[Training] a pocket full of mumbles

In truth, the alchemist truly is alright with it. He's come to realize more and more all the things he can't provide Ronin. Why would you want someone you loved to toil and waste away, while you figured your own shit out, if someone could comfort them in the interim? With an absolutely shit-eating grin, the alchemist nods, clearly pleased. "Ronin tells me that all the time." He quips back easily; What did it matter if the Star was always being sarcastic? "I've come to realize there's the things we think we want in a relationship...and then the people we want those things with." Rolling his eyes as the thought of a certain blonde popped into his head, he looked up towards the clouds with a laugh. "If I've learned anything from Phoebe, it's that those things don't often go together. Not easily, anyway." Hearing that it's the ascended teeth at the heart of it, a coral blush darkens the alchemist's cheeks and he quickly covers a cough by downing the rest of his whiskey. "That, unfortunately, I understand far too well." He admitted, itching uncomfortably at his collarbone. R E M I I followed your ashes into outer space

SUNJATA

Sunjata offers a bit of a broader chuckle to the Alchemist, at least until she brings up the mention of Phoebe and it drifts away to something like a frown, his gaze shifting with it. “No, not it doesn’t.” He offers with a quiet sigh, a puff of smoke following after, the hollow taste on his tongue palpable as he thinks on it further. “I’m glad that whole mess is over, honestly.” He opens the palm of his hand to trace over the scar that remains there before he closes it again and looks up toward the sky.

The Ascended teeth comment, however, is met with a cough from Remi and some hint of awkwardness that Sunjata pointedly ignores. “Mmmhm.” Sunjata agrees quietly, tilting his head back to look at Remi with a quiet calculating gaze. “Want more whiskey?” He asks, lifting the bottle and nodding his head toward the glass.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

Remi doesn't ask what the gesture means. He didn't necessarily think his once-friend was capable of that sort of violence, but then...Phoebe did always sort of do what she wanted. "Mm, I bet. She came to see me you know. One of the first to track Ronin and I down here." Taking a long drag on his cigarette, the embers leaving behind a psylo of grey, Remi eventually exhaled and shook his head. "Something about your wedding and the bar I think?" His voice sounded entirely dull at the mention of whatever drama Phoebe had tried to impart on him. "Probably for the best, yeah." He replies with a grin, extending his glass. "I remember the first time...thinking it would be like any other drug in that the first time was always the best." Running his wrist across his forehead to brush away his curls, the alchemist seemed to give himself an unimpressed snort. "Except..it isn't like that. It's always just as good." This was said gravely, like some thinly held secret which, in a way, is precisely what it was. It was just one that they both knew. R E M I I followed your ashes into outer space

SUNJATA

He listens as Remi expands on his encounters with Phoebe post wedding, and his head tilts a small amount back in thought. “Probably about how terrible I was to her that she went and tried to destroy my bar with a shovel, claiming it was the one thing I cared about?” He explains with a raise of his brow. “Which… Wasn’t wrong, I guess.” A curl of his lip to that before he exhales quietly.

The comment of more whiskey and ascended bites has him leaning forward to pour more into Remi’s glass as well as his own before he settles again, flicking the cigarette so the ash drifts off again into the sand. “That was the problem, really. Nate was the one that diagnosed my lung condition through his bite, and it was just… A normal check up at first. Of course, didn’t last.” He snorts before exhaling. “So I’m sure Phoebe went around complaining about how much of a cheater I was when she knew it was likely before we even said the vows.” And something about this was… Funny, now that he thinks about it, and he looks away from Remi with some hint of disbelief and a quiet chuckle leaving his throat.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

The alchemist laughs easily at that. "Honestly, you probably got off easy." He comments with a lazy shrug. "So what's happening with the bar then? If you're here?" Ignorant of Sunjata's bar-empire-expansion plans, Remi imagines that the VV has just been boarded up. Remi raises a brow hearing that it was Nate. Sam's boyfriend? Well that half-explained how he'd wound up with Loren. "Did you ever promise monogamy though?" The alchemist asked, hoping the answer was no. 'The bites can be justified so easily...needing to give power or strength during times of crisis or just to prepare..' Remi swiped a hand across his eyes, think of all the times he'd had teeth in him, and how he'd never wanted them to part from his skin. Until afterwards of course, when the cold chill of reality sank in and he realized how whorish it all made him feel. 'Luckily I can't say I have any ascended friends anymore, so the temptation is fairly low." R E M I I followed your ashes into outer space

SUNJATA

“It’s still mine, still running. I’m opening a bar in Halo as well.” He offers with a nonchalant shrug, as if it didn’t make much of a difference if the Alchemist knew. They’d all have a similar style, the same tongue of the name. It would be relatively obvious that it was connected. But that conversation shifts back toward Phoebe and the way she’d attacked the bar, and at Remi’s comment he chuckles deeply to that before sighing.

“She said it was implied simply based off of her views of marriage.” He rolls his eyes to that. “Got in an argument in Halo though, she talked about going home with the bartender in Snowcloak, got pissed at me when I told her she was more than welcome to.” There’s a hint of amusement at that, though.

Listening as the Alchemist comments on bites, Sunjata puts the cigarette out and nods to the explanation of justifying it with a quiet snort. “I’m not so lucky.” He shrugs to that. “Though it’s not like I go and seek it out.” He hums thoughtfully before shaking his head. “Maea, however, was diagnosed by Nate as well. Since then, she’s been able to manage her sicknesses.” A tilt of his head, thoughtfully, to that tidbit of information.

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

"Halo?" The alchemist wrinkled his nose at that. "I mean, from what I've heard I guess drinking would make a good pastime given how shit it sounds out there." Remi had only been oncer, and he doubted very much he'd ever go back again. Rolling his eyes a touch at that, Remi just shook his head. "Well, according to her original views of marriage, I shouldn't be with Ronin, and that's changed so.." Phoebe could be stubborn when she wanted, but it wasn't like the alchemist needed to tell Sunjata that. A touch confused by this, Remi tilted his head slightly to the side. "What does that have to do with being bit?" Knowing nothing of Nate's method of detecting things wrong within the body via his teeth. R E M I I followed your ashes into outer space

SUNJATA

A snort to that, slight shake of his head. “It is shit.” He agrees before leaning back a small amount and tilting his head. “I have a habit of dealing in secrets, however, that’s mostly the reason for the bar up there.” A raise of his brow as his gaze flickers toward Remi with a hint of amusement at that before he settles in with the idea of Phoebe and her views.

“Hm.” He supposes that’s a fair thought, but the idea of his marriage with her, well, that was one thing that wouldn’t change. “Well, I guess her own views for her own marriage are still the same.” A raise of his brow in some quiet observation of it – dealing with it firsthand, before his head shakes.

Nate getting added to the conversation has Sunjata leaning forward a small amount, however, gaze attempting to find Remi’s sea glass eyes. “He’s got something from the Voice where when he bites you, it’ll tell him if there’s something wrong with your health.” He doesn’t know the exact specifics. “I had a cold of sorts after Fiat Lux and he found out what was actually wrong to try and treat it better.” His head tilts a small amount thoughtfully. “Could’ve killed me, actually.” So honestly, it had been worth it. “Set me on some treatment plan for it but I had to keep going to get it tested to see if it was getting better.”

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself
in love, vodka, or the sea

A treatment plan huh. Constantly re-tested, huh? Remi's gaze was boyish and skeptical to hear Sunjata describe this medical routine with those words. There was certainly a grain of truth to it he supposed, especially since Nate was a doctor. And to someone who hadn't experienced the ascended bites for what they were, it might have all sounded entirely above board. It just happened Remi wasn't one of those people. Drinking long into the afternoon until the pair were slurring their sentences and rambling on about nothing, eventually, the whiskey ran dry and both agreed Remi should make his way home. ~FIN R E M I I followed your ashes into outer space