Room 504, Saturday Evening

[intraspective]

Ino had woken up at her normal ridiculous hour, freezing, and taken a long look outside before deciding that her clinic shift could go screw itself because Ino? Ino was not going outside in a blizzard. Even if, she'd realized as she'd hauled more blankets on to her bed and crawled back under the covers, the clinic probably had power and was warm. Clinics had things like back up generators and stuff, right? Eh, not worth the odds of getting lost and dying, no.

When she woke up a few hours later—warmer, but then enough blankets to drown in helped with that—Ino peeked out and swore when she realized what she really should have realized before. Her poor plants! It was funny how that got her out of her nest of blankets faster than anything else had as she went to work tacking up blankets over the window and wishing like anything that she had some way to keep her plants warm.

Poking her nose out the hall said that it was even worse out there and she shut her door tight and the shoved blankets at the bottom of it to keep any cold air from getting in. Then she went digging through her kit that she dragged around on missions and came up with a few glow sticks—snapping them got her some light, and if it was green light, well, it was better than nothing. Even if it was an absolute bitch to read by.

So, Ino spent her nibbling on chocolate and granola bars (she had ration bars but Ino was saving those for if this went on for longer than a day or two) alternately reading by glow stick and exercising because that got the blood moving and she could pretend she wasn't cold for a bit and fussing over her plants.

And hiding. But seriously, she was from the Fire Country. Snow and cold were not her friends. Ino curled up in about twelve blankets with another granola bar, another glow stick, and the play she'd picked up in Gaia.

Today sucked.

[Closed door but open post, yes.]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

Zack? Grinning? Good.

"Warm's good! I'll be right back!"

And off he went, taking the stairs about three at a time with the blanket billowing out behind him like some sort of budget superhero costume. The actual process of going to grab his wastebasket was probably about... Oh, one minute. He'd had to stop somewhere in there to find the key to his door. And to grab some sunflower seeds for the gerbil.

"Knock knock," he announced, upon his return.

[intraspective]

Ino had used that one minute to clear a space for the fire and to dart over and into the common room to grab every magazine and newspaper she could get her hands on.

Those, she'd placed in a pile and was cheerfully ripping some of it into shreds to use to start off the fire when he came back.

She grinned a the picture he made: trash can, blanket-cape; he was totally her hero.

(Dorkiest hero ever.)

"You may enter," she said grandly. "And--I was going to say close the door, but I guess we need it open a bit? So don't."

[puppy_fair]

Zack was about three seconds away from wearing the basket like a helmet and striking a pose.

Don't make him do it.

"Open door it is, then," he agreed, making his way in and squatting down by the paper that she was shredding. "Do you want me to put this right here, then?"

[intraspective]

But he'd look so cute!

"Over with the other one," she said, tilting her head at her clear space. She had floor! This was amazing! Okay, she normally had floor. It just usually had some paper or a plant or something on it. Shush. "And I think we're 'bout ready to start lighting it up?"

Fiiire.

[puppy_fair]

Mmm, fire! Zack, complete with blankie cape, was now putting the pail upside-down on the floor, and then carefully balancing the other one atop it.

"Looks to me like we're about ready," he agreed. "Do you have anything to light it with?"

[intraspective]

Ino lightly lobbed a match book in his directions. "Old fashioned," she noted, "and yet still useful."

Lucky them!

[puppy_fair]

Zack, of course, caught it! And then struck it! And then chucked it in.

It was so very 'back alleys of Midgar' of them, to be doing this. Wasn't it? Zack grinned at the papers as they caught fire inside the can, and then smiled up at Ino and took a seat on some more conveniently bare floor.

"So, how have you been, aside from cold?"

[intraspective]

Ino was just going to shift her stack of extra paper over so she could sit close by Zack (but not too close because that was too obvious, really, geez) and wrinkled her nose slightly.

"Got lectured by Centurion for insubordination," she admitted, making a face at that. "Which was great good fun and all of that."

[puppy_fair]

"Insubordination?" Zack's own nose wrinkled a little. "Was that before or after you took the header into the ocean?"

So that he could get his timeline straight, here! These things were important when you were as easily-confused as Zack was.

[intraspective]

"Um," Ino tugged at her hair, feeding a bit of paper to their flame and holding her hands out. "The insubordination happened on Tuesday? In class. And then the lecture happened the day after the dunking."

[puppy_fair]

Zack offered her a quirk of a grin, at that.

"Misbehaving in class? Now you have me curious what was going on, there, you know."

Zack Fair, wiggling his nose into anything that looked shiny around the edges!

[intraspective]

She was just going to leaaan over and grab her box of granola bars (strawberry flavoured, hush) and offer him one before kidnapping one for herself.

"I refused to do his class exercise," Ino said, tugging at the wrapper. "He wanted us to pair up and spill our deepest darkest secrets to the other person to build a bond of trust."

Trust. Right. Built on blackmail.

[puppy_fair]

Zack's eyebrows raised a little as he reached for the granola bar. Mmmm, granola.

"Can he even do that? There's a reason that they're secrets in the first place. Teachers around here ought to be able to respect that!"

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she said, handing the other bar over. "And he said it weren't optional or nothing and that we weren't supposed to lie--and he knows be well enough that if I'd lied he'd have known so--"

Ino gave that a bit of a shrug.

"I pretty much told him he weren't the boss of me and I weren't going to participate and he told me to get out of the class room."

[puppy_fair]

"Way to go," Zack decided, wide-eyed. "I wouldn't have been able to do it, you know? I'm glad I didn't take that class."

A pause.

"Whatever class it is."

He was going to wiggle a little closer toward her, now. Because it was cold in here and he wasn't actually moving around much. Body heat, he'd heard, could be an awesome thing.

[intraspective]

"Living with difficult women," Ino laughed, pretending she didn't notice the inching over.

And pretending she wasn't going to just inch over a bit herself, and lean against him when he got close enough. Mmmm body heat.

"Which I guess I proved the class name right? But seriously--secrets are generally secrets for a reason, you know? I mean, if he'd said 'tell one silly little secret' then I wouldn't have had much of an issue with that 'cause silly secrets you just don't tell 'cause you don't want people to tease you 'bout. But big secrets..."

[puppy_fair]

"Sometimes," Zack replied, "big secrets are big secrets because they're a matter of life-and-death, or worse. You don't just trust stuff like that with people that you've just met in a classroom, even if you have known them for a while."

He sighed. This body heat thing was nice.

"They're civilians. You never know when they might turn around and tell it to someone else."

[intraspective]

"He said that that was why everyone had to share their secrets--so it put us on an even standing," Ino said, maybe snuggling just a tiny bit.

She would utterly deny it. She was cold and that was her story. Though the fire made a nice bit of warmth, yes.

"But not all secrets are equal, you know? And so people might decide that they were willing to have their secret outed if it meant telling people 'bout the other person's secret."

[puppy_fair]

Zack nodded his agreement at that, frowning a little more.

"That's pretty much it. If someone's deepest secret is something like how they stole a pack of gum at the store and they liked it..." He shrugged. "There are people like that. Who live completely normal lives, who don't have anything huge and dark looming over their heads all of the time. Anything I would tell them would be way too big for most people."

Even puppies had secrets, when they were puppies with a body count.

[intraspective]

"Do I count as most people?" she asked, a teasing lilt in her voice as she peered up at him. "But yeah--I don't talk 'bout some things much 'cause people here ain't going to be able to just deal with it."

[puppy_fair]

He shot her a sideways look, his lips quirked into a lopsided, playful little smile right back.

"You are so not most people. You're too short for that."

He was totally bracing himself to be smacked for that, yes.

[intraspective]

It was more of a shove than a smack, but Ino's squeak of outrage was the same either way.

"Hey! It's not my fault you're too tall!"

[puppy_fair]

"And I'm only sixteen," Zack laughed, swaying a little with the shove, "so I've got a few more years of growing left to do!"

Helpful, Zack!

[intraspective]

"I'm only sixteen too!" she protested, poking at his side. "I can totally grow more."

No way would she catch up to him, mind, but wishful thinking was allowed.

[puppy_fair]

"Don't forget to eat your spinach?" Zack gave her a little bump with his shoulder, laughing softly. "In all fairness, pretty much everyone is shorter than I am, around here."

Except for, like, Cable. Cable was just a touch taller than Zack's 6'3", yes.