Second Floor Common Room, Monday Evening

[cantgetnorelief]

Savannah's letter from the past, and his conversation with her earlier today, had convinced Anders that there was something he had to do tonight that he hadn't done in a long, long time. And he was really past due for doing it.

So yes, that's right, he was in the common room with mixing bowls, baking tins, and a whole lot of boxes of cake batter

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[withoutverona]

There was a cupcake scent, there was food he didn't need to cook ... there was Romeo.

He eyed the cupcakes hungrily; he'd eaten all right in the past, but there'd been few pennies for sweets. "Are you cooking for everyone?"

[cantgetnorelief]

Anders waved at him with a spatula. "Everyone might be a little broad, but it is sort of a cupcake free-for-all, if you want some. Got chocolate there now, and there's some white cake with sprinkles, and I'm trying some lemon ones in the oven."

[withoutverona]

Romeo accepted a white cake with sprinkles, running his thumb around the edge to taste the frosting before he would take a bite. "I don't think I've met you yet," he said, tasting sugar. "I'm Romeo. I was new this semester, though it hardly seems fair to keep calling myself new so late into it."

Especially since, to him, it had been July yesterday.

[cantgetnorelief]

"This is my third year here, so you guys are all new to me," Anders replied. "You look familiar, but I don't think we've actually met met yet. I'm Anders."

[withoutverona]

"You're Anders who makes cupcakes," Romeo nodded; it paid to remember who cooked. "So do you graduate this year, or have you one more to go? I couldn't imagine how odd three years here would be, if three months are already so odd."

[cantgetnorelief]

"This is my last semester," Anders said with a touch of wistfulness. "And it seems like no matter how much I've gotten used to the place, there's always something new. I mean, sure, I don't freak out and hide any more when we have an invasion, because let me tell you, the shelves in Special Collections are a really, really bad idea for a hiding place, but this school still keeps me on my toes."

[withoutverona]

"So were you out blinking at the angels?" Romeo wanted to know. "My friends did that. I like to think I would have, if I had been here."

And then, because he had to know: "...should I ask what special collections are?"

[cantgetnorelief]

"Yeah," Anders said with a slight grimace, "I was out there for that, which the me from three years ago would've never done.

He paused, scratched at his ear with one finger, and added, "I've never been back there since, but it's the weird dangerous part of the library. Or something."

[withoutverona]

"I've only a year and a bit until I would graduate," Romeo mused. "Strange to think how I might change, here."

He had already stopped expecting people to hate him for his last name; that was something.

"And I can easily enough avoid that part of the library. I hope. Do the books there attack?"

[cantgetnorelief]

"Eh." Anders shook his head. "Considering all the hoops you have to jump through to get in there, in this town I'm guessing they probably do. Do you like it here so far?"

[withoutverona]

"I do, thus far," Romeo said seriously. "I like the people, and my classes are interesting even at their worst. The weather, I like less, but at least summer is coming. It took me a while to adjust to it not being like home, but I think I've stopped expecting that, and ... there's a girl, and she makes things better."

[cantgetnorelief]

"Yeah," Anders said with a knowing grin, "I bet that makes things better. What's weather like at home for you? Mine's just sun and heat, and occasionally rain, some snow if you're up in the mountains."

[withoutverona]

"it's in Southern California," Romeo said. "Probably much like your home -- warm, sunny, rain only when it's dramatic rarely."

"Are you seeing someone?"

[cantgetnorelief]

Anders coughed slightly. "Yeah, but they're graduated already, out in California too."

The pronoun could quite possibly be mistaken for an attempt at vagueness, rather than a plural.

[ecirpnellehada]

Spotting Romeo from where she was leaning her hip comfortably against a spot of counter, Adah interrupted her attempts to lick frosting from her fingertips to offer him an idle waggle of fingers in greeting, and then dutifully returned to the task at hand.

[withoutverona]

Romeo had forgotten a few things in his four months away, but he was still pretty sure an unsolicited wave from Adah was the equivalent of a soliloquy from anyone else at school.

So he was grinning when he waggled his fingers back at her. "I think the chocolate is best," he noted. "And ... I assume you didn't have a good week, but did you at least avoid the statues?"