#//FUCKING CHRIST GERRY CALM DOWN FLKDSJAFKJDS

[freeddead]

@ofhope | continued from here

This guy is loud, not to mention annoying, and Gerry has to wonder if he realizes that that only makes him less inclined to listen to what he has to say.  He is not even holding a cigarette, just the lighter, but the temptation to now dig one out of his coat and light it right here.  As it stands, he just flicks the lighter so that the little flame comes up for a fraction of a second before putting it out again, just to see how thin this guy’s nerves are.  (Maybe he would not be such an irksome little shit if he had not already been caught in a somewhat testy mood.  People raising their voices at him especially tended not to go over terribly well.)

“I’m not smoking,” he argues back, “I’m holding a lighter.”  He turns to face the sign where the other points, just to make a show of double-checking, and then he points to it himself.  “Signage doesn’t say shit about not being allowed to hold a lighter in your hand.”  Contrary to what may be popular belief, he is generally understanding and respectful of ‘no smoking’ signs.  He knows why he has to do it outside and at least ten feet away from many public buildings, because of people with health issues and the like, who really can’t be around the stuff.  It’s actually somewhat offensive that he was immediately assumed to be one of those people who doesn’t consider others in pursuit of his own vices.

As for the remark about extra baggage, he gives the lighter a little toss into the air, catching it on the descent, to demonstrate how lightweight it is.  “It’s not like it really weighs me down any,” he states.  “I hardly know it’s there most of the time.”  Now, that is a lie, he is always aware of its presence and even more aware of its absence, but were it not such a staple of his person, he really might forget that he had it.

“There’s plenty of reasons to keep a lighter on you, but I doubt you would be interested in hearing them.”  From destroying evil books to creating distractions to lighting one’s way in dark corridors to concerts to, yes, lighting cigarettes... he knows that all a firefighter will hear is the potential hazards.  And Gerry can’t say he isn’t right to hear that.  He knows that, for much of his life, he has often been the reason that the fire department was called to a scene.  He was much worse about it in his youth, his impulses much less controlled, fueled by a ravenous desire to hurt and destroy in the same way that he was being hurt and destroyed.

“And how do you know?” he asks, tone gravely serious, hoping that it isn’t too obvious that he is being purposefully petty and obnoxious because he himself is annoyed.  “How do you know my granddad didn’t press this little Bic into the palm of my hand as he wheezed out his final breath last week?”

#listen to me‚ save yourself. 『 ic 』 #ofhope #//FUCKING CHRIST GERRY CALM DOWN FLKDSJAFKJDS #//apparently getting yelled at immediately switches him into Little Shit mode and i'm so sorry for that lkfjdskdjf #//had someone say that gerry could be petulant and moody when he wants to be and like. YEAH... /YEAH/ #//galo 'very precise with the rules' thymos vs gerry 'rules are more like suggestions' keay FIGHT #//gerry has a very very nuanced relationship with fire that galo could not hope to understand and i'm sIGHS