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The crowd that had gathered wasn't large, but it was relatively enthusiastic; late enough that kids were leaving school and melding into the crowd but still early enough that they wouldn't be late to dinner if they did so. Mostly young people meant not a great take for Warwick, but at this point in his life -- with a stable place to stay, comfortable with his place in the city -- money wasn't really his main concern.

Of course, he put the hat out beside his things anyway.

Right now, it had about twelve dollars in it, but by the end of the trick, perhaps it'd have more. Most of the crowd, at the moment, was distracted by the tattooed Australian perched on a balding late-fourties man's shoulders with the pieces of some kind of wooden structure filling his arms. Originally, he'd been standing on the man's shoulder and talking about how easy it was to fit the pieces together. Since then he'd tumbled down to sit and made a big scene of forgetting which order they went together in, even going so far as to ask a girl of about ten to poke through his duffel bag to see if he'd left the instructions in there.

His focused expression melted to triumph as he got the feet on and set a rickety six-foot-tall tower down on the ground beside his 'volunteer' from the audience. At least the man was a good sport, only rolling his eyes a little as Warwick planted a foot on his bald head, mumbling apologies and grinning and pushing himself up onto the tower.

It swayed. One good push or tug would almost certainly knock it over, but for now, Warwick stabilized to the applause of his audience.

Onlookers likely thought this was part of the act: acrobat hauls a young girl up to participate, even if she's only participating in a sidelines kind of way, and she takes a more active role? The world full of cynics as it was, there were probably some absent speculations that she'd been a plant, this was surely intentional.

Except, naturally, that it wasn't. Only two people in the crowd knew that: Warwick, his feet going out of him as his tower began to fall to pieces, and Lissy, who was currently laughing.

She was lucky. He'd been at this game the better part of a decade, now, and had been practicing since he was about her age. Warwick had experienced his fair share of falls, including some that had resulted in broken bones, laid him low for the better part of a season. You didn't tour without falling now and then, no matter what the best athletes said.

He couldn't stop himself from hitting the ground, but he could stop it from doing any damage. Instead of cracking to the grass or falling hard, he went limp and turned his fall into a proper tumble. It still wasn't graceful, not really, and the bits and pieces of the tower got in the way, but he avoided all but a few scratches and rolled quickly back up to his feet.

His eye were very blue and very bright, scanning for the source of the problem before settling on his erstwhile assistant. He didn't say anything, just crooked a finger at her in an exaggerated way that made the crowd laugh. She could approach or run -- her call.

"Could've killed me." That was all the scolding she was going to get, though -- he wasn't a furious kind of guy, and he hadn't, in fact, been injured. He put just enough force behind it that it might scare her, might prevent her from doing it again, and then he was pulling faces at the crowd and working to gather up the scattered pieces of his makeshift tower.

At least there was money going into his hat.

Arms full of wooden pieces, he eased back to push them into Lissy's arms, wiggling his eyebrows at her in meaningfully and nodding toward the duffel bag. He raised his voice just enough for the crowd to pick up on it. "Assistant, kindly put these back with my things."

If she was going to mess with his tricks, if she wanted to 'help', then she could most certainly help. And he'd nudge the hat out further while she did.

Warwick believed the best in people; his assumption was that, since the girl had put him in danger, she'd be apologetic and willing to help out. It never occurred to him that she'd refuse. No children himself, other than a niece he hadn't seen since she was still a muling infant, he had almost no experience with the stubborn refusal, the glare and the pout.

He had even less with cunning manipulators.

Her comment drew him up short, got a stunned look like she'd slap him, that melted away to something hurt. He might have been a decade older than her, but that left him stunned and injured, mouth open just a little like he didn't understand why she'd said it. And the crowd was, in fact, coming to her side, grumbling and shifting like they were about done with this, a couple of them on the edge of laughter in the hopes she was joking.

Warwick himself had gone quiet, torn between horror and embarrassment: instead of jumping into the fray he just set to carefully packing up his things. His mind went a mile a minute. He'd liked this location. Halfway in the shade, it had encouraged people to pause and watch, since they weren't stranded under the harsh flash of sunlight. Now, though, he wondered if he should pick up and move somewhere else. He still didn't quite know what had happened.

"...um." Lissy caught his attention and he twisted away from zipping up his duffel to blink at her and the hat, working his mouth. She had helped out, after all, and it was more than possible that was her plan all along, no? His intention to stay shut off and not tumble in to the trap crumbled in the face of her smile.

"Thank you." It was hesitant, and he stooped to grab his hand and shoved the cash into his pocket without looking at it first. "...would've appreciated you asking first, though."

Her logic was flawed; Warwick could taste that his logic was flawed, he just couldn't wrap his mind fully around how. Moments like these made him miss his brother, made his eyes go a little distant as he tried to figure out what the hell Reese would have done in this situation, how Reese would have replied.

Reese might have made the poor girl cry. Not a good example to follow. Warwick made a noise and shoved the hat on his head, giving up.

"Uh. I guess...." he didn't think of it as tricks, but it was as fair an assessment as any. He hauled the bag up onto one shoulder. "Wander some, find a crowd, got my routine pretty portable for one person at this point. Can be hard in the winter, but once it gets warm...why, you thinking of joining the circus?"

In all honesty, her boasting enthusiasm was something of a relief. It meant that she wasn't going to mess with his things anymore, and that fact alone was enough to leave Warwick sighing, slowly, the tension draining away as he adjusted the bag on his shoulder. It was obviously heavy, dragging him a little crooked, and a tip of his head exaggerated it.

"I knew two ladies who swam around in fish tails like mermaids, as part of their act." He flicked a look around, and then smiled crookedly down at her. The last of their audience had retreated. So be it, then. "They were sisters. Synchronized swimmers. Pretty cool...and circus act worthy, I think. It's possible."

She was so full of questions that it drew him up short, made Warwick gape and fumble for some kind of appropriate response. It had been too long since he'd really had a conversation with a child, and he couldn't remember when he'd spent time with one as old as her. Trying to follow the stream of her words, he dug fingers up into wildly-colored hair and just bobbed his head in a stupid sort of nod.

"...uh. Well. That's a rough question, wink." He cleared his throat, taking a step away -- and then setting his things back down with a sigh. He had time to chat, so why not. "Used to be me and my brother, but he took off, so now it's just me. Circus en't really what I want."

The serious answer would probably bore her. He made a noise at that, and cracked a smile, finally. Teasing. "And not just cause of the silly costumes."