IC contact for lastvoyages

[cactusy]

[If I don't have an active post up, feel free to use this post to have your character call, videochat, text, or knock on Shaw's door.]

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[littletonoidea]

Eiffel's eyes go wide with the new secret, and he can't hide the grin on his face.

But his tone tries to go sneaky, as bad as he is at it. "Hey, Neal, quick refresher for us. How old are you again?"

[conning]

Neal's eyes narrow. He glances upward without seeing anything, of course, and suddenly wonders if Arthur is feeling smug somewhere and doesn't know why.

"Why."

[cactusy]

"He's younger than me," Shaw guesses, studying him intently. "He's probably, like, thirty."

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel hums, leaning into Shaw and luxuriating in the moment. "But he did just spend ten tears screwing around back home, so he might still be older than us. Maybe he's just got baby face and he's like, forty."

[conning]

Now he's affronted all over again. "All right, I'm not forty, and I'm not younger than Shaw."

[cactusy]

"Thirteen with an aging disorder," Shaw insists mutinously.

[littletonoidea]

"Fifty with great genes," Eiffel counters brightly.

[conning]

"I'm thirty-four," he says in indignant self-defense, his ears and the tops of his cheeks going slightly pink. "I think."

[littletonoidea]

Oh that shuts Eiffel up.

Until a moment later: "How many months?"

[conning]

"I don't- I'm not entirely sure." The pinkness is intensifying. "I've had a lot of birthdays, all right, and even the birthday I grew up with wasn't actually my birthday except for the day. If we're going by the Barge calendar then-- Six months? Seven?"

[cactusy]

"You don't know your birthday?" Shaw asks, her brow crinkling.

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel's budding glee is clipped short with that snippet. "Wait, like- the day, you don't know the month? Or year?"

[conning]

"No, I do, I mean--it's March 21st, it's just the year I'm not entirely sure of. This is not the way I meant to share my tragic backstory."

He is pinkening. "I know it's very unlikely that I'm older than 34."

[cactusy]

Shaw studies his face, then leans back into him, nudging his shoulder with hers.

"You want us to can it?"

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel glances between them both, and releases Neal's hand so he can raise his hand in question.

[conning]

He's about to answer Shaw, but makes a softly amused noise at the raised hand instead.

With a teacher's cadence, he says, "Yes, Douglas?"

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel can't hide the slowly re-emerging grin on his fade.

"Is now a bad time to say that I'm thirty-four and ten months?"

[conning]

"...Oh god help me." Neal frees both hands to press them against his face. It's at least amused.

[cactusy]

Shaw stays largely quiet - she just mutters something that sounds suspiciously like Thirty-three next month.

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel grins with an almost hyena-like cackle of unbridled joy. "Who's the oldest now, boys and girls?! It's ya boy Mister Douglas Eiffel, King of the Zombie Book Club!!"

[conning]

Neal laughs at that, genuine and startled, a sound that even after the better part of a year probably isn't one they're used to from him. Not laughter stronger the carefully modulated tenor he trained himself into over time.

"Wait, Shaw, your birthday is next month? Is that what I just heard?"

[cactusy]

"Early November, yeah. Though, uh-- if we're going by elapsed months instead of the calendar, it happened months ago."

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel abruptly squints at the ceiling.

"I think I came here in... it was March when I arrived," he says, thoughtfully. "But it was September on the S.S. Horrifying Nightmare, and... when I went home, I left the Hephaestus in May, but it waaaaaaas March again when I got back here."

[conning]

"The same March or the following March?"

Neal relaxes a little, feeling better now that there's some normalcy in their little circle. And since things have turned away from his own confusing personal math.

[littletonoidea]

"The March when we turned into the zombie book club," he reminds him. "I got back like ten minutes before the breach started, apparently I was only gone for a week."