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

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!event: welcome picnic

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

There were plenty of chairs and tables by the bonfire, and some further out on the lawn for anyone who might want to enjoy their food alone, or just gaze at the new folks and try to figure them out. All of these potential activities were valid!

[OCD is up! This is the picnic post for general mingling. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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And here Ulysses had thought he'd stay cool if Julius ever popped back up again, because, you know. That disappearing act got kind of tiresome. But then Julius was there and lit up and -- fuck, but Uly was weak.

Curse of the face, indeed.

But he also had a plate in one hand, phone in the other, making this even more awkward. There was an incoming hug, from Julius, why did his hands have to be full? A few seconds went by before he realized he could at least slide his phone into his pocket. There wasn't a convenient surface to set the plate on, so he was stuck awkwardly holding that to the side, but at least it freed up one arm to beckon Julius the rest of the way in with.

"Heyyy, man."

Smooth.

In his defense, he'd gotten sucked into a video game and had been trapped there with a bunch of other people that had happened to!

...It was really hard to explain beyond that, though, ~~because I haven't finished reading that series by the same author~~.

Julius was happy to take the hug, at least, and seemed a little less jumpy when it came to physical displays of affection. Wandering around in a hostile world with a band of quasi-refugees would do that! And had played hell on his vocabulary. "It's so good to see you," he said with soft earnestness.

Edited 2021-01-02 18:49 (UTC)

Fuck this all straight to hell.

Ulysses did his best to hug him back with just the one arm, like part of his brain wasn't currently bluescreening about being this close to Julius. Who was somehow even hotter than he remembered?

"Yeah," he said. "Uh, you too."

That's what happened when you spent better part of a year - at least in relative time - fighting and running from video game monsters. His muscles were much more defined than they'd been in October and his shirts, bought over the summer, clung to his arms and chest in a way they hadn't before.

"Sorry for vanishing. Uh. Again," he said, a little lamely. "Sucked into a video game for a few months. It was a whole...thing."

Yeah, the muscles were definitely part of why this was probably finally going to take over the throne of Uly's favorite memory of him.

(Until now, it had been that time Julius had readjusted his flower crown for him at that one party. Obviously.)

"Wait, what?" he said, as he very reluctantly pulled properly back and away. "Are you okay?"

"I..." Julius gave a sheepish shrug and then runs his hand through his thick hair. It was a great deal longer than it had been in October, curling more around the ends. "Hard to say. It felt more like a year for me? And there was a lot of confusion and fighting and..." Another sheepish shrug. "I guess the easiest way to put it would be 'it was a lot,' you know?"

Wasn't even in the top ten most traumatic incidents of his life though, so...

"How've you been?"

God help him, there was some actual, genuine concern on Ulysses's face as he listened to Julius. Because, what the fuck, a year?

And then he asked that, and Uly's mind just blanked. "Uh, fine," he said, running his hand back through his curls. They immediately flopped back down, one errant strand hanging in his face. "I've been fine. Usual Fandom stuff, had a little invasion before Christmas, you know, the usual."

Everything interesting he'd done was not really suitable for telling a crush about.

But there was something. He hesitated, did that hair thing again, with exactly the same results.

And said, "Missed seeing you around."

Julius looked both touched and guilty. "Missed getting chances to hang with you," he said. "The folks I was with were great, don't get me wrong. R0xxy held us together and SilentBlayde kept stuff off our backs and NekoKitty was great for cheering folks up, but..." And here Julius proved he had zero telepathic abilities, "...Coulda used someone with your chill sometimes, you know? Just to talk to."

Yeah, that was like more than one level of non-telepathic. It was pretty impressive!

And here was Ulysses, finding himself shelving what he really wanted to say for a moment, because it just didn't seem like it went with this moment.

"I'm real sorry that happened to you, Julius," he said, sincerely. "But, like... You're here now. And, um, let's hope it really stays that way, this time?"

Hey! He'd just blithely talked about an invasion right before Christmas! That was chill!

"That's the plan," Julius said. "No more animals, no more video games, no more...bullshit. I just want things to be...you know. Easy. For a bit."

He realized how whiny he must be sounding and reversed course. "Got back in time to pick classes, so that's cool, right?"

He didn't sound whiny.

Although even if Ulysses had thought he did, he would mever have admitted it.

(He did, however, raise his eyebrows a little at that 'bullshit', because that seemed... new?)

"Yeah," he said. "Though, I kinda seem to get my classes assigned, like, at random half the time."

It was! Blame a year spent wandering through a video game world with a band of merry assholes. Thanks for nothing, Arbati!

...Though he was already trying to curb the impulse.

"I know Bob - my brother Bob, you didn't meet him - was picking my courses for the first few semesters, but he didn't this time?" Julius said.

Technically, Uly hadn't met any of his siblings, though he'd seen the aftermath of Julius's run-in with Chelsie and helped him to his feet. Because he was great ~~and hadn't deserved to have that thread dropped and I am SO SORRY but I think it got lost in the sea of notifs but also SO SORRY.~~

Honestly, Ulysses felt like he'd come as close to meeting Julius's siblings as he would ever care to. They all seemed like dicks.

"Hey, that's great," he said. "What, uh, what classes did you pick?"

Were they sharing any?? was what he was really asking, of course.

According to Bob; he was going to be Julius's favorite brother eventually. Julius hadn't heard that, but even so would have considered it a very low bar.

"Uhh, yeah, hang on." His phone still in Nina's possession, Julius pulled out a sheet of paper from his jeans. "I signed up for, uh, Adulting 101; Diplomacy, Relationships, and Tactics; Career Development; CLUE; Culinary Fundamentals, and, uh. Disappearing in the Modern World."

There may have been a theme there, yes. Hopefully it wasn't super-obvious?

If only because that sounded like it was over half the classes that were on offer!

Ulysses kind of blinked at it, yeah. "Oh, wow, you -- you really picked classes," he said, somewhere between awe and... something else. "But, um, hey. I'm in the Career Development one too."

And then in one other class, but they didn't need to talk about that.

"Yeah?" Julius asked, brightening. "So, uh, this is probably stupidly dorky, but d'you wanna sit near each other or whatever?"

'Stupidly dorky' was also a pretty apt descriptor for the grin that bloomed on Ulysses' face.

"Yeah," he said. "I would -- that'd be cool. Like, that'd be really cool with me."

"Fuckin' awe--" He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, uhh, awesome," he amended. "That's really cool. Thanks Uly."

Ulysses huffed out a laugh that sort of sounded like he'd forgotten how.

"You're super welcome, Julius."

... To ruin whatever chance Ulysses had had of paying any attention to the actual class.

Hey, that just meant they could be study-buddies, right? And that would be cool, too!

God, he was such a dork.

"Getting sucked into computer games and turned into animals notwithstanding, this place is pretty great, you know that?"

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

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