but when no one's to blame, what does it hurt?

Graeme was much too hungover for this.

A dull ache pounded in his head, doubling down behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. Truly all he wanted to do was go back to his flat and fall into bed, covers tugged up over his face, and sleep. Alas, he had adult responsibilities to tend to and a stubborn dedication to being a somewhat functioning member of society...It was a toss up on whether it was to prove it to himself that he could indeed function in society or just an attempt to convince everyone else that he was fine. The illusion of being okay was perhaps more important than actually being okay — people tended to treat you less like a fragile object and more like a real human being when they believed you to be stable.

So he carried on with his daily life with some adjustment to fit in more binge drinking. It'd been the hardest he hit the bottle in a while, but...he felt completely justified. How else could he deal with this curveball that had been thrown at him? The dangerous game he was playing with his own body was his responsibility alone, and he could certainly suck it up and drink tons of water and slam back ibuprofen when he needed to.

At least he wasn't drinking on the job, as tempting as it was.

Thankfully his office had been blissfully quiet for most of the afternoon, giving him the time and space to blearily grade papers, marking mistakes in practice runes with a red marker. He was about two thirds of the way through the stack when he set down the marker, gloved hands raised to rub over his face as he sighed heavily.

The day was almost through. Soon he'd be able to go home--

Or...Not. A gruff exhale rolled from him as he heard a knock on his door.

"Come in."

@Thoth

Every time he saw James Havoc he cursed his dedication to not getting fired. The mere appearance of his face was enough to make Graeme want a stiff drink, and if he had a flask handy--well. That'd be that. One would think that with time it would get easier but — no. No, his experience spoke to the exact opposite. Each meeting made him miss Carter that much more, rekindled the sense of loss and the ache that clawed its way through his heart and psyche.

Graeme fought to keep his expression neutral, brow furrowed as he tightened his jaw and straightened his posture.

"Sure," The vet replied with more steadiness than he was feeling. Weight shifting slightly, he gestured in as a welcoming manner as he could muster. "Have a seat, tell me your question."

Perhaps if they could keep the topic purely on class subjects then this wouldn't be so bad.

"Ah," Graeme mused, shifting his attention to the presented piece of homework and focusing on the questions at hand. Much easier than keeping his attention on Havoc — looking at him for too long held all the surreality of an optical illusion combined with the guilt and stress of reality. Reaching out, he turned the paper towards him and snatched up his red marker.

"Here, the angle is important. You want to draw it like this," He drew an angular line by the incorrect one, for comparison's sake. "It's critical to be accurate in your penmanship regarding runes — spells can fail if they're not properly drawn." Not that he expected the blonde to be casting anything anytime soon, but here he was, going into teacher mode to make the interaction easier to deal with.

"They appear to be fairly consistent yes. Their origins are quite different, but the structure and symbolism, the underlying meaning and what they're used to do seem to be the same." Here he shrugged stiffly, "Why that is, I haven't the faintest idea. It makes teaching a lot easier, however."

Graeme waited to cap his marker until he had scanned the rest of the page for any errors. Honestly, he was also postponing responding to the rest of Havoc's commentary. All of it seemed a little to on point, the words clearer, sharper — reality always seemed to weigh more heavily whenever he was in the blonde's presence. He had a hard time looking at the other's face and denying some sort of higher power. No, it wasn't fate — nor was it some sort of god, either.

Abject cruelty, he decided. Life enjoyed pissing on him every chance it got.

"There's little point in believing anything," The vet conceded, before continuing as to brush off any inherent nihilism, "That's not backed up by any sort of evidence."

Leaning back into his chair, Graeme set aside his pen and, with some hesitancy, brought his gaze up to focus on the soldier before him.

"Is there anything else I can help you with...?"

Sometimes he felt as if he should forcibly retire the concept of surprise from his emotional repertoire...Especially since the track record of interaction between himself and the blonde indicated that he should expect the unexpected. Despite that, he still found himself taken aback by the question. Graeme was uncertain what was worse — the forwardness of it, or the blatant obvious of the answer, rendering the inquiry pointless. Jaw tensing slightly, he felt a wry chuckle building in the depths of his chest. By the time it clawed its way up his throat however, all that escaped was a gruff huff.

For a few drawn-out beats, he wrestled with his choice of words, grey-green eyes flitting to one of his office's bare walls, pinning a blank stare on it.

"You are about as different as you could possibly be while maintaining such an uncanny physical resemblance," There really wasn't any point in deception: either Havoc would torture him with direct questions such as this, or he would torture himself with the anxiety and stress that came from the man's presence. There wasn't really a comfortable turmoil-free route to take.

"Now, if there's nothing else..."

There was his masochistic streak again. Why he didn't throw Havoc out of his office, he was uncertain--

Ah. Wait. He didn't want to get fired. That was probably it.

The self-loathing certainly didn't help either.