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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Vincent is worried, of course. He smells like an absolute mess. But he's also witnessed Irahl survive a couple of seemingly life-threatening situations by this point, so he also knows that the guy is way tougher than a normal person--and a part of him is put at ease just knowing someone with some kind of medical knowledge already took a look at him.

That's why his reaction is not frantic so much as... Amazed. He scratches his head while he tries to catch up with everything happening, still standing near the door.

"Damn, man, 'bout to say... I thought that was my thing..."

Liver, huh? That's a pretty bad organ to get... Shot? Stabbed?

"I guess... Should I be worried? And do I need to go kick my brother's ass for this?"

Like was this a consensual amount of violence?

"Already did," he says around a mouthful of some kind of little fried roll. "Stuck him good with some arcana. Couple of times."

Between the effects of the drugs and the fight itself, he slips partially into how he'd talk back home around the guys, about any hunt. It's not quite the same as how he talks around Vincent. It's hard to keep the gears separated at the moment. After a full day of running around with a team, doing some actual hunting, and then battling a monster that almost killed him, it just kind of happens.

"He has too many swords," he adds after a moment of sluggish thought. "...I should be laying down."

Vincent's eyebrows go up at the thought of his brother getting stabbed, and he starts to laugh the more he thinks about it. He knows instinctually, without even having to think about it, that his brother is still alive--so that's not really a worry. It's just that the mental picture of those two fighting is finally starting to come together for him.

"Yeah, what're you doin' still up?" He smiles a little incredulously, starting to move fridge-ward, "Go lay the fuck down, I'll bring you stuff. I wanna hear about his stupid amount of swords."

Vincent means to take over at the refrigerator, probably aiming to grab a few things to bring over once Irahl has settled... But if the guy is hesitant in getting going, Vincent will put a hand on the shoulder less covered in blood and start to physically lead him in the direction of the bed.

Irahl does need to be guided, a little bit, even if it's mostly because he's having trouble detaching from his mindless intake of calories and actually moving toward the bed despite having decided in his mind to do so. Steering him away gets him shuffling in the right direction.

"Was just following orders," he says in a way that sounds less like he's defending his actions and more like he's maybe critiquing Seth's judgement on this one.

"You ever play paintball?"

That response doesn't make a ton of sense to Vincent, but he doesn't sweat it. Finn did say that Irahl's on a lot of painkillers right now. It's just a little funny to be the only one in the room who's sober, for once.

"Paint... Ball..." He says, already sounding unfamiliar with the topic, "Nah, don't think so. What's that?"

He makes sure that Irahl's been safely guided to his side of the bed (which--the single bed is still a whole thing, but everything happening here is far more important than that silly topic right now) before going to do his own fridge raiding. He grabs the boxes of stuff that he's pretty sure is easy finger food, stacking them in the crook of his arm.

"Hunt your teammates, but shoot little paint pellets instead of live rounds," he explains, voice a little strained as he lowers himself to sit on the bed and attempt to find a way to prop himself up that doesn't pull on one set of stitches or another.

"Got him there too. Hit him with a shield. So maybe he just thought up an excuse to stab me later."

It's the most abbreviated version of events possible, but he's continuing to chatter about them willingly, so he must be feeling pretty good.

After just a moment of deliberation, Vincent heads to what's apparently become his own side of the bed. He slides some boxes of food in Irahl's direction until he feels them bump up against the guy's leg, then climbs up into bed himself. It's one of those very fancy mattresses where Vincent's weight doesn't immediately turn the rest of the bed into a sinkhole in his direction.

"Hit him with a shield?" He sounds surprised and delighted by this, "Like, throwin' it or just like...?"

He makes a motion vaguely equivalent to bashing into someone with a shield.

"Like..." Irahl trails off as his hazy brain diffuses now that his body is settled somewhere again. He searches for words to describe something that is mostly just a motion in his head, like how Vincent describes the action of shield-bashing, and the effort has suddenly become more difficult. Sitting and reclining back has let his mental momentum just slither away.

The lag stretches on for a few seconds too long. If Vincent wants more evidence that Irahl really is quite doped-up, here it is.

"--Tackle." Ah, there's a word that fits. "He had a shotgun," he concludes with, as a way to explain everything.

Sitting cross-legged next to his friend, he opens up whatever box his hand lands on first. He picks up a piece of whatever easy food is inside and starts eating. It's partly to encourage the other guy to eat, partly to try to keep the smell of blood down. And it's also partly because he just likes to eat to get comfortable somewhere.

He snickers around his food. The idea of his brother getting tackled by anything is hilarious.

"Damn, then yeah, he might've planned it..." In his professional opinion, at least, as someone who was not there and has no idea what he's talking about, "So did the stabbing happen after the paintball? How'd we get to stabbing?"

Edited 2024-11-06 23:09 (UTC)

Irahl hadn't planned to continue eating, but Vincent is there and leading by example, and he makes it so convenient that Irahl autopilots right into it while he thinks.

He takes a bite from a deep-fried curd of... something... and then gestures with the rest of it as he blearily retraces the day.

"Paintball. Lunch. Then hunted down a nest of..." This time, he trails off both because he's trying to remember the silly name that the creatures had been given, and because he's remembering that there's a nasty monster tooth somewhere in his gear. "...Things. After that, he took me to his house and told me to try to kill him."

That last bit would have been distressing for most people to hear. Not Vincent.

"Oooh, yeah. That'd do it." The stabbing, the weird 'following orders' comment from earlier. The fact that Irahl's beat up, but not in as critical a shape as he could be. And the part where he got patched up. With a scoff, Vincent adds, "So he's as dramatic as ever, huh?"

At first, there's one of those little all-purpose scoffs from Irahl, as to be expected.

A pause follows, however... which then turns into something that rolls into a quiet, pleasantly-medicated chuckle. In the Irahl Lexicon, that translates to being really damn tickled over something. It takes him a few beats of sitting with this spontaneous mental image before remembering to share it.

"...Five years old, demanding that his baby brother fight him to the death..."

He can picture it perfectly. Damn, these are some good drugs.

Vincent waits pretty patiently for Irahl's thoughts laughing to finally roll around into a vocalized thought... Though maybe he shouldn't have, because he almost chokes on his food laughing when he hears what Irahl has to say.

"My guy, you are so wasted right now..."

He gives Irahl a fond pat on the shoulder, making sure to keep his touch very light since he's so covered in injuries.

"But he has sounded like that since like... Six or seven, yeah. Used to demand things of other kids in the neighborhood like a fuckin' tiny warlord."

The intent is to focus up and defend his relative state of sobriety. But, the part of his brain capable of that is apparently sitting way in the back while the stupid side takes the wheel.

Between Vincent calling him out and the incredible mental image of baby Seth that has been gifted to him, the chuckling just gets worse. Which doesn't exactly feel great on his torn up organs, but he can't bring himself to care much about that fact beyond distantly noting it.

"...Got called a wastrel..."

By normal-people standards, it's a good round of quiet chuckling. By Irahl standards, it's a giggle-fit.

"See, I don't even know what that means. Dunno where he gets it from..."

He's happy that Irahl's having a good time, even if it is almost surely the drugs doing most of the work. The earlier comment about a baby brother gets glossed over since Vincent isn't even sure Irahl will remember this later. He pops one more fried-something into his mouth before leaning back on his hands on the bed.

"Musta been a crazy fight. But I bet he's grateful, since he didn't fuck you up too bad. He always gets so mad that no one'll humor him..."

"Staked me to the ground with swords..." he says like a vague complaint, maybe as a rebuttal to the accusation that Seth didn't fuck him up too bad.

It isn't really a complaint, though. Sure, it's an expression of the fact that being impaled wasn't fun, but it's also just the first step in a wandering train of thought that goes farther than that. He's thinking about the course of the fight, and about how Seth is going to feel pretty bad tomorrow when he can't heal.

Finally, there's the sound of his hand flopping down onto the blankets next to him in a surprisingly emotive gesture.

"...I have a boss I can stab."

So, Seth isn't the only one who's grateful for the gratuitous violence.

"Eh, that just means he likes you," Vincent says about Irahl being staked to the ground, waving his hand a little. His brother could have done much worse with those swords of his, and he's probably only gotten better at killing people since Vincent last checked in with him.

The expressive gesture, while surprising coming from Irahl, hardly puts him off. He grins back in response.

"Man, that's like a dream come true for you, ain't it? Congrats, man."

The meds must really be doing their thing, because there's a wordless sound of agreement, followed by what sounds suspiciously like a sigh of contentment. Which, if this is true, Irahl isn't currently being consumed by feelings of restlessness and discomfort, and hasn't even hit the pessimistic bracing-for-things-to-go-wrong stage.

He's stuck far from home, hiding to stay safe, full of grievous wounds and painkillers, but he still seems strangely happy.

It's a far cry from how things used to be, even if the drugs are doing a bunch of the work. For a few moments, Vincent can only smile; just thinking of how bad things had been on that ship, and in some ways how much worse they'd been when they were apart... It's hard not to hope that maybe a little of this will last for Irahl even after the painkillers wear off and the glamour of having a boss you can stab has lost its shine.

He's just... Really happy for him. It helps him feel good about being here for him, even if he's still working through what that means for himself.

"Well, man... Glad you had a good day. An' I'm glad you're home."

It's almost a little too much sentiment, so he finds himself going for another box of snacks.

"My day was pretty fuckin' boring by comparison... Though I did have to run from the cops for a minute."

He drops this casually, like it's no big deal... But he does kind of want Irahl to ask about it. He's been feeling pretty stir-crazy the last few hours and it'd be nice to get some of that energy off his chest, even if the guy listening is... Again, extremely high right now.

A nice thing about his nerves being so buffered, is that he doesn't recoil when Vincent gets a little sentimental. Like everything else, it's happening at enough of a distance that he hardly notices it.

When Vincent mentions running from the cops, of course Irahl flops his head over on the pillow he's leaning back against to look over at him.

Normally, he isn't one to be interested in the stories of others, but Vincent has always been an exception to the rule, and... especially right now? As content and grateful and painless as he's feeling, looking over at Vincent makes him feel even more so.

Of course he's ready to settle in and hear what Vincent has to share.

"...Oh?"

He knows that Irahl's turned his head to look at him. He can tell that the direction of his voice has changed. A strange thought almost finds purchase in his mind, but he pushes it away. Some of it's the smell of blood still thick in the room. It's got to be.

He focuses on eating what seem to be little tubes of pickled vegetables in a bread wrap. He didn't actually mean to grab these. It's distracting enough and hard to eat that they'll do perfectly.

"Oh, yeah, well... I mean, yesterday I told my bro I was gonna be bored, so he put me on some guided... Tour? Thing? Pretty sure that motherfucker was prankin' me, so I left, an' the guards got mad 'cause I think I used the wrong exit or somethin' an set off an alarm?"

Hey, he's blind. How is he supposed to tell one fancy exit door from another?

"An' I didn't wanna deal with guys makin' me go back so I just kinda hoofed it. An' then I hid in a restaurant until they gave up."

Irahl listens dutifully, some part of his meandering brain aware of how goddamn comfortable these pillows are. Normally, he has noting but mild disdain for soft, real beds, but it feels amazing at the moment. Having a story to passively listen to isn't bad either.

He might have stayed in this passively-listening state if a couple of amusing thoughts didn't strike him. The first is imagining Vincent 'sneaking' away, then blindly fleeing. The second is imagining the aftermath.

Half of a chuckle loosely jostles him. "...How many people you think thought they saw Seth running from the cops?"

Vincent suddenly becomes a little more animated when Irahl brings this up, pointing at him to emphasize a point.

"No joke, that happened--!" He grins with a sort of chaotic sibling energy that only seems to come out when his twin is involved, "Some guy stopped me and asked if it was my day off an' I was like, 'the fuck're you talkin' about, who are you'--an' he just started stammerin' and left in a hurry? An' it wasn't 'til later I realized he thought I was my fuckin' brother."

He bites into a piece of food with particular emphasis, equally annoyed and delighted by this turn of events, and talks around it.

"Y'know, I bet people'd buy it if I put on a fancy shirt an' slicked my hair back. Spent a little more time in the sun. Carried around five swords at once."

This gets something closer to a real laugh--even if it's still strained--especially when Vincent paints a specific picture of how he would impersonate his brother. The meds are helping the possibilities seem to stretch endlessly before them.

"Would make involuntary sightseeing more entertaining for you." You know, stand there pensively and pretend to gaze at whatever important landmark of the city is being showcased on the tour. "Tell people you're on your monthly alotted recreation time."

It feels a slightly sacrilegious to poke fun at his new boss, but the guy did just poke a bunch of holes into him, so he feels like he can get away with a little.

Vincent laughs. It's a good one.

"Fuck me, you did spend all day with him. Man..."

He trails off, letting the laugh and the surrealness of the situation settle a little. It sure is nice that his best friend and his twin brother are getting along, but he's also glad that Irahl's not so gung-ho about Seth's little group that he can't make fun of the guy for being an absolute stick in the mud. He's been worried from time to time about that, while he's been alone and not occupied with something dumb like low-key running from the cops.

"...Anyway, all that to say, met a nice restaurant owner an' promised her I'd come back an' eat there before we go. An' not just hide from the cops inside."

Edited 2024-11-08 02:32 (UTC)

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