fandomhigh | Library, Tuesday

"He seemed that way to me," Kenzi said, tentative. She licked her spoon, then pointed at the bottle. "And pretty upset about all of it. He sucked down one of these in about five minutes. Said he couldn't get drunk anyway, so..." She shrugged, still more than a little disturbed by that. "I'm glad you guys are okay, 'cause wow, so not his fault he's hot in a priest's outfit, and Fandom is crazy." She shook her head dolefully, and took another bite of ice cream. "He introduced me to the demony-guy he's hooked up with. Um. Ifrit?"

It would take entirely too long to get into the messy backstory, most of which Kenzi probably didn't want to know.

"It really isn't," she agreed, instead. "It's complicated. Most things are, really, aren't they?"

She tilted her head, curiously, at the other girl.

"He showed you his GF?" she asked. She was giving her a onceover, wondering about the implications of that. "Did you get to see his Hell Fire?"

"When he blows shit up?" Kenzi beamed. "That. Was. Awesome. Although we forgot to blow up more crap in the park, when I met Ifrit. Got distracted talking, and all. Cookies instead of booze." She had definitely gotten the idea that Seifer was still hung up on his ex, from all that. But also... "He seems like a guy who'd make a good friend, you know? Even if he's not all about the rules all the time."

"He's never about the rules," Rinoa laughed. "He's never boring, and he's usually in some kind of trouble, but he's loyal, and ... yeah. He's a good friend. He wasn't such a bad boyfriend, either."

She took another spoon of ice cream, thoughtfully. "And he could use more friends around here," she added. "It's hard for him, back home."

She wasn't sure it was okay to say more than that. He deserved his privacy.

Kenzi didn't ask, 'cause, well, that could be a lot of things. She just nodded and said, "I think we're good. And I'd like to have him as a friend. At first it was just to not feel like a 'ho, or to feel like I had nothing to worry about, sexing up a guy I didn't know, but now... yeah." She slurped ice cream off her spoon, and said tentatively, "And hey, weird way to say hi to you too, but. You seem pretty cool as well."

Rinoa considered telling Kenzi that Seifer did regularly sex up girls he didn't know, habitually, but decided that wouldn't actually make her feel any better. Probably the opposite, in fact.

"Same to you," Rinoa said with a laugh. "It's nice to meet you, and, um. I ... don't think I apologized for putting ... drama all over your Twitter feed? I was having a lot of angst about cheating on my boyfriend with my ex, and then discovering they'd finished the triangle themselves ... didn't exactly help."

She eyed the bottle of whiskey thoughtfully. "Should we?" she asked.

Very much the opposite, yeah. So just as well, even though Seifer had said something that made her wonder about that.

Kenzi snorted. "Dude, anyone who doesn't drama over that probably doesn't have a pulse." She grinned, and looked at the bottle. "I think we deserve a shot. Why not?" She shook her head. "I have a boyfriend now. Didn't then. Celebrate!"

"Oh, nice!" Rinoa reached for the bottle, working the cap off and hoping that Kenzi wasn't going to mock her for being a lightweight. What? She went for girly drinks, usually. Maybe becoming a Sorceress had upped her tolerance.

That ... might totally have happened, sure.

"Congratulations," Rinoa laughed. "Who's the lucky guy? I ... still have the same awesome boyfriend I had before, even though we have both now slept with my ex. Which is seriously weird, but, um ..."

She trailed off. Hrm. There wasn't much that was actually celebration-worthy about that last part, exactly.

"Let's just drink," she decided.

"To... persistence! Or tolerance! Or something." Not to polyamory, Rinoa wasn't Bo, after all. And the sitch was emotional and complicated, and Kenzi was so glad it hadn't gotten worse.

Kenzi wasn't a lightweight, but the mocking would only happen if there was vomiting. "Toby Logan. He's on the Student Council. I should've campaigned more for him. But yeah, he's cool, we've kind of been semi-dating all summer anyway, doing day-trips to the places the island visited. Kinda glad it *wasn't* official before, or..." Um. Foot, meet mouth. "Yeah. Sorry? I mean. Is that... going okay? With your boyfriend, I mean. You said it was, so..."

Rinoa took a swig from the bottle. A little one. The whiskey burned, and she was just happy she didn't cough it back up.

"I don't think I know Toby," she said, handing the bottle over. "But we weren't ourselves. It's not really cheating if you're out of your gourd, and it's kind of ... it's worse but easier at the same time if you both did, I guess? We're ... taking some time. I mean, he's still my Knight, and that's a whole other situation, and he's still my boyfriend, but ... I think it'll be okay. I hope so, anyway."

She exhaled, messily. "Would you believe this past weekend was actually worse?"

The whiskey might be helping. Maybe she needed more.

Maybe she needed to not get drunk enough that Belle fired her.

"Plus you had amnesia!" Kenzi remembered, and if that wasn't a get-out-of-trouble-free card, what was?

"Knight, yeah, Seifer mentioned that too. About him and Squall." Which. More issues. "Also, being mercenaries, which kind of confused me. I didn't know you could be both." She frowned, and took a swig from the bottle, letting it burn down her throat. "Whoa. Waaaait. How could this last weekend be worse? Dude. The only thing happening here were the 3-minute-dates!"

"I wasn't here," Rinoa said, reaching for the bottle again. "A friend had ... some really bad things happen, back home, and needed help. It was one of those things. And so we went, and we helped, but it was ..."

She shuddered, and took a long swig from the bottle. The burn was kind of pleasant, when you were expecting it.

"'Knight' means something different than it does here," she explained, back on a safer topic. "Here it's something about courts and kings, I guess? Back home, a Knight is the sworn protector of a Sorceress. I don't know if you can be both. Squall doesn't consider himself a mercenary any more. Knights are rare enough that the question doesn't come up much."

Kenzi had yet to experience one of those things, but from her own experience, personal shit was always worse. "Sorry?" She gave Rinoa a worried frown. "Suckiness? Did everybody come back in one piece, at least?" That was the priority.

"Okay. Hunh." Kenzi held out her hand for the bottle, willing to let Rinoa share when she was ready, though. "Um, here they're kinda... fighters, yeah. Or they were, like, a hundred-umpty-something years ago. For the country, and the royalty. Now you can get given a knighthood if you're a really good musician or actor." She shrugged. "They're romantic in the books. Rescuing girls. Fighting dragons... so wait, Squall is protecting this Sorceress? That's cool."

"Everyone from here," she said, nodding. "The person we went to help is okay, too. We saved most of his friends, even."

There had been a few people they couldn't save, which went without saying, and which deserved a quick sip from the bottle before she passed it back to Kenzi again. (Feeling a bit guilty for hogging the alcohol, yes.)

"It's still romantic," she said, a light smile playing on her lips. "Don't freak out, okay? But ... I'm her. The Sorceress he's protecting. He's been my Knight even longer than he's been my boyfriend."

"Oh, cool. That's good." Most of his friends. It sucked that it wasn't all, but Kenzi wasn't that much of an optimist. "But I'm guessing it was intense and all." Rinoa's expression kind of gave that away. And the extra shot. "Must be a good friend."

Kenzi stared a little, then laughed. "No. Way. Seriously? Like, he's your bodyguard, and you're the one with the magic, and he's assigned to throw himself in the path of a bullet and... oh, wow. You guys are like an epic fantasy romance movie!" That deserved another shot, before handing the bottle back to Rinoa. "Shot!"

"Very," Rinoa said, nodding. She didn't want to think about Jono's friends, or the bodies in the church. She couldn't, dammit.

Which was why she was taking the bottle back again, even though this was ... really, far too many shots for her. They would be catching up soon, too. She was so getting fired for this.

"Something like that," she laughed. "He's supposed to protect my spirit and guard my soul. And the bodyguard thing, too."

She took a small sip before handing the bottle back. "To romance," she said. "So tell me about you and Toby. Toby of the brain tumor that doesn't exist?"

Kenzi hiccuped a laugh, and toasted Rinoa with the bottle. Not buzzed. Well. Maybe a little? "Protect your spirit and guard your souuul. Awww. That's... neat. Very cool. That stuff, it needs protecting too." She grinned all over her face at the mention of Toby. "Umm, well, we're both from Canada, north of here, but we never met before this summer. He's a little younger than me, but... we had the same kind of stuff happening for us before here."

She paused, taking a shot, but hey. Rinoa had been up-front about a lousy weekend, and the weirdness with her boyfriend and her ex, and it wasn't like Toby wasn't honest about the foster kid thing. She could be a little honest too. "Toby's a foster kid, I blew off my parents two years ago, about. So we get each other. I tried to steal his apple at my first welcome picnic, and he thought it was funny."

Which, come to think of it, must've been telepathy. That sneak.

"...and he's a very good kisser? We're still having fun just finding out stuff. You know?"

"I haven't talked to my dad in a while," Rinoa admitted, "and Squall and Seifer are both orphans. It's ... I think I get it."

Okay, Squall had turned out to have a father, but one who didn't know he even existed until Squall was 17, and vice versa, so. That sort of felt like orphan-with-an-asterisk.

"It's rough," she said, nodding. "Why were you stealing his apple? Flirting, or because you wanted it?"

Either was a legitimate answer, in her mind.

"And good kissers are always a bonus," she added.

"Yeah." Not exactly the same, whole different worlds, but there was stuff that was more important than that. Kenzi took a swig, and handed back the bottle. Then grinned. "Both? And to see if I could? He had it in the front pocket of his hoodie, if I'd managed to distract him that hard, wellll..." She nodded vigorously. "Yes. Much bonus. I went on the 3-minute dates, and there were guys I liked, but it just kind of... solidified? That I liked him best of all." She tilted her head. "He has really pretty eyes." And oh God, never let her sound like that in her head around Toby.

"Okay, fess up," Rinoa said, putting the cap on the bottle and setting it down. No more booze for her right now, thanks. "Did you go on the three-minute things to see if you wanted other guys, or to try to make him jealous, or did you just get signed up for it and you rolled with it?"

"First one," Kenzi admitted, swaying only a tiny bit. "Didn't tell him I went 'til after. Then to check if he'd care, I guess? And he was all worried for a minute. 'Til we got that straightened out. I think being around Seifer made me worried, you know? But I bet that was, like, ninety percent crazy and priest's costume." She grinned wickedly. "Bo's the one that got signed up and had to roll with it, not me."

"There's nothing wrong with going just to go, either," Rinoa said, shrugging. "I had to do a lot of the making-him-jealous stuff, at the beginning. It's a long story. But it's also good to know for sure if you're wanting to settle down or not. Better to be sure than to end up hurting somebody."

She flipped through her mental file of students and frowned. "I don't think I know Bo, either," she said. "I really need to get out more."

"Yup, that," Kenzi said, nodding vigorously. "So yeah. We're dating now. Not much different than before, just with smoochies." She grinned, and took another bite of ice cream. "Bo's the Security Person. Chick. Here. Not a student. We're buds."

Well. She felt perfectly comfortable breaking into Bo's place. That made them buds, right?

Library, Tuesday

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