#diaval:interactions

Things were still laced with broken glass around campus, everyone still wrapped up tight and ready to snap. Was Val concerned? For himself; a little because he had too narrow a margin for error to screw up but there weren't too many fingers pointed his direction. For a few other people; that was where he really felt those ruffled feathers. People like Henrik, Erik, hell, most of Thoresby, caught in the crossfire? That bit a few sore spots. Nothing was going to tame down for a while, not with people so worked up, but he wasn't looking forward to the casualties that it left in that wake.

And when he could feel his rough edges grinding, not to mention a lack of wanting to see Barrel, he retreated to his comfortable little haven outside. Having a few moments to breathe, to stretch out in the place between thick branches of the tree he had claimed outside Thoresby; it kept Val from breaking someone's jaw. That wasn't a side he liked to play anymore if it was avoidable.

Settled in for a nice little nap once the sun had dipped down and the night had crested, his eyes were shut and his arm folded back behind the pillow he usually drug from his room to his roost. It suited him just fine doing nothing, relaxing, soaking up the darkness and purposely trying to ignore when he could hear the rustle of his retreat being encroached upon.

"Now," he drawled and didn't bother to dredge his eyelids upward, "there's only one person I let up here. So, if you ain't him you're about to regret it."

He chuckled though and shifted a bit to free up some space, because he knew who it was, "Hmn, hey Jackie. Barrel being a first class asshole again?"

Val was minding his business, or Val was minding someone’s business because on the whole he considered most things that happened around him as his business. Point being, he was distracted and scrolling through screens on his phone. It wasn’t too common of him to have his head in the clouds, he was far more the down to earth type, but something had Val just a little off his normal paces lately. Or someone, getting technical with it. 

Maybe he wandered too close to the archery range, maybe he didn’t really know where it was in the first place because he didn’t pay much mind to the people out there with their bows and arrows, their targets and all the rest that went with it. Just didn’t hold his attention much because Val had attention directed elsewhere and his nose buried in text messages.  In hindsight he’d be a bit irked about it, off his game like that? Unforgivable. 

He didn’t even see it coming. Not until a streak of red hot pain shrieked over his nerves and he dropped the phone with a vicious curse ‘hijo de perra!’ hissed through his teeth. What was that? 

An arrow, Val realized dumbly as he stood there trying to process, in vague order; shoulder, bleeding, arrow. It irritated him even more that the feather part of said arrow mocked him, all bright and cheerful, from and angle as he glared it down where it was embedded in the flesh of his upper bicep.  Really? Really? 

It didn’t even hurt nearly as much as it just pissed him off. His own fault, probably, but still plenty enough to put a damper on his mood. And what the hell was he supposed to do about an arrow? Pull it out? Leave it alone? Guns Val knew but this? It was a new one for him.  He was going to have a few words with someone, oh yes.