"That's not as much a glowing condolence as you might think it is," Tim says blandly, but he knows that Jon knows it isn't in the way that he says it. They each spend a moment in their own heads, staring into their own glasses and thinking their own thoughts about the situation.

Tim's grateful, at least, for the growing buzz of drunkenness clouding his brain. It makes him want to turn everything into a fight, but it also makes everything so painfully stupid.

He polishes off his drink in a couple of unhealthy swallows, cringing at the compounding burn of alcohol at the back of his throat. "We get any fair warning on the bullshit around here or just?" And here, he gestures with a broad, displeased vagueness, mostly with his ice-clattered glass.