fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

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Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

Natalie had gotten a call from her mother today. Just a basic, checking up on the daughter kind of call. Though she'd been here for a few weeks now, it was the first of its kind. Not because her parents didn't care about her, but because they knew she could handle being far away from home. They thought she was a smart, capable girl, after all.

Still, her mother had expressed the same concern Natalie had heard many times over the years, and that was the one about whether she was making friends and not just shutting herself in her room with her books and her comics and letting the social world pass her by.

She'd answered yes and no, in that order.

So, now she was curled up on one of the couches in the common room, with a mug of fresh coffee and a business studies textbook she'd checked out from the library a few days ago. What? She didn't like lying to her parents, but she also wasn't exactly about to throw a party for the whole floor or anything.

[ooc: Open common room, yup.]

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Where Natalie had a business textbook, Kate had something old, leather-bound and written entirely in Russian. They clearly had different priorities when it came to extra study.

The similarities were there in their almost simultaneous decisions to take their extra-curricular studies to the common room.

"I think this is the first time I've come in and not found someone watching either a talk show or infomercials." It was almost a miracle.

"There was nothing good on," Natalie drawled, giving the other girl a little nod of greeting. Sort of. "Or I just assumed there wouldn't be."

"It's touch and go if it'll actually turn on when I try it," Kate admitted, wrinkling her nose and dropping down onto the couch. "I think technological things have a hate-on for me."

Her book fell open to a well worn page. "Sometimes I think that might even be a good thing."

"Most of the time it probably is," Natalie replied mildly, eyeing the book, or what she could see of it. "It's kind of a waste of time."

"Yeah, and I still automatically try it pretty much every time I come in." It was a tough habit to break. "It's a problem. There's probably therapy out there for it."

"Well, there's therapy for everything else, so why not that?" Not that Natalie really knew, it wasn't like she'd ever needed therapy for anything. "Help for compulsive TV triers."

"There are worse problems." Kate even had a few of them. She'd actually rather have the TV compulsion.

"Weren't you leaving?" No, she hadn't registered that whole 'different person' thing. She'd met other Kate all of once, and the differences weren't that pronounced.

When she'd been here longer, maybe she'd get used to the fact that a different style quite often meant doppelganger.

Natalie suppressed the sigh, and the eyeroll, and the general sense of frustration. It made for a pretty specifically neutral end result.

"That's Kate," she replied. "I'm Natalie. I'm new."

A slightly puzzled expression crossed Kate's face before she straightened it out. The initial assumption was a relative, but with Natalie seeming less than excited about explaining she (probably wisely) chose not to ask.

"That'll make things less confusing," she said instead. "I'm Kate."

Natalie looked almost, almost amused by that. In an ironic way.

"Hello, Kate," she said. "Nice to meet you."

"And you," she offered, "By new, are you really new?" she guessed.

For all she knew it was possible she'd been seeing her a little while and just not realised she wasn't Kate.

"As of the beginning of the fall semester," Natalie nodded. "So yeah. Really new."

"Wow." Kate looked faintly amused, "And you haven't tried to run after this weekend. I'm impressed."

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Ben walked in a few minutes later and gave the unfamiliar face a quick nod. "Hi."

Kate tipped a nod and offered a, "Hey," in return. "You one of these people who lives on my floor and I've still managed not to meet?" she asked.

"I was gone for the summer if that helps at all?" Ben offered. "I'm Ben, in 204."

"Kate, 210," she twitched a wave. "Your attempt to make me seem less antisocial is appreciated." She liked to think she might at least be able identify people who she lived no more than a couple doors away from by now.

... Going to his wedding this weekend did not count.

"Had you been here long before the summer?" That implied he wasn't new as her, at least.

"I've been here since I was a freshman," Ben said. "I'm a senior now, but I'm still playing catch-up on all the new faces. I got kind of stuck at 'talking pink pony' at the picnic."

"Wow. Long-termer," Kate slouched back in her seat looking vaguely amused. "Any tips?"

"Remembering that most of the weirdness only lasts a weekend," Ben said, "and that people are generally forgiving for whatever you did then while you were out of your kriffing mind. Where are you from?"

Forgiving was good. Kate was hoping forgiving was accompanied by 'convenient memory lapses' and that maybe no one who'd seen it would ever mention her weeping again.

"Atlanta, 2032," she answered easily. It was becoming second nature to mention the year, which it never had been before. "It's weird, but not as weird as here." Not far off, though. "You?"

"A galaxy far, far away," Ben said with a tiny smile. "And not England, though I guess I sound a bit like it."

"You really do," Kate agreed. "And here I'd heard the British weren't into all that," she joked. At least, they hadn't had a long-running space programme in her world, anyway.

"I think you're the first I've met with the 'I come from outer space' story."

"Really?" Ben looked surprised. "I guess there aren't that many of us around any more."

"It could be I just didn't ask the right questions," she theorised, shrugging mildly. "It's not like I look at you and immediately call alien."