thisavrou_log | [ catch-all for miles ]

Who: Miles and YOU
When: anywhere from the beginning of the month to..... eh (wobbles hand)
Where: the bar, sanitation, the vor cabin, WHEREVER YOU WANT
What: Miles being a miserable depressive sadsack and then getting better! Making amends for being a shit during the event! Teaching the new guy how to not break the septic system! Whatever your heart desires!
Warnings: TBA

The last couple of weeks have been disaster. Miles had been so caught up in the effects of the exuo and the eclipse that he'd lost control of himself more than once, instigating a few fights and severely paying for it afterward. The broken arm will heal fine, but the cracked ribs are going to be a pain for a little while yet. Not to mention the whole nearly being sacrificed in the name of bringing back a little sunlight. That? That he can live without.

But the worst thing about it was the knowledge that something -- something was messing with his brain, and he still doesn't fully understand what or why or even how. It'd made him lose himself, hit that edge dangerously close and slip right off it. In Miles' line of work, he can't afford that -- and he's not sure he can live without his line of work. It all gets very...tangled up sometimes.

He's exhausted, after it all winds down. The -- effect, whatever it was, it had him going so hard for so long that as soon as it wore off, Miles crashed hard. His post-mania funks are never pretty, but this one's especially black, made only worse by the stinging memory of some of the things he'd said. He can't get that much privacy in his cabin with Ivan and Gregor, but he tucks a sheet under Ivan's mattress to create a makeshift curtain and resolutely hole up as far in the corner as he can in a miserable little pile of Miles Naismith Vorkosigan.

It wears off after a few days, much to Ivan and Gregor's relief as well as his own. Once the black clouds have passed, though, Miles drags himself out of bed. Time to get back his forward momentum. Time to get back to work. He's got double duty, after all, at the bar and in sanitation, and last he checked, he's got a new guy to train. Hopefully the place is still running alright. Miles feels a bit bad about not being consistent about showing up for work, but now that he's determined to get his shit back together, he makes a project out of cleaning out the whole damn bar and rearranging it, and as for sanitation -- well, he'll make an action plan when he gets down there.

[ this is a catch-all, so feel free to tag in with whatever or request a starter if needed! ]

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"Oh, this?" Miles' grin goes crooked and he tries not to wince as he straightens up to gesture at himself. Those cracked ribs aren't doing him any favors, either. "It was a crazy week. You should see the other guys."

The other guys being Ivan, Niko, and a couple of really handsy aliens. They're all doing pretty fine, actually. Miles was kind of disappointed that the good punch he'd given Ivan had done more harm to him than his cousin. "I'm fine. I've suffered through worse, believe me. So -- can I get you anything?"

Maybe she's just imagining a slight stiffness to the way he moves in general, but the concerned look on her face is almost entirely hidden by her mask. Maybe he can see something if he squints.

Tali hasn't heard anything from Niko - nor Ivan, when it comes to that, but she hasn't met the latter ~~yet~~ - so, "I'll take your word for it." And there's something of a fond grin in her voice. She's found herself taking a quick liking to the human...even if it already looks like he's going to be yet another friend of hers she has to constantly worry about the safety of.

"Hearing you've had worse doesn't make me feel better," she says wryly, and then, "Ah, do you have anything dextro? They've got dextro meds and food on board, but I wasn't sure about drinks..."

Weirdo aliens need to get drunk too, damn it.

Sorry, Tali, everyone has that worry about Miles. It's kind of part of the package. Worrying even more still for the fact that he has a tendency to fling himself headfirst into dangerous situations and drag everyone within a five meter radius in with him. Everyone's got a vice; Miles' is adrenaline.

"It should," Miles tells her cheerfully, but her request only yields a look of noncomprehension. He looks at her inquiringly. "Sorry -- dextro?"

"...Right." Sometimes she has to remember just how damned awkward she is. At least everything doesn't have to be sterilised anymore? "Quarians have different biochemistry from...say, a human. Our amino acids are aligned differently..." This is all delivered in the voice of someone who has given this talk before, but likes to tell it differently each time just to keep from getting bored, "...so me trying to eat your food is like trying to put a glove on the wrong hand, you know?"

Beat. "If your right hand was, ah, allergic to your left glove. I suppose. Anyway, I don't know how bad my reaction would be if I started drinking vodka or something, so we'd better not risk it."

She grins and fidgets a little, sort of sheepish as she realises that he probably didn't want the lecture. "Maybe it's easier if I just have water."

Miles holds up his hands and shakes his head. "Oh no -- please, don't apologize," he says quickly. It isn't like he doesn't know what that's like, having a long-practiced script to recite to strangers unfamiliar with his biological idiosyncrasies.

"No one's going sober on my watch, I assure you, Tiruncula Tali," he says grandly, and he hops down off his stepstool and onto the floor behind the bar, waving a hand at her to come around the side and follow. He sits down on the floor cross-legged and starts one-handedly pawing through the assorted inventory, now in disarray in the midst of his mission to reorganize the whole damn place. "There's a lot here -- let's take a look, shall we? Ah, what am I looking for, exactly? How do you tell if somethign's dextro? I don't suppose they just put it on the label."

It's not so bad now that she doesn't also have a non-existent immune system to explain away. That was always the less weird thing to have to tell people about, though - having to explain what dextro is when one of the major Council races is a dextro species? That's a lot weirder. It feels like having to explain the basics of the basics.

The rank gets a surprised huff of laughter out of her as she rounds the side of the bar. "Glad to hear it, Tiruncula Vorkosigan."

She sinks down to sit next to him, legs curled beneath her. "OK, ah..." She reaches to grab a bottle. "It might be on the label? There's a dextro symbol... I'll definitely know it when I see it... It's a circular sign, kind of spiky... It looks like someone got drunk and drew a turian's head, but that probably doesn't help you much..."

The bottle she's just picked up does not, in fact, have the sign she's thinking of on it, and she puts it back where she got it. Although considering the mess, she's not sure it would matter where she put the thing.

"Maybe I can just bring some adrenaline shots and drink whatever I want."

She is not going to do that.

((OOC: I have no idea what that sign on the right actually is in canon, but the idea of that being a NO DEXTRO FRIDGE is weirdly funny to me, so headcanon accepted.))

"No, no," Miles insists, shaking his head as he stubbornly pulls out one bottle after another. He has no idea what a turian looks like, but he's determined to find Tali a drink, if only on principle. "I'm not going to let you drink something you're probably allergic to you. I'm the Beverage Dissemination Officer, after all," he says with an ironic tilt to his mouth, "this is basically my job. And if I can't serve a quarian one measly drink, then what good am I, eh? Ah! Is this it?"

Miles squints at the bottle in his hand, a little dusty on only one side. It's got some kind of writing he doesn't recognize on the label -- or maybe it's just a pretty design, hell if he knows. There is a little symbol in the corner of the label, something that looks like...well, he doesn't know what it looks like, but he's never seen it on a bottle before. He holds it out to Tali for her own inspection.

She snorts as she picks up another bottle, recognises human writing and puts it back down. "The Beverage Dissemination Officer?" A soft snicker as she tries not to laugh and fails. "That's very impressive."

"Hm?" She looks at the bottle offered to her and-- "Aha! That's it." She takes the bottle and squints at it. "You know, I'm not sure it does look like a turian. Maybe someone just tried to get creative when they were making the sign."

Sweeping the dust off it, she squints at the label. "It's turian alcohol, I have no idea what any of this says. Just..." She holds the bottle up. "Don't give this to anybody else, OK?" Beat. "I mean, it's a health hazard, I'm not getting possessive over it."

"Don't laugh too hard, this was your boyfriend's post before it was mine," Miles says, amused. He grins, obviously pleased that he's succeeded in his modest quest to ensure the future deterioration of Tali's sobriety. He gets to his feet and retrieves two glasses from beneath the bar and a bottle of wine of...some vintage, hopefully a half-decent one. They might as well have a tasting.

"I swear I'll keep it under lock and key," Miles promises expansively, handing Tali a glass dropping back to a sitting position on the floor, his back to the shelf behind the bar. "So what does a turian look like?"

"Oh, yeah, Niko had this job." She shifts so she's sitting down properly against the shelf. "He told me they made him a barkeep when I found him."

There's a clear fond note in her voice, and as she takes her mask off to put it down next to her, takes a glass from Miles with a murmured thanks, she's still smiling a little.

"Turians?" She pours herself a glass, lips pursing in thought. "They're...tall, dark and spiky?" She laughs a little; it's strangely hard to describe an alien species to another alien. "Some humans say they look like birds, even though they don't have wings or anything. They have digitigrade legs, like quarians..." She raises one leg so she can stretch it up and out, showing Miles the extra joint in her leg. "But they're much bigger, armoured... Streamlined, like a predator."

She takes a drink...and screws up her face violently, shaking her head like trying to throw off the taste.

[ catch-all for miles ]

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