#yoinks this

with @mecha-blue from here.

" god⸺ no. " jane covers the bottom half of her face with her hand, a sound suspiciously close to stifled LAUGHTER eking out from between the spaces of her fingers. it falls back to the bar, around her quaintly-filled, half-drunken glass. evidence of her laughter lays plainly on her face in an unrestrained grin, cheeks dimpled.

" i don't⸺ that's . . . " she takes a second to string the proper words together, " it's not performance anxiety. I DANCE. but i'm, you know. tone deaf. punch-up says it's worse than flambae, and i'm inclined to agree. " the last time she held a microphone seems like a distant memory. the skin between her eyebrows pinch as she attempts to recall, but it submerged in fog, details unclear. there was something about malfunctioning sound equipment, and being too tipsy to read the teleprompter that scrolled through the lyrics of whatever song she'd intended on singing. something like that.

she JABS a finger into robert's collarbone, " i think you should go up and sing, " she says, " the whole team would get a kick out of it. what kind of music do you listen to, anyways? " she has a hard time picturing. whatever's in her veins has her skin buzzing, " old rock? country? "

continued with @ospraey

" not a fan of fashionable lateness, now? " their voice holds a faux and overly joyful FLAVOR, putting on the mask of joking around with an old friend. they cannot help their relief when they aren't shoved away and refuted- not a LIE has been spoken upon their tongue, after all. ulysses might suspect this person had an inkling of self-preservation, if not for what's currently among them-

ulysses being the most dangerous thing on the street.

they aren't keen on MAKING A SCENE, however. so they've gone covert. approached the object of the tracker's focus to at least try and steer them away from danger. whoever else is lurking in the shadows, they're no amateur, and ul is not about to just let them have whatever it is that they want.