finchwoodacademy | (no subject)

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WHO: Liam Blumenthal & Kodi Hansen.
WHEN: Friday, November 23 during a Steelers game ~~that we made up~~.
WHERE: Wands boys' common room.
WHAT: Football good, feelings bad. Two nerds commiserate over weird monster-fighting-school stuff.
WARNINGS: Language.

There are six senior wands and six junior wands and neither the senior nor the junior currently camped out in the Wands boys' common room could claim either title. They're freeloaders, sure, but at least they're freeloaders with leftovers. Leftovers and football.

Kodi, stretched out across an entire sectional, pushes her mashed potatoes around their plate as she watches the halftime announcement flash across the screen. While Steelers games always pump her full of adrenaline and creative curses, today both feel... lacking. Even the Steelers can't distract her from a days-old conversation and it's been eating her from the inside out. She's convinced that she's hours away from it bursting out of her chest like she's Buddy Benson. And that would just be messy. So, so messy.

She glances briefly at Liam before she smashes the gravy volcano. "Do you ever wonder if you were better off staying in Pittsburgh?"

Liam has never been a sports person, but you don't grow up in the Paris of Appalachia without having a bit of steel in your blood. And a working knowledge of football comes with that. So, he's sort of half paying attention to the screen, half lost in thought when Kodi's question hits him and drags him back to reality.

"Oh," Liam starts around a mouthful of reheated dinner roll. "All the time."

It comes out too fast. Flippant. He shoots Kodi a wide-eyed look, because even if it sounds jokey, it's not a lie at all. "Uh, why?"

"'Cause you're not the only one," She replies with a shrug. She asked but she isn't necessarily willing to tell, at least not without more info. "What's your read, then? Were you meant for Finchwood?"

A short hum leaves him, gaze dropping with the tone of his thoughtful song to the plate in his lap. Liam moves the reheated turkey around with the remains of his dinner roll. As he goes over how he wants to answer, a series of small changes play out in his expression. A wince, a wry frown. He looks up and off to the side. That Kodi has the same thoughts - he isn't sure if that's reassuring or not.

"I'm good at what I do here. So, like, in a way, yeah?" He says, chin tilting up. Confidence has always been something hard earned for Liam, and he clings to every bit he's managed to come by honestly. "But, I don't know..." Here, he falters, sounding unsure when he redirects his attention back to his friend. "It's, um...lonely?"

Kodi forgets the fork in her mouth for a moment and a lump of mashed potato falls back onto her plate. It's totally elegant. But then she's back to Earth, and chewing, and considering Liam. That he agrees with her is... a surprise. It shouldn't be — if she'd only wanted validation and admiration she would have asked Pearl, but broaching the topic with the gangly boy in front of her was still a conscious choice to talk to someone whom she knew would at least try to see it from her perspective even if he didn't agree.

She just didn't expect him to already be there.

"It's–" she pauses and catches herself before she can concur, setting her plate down on the coffee table, "But you've got your friends, right? And you seem to get along fine with your squad."

He dips his head, heat creeping up into his face, reddening his neck. "Ah, more here than back home, for sure." That response comes readily enough, though his voice strains against him when he tries to go on. "It's, um, it's- you know, the Contract. We can't really- like, we're different from everyone who doesn't go to this school. Friends, family. There's so many secrets. And, I just don't know. I worry. In that cathedral? Any one of us could-"

Liam cuts himself off, lips pressing into a flat line before he speaks again. "I guess I should just watch Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers or something. Need a reminder about camaraderie on the battlefield."

Kodi briefly considers retorting with Adam has some tips about camaraderie but wisely keeps her mouth shut. For once. Instead she shifts on the couch, full-out lying across it with feet knocked over the armrest opposite her, and picks up a throw pillow that's suddenly really interesting. It's something to pay attention to—to look at—to distract herself from feeling awkward, or vulnerable, or anything at all like someone who's ever even heard of the concept of having feelings.

"Your being lonely," she starts, holding the pillow above her face and staring at it. Intently. "What's that have to do with people biting it in the Shadow World?"

His expression is all cautious hesitation at first, tongue poking the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. It's a hard question to answer, because the answer is...melodramatic? Selfish? Built on too much anxious worrying? Maybe all of those things.

"Sometimes it feels like we shouldn't, um, get too close. Because, what if something happens?" Expression crunched in concentration, Liam waves his hands as he explains, weaving his words from the air. "But then, I wonder, am I just isolating myself? Or is this whole thing isolating?"

"It's all isolating," Kodi replies without hesitation, spurred on by the fact that Liam just voiced her side of her and Adam's conversation, albeit in a tiny fraction of words. "Getting close is a recipe for getting hurt."

"Of course, Adam would say you're making a mistake." The Swords boy's name is punctuated with Kodi ~~chucking~~ tossing the pillow at the other, empty end of the couch. For no particular reason.

Liam doesn't immediately respond, attention fixed on the pillow. It's a point to focus on while he shuffles through his thoughts. They don't seem to want to lay together nicely, though, because his first reply is an unsure, "Maybe he's right? I don't know."

He sets his plate down and scrapes his fingers over the back of his head in a sudden burst of nerves. Going all-in on bonding hadn't been easy, but he'd done it. And twelve had stuck. His regrets only came after the kidnappings at that nightmare circus brought their isolation from non-persona users into sharp relief. "Like, I think, maybe, either way, it's going to hurt? And...our classmates - they're all we have."

Cheeks puffing out, Liam exhales. Nothing he says feels solid enough. "Do you, um. I don't know. What's your feeling on it?"

"I–" Kodi searches for a comforting distraction—first by picking lint off the hem of her Steelers jersey, then by glancing at the couch ad on the television—but nothing fits, probably because they're all pretty weak. "Thought– I think that separating myself is... a good idea." She doesn't sound that positive about it anymore but she pushes on (stubbornly). "They're all we have but we've got to leave them again, right? Like we did last time? And I didn't want to–" God, she needs that pillow back so she can throw it all over again.

"There's no right answer, except when I told Adam he said I was wrong and that that I'm hurting everyone else by not getting too close. So now we've got the only fucked up squad and apparently it's all my fault for looking out for myself." It's uncomfortable to admit out loud, making her stomach churn and her cheeks warm, and she itches her neck to try and pull some of her attention away from the physiological side effects of sharing feelings. Ugh.

As Kodi fidgets, Liam shifts, sitting up straight and drawing is long legs up and tucking them beneath him. And he nods along, listening, his head tilting to the side a bit like a concerned puppy. "Well, first of all, you all do very well in the Shadow World, and I think that speaks to your squad not being fucked up."

He hangs for a moment after, letting his attention wander back to the television. And, once there, finds that the game has utterly lost his interest. "But, you’re right. There isn't really a right answer, is there?" Liam squints away from the television, back to Kodi. "You have a point - and a right to protect yourself. Adam has a point, about being responsible for each other. Do you think you'll be able to, I don't know, find a compromise somewhere?"

She gives a half-hearted shrug. "He's really pissed. Enough to run to Florida." With Suzy, to Lee's, denying Kodi at least two whole people to make out with and thus feel better about herself. (Never mind that Lee was going home anyways...)

She doesn't like not knowing what to do. She prides herself on confidence and smarts... except for how she's been devoid of both all week, and it fucking sucks. Brow furrowed and lips halfway to a pout, she burrows herself into the corner of the sectional. "I'm just tired of that feeling like... whatever you're working for is out of your hands. When I work and train harder apparently I get told I'm alienating people, but if I try to get closer to them I'll be working on relationships that probably won't last into college because why would they?"

There's a sigh and maybe it's a bit more dramatic than her current situation warrants. "There's no fucking YouTube tutorial for going away to Monster Academy." She knows: she looked.

Liam's reply is an involuntary huff of air. "Oof." He scratches his eyebrow, trying to think of something more constructive to say. At first, all he can settle on is a breathless, "I hear you." But he's not done speaking, even if he's not sure what he wants to say.

"Maybe..." Again his head tilts to the side, a hard angle to the right, like he's trying to shake his thoughts out of his ear. "I guess you-- both of us need to decide what's more important." He hesitates, thinking of something else. "Though, really, nothing's permanent. So, you've gotta decide what's really going to be good for you, you know? Given what we're facing, is protecting ourselves better? Or is embracing letting people in better?" He shrugs. "I really...don't know."

Kodi only hms at first and sits, considering, fiddling idly with the hem of her pants. After a few too many moments she finally remarks, "I guess we need an alternative to wallowing in family fomo," with a sad glance cast to her reheated Thanksgiving meal, "try to see. Compare. Test the options. Even if I think it's a waste of time."

"Science," Liam returns, tone far more sprightly than his earlier slow, pondering musings had been. The hint of a smile tugs up on one side of his face. "Always an excellent alternative to wallowing, I agree. We should be doing."

Then his expression changes, softens, still reflecting. "For what it's worth? I can't...imagine, after all this, a life after Finchwood where Kyra's not in it. Or you or Neal or Nora. Any of my squadmates. My housemates." He wrinkles his nose. "Ice castles and haunted clown shit kind of sticks you together more than most high school stuff."

Kodi hesitates for a while before she gives a small nod. She doesn't want to get attached, but she has. Now the question is whether to cut those ties or strengthen them, which are both equally scary options for her (though she'll never admit it). "You won't be rid of me," she replies, poking him in his (pointy, fat-free, bony) side, "which is both a promise and a threat."

He snickers, a wincing giggle when Kodi nudges him. "Actually," while he's buckled forward trying to avoid that ticklish feeling, Liam scoops the dinner roll back up off his plate and shoves it in his mouth. "I'm skipping my senior year, folding myself up, hiding in your luggage, and going to college with you. Adventure."

"You know I'm gunning for Carnegie, right?" She points out, snapping her fingers at his food. "So you'd be coming home with me. Not much of an adventure, or much quiet, but you would get the whole Hansen-Ortiz experience." And what an experience it was.

Pushing back the wave of homesickness the remark brought her (and probably her thousandth that day alone), she reaches for her own plate. It's time to conquer the gravy mountain. "You should start learning your Pokémon if you want to fit in."

"Oh, that's great!" Liam's enthusiasm is genuine, clear from the smile on his face. Not just that Kodi will, ostensibly, still be nearby, but Carnegie - that's a great school. "And it's not like the Burgh's boring. Although, I'm, like, at least a gen behind on my pokemon." He taps his fingers against his mouth, humming. "Maybe I can start nicknaming Shadows after them, for practice."