#allpurposebogeyman

        He’s seated a little closer to Rod than he really needs to be, cozied up on one of the dramatic leather fainting couches with the easy-to-clean finish.  The room is warm, but not so warm that Lip, with his backless silk top and his forearms freshly healed over, doesn’t feel a chill.  On another night, he'd be on his way to charm the bartender into raising the thermostat by now.  But tonight, Rod is here, and Lip wants to take the chance to spend a bit more time with him.  Even if that means attempting small talk.

@allpurposebogeyman says: “Oh, don’t worry about it.  I have a ton of things that I do.”

        The non-answer answer doesn’t phase Lip at all. He laughs a little, brushing a stray lock of Rod’s hair back into the pomaded wave.

        “I’m sure you do.”  There’s a particular way he’s learned to hold himself, always displayed to his own best advantage.  His bare shoulders catch the low light, inviting an arm to be wrapped around them.  He glances towards the door to the back room.  “How long do you think they’ll be in there?”

Mortality is a funny thing.

Comes crashing down as a mountain on your back or sweeps you up in the sky on wings.

--Adrenaline rush, probably. Vigilantism like a religious experience, a fight like a high you can't catch. You can't get caught up in it, Robin, someone could get hurt--

(Sometimes he doesn't remember what he started the fight about, what crime, what sin was being committed that he had to interfere for-- it'll come back to him, feeling the bruises spread across his knuckles.)

He's self aware enough to know this means he can't walk away. Won't ever walk away. He'll be buried, again. Closed casket, again.

But it isn't today, and it isn't in the dingy little iHop (Bat-hop?) they've posted up in.

He carves their initials into the table while the waitstaff isn't looking-- it isn't what the knife is for, he'll have to resharpen it later-- then stashes it securely in one of his many thigh pockets.

"Think it got the point across?" He's grinning, emboldened, no eggshells or capes to tread on, "Not much of an artist, but I thought I could take a stab at it, you know?"

("-- thanks," Jason does not say, "This is the best birthday I've had in years.")

“I stopped turning your bounties in when they started lowering the credits.”

Not exactly true. Din had been fresh off of being a foundling, with shoddy second hand gear and an ill fitting helmet and Kasun’s bounty had been the first one he picked up. 

The womp rat managed to slip his cuffs a handful of times and even made it completely off of the ship while they were docked for fueling. 

Din caught him a few more times. Got caught up in it himself. 

(Sometimes, when it’s dark and quiet, he thinks about that one quick brush of Kasun’s fingers against his jaw before he pulled away from where he’d been playfully tugging on Din’s helmet.)

But the next time the puck came around, the bounty had changed. Now it said dead or alive. 

DESPICABLE ME!

“I wouldn’t know.”

Do not take that tone with him, Roderick. And if you value all your important pieces, you absolutely will not take that tone about Alexander. Magnus may not be prone to owning up to his heritage, but that doesn’t make him any less of a prince of hell. 

“I don’t own him.”

He cocks a brow, and takes a moment to rein his temper in. He’s here for a good reason, he reminds himself. Out of worry for an old friend. 

“But you however...have put yourself in a situation where you do own someone. And I worry about you. About both of you.”

A deep, slow breath. 

        "There is a charming misconception that survival is somehow the natural state of affairs." The good doctor spoke calmly, lucidly, gesturing with one elegant hand. The cigarette between his knuckles wagged with the motion, unlit and all but forgotten. "That the body desires to live. To heal. That the job of the doctor is simply to excise the obstacles to survival, and all else will be taken care of."

        The sound he made as he exhaled could almost have been mistaken for laughter, but there was no trace of it in his voice when he began, inevitably, to speak again. "Of course, like all comforting ideas, it is a vast oversimplification at best. At worst... An outright lie. The body has mechanisms to perpetuate itself, of course, and it will run them into the ground, but the body doesn't understand survival, any more than the stones of an aqueduct understand irrigation. Left to its own devices, the body will just as gladly burn itself up or choke itself off as it will heal.

        "So we trick it. We redirect the body, manipulate it for its own good even if it fights us every step of the way. We stave off its tendency towards chaos- but that's all we can do. Entropy is not the interloper. It lives inside us, like any other organ. An unremovable appendix in the warm, wet dark. We are its home, and it will be ours."

     His chest has been aching for days, the loss of his son feeling like so many hot coals, burning him up inside. He sits on the edge of his bed, room dim, lit only by his bedside lamp. His apartment is painfully quiet. 

     He looks out onto the balcony through the gap in the curtains, a glass of scotch clutched loosely in his fingers as tears slip down one side of his face. Silently, they cut rivers down his cheek, disappearing into his stubble and beard. 

     He senses movement just outside of his periphery. He doesn’t turn, just stares straight forward and lets the tears fall as they may. 

     His voice cracks when he speaks.

     “If you’re here to kill me, I can promise that won’t end well for you.”