fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

Oh thank everything, more food. Julius was still really hungry, two sandwiches were nothing to a young dragon. He'd seen his brother Justin plow through fifteen pizzas in ten minutes and still order more. Still, he was trying to keep a low profile, so he was polite and limited himself two only two plates of hamburgers, plus a plate of fries, three more plates of various sides, and a handful of cookies.

As hiss nose had predicted, it was all delicious. He wolfed his first plate of burgers down, but the second took him much longer. By the time he was ready to start on his sides, Julius was astonished to find he was full. Apparently, even his appetite was limited to a human scale now, which meant he'd lost both food and flying to his mother's seal. That realization almost made him weep. He loved eating.

Today was the worst day.

Edited 2020-05-09 15:45 (UTC)

Karolina had just one name left on her list of new kids to greet, and so she scanned the crowd for one last unfamiliar student, and --

"Julius?"

Her little wave was a little dorky. (Also, no, the last name on his tag did not match her list but she'd been in Fandom too long to expect paperwork to always be 100% accurate.)

"Hi, welcome to Fandom! I'm Karolina, the guidance counselor for the school."

His return wave was also dorky. Look, he had three bachelor degrees and played MMOs. Dorky was where he lived.

"Oh, uh, hello," he said, setting his plate aside and standing up to greet her properly. "I'm Julius Hhh--Quetz."

He was gonna nail that last name. At some point. Which was not today.

It was fine, Karolina could let it slide easily. He wasn't the first and would't be the last to come to this town under a different name.

"Nice to meet you, Julius," she said, holding her hand out for a shake. "How's it feel, so far?"

"Uhh..." Julius looked around and scratched his head. "Hard to say," he admitted. "Um. This is just the latest in a whole line of really unexpected things to happen to me today? I got off the plane in Michigan and somehow walked down a hall to Baltimore."

And all of that paled to what his mom had done to him.

"I think I'm at that point where nothing makes sense at all, so it almost doesn't matter how much it doesn't make sense. Uh. If that makes sense?"

"It does," Karolina assured him, her smile going a little wry. "I used to be a student here, and I also came here after a bunch of surprising stuff happened."

Including finding out her parents had locked away a whole part of her! Just, in her case, that meant finding out she had such a part to begin with.

Anyway. Her head tilted with a gentle look. "You doing okay? If that's a question you can answer right now."

"Of course." The response was automatic. To admit to being anything other than 'okay' was admitting weakness. And with as weak as he actually was, he couldn't afford to let people know just how okay he actually wasn't.

Karolina did not buy it, but Karolina was also far too nice to go poking at it. "Well, good," she said. "But still, if you ever need a listener, I'm available. It's sort of the entire reason the school pays me."

... Okay, she wouldn't poke at it more than that, anyway. Just, cheerfully and lightly!

"And on that note, I have something for you." She pulled out a small, glittery gift bag from her basket, then held the bag out for Julius. Inside it were a map of the island, another of where all the classrooms were located in the school, a vegan chocolate bar, and a handwritten little card with Karolina's contact info on it. "Just a little welcome gift."

He appreciated that Karolina. For reals.

"For me?" Try not to look so astonished, boyo. "Thank you! That's very kind." He started patting himself down. "I don't have anything to offer in return..."

Karolina held up her free hand. "Absolutely not necessary," she said. "If you really want, you can pay me back by checking in at my office sometime."

See how crafty she was?

... Although she was pretty sure his reaction to the gift meant a clarification was necessary. "Not with anything. Just to check in about how you're settling in."

That was...very much not how dragons did things. They lived for debts; the more people owed them, the more power they had.

Shockingly, Julius really hated the concept of debts and owing. So Karolina's refusal to even entertain the notion of a gift back was as gratifying as it was surprising. "Thank you," he said again, words spilling over themselves. "You really didn't have to. But - guidance counselor, you said?"

"That's right," Karolina confirmed brightly, complete with a nod. "Means I'm here to do my best to help with whatever problems any of you might have."

Julius's smile went a little wry at that. He had a major problem that nobody could help him with, sadly. But he appreciated the sentiment, at least.

And the chocolate.

"You already have," he said, holding up the map. "I, uh, sorta showed up without any luggage, so having this to navigate through the town's stores will help."

Because he was fastidious not to want to wear the same clothing for days on end, thanks.

Re: General Mingling [Summer 2020]

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So there was Ulysses, just minding his own business, bringing another hearty plate of food back towards the table, when he suddenly saw the hottest guy he'd seen in -- well, at least the last couple of weeks.

What he wanted to do was casually walk by the guy's table, maybe give him a nod or a casual "'sup?" or something.

What he did was not look where he was going and promptly trip on some uneven ground, managing to keep his balance but also flailing just a little in doing so, which sent not one but two tacos from his plate flying towards the ground.

One just barely missed his foot.

".... Fuck."

The second landed neatly in Julius' hand. "Sorry," he apologized, handing the taco back over. "Are you all right?"

If he'd still been in proper shape, he would have been able to catch both. He used to pour water out of a cup and catch it before it splashed on the ground as part of his training.

Ulysses just sort of stared at him for a second. Both because he found this situation mortifying, but also because this guy had just caught one of tacos he would have presumed to be uncatchable.

"I'm -"

Dying of embarrassment.

"Wait, why are you apologizing?"

"I didn't catch the other one," Julius said, still a little apologetic. "I'm out of practice. Do you want me to go get you another one?"

... What?

"Wh-- what?"

He was so smooth.

Also shaking his head. "No, I mean. It's my taco, that I dropped, so I think generally that makes it my own responsibility to get another. Or to, you know, just -- face the consequences of dropping it in the first place, which is mostly just having one less than I meant to, when I was getting them." Okay, he was babbling. Take a breath, Uly! "What I mean is... You really don't need to do that."

"Okay," Julius said and sat back down. "Uhh, I grabbed too much to eat anyway, if you want to share some of what I got?" He offered Uly one of the plates full of sides he'd grabbed back when he'd assumed he'd have his original-sized appetite.

Okay, none of this had gone the way Ulysses had originally pictured in his head. In the two seconds between spotting this guy and tripping all over himself, anyway.

Still, he should've done better than these two seconds of kind of just gaping at Julius as his brain tried to catch up.

"I..." Come on Uly, you can do this. "Yeah, sure. I mean, if it's cool with you, man."

"Plenty of food to go round and I don't like the idea of trashing it," Julius admitted. "Thought I was hungrier than I turned out to be."

Sadface. Stupid seal.

"Yeah, hate when that happens," Ulysses replied, mostly on autopilot.

He did, however, not spill anything further off his plate as he moved to take a seat.

Also, there was something obvious he hadn't said yet: "Oh, um. I'm Ulysses. Hi."

"Oh hi!" Julius said, wiping his hand on a napkin before offering it to Ulysses. "Julius. Uh Quetz. Julius Quetz."

Maybe with repetition, he'd make that sound natural sometime.

"You're not a new kid, right?"

"Nope," Ulysses replied, really popping that P at the end there while a distracted par of his brain made note of the vague similarity in their names.

Also wow, those were some really green eyes.

Oh, right, handshake. "Did my whole junior year here."

Julius nodded like he knew what a 'junior' year was. Look, he'd been tutored by dragons his whole life, and even absorbing human culture through books and TV and the internet left weird gaps sometimes.

"And came back again, so I'm guessing that means it's a good school?" he asked, keeping up the eye contact.