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[thereneverwas]

[For correspondence, private scenes, and anthrax.]

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[extortionate]

A cautious man would wake at the first loud noise: When you aim to survive, it pays to be quick from dreams. A clever man would argue that it's the quiet noises that are the problem right now, that any problems loud enough to hear are clumsy enough to handle.

Lazar isn't either of those things. What he is, is lazy. An answering groan rumbles loose from Barrow's pillow (yeah his face is just all mashed up in there), one bleary eye winching onto the bag.

"What you got there? Bowling balls?"

Out of fashion right now. Difficult to pawn. Maybe he'll go back to sleep -

[thereneverwas]

"Why don't you catch it and find out," Barrow grunts, moving through the room with a nudge of his toe to the bag, which he has no intention of picking up again-- it was enough lugging it up all those stairs, with or without bowling balls inside.

He comes to rest with his back to the windowsill beside his bed, arms folded as he regards Lazar wearily from above.

"What's got you back here? Finally get kicked out of wherever you went?"

[extortionate]

"Wife's a bit worked up," A hand flutters up just enough to prove that it's whatever, settles heavily onto the cat's twitching haunch. "So I figure: Give her a little space - do a little good. Win-win."

He yawns.

"Surprised you stuck around."

[thereneverwas]

“Imagine,” Barrow grunts, offering no further commentary on Lazar’s relationship (he has a wife?? Maker), “why’s that?”

Why the surprise, that is.

[extortionate]

A wife, and don't get any ideas, Barrow.

"Well,"

Older means slower - but Lazar knows better than to go there. If Barrow was gonna die like that, would've done it already. - Older means don't get yourself fucked up by him, it'll be embarrassing.

"Reckoned you might've closed the deal on one of them Hightown broads by now."

[thereneverwas]

The scoff that this elicits does contain sincere amusement, but just as much incredulity.

"Hightown," Barrow repeats, shifting his weight unconsciously as a cat leaps from the windowsill to his shoulders, "your opinion of me's higher than I thought."

[extortionate]

"There's plenty of them get bored, start taking in strays," He finally huffs up to his elbows, displacing the armpit wriggler. Lazar spins a finger: "Wrap 'em up in sweaters. Hell, you could have hot milk, twice a day -"

[thereneverwas]

Barrow's expression lightens a bit as he considers, and eventually dismisses the thought with a shrug.

"Too many stairs."

[extortionate]

"Too many here already. They oughta move this place somewhere flat."

[thereneverwas]

Lazar is right, and that's upsetting.

"We can move people through eluvians," he muses, "maybe, if we combine all the eluvians, we could move our base to... I don't know. The Hissing Wastes. Nice and dry there."

He is, however slowly, warming to the presence of his erstwhile-erstwhile roommate. Except,

"That's my bed, by the way."

[extortionate]

There's a face that Lazar can make. It's even worked before - alright, sometimes, occasionally; less often than he'd like and almost exclusively with women of a certain age.

But he's making it.

[thereneverwas]

Barrow may be of a certain age, but sadly he's not a woman.

"Up," he grunts, jerking his thumb back toward the other bed.

[extortionate]

When you're being mean to him, this is who you're being mean to -

A thirty-five year old man who groans out of Barrow's bed like he's twelve, and toward the hall. Someone probably left their blankets behind when they vanished into a Rift. Or just didn't lock their door.

He'll be back, unfortunately. Eventually.