fandomhighdorms | The Roof, Late Sunday Night

Anders jogged leisurely up the steps to the roof, driven only in part by the need for a smoke -- he wasn't doing that as often lately, but if he was planning on going up to break curfew anyway, why not throw in another habit that wouldn't go down well with Umbridge?

"Oh, hey," he said, stopping short on the top step when he caught sight of Andrew and his bedding arrangements. "I'm not -- am I interrupting? I can go out front . . ."

Rodney once again lugged his telescope up to the roof. He was armed with a thermos full of coffee and was ready to watch the best meteor shower of the year. If there was a strange boy with a bunny also on the roof, Rodney was totally ignoring him while he set up his equipment.

Andrew looked over at the visitor from where he was laying on the roof and smiled. "No! No bother. Are you here for the show?"

Bunny John was contentedly snuggled in a corner of Andrew's blanket.

Andrew watched Rodney set up his telescope. He clearly recalled their rather uncomfortable three minute date and had no intention of saying anything to the smug Canadian.

Bunny John was watching him as well and waisted no time in hopping out to greet the boy.

"Show?" Anders tilted his head curiously, an involuntary grin twitching at the corner of his mouth when he caught sight of John the bunny, and moved out onto the roof, tucking his cigarettes back into his pocket. "What show?"

Andrew didn't sit up, but he did throw his arms up and out wide. "Nature's biggest fireworks display of the year!"

Andrew folded his arms back in a sighed, "Somewhere out there is the Swift-Tuttle comet, and our little planet is about to begin passing through its debris trail. Even the smallest bit of space dust traveling at about 132,000 miles per hour makes quite a streak."

The bunny hopping at his feet was a little hard to ignore. He'd heard that John had turned into a rabbit, but he still found it hard to believe. Taking a closer look at the bunny's fur, he asked hesitantly, "John? Is that really you?"

Andrew snickered loudly and rolled around to watch what happened next.

Bunny John just sat there looking up at Rodney.

"Yeah?" Anders looked up, his smile growing a little wider. "Mind if I stick around and watch? Should be interesting to see something like this on Earth. Totally different perspective from . . . well, wherever the frak Earth is in relation to where my planet is."

"Sure, plenty of roof... Wait! Are you an alien?" This got Andrew up on one elbow, eyes wide with excitement.

Rodney looked back up at the loud snicker. Great. It was the weird boy who'd pretended that he hadn't almost choked to death at their three minute date. Rodney rolled his eyes. "So, is this actually John Sheppard or is it your rabbit and I just made a fool of myself?" Not like it would be the first time. Or the last.

"Sort of?" Anders found a low bit of wall to sit down on and got comfortable, used to this sort of reaction but slightly off-balance since it had been a while since he'd gotten it. "I'm human, just not from Earth. According to some ancient religious scrolls from our planets, we all -- us and you guys -- have the same ancestors."

Andrew had to fight the impulse to lie about the bunny.

"It really is John. At least, he was wearing John's shirt in the park when I found him. Though, the unique spiky quality of his fur would have been strong enough empirical evidence to convince me of his origins anyway."

"Neat." Andrew turned back to the sky. "So which one of these stars does your home world revolve around? And what do you call it?"

"Well, knowing what I do about this place and given the state of it's fur, I don't think that was too much of a leap in logic," he acknowledged. Rodney knelt down and reached out to pet the bunny like he would a cat. "Um, hi John."

"You know, I . . . don't know," admitted Anders, squinting up into the stars speculatively. "It was always just the sun to me ~~because canon is utterly unhelpful about these details~~. I've got a feeling it's pretty far away, though, since most people where I come from don't even believe Earth exists. I'm Anders, by the way. Sam Anders."

Bunny John seemed to like being petted. His little back foot thumped the roof repeatedly in pleasure.

"Yeah, my roommate was a cute little cheetah cub a few days ago."

He glanced over at Rodney's setup. "So what's the telescope for?"

Andrew considered that for a bit. "Nice to meet you Sam. I'm Andrew."

He turned again, to look at the boy, "So do you get homesick? I mean, I don't really miss Sunnydale, where I'm from, all that much, but it's not like I can't walk out tomorrow and hop on a plane to get there."

Rodney would never admit it out loud, but the thumping was kind of cute. "Your roommate, too? What is it with this place?" He asked rhetorically.

"Tonight is the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. It can be seen with the naked eye, but I want to get a closer look at some of the atmospheric impacts."

"Oh, is that tonight?" Andrew asked, playing dumb.

"So in the two to three seconds the meteor takes to streak across the sky, you're going to, what, zoom in on it and track its course?"

Andrew wondered if Rodney had ever actually used a telescope.

"You know," said Anders, after another moment of being slightly thrown, this time by the use of his first name, "I can't say I am, really. Maybe it's just the whole headtrip of being somewhere that most people I know don't even believe in, but I'm enjoying it way too much here to miss home all that much. Is that kind of frakked up? I kind of worry about that."

He paused. "Sunnydale? Wow, people from there keep ending up here."

"Yeah, so much for anonymity, huh? The worst part is that they all seem to know me even though I don't really know them."

He sighed, but then, "Oh!" Andrew pointed up into the sky. "It's started. They say that at its peak, you should be able to see at least two strikes per minute."

Bunny John seemed to be doing his best to look up towards the sky as well.

[Sadly, it's bed time! I'll be around tomorrow to pick up pings if you wanna!]

"Yes, it is tonight. That's what I meant when I said 'tonight,'" Rodney spoke slowly and used air quotes.

"Not quite," he corrected Andrew. "By aiming the telescope along the angle most of the meteors seem to be taking from the radiant, I'm hoping to get some pretty good high speed images."

Anders wrinkled his nose in sympathy. "Time weirdness, huh? I totally get that. My ex is from the same place as me, but we eventually found out I'm actually about ten years older, and . . . whoa."

He fell silent for a minute or two as he looked up into the sky expectantly, then finally asked in a distracted voice, "Is it really bad that they all know you but not the other way around?"

"Riiiight," he replied. "Good luck with that." Andrew didn't feel the need to point out that if he really wanted to get good images of a meteor strike, he should just ditch the telescope all together. Even at the lowest possible magnification, you would be still only be able to observe the tinniest fraction of the night sky.

He really didn't like this Rodney guy, and suddenly he felt uncomfortable with John being near him. After all, all the history books emphasized the importance of fur trapping in Canada.

"John," Andrew whispered, "get back over here before the mean Canadian turns you into a fuzzy hat."

It took Andrew a moment to gather his thoughts, being distracted by anticipating pretty streaks of light -- and it wasn't a conversation topic he was all that comfortable with. "Um, I can't really say. Dawn says they can't talk to me about it because if they do, the world could explode."

Anders suddenly remembered Cally getting evasive and running away the last time he'd asked her for details about things from her point in time, and had to shake off a brief flash of paranoid curiosity, so it wasn't just Andrew who was a bit uncomfortable.

"Oh," he said, more of a moment of comprehension than anything else. "Yeah, I get that. Timeline weirdness here makes things like that kind of unavoidable, but it still kinda sucks."

The Roof, Late Sunday Night

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