[Funny. In another life, he'd take this opportunity for gallows humor with incredibly inappropriate enthusiasm and bitter irony. Now...he still takes it, though there's a longer-than-usual pause before he answers.
Absently, he rakes a hand through his hair while he reads her response. Not an uncommon habit, but this time his fingers stop briefly at the scars on his scalp, hidden under his hair, were the piece of black-market tech that had saved his life once sits. Wired irreparably and invasively into his brainpan.
(Every flu-like symptom of the virus seems a pale echo of something else. Like seeing double. The ache in his ribs like they ought to be shattered. The coppery bite on the bottom of his breath. The ghost of a spiking headache that'll twinge oddly at the edge of his attention for hours. Fuzz his clarity, eat away at his concentration when it creeps up on him. It's gotten worse, the dissonance, even after the laughing has stopped.)
Rattling back to attention, he drops his hands down to answer her.]
Sorry to disappoint. The RAC's got a bet running for first to kick the bucket this week, and I don't want the bottom-feeders who bet on me to win.
no subject
Absently, he rakes a hand through his hair while he reads her response. Not an uncommon habit, but this time his fingers stop briefly at the scars on his scalp, hidden under his hair, were the piece of black-market tech that had saved his life once sits. Wired irreparably and invasively into his brainpan.
(Every flu-like symptom of the virus seems a pale echo of something else. Like seeing double. The ache in his ribs like they ought to be shattered. The coppery bite on the bottom of his breath. The ghost of a spiking headache that'll twinge oddly at the edge of his attention for hours. Fuzz his clarity, eat away at his concentration when it creeps up on him. It's gotten worse, the dissonance, even after the laughing has stopped.)
Rattling back to attention, he drops his hands down to answer her.]
Sorry to disappoint. The RAC's got a bet running for first to kick the bucket this week, and I don't want the bottom-feeders who bet on me to win.
[He's probably joking.]