fandomhighdorms | the roof: monday afternoon

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the roof: monday afternoon

Nathan had been keeping mostly out of his room. His roommate was...interesting and reminded him a bit of Annalise. But just a bit. Where Annalise seemed to be welcoming and interested in him, Isabelle was not. So, he just made sure to keep his distance and to keep himself away from her things.

Today's exercise in distance involved catching the lift up to the roof and settling himself on the ledge with a book that he probably wasn't going to do much with. For the longest time, he just checked out the view. It was pretty spectacular and almost reminded him of Wales. Almost.

After awhile spent staring, Nathan opened the book and tried to make some sense of the words. Every so often, he'd find something he could actually read and get excited before realizing that it was pretty sad that he was getting that excited over something so small and that would send him right back to quiet. But, he kept at it. The book made no sense but that really wasn't the point. Nathan just wanted to find one whole sentence that he could read. Just one.

So far, he hadn't accomplished what he set out to do. It was pretty depressing and Nathan nearly threw the book off the roof a few times. He might actually go through with that here shortly. Maybe.

[It's an open post]

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Anders' room was cold. All day. Maddeningly cold, so cold he kept expecting frost to form on every surface.

And then he'd step into the hall and feel no chill at all. He couldn't figure it out, and it was maddening, and rather than puzzle over it anymore he was escaping to the roof. He tossed a weary smile at Nathan.

"Is your room trying to drive you out, too?"

Nathan looked up when Anders arrived and closed the book, almost looking thankful for the interruption. Reading wasn't going well.

"The last time I was in there, I felt like I was being berated in a language that I didn't understand by something I couldn't see," he shared. "I'm guessing that's not normal?"

"Doesn't strike me as something that happens in most places, no," Anders said dryly. "Now I feel lucky that mine's just inexplicably cold. The cold doesn't yell at you."

"Most of the time, cold doesn't bother me so I think I'd take the cold too," Nathan said, shaking his head. "It doesn't help that I've a roommate that seems to have...taken over most of the room. I can barely see my bed these days."

Good thing he didn't tend to sleep inside.

"Who did you get?" Anders asked, curious. "I feel that way about Rapunzel's hair sometimes over in the dorms, but here I barely see Soren."

"Her name is Isabelle," Nathan replied after a moment spent trying to recall her name. The amount of glitter she had in the room must have been messing with his senses. "She's not a bad person -- "

Little did he know.

" -- but she does have a lot of stuff. Soren's my roommate back at the regular building. I rarely see him either. He told me he doesn't actually sleep."

"That would explain why he doesn't spend much time with his roommates, then," Anders commented. "Not sleeping, though. That can't be good for you. Though maybe his world is different."

That last sentence was something he'd learned to say in Fandom as an explanation for all sorts of oddities.

"I think I met Isabelle at the picnic," he added. "Pretty girl, but I'm not surprised she's tye type with all kinds of stuff."

"So much stuff," Nathan said with a huff of a laugh. He shook his head again and leaned back on his hands. "Thankfully I don't own many things of my own and what I do have is safely tucked away."

He shrugged a shoulder after a moment. "She is pretty, I guess. Not really the type I think I'd notice without someone else saying something."

Nathan didn't really know what his type was, if he was honest with himself.

"I notice everyone," Anders admitted, with a little laugh of his own. "Not that it normally gets me anyplace, but sometimes it would be nice to stop noticing. Especially since almost everyone here is pretty in one way or another."

"You notice everyone?" Nathan asked, head tilting to one side. He crossed his arms over his chest. "That does seem like it would overload your senses sometimes."

He tended not to notice because he was sometimes afraid to notice and have it come back to him in a painful way. "People do look nice here though. I'm not really used to noticing that."

"In the Circle some days it feels like there's not much to do but notice each other," Anders explained. "We're less prudish about all of it than other people."

There wasn't much to do, and they had herbs to keep away babies and diseases. The Circle was worse than boarding school where casual sex was concerned.

"Were there even any people worth noticing, where you were before?"

[OOC: Night!]

"There were but I wasn't supposed to look," Nathan shared, looking down at at his feet. He swung them against the roof idly. "I guess you could say I wasn't allowed. Or, to be more precise, they weren't allowed to associate with me."

He'd broken those rules and he'd really paid the price. "But, I did notice people though I doubt they noticed me. I don't think they wanted to, actually."

[Sleep well]

Anders felt a stab of angry sympathy twisting through his stomach.

"That's about the cruelest thing you've told me yet," he said. "Unless you've a habit of turning people to stone when they look at you, but somehow I don't think you do."

"If that's something I can do, I haven't discovered it yet," he said lightly. "Might come in handy for the less than pleasant situations out there, though. No, where I'm from is very...separated is the best word I can come up with for it. You have what people think are the good and what people think are the bad."

And then there was him. "I fall in the middle. No one knows what I am so they warn people away."

Anders wrinkled his nose. "So you had one parent who was one, and one who was the other?" he asked, trying to clarify. "It's not as though you had any control over that."

"Yes," Nathan said, nodding. "And that didn't matter. One parent was a White Witch, one parent a Black With. The fact that wasn't pure mattered. And they made sure that I wouldn't forget what I was."

He extended his arm with the black tattoos on both wrist and finger before he gestured to the larger one on his neck. "Magical tattoos. Quite the souvenir, isn't it?"

Anders let out a low whistle. "Had to make sure no one around you forgot about it for even a second, didn't they?" he asked. "You must hate them. I would hate them."

'Them' meant the tattoos and also the people upholding the system. But mainly the tattos.

"I think I've more gotten used to them than anything else," Nathan said, shrugging and running his fingers through his hair. "Sorry, I didn't mean to tell you all of this in one go. I'm sure it makes me look depressing or something similar."

Which wasn't completely untrue since he could be depressing. "It's a little easier to think that people don't mind these here. That it won't put people off so maybe they'll actually want to notice."

Even if he'd be awkward about any attention. Any and all.

"It makes me more angry than depressed," Anders said frankly. "I spend so much time thinking about how badly mages are treated at home, but next to what you've been through it's nothing. Anyhow -- I'm your friend, or at least I want to be. Don't worry about upsetting me. I'm durable. And I don't think anything about you should put people off in the slightest."

"We went through different things," Nathan said after a moment. "What I went through is different than what you went through but no less terrible. You were caged too. You had to escape. When we were both supposed to be going to school and getting into fights -- "

Or, in their case, learning magic and spells, it seemed. He continued on with his rare moment of introspection.

" -- we were on the run, looking over our shoulders. Still are, it seems. I'm your friend too. And I haven't been able to say that about many people. But, it's true. You are. I did notice that."

Anders smiled, going a bit pink. "I'm going to take that as a compliment," he decided. "I like a lot of people, but I don't trust many of them as much as I trust you. And I hope we can stay here and do all that normal stuff for years and years."

And then he'd go home and smash the chantry, but, y'know. Priorities.

The blushing was something new that he hadn't seen before. He was pretty sure he hadn't ever done it before either and it made him smile just the slightest bit.

"You trust me?" Nathan asked, putting his thoughts about blushing away to be a little surprised about that. "Even though you don't know me that well?"

"As much as I can trust anyone," Anders said, smiling back. "Not with everything that could ever happen, but I know you wouldn't turn me in if the Tempars turned up."

"I don't even know what a Templar is," Nathan told him, nodding. "I wouldn't turn you in, no. I'd help you, if I could. Hide you, if it was possible."

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the roof: monday afternoon

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