Solivagency - Empires SMP

XX

"Joey!" Scott made an effort to raise a stiff, polite smile at him. "What brings you here?"

Joey hesitated for a moment. What did he actually need to do at Rivendell? The real reason, heartbreak, would sound stupid and probably get himself kicked out.

"Trade!" He answered, the idea coming to him in a flash. "I- I need to organise a trade deal."

Scott's eyes seemed to have a brownish red tint to them, but maybe that was just Joey's eyes totally not being shitty and sore from crying for over an hour and eating ice-cream and listening to TWICE's suprisingly violent breakup songs only for the next song on autoplay to be a cute love song about doughnuts that made him feel pathetic even though Xornoth had never ever shown any interest in doughnuts and wow, Joey was very much spiralling right now. His feelings should seriously DNI.

In his defence, he didn't speak Japanese. Meaning he couldn't fully channel the 'get the fuck out of my house I'm going to set something on fire' energy of Perfect World.

Scott looked at him weirdly, probably taking in his red cheeks. "...what do you need to trade for?"

"...gold." Joey fidgeted with the bracelet around his wrist. "I'm interested in importing gold."

He raised his blue eyebrows at him in what was probably disbelief. "Are you sure it's just about gold?"

"Yes! Absolutely. One hundred and seventy percent sure." Joey nodded, plastering on one of his fabulous grins with a fake assurance that he doesn't feel.

"Alright." Scott shake his head. "If you say so. Let's go to the megabase."

-

Upon closer inspection, Scott looked terrible.

His skin was several shades paler than it should be, and Joey was definitely certain that it wasn't a trick of the light. And underneath those eyes which had an almost glazed and distant look where heavy shadows that he pretended not to notice. He knew sleeplessness all too well.

What was weirder was perhaps how there was a certain, absent animal likeness to his posture, ready to flee at any moment. It was... strange. Nothing like the proud King of Rivendell he knew.

"So you wanted to discuss gold trade?" Scott asked, tapping his finger against the desk almost nervously.

"Yeah." Joey forced himself to act casual and normal. "We don't need it, but some of the richer townspeople have been complaining about the poor having too much of the governments gold. Which is totally untrue, but it's easier to get more gold in the stockpile anyway so they stop complaining.

Scott winced. "That sounds like a handful to deal with. What do you want to trade for it?"

"We've got a range of things available." Joey happily explained. "Like jungle wood, cocoa beans, chocolate, spices and of course, our totems of undying."

The look on his face told Joey that he would be better off offering those things to Joel for gold, but he was here now, and he was too lazy to fly a huge distance just for gold he didn't need.

"Of course, I can also offer you a raptor." He threw onto the side. "We have a... uh... army sized amount of them."

Scott looked awkward. "...We have deer and stags Joey."

Personally he was more than offended that Scott had raised fucking deer over raptors, but that wasn't his business. "Oh."

"I'm sure there are other things you could trade." He barely concealed an exhausted sigh. Joey began to feel more than a little bit guilty - this man clearly needed sleep, not hashing out unneeded trade.