[IC Inbox | Meadowlark]

[lifetothefullest]

@lance.sweets | ■ ▲ ◌ ▼

Comments

[lifetothefullest]

Probably.

[He's tired and doesn't really have anywhere else to be, even if he want to be purposefully avoiding going home, which he's not sure he does.]

[evocation]

okay
i just want to make sure you're alright

[lifetothefullest]

I'm fine. I can also pay our rent for the next like three months.

[evocation]

uh
how?

[lifetothefullest]

Poker.

[evocation]

jesus
remind me never to play with you

[lifetothefullest]

If it ever comes up, I'll be sure to remind you of the danger.

I'm on my way back the apartment.

[evocation]

okay
i'll be here

[lifetothefullest]

[He arrives about a half an hour later, the transit time dampening a little of the nervous, amped energy he had been using to be out all night playing poker, making way for some exhaustion to set in. Still, he manages a faint smile when he steps into the apartment.]

Hey.

[evocation]

[Oh. The smile's good, right? Honestly, she's been worried since he told her he was leaving.]

Hey. Um... Did that help?

[lifetothefullest]

Help with what?

[He asks it incredibly mildly, more than enough for it to be obvious he's being purposefully difficult, as he pulls off the fancy, futuristic suit coat that's necessary for the dress code of the casino.]

[evocation]

[Ah, okay. It's going to be Ian round two.]

You seemed upset.

[lifetothefullest]

Really?

[Don't mind him just wandering into the kitchen for a drink. Not upset at all.

But he's also self-aware enough that the appeal of being passive aggressive wears off very quickly, and he soon sighs and continues.]

It isn't exactly my favorite thing that people here seem completely set on assigning the worst possible motives to everything I say.

[evocation]

[Thank God he's more talkative about this stuff than Ian.]

You mean Akechi?

[lifetothefullest]

Yeah, though he's not exactly the first one.

[There was that earlier debacle, after all, but no need to really get into that.]

But usually I've done something a lot more directly challenging than just disagreeing to warrant that sort of response.

[evocation]

[She sighs, raking a hand through her hair.]

I think I had an... okay conversation with him. In private, I mean. And I'm not defending him.

[She adds that quickly, because she doesn't want this to be an Ian repeat.]

He's... I don't know. It seems like Ren and Akechi are freaked out about a lot of this stuff. Maybe that's why he's so intense.

[lifetothefullest]

You think that, but then in a few weeks he'll probably be telling people you said the opposite of what you actually did.

[But okay, that comment was unnecessarily bitchy, and so he moves on more neutrally--]

I talked to Ren, before all of this. Apparently he wasn't too pleased that you and I disagreed about the Riverstone plan.

[Which is a separate issue; not the plan itself, but that combined with Ren contacting him and Akechi's comments to Ian on the network, despite his earlier comment Lance does have a guess as to what prompted the vitriol on Hawke's post.]

[evocation]

Ren wasn't? Yeah, I know.

[She's not entirely sure why he's bringing that up.]

He didn't want me taking the heat for it.

[lifetothefullest]

Which is nice of him, but it isn't exactly unusual for people to disagree and so I'm not entirely sure why he thought he needed to get involved. Still, he seemed to think it was necessary, and apparently so does Akechi; at least Ren came to me directly, but it looked like Akechi thought it would be better to just be unnecessarily aggressive on the network.

[Which he's not super impressed with. It isn't exactly appropriate to be getting involved in disagreements between friends, especially when you really only know one of them and they'd already talked about it and more or less resolved the problem.]

[evocation]

Yeah, I get it, and I'm not saying you shouldn't be frustrated. But I'm not his keeper either, you know? I don't even think Akechi likes me that much.

[lifetothefullest]

Even if he doesn't, he seems very invested in making sure you don't like me or Ian.

[Which is one of those big flashing warning signs that Lance knows to look for in how people interact. In this case it might just be an angry teenager with no deeper motive, but it's still worth being aware of.]

And since he brought up the disagreement between you and Ian specifically in their conversation, that's the most likely reason why.

[evocation]

[Kyna's head tilts, nose wrinkling. She hadn't considered that at all, and it throws her.]

Wait, that's what you think he's doing? Why would he care?

[lifetothefullest]

There are a few reasons, but I don't know him well enough to actually take a real guess.

[And while he can speculate, and as annoyed as he is at Akechi, this is also a teenager with clear emotional issues and so it feels out of line to just be throwing out those possible reasons without enough evidence.]

But people don't usually get that malicious without some sort of reason, and if it isn't because he likes and wants to defend you, then the next most obvious reason seems to be that he wants you to dislike us. And maybe I'm wrong, but it's something you should be aware of.

[And therefore possibly take his accusations with skepticism.]

[evocation]

Okay.

[She's still mulling it over, trying to parse out why Akechi would have reason to do that. She's not sure she can think of one, and she's not sure Akechi cares enough about her to care what she thinks of Lance and Ian.]

He's not going to convince me if that's what he's doing, just so you know.

[lifetothefullest]

[He watches her a moment, tapping his fingers against his drink, trying to decide if he wants to say what he's thinking. But he's told her when they discussed the Riverstone incident that it was best to just get right to the problem, and so he decides to bring it up.]

Are you sure? You didn't seem to disagree with much of what he was saying.