the roof, Friday night

[nadiathesaint]

Yes. Nadia was back on the roof of emo.

Yes. She had her guitar of emo.

So, it stood to reason, that she was playing a song of emo.

After her lunch, she was pretty sure at least one of her better friends was now mad at her. Though watching the movie with Blair and crew had been fun. But then she'd felt guilty about having fun at Blair's

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[walter_n_wires]

After much of the day spent sleeping, Walter was restless. And itchy. He had a couple of sandwiches he'd thrown together and a bottle of water and had headed for the roof because you never knew who you'd find emoing up there.

When he opened the door to the roof and heard guitar, he assumed it would be one of two people.

He waited for a break in the music. "Hi."

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia tensed, but tried her best not to show it. She concentrated on her finger work on the guitar as she started playing a quiet, repeating phrase.

Her voice wasn't much louder than the guitar. "Hi."

She wondered how long he'd been listening.

[walter_n_wires]

"Do you mind if I join you?" he asked, already taking a spot nearby and pulling out a sandwich. "Want one?"

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia shook her head, watching Walter carefully. He wasn't acting like he hated her . . . but who really knew? "No, that's okay. Thank you, though."

She wasn't quite sure what to say to him. There were a lot of thoughts all whirling through her head. "How are you?"

[walter_n_wires]

"Itchy." His stitches were driving him crazy. "Couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd get some air. How are you? And Lucas?"

[nadiathesaint]

"No longer a tree," Nadia said, avoiding saying how she was. "He seems pretty happy about that. Why are you itchy?"

She thought she might know the answer to that, but saying so would require mentioning talking to Pippi earlier, which she really didn't want to do.

[walter_n_wires]

"Stitches." That was awkward to explain. "There was an accident yesterday morning."

Subject chage? Oh, yes please. "How did Lucas return to human?"

[nadiathesaint]

"No idea. He just kind of . . . did. One of those Fandom things." Nadia narrowed her eyes at Walter. "What kind of accident?"

Was she looking for digs against Victor? Yeah, okay, so maybe. She was a bad, bad person. Going straight to hell. Yep.

[walter_n_wires]

"Strange." Walter took a bite of his sandwich and used the pause while he chewed to try to think of how to phrase that answer. "Victor had a new mutation come in yesterday morning. He sort of... molted, like a lizard and was suffocating in the shed skin."

He paused and scratched lightly at his arm. "The new mutation is very, very sharp claws."

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia already knew that, of course. But it was still a shock to hear it from Walter. She sighed internally. She just couldn't do it. She couldn't be mean.

"Are you both okay?"

[walter_n_wires]

Walter nodded. "Victor's learning control of the claws now. He didn't need many stitches."

"By the time I leave Fandom, I'm going to have an interesting way of telling stories. 'This scar is from robots. This one from my boyfriend. This one is from giant purple bunnies from outer space.'" He laughed and took another bite of sandwich.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia kind of wanted to yell at Walter that his boyfriend had hurt him--made him need stitches--and that maybe that wasn't such a little thing to be talking to off-handedly about, but she couldn't get the words out.

Because she was pretty sure she had no right to say anything about it, at all. After all, she was just the dumb girl with a crush. She looked down at her guitar, then out over Fandom and smiled without humor. "Heh. Yeah. Giant . . . purple bunnies. That's funny."

Her fingers struck a bad note and she winced. "I hope that's not what's coming next. Because I like bunnies. I don't want them to suck."

[walter_n_wires]

"No. Maybe the muppet rats will stage a rebellion."

Let's try that subject change again.

"How have you been? No problems with Belthazor or teasing about the book-that-will-not-be-named?"

[nadiathesaint]

"Well, Bel apparently got Blair to watch When Harold Met Sarah to explain what 'the big O' was, but other than that, No Belthazor problems." Yeah, and that was her side stepping the "how are you?" question again. "And no, but Professor Mac has been pretty quiet in class this week."

[walter_n_wires]

Walter stopped for a moment to assure himself that Nadia had been speaking English in the first part of that answer.

"He had Blair watch what? And what is 'the big O'?"

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia suddenly realized exactly why Bel must have decided to tell Blair to watch a movie instead of actually explaining anything.

"When Harold Met Sarah. It's a movie. If you watch the diner scene, you'll figure it out."

Because there was no way in hell she was going to say the word, out loud, to Walter. Especially not after the Kiss.