2nd Floor Common Room, Friday Evening

[intraspective]

There was the whole Valentine's dance thing that Ino hadn't decided on yet (also, she didn't have a date, but whatever—you didn't need a date for socializing and dance, pffft) and the whole Spring Break vacation thing that she hadn't yet decided if she was going to go on that either.

(Part of her wanted to. Another part of her was hoping that, if she stuck around and made enough phone calls home along the lines of 'I have a week off! Please give me work!' that she'd eventually get a mission of her very own rather than having to mooch off other people.)

All of that, and the fact that she'd had two days of doing nothing but studying and the like, was the reason Ino was sprawled out on a couch now, with a bag of M&Ms that she could totally be persuaded to share, and flicking through a gardening catalogue. It was cold outside now, sure, but spring had to come eventually, right? And that meant flowers. All different kinds of flowers!

The tiny little fact that the couch she was making herself comfy on wasn't anywhere near her floor's common room really didn't bother her much. Why on earth would she limit herself to one floor?

[Ooopen as a common room is!]

Comments

[intraspective]

Ino ate an M&M and considered that.

"Or if they haven't had anything--bad or anything in their lives that they needed to hide or feel unconfident about."

[wwiii]

"I think everybody's got something to hide," Warren replied. "Maybe for some people, it is a case of comfort over confidence. But then, even if I can't respect them, I have to kind of envy them."

[intraspective]

...

"Okay," she said, "I'm lost--how do you respect something like that?"

[wwiii]

Warren laughed a little, shrugging and running a hand through his hair before slinging his arms up across the back of the couch, leaning back, and looking at the ceiling.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe I'm just weird."

[intraspective]

"And maybe I'm the weird one," she teased. "Who can tell at this point?"

[wwiii]

"I bet normal people probably could," WArren chuckled. "But then the trick would be actually finding one."

[intraspective]

"You'd have to get people to agree on what normal was first," she noted. And laughed. "And the odds of that happening are pretty low."

[wwiii]

Warren nodded, still smiling faintly while he stared up at the ceiling.

"True. That's true. But then again, it doesn't seem to be so difficult to find a group of people who can agree on what isn't normal."

[intraspective]

"True enough," she said, her smile flickering to something less than amused briefly before back to usual. "But process of elimination is a bad way to find normal."

[wwiii]

"You'd end up with a pretty empty world, by the time you were done looking."

And then Warren was sitting up again, leaning forward now and folding his wings against his back.

"You'd know who was normal by the end of it, at least. The last man standing would be all that's left to set the status quo."

[intraspective]

"And the last man standing wouldn't be worth knowing. So bland, so full of the fact that they're normal, so--empty."

[wwiii]

"Now, there'd be a person to pity," Warren decided. And then he gave his head a small shake, smiling again. "I'll take being weird any day."

[intraspective]

"To being weird, then."

She laughed.

[wwiii]

"To being weird."

And to cupcakes.