fandomhighdorms | Roof, The Wee Hours, Late Thursday Night (post-radio)

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Roof, The Wee Hours, Late Thursday Night (post-radio)

It was one of those nights. The kind where Elena knew she wasn't going to find sleep, not without a fight for it. Some nights, she'd get a bottle, or find a warm body for a few hours' distraction.

Neither sounded all that appealing, tonight. So instead, she was on the roof with a pack of cigarettes. Watching the city lights on the mainland, across the water. Thinking. Trying not to think.

(open roof is open! post-radio, so do not worry about dropping this, squirrels)

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Gunn had been in a foul mood since Tuesday. Couple that with the fact that he was still used to patrolling all night and sleeping most of the day, wandering around at night seemed pretty natural for Gunn.

This was, however, the first time he had come to the roof and honestly didn't expect to see anyone there.

"You want to be alone or can this view be shared?" he asked.

Ben had done his circuit for the day--salle, gym, Perk--and had even stopped into a common room for variety, but his brain wouldn't shut off.

Thus, roof.

"Oh, hello," he said softly.

"I don't mind," Elena said, gesturing to the space around her. "Have a seat. Not gonna promise to be great company, though."

"Hi," she said, nodding at him. "Seems like that kinda night, doesn't it?"

His face kinda looked how she felt, so she was going to assume he wasn't up on the roof because he thought there might be fireworks or some shit.

"A lot of nights are," Ben said with a tiny smile. "I practically live up here in the summer."

"Too many," she agreed, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "This sky always gets me. Wish I could live up here, some nights. I don't think I'd mind the cold."

Ben pulled the edges of his Jedi robe around him. "Depends on the night. You don't see stars at home?"

"Damn. And here I was hoping this would be the start of Algonquin Round Table," Gunn said dryly. "I'll have to hold in my shame and anguish."

"I grew up under the Plate," she said, taking a moment as always to remember that no one here had even heard of Midgar. "The city had two levels, and we were the underside. So all we could see was steel. Now there's sky, but it's too polluted for anything like stars."

She turned to look at him for a long moment. "What about you?"

"That sounds a bit like the lower levels of Coruscant," Ben said, "which is where I sort of grew up. The planet. We were in the upper levels, when we weren't traveling."

That got a smile out of her, albeit a wry one. "I meant don't expect sunshine and chipper conversation, smartass."

"Rich?" she asked. No malice, just idle curiosity. "Midgar was a company town, so it was mostly executives topside."

She dug out her packet of cigarettes, waving a hand. "So what's the big draw of the roof for you?" she asked. "Quiet, away from people?"

"It's all right," Gunn said shooting a brief grin back. "I'm okay with moonlight and secondhand smoke. What brings you up on a night like this?"

Ben wrinkled up his nose and wriggled his hand. "Not exactly. My dad runs the Jedi, so more like...powerful? He doesn't exactly care about material possessions."

He swung his feet over the side. "Yeah. I'm an empath, so it's quieter here, and I like to give my roommate a break from constantly guarding what he's feeling."

"Couldn't stop thinking," she shrugged. "Figured I might as well smoke while I'm at it. It can be firsthand smoke if you want to bum a cigarette off me."

"Nah. Don't smoke," Gunn replied with his own shrug. "I breathed enough smog in LA. No need to smoke. What's got you thinking?"

Strangely, Elena thought of Tseng, who collected bottles of wine and never drank them. It wasn't the same, but there were familiar echoes.

"I'm not ... projecting anything, am I?" she said, sitting up a bit straighter with a nervous expression. "My head's probably not a great place to be tonight, you might not want to ..."

He really, really didn't want to know what she was thinking about. She was going to try to think of something happier, and not scar him for life or anything.

Something nonsexual and happier. That'd be a bad kind of scarring, itself.

... fuck, that was hard.

"I've been trained to block it out since I was a toddler," Ben said with a reassuring smile. "I'm not going to try and pry. You seem a little troubled, though."

She took another drag from her cigarette and eyed him.

"You know," she said, "usually when people say 'you don't wanna know,' they mean, 'I don't feel like telling you.' Which is a shame, because then when people honestly say, 'you don't wanna know' and mean, 'I don't think you really want to hear this,' other people think you're saying 'I don't want to tell you' and butt out."

"Oh, good," she said, exhaling and slouching again with relief. "I don't mean -- I'm not accusing you of digging around or anything."

To be fair, she hated the idea that someone could just peer into her mind and guess her thoughts, and that she would have no way of stopping it, or even knowing. But that hadn't even crossed her mind, tonight.

"I just ..." Elena pulled her knees in to her chest. "Bad memories, that's all. Didn't want you to get hit by any of that flying around."

Which probably made it sound like she was brooding about how Daddy never loved her, or some pedestrian bullshit. Fuck it.

"There's a lot of that around here," Ben said, staring up at the stars. "The radio thinks that the plants up here grow on emo."

"Maybe they do," she said, giving him a flash of a smile. "Maybe there's some kind of homing beacon up here, for all the emo. So the plants won't die."

Stupid plants.

Ben smiled back. "Maybe. It certainly beats moping in the basement. That would just be too depressing."

"Isn't there a pool down there?" Elena asked. "I could get into pool-moping, if they had a bar."

She huffed to herself after that. "More alcohol. Exactly what I need."

"Trying to get numb?" Ben guessed.

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Roof, The Wee Hours, Late Thursday Night (post-radio)

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