15 . JOHNUARY

[necrolord]

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: All around him, John's friends and loved ones begin to shed their skins. Also: Riteoir.
When: January
Where: Gaze and the new city.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

[bolstafir]

[Well, this is awkward. Some part of Qrow, honestly, had hoped after the organ puking incident, they'd be able to avoid each other for quite some time. It'd be so much easier to avoid acknowledging the situation in which John had been in a vulnerable position and Qrow had offered a hand, but Doorway seems to have other ideas.

Qrow is staring a little sullenly at the Omni when he appears across from John, knowing the other is likely looking at his own blurb, which would be embarrassing enough if someone he liked saw it.

He sighs so, so heavily.]

Nice slippers.

[necrolord]

[ So: on one hand, this is deeply inconvenient. He already knows he has to speak carefully or they'll start swatting him down for every half-truth, every evasion, which is frankly rude when he's not even trying to hide anything from this guy. As self-declared enemies go, Qrow has blown everyone out of the water by being such a sweet guy John still wonders if he was playing it up. Nobody can be that decent without it being at least mostly a bit.

Sitting across from him, watching Qrow sink down slightly in his seat, John knows they can agree: if the Doorway turned up now to congratulate them on friendship, they'd have a touching team-up to kick its ass. ]

That's my divine regalia, I'll have you know. Very important stuff.

[bolstafir]

[Much to Qrow's own chagrin, the decent-ness is the main part that's not a bit. He does not have half the swagger he pretends to.

The comment wins a snort. Dryly:]

My mistake. Just wouldn't have taken the bunnies for your divine aesthetic, is all. I'd have thought you might prefer hornets.

[Because, you know, he likes to kick hornet nests that happen to be eldritch abominations!]

[necrolord]

[ Fittingly, that one stings: it gets a shift of expression from him, a tightening around the eyes and mouth that is half a wince. ]

Oh, you know. God loves all his creations, et cetera.

[ The joke is that he didn't invent bunnies, or hornets. He invented Heralds. He sure as hell did not mean to. ]

[bolstafir]

[...]

Really? That's all you got for me?

[Qrow is looking at a profile full of sex jokes and he's not going to take the bait with rabbits?

It's weird. For digs Qrow could've made, that one barely had any teeth. He's thrown worse, more direct insults in his face without getting that reaction.]

[necrolord]

[ By this point, John figures anyone even peripherally aware of the boat incident knows about his Omen: she's pretty memorable, and that's setting aside the closer look Oscar got in November. But Qrow doesn't press the issue, so John takes his softball pitch and rolls with it, the wince sliding away again under his usual dry tone. ]

What's anyone got against bunnies? Be fruitful and multiply, they've got that bit down. Second only to humans.

[ normal jokes when your planet collapsed under a population of eleven billion people ]

[bolstafir]

Heh, dunno about second. Think our scales tip a bit more on the other end, you know? Multiplying isn't exactly the goal most of the time, anyway.

[It still sticks in the back of his mind like a splinter. Somehow, he got to this guy with that one, even though he wasn't even trying. Hornets are a sore spot, apparently. It should feel more satisfying than it does.

He looks between him, and the cards, and the room that clearly has no way out until Doorway has deemed them having Bonded (TM) enough, and he sighs, after a moment.]

Alright. Gonna go out on a limb and assume you'd rather not talk about whatever just happened there, but we are currently stuck for an indeterminate amount of time. So. We gonna go through the pretense of smalltalk roulette or should we just rip off that bandaid now?

[They won't get away without talking about something sensitive, and they've clearly landed upon such a topic right here.]

[necrolord]

[ There it is. He can't fault the guy for pressing an easy advantage, but that doesn't mean John is thrilled to chat about his Omen. Utterly deadpan, he opts for: ]

Maybe I'm afraid of bugs.

[ He taps the cards. ]

You sure we're going to miss out on these? There are some good ones in here. Tell me what your childhood was like, that one's got to be cheerful.

[bolstafir]

Totally. It was all dancing cartoon bears and eating glue.

[zzzzzzap.]

Tch, really? That's kind of an overliteral take on lying, isn't it?

[Does he actually need to answer it because John read the card out loud? He doesn't want to. It's something he's told exactly two people in Trench about, and he's sleeping with one of them. John is someone he can begrudgingly sort of admit to himself isn't intolerable company, but it's not like they're friends. Awkward goddamn city.]

....Look, let's just say I learned how to fight and it didn't go to waste, alright.

[necrolord]

[ John, for his part, doesn't get zapped for afraid of bugs, which seems just as inane in the opposite direction. He sails past it in a hurry. ]

Fair enough. I claim many skills, but being able to swing a sword isn't among them.

[bolstafir]

[Qrow scoffs.]

Guess that tracks. When you've got control over life and death already, you don't really need to know how to kill things by hand, huh.