psychoshenanigans | Goodnight // AU

Entry tags:

coil,
zhas

Goodnight // AU

Zhas kind of likes cooking. It's like science, full of measurements and processes, but the end results are usually nicer than the results of his other experiments. As much as he hates giving in to basic human necessities like eating and sleeping, there is something kind of calming about making food.

He'd never admit it, though. The sun is shining, the window is open, the place is empty... and he's standing near the stove, measuring pasta and stirring it around in the bubbling pot with the same stoic, vaguely brooding look that he always has.

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Coil is not often found in the kitchen. Of all the tedious human priorities, food occupies a very low spot on the list. Eating is simply an obligation on the best of days, and an annoyance or downright struggle the rest of the time. So, he gets absolutely nothing out of the room in which food is housed and prepared.

He's only heading down there because he has ideas and a thought process that almost connects them, and that is something too important to leave for notes to preserve until lab time. He's pretty sure that any notes he'd draw up right now would end up more confusing than necessary, anyway. He's tired; he's on one of those very nocturnal kicks that happen during a really good line of study.

With one of his big old tomes tucked under one arm, he finally makes it to the kitchen while on his round of looking for Zhas--sleepily wandering in and over to see what he's doing and how long it looks like it's going to take.

It could take minutes. Or it could take years. It depends on how much Coil knows about cooking basics. The reality of it is that he only needs to babysit the stuff for three or four minutes before the boiling will keep everything moving on its own.

Something Zhas would not like to admit knowing.

He glances over at Coil, checking to make sure this isn't something really important. Since he doesn't look particularly alarmed or nervous, he doesn't bother pausing what he's doing.

He's hungry. It's important.

And the only thing that standing there in twenty seconds of halfway-impatient silence tells Coil, is that the water has probably not even reached whatever point Zhas needs it to be.

That's annoying. But it's also not really that big of a problem in the grand scheme of things, because this is important.

He shrugs the book up in his arms a little--a silent hint as to what he's there for.

Well, that's great. He'd love to know about it. But despite the hint, he continues to give Coil the same expectant stare as usual. He has absolutely no intentions of leaving.

And he signs such--as well as he can with one hand, 'What is it?--to show that he is interested in whatever he's found. Just not interested enough to stop.

He almost starts to explain. He gets as far as shrugging the book up again, careful not to knock all the loose leaves of paper tucked inside, so he can free up one hand to sign with.

But, the thoughts he wants to convey are complicated by nature, and still pretty unorganized in his head... so, he only gets as far as the signs for 'read' and 'idea' before giving up.

He lingers for a moment, eyeing the stove with a sigh that probably wouldn't have meant anything if it'd come from anyone else, before retreating to the table to drop his book down.

Oh, he knows. For someone who puts a lot of effort into not making noise, an audible sigh is kind of telling.

But he lets him sit, resisting a similar urge to roll his eyes. He's used to his attitude, but it doesn't make it any less obnoxious.

'Cooking', he explains, as if telling him what he's doing will somehow validate his side of the argument. He sets over the spoon just long enough to sign, 'Five minutes.'

Heavy emphasis on five, as in, it's just five minutes, don't be so impatient.

After dropping the book down--which also makes a sound--he takes a seat in one of the chairs, folds his arms flat and rests his chin down. Because he, apparently, has to wait five whole minutes now.

When he's actually got something to say, and being overtired and nocturnal is already running his patience short, that's an eternity.

He probably won't make it.

That gets him tapping his foot. It's quiet, but it's the kind of thing he does when he's annoyed and he can't just bash the annoying thing's face in.

He gestures, 'You can have some,' as a last token of goodwill (left over from before Coil came in and made things more difficult than they need to be).

He either nods or shrugs his shoulders--some noncommittal response to the offer. It's a quick motion, because he's taking the opportunity of Zhas' glancing attention to straighten up and blurt out a few quick signs.

He found something interesting, he hurries to gesture.

Zhas... just... looks back over at his pot. He's skeptical. Not about what Coil's come up with; his points are usually good ones, even the things he digs up during spells of sleep deprivation.

He just doesn't think that it's so important it can't wait four minutes and thirty seconds.

Coil, of course, begs to differ.

He pauses for a minute when he's cut off, waiting to see if Zhas is going to return his attention so that he can continue... and then folds back down onto the tabletop when it doesn't happen.

He'll just have to try to keep his important thoughts cycling in his head and try to project the most impatient sort of silence he can manage in the meantime.

"Brat."

It's muttered under his breath with the slightest suggestion of a smirk to accompany it. Lucky for Coil, he has at least endeared himself enough to Zhas to be forgiven. Sure, he's still debating throwing something at him. But it's out of affection, really. Probably.

If there are no interruptions, though, he'll finish up what he's doing as quickly as the needed time will allow.

Being called a brat gets him to at least straighten up a little and pretend to be patient about this.

He slides the papers out of the book, though. He has to fidget with those--looking over them to preserve his train of thought, keeping his brain moving so he doesn't settle enough to start yawning.

By the time Zhas is done with the stove, Coil will have his notes spread out into at least two piles on the table.

There is an end in sight, and he does get everything going how it should. After his spoon is very pointedly placed over the top of the pot, a metal sound to signal him finishing, he turns to give his full attention to coil.

Not for what he'd think, though. He's got one more jab for him.

'Thought I would make something that can't run around.'

It takes him a minute.

With all of the notes running through his head, the way that overtiredness has his brain running a little more lethargic than usual, the first response Zhas gets is nothing but a few confused blinks.

Until... oh.

He gets it.

And, eye sliding away off to the side, he can't help but sink a little lower in his chair.

That counters everything that the last five minutes could have made wrong. He chuckles--low and guttural--over Coil's misfortune before finally walking over to see what all the fuss has been for.

He ruffles through his bangs, like he does, to say that he doesn't mean anything permanently cruel by it. And then he leans over the table to start looking--more notes, old tomes, pulling up references from his mental archive to see where Coil's been going with this.

It's vaguely familiar in the way that it's all vaguely familiar. The references are ones that he's seen before, jottings of names that come up a few times in the necromancer timeline that Coil treats as sacred history.

But whatever connection Coil has been waiting to point out, is all in Coil's head.

And, by the way he's slumped there and kind of glowering to himself, it might just stay in Coil's head.

He was waiting for an explanation, but as we all know... Zhas isn't really much better at patience than Coil is. To be honest, he's probably worse.

So when Coil doesn't say anything, Zhas shoots him a sardonic glance and signs a very simple question.

'Mad?'

He's not bothering to answer. Besides unslouching enough to gesture around at his arrangements of notes, he's pretending Zhas hasn't signed a thing.

He just sifts through the notes until he gets to pockets of annotations that he's grouped together, alongside segments of text he's translated mostly for Zhas' benefit. It's a hasty web of association. Aside from the fact that it's all separated into two piles, any sort of relationship is not immediately apparent at all.

And the fact that he's halfhearted about the whole thing now probably isn't helping.

Yeah.

He's mad.

He does his best to follow and look for a connection, but he really does need Coil to explain where he's going with all this. He could apologize, but he could also throw himself out the window, and that doesn't seem any more necessary.

'Interesting?' Come on, Coil. He won't have been dragged over here for nothing. 'Idea?'

He doesn't really sigh, but the look of it is in his face. It's not as though this had been some big thing he'd been looking forward to, but for whatever amount of it there might have been, Zhas has taken the fun out of it.

He'd been practically fidgeting to get this explanation out before, and now it seems more like Zhas is twisting his arm about it.

...It might have something to do with his work being so recently picked on.

So, he's still not really filling in any gaps with further signs, but he's at least pointing between circles of footnotes that supposedly have something to do with each other between the two piles.

Zhas smacks him with the back of his hand. Flat against his arm--not enough to be an actual aggressive injury, but Zhas hits harder than most by default anyway.

"I was kidding."

And halfway through the last word, he's already signing something to the effect of, 'Do you want my attention or not?'

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Goodnight // AU

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