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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Irahl's grip may be like iron, but it's drunk iron, it's working from a very bad angle, and it's now being elbowed in the ribs. It's only a matter of time before he feels his very big captive successfully muscling his way to freedom.

As soon as Vincent twists away and has his hands free, some very powerful instincts take hold of Irahl. Whether fighting monstrous enemies or particularly enthusiastic sparring partners, the moment that one wriggles free of a hold becomes extremely dangerous as it means that a mobile enemy is now suddenly too close.

So, Vincent does get his poor, bullied wrist back, but this discomfort is immediately replaced with Irahl squirming and trying to wedge powerful elbows up into his torso, in an attempt to buy himself some distance in which to defend himself from whatever he's imagining is going to happen next.

Vincent sounds so relieved when he finally gets out of that wrist-lock. However, the sheer visceral joy of being able to shake out his hand and not feel intense pain is a little dampened by sharp elbows in his back.

He grunts and rolls away. He tries to turn and face his opponent, hands up to catch any other strays. Like a practiced dance partner, he can tell the other's energy has changed, and he answers by trying to match it--even if his attempts are clumsy, off-balance, and end with him nearly tipping face-first back onto the mattress.

But he tries a couple of genuine moves, upping the threat of actual harm with a couple of strikes in Irahl's direction and another attempt to get into his space and pin the guy down. If some part of Irahl's decided he's a threat, he'll start acting like one.

Irahl isn't thinking about the fact that he's still injured, but some unconscious part of him is still keeping track of these extra vulnerabilities and the fact that Vincent's antics are a genuine threat to them. So, there's a fun extra jolt of adrenaline when the roughhousing becomes a little more intentional.

Even when sober, it's easy for Irahl to stop thinking about the point behind violence and just lean into it once it's started. So, when drunk and rowdy, he's very quickly fighting a grin and ramping up how pointedly he's blocking and returning the aggression sent his way.

Of course he's making sure to be a pain in the ass to fight. He's just as clumsy as Vincent is right now, but he isn't battling gravity at the same time. So, anything that he manages to block also gets shoved to the side, and he takes at least a couple of opportunistic pot-shots at whatever limb Vincent happens to be using to prop himself up with at the time, just to give his opponent a harder time than necessary. Just to piss him off.

It's not that he's not getting pissed off about all the pot-shots every time he puts some real effort into getting straightened out--but it's the kind of nuisance that keeps the fight feeling light-hearted even as he takes a mean kick just below the knee. It's why at some point he starts trying to grab and shove Irahl around just as much as Irahl is doing it to him, playing into the spirit of chaos they've invited here.

Just as he catches a jab that would have left an awful bruise the next day, he misses so badly with a wide swing of his own that he topples over onto his back with barely any help from Irahl at all. Confusing, but his only reaction is to laugh at himself and keep trying not to get decked anywhere that'll hurt a lot in the morning.

Irahl sees his opening in the wake of something that he finds himself surprised (even while drunk) he hadn't needed to actually be bracing for. Vincent misses and tips his own ass over in a way that Irahl can't help but be delighted by. He needs to capitalize on something that stupid. Violence is his way of laughing at his friend.

So, he follows after him, rolling and sitting up enough to try and trap Vincent's closest arm against the mattress. His injured shoulder is stiff and mostly-useless, but he's sure it will be fine to just brace his arm downward with it to pin his friend's limb.

The room is spinning too much for him to properly sit up and get control of things, but he only needs to be slightly less clumsy than Vincent. It doesn't really matter that he doesn't have enough room to take a good swing at him. He just needs enough room to sneak in a close-range jab at his opponent's face. Just enough to make a point.

He can't help it. Vincent is just really fun to hit.

Even as half of his defense gets pinned down against the bed, he's grinning. He struggles to try and push back with his shoulder, but he only succeeds at sinking further into the mattress. He doesn't realize how much the smell of fresh blood is distracting him. He doesn't catch his own half-formed fantasy about the other's open wound. He also doesn't catch the fist that sends a shock of pain across his face.

He's drunk. He thinks he's in more control of the situation than he really is. Even as his free arm shoots up, unbidden, to grab his friend by the face--it feels as natural as breathing to try to shove him back down, overpower him, get on top of him. Irahl escalates, and Vincent responds in kind once again.

Irahl is sure he's got this. Even as Vincent succeeds at pawing him over by the face because the only thing holding him up is his bad shoulder, he is confident that this is all part of the plan. Vincent spins the room in the other direction until Irahl's back hits the mattress, and he is sure that his drunk friend is playing right into something he has accounted for.

He hasn't. He just feels more in-control because he can't be knocked over any further than he already is. Yes, he can be capable of controlling a fight from the ground, but unbeknownst to him, this is presently not one of those cases.

At the moment, he is undaunted by being crowded and pinned down while extremely shirtless and half-injured. Still grinning, he locks his good arm with one of the limbs pinning him down... which does gain control of it, but not in a way that actually helps or hinders anyone. And his bad arm is the one he that starts trying to hit Vincent with.

Take that.

Vincent is vaguely aware that his arm is locked up in Irahl's, and that this is generally bad for maneuverability and strategy and all that, but he's having too much fun to really care. Maybe one day he'll actually voice how much it means to him to have somebody to let loose on every once in a while, but right now he's a little too preoccupied with trying to get that somebody to stop being such a pain in the ass.

He shoves down on Irahl's shoulder until he realizes it's the bad one. As a sloppy correction, he tries to get a leg up over him and winds up taking several hits in the process. The last straw is a particularly sharp blow to his jaw--which he returns with a mean left hook before he even has a second to think about if he's going too hard.

He means to call him a brat again, and he thinks it pretty adamantly--both out of frustration and absolute fondness. Instead, he completely forgets himself and presses forward, wedging his face near his friend's injured shoulder to get a good lungful of everything his friend smells like.

Ha ha, take that!

Irahl is unfortunately not braced at all for the sharp blow that returns his own not-very-nice strike, (which is weird, considering how much control he's still sure he has over this situation,) so there is a good second or two afterward that is spent only on struggling to reorient himself.

The fact that Vincent shoves down on his injured shoulder goes entirely unnoticed. However, as his ears ring and vision swims, he is at least vaguely aware of Vincent getting too close... and he's already beginning to shove very clumsily at his friend's shoulder when he suddenly realizes exactly how close he's getting. He fails to catch the reactionary way his claws curl and dig in a little when it registers.

In the very back of his mind, more little bells of familiarity are beginning to ring.

Vincent's face is too close to properly headbutt. So, unintentionally following a few more of the steps they'd danced through once upon a time, he tries to shove Vincent's face away with the side of his of his own to get him away from the touchy vicinity of his own neck.

It would probably be easier to push Vincent away if he would also let go of the arm he still has locked up, but that's too many limbs for him to keep track of at the moment.

What if he just bit him? It's a very tempting thought, and it nearly drowns out the fact that Irahl's trying to shove his face away. Vincent doesn't remember that this kind of thinking is almost exactly how things got out of control the last time.

But lucky for both of them, this isn't last time. Irahl's objections do get through somehow and he instinctually pushes back on his free arm to give them both a little more space. Before any of his human reservation can catch up to what's happened, he pretends he meant to be fighting the whole time and gives Irahl a couple of obnoxious thuds in the ribs.

Maybe he's doing it out of some genuine, deep-set respect for the other guy's boundaries, or maybe he's suddenly decided it's his turn to be the brat--but he waiting for Irahl to tell him what he wants, in one way or another. Even if he is preoccupied with the little bit of blood he knows is smeared on his cheek now.

Whatever the driving thought had been behind the small distance that Vincent puts between them, that hesitation is at least swiftly acted upon by Irahl. As he moves, it's hard to tell if it is a reflection of what Irahl wants or if it's just a response to being punched in the ribs, but Irahl's whole body starts twisting over.

If Vincent thinks that Irahl had been difficult to wrangle before, he hasn't seen him this drunk and keen on aimlessly retaliating for... whatever that had been a few seconds ago. Being sniffed??

With the little bit of extra room he has been given, Irahl anchors his own weight onto the mattress by pressing his shoulders back. Meanwhile, his lower body wriggles out from under Vincent enough to start kicking one leg over... and the more momentum that motion has, the more he shoves back with his shoulders (very much including the bad one,) to lever to both of them over.

It turns out that he's pretty good at twisting out from under bigger opponents and gaining the literal upper hand. This is not the first time that he has done this.

See? You give a guy an inch and he takes a mile. That human reservation of his finally pipes up in a very I fucking told you sort of way as he pitches sideways, torqued over by one of those snaky legs he'd originally been trying to keep Irahl from dragging up.

Suddenly he's on his back. It feels like the world keeps tumbling past him even though he's stopped moving. Surprise gives way to amazement as he realizes what's happened. It's not even a skill thing, he's just a big guy. Nobody ever flips him over.

Regardless of all the other feelings he may or may not have about his friend being on top of him, his instincts snap back to him a second later and he raises his only reliably-mobile arm to try and divert whatever violence is most assuredly about to come his way.

If Vincent had been in a state to have kept his weight better centered over Irahl, maybe had room to spread out and brace himself, or even been fighting on the floor instead of a mattress, Irahl would have had a much harder time flipping him. Even so, Irahl still feels pretty cool turning the tables like this.

See, he knew he'd had this under control.

It's with this little boost of ego that he does set into trying to beat up his friend for letting him get here.

He lets go of Vincent's arm, which is maybe not the smartest thing he could do, but in this moment he feels like it serves him better to have room to work with. He can sit back a little, knock Vincent's arms aside as they come for him, and choose his shots.

This is the theory, anyway. Whether or not it actually pans out is a completely different story. Some dark corner of his mind remembers that this kind of thing had once led to him trying to strangle Vincent, shortly followed by everything that had happened afterward.

The rest of his mind is busy thinking about how much fun he's having, though. He's finally riding on a good adrenaline high now, looming over Vincent and trying hard not to growl, because he can tell if he slips up now, he won't be able to make sure that it comes out as a human-adjacent sound.

Only time will tell if their shared ounce of caution keeps this from turning into the brutal slugfest it was last time. Right now, he feels more awake than he was a moment ago, but it's wholly thanks to a spike in adrenaline and not any of the choices he's made. He's still trying not to hurt the other guy too badly, but the other guy's made it pretty clear what he wants.

So he lets Irahl hit him for a while. Not that he could have done much to not get hit; at first Vincent puts all his effort into blocking those blows, but it's exhausting work and Irahl's got better aim than him even when the guy's shitfaced. Soon he realizes it's just as productive to take his licks and suffer the consequences, since it gives him the space to land a couple on Irahl in-between. He shifts every which-way he can under some pretense of making himself harder to hit, or maybe even wriggling out of there, but it gets a little aimless after a while. It slips towards moving for the sake of feeling what it's like when he moves.

While he's holding up extremely well to this mess, his supernatural resilience can't stave off everything. A string of sloppy punches ends when Irahl decks him a little too hard and a little too high. Something in his face pops on contact, he briefly thinks he sees a color, and he feels the familiar warmth of a nosebleed begin to crawl down the back of his throat.

He suddenly grabs and pins one of Irahl's arms against his own chest, letting out a quiet and dangerous laugh as he tries to roll them both over again with the motion.

Irahl is on a carefree adrenaline high one second, focusing only on penning in the wriggling happening beneath him as he beats up his friend a little, and then things change and he's abruptly trying to reorient himself to the whole world in the next second.

It all pivots around that one moment in the middle where he slips up and breaks something that he doesn't mean to. It's a testament to how highly he thinks of his friend that there's even a small hesitation after it happens. One slight pause catching him before his next swing, which is far more than he would normally afford anyone.

He almost starts thinking in that moment--halfway to wondering if Vincent is okay--before his arm is pulled and trapped against his friend's chest, his attention is very much hooked on that laugh, and everything spins.

Now, it's his turn to be surprised. Somehow, he hadn't expected this at all, and the fact of just how shirtless they both are very much gets through the veil of alcohol for the first time. It's hard to think about anything but that as he finds himself suddenly pinned under Vincent's weight.

That laugh really sets the tone of things. Irahl does begin fighting aimlessly for freedom, but in the wake of that dangerous chuckle, he mostly finds the situation funny. So, as Vincent successfully turns the tables, Irahl can't help a breathless and disbelieving chuckle of his own.

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GRATIA // PSL

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