[ Wash is still getting used to the Barrayar camp but he's become accustomed to having some company around on restless nights, a Barrayan soldier on guard duty at night coming to check the tent, another maybe coming by to sit in the warmth of the fire for a while. This one's different, though, just because he's sure he's seen him around the Outsider's tent sometimes in the day -- and because he brings a bottle, the same kind he's seen soldiers occasionally carry around camp. Maple mead, he remembers someone saying.
There's a practiced quality to the way the man drinks from the bottle and offers it to him, and Wash is sure that this is probably something that he's expected to accept. But, well, Wash doesn't drink. He never really has, not that he hasn't tried it or thinks poorly of people who do, he just doesn't like it, hates the thought of being at all inebriated and not having his wits about him, about something that makes him more careless and prone to slips of the tongue. He's far too careful and far too cautious, has spent too much of his life needing to make absolutely sure that everything he knows will stay a secret, and he's only ever drank in very exact circumstances. Being in a military camp on an alien world in the middle of some civil war in the dead of winter isn't one of them.
He -- tries to be polite and friendly about it, lifting a hand to indicate he doesn't want it with a slight shake of his head, tipping his chin towards him. ]
All yours. [ He's good. Hopefully refusing a drink wasn't seen as some incredible slight in this culture or something. Back home, it just mean that he wasn't a whole lot of fun, as other people defined it. ]
no subject
There's a practiced quality to the way the man drinks from the bottle and offers it to him, and Wash is sure that this is probably something that he's expected to accept. But, well, Wash doesn't drink. He never really has, not that he hasn't tried it or thinks poorly of people who do, he just doesn't like it, hates the thought of being at all inebriated and not having his wits about him, about something that makes him more careless and prone to slips of the tongue. He's far too careful and far too cautious, has spent too much of his life needing to make absolutely sure that everything he knows will stay a secret, and he's only ever drank in very exact circumstances. Being in a military camp on an alien world in the middle of some civil war in the dead of winter isn't one of them.
He -- tries to be polite and friendly about it, lifting a hand to indicate he doesn't want it with a slight shake of his head, tipping his chin towards him. ]
All yours. [ He's good. Hopefully refusing a drink wasn't seen as some incredible slight in this culture or something. Back home, it just mean that he wasn't a whole lot of fun, as other people defined it. ]