Movie night! [Rina/Tal/Draco!]

[Rhi-Rhi]

"Roman!"

Well, that was one way to get Gabriel to settle down. Getting frosting smooshed in his face worked wonders! But despite the indignation in his voice, he was laughing as he pulled the smashed cupcake away and set it on the side table--for his own safety. You know, so he didn't get the urge to smash the whole thing in Roman's face, which would be fun as hell another time, but which would probably bring this night to an end.

Self control, Gabriel! Time and place!

And right here, right now, he pretty much had the best seat in the house so he did not want to blow this.

Frosting was all over his nose and lips, and he licked away what he could reach and wiped the rest off with his fingers.

"That was evil. And here I was being so nice and offering to share like you learn in grade school and you go all playground bully and shove it in my face. Meanie." He wagged a frosting covered finger at him, trying to look all stern, then grinned and smeared it on Roman's nose in revenge--

And nearly jumped out of his skin when a blood-curdling scream issued from the TV. He whipped his head around just in time to see one of the monsters peeling off someone's face.

Eww...

[Anonymous]

Alaric froze like a rabbit in headlights when he felt Remi's head on his lap. His entire brain hyper focused on the blond faerie in his lap, forgetting all about Gabe and Roman. He stared sat the movie, not really seeing it, his brain racing.

Remi. Was in his lap. He must be able to hear his heart pounding. And he was very glad the dark room hid his dark blush.

Oh man. Oh man. Remi's hand was on his thigh. He couldn't believe Remi was being so cuddly. This was going better than he had ever hoped it could be. It wasn't until there was a high pitched scream from the movie that Alaric focused on it, jumping slightly.

For all that Alaric was fine with real gore, fake stuff squicked him out. He gave a little shudder and wished he was brave enough to snuggle closer. As it was, he just stayed very still in the hopes that Remi wouldn't move away.

[Tally]

"He started it," he shot back at Remi while at the same time trying to fend off Gabriel.  He got frosting smudged on his nose anyway, and before he had a chance to grab the glass of iced tea and empty it over Gabriel's head in revenge, the TV made a truly awful sound and Gabriel jumped about two feet high.

Roman laughed and grabbed a napkin off the table to clean the frosting off of his face.  He poked Gabriel in the ribs.  "Look at you, jumping out of your skin over a bad horror movie."

Roman's phone suddenly rang.  It was way too loud and the ringtone was still the default high-pitched chiming that had come with the phone.  He never had found the way to change it or to download some less annoying tones for it.  They made these stupid things too complicated.

By the time he got it out of his back pocket it had already stopped ringing.  Before he could even try to figure out who had called him, Gabriel had already snatched it out of his hand and started fiddling with it.

"Hey!  Don't do anything stupid with it! I just want it to ring.  I don't want to hear puppies barking or some celebrity yelling at me. I just want it to ring."

[Anonymous]

He was trying to sleep. No wait, watch the movie. Remi opened his eyes in time to see someone get a large cheesy looking gash on their chest and to hear a loud awful noise. Was that a phone? He winced before he lifted his head and stared at Roman and Gabriel. He watched for a moment before looking up at Alaric and lifting his eyebrows. The heck was going on with those two?

"hey, hey. I thought cellphones were supposed to be turned off during movies."

" Should find him a nice bubbly-gum pop song, make him think of you when his phone rings. "Remi grumbled and let his head flop back onto Alarics lap. "Now shoosh, some of us are interested in this..." A wail from the screen and Remi closed his eyes again before getting comfy, "Wonderful movie." He honestly thought it was pretty awful.

A little more than pretty awful. But at least it let him catch up on sleep and on a pretty comfy lap, too!

[Rhi-Rhi]

Roman's protests, as usual, went completely ignored. The guy couldn't even turn it off for a freakin' movie? Then he could suffer the consequences. Likewise, if he didn't want Gabriel messing with his phone, then he shouldn't have given him a reason to do so!

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Gabriel told Remi, and twisted so he could shoot Roman an accusatory look. He knew he was married to his job and all, but really? "Couldn't even put it on vibrate, huh? Oh, wait, you probably don't know how."

Leaning back against Roman again and getting comfortable, legs thrown over the arm of the chair, he resumed his fiddling, thumbing through the settings. He glanced up every now and then to catch the movie, and meanwhile, with a few pushes of a button, he had managed to change the phone's wallpaper to a colorful, animated My Princess Unicorn one (with lots of pink and rainbows and sparkles) and started downloading the theme song. It would make a wonderful ring tone.

"Jeez, do you ever do anything with this thing?" he asked as he set the theme song as the ring tone. "It's still got all the default settings."

[Anonymous]

Aaaaaaand....Remi was dozing. It wasn't hard to tell he was, his breathing even and calm and his eyes were closed. Alaric repressed a sigh, rather disappointed. Remi was in his lap, yes, which was nice. But...he had kind of been hoping for something a little...more. But Remi only seemed interested in commenting on Roman and Gabriel and sleeping.

Some date this was turning out. He was so boring Remi didn't even want to talk to him. He watched the movie dispiritedly, just wanting it to be over at this point.

Alaric. Kazef's oily tones slid into his mind I do hope you aren't busy.

You know I am. What do you want?

I have chipped a claw and I need you to come take care of it.

What? Right now?

Yes. Now.

Alaric actually gave a sigh then, shifting under Remi's lap, carefully putting his ex-mentors head onto the couch, "Hey, sorry to cut the night short. Kazef is being a brat. I have to go take care of him. Um...see you later. Sorry again." He gave a small wave at Gabriel and did his best to leave as quietly as possible. No one was really watching the movie, but he didn't want to be rude about it.

[Tally]

Roman sneered at Remi but the other Pilot looked half asleep.  He had enough problems with Gabriel, he didn't need the other two taking sides.

"Don't give me that look.  Just fix my phone." It didn't technically need fixing but that's how he thought of it. He wrapped an arm around Gabriel's waist and watched over his shoulder.  Gabriel flicked through the menus and icons so fast he couldn't even follow the path he used to do all this.  He sighed against Gabriel's neck.  "How do you do that?"  Quietly, so he didn't get another comment from Remi.

Roman's ineptitude with technology was bad enough to be considered outright strange.  He just was not as plugged in as most people, and these new phones were different from the old ones.  There were no menus that he could find, just disjointed icons.  How was he supposed to know where anything was on there?

"What are you doing, what is that?"  He pointed at the explosion of pink on his phone.  "No, get that off.  How did you do that?  Show me how to change it."

Then suddenly Alaric was up and leaving.  Roman nodded at him, and glanced at Remi.  Was he actually asleep?

[Anonymous]

Remi twitched and it felt like he was falling so his eyes jerked open and he rested his arms on the couch as he watched Alaric leave. Well, shit. Remi rubbed his head and sighed before he looked over at Gabriel and Roman. He’d been asleep. Alaric was just so comfy, a sort of safe place and Remi unintentionally zonked out. “Shit.” he grumbled before he stood up, “Well, since my date is gone, I’ll leave you two alone. Makes stuff less awkward for me having to watch you two cuddle in the chair.”

He left the apartment, feeling a little awful with having fallen asleep. He’d go back to his apartment and spend his night like every other night. Alone with alcohol and wide awake.

[Rhi-Rhi]

What? Everyone was leaving? Kazef what? Fucking asshole dragon! Gabriel frowned, catching Alaric's eye, and said a quick goodbye as he left. Man...what the hell? Dragon probably did that on purpose, too, and this was supposed to be about he and Remi getting in some bonding time...

But then Remi was leaving, too, suddenly awake. If he was smart, he'd go after Alaric--and he hoped he would.

The disappointment faded, though, and was replaced with amusement as Roman demanded he 'fix' his phone, and he grinned. Yeah, he'd make sure to fix it good--

Whoa. Roman's arm. Was around his waist. Well, duh, weren't many places to put it! Gabriel narrowed his attention on the phone, trying not to notice that he was breathing on his neck.

Best way to do that? Start a fight.

"Well gee-gosh, snickerdoodle, I just don't remember what I did. I don't even know how I got to this screen. Ooh, lookit that! You have people in your address book! Aww, Roman, you do know how to do stuff!" Gabriel said as he scrolled through Roman's contacts.

Hamilton, Hamilton...there! Thumbs flying, Gabriel leaned over the phone to try and hide it from view while he tapped out a quick message, hit "send", and tilted his head back to flash Roman a shit-eating grin.

"Don't know how I just did that, either. Huh. Guess it just speaks to me. My hands, they move on their own."

[Tally]

Well that fell apart awfully fast.  And here he'd thought for sure that he'd be the one to ruin the evening and he was turning out to be the most well behaved of the whole bunch!  Gabriel, however, was starting to annoy him, and not in the usually half-funny kind of way.

"They transferred all my contacts over when I got this phone," he said.  So yeah, the one useful thing done on that phone hadn't been by him at all.  "Are you gonna show me how to use this thing or not?"

He relied on Gabriel to help him with this stuff.  No one else knew him well enough to explain it all so he could understand it.  Encounters with their tech guys usually ended in cringing and fear on their part and yelling and the smashing of expensive electronics on his part.  He looked to Gabriel to help avoid his phone getting smashed to bits but just then he was well on his way to a smashing mood.  And they'd started out so well.

"I don't know what the hell you just did," he said, leaning back in the chair, light from the TV flickering over a deliberately—and deliberately overdramatic—dark expression.  "But don't start something you're not willing to finish, Tierney."

He was still willing to let this go and salvage whatever relaxation the night had to offer.  He was also willing to wrestle that phone out of Gabriel's hands if it came to that.

[Rhi-Rhi]

Gabriel winced at the sound of his last name.

Erk. Looked like he'd gone too far. If there was one surefire way to gauge the difference between funny!angry Roman (a la the spoon incident) and angry!angry Roman (a la now), it was by paying attention to the way in which his old mentor addressed him. Surnames? That typically meant serious business. Amusing flip-outs and arguments over stupid things were one thing, but that cold, ominous 'we are not amused' look? Yeeeah.

Apparently this was a hot button issue and he'd pressed too many buttons. No pun intended.

"Just joshin' with ya, honeybear," he said in an effort to diffuse the situation. "You think I'd really let you walk around with a My Princess Unicorn-themed phone?" Yes, yes he would. Regretfully, he flipped through the menus and started to strip the phone of all its frills and pink. "Not even I'm that cruel. C'mon, I'll show you how to do it for reals now, alright?"

[Tally]

"Of course you would."  Roman still couldn't follow anything Gabriel was doing with that phone.  He tried but the windows opened and closed faster than he could read them or tell which buttons and menus Gabriel was using to change all the settings.

He wouldn't put it past Gabriel to hide something in there that would go off later.  Like some sparkly pussy music tone set to on an alarm, something that wouldn't show itself for days or weeks. He practically expected it of him.  He hated he couldn't do this shit himself.  Gabriel made it look so damn simple, and it left a knot in Roman's stomach having to ask for help with anything. It was easier, asking Gabriel, when Gabriel decided to make it easy on him.  He wasn't sure if he could stand anyone else holding his hand through this crap.

"Why do you have to be so difficult."  Not really a question.  He certainly didn't expect an answer as he wrapped an arm around Gabriel's waist again and pulled him back against him so he could see the phone.  "So what are you doing?"

[Rhi-Rhi]

"Fixing your ringtone," Gabriel answered, settling back against Roman and keeping his mind fixed on the phone. He certainly was not thinking about where Roman's arm was or how warm he felt or how his skin and hair smelled. The phone was a nice distraction, and he could talk tech all day long without even thinking about it.

He exited out of all the other screens and returned to the main one, the one displaying the time and date and any current notifications.

"Alright! So, ringtones. It's pretty easy to do once you know how to get to the settings. If you can get to the menu, you can do anything. See, you just gotta hit 'menu' over here in the right hand corner like this..." he said, holding the phone up for Roman to see as he did it. "Then see all those icons and stuff? What you're looking for is 'sound settings'. It's the music notes over here. Hit that, go to 'ringtone', then you can kinda scroll through all the different sounds you got. You can preview them if you right click and hit 'preview'. So you can have an old-school sounding ring, or an office sound...then there's the fun ones down a little further, and you can download ones, too."

Tutorial over, he thumbed back to the main screen and then slipped the phone back into Roman's hand. "And seriously, don't be afraid to fiddle around with it. You're not gonna break it. You can always just hit 'cancel' if things go nuts." He gave his hand a reassuring pat. "Alright, so let's see you do it, now."

[Tally]

Roman rested his chin on Gabriel's shoulder and scowled at the phone.  He hated that thing, he really did.  And he suspected it hated him.  He followed along for awhile, but by the third or fourth step he could already feel his eyes and mind glazing over.  Tech talk numbed him.

"That sounds like a challenge," he said, punching at the music note button.  Damn thing would break if he threw it against a wall he bet.  It didn't even go to the ringtones options.  He was somewhere else entirely.  "These icons are too goddamn small!"

He jabbed at some more of them and ended up the gods knew where.  It was asking for his email verification for some reason.  "What did I do?  Where am I?"

[Rhi-Rhi]

"Uhhh..."

Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh.

Gabriel cleared his throat to stifle the sound, then pulled the phone down where he could better reach it. "Uh, well...somehow you wound up online..." He pressed the back button several times to exit out of the screen and retrace Roman's steps and raised his eyebrows, increasingly impressed by the depth of Roman's ineptitude, and the irony that someone so brilliant as to know all the intimate details of a human brain couldn't navigate a couple screens. Guess that's part of what was so endearing.

"Hokay! Let's try that again! We'll make you a pro yet. Here, let's do this together." He grabbed Roman's hand and covered it with his own, thumb over Roman's thumb, and started to repeat the steps again. "You just gotta not spaz out."

[Tally]

"Yeah. Somehow."  He could do wondrous things with technology given a chance.  Not the things he wanted, but wondrous things just the same.  He had baffled the tech guys on more than one occasion with what he'd managed to unintentionally make these things do.

He poked Gabriel in the ribs.  "You wouldn't be laughing at me there, would you?"

[Rhi-Rhi]

"Hey hey!" Gabriel gave a surprised laugh and squirmed away, then lightly smacked Roman's hand and schooled his expression. "Me? Laugh in such a hopelessly dire situation? Never, this stuff's serious. Now stoppit! See, you made me hit all the wrong buttons."

[Tally]

"Ohh did I mess you up?"  So all of a sudden Gabriel wanted to be serious about this?  Well too bad, because Roman had had about enough of it.  He jabbed at the phone, opening and closing things randomly.  "Did I?  Huh?"

[Rhi-Rhi]

"Hey! Hey, you, don't test me! You don't wanna do this, you really don't! I'm warning you!" Gabriel tried to twist and tilt the phone away, but he wasn't really trying to mess with it anymore. Roman was hopeless beyond hopeless with the patience of a two-year-old when it came to tech stuff, and now that he was in RAWR BUTTON SMASH mode, he was beyond help. It wasn't really about the phone anymore.

But fine. He knew at least one surefire way to get someone to stop.

Leaning down quickly, Gabriel dragged his tongue over Roman's hand. "Nyaaah."

[Tally]

"Uh oh.  Uh oh, what have I done now?  What does this button do? Agh!"

Roman jerked his hand away.  "You disgusting freak, what have I told you about that?!  Gods!  Ugh, I can't believe you!  That is so gross."  And effective.  It was bullshit that he didn't have anything to get back at Gabriel with for something like that.

"Just...ick!  Don't do that!"  He wiped the slobber off on Gabriel's shirt.  It was only fair.