(Untitled)

[headofaccounts]

Sterling's Gold.

Pete almost doesn't believe it when he sees the book on the Rec Room shelf. Still, when he sees the title followed by the words 'by Roger Sterling' on the spine, he pulls it out, staring, slightly dumbfounded, at the dust jacket (the ink sketch of the author on the back isn't bad) until he reaches a chair, then proceeding to sit

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[abbysciuto]

The snow was gone and the warm weather was back. Not as warm as it'd be in a few months, but still, to go from needing scarves and mittens to 75 degrees and sunny was really nice. Abby was enjoying the chance to dress accordingly, so she'd chosen a short schoolgirl skirt and a black ruffly tank top and paired it with stompy boots, wristbands, and even a collar. She was way more gothed out than she even normally was, but that was fun and fine, even for a day when she was just going to the compound to check on some things in the lab.

She needed to grab a reference text from the bookshelf before she really got started if it'd give her one, and she bounced into the rec room, passing the slightly irritated-looking guy (Peter Something, maybe?) and greeting him with her usual cheerful "Hi."

[headofaccounts]

Her get-up, as it were, was enough to shake Pete from his reverie completely. He'd seen a lot on the island that would have been absolutely unacceptable back home, but this had to be his first encounter with goth. And, honestly, he didn't know what to think of it. That being said, he at least wasn't thinking about the book anymore.

"- Hi." Based on inflection, it was almost a question.

[abbysciuto]

"Bookshelf give you something you weren't expecting?" she asked breezily, glancing at him over her shoulder and scanning the shelf for the book she was looking for, or at least something similar.

He had that confused face, and the book on his lap might be the culprit. Or he might just be confused in general. He definitely wasn't new-arrival confused, though. That was a different confused face.

[headofaccounts]

"Yeah," he replied, voice suggesting that both the bookshelf and the doorway had yielded surprises today. (They had, to his displeasure on at least one point.) Shifting, he closed the book, placing it on his knee. "Something like that."

[abbysciuto]

"I don't know why it likes doing that. It's like it has the worst case of the Mondays combined with always finding gum on it shoe," she mused, scanning titles with the tips of her fingers.

"Fortunately, you don't have to read it once you realize it's an illustrated history of worms or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with worms, if that's your reading material of choice."

[headofaccounts]

"It's not," Pete said flatly. (And no self-respecting person, as far as he was concerned, would choose such a topic for light reading.)

Then, in an attempt to address the elephant solely in his corner of the room: "Do you always dress like that?"

[abbysciuto]

Abby glanced down at herself to make sure she hadn't put on one black sock and one argyle sock, but nope, she'd managed to look like she didn't dress herself in the dark today. His tone had a little bit of she didn't know what, but he wasn't rude exactly either.

"Pretty much yeah," she acknowledged easily and comfortably. "Except when it's snowing. I'm not a fan of frostbite."

[headofaccounts]

"When are you from?" he blurted out, unable to keep himself quiet. He was genuinely curious, largely because she looked like she was about his age. The only explanation for her dress that he could think of was that she was from a different time period. The 1960s didn't exactly allow for anything so out of the ordinary. Then again, Lucy was the only person he knew who was from any time close.

[abbysciuto]

Maybe politeness wasn't his strong suit, but then, he had a little bit of a Northeastern accent, so that might be expected. She wasn't offended either way. The where/when you were from question was something everyone asked.

"I arrived from 2006, Washington DC," she replied cheerfully. "What about you?"