fandomhighdorms | 4th Floor Common Room, Late Thursday Afternoon

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4th Floor Common Room, Late Thursday Afternoon

After her long swim, Uma was feeling slightly more like she could handle interacting with people without wanting to pounce on them. So rather than holing up in her room after showering the salt and sand off, she stopped in only long enough to grab her supplies and then made her way into the common room to rebraid her hair. Back home, she'd trained Gil and Harry to help, which made the process go by a lot faster. She didn't have anyone here to help, but at least she had the TV and could find something that wasn't Auradon propaganda to pass the hours while she worked on her hair.

Bonus if someone came by with more food than they knew what to do with, which seemed to happen a lot.

[Open common room and I'm done spamming the f-list for the day!]

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Sidon had been contemplating a swim himself, but, quite frankly, after taking care of the animals all day at the shelter and everything else emotionally and physically, he was feeling far too exhausted and drained. Besides, he was getting a sneaking suspicion that his dolphin friend was expecting more of a commitment out of him than he was willing to give.

So he just dragged himself back to the dorms, wondering if there might be anything good in the fridge to satiate at least one form of hunger before going back to his tank and sulking over the existence of the other, more difficult to quell hunger.

It was definitely a binge-on-frozen fishsticks kind of evening ahead.

"Uma," he said, giving her a nod as he entered the common room en route to the freezer. "Salutations."

He hesitated to inquire after her, as he knew his answer wasn't exactly the cheeriest it could be, but it simply felt too impolite not to.

"How are you on this..." Usually, of course, he would put in an adjective here, but today, he seemed to have trouble grasping the right one, "...day?"

Ringo also headed for the common room after her shower, though hers hadn't been prompted by a swim. Because while swimming was nice and all, it was never going to beat AirTrek out for Ringo's time.

"Oh, wow, I don't think I've seen you with your hair like that before," she exclaimed once she spotted Uma. And then moved around to the side enough to figure out who she was. (She looked way different from behind this way, okay?)

Uma grinned up at him, her smile, for once, having lost its razor edge. "Hey, Sidon," she said. She didn't bother waving, dark fingers flashing through locks of teal and black and gray as she braided. Funny how hair that seemed so short could end up being so long by the time she'd finished bringing it back under control. "You know, not bad today. Not bad at all."

The swimming had released a lot of that tension she'd been carrying with her, leaving her tired and mellow and oddly at peace. "You?" Beat. "There's a buncha fishsticks way in the back of the freezer if that's what you're looking for. Saw 'em yesterday while I was digging for ice cream."

"Yeah, I don't take 'em down that often," Uma said, parting out a new section of hair with her comb. She had quite a little workstation set up: comb, elastics, hair grease, the works. "I usually just wash 'em in the braids and go. But every so often I need to take them out and redo them."

And after the chlorine last week and the saltwater this week, today seemed as good a day as any. "You're Ringo, right?"

"Yep!" Ringo beamed at having her name remembered. "And you're Uma!" Some people were surprised to discover that Ringo was actually pretty good at remembering people.

Though he was certainly not one to judge anyone by the sharpness of their smile, the lack of it in Uma's was...unexpected. It took him back a little, blinking. So many things catching him off-guard, not for what they were, but merely for how strangely he found himself reacting to them.

Yes, a decent snack and retreating into his tank until Monday sounded like a very wise idea, indeed.

Still, he tried to brush it off, chuckling a little nervously as he smiled back, also without a good deal of his own edge. "Yes, yes, that was precisely what I was hoping to find, how clever and astute of you, but I'd expect no less. It is heartening to know that my search will not be futile."

He ducked his head a little in what appeared to be a sort of awkward bow before turning and opening the freezer door, lingering for a little in the blast of cold air that he would usually find so unpleasant to his skin, but now felt so refreshing, as it did seem terribly hot in the room all of a sudden.

Uma would be happy to tell him it was her. In fairness, Uma would be happy to tell him that even if it wasn't this week.

"Wasn't really a hard guess," Uma said, with a low chuckle. "I mean, we killed that other bag pretty fast the other week."

So was Uma. Knowing everyone's name was important in a captain. And in survival in general.

"So I am," she said, lazily. "What's up with you? Surviving the week?"

Ringo wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes. "You get used to it after a couple of years," she sighed.

"So this happens regularly?" Uma wrinkled her nose. "It wouldn't be so bad if everyone wasn't just so weird about sex. Just do it and get it out of your system."

"'Bout once a year," Ringo nodded.

She flushed slightly. "And I guess I'm one of those weird people, too."

Guess how utterly unsurprised by that she was, Ringo. Just guess.

"So, what?" she asked, frowning. "Like, is there some kind of big sex taboo? The first person you do it with, you're stuck with forever? Why is everyone so touchy about it?"

Aloy was still... twitchy and distracted and ugh it was the dumbest thing.

At least when she walked into the common room, the only thing twitching was her eye, just for a second. "I see someone's settled in."

Nobody believed in the healing power of getting laid at this school, really.

Uma glanced up at Aloy, trying to figure out how sarcastically that had been meant. "Why be uncomfortable if you don't have to be?" she asked, adding a bit of grease to her ends to keep them neat as she finished up another bright blue braid.

Aloy shrugged.

"How does your hair get that color anyway?" she said, not because she was all that interested, but because she was there.

... okay, she was a little curious. The focus was producing a few readings on compounds, but she didn't know what they were.

Ringo pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I don't know," she admitted after a moment. "I mean, it's probably different for each person, right? Like, everyone's got their own reasons?"

She shrugged. "I think, for me, I just want it to be special, you know? It doesn't have to be forever or anything, but it should, I don't know, mean something?"

"It just is," Uma said, using her comb to section out a hank of hair and showing Aloy the roots. "It's just always been that way since I was born. I used to go to Dizzy Tremaine's hair salon to make 'em a bit brighter, but that's just cause sun and rain and salt have a way of leeching the color out of your hair."

She dabbed a small bit of grease onto her fingertips and worked it through the hair she'd sectioned out, straightening the natural curl before she took the comb to it again. "And this is hair grease," she explained. "Makes my hair easier to braid and keeps it looking neat. I put it on right after I wash my hair, it keeps the moisture in and makes a barrier to keep other stuff out."

"It means stuff," Uma said, shrugging. "Fun, usually. Or that you think someone's hot. Or that you were bored and thought they'd be more interesting than whatever else is going on. Why does it have to mean anything more than that?" She gestured around the room, taking in the campus at large. "Bet there'd be a lot fewer grumpy people around if they'd all just agreed that it didn't have to mean anything."

After a moment to consider that, Ringo let out a little laugh. "Are you accusing me of being grumpy?" she asked. Two years at Fandom, and the chance to grow up a bit that that had given her, meant that she sounded amused rather than insecure.

"I don't know you well enough to say," Uma said, though 'grumpy' probably wasn't the word she'd have used for this interaction herself. "But for most of the people I dealt with this week? Yeah."

"Well," Ringo drawled the word out thoughtfully. "That might be more because no one really likes to, you know, not be in control of themselves. The sex is just part of it, right?"

Ringo wasn't exactly a huge fan of it herself, even if she had sort of gotten used to it.

"But you are in control," Uma said, tucking another finished braid up into the loose bun on her head. "You haven't jumped on anyone you didn't intend to, did you?"

"Strange," Aloy said. "The color, not the grease. My mentor uses something like it."

At least Uma wasn't being openly hostile this time, and that mollified her. She sat down on an arm of the sofa.

"Strange why?" Uma asked. "Lots of people use color in their hair, don't they?"

Dizzy's dyes always sold well and lots of Uma's pirates had taken to dyeing their hair odd colors in honor of their captain. Though none of them tried to match her natural teal.

"Not where I come from," Aloy said, with some humor in her voice.

Though she probably didn't know enough people to say for sure.

"Huh," Uma said. From her Isle-born perspective, that was really weird. The goblins did quick business hunting down ingredients for hair dyes. "But you got some decent braiding there," she said, nodding at Aloy's hairstyle. "I bet you could get some crazy patterns in it, if you wanted to."

"I can, it's just usually not worth the effort," Aloy said. "And the people here seem pretty lazy with their hair."

Uma gestured to her own. "Consider this an invitation to step up your bars," she said, but while her voice was teasing, it wasn't mocking. "I promised Tip I'd braid hers sometime, too, so that's two people gonna bring some game to the Fandom hairstyles."

"You want to have a hair-braiding party?"

At least Aloy sounded faintly amused.

"Well." Ringo shook her head, flushing slightly at some old memories. "Not this year. But in the past?" She sighed. "Let's just say I didn't have the best time."

"I dunno if a couple of people braiding hair counts as a party," Uma said, snickering. "At least, not the kind of parties I'm used to. But damn, if you can do cool things with your hair, why worry about how boring other people are with theirs?"

"Betcha if you didn't keep everything so pent up, you'd know how to deal with it," Uma drawled. "You gotta know how to let the pressure off without waiting for it all to explode."

"I've got pretty good outlets most of the time." Ringo shrugged. "So I don't know if I'd say I'm pent up."

She grinned, slightly amused. "Besides, I don't know that many people here on the island that I'm particularly interested in sleeping with."

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4th Floor Common Room, Late Thursday Afternoon

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