strangetrip | [EP/GP] Check-In: I Assure You We Are Open

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[EP/GP] Check-In: I Assure You We Are Open

The damp, cool, chilly morning clouded with fog seemed to fit the mood about the Madonna Inn. Nobody had been quite right since the undead invasion. Definitely not Vax'ildan. But for him, it was less about their sense of day-to-day calm and safety shattered, less about undead specifically. It was a lot more to do with losing Scanlan and Pike, and the new memorials installed in the Temple.

He wondered about it, not for the first time, even as he readied for the fresh arrivals that might be coming today - or not, because they didn't always. What decided who came and went? Was there any sense in how many and when or why? Not so far as he could tell, but he'd never been the brains.

Gathering up the great heap of cloth and rope in his arms, the lean figure summoned the wings of his armor, the black of his silhouette merging with the other dark and shifting shapes skulking about in the first light of dawn. With a crouch and a lunge from the roof, he spread his wings wide and circled through the air right up to the face of the main building, unfurling the massive banner he'd sewn of spare bedsheets and painted with dark dye to tie it up taut:

WELCOME NEWCOMERS
YES, THIS MEANS YOU
NO REALLY WE'RE SURE

Life kept going on around you, no matter how confused or scared or fucked-up you were. And the best thing, the kindest thing, the sanest thing he could think to do in all this was to start up the coffee machine, stack some decorated pumpkin-shaped cookies on a platter in the lobby, and prop open the doors for whoever would join them in being confused and scared and fucked-up today.

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Being part of the welcoming committee meant you had to be ready every first and fifteenth of the month, no matter what else was happening in your life. Even if Liz was trying to avoid running into Brad at the moment, she needed to be around the lobby to help if someone new showed up and needed it. She did, however, make it a point to wear Peter's hoodie today.

She was staring at the equations on the paper in front of her, but she hadn't moved to write anything down on it - her mind was pre-occupied. Why did Brad have to kiss her? Would it make things complicated now? She had to tell Peter, but she wondered how he'd react.

Liz closed her eyes and rubbed her face, frustrated with all the unknowns at the moment.

Caroline approved of Vax's efforts to decorate but she also had Plans for the lobby. She'd been hauling fall decorations out of the storage rooms all morning and it was time to take a break.

Liz was sitting in the lobby doing an excellent impression of a statue. "Girl in deep repose" maybe. Or "Troubled teen introspective". Either way, it was just asking to be meddled with. Caroline collected two mugs of hot apple cider and some of the pumpkin cookies and brought them over. She slid the mug in front of Liz and took a nearby chair. "You look like you could use a break from whatever's eating you."

Caroline's voice seemed to help Liz snap out of it. She offered a small smile to the girl. "Oh um. Thanks." She took the offered cup. "I'm probably thinking too much. Or dwelling, as Loki puts it."

"Loki is kind of a dick." Caroline wrapped her hands around her own mug and sipped to demonstrate good behavior. "Sometimes you need to dwell. Sometimes you dwell because you know what you should do, you just don't want to do it. And sometimes, you're just thinking."

When Caroline called Loki a dick her smile widened a little. He could definitely be a dick, but he was a good person deep down. A lot like Michael back home.

She paused. "Have you ever had a guy like you, but you couldn't return the feeling?"

Caroline choked on her apple cider. For several seconds, she had to focus on not aspirating liquid which would have been both painful and annoying.

"Um, yes."

Liz felt like maybe she over-stepped somewhere. "Are you okay?" She ducked her head. "Sorry, that's probably something awkward to ask. I just... I mean, when I broke up with Kyle back home, he still liked me for a long time, but I knew we'd still stay friends, somehow, you know? Maybe because we grew up together." She paused. "But... if you have, um. Advice or something, on how to handle that sort of thing..."

Caroline cleared her throat and smiled ruefully. "Uh...my situation isn't a good model. It was kind of a special case." For one thing, even when she'd been saying no, she had always been drawn to him anyway.

What should you do if you weren't dealing with a 1000 year old nearly omnipotent hybrid who had never been denied anything he wanted in his long unlife? That was a question that was easier to answer. "The best thing to do is be upfront with him. Tell him you're not interested and you aren't going to change your mind. If he's a good guy, he'll listen and back off. If he won't, that's harassment and you're totally within your rights to get help."

Her eyes widened and she shook her head instantly as she lifted her hands. "I don't think he'll harass me!" That's all she needed was for someone to think Brad or someone else at the inn was harassing her - there weren't a lot of guys her age around, anyways, so it wouldn't be that hard to narrow.

"Just, um. I feel bad?" She scrunched her nose. "Brad, um. He kissed me? Last night. And then apologized a bunch of times and walked away and I just feel like... I don't know. Like, I want him to know that I don't hate him, but that I'm not interested?" She was pretty sure he already knew she wasn't interested, but still. "It feels like things are more awkward because it's Brad." Who happened to look a lot like Peter, but most definitely wasn't - those two were different sides of a coin.

Caroline's eyebrows climbed. She'd been a stupid teenager. She'd kissed people unadvisedly. And she was not so much of a hypocrite that she was going to lecture Liz about it.

On the other hand... "Aren't you dating someone else?"

Shit, was her information out of date? She hadn't been paying as much attention as she usually did recently.

She flushed suddenly and nodded. "Yes, I am. I'm dating Peter. I didn't - I didn't kiss him back or anything. It was..." She brought her hands to her face and rubbed. "It looks bad, doesn't it." Was Peter going to freak out on her?

"Yeah, it looks bad. It looks like Brad needs to learn about boundaries." Caroline was so indignant that it took her a moment to realize that wasn't exactly what Liz had meant. "Oh, you mean for you? No. Um, well, maybe not. Did you want him to kiss you? Because that would be a little bad. Not that I haven't kissed guys when I was dating other guys before. But it's a shitty thing to do. But it's more shitty to kiss people you know are in relationships without asking them first if that's something they want to do."

She shook her head. "I didn't want it or like it." Not in the sense of like-liking it anyways. She didn't want to throw up when it happened, but it hadn't been wanted.

"I think he knows that. He, um... He apologized a lot and walked away quickly." Somehow she felt like she was responsible for the awkward. "I keep wondering if I did something to give him the wrong impression."

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The first thing Peter notices when he approaches is that Liz looks frustrated.

The second thing he notices is that she has a notebook opened to a page full of equations.

Immediately, he makes the connection.

"Hey, Liz," he says. "Did you need help with your homework?"

Her head whipped up before she could control herself and her eyes widened just a little before she recovered. She flushed, embarrassed somehow. "Um, yeah. Sure." She paused as she looked at the sheet. She forgot it was even there.

"I'm, um. I'm having a hard time concentrating, I guess."

Peter sits down next to her. "Everything okay?" he asks. He briefly shoots her a concerned look, then grabs the list of equations and scans the page. Physics. Peter was pretty good at physics.

She pressed her lips together as she considered how to answer that. Thankfully Peter started to look at her paper so it gave her time to contemplate. Caroline's words rang in her mind, but it was hard not to say anything with the question Peter asked. Everything wasn't okay, not really. If she lied about this, then she was actually lying. She was sure other people would roll their eyes, but it was important to her that she never kept anything from Peter.

If she started it off with 'we need to talk' that would probably be bad. Would 'I have something to tell you' get the same reaction?

"Something's sort of bothering me, actually..."

Peter sets down the equations so he can give Liz his full attention.

"What's going on?" he asks.

She paused. Him giving her full attention seemed a lot more daunting. She almost asked him to solve the equations while she spoke, but Liz knew that was weird.

"It's not, um, a big deal or anything. Or, okay, it not not a big deal, but it's not a big deal as in there's an ongoing issue that can't easily be resolved or anything."

Liz was rambling.

Peter dampens his lips and wordlessly watches her, his brows furrowed. He's not sure what's going on, but her rambling is really starting to make him nervous. She says that it's not a big deal, but...

It's starting to feel like one.

She felt the heat in her cheeks grow because she maybe should have thought about exactly how this was going to go, but she had been more pre-occupied with the action in general.

Liz squeezed her eyes together and pushed the words out. "Brad kissed me yesterday." Her eyes opened and bit her bottom lip as she looked like she was waiting for something bad to happen.

Peter isn't sure how to process or how to react to it, so for a few long seconds, he doesn't say anything. Then, as if suddenly realizing he should say or do anything, he says:

"Oh."

She scrunched her nose. "I'm sorry." Even if it wasn't her fault, or she was pretty sure it wasn't. "He, um. He apologized after and I told him I wasn't interested and he said 'I know' and said he shouldn't have done it and then sort of just... walked away."

But it still had happened.

Edited 2018-10-08 23:39 (UTC)

Peter takes a breath and then stands up.

"I'm not mad at you, but I think I need to go think about things," he says, not quite making eye contact.

Liz panicked and stood up in her seat when Peter did. Maybe Caroline had been right and she shouldn't have said anything.

"Peter?" Her heart felt like it was going to push out of her chest.

[EP/GP] Check-In: I Assure You We Are Open

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