into the sea, you and me
all these years, and no one heard
i love you, let's go

Everything about this meeting feels off, but Sikeax can’t help but enjoy the distasteful sensation of entertainment in it. There is something about how Manon acts that intrigues her, might it be the slipping grace of her elegant tongue, the curves in her body that portray themselves wonderfully in the fluidity of the mare’s movements, or just the fact that this meeting isn’t completely haunted and, or possibly, probably tortured by her fear of the world.
Manon is clean, fresh, a saint in a world of sinners, but that is not to say that Sikeax still doesn’t trust her. Its just a pretty face gifted onto a body of miracles, a brain that probably has other things to think about other than her.
Hobgoblin doesn’t bask in the sensation with her. Embarrassment proves to be a sour taste in his mouth that can’t be washed out with anything. He doesn’t exactly try though. No, Hobgoblin is not that burdened by it.
But what he can feel is Sikeax’s tension, the pinpricks of discomfort and confusion, the edge of suspicion creeping ever closer, regardless of how little of it she chooses to show. His hatefulness is getting the better of him. It rounds the corner on ballerina leaps and has the same silver hair as this woman whose eyes are lingering only mere seconds too long on his bonded and him.
And if he has learned anything from his bonded, it is that lingering eyes always have an agenda.
To make matters worse, there’s a smile hanging up on the rack of her lips. She cannot keep her eyes and mind from it, rolling a batch of sea foam beneath her skin that gathers up her stomach(and rib cage? The feeling wiggles out to freedom from under her finger’s pressure right as she comes to believe she has a hold on it), humming a tone of waves and gull cries as it tosses it into the air.
‘No’ is what Hobgoblin proclaims at the sight of it, but what it really sounds like in the two of their heads is “Fuck off, Wound-Body.”
The new selection of naming brings nothing new to their table. Sikeax stares at it with distaste and disapproval, a frown that says ‘You could do better.’ as Hobgoblin returns with a look of rebellion, harsh, hard features that threaten and engage.
Display of weakness, to no surprise, has become one of his anger points.
Hmph.
Neither is sure who it came from, so let’s agree that it came from both because that is exactly what they are feeling, in different contexts. Hobgoblin’s is disbelief in her words, as is Sikeax’s, but Sikeax tricks herself into believing that maybe she is telling the truth and that this is the impromptu completion of a promise that she is sure was never meant to be completed. They just don’t work that way.
The expression that leaks across Sikeax’s face is one less true of her feelings. Her jaw tenses on one side but discovers slack in the opposite side, once contained brows gradually climb their way to a higher altitude, where they question her company with little amusement. The emotion in her blue eyes is lazy. It simply shows a half-assed display of questioning.
Hobgoblin, like the polar opposite he intends to be these days, glares. The stress in his shoulders has faded. One stands at salute while the other lurches downward, further into the mess of nothingness and transparency that his legs become before the ankle begins to even think of existing. Everything slopes off into one general direction to landslide into a painting depicting an overall expression of ‘are you fucking serious?’
You can see where their equal ‘hmph’s’ make entrance now.
The raised brow that Manon gives? Had Hobgoblin had skin, muscles, the entire works of bodily stuff that makes up a face, she would have been greeted with a snarl, but there is no visible nose for him to crinkle, just teeth that have no lips who stand idle, docile, useless predators with a hidden agenda.
Darting eyes sprint to lifting knees, and Sikeax finds herself doing the same, only in the opposite direction. It is not meant in rudeness. Well, actually it is, but she’s not about to admit that. There are more important things to fret over and Hobgoblin is definitely not taking control of the wheel here. Ignorant pain, the kind of muscle ache that hums itself as a lullaby into life when one moves in a funny way, pops up in her neck as she tucks it into herself. The height in her brows has turned back into those crumpled-up knots again. Even her ears are cowering from the approach.
A shake of the head follows short, teamed up with Hobgoblin pushing his own forward into announcement as a warning, oblivious as to how there is nothing to threaten with here.
“I guess we could go with that.” Distrust plays the flute of her voice. Suspicion pulls the ropes that lift, drop and move the fingers needed to play. This, all of which she makes slightly obvious, just so that the point will get across.
Weak relief hits her at the knowledge that she wasn’t wrong. The playing field has (somehow? maybe?)leveled itself now. Everyone knows each other, Hobgoblin doesn’t give a fuck(but this isn’t out of the ordinary, so no cause for worry), except there seems to be the fact that this woman cannot learn the meaning of personal space.
Hobgoblin, again, to no surprise, is the one that has enough in the end of it.
She has paid too much attention to him, too many darting eyes and seemingly endless stares, flashing smiles and fluttering lashes that he finds no purpose to. Yes, the pretty, silver colouring in them is very nice, he’ll give her that, but he cares nothing for beauty. Sikeax could be a whale carcass that he was forced to spend his entire life attached to, feeling whatever (probably)god-awful emotions that come with rotting and being eaten at the bottom of the sea and he wouldn’t blink an eye to it, and that’s pretty damn ugly. He’d still hate and love her the same, or maybe not. You can’t be sure of those things. Chances are he’d take part in eating it before he even thought about it.
But the thing is, they aren’t leaving him alone. They’re there, they’re alive, they’re a thing in this world that is happening when he isn’t particularly interested in putting up with them. So he goes for his logic, which for this scenario, is hard eyes and a stare that won’t give up til he works up the effort to break himself apart and drop to the ground, completely, utterly done.
All of this can’t help but make her annoyed, scrunching up the sunburn-scarred plains between her two nostrils. It feels too much, like an effort is being made that isn’t needed. She is not one for buttering up and flattering when the comfort of warming companionship and unexpected, easy conversation and company filling up the room makes her sigh and melt with relief.
“His name is Hobgoblin.” She throws it out there with blunt force, like it needs to be said with. Those fluttering lashes are returned with stone features. Now, she intends to give nothing out. Suspicion has finally made it around to her and is fast at work, whispering things in her ears. It wears Hobgoblin’s voice.
“Know.”
She left with Tilney to the World’s Edge. I don’t see a reason why anyone would want me except from those in the Throat.
“They know???? Help?”
I doubt it.
‘You never know’ brows meet her as she turns to take one look at him before fading into the silver of his body.
She comes back to reality to find that her notion of Manon’s lack of knowledge of personal space is true. No time has been wasted in her making up the slack in their positions, inching closer till even Hobgoblin shares unsteadiness with her.
Even with the world all around them with everywhere to run, she feels trapped, caged, with nowhere to go.
What comes out of her next makes her sink into her own body, turned into a depth-less sea that she can let swallow her up as much as it wants, safe.
“What makes you think I’m hiding?” The force in her words is unexpectedly strong. She doesn’t mean the snap, but there it is, already out in the world. “If I want to slink away to the North at any reason, I don’t believe there is a single problem with it. I don’t think I need to produce a cause to it.”
Hobgoblin’s bulky mass of a head slings round so quickly that he might as well throw some slobber with it. Anger is bubbling but it isn’t exactly his.
Too bad he hasn’t really been paying much attention to them.
“If you’re going to ask me why I’m so far away from everyone else, then how about I ask you why you’re trying so hard? Sweet compliments and such forward approaches won’t win everyone if that’s what you are trying.”
Embarrassment pings off of her forehead and worms its way in because it is not till now that she really comes to acknowledge that maybe Manon actually is flirting with her. Hobgoblin chuckles in the back of her head and she hates it.
It finds its way in when she sighs and accepts the weight of it on her already heavy heart. The sigh blossoms in her chest as she mentally rolls her eyes, unsettled by the fact that this could actually be happening and the memory that her last lover(?????) has been the cause of her agony, a curse on her well-being without the intention of it. It’s not something she’s looking to reacquire.
A solution rises about the same time that it makes its way to her face. Her ears are cast backwards but slouched, there is a far greater slack in her muscles now that they look like they might break from her body as her lips curl inwards and frown in a most unattractive way.
Yet, nonetheless in a matter of fact way, like she has thought this through and has had it happen thousands of times over(which it has not), comes “Some of us prefer comforts similar to that of attempting friendship instead of, uh…” Words tumble over one another now that she finds herself at a standstill. “such straightforward flirting.”
Giggling. Oh, how she hates it, checking with a sideways glance to find that Hobgoblin is grinning with content.
“If that happens to be what you’re doing.” And if not, may the Gods have mercy on her poor soul because this will be what does her in.

OOC: please take my awkward child she is terrible
hobgoblin changing any shape adds up to what he does in the before post!