The Dorm Roof, Monday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

Classes? Atton wasn't bothering with classes.

He was restless, he was tired, he was angry, he was mellow, he was about a dozen things at once and hadn't he skipped through this phase back when he was fifteen? He had no idea. He didn't want to think about it. Or drink about it, because now that he wasn't stuck in an underground dungeon it became a lot harder to pretend alcohol solved anything.

So Atton needed a different solution, and this was it: laying spread-eagled on the dorm rooftop staring up at the sky being kind of glad it was there. Being kind of pissed off he wasn't up there himself. Trying not to think about anything that didn't boil down to 'I hope some bird doesn't dump droppings on me'.

It seemed to be working. But don't ask him which part.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[arsenicmauls]

Ahaha, going to classes. What.

Gert found herself needing some serious fresh air today, so: roof. With Old Lace, because she seriously wasn't sure she was ever going to let her dinosaur out of her sight ever again.

She was halfway across the roof and on her way to sit on the ledge when she noticed Atton laying on the floor. "Oh, sorry. Hey."

[suitably_heroic]

"Don't mind me, I'm just furniture," Atton said, mildly irritated but not enough to actually get up and do something about it.

[arsenicmauls]

Old Lace was just going to go sniff this interesting-looking Atton-shaped rug.

"I would've thought most people were sick of sleeping on the floor," Gert observed. "Not so much?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Do I look like I'm sleeping to you?" Atton asked her, glaring at the dinosaur.

He'd had enough of dinosaurs for the duration. "Hey, keep that away from me."

[arsenicmauls]

"Old Lace," Gert said, patting her leg. Old Lace came back over to her, still looking a touch confused about Atton's choice of position.

"Laying on the floor, then," she amended. "Don't you have a bed?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Sure," Atton said. But that was in a room with a person in it. Plus the cold floor was helping him think, or at least get back to his senses. "What's your point?"

[arsenicmauls]

Gert hopped up to sit on the ledge, Old Lace curling up at her feet.

"Just trying to figure out what you're doing," Gert said. Really, she didn't have a whole lot of interest in what was going on with Atton, but this conversation was already in progress. With a healthy note of sarcasm, she inquired, "You're not trying to communicate with aliens, are you?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes. "You know how many aliens I could meet if I just grabbed a portal back home?" he said.

[arsenicmauls]

"Yeah, same," Gert mused. "Actually, you could probably meet a few just by going down a flight of stairs."

Hmm.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah," Atton agreed. He sounded... almost but not quite mellow. "So really, the only reason anyone would come up here is to find some peace and quiet. Away from all the aliens."

[arsenicmauls]

"Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think a lot of people are going to be coming up here just for some fresh air today that doesn't necessiatate leaving the building," Gert told him. "Quiet or otherwise."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton groaned. "I'm going to have to go back down to the pool again, aren't I?" he said. "Nobody ever goes to the pool. Weird, really."

[arsenicmauls]

"I think there was a flooded room in the maze," Gert offered. "Bet it emotionally scarred enough people that they'll stay away."

Was she helping or antagonizing? IT WAS A MYSTERY.

"Better not lay on the pool floor, though."

[suitably_heroic]

"I think they have plastic chairs," Atton mused. "I'll just dump a towel on my head and pretend to be dead."

[arsenicmauls]

"Have fun with that," Gert said. "Try not to snore too much. It's a dead giveaway."

Pause.

"'Live' giveaway. I guess."

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah," Atton said, thinking about it. "Congratulations to all of us, by the way. We're not dead."

His brain wasn't finished fixing itself yet, okay?

[arsenicmauls]

"Yeah, same to you," Gert said, looking at him curiously for that remark. "I should probably only get half-congratulations since it was kind of a close call for me."

Just because she was bitter and embarrassed didn't mean she wasn't going to snark about it. Not much of a represser, our Gert.

"Has that kind of week ever happened to you here before?"

[suitably_heroic]

"There were those birds last semester," Atton said. "And the semester before that, the crazy witch who zapped us to another universe or whatever the hell that was..."

He hadn't been privvy to the details, what with being stabbed.

[arsenicmauls]

Seriously?

"...Yeah, that's the kind of thing people should say when they warn people that this town is crazy," Gert said, eyebrows going up and up. "Instead of 'we have aliens.'"

[suitably_heroic]

"Hey, you'd be surprised how many of you people don't know about the aliens," Atton said. Defensively, for no reason he could really think of.

[arsenicmauls]

"Yeah, but here I've been going around the last few months thinking this place was calmer than normal compared to where I'm from," Gert said. "Back home there's aliens, magic, people running around in capes... and I've been sitting around doing homework in a dorm room since January. Now apparently this can happen."

[suitably_heroic]

"Then you should be happy it only happens once every few months," Atton pointed out. Really, he was grateful for any place that fed him for free that didn't have people running around trying to kill him.

[arsenicmauls]

"Lucky me," Gert griped sarcastically, but she left it at that. "I guess as someone who brought a dinosaur to school, I don't really get to complain about this place being weird."

And any complaints about her own inability to fight were probably best kept in the privacy of her own head.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes and gave a little wave with his hand. "Sure," he said. "Until you do. It's a weird place. It just could be worse, that's all. Don't ask me how, but it could."

[arsenicmauls]

"I don't need to ask how," Gert assured him, crossing her arms. "It's already got one up on the last place I lived because it's not a cramped cave that smells like teenage boys."

Technically there had been more girls than guys in the Hostel, but even just two of them had gone a long way.

[suitably_heroic]

"Do you live in the same dorms that I do?" Atton asked. "I mean, it's crawling with teenage boys. And sometimes cramped."

[arsenicmauls]

"But there's also plumbing," Gert countered. "Does wonders for the smell issue."

Honestly, she still thought living in a cave was better than going to boarding school - by a lot - but if she had to just boil the two places down to their settings, she did prefer having showers available.