something's really fishy

This, Lo’kha thought, is the worst olive branch in the history of forever.

The entrance to the Tam-Tara Deepcroft was as disgusting as he remembered: he could smell the mold and the damp and the mildew and this was a horrendously bad idea, terrible, he should set it on fire and be done with it, but Paiyo had not been seen in two weeks and he was - worried. However, the Deepcroft was still a minefield of voidsent, and literally no other adventurer nor wailer in the Shroud would go in to go after the lalafell, no matter what payment or bribe be made.

He did not want to go in there alone either, regardless of the months he’d been a black, voidsent-communing mage (he had not touched his white mage regalia since he’d run away come back from the First, faith in his one false god shattered), because the Deepcroft was Special.

Lo’kha drew a stick man in the damp soil with Kaladanda and withered. So, in what he thought was a bright, two-chocobos-in-one-gysahl-green stroke, he’d asked Feo Ul to send word to them.

Tell them I need help with finding someone, he’d said, very uncomfortably, to the Fae King.

Back home? They replied, slyly, and Lo’kha squirmed.

It had been a nearly a year since - since his entire, gigantic fuckup with the Syndicate, one of the worst weeks of his life, a blur of fighting and screaming and he walked out on the both of them and never sent word aside from the occasional businesslike exchange of are you alive and you are still persona non grata in Ul’dah, but he’d finally gotten high enough in the Syndicate council to have them under his protection.

If they still wanted it.

He wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t. They’d been on the First and saved it after he’d helped crown Feo Ul as Titania, and he knew how fucked up the time dilation was on the other shard, and out of shame and fear and general I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this he never asked to meet personally.

Who was he kidding, he wasn’t actually expecting either of them to come here to the Shroud - and especially the Deepcroft - anyway. He stood up, brushed his robes off, and prepared to go inside. God damn it, Paiyo. This is your fault.

This, Lo’kha decided, was not very good for his blood pressure.

It was a late weekend afternoon, overcast but not too much, the dry desert air a fair bit more bearable. J'tomo had that usual air of mischief around him that made Lo’kha want to punch his face (with his hand or with his mouth, he could never tell), and he’d made the innocent suggestion to maybe, perhaps, practice some shooting?

He had no idea that it also involved Sapho’li, who apparently could also assemble a gun without looking at it. (Not as fast as J’tomo, mind, but he was skilled enough.) There were a lot of things new to Lo’kha in this ... thing, they had going, the three of them (oh Menphina): the way Sapho’li’s face went soft whenever he looked at his husband, that mysterious outdoor hot spring in their yard, the way J'tomo murmured welcome home whenever Lo’kha took them up on their standing invitation to go visit. He’d girded his loins for all of these new things, but there was no preparing for his childhood friend’s ability to slot a gun together like it was nothing.

He’d gone out to the yard first, where there was some sort of ramshackle shooting range set up, and planted himself in the shade of a tree with a drink and an attempt at willpower. He could do this. He was a priest for gods’ sake, if anyone had to control a giant raging fetish for guns and gun owners who knew how to use them, it would be him, right? Right.