psychoshenanigans | GRATIA // PSL

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GRATIA // PSL

So, here's what Irahl knows.

He's alone in a dark, cold cave. He has most, if not all, of his gear. No one is guarding his location. As he heads away from the spot where he came to consciousness, no one tries to stop him, and no one gets in his way. The few people he finds down there seem human, and not about to approach the nearly-seven-foot man that comes stalking out of the lower tunnels. Honestly, everyone here seems a surprised and a little astonished about his... Entire scene.

There is a way up. It's a maze of twisting corridors and confusing passageways, half of which feel too small for him. It's bigger and bigger groups of people, some of which scatter like schools of fish, and some of which have to be pushed through to get anywhere. It's climbing up into streets lit with dingy lights, graffiti-covered hallways, warehouses, weird holes in stone walls that may or may not be windows. It's alarm bells, it's people yelling at each other down the street. It's just an absurd number of stairs. A couple of people make an attempt to stop him somewhere, and it goes poorly for them.

Elsewhere, events are being set in motion where Irahl cannot see. But he's on his way out.

Eventually, more people try to stop him. At the end of another long stretch of Underground city, a group of official-looking folks are putting a real effort into blocking off the obvious exit, and some of them have weapons.

Down a side alley, into another tunnel, and then the space opens up into a... Plaza, of some sort? The floor is made of stone. The buildings surrounding it are made of stone and are hard to distinguish from one another. At at least the ceiling (also made of stone) is a lot higher than before. Cavernous. There's some kind of sculpture in the middle of it, some impressive feat of geometric stonework that gives the illusion of defying gravity despite weighing literal tons.

This is where someone finally catches him. Sounds have been echoing unhelpfully down every passageway, making it hard to tell if people are coming or going - but this series of quick footsteps comes from an upward direction before someone hits the ground about five feet in front of Irahl.

His clothes are different. His hair is better-kept. Maybe if the situation wasn't quite so tense, there'd be time to see the ways in which his face is different, the way his eyes don't have quite as vicious and sharp a gleam as they used to. But whatever Irahl can take in of him, there is Robin, having hopped down from a rooftop to put himself between him and the exit again.

"...Holy shit."

Kind of weird that he looks absolutely shocked to see the person in front of him, though.

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"Yeah, sounds right." Robin is absolutely unsurprised by this, and goes back to giving the contract one last cursory read-through. "Good that you did, though. This'll keep you out of trouble with pretty much everybody."

He keeps up this conversational tone, aware of how Irahl had been looking at him but unable to remember if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Irahl was always hard to read. He finishes his review, folds everything up, and puts it back in its envelope.

Glancing at the men around him again, he realizes that they're all standing... Leaning... Looking dour... And he swivels himself back around into something much closer to a normal sitting position.

"So... Why the long faces? What am I missing? What's the catch?"

Well, Irahl's face always kind of looks like that, so he ends up addressing Vincent more than the other one.

"...No catch, I think." Vincent scratches his head, trying to look slightly less dour having been caught at it, then repeats, "I think? Unless I'm missin' somethin'?"

"Nothing more than usual," he says, which would have meant nothing coming from almost anyone else, but it probably includes a lot when coming from Irahl.

It's one of those things that is the closest to positive that a true pessimist can get, but still counts as pessimism.

The fervor and excitement he'd experienced while talking to his new employer has dulled by now to that vaguely rattled feeling that comes after a kick of adrenaline. Reality has been settling in, which never goes well for him.

He almost looks like he's going to elaborate, but instead tightens his folded arms a little more and hunches into his shoulders instead, taking on the familiar look of being uncomfortable in his own skin.

Okay... Vincent's not complaining about his brother, and Irahl didn't say one of the many biting things he could have said about being a prisoner or whatever, so things are technically going well. Irahl's probably freer than he has been in months, why does he look like he's being put back in a cage?

He takes a moment to really look at Vincent, as the puzzle piece he understands the best out of the two. He knows a lot about both brothers, but doesn't actually know much about the conflict between them. Neither of them really talks about it. He just knows Vincent is hurt that his brother left to be a war hero without him, and that he doesn't want to go back to the Capitol because he's embarrassed about... it...

And... Irahl has... A huge crush on him, obviously, so... Hm...

He looks back at Irahl. It's probably not all that's going on, but with how chummy these two were acting yesterday... He could see Vincent putting his foot in his mouth about the Capitol or his brother, and Irahl getting self-conscious and sad about whatever dumb shit he said. That's the theory he decides to operate on as he finally follows up on his thought.

"Okay, so... We doing lunch still? Or heading straight upstairs?"

Whatever awkward conversations may or may not have happened between and around them earlier today, Irahl's first impulse is still to scoff under his breath and look in Vincent's direction as if the other man could actually catch his gaze.

He's pretty sure that Vicent has a bottomless pit instead of a stomach, so maybe he isn't feeling the same way, but Irahl at least can't picture what kind of lunch would sit well on top of two bread-covered tubes of mystery meat, a pile of tubers, and enough cave-prawns to feed eight people.

At the very least, he imagines the other man might find the thought funny, and he doesn't want to miss that reaction either.

He's also on the fence about heading upstairs. While it sounds like freedom and that's always welcome, it would also mean a change of scenery when all he feels like doing is crawling into a hole and completely checking out for a couple days, and there's also a world of people between here and there to stare at him while he's feeling paranoid.

So, he doesn't say anything right away, and seems to be continuing to look at Vincent like he's waiting for him to make the call.

The idea of lunch does get Vincent to kind of... Chuckle with growing discomfort as he thinks about how much food is in him and how absolutely absurd it'd be to get more food on top of that.

"Nah, I'm..." He shakes his head. So much krill... "We ate..."

As for up-top, Vincent kind of waits for Irahl to say something, because he doesn't really feel like taking a trip anywhere. He kind of wants to sleep until tomorrow, actually.

"Okay, upstairs then," Robin concludes, absolutely taking advantage of the uncertain silence, "We can celebrate your trip going well and Irahl's newfound legality."

He stands up off the couch, makes a show of stretching. Puts on a big grin. "Unless you two are already tuckered out from a little paperwork..."

In their hesitance, a decision seems to have been made for them, and yet there is no sign from Irahl that he has any attention of going anywhere. He doesn't seem ready to move over to the couch, let alone all the way upstairs.

Though, that is also how he'd been back when half of Robin's job had been trying to move Irahl from one place to another. He never looks like he's going to cooperate by moving a single muscle until the last possible second, and even then, he never gets moving very quickly.

So, he stays right where he is and looks completely unfazed by Robin's grin.

"They asked if I had a nut allergy." Just 'a little paperwork' indeed. Robin clearly doesn't understand what he has gone through. Also, it's impossible to tell--as usual--whether he's trying to be funny or not. "How far is the nearest lake?"

He clearly doesn't understand what they've gone through. Robin has no sympathy--in fact, he smirks and makes a mental note to find out who Seth put on his team, since they're apparently both smart and funny.

"Lake? A few hours of walking. Plus the hour to make it up to the surface. Why?"

Robin will realize, later, that he shouldn't have mentioned the lake because of some potential logistical nightmares. But he hasn't realized it yet.

Vincent perks up at the question, though, tilting his head to listen more intently.

"I want to go fishing."

No he doesn't. It's a joke. He'll leave it up to Vincent if he wants to clarify anything further for Robin. He also continues to not commit to anything about the actual trip upstairs, maybe because he's still waiting for Vincent to weigh in with his thoughts.

In the meantime, he has a question that is relevant to both now and any other time he decides to venture out into public. He tilts his head toward the massive envelope of documentation.

"...Do I have to carry that whole thing around with me now, or what?"

The joke gets a little bit of a laugh out of Robin, but the question about the envelope is what pulls his attention. He pulls the papers out and begins to separate them into two piles between his fingers.

"...Heard the lakes upstairs are real nice," Vincent speaks up from his corner, shrugging. "Dunno how much of a walk I'm up for, but I'm game to try."

Robin sighs, suddenly, pausing in his paper sorting to cast annoyed glances at the both of them, "Do you two need to take a nap before we go? Or something?"

Vincent looks a little surprised, but something about that does finally get him to smile a little sheepishly, "I mean... Wouldn't hate that...."

There's a shift to Irahl's eyes that says he's probably now smirking under his scarf, though it's hard to tell if it's in the wake of Vincent's (cute) answer or Robin's (hilarious) annoyance.

Either way, he's glad that he waited and withheld sharing any of his thoughts on the topic. He might have missed that little exchange otherwise.

"We ate a lot of shrimp." Still smirking, but that doesn't interrupt his ability to sound absolutely dire.

Something about the dire tone and the topic of shrimp gets Vincent to laugh.

"Seriously," he adds, "It's bad, man. I'm more shrimp than person right now."

Well, as annoyed as he is that he was right, and after all his laying around and waiting for these idiots they just want to take a fucking nap, at least Robin can see that the offer seems to have picked up their moods. He'll drag them upstairs if he has to, but he really doesn't want to have to.

"Fine..." Robin sighs again, putting approximately a third of the papers back in their envelope and holding it out for Irahl to take, "Since you boneheads took care of lunch without me, I'll go eat. But I'll be back in an hour."

Irahl does take the downsized envelope and idly pulls the documents out so he can flip through them. Knowing exactly what papers he's carrying will probably come in handy when someone suddenly demands to see one of them. His eyes are still down on the paperwork when he dryly replies.

"You're very kind."

It's flat and sarcastic, but he also didn't need to say anything at all, so there might be a nugget of actual sentiment in there. Somewhere.

"I'm a regular saint, yeah."

Robin rolls into the sarcasm as easily as breathing. This exchange feels very familiar; they did always get along best when they were both feeling annoyed and sardonic, after all. In exchange for what may be a sentiment, Robin excuses him from having to feel it for very long.

The documents he picked out for Irahl are mostly top-level approvals with lists of equipment that reference other, more specific documents. Those specific documents have been removed, save for the ones people are most likely to ask for. His gun, his other gun, his cloak, his visor. And his music player, even though no one will ask.

"Hour sounds great," Vincent answers from where he's at, finally shrugging off his coat.

With Robin getting up to leave, Irahl also finally feels the compulsion to move as well--especially with noticing that Robin had included his music player in the vital pieces of equipment that should have their specific licenses ready for access at any moment. Something about it picks at him, a tiny bit.

In either case, a few moments after Robin begins to uproot himself, Irahl does the same, moving to crouch down beside his pile of junk so he can officially find a place for the documents in the duffel bag. It's going to theoretically become a permanent installment in his routine, so it will take him a minute to figure out the best place for it.

Robin heads for the door, but turns back before opening it to smirk back into the room.

"If you clowns ain't rested by the time I get back, I'll drag your asses upstairs myself," he points at Vincent, threateningly, "Again."

"Hey, hey..." Vincent half-laughs as he tosses his coat into his room, "I hear ya'. You're the boss."

"Good," Robin punctuates, finally heading out and closing the door behind him before Irahl can get too fussy about his choice of words.

In the silence left by Robin leaving, Vincent finally sighs--one of those big sighs that seems to be offloading the events of the last few hours.

"What a fuckin' day..."

Wise choice on Robin's part, as Irahl had begun to think up a comment about how he's happy to hear that Robin can drag people up stairs and not just down them, but is distracted by the event of him actually leaving.

Irahl's body is typically far more resilient than most, but he does make a sound as if his bones hurt while he pushes himself up from crouching down by his stuff. The timing is probably coincidental, and is meant much more as a sound of commiseration to Vincent's comment than anything else.

Once he's up, he only moves far enough reach the couch, finally completing the earlier day's ordeal by sitting down. Without anyone there who can watch him now, he allows himself to move his scarf out of the way enough to rub his face with both hands, leaning backwards in his seat to stretch the tension out of his shoulders over the back of the couch.

One of his very favorite things about Vincent is that he can't see. This is the first time since they'd left the apartment this morning that he is away from prying eyes. Some of those walls can be put down for real now--at least for an hour.

On the exhale after the stretch, he sits forward again, still rubbing his face... and he just kind of keeps bowing forward until his elbows land on his knees.

And there he stays, face resting in his hands while things in his head begin to rattle apart a little more than he'd expected as soon as he's not holding them tightly together anymore.

Irahl can decompress in whatever way he wants and Vincent will only ever have his best guess as to what it looks like. And the guy barely even remembered that Irahl had scales, so his best guess may not even be that good.

Though he gets the general gist of things enough to be helpful. Here, he gives Irahl a minute of space, partly out of respect for the time this guy has just had and partly to give himself a little bit of room to unwind. He wants to make sure that what he's about to say isn't just more desperate rambling like it was last time.

Eventually, he walks over to come sit down on the other side of the couch. He goes a little slower than his usual graceless flop, since he doesn't want to startle the guy if he's not really paying attention right now.

"Hey man..." He says quietly, more towards the wall than at Irahl, "M'sorry. Said a bunch of dumb shit earlier an' made it weird."

A rueful smile crosses his face as he remembers something from what now feels like a long time ago.

"An' I don't want it to be weird, so. I'mma work on it. We cool?"

This is where he'd normally put a hand out for a handshake... But that seems like an awfully intimate gesture where they already seem pretty uncertain, so he holds out his arm for a fistbump instead. Bump for yes, ignore for no.

Now Irahl remembers how this goes. He begins to lose altitude into a spiral that he cannot see the bottom of, and Vincent jostles him right back to reality before he and find out how far it goes. Every time.

He doesn't feel better when Vincent speaks up, but there's at least a pause in his descent. Things are still full of tension and messy where they've been rattling off the organized shelves of his mind, but he surfaces and lifts his face enough to peer over at Vincent.

Looking at his friend beside him, there are a few moments where confusing and nostalgic thoughts begin to form... before the even more perplexing gesture is offered out in his direction.

Vincent is left hanging for several seconds while Irahl struggles to figure out what Vincent is expecting here, going through a couple of different options in his head, before he finally give up and asks, "What is that."

"Huh?"

Of all the things he was half-braced to hear, that wasn't one of them. The fingers of his hand droop for a moment, but he's committed to the gesture. He tilts his head over to 'look' at Irahl but re-steadies his hand.

"...Is this not a thing where you're from? You bump fists?"

He continues to hold his fist in the air. For his bro? He'd do this all night.

"Instead of a handshake."

Getting Irahl to think about how silly he finds the idea of 'bumping fists' is one way to distract him from pitching headlong into some sort of shutdown. Though, that derision might only be because whatever he's picturing about how it's done is almost certainly incorrect.

"Handshake?"

He's pretty sure that's also something they've never done before. And while Vincent probably means it to mark an agreement to put awkwardness behind them, even that case doesn't seem right to Irahl.

He doesn't know what would feel fitting here, but it's not either of those things.

"...What happened to shoulder-grabs?"

Vincent has perhaps underestimated just how much his go-to gesture of grabbing someone's shoulder has meant to Irahl. He didn't realize that had become kind of their thing.

He can't help but laugh, surprised. He can't help it--here he is trying to go out of his way to do anything socially refined and it's backfired in the more bizarre and endearing way.

"You know, what the fuck am I doin'? You're right."

Grinning, he reaches over to grab Irahl's shoulder and give it a shake. A light jostle.

"It's gonna be fine, bud. We'll figure it out."

The gush of relief that Irahl feels kind of disgusts him. Being touched at all is still strange and jarring, especially after the isolated few months he has just had, but Vincent still shakes the tension out of his shoulders.

The whole thing is so familiar that it almost hurts. He can't be open and personable enough to return the gesture, but he does his version of it--automatically reaching to clap his hand onto Vincent's and leaning against it just a little.

It's funny how a single gesture makes all of his earlier anxiety feel totally baseless. Yeah, he learned that his friend has a big, dangerous, life-consuming goal, but does that make him a different person than the one he was stuck in space-jail with? Not at all. That guy's still right here.

He lets him keep his hand however long he wants. Gives his shoulder another squeeze.

"'Sides, didn't run halfway 'cross Third for you to ditch me now. I'm comin' with."

He doesn't realize consciously that this had been a fear of Irahl's, but it had been a fear of his--and so the reassurance is both to remind Irahl he won't have to figure things out by himself, and to remind himself that he has a say in the matter.

And yes he is still not over the fact that he ran across half a city to find them yesterday. That's a wild thing he normally wouldn't be caught dead doing.

The statement doesn't completely click right away.

"Coming with?"

Irahl is so caught up in the present moment, focused in on this gesture between them and realizing just how much he'd missed his friend, he loses track of the actual conversation. Between that and not expecting Vincent to mean his upcoming trip, he doesn't follow.

"Yeah, comin' with." His smile falters slightly as his words aren't immediately met with agreement. He thought this was kind of a given, just hard to conceptualize. "To the Capitol?"

Honestly, Vincent doesn't have a great sense of just how much Irahl's been paying attention to him and his brother's interactions, and that his hesitance to visit the Capitol because of his brother is really, really obvious to anyone with ears.

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