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, that was pretty much the best decision he has ever made. It's hard to watch this show from where he's seated at the edge of the bed though, so he turns to sit back against the headboard.

He's only following the broad strokes of Vincent's logic, but that's hardly a fault of the alcohol. He is much more concerned with appreciating the inane and endearing details of this tableau before him.

The earnest slurring. The half-forgotten shoe. The fact that Vincent thought to put the words 'ruffle' and 'disease' together in a way that he is sure no one in history has ever done before.

"You had a witness." Don't worry, buddy. He'll back you up.

"I had a witness," Vincent repeats back at him. He speaks a bit slowly because of the alcohol and a misplaced need to lean towards Irahl as he says it, but he seems kind of delighted so it mostly just comes off as very cute, "You gotta tell him. Along with all that other stuff, the... Sugar... And the cake thing..."

In gesturing to try and recall his memories of the spun sugar nightmare they'd consumed earlier that day, he scrapes his fingers against his shoe and remembers that he's still wearing shoes. He starts back in on that second set of laces.

"...Not in a million years..." He mumbles in wonder, as if the total sum of their breakfast adventure is only just starting to sink in now.

To be fair, their breakfast adventure hasn't sunk in as reality to Irahl either. It's almost impossible to think of it having happened earlier this same day. Brunch, the dive bar, tormenting Finn... did they crash a garden party or something? Today feels like several separate day's worth of gallivanting to him, existing as delirious little islands in his mind.

Trying to think of it all happening in the same day is almost as difficult as imagining that he'll actually have to go back to Skeleton City sometime. In his tipsiness, it takes him a few seconds to recall what Vincent's little apartment even looks like.

"Tell him it's because you hid from the cops. He'll believe that."

Vincent laughs quietly to himself when it's pointed out that all this started from one of his usual bullshit adventures. He gets his second shoe off of his foot and sends it rolling about halfway towards his stuff pile.

"Yeah... Yeah, he'd believe that. That's the kinda shit that starts all kinda stuff..."

He tries to crawl up into the bed, but quickly realizes one of his feet still has a shoe on it. Thankfully he's at least still got the presence of mind to reach back and fumble his first shoe off instead of just trying to 'make it work' or something.

"There you go," Irahl encourages when that sneaky shoe get caught before it can reach the bed.

Everything is funny right now, and that occupies the majority of his limited, fuzzy attention. A tiny part of his mind however skips ahead several seconds in time to note the reality of Vincent finishing his climb onto the bed.

That little part of his mind suddenly becomes aware of the fact that he hadn't put on so much as a tank top after he'd patched up his chest. While Vincent is figuring himself out, Irahl glances over to where he'd stashed his clothes and starts thinking through the drunken effort of maybe hopping up and putting on a shirt...

With both shoes finally off his feet and no idea that Irahl is considering being somewhere else for a moment, Vincent finally flops around onto his back and lets his arms fall to either side. He's laying somewhere between sideways and upside-down--and while the bed is comically huge, so is he, so it's kind of wonder he doesn't accidentally bump into Irahl while he's doing all of it.

Gods, it's a good bed. He really is considering trying to take a mattress like this back with him, somehow, whether legally or not. But that's a plot for tomorrow--for right now, he mentally traces where he thinks the outlines of Irahl might be, based on what he can hear and smell and feel, and smiles.

"Man..." he says, slowly forming an enraptured thought as it all washes over him, "I had... A good day."

It feels... Important, the way he says it. And it's not that hard to imagine why. Both of them know it hasn't been easy. He lifts an arm vaguely, blindly, in Irahl's direction, though he doesn't quite reach him at this weird angle. Another thought comes drifting out of his mouth as his hand hovers in the air between them.

"...Hey, which one's the bad shoulder again...?"

Irahl's distant hopes of hunting down a shirt become considerably more distant as most of Vincent's body bonelessly pours across the mattress. He is in fact surprised when he isn't flopped into in the process.

He isn't a particularly empathetic person, but there's something about Vincent's sigh that resonates with him. Maybe one of those stunted, unacknowledged things hiding in his blood flickers to life a little bit, recognizing and reflecting the sense of peace that he is supposed to be attached to. Whatever it is, seeing Vincent so purely contented pulls at him.

As tipsy as he is, it's hard not to smile to himself over it. He hardly even minds that there's a hand kind of aimlessly reaching toward him.

"Left," he says, with Vincent on his right.

Left...

He nods a little. The look of serene contentment is replaced, for the moment, by the look of Vincent thinking very hard. If he's sideways, and Irahl is facing... That way... For as good as his spatial awareness usually is, being inebriated isn't doing him any favors in figuring out which shoulder is which.

"...Okay," he finally says, "C'mere then...!"

In one motion, he sits partially upright and stretches for what he's pretty sure is Irahl's uninjured arm, aiming to try to grab and drag Irahl down onto the bed with him. In Vincent's imagination, this is foolproof--he'll grab him, twist away, drag him down, and pin him to the bed by laying on his entire upper arm. It won't be painful, just uncomfortable and extremely inconvenient. It's a perfect plan.

And here Irahl had been expecting one of Vincent's patented shoulder-pats. Foolish.

He placidly looks on, finding amusement in the look of deep thought on Vincent's face as the man tries work his way through some spatial reasoning. He finds it funny. He has no idea what's coming next.

Vincent pounces when Irahl's guard is so lowered that he only feels a little vague confusion, even as the other man is coming right at him. He only manages to drunkenly wonder at how exuberantly the other man is going at this whole shoulder-pat thing, before he's grabbed.

As soon as he realizes that it's an attack, adrenaline tries to get him moving, but the jolt of it slogs through nerves soaked in alcohol. So, after actually uttering a sound of disoriented surprise, Irahl is grabbed and dragged, and though he tries to twist away, he mostly just manages to turn his arm in such a way that it is pretty darn uncomfortable to have Vincent's weight dropped on it.

"--Hey!"

Vincent has the satisfaction of feeling Irahl start 'squiggling' and it being at least initially ineffective. The sniper first has to get closer to the other man as he shoves his trapped arm forward until it's flat, so he can then turn it to a less-twisted angle before trying to yank it out from where it's trapped.

Vincent feels pretty good about how this went. Irahl's 'squiggling' is met with low, steady chuckling--the kind of stupid, thoughtless laughter that'd probably keep going if he didn't start trying to say something.

"Fuckin' sayin' I can't break your arm, we'll fuckin' see..."

It's clearly a joke--even drunk, Vincent's not the type to spring to actual horrible violence that wasn't consented to by all parties--but he does move around enough to try and manipulate Irahl's forearm, which is Irahl's opening. It doesn't help Vincent that they're on a fancy mattress that takes a while to absorb all of his weight, so Irahl isn't pinned as far down into the bed as he'd imagined.

He finds himself suddenly with no arm under him to speak of. Hm.

Injured shoulder? What injured shoulder? Irahl sure doesn't remember anything about an injured shoulder. Even the partially-reinjured sutures that he had just stuck gauze over are pretty far from his mind all of the sudden.

All he's got right now is some adrenaline that is hitting his system a little late, and a big, dumb adversary right in front of him.

Irahl's arm has disappeared out from under Vincent, but it reappears a second later as it shoves its way into the gap between his neck and the mattress, before cranking up into a very professional sleeper hold. Even wasted, Irahl's got this one hiredwired into his muscle-memory.

It's one of those good holds that lock in less on the windpipe and more on the blood vessels keeping the target conscious--good when fighting even larger creatures than oneself, or ones that might have armor protecting their throat. Or when fighting drunk friends. Irahl isn't going to actually hang on until Vincent passes out, of course, but he wouldn't feel about making him see a few stars.

"--What was that?"

Okay, how was Vincent supposed to know that suddenly attacking an unsuspecting and extremely-capable monster hunter would end like this? How could he have possibly foreseen that his faster, more nimble friend would be able to turn the tables on him like this? Absolutely ridiculous.

As things have gone, he finds himself being casually choked-out at the end of a joke, which... Well, it's probably not the first time this has happened, but if he got out of it last time he sure can't remember how at the moment.

He squiggles. Or tries to, anyway. He doesn't have a lot of reach where he's at and he certainly doesn't have the coordination to do something helpful like getting up.

"Fuck off..." He manages to say, amid vague sounds of struggle. He's not consciously aware that he can smell blood again, but he can. It's kind of exciting. He hopes he's not about to die, but the hope is in the same sort of detached fascination it's usually in when they get like this.

He gives up pretty quickly. About when he starts getting dizzy, he drops his arms and just lets his body become deadweight. Maybe Irahl will have pity on him.

Whether it's a good idea or not, Irahl does end up taking pity on him--mostly because the other option is to let him slip into unconsciousness. Not that Irahl is above that, but he's also beginning to become aware again of just how much skin-to-skin contact is happening here. They may have wrestled and knocked each other around on a semi-regular basis back in space, but there had always been considerably more clothing involved.

So, after leaving a couple of beats in an attempt to make sure his buddy has learned a lesson, he lets go of him.

Honestly, maybe having a light brush with unconsciousness will be good for Vincent. It might sober him up a little bit. His heart rate's certainly up, what with his body struggling to get enough of it up to his brain and all that.

Once he's released, he gasps for air and rolls away, giving Irahl more of the space he'd been looking for. It takes almost no time for him to start laughing again, though--this time on his back, hand on his forehead, cracking up at how stupid that all was.

"Okay, okay... I guess that's fair..."

He sits up. His chuckles die down. He can smell fresh blood without the backdrop of everything dried up and stale behind it. It's a little distracting.

"But I'm tellin' ya', if you hold still I could do it..."

Irahl stays down here while Vincent sits up, as it gives him just a little bit more space. Not that he's feeling intensely crowded or anything, he just needs a second. He's feeling particularly drunk as the room wobbles from him rolling onto his back.

And it's in that moment that another pang of familiarity hits him, but not for their usual sparring sessions in the cargo hold or the gym on the big ship. Right now, the dizzying amount of alcohol still in his system, the stupid conversation about violence, the pointless competition--it all reminds him of something very specific.

He maybe doesn't think about all of what it reminds him of, but he at least thinks about the beginning of a certain incident, and in recalling it, he suddenly remembers a certain point about it that has not resurfaced in his mind since then.

Vincent's laughter over something stupid dies down, so now it's Irahl's turn, a short chuckle under his breath slipping out before he can catch it.

A short chuckle wouldn't be of note to most people, but Vincent knows that any sort of laugh out of Irahl has got to be significant. He's usually got to work pretty hard to earn any kind of laugh.

So he's interested. And he also halfway assumes that Irahl's making fun of him. Part of him is looking for an excuse to go again, since even a pointless play-fight sounds exciting right about now.

He pulls his feet up near himself so he can lean over in Irahl's direction. One arm's propping him up, the other is absently feeling at where the other guy had just been at his own neck. He'd closed his eyes a while ago, with no reason to bother pretending he can see.

"An' what're you laughin' about, huh?"

The fact that Irahl can tell that his friend seems to be itching for a little fight as he's looming there is adding to his own amusement in light of the tidbit of memory he has recalled. It's probably just him, it's probably just this moment of headiness after his sluggish bump of adrenaline, but it's all very funny to him right now.

He knows that this is one of those things that he had put on the mental shelf of Memories That Never Happened, but he's currently sure that a quick mention of it will be fine for the sake of humor and light reminiscing.

"Back on that waystation, you know how I'd said 'we should fight?'"

He pauses long enough for them both to call that delirious occasion to mind, but hopefully not long enough for them to think too hard about it, before he continues.

"...I'd meant fight later."

Of course he remembers. Vincent would very much like to pretend that it takes a while for the memory to come back to him, but in truth, the strange emotions of that day and the drama that followed have become so folded into who he is now that no amount of 'pretending it didn't happen' has ever really buried it.

The only thing saving him is that he was too drunk to remember much of what specifically happened, just the large brushstrokes and the big emotions that had been tied to them. But it's a strong emotional memory.

So he remembers the station and he remembers how it started... It only takes him a couple of moments to run it all through his mind and recall what Irahl is talking about. It had been a great idea. He'd been so excited. And...

Well, of course, Vincent starts laughing. In hindsight, that's... Very funny. He dips his head a little, hand moving so he can hold his own thread in retroactive embarrassment.

"So not... While we're hammered in the middle of an open station...? Not that? You meant later?" After another bout of helpless chuckling, he asks, "You didn't want me to jump up an' break your ribs in the middle of fuckin' nowhere? Weird."

It's always surreal to have the fever dream of the past confirmed in the fever dream of the present. But, as the event is tentatively acknowledged in present reality, Vincent's laughter bolsters the positive associations until Irahl starts laughing too.

The whole thing had been so stupid. It deserves to be laughed at for a minute. And Irahl is glad to be able to do so, because it had been a lot of fun, despite everything that had happened afterward.

It's a good cathartic laugh, despite how it makes the ceiling jostle and slowly rotate above him. One of those quiet, low, awful chuckles with how alcohol has loosened the sound of it. And once he starts, the feel of laughing while this drunk is just as distracting and vaguely hilarious as the thing that originally triggered it.

With how idiotic the whole thing is, he can't help himself.

"Ribs. Maybe my face... but not my arm."

It does feel good to laugh about it together. It had been fun. Even at the height of their shared anxiety about everything that transpired, Vincent admitted freely that he hadn't hated any of it, and he'd meant it.

Having it all here near the surface makes it that much easier to admit to himself that he wants to do it again. He's had so many big--and at times, confusing--feelings towards his friend during this trip, but something about the idea just seems right.

Sure, it's... Okay, just like the first time, it's probably the alcohol talking.

This hotel room feels a little more like the real world than some remote space station had, so he can't completely shake the sense that it'd be wholly irresponsible to bust his friend open when he might have to talk to his coworkers in the near future... But like earlier today, Irahl's taunt is stupid and obvious and Vincent finds he can't not give into it at least a little bit.

"See, you keep fuckin' bringin' it up..."

When his chuckling finally subsides, he puts his free hand down against Irahl's forearm. It's a gentle pressure at first, but he slowly puts more and more of his weight into it for as long as the other will let him get away with it.

"...You sayin' this counts as 'later'?"

He should not like the looming threat as much as he does, especially in the compromising situation that he's currently in. Injured, unarmored, half unclothed--whatever rowdiness he's failing to discourage here is going to have a lot more punch than any of the other times he and Vincent had done something ill-advised. And that's not even taking into account all of his new obligations and liabilities that he should be keeping in mind.

However, Irahl has never been good at being safe, and he has missed his friend. It's a big feeling, and he has never been good at those either. He doesn't know what else to do with it but this.

The arm that Vincent is steadily leaning down on tenses.

"You heard what I said."

Finn is going to be so disappointed.

This doesn't have to be a bad fight. It's not like they need to wage war until someone's having a medical emergency--they can just rough each other up for a while. They can just have some fun. Irahl's been trying to get him to come play like this all night.

"...Then I guess I gotta," comes his unhurried response, his expression momentarily one of unfettered fondness. He offers this out of love, implicitly trusting that Irahl will take care of him, and hoping that Irahl trusts him to do the same.

But with all that emotion aside, he does have to kick this guy's ass now, so his expression flits to a self-confident smirk and he does his best to quickly grapple that stupid arm and see just how hard it is to snap any of the bones contained therein.

It's probably a good thing that Irahl is both drunk and committed to not thinking, because he would likely spook himself away from this encounter if he stopped to think about how much he does in fact trust Vincent. Not only is he relying on the fact that Vincent won't cause serious damage to his dominant arm, but he's also tangling with him with all of his scales exposed, and is doing so on a bed. Any one of these factors on its own would be difficult for Irahl to imagine being okay with under any circumstance. Vincent is certainly a special case.

Irahl is about to get clobbered by a semi-human guy with super strength, and he has never felt more safe.

The other good thing about what's quickly unfolding here is that Irahl had not been bluffing about having tough bones. While Vincent had been able to crack a few while giving him a serious pummeling, his long bones are especially resilient. So, nothing snaps when he brings up a knee to brace against his attacker and starts hauling back, trying to twist his arm free.

One of the nice things about fighting with Vincent is that, unlike some people, he's never acknowledged the scales. And it's not like he doesn't know they're there; as Irahl wrenches his arm out from underneath him, Vincent grabs for the rapidly-disappearing hand, snags a wrist, and feels a little of their texture before that also slips away.

But there's no reaction, he just rolls away because he's sure he's about to get kicked in the back if he doesn't--and then he tries to sit up despite his sense of balance going a little sideways.

"Damn, dude!" Part frustration, part excitement, all grin, "Fuckin' slippery bastard..."

Gods, a bed really is the worst thing to be fighting on. He's not about to get his legs under him, that's for sure.

Irahl is feeling the fun kind of spiteful. He could let Vincent go, he could ready himself to fight, or he could just skip right to hitting him. But he has been in what is considered a rowdy mood by his own standards for this entire trip. Vincent has gone for his arm twice, and he feels like this deserves a little petty justice.

Before Vincent fully sits up and escapes, Irahl hears his parting comment and decides in that moment that he should show Vincent what a 'slippery bastard' he can really be--as well as punish him for his continued transgressions against his arm bones, which had only been minding their own business when they were attacked.

Suddenly, he grabs his friend's arm and goes to twist him into a painful wrist-lock.

This isn't the first time that he has done this. It's difficult to manipulate the limbs of someone as large and strong as Vincent is, but Irahl has succeeded a time or two in past sparring sessions. Whether he can manage it while on his back and drunk is another story, but he's going to try.

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