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 asks a couple other questions about gargoyles, complains about how hard it is to actually pull off that slice-a-car-in-half trick of his, and even asks Irahl if he's ever worried about rolling out of bed and off the side of a building in that only-three-walls apartment of his. Vincent hasn't yet caught on that Irahl hasn't been in his own place for months now, and maybe Irahl tells him. Maybe he doesn't.

Either way, he's plenty entertained between snippets of curious conversation and playing a few rounds of cards. And the drinks being way better than the ones upstairs (in his opinion) help. He switches to hard alcohol after the first drink so that he can go slowly, not as many trips up and down where he could bump into people and cause a scene.

Later, he comes back with their third drink and a basket of potato wedges (a food understood and beloved in all realities), but he has a slightly more serious demeanor as he slides everything onto the table.

"Hey, I can't see--" He says, voice lowered like he doesn't want to be overheard, "Is the bartender cute?"

He doesn't realize what a loaded question this is; he just knows Irahl is his bro and that on his own, he's got no chance of guessing.

It probably started with Irahl's comments about their buddy playing fetch, but the sarcasm is currently riding quite high. He makes comments about his living situation back home and answers questions about gargoyles, but it's hard to tell how serious anything he says is.

This trend continues when Irahl fields Vincent's furtive question while sliding his next drink and the basket of potatoes closer to himself.

It's pretty obvious that he doesn't so much as glance toward the bar before he answers.

"Depends how many missing teeth you still find cute."

"Damn dude!"

Vincent has to laugh. It caught him by surprise, both because of how fast he said it and because it wasn't at all what he'd pictured--and those are the kinds of things that get him to laugh the most. He slides back into his seat, momentarily torn between whether or not to believe him and whether or not to be offended.

"...What if I said four's a hard limit, huh?" He ends up joking, further sliding the cups and tray of food he'd gathered into place on the table. "Where'd we be then?"

He doesn't mean it and after that pretty punchy reception, he's not sure he's interested in finding out. He's feeling out the space, here.

It's a good reaction. Irahl feels pretty satisfied with that one.

So, he finally gives the bar a cursory glance. The bartender is easy enough to spot, and he assumes she's considered conventionally attractive... Probably.

He does wonder to himself if there's an answer he might give that would end up in Vincent getting distracted or spending more time over there when retrieving the next round of drinks. And that would be... fine... just different from the fun, comfortable time they're having right now.

More sarcasm it is, then! And Vincent can do with it what he will. It's not the response guys would normally have, but it is very Irahl.

"Distracts from the warts, honestly."

Just trolling his blind friend. It's fine.

Okay, now he can tell that Irahl's fucking with him. He was not so invested in this idea that his feelings are hurt or anything, but he does immediately internalize a valuable lesson: don't ask Irahl about chicks.

"All right, all right..." He chuckles, good-naturedly, "Forget I said anything."

Fortunately for Irahl, his continued sarcasm is going to get Vincent to stay at the table longer and not take any chances with the flirty bartender. He grabs a couple of fries before he picks his latest hand of cards back up, and soon there's a change of subject on the table.

"Oh, kinda... Changed their recipe," he muses with his mouth full, "Used to be squishier..."

Irahl is absolutely neutral on the fact that Vincent has decided to stay and focus his attention here. In fact, he is so impartial that he mentally repeats this fact to himself a couple of times.

Likewise, it is out of pure ambivalence that he feels relaxed and content enough in this moment to bring his drink with him as he settles more comfortably back in his seat.

It often takes Irahl an extended period of time to become acclimated enough in a setting to move from casually slouching over his drink to casually slouching back with it, and in many instances, he never gets there. However, for one reason or another, spending time with this particular friend usually brings out that much more honest state of relaxation at some point during the course of hanging out. Vincent can hear that shift now as Irahl sits back like a normal person who doesn't look like they're ready to stand and leave at a moment's notice.

"Not just too used to cave shrimp?"

And just like that, Vincent puts the interaction behind them. He's already a little iffy about hitting on people while they're working anyway, but he can tell that Irahl's starting to really settle back in his seat, and he doesn't want to go and disrupt something as hard-earned as that.

So he moves on. The bartender will stay a mystery and he'll keep talking about potato wedges.

"Nah man, cave shrimp s'posed to be softer than these. Most people don't eat 'em with the crunchy part still on." He chuckles, tosses a card down. Irahl's move.

Both in regards to the conversation and the card game at hand, Irahl coolly counters Vincent's play without hesitation.

"Most people can't handle it."

He then reaches out to pull the basket of potatoes closer to himself, even though his arms are so long that he'd already been able to reach them where Vincent had left them. It more serves as a punctuation than anything.

He begins snacking while Vincent works on taking his turn, but he gets one bite in before a thought occurs to him.

"Wait. You sure they changed their recipe, or you thinking of the ones we made?"

Because even the most successful of their misadventures in making fries out of reconstituted potato flakes and extruded protein had been considerably squishier than these bad boys.

There can't have been many people in Irahl's life that get his sense of humor and comedic timing the way that Vincent does. He tried to poke a little fun at his friend and got back the perfect response. He comes dangerously close to laughing mid-sip, and just barely avoids making a mess of his drink.

"Can't argue that..."

While he's working on finding his next play, Irahl's got another comment... And Vincent's eyes go wide with recognition despite him not looking at anything. To think, he'd nearly forgotten about some of their potato experiments...

"You mean the wet chunks?" He asks, grinning with some incredulity, "Or the flat guys that crumbled an' nearly set the place on fire?"

It's true that there have been painfully few people who've been really tuned-in to Irahl's subtle brand of humor, instead of only catching most of the sarcasm and leaving Irahl to laugh to himself at the rest. It's an arrangement that he has always been perfectly fine with--especially as his humor had started out being appreciated by no one--but he has to admit that there's something extremely satisfying about having someone who almost every one of his jokes land with. The smirks and chuckling he receives are themselves contagious. It's a nice feedback loop.

"Those were chips," he patiently corrects in reference to the 'flat guys.'

Circling back to the first guess, there is no tonal shift in his voice, but the slight emphasis that he places on one word in particular does all the work for him.

"They weren't that wet."

"The chips, sorry, sorry..." He waves his handful of cards a little as if to clear the air of his obvious mistake, entertained that Irahl is still dead-set on referring to those flat nightmares as 'chips'. If that's the bit, he'll give them the respect they only marginally deserve.

That second bit, though... He can't let that go as easily.

"Right. On the outside they weren't that wet. An' on the inside they were a soup."

Okay, they truly weren't that wet, but this is fun and it feels again like the stupid conversations they'd have on the Eclipse, late at night when they were both tired but unwilling to sleep.

"That's not what I'm talkin' about, these fries used to be..." He feels around on the table for the basket, but he's forgotten that Irahl moved them closer to himself and is momentarily distracted by wondering where they got off to.

Irahl absolutely does not help him locate the basket that he'd just moved, unrepentantly watching his friend grope around the table. He also doesn't help out the conversation by following the thing that Vincent wants to talk about.

Those space-fries deserve a defense--just like the other pointless things the two of them used to talk about when half-drunk and sleep-deprived, clinging to sanity. This feels so much like the useless hours they'd spent at the Boozehole, aside from the actual people around them now.

"Wasn't so bad once we added pieces of protein. And synthetic rice."

He somehow manages to assert this with a straight face.

"I dunno..."

For the second, it's hard to tell if Vincent is about to talk about the homemade fries or the missing basket. Whatever the rest of his sentence was going to be, he never gets there. He thinks for a moment, racking his brain for some memory of a sound that will clue him in. Perhaps it's a sign that the alcohol is starting to kick in again that it takes him so long to remember a particular punctuated slide from earlier.

Once he remembers, he reaches gracelessly over the table to feel around directly in front of Irahl. Thankfully he finds the mound of fries before he has a chance to dunk his fingers into Irahl's ice-water glass or something.

"Ah-ha...!" He declares, grabbing a small handful (it would probably be a substantial number of fries for a normal person, but his hands are huge). He will not drag the basket closer. He goes back into his space. This works fine for him. He looks a little smug about it, actually.

"Now listen," he then starts to explain, emboldened by his fry acquisition, "You're describin' a dumplin'. That ain't a fry anymore."

For a brief moment, Irahl considers soundlessly lifting the basket straight up off the table at the last second. Fortunately, he's too stoic for quite that much trolling... also, he imagines the spilled drinks that would follow Vincent grasping around in increased annoyance, and that's not a risk that he's willing to take.

So, Vincent gets his victory fries.

But then this smugness leads to Vincent continuing to slander the name of Irahl's culinary creations. He first replies with a dubious hum as if he has any practical idea of what defines a dumpling, before muttering under his breath.

"Didn't know you were so close-minded."

Vincent's completely undeserved smugness is interrupted. He frowns with a potato wedge still sticking out of his mouth.

"Nah, I just know potatoes," he begins to argue, pulling the rest of the fry into his mouth before saying the next logical thing, "They grow under dirt. An' I grew under dirt. Potato expert."

He gestures between himself and... Probably the fries. Is he trying to say he's got some kind of special connection to spud-based foods because of his growing up in an underground society? Yes. And it's dumb, he knows it's stupid, but he's intentionally trying to be absurd in the hopes of getting a chuckle out of all this.

"Once you start addin' stuff that ain't potato it ain't a potato wedge no more."

Okay, that is pretty good. Irahl is disappointed that he hadn't thought to make the comparison himself, honestly. So, Vincent gets his wish and manages to break Irahl's stoicism into a relenting chuckle. He wins this round fair and square.

"Fine. You can have potatoes," he concedes. Vincent can be the potato expert all he wants. He has earned it, apparently.

Meanwhile, Irahl finally notices that his glass of ice has melted considerably, so reaches over to take a drink and then begin carefully maneuvering some of the half-melted cubes into his glass of alcohol... which of course is meant to be served neat, but he has no reservations about blasphemously shoveling ice into it anyway.

He takes this admission as if it was a hard-earned compliment, the pointlessly self-satisfied look returning to his face as Irahl moves his ice from cup to cup. He finally picks all his cards back up and, after feeling his way around his choices again, decides to play something.

"I did kinda like those rice an' protein ones though. Think they'd want the recipe?"

More time passes between idle discussion of food and restaurants and whatever other bullshit comes up between rounds of cards. They're a few more drinks in by the time the early beginnings of a dinner crowd begin arriving, mostly folks who got off work early or plan on meeting other people here later.

The card games paused at some point; Vincent's gotten up and down enough times for drinks and appetizers that he's sort of... Drifted in Irahl's direction over the last couple of hours and is now sitting much closer to him than he'd originally started. He's leaning lazily on the table now, head propped up, feeling delightfully buzzed and completely oblivious to anything other than his friend.

"Man..." He comments, probably not actually related to whatever they'd been talking about before, "Glad you like whatever that drink is. I told 'em to make it spicy but I had no idea if they had anythin' like that here..."

One comment of, "want my secret recipe, you have to play me for it," and they have a framework of banter that can keep them occupied off and on for at least another hour.

By the time that game has come and gone, as well as two baskets of greasy bar food and a few drinks that have alternated between repeats of the spicy mixed cocktail and the hard liquor that he keeps sullying with ice, Irahl's skeleton has lost a significant amount of its integrity. Normally, he slouches forward over his drink when this happens, so the fact that he has instead been leaning back and sliding lower in his seat is actually pretty significant.

He's in a city that could not be farther from what he knows and prefers, and yet Vincent still makes him feel comfortable enough to be lounging so thoroughly.

He's so relaxed that it takes him a buzzed couple of seconds to process the little swerve in the conversation when it happens, and another few to find himself surprised by it.

"Hmm? ...Thought it was just a special?"

"...A special..."

The joke about just getting whatever the special is left Vincent's mind about half a century ago, so it takes him a moment of puzzled silence to realize why Irahl would even think that. But once it clicks, he also realizes he never exactly explained himself either.

While it's nice that talking to Irahl feels effortless, it's just as much of a relief to know they can leave long pauses and thoughtful silences between their words without ruining the conversation. Which is good, because the pauses are only going to get longer the more he drinks.

"Oh, no, this ain't a special. I asked 'em to make somethin' spicy 'cause I know you liked that... That one back in the Boozehole. Y'know. With the gold."

Despite not being used to having a favorite drink to begin with, Irahl is somehow even less used to having someone intentionally remember and order said favorite drink for him.

Such a small thing really shouldn't be a big shock to the system, especially when his brain and body both feel pretty hazy right now, but there is something about it that does in fact strike him in a way that he doesn't expect.

Lucky for him, they're both leaving pauses between their comments already, so this pause doesn't sound any different than his usual ones.

"...Huh."

Vincent is the rare kind of man for whom kindness comes effortlessly and often as a first instinct, so it doesn't really occur to him that something as simple as remembering someone's favorite anything would be a challenging concept. He may have been raised in a shithole, but even a total asshole can remember a drink their friend likes if they're paying attention.

"...Huh?" He responds back in question, confused about Irahl's reaction and half-wondering if he's missed something again.

"Nothing," Irahl says, as the fact that he said anything out loud at all settles in.

Unfortunately, the fact that he says something out loud again is also a mistake. Irahl very rarely ever says 'nothing' out loud, especially if it really is nothing. Anyone who has ever met him knows that he would either idly deflect with sarcasm or just literally say nothing.

So, there's obviously something. He knows, Vincent knows, and he knows that Vincent knows. But the truth is objectively small and pointless, so not worth circling around.

He looks for the most convenient off-ramp.

"Think it has a name, or she made it up on the spot?"

And normally, Vincent might be more inclined to take that off-ramp because doesn't like conflict and it's obvious that Irahl's trying to steer away from it... But he's feeling emboldened by both the alcohol and the fact that they've just had a whole day of being indisputably best friends.

"Nah, hang on..." He stops them, pointing and gesturing in a sort-of-circle, "What's nothin'? Whaddya mean?"

He's not offended; if anything, he seems confused and maybe a little curious about his friend's unusual reaction.

People with eyeballs can see the way that Irahl closes his eyes for a second or two when Vincent applies the brakes instead of following him down this perfectly respectable conversational path. He doesn't sigh, though. Because as he has been saying in his head, it's just a stupid small thing that really isn't worth a reaction--one way or the other.

So, he just... sounds as absolutely ambivalent and casual about the whole thing as he possibly can.

"Nothing," he reiterates. "Didn't know I had a favorite drink."

That's the least-uncomfortable way to answer that he can think of. But the fact that he doesn't just immediately think up a sarcastic answer is probably telling.

Vincent kind of takes this at face value first, filled both with relief and with a certain quiet delight that Irahl's just learned he has a favorite drink. The rest of the implications won't settle in until after he's already started smiling and verbalizing his first and most natural reaction.

"Then congrats, man. Learned somethin' new."

He raises his glass a little in sort-of a 'cheers' gesture before he finishes off the latest of his own drinks.

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