Room 212, Tuesday Afternoon (After 4th Period)

[boneyard_girl]

Pretty much the moment after class was done, Ada had absconded with Dante. Neither of them had said much on the way back to the dorms, but, well, Ada was generally comfortable with silence, and neither of them had really needed to say anything

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[rebelseekspizza]

"Soda's good," Dante said. He shrugged off his coat. It felt like a weight on his shoulders. It was better served on the floor.

He was fine, truly, by some value of fine that had bled the good humor right out of him and had left the spectre of worry - about Kathy, yeah, but also about all the shit Max had said about him - in his eyes, no matter how hard he was trying to put it off.

[boneyard_girl]

Ada leaned over to open up the dorm fridge and pull out two cans of orange soda, offering one to him. "You look tired," she said bluntly, handing it over. "You sleep at all?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Sure," Dante said, snagging the soda like he thought Ada was going to take it back if he didn't. "Just had a long night out last night."

And the night before that. "It's been a weird-ass week."

[boneyard_girl]

"Yeah?" Ada settled in, opening her soda and taking a sip. "Sit down b'fore you fall over? An' define 'weird-ass.' Like, on a Fandom scale of one to ten."

It was an opening, if he wanted to talk about it, or a chance to deflect. Gentleman's choice.

[rebelseekspizza]

"What's the scale number on 'somebody's being an idiot'?" Dante said.

He padded over to the bed and sat down. He was feeling jittery. Didn't stop him from taking a sip from his own soda, mind.

[boneyard_girl]

"An idiot in a situation with zombies?" She clarified. "Eleven, probably."

Sorry, was she supposed to be calming? Because... Ada was probably the wrong person for that. She tended more towards 'blunt.'

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante sighed.

"Kathy's world is dealing with some kinda zombie outbreak and she won't leave because she thinks she's going to rainbow and sunshine it out of existence," he said. "Almost had her there, but then Anders had to go heal some kid--"

He let out a frustrated noise into his soda can.

[boneyard_girl]

"And now she won't come back, will she?" She asked quietly, filling in the blanks. "'M sorry."

She was, too. She didn't really know Kathy, outside of having been in a class or two with her, but it clearly mattered it Dante.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Probably not." Dante gave a half-casual shrug. "Whatever. Fuck her."

He'd lost the energy to care sometime over the past few days. Maybe even back in that hotel room, after she ran out.

[boneyard_girl]

"Not the choice I'd make, but it's hers," she said with a shrug. Ada could respect wanting to protect what you saw as yours, even if she privately thought Kathy was going about it all wrong.

"But 'm glad you're back. An' your roommate actually healed some kid from bein' ....?" Dead. Undead? "Didn't know that was even a thing."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Just some kid who got bit by a zombie. Like in the movies?" Dante took a swig of his drink. "So if you get to 'em in time, you can put 'em back together. Don't know how much that's going to help when we found like a hundred of 'em just sitting around where nobody even knew a single zombie had got in."

This was gonna get out of hand. But maybe you needed to be a Grade-A born nihilist like Dante to see it.

[boneyard_girl]

"But....LA is so big, right...?" This was gonna get so out of hand, and Ada didn't need to be as much of a nihilist as Dante to see it. "Ain't no way to watch everyone or catch every bite."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Nope," Dante said. He found himself wishing there was something stronger in the can than just orange soda. "Whatever," he said, after a long moment of eyeing that can. "I'm not going back there again."

[boneyard_girl]

"Good, " she replied, and if there was a quiet note of viciousness in her tone, well, Ada was protective.

She was gonna lean over and hang upside-down to reach under her bed and come up again with a little bottle. Look, she wanted to have something, just from hearing that, so the top got unscrewed and some got poured right into her soda can.

"It burns," she warned, even as she offered Dante the bottle. Because, well, bathtub gin wasn't exactly known for being smooth.

[rebelseekspizza]

"So do all the fun things in life," Dante said, though his heart wasn't in it. It definitely was in topping up his can with the booze, though.

"Also, superheroes? Are dickheads."

[boneyard_girl]

"Sometimes burning sensation means you need to go see the doctor, not that you should do it again," Ada teased.

"Did ya meet a lot of them, then? Superheroes, I mean."