bigapplesauce | Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine? [closed]

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Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine? [closed]

Navigating his way to Seth's building without assistance makes Daniel prouder than he has any right to be, but it's just nice to know he's able to adapt and learn his way around. It gives him a sense of accomplishment to contrast with the drifting downward trajectory it feels like his life's taken as of late.

The optimism lasts about as long as it takes for Daniel to find the apartment door. Then he briefly loses his nerve and has to take a minute (or two, or three, certainly no more than four and no, he has absolutely not been counting) to collect all his thoughts into one place and automatically begin assembling a preamble before scrapping the idea almost immediately.

He is not going to start with a formal introduction. That would be ridiculous.

And he's not nervous. Just a shade agitated, maybe. Well within reason. It's just the issue of he and Seth spending a disproportionate amount of time walking around in each others' heads, something that definitely warrants a conversation of some sort. Possibly involving alcohol, and Daniel isn't typically one to make that suggestion lightly.

He's done hesitating. Daniel takes a quick breath and knocks before he can change his mind.

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"No worries," Daniel says lightly, still putting a herculean effort into keeping his voice level and not at all amused because Seth is very obviously embarrassed by the whole maneuver. "You're a bit, um, you know. Motor coordination's one of the first things to go."

Hence why Daniel has been so stationary. Seth seems intent on righting himself without actually touching Daniel, oddly enough, but he won't question it. He just keeps himself relatively still so Seth can rearrange himself in a more vertical position. And doesn't laugh. Which he manages, miraculously.

"I'm just going to go ahead and blame you for having too long legs," he decides. One advantage to being drunk is that embarrassing yourself so spectacularly isn't quite as mortifying as it would be otherwise, and it's quicker to become distracted. And there's the glass of water, which he needs to be drinking, how convenient, he can do that instead of talking.

"My legs aren't that -"

He takes a moment to inspect them.

"All right, so maybe they are a bit. I happen to be tall."

Seth looks to have recovered from his stumble, at least, in both the literal and figurative sense.

"You seem to know your craft in hangover prevention," Daniel comments, watching Seth and his glass of water with his eyebrows raised. "Not that I'm complaining." He really, really isn't. The lower tolerance makes for much harder-hitting hangovers which, no thank you.

Obviously anything taller than Seth is something he can justifiably call too tall, even if Daniel is only a few inches taller than him.

"Well, you know, years of experience," he answers, mildly breathless from downing half the glass in one go. He leans forward and picks up Daniel's glass and hands it to him in a silent request to do the same. Hangover prevention can be boring and easy to forget, but it's so much more preferable to hangover recovery.

Daniel takes the pointed hint. A good portion of the water vanishes in his first gulp and the rest disappears in the second. He's in no awful rush to get hit with a pounding headache in the morning.

"Wish I could say the same," he says, setting down the glass. "But, you know me. I've pretty much always been a caffeine guy. Not exclusively just, you know, mostly."

Which would be putting it mildly. Daniel doesn't actually know if he can exist without the stuff.

Seth gets momentarily distracted watching Daniel's throat as he drinks, and then how wet his lips are afterwards, and has to make himself look down at his glass. He tries to tell himself there's nothing strange about having trouble shaking that mental image. The brain does all sorts of weird things when you're drunk.

"Yeah, uh, I had kind of picked up on that," he answers with a nod. "So do you mostly go for coffee, or is it any kind of caffeine? Tea? Energy drinks?" He's not entirely sure why he's asking this. Knowing how to stock up, maybe. Then again, he always has tea and coffee anyway.

"Coffee. Usually. Sometimes tea if I want to be less, you know." He makes a wiggly, noncommittal hand gesture that is exactly the opposite of informative because he realized too late that he didn't actually know where the sentence was headed when he began. "Back home people really got on my case about it. Which I guess makes sense when you make a habit of hitting the forty-eight-hour mark without sleep on a regular basis and don't actually notice until someone points it out." Yeah, oops. "Though in my defense, they should've known better than to put a coffeemaker that close to my office. They realized that pretty quickly though. Put a stop to it. Unfortunately."

He frowns a little to himself at the memory. The coffeemaker had to be promptly transplanted back to the commissary and never again placed in such proximity to the office of one caffeine-dependent insomniac archaeologist. ~~He still resents that command decision.~~

Yet despite the amount of coffee he's had so far, Daniel supposes the alcohol-to-coffee ratio must be skewed in favor of the former because he's starting to slur his words a bit, even if they're still tumbling out at just as breakneck a pace as ever.

He's going to assume that wiggly hand gesture means energetic. Or possibly fast-talking. He raises his eyebrows at the whole 48-hour wakefulness thing. That sounds more than a little exhausting. Not that Seth hasn't had his share of sleep deprivation at times, but it wasn't thanks to coffee or choice.

"Inconsiderate of them," he answers with mild amusement. He wonders how Daniel is coping here, with a coffee maker right in the same room he stays at, and coffee shops practically on every street corner. Perhaps not as badly without work to focus on. Well, judging by the fact Daniel keeps appearing in dreams, anyway.

He finally empties his own glass of water, leaning forward with a small groan to put it down, then flopping back against the pillows.

"You know... I seem to recall something about me being promised Russian," he comments. At least Seth won't laugh at him for that, seeing as Seth doesn't know any Russian. He'd just like to see how Daniel will handle it when they're this drunk.

"Ah, I did not promise Russian." Daniel raises an indignant finger for clarification. "I merely implied. Vast, vast important difference between the two."

Then he smirks and mutters, "Много разногласий," with semi-decent diction. No, actually, if he's honest with himself those consonants are really terrible, but he is drunk and overcaffeinated, and that is his excuse. Seth did want to hear it after all.

Seth is about to argue to get him to relent, but then Daniel does say something in Russian, and wow that's ...interesting. And while smirking, no less, and Seth just blinks at him for a few moments, slowly getting a lazy grin.

"What'd you say?" he asks, because that was really just a strange jumble of consonants for him. Though it sounded suitably impressive.

"Uh, I said there were a lot of differences. Or at least I think that's what I said. You might want to consult a dictionary on that. Now's really not the best time for, um, demonstration. Seeing as I am drunk. Probably. I'm going to say that to make myself feel better about that atrocious elocution."

"Drunk" might be stretching it. He's at least well on his way. It's starting to feel like that, though he could just be tired. It's getting increasingly difficult to tell.

"Well, unfortunately I don' have a Russian dictionary jus' at the mo'," he answers, as if he were ever likely to own one. "Also I'm pretty sure I couldn' even spell it." His elocution seems to be taking a turn for the worse as well. He usually makes a point of enunciating much more properly than he would back home, since anything else mostly led to blank stares, but the drunker and/or more tired he gets, the more obvious it becomes. It's like his t-sounds are slowly fading out of existence, only making occasional appearances.

He grins widely as Seth's accent gets notably stronger. He likes the accent, even more so as it becomes less filtered, and the natural thing sounds infinitely better than Daniel's own poor attempt at recreating it.

"Neither could I at the moment," he replies airily. Daniel doesn't think he could actually muster the energy to stand up or move at all, hypothetically. "Motor skills are probably a bit impaired at this point."

By which he means this couch is really just enormously comfortable, and Daniel is going to keep lying here.

"Well, you saw wha 'appened when I tried to move," Seth answers, leaning his head back against the couch and looking at Daniel sideways. He's moved past embarrassment and into amusement at his stumble now. Perhaps because Daniel is too nice to laugh at him.

"I 'ope you don' need more water, cause I don' think I could fetch it," he adds. Or, well, he could probably manage it. But he doesn't want to. They're both so comfortable slumped here. It's going to be a problem when he needs to go to the bathroom, though. Which... might be soon, considering how much he's drunk.

"I'm good." Yep, he is just fine like this. And Seth's articulation is noticeably becoming much less pronounced so Daniel doesn't think standing and moving around are currently in his docket. Besides, he's perfectly comfortable like this, what with the two of them reclining on Seth's couch in bizarre symmetry.

"Mostly I'm just," out of habit he tries to demonstrate his meaning with his hands but finds he lacks the energy so all he manages is an incomplete shrug, "tired."

Pleasantly so, he doesn't add. He should think that'd be obvious.

"Mm," Seth agrees, looking up at the ceiling before closing his eyes. He's glad he put on some music before he sat down. It fills the silence and makes it nice and comfortable, rather than making him feel like he should say something. He thinks he could easily fall asleep like this. Which means he should probably get up.

Logically, the caffeine should be earning its keep in helping Daniel stay awake.

Logically, he should recognize that inebriated crashing on someone's couch might send all sorts of messages he's not sure Seth wants him to be sending.

Logically, he should be getting up and trying to forestall the alcohol-induced drowsiness that's starting to make this couch feel like an excellent place to simply lose all consciousness for a while.

Daniel supposes alcohol has a way of nullifying logic. Or he would suppose as such if he weren't in the process of passing out on Seth's couch.

Which is exactly what he's doing, despite himself.

He should probably get a less comfortable couch. It takes a remarkably short amount of time for Seth's consciousness to evaporate completely. And thanks to the fact that Daniel is doing the same, there's nothing to wake him up before he can get well and truly settled.

Which is probably a good thing, because then he doesn't notice as he slowly starts to slip sideways, becoming more and more tilted, until he's leaned against Daniel in a deep sleep.

The sensation of Seth sliding down to come to a rest against Daniel stirs him awake just before he enters stage two sleep. It's not even his head or an arm - it's just Seth, his whole general everything, essentially collapsed against him.

The man is surprisingly light.

He also doesn't look anything like the haunted man Daniel tried pulling out of a dream prison, or the catalytic knot of anxiety he'd become after the mention of his past. Sleep has pulled the buried reservations from the way he sits and stands (or, more accurately at the present moment, slumps) and given him the appearance of someone at peace.

Daniel doesn't mind it. He's used to odd sleeping positions, to waking up and discovering two or three equally weary teammates tangled on top of him. And if Seth's reached that comfort level with him, well. He doesn't particularly mind that either.

Careful to keep still, Daniel lets himself slide out of the conscious world for a little while.

It's several hours before Seth returns to consciousness, and then it's only because his bladder demands his attention. That's the first thing he becomes aware of.

The second thing he becomes aware of is what he's leaned against, and he tenses up awkwardly. It takes a certain amount of sleepy determination to push himself up without disturbing Daniel, and he can feel his cheek turning a little hot, though that might just be the general.. sleepy.. post-drunkenness. If it is post. He's not sure if the wooziness he feels is due to sleep or alcohol.

Either way, he somehow manages to defeat it and get to his feet, stumble over to the bathroom without making a ruckus, and relieve himself. He washes his hands, splashes water in his face, and even remembers to gulp down some more water.

As he steps back into the living room, he can't help but smile at Daniel sleeping peacefully on the couch. He shuffles over to his bed and grabs a blanket, carefully draping it over Daniel, because it seems like the thing to do. Even if it isn't actually terribly cold in there.

Then he crawls into bed and very quickly passes out again, on top of the covers, and still fully dressed.

Gabriel has been aware of a fourth person in the apartment building since they arrived the day before, and he's very interested in who it could be. He doesn't know Seth to have many visitors, much less overnight ones. It's almost his duty, he thinks, to go and say hello to the new person and check up on Seth.

Seth had said he'd like Gabriel to bring him breakfast.

When he gets downstairs, Gabriel is fairly sure that both Seth and Guest are still asleep, so he doesn't bother with knocking. Instead, he opens the door and walks in, materializing plates of waffles as he goes. The guest in question looks a bit ridiculous trying to fit on Seth's couch. Gabriel isn't sure what he was expecting in Seth's new companion, but 'tall muscular guy' was probably not at the top of the list. Both him and Seth are still clothed and not very cuddly, so he doubts that there's anything sexual here (at least at the moment), but he'd be surprised if there was given how prickly Seth was about his possible bisexuality the last time they talked about it.

As the pair begin to wake, Gabriel starts talking. "Morning. I brought food. Well, I'm sort of still bringing it." This, he illustrates by placing another plate of waffles onto the table, followed by three steaming cups of coffee. "Hey, Chippendale," he says, addressing the newcomer, "you like waffles?"

Edited 2014-10-30 21:07 (UTC)

It always takes Daniel a good twenty minutes to thirty minutes to become cognizant in the mornings, longer if he has no ready access to coffee. He needs to devote most of his brainpower into registering the tonal presence of another person, and then sitting up and then - realizing that the person who's been talking isn't actually Seth.

"Nnnnh," Daniel manages by way of a startled grunt, reflexes kicking in at the same time the leftover Ascended senses go off in every back part of his skull. There is something seriously different here about this - person, whoever he is, but at the moment his scrambled brain can't place what. He sits bolt upright, masterfully avoids getting tangled in the blanket that he definitely doesn't remember being there before, and tries to process everything at once. Semi-successfully.

This time he forms words. Well. One word.

"What," says Daniel.

Seth jerks awake at the sound of Gabe walking in, though it takes several moments before he really becomes aware of what's going on. Oh, it's just Gabe making breakfast, that's alright then. Give him a moment, he can deal with that. Breakfast sounds great, actually, he thinks as he pushes himself up, running his hands down his face and groaning a little.

...Chippendale?

Oh. Daniel's still here, right. It's probably a good thing he's not quite conscious enough to connect that nickname with a mental image, because he'd have trouble forming words then. Well, he already does, really. He also has trouble remembering exactly when he moved from the couch to the bed, and having apparently given Daniel a blanket.

"Hi," he says finally, slowly reaching the point where he can form words or maybe even sentences. He hopes Daniel isn't too freaked out by his neighbour randomly waltzing in, though at the moment it seems like he might be.

"Do you like Waffles," he repeats to Seth's guest, this time slower and with more enunciation. "I could whip up some eggs and bacon if that doesn't hit the spot. Here, I'll just-" The table is definitely set up. There's coffee, waffles with a selection of syrups, and a separate plate each for both Seth and his guest that has eggs, bacon and hash-browns. "There's coffee, too."

He picks up his own cup of coffee and takes a sip before addressing Seth, an eyebrow raised in amusement. "Late night?"

Daniel's instincts for self-preservation might be nigh nonexistent but his analytical intuitions are, as always, the first thing to load on his presets. The unexpected someone has set everything on alert including, most distractingly, Daniel's usually latent post-Ascension faculties.

And then he just casually - shifts reality, perfectly cheerful about it, seemingly unhostile. But there's also the vaguely charged air surrounding him, the same sort of heavy jangling presence that Daniel once picked up on the man that he would eventually learn (he realizes with no small amount of distress) was the real, honest-to-literal-god Lucifer. And while Seth seems to be perfectly at ease with this man, Daniel is - not. There are too many similarities here, too much that goes in chilling parallel with what Daniel picked up off the Devil. The actual real Devil.

He tenses, on sharp alert for once, and does the first thing he can think of, which is throw up - as silly as it sounds - a linguistic defense.

"אתה כוכב הבוקר הֵילֵל?," he asks slowly, shoulders taut.

Edited 2014-10-31 01:53 (UTC)

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