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Main Campfire - Morning before classes

Weather still too hot. Check. Cabin stinking of leeches. Check. Half naked boy. Check. Half naked boy eating. Check.

Hopefully those thunderstorms wouldn't take much longer to reach the island, but for now it was dry and Jake had taken up position at the main campfire. There was a bag from J,GOB resting on the ground between his feet. He was planning on just eating it all by himself, but if you'd ask nicely enough he might be willing to share.

Might.

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Karla was just going to spend some time laughing at that image, sorry Warren.

"I'll keep that in mind," she sputtered. "Especially if I f-find an engagement ring in my drink. I'll hand it back to the waiter with assurances that it's not for me!"

Mother Night, too funny. "Of course the question must be asked," she said, wiping at her eyes. "Were you wearing dinner before or after someone thought you were slipping an engagement ring into someone else's glass?"

"Before," Warren sighed, trying not to take Karla's laughter personally. In retrospect, it was funny, after all. "The waiter dropped pasta on me."

And it had been hot. Being able to heal quickly had been his good fortune, he supposed.

"I couldn't imagine proposing to anyone by putting a diamond ring into a glass, anyhow. Too easy to choke on it."

Which, in retrospect, really would have tied off that outing neatly.

Fortunately, Karla's laughter was dying down to the occasional giggle anyway. "If I'd known about that dinner, I think I might have been less worried about bringing you home to the Hall," she said, dimpling up at him. "I would have promised that, no matter what else happened, Beale and Helene would never allow for a guest to have food dropped on them."

Oh Darkness. Just the idea made her shiver.

"I think a restaurant is too public a place for a proposal anyhow," Karla said. She'd been thinking about such things, ever since Drake's class. "I'm going to live most of my life in the public eye. Something like a proposal--I want that to just be for me. Something I don't have to share with strangers."

"Better some scrap of life that's just for you," Warren noted, pursing his lips a little. "Most of my life has been... the other way around. I don't think I ever really thought of it that way, but I can see the appeal."

Something for just you. Not a secret, really, like the ones he'd been keeping since he'd gotten his wings, but something personal all the same.

He could appreciate that.

"Exactly," Karla said, hugging her knees. "It really came to me this weekend, when my parents were here and there wasn't always someone running in to talk to my mother about something urgent. And I watched her and my father both wear these pleasant Court masks when they talked to people and I realized I don't want to be like that. The expected their every move to be watched and viewed and gossiped about."

It was why she had adjusted so quickly to the idea of radio squirrels. Back home, being in the public eye was just part of life.

"While some of that might be unavoidable, I'm not going to be like that," she decided. And then flushed a little. "Hi, Warren. Welcome to my issues. Sorry."

"I don't mind," Warren replied quickly, and then he found himself flushing a little, himself. He looked chagrined for a moment, scuffing a toe against the ground. "While I was growing up, my father's biggest challenge was trying to find a balance between privacy, and life in the public eye. The Worthingtons aren't nobility, per se, but the world does keep an eye on what our family is up to."

He could only imagine what people back home were saying after the header he'd taken through a window. And what they were saying about the cure that prompted it.

"Is that how you got so good at hiding your wings?" Karla asked. "A lifetime of pretending you didn't have them whenever someone drew near?" She reached out to gently run a finger along the ragged edges of his primaries. "Just imagine," she said lightly, "going back and telling a younger you that, one day, he'll only have to worry about protecting his wings from one overenthusiastic kitten, occasional transformations into parakeets, and..." she gave him a smile, "treating ravenous young witches to fabulous lunches and the occasional dinner."

"I wouldn't have believed myself," Warren replied without hesitation as he turned his gaze toward her hand. He stretched his wing just slightly, allowing himself a slight smile in turn. "I wouldn't have been displeased about the news, though. Well..."

He laughed softly. "Maybe the kitten part."

She frowned at the feathers she was stroking. "You should save your primaries and secondaries if you don't already," Karla said. "So they can be imped back in if you break one. This won't make it harder for you to fly, will it?"

"A little," he admitted. "It's a bit more exercise to get any lift, but a little more exercise never hurt anybody. I can still steer, at least. That's the important part."

He hadn't saved any of his old feathers, no. The thought had never occurred to him that he might have to. This had been his first moult, after all, where he didn't have to dispose of the evidence by incinerating it as medical waste in one of his father's labs.

"More exercise, huh? You won't be happy until you can't wear shirts at all," Karla teased. "And Aldric will have to go and let out all the seams for your sleeves so they can fit over your arms and shoulders."

"Yeah, secretly that whole budgie thing was the island's way of starting me on my new bodybuilding regimen," Warren said, bemused. "It's a wonder that more bodybuilders around the world don't make use of the 'tiny white kitten' method, I think."

And then, because he couldn't resist, try though he might?

"You're not complaining, I hope?"

"Well, it might be a bit inconvenient if your shirt just tore itself apart over dinner," Karla said, blushing and grinning at the same time. "Mostly because I'd be awfully distracted by the view."

"...It's a nice view," she admitted, ducking her head a bit.

"Even without me bursting out at the seams?" Warren was maybe a bit on the pink-ish side, himself. That wasn't going to stop him from being completely incorrigible. "I'm going to have to keep that in mind, I think. That's no small compliment coming from such a pretty lady."

"Even without," Karla assured him. Though she was going to try to poke him for being so blatantly fishing for compliments. Right in one nicely toned and taut side. "Besides, with your restaurant luck, we'd probably get kicked out because you weren't obeying the 'No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service' signs."

Warren took that poke to the side in stride.

... Which meant, really, that he clapped a hand to his ribs and squirmed when she'd poked him, and that meant that he was more or less obligated to just start laughing, right then and there.

It was important.

"And if that happens," he managed, "I suppose I'll have to cook for you myself."

Very stoic, that Warren.

"I could help!" Karla said, deciding that his squirming and laughing meant he really liked getting poked and took that as an invitation to keep trying. "We could cook something together!"

Oooh, no no no no no. Warren remembered those cookies and was not about to forget them any time in the near future. Which meant that this particular squirm was going to have to lead into some creative deflection, if Warren valued having functional tastebuds.

"Or we could do this the old-fashioned way," he offered. "Where I show you a cookbook, and you pick something you'd like, and then, because I owe you the delicious lunches and not vice-versa, I spoil you rotten and cook it myself."

Safely.

But with Warren's healing factor, they'd grow back!

"Ooh, that does sound nice, too," Karla said, giving Warren a bright smile. "But what would I do while you were cooking? Left to my own devices, I might get bored and that almost always leads to mischief. I'd probably end up in the kitchen anyway, trying to distract you."

"You know...?" Warren smiled right back and then he was reaching out to return that poking assault with a nudge to her ribs. "I don't think I'd be opposed to any distractions, really."

"Ice cubes down your back it is then," Karla said merrily, trying to twist away from his retaliation. "While being underfoot constantly."

For Karla, flirting hadn't progressed much past pulling someone's hair and pushing them into the mud.

Warren had never been pushed into the mud! This could be like a learning experience!

"Fortunately, I have plenty of experience already, having Yei constantly underfoot," Warren pointed out, directing another poke to her other side in the hopes that she'd squirm right into it. "The ice thing is pretty new, granted. But so far as underfoot goes, I'm nearly a pro."

"Are you suggesting I should find another way to keep you distracted, then?" Karla asked, and then squealed as she dodged into the waiting poke. "Hey! That's cheating! Somehow! No fair!"

What she meant was 'no fair cheating better!' Which was why she was conjuring another phantom hand and sending it after him.

"Who said anything about me having to be fa--ah!"

Please hold while Warren does the traditional dance of There Is A Hand I Cannot See It Ah Ah Ah Get It Off!

It was an easy dance to master, really. Though the solemn effect of those truly heartfelt movements might have been lost some, what with all the grinning and laughing that Warren was doing, as well.

Even so, it was a profound dance and Karla was moved by it.

...Moved to tears of laughter, but moved!

"That'll teach you," she said, nodding in satisfaction. "Do you surrender?"

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