GRATIA // PSL

[skeletoncity]

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.

Comments

[indigochild]

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.

[hatesblindjokes]

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.

[indigochild]

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.