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Fourth Floor Common Room, Friday Afternoon

Wes was having a... strange day. For one thing, he still had a few globs of pie filling in his hair from his Badass class earlier, and he was still annoyed at the way his Science of Deduction teacher had criticized his "tiny brain." So he retreated to the common room to decompress. Showering might have been a better choice, but sitting in the common room with a stack of books seemed more appealing. So he did.

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A head full of blond hair ducked into the common room. It was one room below Dolf's, but it'd help if he familiarized himself with every part of the dorms. Besides, it wasn't like one common room was much different from the others.

He hadn't been looking for something in particular, but the pile of books was something. As was--

"You have cake in your hair," he said, helpfully.

Kennedy had Fridays completely free this semester, which meant that once she was done with training for the day she was at loose ends.

Fear.

"Yo, Watcher Junior," she called on her way through the common room to look for the remote. "What did you do, piss off someone at the bakery?"

"Pie, actually," Wes corrected him dryly, hoping to at least partially mask his embarrassment. "But thank you." At this point he'd run his hands through his hair about thirty times, but knew he hadn't really done the best job, so it didn't come as a huge surprise. He tried again half-heartedly. "Is that better?" he asked, not really expecting much.

Dolf shrugged. Pie, cake, it was the same thing, right? In English, at least; in Dutch, cake was just a brown, porous thing that didn't even taste like the vanilla it claimed to be.

"A little," he added, one edge of his mouth quirking up a little. "Why is there pie in your hair?"

Wesley laughed. "No, this was an introductory exercise in one of my courses. To see if we could make it through introducing ourselves while being pelted with dessert items and water balloons."

"It wasn't fun," he added in a deadpan.

"Class," he answered shortly.

Then he elaborated, "We had to introduce ourselves while having food thrown at us, to see if we could maintain our composure."

Whatever classes Dolf was taking, if they didn't involve food fights, Wes was jealous.

Kennedy, having located the remote, flipped it into the air to catch it again and dropped onto the end of the couch.

"Sounds pretty fun to me, actually. Though now I'm wondering, since I'm thinking of ordering a pizza, if you aren't gonna want any."

Dolf, in all his still-limited vocabulary, couldn't do much more but scrunge up his eyebrows, and go "Weird," and then "...really? Is that okay?"

He was fairly sure that should be illegal in classes. Teacher abuse.

"Impressive throw," he observed.

"Students here can order pizza? I never knew that. All right, certainly. I'll just run to my room to grab some money, then, shall I?"

"Apparently. It's actually the second class I've taken here in which pie-throwing was a mandatory activity, so I assume it must be allowed."

"...It shouldn't," said Dolf, frowning more. Then ran back over Wesley's sentence, trying to figure out 'mandatory' without looking like he was trying to figure out anything about the way the man talked. "Why pie?"

She gave him a cocky smirk (like she had any other kind) and said, deadpan, "Yeah, I've been spending an hour a day working on that one. And tchah-- pizza's on me. Wouldn't want you to leave your books unsupervised or anything."

Yeah, Wes wasn't so good with the using of small words without being expressly asked to. "I assume it's because it's relatively soft. There were other desserts thrown as well. Cake and pudding and such."

But Wesley had just said there was pie--

Whatever. "At least there was fun?" Dolf said, hopelessly. "You weren't hungry."

"Oh, that's not necessary, but thank you. My room's only a few doors over; I'll be right back." He went to leave, then doubled back, scooped up his books, and exited again, then came back a minute later with his wallet.

"So. You said you were working on that throw? Is that part of your Slayer training regimen?" He wasn't sure if she'd been kidding or not, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask. He was curious as to how she trained, anyway.

It occured to Wesley that Dolf might not have the greatest grasp on the English language. Maybe.

"Yes, it was quite fun," he lied, feeling bad for not figuring out to use smaller words before. He resolved to be more comprehensible. Or try to, anyway. "What classes are you taking?"

Not a great grasp, and feeling self-conscious about it, to boot - it wasn't helping him endeavour to stretch his sentences any longer to practice. (Reserves would probably change that, though; but that wouldn't be until next week)

"Cultural appreciation and Unconventional Tactics," he said, tripping repeatedly over 'appreciation' and 'unconventional', and sounding like a complete North-Western European over the whole thing. That, though, he didn't care about. "What was pie-throwing class?"

Damn, he sucked at this communication thing. He resolved to speak more slowly, which probably wouldn't be all that helpful. "The class was 'How to Be a Badass,'" he answered. "Your classes sound very interesting." In every word, distinct syllables were about five seconds apart. Way to go, Wes.

There was a relatively telling silence on Dolf's part.

"I'm not stupid," he pointed out.

Lightly.

How was it that a guy who spoke as many languages as Wes did couldn't manage to talk to someone who didn't speak English very well?

"Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that you were!" Wes exclaimed. Damn, he was awful at this. "I'm terribly sorry." He thought on this for a bit, then had an idea. "Er... I'm quite proficient in a number of other languages," he suggested. "Is there a language you'd be more comfortable speaking?"

"Wesley." Kennedy had both feet up on the coffee table and a good-natured, teasingly scolding look on her face when he got back. "Number one, I wasn't kidding about paying for the pizza, and number two, I was kidding about the remote. Seriously? I spent most of this morning working on doing pushups so I can clap in between 'em."

Regular pushups apparently weren't good enough. Sheesh.

"Hello," Rilla said as she tripped lightly into the room. "I'm through with studying for the day!"

Dolf watched him splutter in bemusement, and rubbed at his hair. He wasn't sure whether to feel outraged or just slightly annoyed, and he was a little terse, even for his current standards, as he said. "Dietsch. Dutch, some French, German-- old Italian?"

He had no idea what to call it, but by the end of it he was at least making some attempt to accomodate Wesley's English.

He spoke a fair deal of languages, himself.

God, he just sucked epically at communication today.

"Oh, I had Faith and Buffy do those push-ups," he reminisced, distracted. Then he focused. "Right. Well. I suppose I could pay next time, then." There. A compromise. He kind of doubted he could ever manage to get Kennedy to let him pay anyway.

Aaaargh. Wesley was just King of Bad Impressions today.

"Dutch is fine," he offered, in Dutch.

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Fourth Floor Common Room, Friday Afternoon

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