J,GoB, Saturday Afternoon

[doctorgingerspice]

You know what was a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon, if you were Will Halstead?

With a stack of medical journals, reading about some of the advances and discoveries of the past three years though strangely nothing Covid related, so weird.

And yeah, he could've done so anywhere, including his hotel room, but he had a craving for jelly doughnuts so really, why not kill two metaphorical birds with one stone, and settle in at a table with some pastries while reading those journals?

[ooc: so very, very open.]

Comments

[furrybluefreak]

After a couple of hours running around in the gymnasium, and doing a bit more porting than running to be honest, Kurt was starving. Still trying to figure out where everything was, he happened to wander by the pastry shop and immediately made a b-line inside for a much-needed sugar boost.

As he placed his order he looked around and saw Will sitting nearby. Kurt was pretty sure he had seen him at the welcome picnic, but he couldn't remember for sure. He had talked to and seen a lot of new people that day after all.

"Hi, I'm Kurt," he said with a wave and a friendly smile that hopefully wasn't too big and toothy, seeing as it made some people uncomfortable.

[doctorgingerspice]

They had briefly crossed paths, yes, but hadn't actually spoken during the picnic. And at least that brief encounter plus Will's carefully-honed poker face from years of working in an Emergency Department meant there was no staring, even though a furry blue teenager was still... a very new experience.

"Hi there, Kurt," he replied with a friendly smile of his own. "I'm Dr. Halstead." Another thing he didn't have a terribly large amount of experience with? Teenagers. Or at least, teenagers that weren't in the middle of some sort of medical trauma or crisis. So introducing himself that way felt oddly formal, but using just his first name would have felt too familiar considering he'd just met the kid, and...

[furrybluefreak]

"Oh, Dr. Halstead!" Kurt said with a nod. "Libby has handwavely been telling me all about her first shift at the clinic and how much she loves working with you and the rest of the staff there! It's nice to finally meet you."

[doctorgingerspice]

"Oh, well, that's," Will scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Good to hear. She had a pretty busy first day, didn't she?" One of the busiest the clinic had seen in a while, really.

[furrybluefreak]

"Trial by fire...I think that is how that saying goes, isn't it?" And now it was Kurt's turn to shuffle slightly and rub the back of his head as he mentally cursed himself for still struggling with certain words and phrases.

[doctorgingerspice]

"That's the one," Will nodded. "So, Kurt, how are you settling in?"

Hah! He got to ask that now, since a batch of students arriving meant he wa pretty definitively no longer 'the new guy'.

[furrybluefreak]

"Really well actually! My roommate and I have been working on getting everything set up. And the first week of classes went well." He hesitated a moment before adding "It... it almost feels too perfect, in a way."

[doctorgingerspice]

"How's that?" Will asked, who definitely did not have the same experience, having come here more or less against his will. "If you don't mind my asking," he amended, since they'd known each other for all of five minutes, and maybe the kid didn't want to spill everything to some adult he'd just met.

[furrybluefreak]

"Things weren't all that great back at the other school I had been at" Kurt said with a sad shrug. "People in general back in my world don't take too kindly to Mutants... like me."

[throughaphase]

"Some light reading?" Kitty asked as she wandered by with her coffee.

[doctorgingerspice]

Will absolutely did not startle at the sound of Kitty's voice, what are you talking about.

"Oh, you know," he said, super casually, "just... catching up on nearly three years' worth of medical advancements. No big deal."

[throughaphase]

"Oh, you can totally cover that all in an afternoon," she said. "Three years?"

[doctorgingerspice]

Will nodded. "That's the difference between what year it is back home, and what year it is here," he told her. "Which, honestly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around."

[throughaphase]

"Sometimes I think being time displaced for a short amount of time might be worse than being from different timelines or hundreds of years away," Kitty mused. "Because you're just a little bit off."

[doctorgingerspice]

"Exactly," Will nodded. "Things are familiar enough that most days I don't think about it, and then... someone'll make a reference to something that hasn't happened for me yet, and it just reminds me all over again."

[throughaphase]

"Hopefully that gets easier soon," she said. "I mean, it has to, based on everyone who's stuck around here."

Maybe she was generalizing!

[doctorgingerspice]

"The way I hear it, some people are literally stuck here," Will pointed out.

Like himself! Though he didn't have anything magical preventing him from leaving. Just, you know. Fear for his life. NBD.

[canlendanear]

Alara was really not liking the cold weather and she was definitely missing the weather back on Xelaya, it was one of the few things she missed about home.

She decided to wander down to the bakery and take the opportunity to also take some photos for her photography class along the way. She was being extra careful though so she wouldn’t break the camera - she would feel terrible if she couldn’t even make the camera she’d been given for class last a week.

“Afternoon,” she said with a smile when she spotted Will.

[doctorgingerspice]

"Hey there," he nodded back to her. "Take any good photos?"

He was... not good at this whole 'striking up conversation with strangers' thing, particularly teenagers, but he was trying!

[canlendanear]

"I think so," Alara said as she considered the camera, "I've never really done photography before, well I took photos in a teacher's office for instagram once?" then realised admitting she had broken into a teacher's office to an adult was probably not the smartest thing to do, even if it had been for a class assignment, "we don't really have any of this back home," she decided to settle on instead.

[doctorgingerspice]

To be fair, she technically hadn't mentioned the 'breaking in' part, so for all Will knew, she could've been visiting for office hours or something!

"What, cameras?" he asked, focusing instead on the second part of her statement.

[canlendanear]

“Well cameras like this,” Alara admitted, “or social media for that matter, I’m from another planet - Xelaya, it’s 2412 for me back home, so all of this has been a bit of a learning curve,”

[doctorgingerspice]

Look, Will was having enough of a time adjusting to a three year time difference. Almost four hundred was a huge difference, and for all that he and Kitty had been talking about how a slight difference was sometimes weirder than a big one, it was still a lot to wrap one's head around. Especially when coupled with the other thing Alara had mentioned.

"And me, I'm just getting used to the idea of there being life on other planets," he confessed.

[canlendanear]

“You didn’t think there was life on other planets before?” Alara was curious, tilting her head slightly, “Earth is the headquarters of the Planetary Union, back home” she told him, “it’s quite strange being on Earth in this time before all of that,”

[doctorgingerspice]

"Well, we didn't- don't? Have any proof," Will shrugged. Tenses were weird when time travel was involved. "We're really just getting started exploring our solar system, when I'm from."