[ota] taking care of business

[so-complicit.livejournal.com]

[ooc: This got a wee bit longer than I intended. tl;dr version: Davin shows back up with the horses he was contracted to find and unloads them, then on his way back in to the Castle, is sidetracked by an old friend who wants him to teach his 20-something year old son a little humility. Anybody who saw him with the horses at the temporary corral set up for them just outside Spade Castle or over by the practice field dishing out that humility is welcome to stop him and have a chat.]

He'd left Sunday night for Outside on a trip to see a man about a horse.

Well, technically, see several men about several horses. But these weren't riding horses, oh no, these were rodeo broncos intended for a soon-upcoming Challenge between an Eight and Seven of Spades who were both cowboys at one time. Or perhaps just fancied themselves as such, Davin didn't particularly care one way or the other.

But once he's driven on Deck with the horse trailer and unloaded the horses in the temporary corral just outside of Spade Castle where they'll be residing until the Challenge is over, and gotten paid by the two cowboys in question, his only desire is to go back up to his rooms and take a long, hot shower.

He's on his way to do just that when someone calls out to him from the practice field.

"Turning into a cowboy on us, Davin?"

Davin smiled and shook his head, "only playing the part for a little while, Tucker. Think I should keep my day job?"

The other man laughed and waved him over, "actually thought you might give me a hand," he nodded over to where a couple of younger Numbers were sparring at hand-to-hand fighting. "Young Ryan over there happened to mention someone ought to challenge up through you on their way to Eight," with his expression and eyeroll clearly indicating that Ryan thought it should be he himself, and at Six, he was positioned well enough to do so, "I thought maybe you wouldn't mind disabusing him of the notion."

Davin watched the sparring a moment and sighed, that shower sure did seem a long way off now. "How much of a lesson you looking for him to get, Tucker?"

The man shrugged, "he's not bad, he just thinks he's quite a bit better than not bad. Don't break anything, okay? His mother'd never forgive me."

Davin smiled at that and pulled off the cowboy hat he'd worn out to get the horses, setting it on top of one of the fence posts that ringed the practice field. Then he tugged off the flannel shirt he'd had on, draping it over the fence, and slipped out of the cowboy boots, setting them on the ground underneath the shirt. "Don't steal my hat, Tucker," he said, walking out to approach the two sparring Numbers Tucker had indicated. "Which one of you is Ryan?"

The young man in question frowned a little, glancing over at Tucker, before nodding to Davin, "that's me."

Davin smiled and spread his hands. "Tucker tells me you don't know why I'm still Eight. Why don't we find out?"

Well, since he'd just been boasting earlier, the boy could hardly back down from such a direct prompting, now could he?

Less than a minute later, he's lying on the ground with a bloody nose and a few new bruises and Davin's walking back over to Tucker to retrieve his clothes. "Think he got the point?"

Tucker somehow managed to grin and scowl at the same time, "not bad, but I'm still going to hear it from his mother about the nose."

He didn't wait for a response from Davin, though, walking away to tell Ryan how he'd lost that fight while Davin pulled his clothes back on.