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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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.

Too bad Vincent can't see Irahl's eyebrows raise. Yes, apparently Vincent's reluctance in regards to the Capitol has been obvious enough to cause an expression of surprise to actually register on the sniper's face now.

"You are."

It isn't phrased as a question, exactly. More like he's skeptically looking for confirmation that he's understanding this correctly--or hesitant to trust this fact as true until he is doubly-assured, so that he doesn't get his hopes up for nothing.

"Yeah, of course. Wouldn't send you off alone."

He says it confidently enough, but his expression drifts more towards a frown as two separate thoughts compete for his attention. One is that Irahl seems very surprised. The other is that after the conversation he had with Seth, he has just enough self-awareness left to realize it's kind of shitty that he's turned down his brother for years only to throw all that away the moment a friend might be sad if he didn't go.

It's a little more complicated than that, but still. He gives Irahl's shoulder another small squeeze.

"'Sides, it's... Probably high time I finally paid my bro a visit."

There's no way for Irahl to know what the trip to the Capitol might be like, but he's been trying to imagine it during whatever small moments of mental room he has had for imagining. Now, there's a pause while he begins to adjust that half-formed mental image to include Vincent.

One of the main reasons for his current spiral is all of the monumental upheavals to his life that he has endured in the past year, with the pace of them seeming to be drastically picking up speed. Even for someone like him--who has had so many life-wide overhauls and is halfway expecting another one to happen at any moment--it has been a lot.

In the past, those changes have always meant losing important things, and he has always endured them alone. Arriving here is proving to be the first reversal of this tradition.

So, he doesn't say anything, but the way he solidifies his hand clamped down on Vincent's, almost giving it a small squeeze in return, is an adequate stand-in for what he means.

There are so many feelings coming up all at once... Shock that Irahl would think he'd ever leave him, guilt over his earlier words, but also comfort and relief and joy knowing that maybe he's managed to help, even a little. There's fear for the future and hope that he can repay even a fraction of what he owes Irhal for everything he's done for him. He has the near-overwhelming urge to pull this man close and hold onto him until...

Well, he doesn't know. So he doesn't give in, really not wanting to scare him with a sudden burst of sentimentality, but he finds a middle ground by letting his hand rest there as long as Irahl wants it to remain where it is.

This feels like about the right time to deflect with some humor, right?

"I, uh, may need your help makin' rent, though. Don't think my landlady will appreciate me skippin' out for a few weeks without payin' again."

Okay so again, it's a joke but also not a joke.

Little does Vincent know that in that moment, Irahl is struggling with the extremely alien impulse of wanting to hug his friend. Or be hugged. He doesn't know. And he doesn't know what to do with an impulse like that--he doesn't even know what to think about it--so, some part of him is relieved when Vincent interrupts it with a joke.

He takes his hand back, pretending he was planning on doing so anyway. Vincent is free again.

"Sure. Don't think you'd survive another attack."

Back to jokes. That's something he does know how to do.

It takes him a second to remember why that's a joke... But once it hits him, it hits him hard and gets another good, deep laugh out of him. He smacks Irahl's shoulder a couple more times for emphasis before he finally takes his arm back into his own space.

"Yeah, I got a couple crazy ideas, but we can talk through 'em when I'm not so fuckin' full of krill."

He knows that heading to the bedroom to sleep would be the smartest thing here, so Irahl can have the couch to himself... But even though he muscled through wanting to give his friend a hug, he can't seem to bring himself to leave his space just yet. So instead, he kicks off his boots, trying to decide if he can just pass out on half the couch instead.

As always, the laughter helps. It reconnects the two of them a little more. The hand jovially smacking down onto his shoulder further jars him into the present moment.

It reminds him that rubble isn't falling all around him. This won't be another lonely drive with strangers to a city that wants to trap him.

So, he isn't eager to separate from Vincent either. He himself hadn't been intending on actually taking a nap, and he didn't know if Vincent planned to or if it had only been a ploy to get Robin to give them an hour's worth of space. He watches Vincent kick off his shoes, but until it's obvious that the other man wants Irahl to shuffle off elsewhere, he stays right where he is.

"No babysitting."

"Nah, nah," Vincent waves a hand, "Nothin' like that."

He'd actually considered taking them out and maybe doing a little bit of monster hunting on their own. It'd give them a chance to show off their stupid weapons and make some cash at the same time. But that really is talk for another time, when he feels like he can talk through logistics without a headache.

His composure breaks a little and he slumps over. He ends up leaning his head and shoulder against Irahl's arm, but shows no signs that he actually wants him to move out of the way.

"I might actually sleep," he says, "Wasn't jokin' 'bout bein' tired."

Vincent leaning on him is not that big of a shift, in the grand scheme of things. It's fine. There's nothing strange or uncalled-for about it at all. And yet, even though he's watching as it happens, it completely catches Irahl off guard.

He's startled, but the jolt is entirely an internal one. He holds carefully still, in fact, as Vincent bumps into and settles against his arm. If anyone with eyes had been in the room, they wouldn't have seen much of a reaction beyond a small smirk twitch across his face.

Inside, there's a weird stomach-flop that Irahl immediately blames on krill.

He expects Vincent to be joking around, and it takes him a few beats to realize that the other man isn't actually planning on sitting right back up again.

"...You waiting for me to tuck you in again?"

Vincent laughs at that. It's almost a cackle.

In his mind, he's doing this at least partly to be a pain, even if it is in a very mundane, inoffensive way. It's just enough to justify the other reason he's doing it, which is that this is fulfilling his deep and indescribable want to be close to someone. He's always found a lot of comfort in being able to reach out and touch someone, and Irahl's been a comfort for him since the first day he met him.

"Yeah, maybe." He shrugs irreverently, a lazy smirk on his own face, "Hey, where'd that pillow go...?"

He means the one he threw at Irahl's face the day before. He feels along the ground with one of those stupidly-long arms of his, figuring it's probably on the floor somewhere.

It's hard not to think about Vincent's laugh when it's right there, jostling his arm. He smiles along without noticing.

Then his attention follows Vincent's arm as it feels around on the floor, and he stretches out one long leg to shove the pillow closer, gently kicking it into Vincent's reach.

He still can't quite believe that Vincent actually seems intent on napping right there, though Robin used to fall asleep on him often enough, so maybe there's just something about him that invites this kind of thing. He can't imagine what about his presence would be anything less than disconcerting, but he doesn't find himself resenting it in this case.

Before he can think too much about it, Irahl reaches over the arm of the couch to grab his coat off the pile of belongings and draws it over Vincent like a well-armed blanket.

Vincent hadn't denied wanting to be tucked in, so there. It's all part of the joke, and nothing else. He's doing it to be funny, and he's telling himself that's why he's hoping it gets another smile or a laugh out of his friend.

Well shit, when he played into the bit he hadn't actually expected Irahl to have a follow-up. He feels something heavy getting draped over him and laughs again, this time out of surprise and a little bit of delight.

He recognizes it very quickly. Once, Irahl had draped this over him out of desperation. Now it's being done for... Fun and maybe (probably) even a little bit of affection. His heart swells again.

"That's what I get," he admits, stuffing the now-in-reach pillow between Irahl and his head. He sticks his legs out over the arm of the couch in the other direction. "Service around here's really improvin', I'll tell ya' what..."

Good gods he's so immediately comfortable. Even after spending months apart, Irahl probably remembers this guy's propensity for falling asleep very quickly once he finds a good spot. Vincent doesn't stand a chance for long, if he really is that tired.

As Vincent wedges a pillow under his head and rearranges his legs over the arm of the couch, Irahl takes the opportunity to subtly shift around himself while everything is moving. He slumps a little more comfortably and settles where he now expects someone else to be leaning on him by the time Vincent plunks his head back down.

"Don't say that too loud or she'll raise your rent."

It's a joke that Irahl gives out of simple reflex, not putting any energy into it as things are apparently winding down. Still not quite over the surreality of the moment, the majority of Irahl's attention is actually being spent on staring in quiet disbelief as Vincent continues to make good on his threat to fall asleep on him.

He wouldn't want to admit this to anybody, because they'd almost certainly think he was crazy for saying it, but as much as he's been happy to be back somewhere with comforts like food and beer and dependable gravity, there had been moments where he really missed being on the Eclipse. One of the things he missed the most was sleeping near someone else, and the feeling of knowing they'll still be there when he wakes up.

"Oh, shit," he laughs again, quieter this time, "Right, right. Man, I aughta... Introduce you two sometime, so she don't think you're a... I dunno, a burglar or somethin'."

He himself cannot believe how immediately close to sleep he is. It's stupid that getting tucked in actually worked.

"'Specially if you're gonna be... Comin' back a lot..."

It is kind of crazy--and definitely endearing--that Vincent is so quickly crashing toward sleep. The only thing that Irahl can compare this to is Robin passing out on him, but that had always been either after a nightmare, when Robin had already been sleeping for hours, or after nights of heavy drinking, and that didn't count for other reasons. He's never watched someone feel so comfortable around him that they just flopped over against him and fell right to sleep without the weight of alcohol dragging them both down.

Irahl gives the most unobtrusive "mhmm" he can muster to keep from distracting Vincent on his way toward unconsciousness.

At first, Irahl is watching Vincent meander his way toward sleep with amusement. Sometime after that though, as he starts to feel more like he is being left alone with his thoughts, he becomes aware that feeling of amusement is shifting to something that feels a little more crushing.

It's not quite the crush of gravity or the impossible weight of hopelessness, though. The feeling is a little closer to what it's like to have big arms wrap around him like they're trying to squeeze the air out of his lungs. It's too many feelings at once.

It reminds him of discovering that a certain mortal wound hadn't been as mortal as he'd dreaded it would be. It's the feeling of realizing he can keep his friend, all over again.

Luckily, that sort of feeling is exhausting, and it won't be very long before his brain shuts itself off to let him sleep for a little bit too.

Meanwhile, Robin is... You know, he finds himself in a strange place. Being one of the nine pillars of human existence for thousands of years has made him a fairly self-centered creature. He likes to think that he can be kind and put other people in the spotlight and all that, but it's usually because he's made the choice to do so.

For most of the hour that Robin was away, he does exactly what he said he'd do and gets some lunch. He takes it up to some half-ruined balcony on a dilapidated skyscraper and eats it while he thinks and watches people milling around below him.

He thinks about how he's very used to feeling like the center of the world for both Irahl and Vincent. Sure, they have other things going on, other people who preoccupy them just as much, maybe even more... But, he doesn't know, he's always thought he'd been pretty important. Even if it's in a bad way, it's still important. And maybe that hasn't gone away, exactly, it's just...

Well, since the two of them reunited, he just hasn't really felt like the most important thing in the room to either of them. And it's a little frustrating, he's definitely jealous, but it's also just... Strange. And he doesn't know what to do about it, because he hates it but he doesn't hate it.

He has been trying to do better by Vincent, at least. He owes him that explanation still. And Irahl, well--he didn't think he'd get a chance to do anything with him ever again. He should be jumping on the opportunity to endear himself to the sniper as much as he possibly can. But their whole relationship had been such a mess from such a gross and terrible time, and he doesn't really want to be that kind of person anymore.

An hour isn't really enough to sort anything out. He'll probably be working out this situation for weeks. But the self-reflection is probably needed and useful, in its own way. He can at least remind himself not to be a dick to his friends even if he feels spiteful and petty every time they seem to be on a wavelength he wasn't looped into.

He returns when he said he would. The inside of the apartment doesn't feel like a swirling maelstrom of suffering, so he kind of assumes they passed out... He knocks audibly on the door, to be polite, and calls through, "Hope you princesses got your beauty rest, we gotta get going before we're chasing sunset."

And then he'll open the door and let himself inside. Vincent is very slow to drag himself out of what was a much-needed and deep sleep, but that probably has absolutely no bearing on Irahl.

No, Irahl wakes up in the usual way he does when he's somewhere that he hasn't completely settled into yet and is startled, especially when he doesn't remember falling asleep in the first place.

Vincent is lucky that he's leaning on Irahl's dominant arm, because an elbow would be landing in Vincent's chest right now if it had been on the back of the couch instead. Instead, it's his other arm that jerks backward to reach for a weapon that isn't there.

There's still an emergency knife stashed in or around his couch somewhere, of course, but his brain isn't currently updated to the correct set of coordinates. So, he mostly only jolts, jostling Vincent and clumsily smacking some part of the couch. That's what he manages to accomplish before Robin walks in.

So he hears Irahl hit something before opening the door to find the sniper looking discombobulated and Vincent next to him, under his coat, with a pillow underneath his head and a familiar look of half-awake confusion on his face.

To be fair, Robin is also confused by what he's seeing, though this confusion manifests more by him standing in the open doorway and looking thoroughly unimpressed. Either Vincent pulled some stunt to steal that coat and trick Irahl to agree to hold still long enough to fall asleep on him, or... Irahl did it willingly, neither of which Robin can fully process as logical possibilities.

"Cozy," he comments, wanting to fill this weird space with something other than Vincent's grumbling, "Time's up, ladies."

Vincent at least manages to sit up and pull off his very heavy, weapon-filled coat.

To be doubly fair, Irahl also seems a little confused as to how he got here and why someone is pinning one of his arms down. There are at least a couple seconds spent on blinking groggily at both Robin and Vincent.

Finally, there is a grunt of acknowledgement in reply as the memories slot back into place. This had been one of those naps where years of time somehow jams itself into forty minutes. He's pretty sure he'd even been dreaming, which is not exactly an everyday occurrence for a dragon.

Once he straightens out the kink in his neck, he helps separate the two idiots on the couch by dragging his coat off of Vincent. He'll be needing it for when he reassembles himself for their camping trip anyway.

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GRATIA // PSL

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