eachdraidh | Video: Open: Unseelie & Seelie

He didn't object when the bottle came back to him, though he did take a moment to ponder how quickly they'd gone through so much of it. When he blinked, all fours eyes were totally out of order.

"Spare me your arguments, I will not be convinced," he said, leaning a bit further over the table than he had before. "Nor did I miss anything you have said. The significance is insignifi - it is... meaningless. Such relationships only serve as a weapon for the enemy."

It didn't matter that Reapers hadn't been around at the time House was dealing with his friend. Besides, he was talking to the captain of Team Friendless, who had once been forced to kill those he had considered close friends.

House blinked at Javik a couple of times, his vision having gone slightly unfocused to the rapid intake of booze. "Wow. You truly are more cynical than anyone I've ever met. Also, you are a huge Debbie Downer."

Being something of a cynic himself, he wasn't being particularly critical of Javik. He was merely making an observation. Honestly, the only reason it was noteworthy was that he wasn't used to being the least cynical person in any conversation.

"You're also wrong. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, it was meaningless. We're all meaningless...except to each other. So there's that." He pulled a face, aware he shouldn't say things like that. The cynical 'we're meaningless' stuff--absolutely. He always said stuff like that. Admitting he actually cared about another human being was not really his style however.

"As for enemies...that's actually not wrong. There were people who would've used my uncharacteristically good intentions against me if they could have." He shrugged and raised his glass. "But they didn't. My gamble paid off."

"So I have been told." Well, 'Debbie Downer' might be a new one, but cynical certainly wasn't. Shepard and her crew were still in the beginning of their war, and still harbored fantasies of hope and victory. He preferred being called a realist,

Javik actually growled when House said he was wrong, but didn't interrupt him, sullenly tending to his drink instead.

"Circumstance," he said, stopping a moment as he seemed to have lost his train of thought. He continued when it finally came back to him. "Circumstance that puts us in each other's company does not cultivate meaning. Meaningfulness. If that is what you choose to believe you gained, then so be it. That your enemies failed to exploit you is fortunate. I have not been so fortunate."

The alcohol was making him walk the fine line between feeling great and feeling really awful. He wasn't too concerned with being coherent, either.

"Meaning is as meaning does." He wasn't sure that even made sense, and frankly he didn't care. Still, there was a nugget of truth to his ineloquent statement. He didn't believe in fate or destiny or any of those stupid attempts to give meaning to random occurrences. He believed circumstances had as much or as little meaning as he chose to give them. In most cases, he gave them very little meaning. Every now and then, however, he fell victim to the desire for human connection. It almost never ended well.

"No, circumstance doesn't create meaning. But sometimes circumstance allows us to meet someone who matters. It's rare but it happens."

House leaned his forearms on the table and simply stared at Javik. "Now who the hell is Liara?"

'Someone who matters' was definitely subjective, but Javik found he actually couldn't argue. Shepard mattered in the galaxy he'd woken up in, and if she died before they found a way to defeat the Reapers... none of those alliances she's forged would hold together. He was spared having to agree with the doctor when he brought up Liara again.

Javik set his glass down a little too hard, glaring at House. Damn the man for not letting it go - he'd been so certain he'd derailed them enough. Reaching across the table, he grabbed House's wrist just tightly enough to keep him from ripping it away. A heartbeat later the doctor would find himself standing in a dimly lit room, facing two women. One was a redheaded human, the other a blue alien, both of them looking at House as though he had two heads. The memory was Javik's, though, and he could share it with House as if he'd been standing right there.

The memory was brief, and relatively harmless from his standpoint. He and Liara had gone to have quite a few arguments since that initial meeting.

"She is asari," he said, withdrawing his hand once the memory was done. "She believed herself an expert on my people, but knew nothing practical."

[ooc: i spent like twenty minutes trying to figure out how to set a video to stop a certain point, but couldn't make it do right, so the memory he shares ends as 9:31!]

House wasn't cowed by Javik's reaction. He'd spent his life provoking people in way they generally found unpleasant and he'd gotten used to what were occasionally somewhat unpleasant reactions. He never stopped because he had a very good reason for doing it. If he didn't provoke, he never got the truth. The fact any particular piece of truth might be none of his business was...irrelevant.

His eyebrows rose in a silent question when Javik grabbed his arm but the explanation became obvious just a moment later. And boy, did it explain a lot.

He flexed his wrist once Javik released it. "Wow. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the stasis pod." It was an understandable reaction, though. In fact, he understood at least a little bit more about what made Javik tick though he was still processing all the tidbits of information contained in the memory.

"So sure, the blue chick was an annoying know-it-all." He leaned forward. "But the key point is--did you ever tap that?"

[ooc: no problem--I may even go back and watch the whole thing later 'cause I'm totally canonblind.]

Javik's attitude had been just as bad before he'd been frozen in stasis, but it wasn't far from the truth. Fifty thousand years left a huge gap between what he'd known, and what had come to be.

Did he ever - oh. Javik might be able to learn a language with one touch, but understanding the slang and cultural nuances was another thing altogether. Still, once he was done looking confused, he just looked insulted.

"No, of course not," he snapped. "Her people could barely count their own toes and fingers when I knew them, and we most certainly did not mate with aliens. I already told the commander what a pointless exercise it was, but she insisted on joining with the turian."

Griping about interspecies relations was a much safer topic than blu - than Liara. He was oddly articulate with his rebuttal, though, trying to steer it away.

"Well, sure, she had her faults but she was hot. For being blue. And bald." House was obviously teasing Javik at that point, grinning across the table at him. He couldn't help himself...fine, yes, he could but he didn't want to. When someone got uptight and defensive, it was like hanging a sign around their necks saying "Push my buttons." Pushing buttons was House's favorite hobby.

"Wait, so the other chick actually did hook up with an alien?" He scrunched up his face as he considered the ramifications of such interactions. And yes, he was aware that 'alien' was a matter of perspective but since he was human, his perspective was that anyone not human was alien.

"Is that possible? I mean, from a purely anatomical standpoint I would imagine different species wouldn't necessarily be compatible." He was genuinely curious. For science. And the potential for porn, but mostly for science.

Normally Javik was the one pushing buttons, especially since no one on the Normandy appreciated his sense of humor. Vega had tried, until he realized he was being mocked at every turn.

"A turian, yes," Javik seized the opportunity to redirect the conversation. If other doctors were anything like Mordin Solus, they'd have an unhealthy interest in cross-species relations. "They cannot have offspring, which makes the union even more pointless. Humans and turians are also biologically incompatible in other ways - consuming food from Palaven would likely kill a human. Only the asari are equipped to have such relations with other species."

And just like that, he'd put them back on the topic of the asari. He was too busy refilling his glass to realize his blunder.

"Well obviously they can't breed. The DNA would be too different...assuming aliens have DNA, which I suppose they wouldn't necessarily." He was momentarily distracted by the tangential thoughts running through his mind. Why the hell hadn't he considered that alien life wouldn't necessarily be built from the same stuff? The only reason to assume they were was that he'd never encountered any life that wasn't. He really needed to follow up on that...later.

"And reproduction isn't the only point of sex, at least not among more evolved species." Yep, take that, Javik. House just called you primitive. "If you don't think it's fun, then you're doing it wrong."

"Asari, eh?" A sly grin grew on his face. "See? I knew you hit that. Or wanted to anyway. And I can't see her turning you down, not as interested as she was. Which means you're a big chicken." Not that he could talk. Forget how he talked; when it came to the real possibility of sex, he beat a hasty retreat.

He was certain all the scientific details were fascinating - if he were a doctor or a scientist. Javik's understanding of alien species centered around how best to kill them, and 'shoot them until they stopped moving' seemed universal.

"Do not lecture me on the purpose of sex. The younger species are simply too fixated on it," he groused. No House, it was the evolved species that had outgrown being driven by it. Of course, he'd be lying if protheans were immune to hormones and pheromones among their own kind - it was just easier to throw everyone else under the bus. During his time, extinction was a certainty, so the thought of reproducing was just depressing.

Javik scowled, glaring into his drink before polishing off half of it. His tongue was starting to feel rubbery. "I never struck her, human, and only would have if she betrayed us."

Language barrier, or willfull ignorance? House could decide.

"You say fixation. I say having fun." Javik was never going to convince House that non-reproductive sex was a primitive trait. Only animals were driven by fertility cycles and hormones. Higher beings were able to divorce sex from biological drives which was fortunate for people like House who had no intention of producing offspring. Why would he want to subject himself, or the kid, to a paternal relationship that was sure to be a disaster?

House scoffed as he refilled his glass. "You know exactly what I mean." Javik wasn't an idiot. He might not be familiar with modern American slang but House assumed he could surely pick up the meaning from the context. Then again, maybe House was giving him too much credit. Maybe Javik's language skills were limited to strictly literal interpretations.

"It's understandable, though--you wanting to keep your distance. Women are strange and a little bit scary. Also she had that scientist thing going which is kind of a turn off in the bedroom. Seriously, who the hell wants to be measured and plotted on a graph when he's just looking for a good time?"

The word 'fun' had probably been written out of the prothean language a long time ago, but Javik would just let it go as 'cultural differences'. The primitive species were still young and early in their cycle - that sort of thing was still important to them. The Normandy's recycled air was periodically clogged with an overabundance of pheromones.

Javik just grunted, once again hoping to avoid the topic by... avoiding it. Human memory wasn't that great, right?

"The salarian doctor wished to dissect me," he snorted, now looking at the bottom of his glass. If he tried to stand up right now, he'd probably just fall right over. He was going to need to find a dark place to recover in soon. "I told him he could... if he beat me in combat."

"Well, now that's just rude," he said, his words beginning to slur just a bit. "Unless he specified he meant after your death by natural causes, in which case it's perfectly understandable."

House totally understood the alien doctor's desire. Given a chance, he wouldn't turn down the possibility to study an alien species in more detail. He would probably wait until the subject was dead or at least dying before he suggested it however. Probably.

"But...." He exaggerated his enunciation in an attempt to compensate for the slurring. "We weren't talking about solarians...salierians...whatever. We were talking about the hot blue chick." He drank, only enough to moisten his throat...and he had a very dry throat. "I mean seriously--are you so beyond the desire for sex that you'd pass up any opportunity? Or does it have more to do with not wanting to get involved in anything that might distract you from your mighty quest for vengeance?"

"A living specimen," he said, stopping as his train of thought went off the rails again. He finally continued: "Is far more valuable. He declined my offer. And perished on Tuchanka."

The commander had taken that hard, but he never understood why. Salarians had short lifespans, and the doctor was at the end of his anyways. Javik pushed his empty glass away. It was probably a wise move.

"No," he said, without bothering to indicate what part of that he was answering. He looked like he was about ready to say something else, before inhaling deeply and then leaning forward until his forehead hit the table with a soft thump. He was pretty done with everything right now, alcohol and House's questions included.

"Is that no, you aren't...?" That was all the farther House got before Javik established a rather abrupt head-table interface. He frowned. Well, that was rude. Not unexpected, though--he already knew Javik was something of a lightweight when it came to booze.

He leaned back half-slumped into the corner of the booth and stretched his legs out. "Don't think for a minute this gets you out of answering questions," he told his silent and semi-comatose friend. He made a clumsy grab for the nearly empty bottle. "You're only postponing the inevitable."

Javik could actually count on one hand how many times he'd had alcohol, but after this he was going to need the other hand. He had a long way to go before he built up any sort of real tolerance for the stuff.

He didn't move, glad for now that his head wasn't pounding. That came later, he remembered. Right now, he just felt kind of... not here.

"Stop speaking," he finally said. He didn't want to talk about it anymore. He didn't want to talk about anything anymore. If there was some sort of competition inherent in these sorts of social rituals, he'd gladly concede House had won.

To himself. Definitely not out loud.

House snorted, which was not a good idea when he had a mouthful of alien booze. A nasal lavage had not been on his list of things to do that day. Fortunately Javik still had his head down so he hadn't seen.

"Now, now," he said once he'd cleared the excess whiskey. As he stared at the top of Javik's head, an idea came to him. It wasn't a good idea but what idea was when it came from an inebriated brain?

He snatched a marker from the pocket of a passing waitress, or possibly a waiter--he could never tell with non-humans. He uncapped the marker and leaned forward on the table.

"There comes a time in every man's life when he gets asked the hard questions. Or every praying mantis' life in your case." He began drawing a series of 'eyes' across the top of Javik's head. "And I'm usually the one doing the asking."

He didn't comment on the fact the one person he never asked the hard questions was himself.

Much to Javik's dismay, House just kept talking. Whatever the words were, they probably didn't matter, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear the noise. He made no answer, going for the classic 'they'll go away if you ignore them' approach to dealing with problems. His other problems involved giant killer machines, which he could shoot at, but that wouldn't work with House.

Well, it would. Thankfully, he didn't budge.

The top of his head wasn't completely devoid of feeling, so he swatted at whatever House was doing, probably missing completely.

"Go away, human," was his next command. Why didn't anyone ever listen to him anymore? He'd been a commander, once, leading over a million strong. Stupid primitive aliens didn't know what was good for them.

"Awww." House frowned at the damage done to his artwork by Javik's flailing hand. A line of ink wiggled away from the corner of the eye and now it looked like it was crying.

He normally wouldn't have obeyed Javik's command, especially if the prothean wasn't even going to use his name, but he'd reached the point of inebriation where he was too relaxed and sleepy to argue.

The waitress passed by again and House grabbed clumsily at her wrist. "I'd like to leave a wake-up call for two hours from now." A little nap would revive him enough to be functional. And Javik, well, House could drag him back to his quarters to finish sleeping it off if he had to.

"Do I look like your mother?" the waitress asked, indignant.

"Not even the same species," House said. She rolled her eyes at him and walked away.

"The service in this establishment leaves something to be desired," he muttered to himself. But whatever. Unless they wanted House and Javik taking up space all night, someone would wake them eventually. He lay back on the bench seat and closed his eyes.

Video: Open: Unseelie & Seelie

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