Second Floor Common Room, Thursday Afternoon

[lockestheway]

Okay, so Peter's plan to get some bodyguards had been waylaid by the enormous volume of work that had come crashing down on him the past few weeks. What little free time he'd had he hadn't exactly wanted to spend going around politicking with the student base, but now that he finally did have a day with only minimal work to do, well...

He'd gone out into town and bought two bags full of pastries from JGoB's, and brought them back up into the common room. Now there they were, spread out across the coffee table, Peter lounging ever-casually on the couch.

If that didn't bring in some potential bodyguard candidates, he didn't know what would.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[lockestheway]

Peter shot him a mildly amused look. "I've been here off and on for over a year," he said, "We must've missed each other a few times."

[nottrivial]

"Oh." Fail. "Sorry. I don't actually get out that much."

[lockestheway]

"You and half the people in these dorms." That was practiced friendliness, yes. "That's why I figured I'd try and lure some people out with the smell of food."

And attempt to convince them to want to defend Peter with their life.

[nottrivial]

Alec nodded. "It's a pretty good strategy." Since he was here and all. "I mean. Obviously."

[lockestheway]

Peter was going to take the 'socially awkward' bits as a good sign that this one would be easy to get on his side. He just nodded - obviously! - and said, "So what's your name? I'm Peter."

[nottrivial]

Somewhere, another socially-awkward Peter minion -- who was probably still asleep -- was feeling oddly flattered.

"Alec," Alec said. "Lightwood. I got here early this summer, so I'm still mostly new."

[lockestheway]

"Not new enough not to know what this island's all about," Peter said sympathetically, and picked up a pastry himself as an exercise in purposefully mirroring being companionable.

[nottrivial]

...He was so good.

"Right," Alec agreed. "I think that one week in the other reality cleared that up for me pretty quickly."

[lockestheway]

Well, he was a politician.

Peter winced sympathetically. "Yeah, that was a bad one," he said. "I was actually elsewhere during the summer-- of course I wandered in right as that was going on."

[nottrivial]

That got some actual sympathy out of Alec, not just the Peter kind.

"That had to have been difficult," he said, looking concerned. "You didn't worry anyone or miss anything important, I hope?"

[lockestheway]

Peter pulled a face. "I was doing work that summer," he explained. "I missed a week's worth. That was a pain in the ass to catch up with."

[nottrivial]

Alec winced. "And 'detained in a dystopian alternate reality' probably isn't an excuse your employers generally let slide," he filled in. "I'm sorry. That's Fandom, I guess. You probably know better than I do."

[lockestheway]

"A year I've been here, and never has a week gone by without a catastrophe," Peter sighed. "How was your dystopian week?"

[nottrivial]

"Probably about on par with everyone else's," Alec settled on, because he didn't want to go into all the details to someone he'd just met. In fact, he'd be fine not going into the details with anyone ever again. "I'm glad the island hasn't seen fit to recreate the experience."

[lockestheway]

"Don't say it too loud or it might," Peter said, taking a bite of his pastry. "Still, right now we seem to be in the middle of a spate of less... destructive... incidents."

[nottrivial]

Alec nodded. "It's been more... whimsical chaos, I guess," he said, in a tone that clearly stated exactly how he felt about chaos, whimsical or otherwise. "I'd still rather it not turn us into girls anymore, though."

[lockestheway]

Peter shrugged. "That one's always going to throw you off in the beginning," he said. "But unless you really have to be somewhere that day - or that weekend..."

[nottrivial]

"...it could be a lot worse," Alec finished. "Yeah. It wound up not being completely horrible, anyway."

[lockestheway]

"Well, there you go," Peter said, lifting his pastry to him. "So where are you from, Alec? Nowhere crazy things like this happen on a regular basis?"

[nottrivial]

The question probably shouldn't have come as a surprise, since Peter had clearly been building toward it ever since setting out the pastries, but Alec was still caught off-guard by it.

"Oh. I guess we have... moderate craziness?" he tried. "The alternate reality week wasn't the first time in a dangerous situation, but last weekend was definitely the first time I've turned into a girl."

[lockestheway]

So one of the world-savers, or at least one of the scrappers, Peter judged. Good. He wasn't wasting his time here.

He made sympathetic noises. "Then it's definitely going to come as a shock," he said. "My world is ridiculously normal according to Fandom standards - I didn't know what hit me."

[nottrivial]

"Yeah, I can see how that would come as a shock," Alec sympathized. "My adoptive brother started here before I did, so he was able to warn me. If he hadn't prepared me, even coming from a weird background, I probably wouldn't have dealt too well."

[lockestheway]

"Not much for big, jarring changes in your environment?" Peter asked. "You're lucky. My brother was here, but we've been... estranged."

[nottrivial]

"Oh." The weird thing was, no matter how much Alec heard about that kind of thing happening, first from Clint and now from Peter, it still startled him every time. It was difficult for Alec, who'd been raised to protect his siblings no matter what, to wrap his head around the idea of not being close to family. "I'm sorry."

He fidgeted a bit, just enough so that someone who was especially perceptive would notice.

[lockestheway]

Peter noticed something, but he could only guess at what was behind it.

Still, he was a decent guesser. "It's fine," he said glibly. "These things happen. He's gone now, anyway, and my time here's all the better for it."