[Speed Dating, Round Two]

[callofkaren]

With the first round done without any hiccups, Karen spent half an hour straightening things up, checking names off as the second group of half uncomfortable, half vaguely excited looking potential daters showed up, and soon it was much like the first. The spiel was the same, drinks were handed out, and luckily getting everyone in order came easily

Comments

[wishesandsmoke]

It's a little disappointing, Eden finds, to have been separated from Lily for all this. She expected that, even if the men all turned out to be duds, she'd have Lily to look forward to, able to glance around the room and share looks, joke about it all afterward and compare notes. Instead, Lily's already finished her round and Eden's here, sipping water instead of the other offered drinks, feeling a bit stupid. Claire was incredibly encouraging about this, more so even than Lily, and it's probably a good idea, putting herself back on the market, but she's bad at this, her thoughts drifting away from the men who come and go.

If nothing else, at least she might get a few decent conversations out of the night and she can say she tried.

[cool_coolcool]

"I think the camera's making people uncomfortable," he said, in lieu of an introduction, said camera in hand, the rec record light blinking.

"I thought capturing the night on film would be a good idea, but you can say so, if you don't like it. Some people don't like being filmed. They're afraid of what the result might teach them about themselves."

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden laughed, a bit surprised, and shook her head. "No, it's fine," she said. "I don't mind cameras. Although I can't say I've spent much time in front of them as myself." It reminded her of Gideon, actually. He'd always been careful about his cameras, had rarely done things like this, but she recognized the impulse. Besides, anything frightening there was to learn about herself, she'd learned long ago.

[cool_coolcool]

"You have large eyes. Large eyes usually look good on film. They project emotion in a more exaggerated way, which cuts down on the work required from the audience to interpret it," he said, knowing that she'd been behind the camera, even if she didn't know it.

The first season of Heroes had been incredible. It had lost it's direction, at bit, from there.

[number_unlucky]

I'd done this speed dating thing before, once, in med school. That time had been even more awkward than this one, namely because it had been thoroughly populated by cocky and/or socially awkward second year students who hadn't slept properly in weeks and who had little else to talk about besides what random fun fact they'd read in an old issue of JAMA.

This, though--well, there'd be island weird shit, and that was always an inexhaustible topic, and I'd learned how to push away arrogant men from the best teacher on Earth, since then.

I just didn't know why I was so nervous. It wasn't like this was committing to any kind of steady dating again.

[cool_coolcool]

She was the hottest woman in the world. Maxim had said so. Abed didn't actually read Maxium, or afford it any authority on the subject of attractive women, but he knew her standing in the hierarchy of beauty as dictated by American media, and that made her intimidating, at least in a very vague sense.

He'd never liked House, but that wasn't really her fault.

"Hi, I'm Abed," he said, claiming the chair across from hers. The camera, he'd stowed away in the bag hanging at his hip. He should've brought along a camera assistant if he'd wanted to participate at the same time the evening was captured on film.

[number_unlucky]

"Hi, Abed," I said, giving him a faintly nervous smile. He couldn't have been more than twenty or so, but that didn't mean that I wasn't slightly worried about this whole project. "I'm Remy. Where are you from?"

A little dorky-looking, but he had a kind face, if a little...blank, for some reason.

[cool_coolcool]

"I was born in Palestine, but my father moved us to Colorado when I was a baby. We live in Riverside, but I go to school in Greendale. My dorm is there," he said, his hands moving in tight gestures through the explanation. Abed had a tendency to think of home as wherever he spent the most time.

The study room on campus was as much a home to him as his father's house.