all_inclusive | Listening to the fish

She had been told not to explore without her sister. Of course, Buffy was overly protective of Dawn in this place where they knew very little about their surroundings. And maybe since overly protective was her sister's default in regards to her, Dawn should change that to supremely protective. But Dawn had a habit of not listening to her sister and doing her own thing. She was older now, a college student even, and didn't really think most people here even knew what 'the key' was or how they could try to use it.

This is what has her standing at an open door, peeking inside in excited wonderment. She hasn't quite stepped in yet. Mostly, she's just looking in and marvelling at the sight of the Brontosauruses drinking from the lake, their long necks curving and dipping down or rising high up over the ground.

“This is so freakin' cool...” She murmurs to herself, on the edge of stepping in, but also something holding her back from fully doing so. She saw Jurrasic Park. Plus, there's that little voice of her sister in her ear telling her to be careful, not to go off on her own, not to speak to strangers, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah and so forth.

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"I know, like a library radar? Anytime we're in a ten mile radius of one I start beeping." After she mentions it her nose wrinkles. "Or something much cooler than beeping because that could get annoying really fast."

No, he laughs. It's funny. "Exactly like that. Maybe you could hum or vibrate. Or maybe not the humming. Humming is creepy. Sing? Do you sing?"

"Way off key and only when I'm nervous, in the shower, or home alone and dancing around the house." She glances at Peter, smiling a bit. "I'm a closet hairbrush singer. Don't tell anyone."

"Let's be honest, who doesn't sing in the shower?" Peter answers with a grin. "Personally, I prefer singing into a bottle of hair gel."

That makes her smile and cant her head back with a full laugh. She side-eyes Peter with a grin. "I like you, Peter Parker."

They reach the door and out they go into the hallway. "Look at us, dinosaurs minus all the mayhem and shenanigans."

"Yeah?" He looks gleeful about that, because he kind of is. He ducks his head, grin still in place. "I--I like you too. I mean...you know--" he bobbles his head in an awkward nod, reaching up to rub the back of his neck and scrub his hand across his hair, sending it up into wild bed head for a moment.

"I think we're getting the hang of this door thing." He glances down the hallway then at her. "Left or right?"

She can't help but sort of squeal inside when he says he likes her too. Honestly, she didn't know how girls played it cool at all when boys were sweet like that. She smiles like a loon and the pep in her step picks up a bit. "We'll be door professionals before we know it. Or maybe we'll know it when it happens cause... professionals."

She hums and turns her head to look back and forth down the hallway. "My book-dar says left." Which could be completely wrong because she didn't have book-dar. But she went with it anyway.

Hey, not playing it cool is good. Not playing it cool is totally giving Peter a break because he doesn't have to try and figure out what she's thinking or whether he's entirely screwed things up with that admittance.

"Maybe we'll get certificates," he offers with a chuckle.

"Left it is," he extends his arm to the left in an 'after you' gesture. Once she starts off, he falls into step beside her, his hands stuff in the pockets of his jeans.

"So tell me about yourself. Where you're from, your family, what's your favorite color, what do you wanna do and be and do you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend." See how she just slid that last one right in there like it's nothing as they walk along the hallway? She's super sneaky, she thinks.

"Uhm..." Peter scratches the back of his neck as they walk. "I'm from New York City. I grew up with my Aunt Mae and Uncle Ben. My favorite color is a toss up between red and blue. I want to be a biologist with an emphasis on genetics when I--" he pauses and uses air quotes, "grow up. I used to have a girlfriend, but..." he stops and shakes his head. Clearly it didn't end well.

After a moment, he looks up to her. "What about you? I don't know much beyond your name, you ramble and you like books. All things I approve of, by the way."

"I'm from Sunnydale, California. Which... no longer exists. My mom's gone, but my dad's still out there somewhere, living his life. But then I lived in Scotland for awhile. And then more recently in San Fancisco." Where she lived with her boyfriend who was not here so she didn't feel the need to mention that. "But I have my older sister here. And that's nice. I was attending Berkeley but that keeps getting interrupted by life. So online courses might be my best bet... eventually. And my favorite color is purple."

She wrinkles her nose. "I hate that term. Grow up. It took forever for my sister to let me help her out with..." Slaying. "...her stuff." Even in the researching part of it. Even now Buffy sometime had a hard time letting Dawn in, mostly because she wanted her to have a normal life so it came from a good place. "Like seriously, we're not kids."

"Wow, you've done some traveling. I've only ever lived in New York City." He's impressed in that way that someone who has only ever been in one place their entire life can be. "Online courses are great. I've been looking at doing a few of them myself my senior year."

Oh yeah. Uhm Dawn, he's only seventeen. OH WELL.

He bobbles his head at her rant about growing up. "As if turning a certain age makes you grow up when in reality, it's more about the things that happen to you that make you grow up."

He would know. He felt like he'd become a grown up over night when Uncle Ben had died. He'd hated it, and protested it without much success.

"Well. It was sort of the necessary sort of travelling. Forced travelling. But on the fun side of things we used to travel to the beach a lot when I was younger. Nice thing about California, you're never too far from a beach. Even if the water is freezing most of the year." Rambling. She's rambling. Because senior year? She wants to ask how old he is but that's probably rude. She's only nineteen herself. That isn't super old.

"To be fair, I had to get my GED without actually finishing high school. I'm only nineteen." Because of the lack of her high school and then staying with Buffy as she set up in Scotland. She looks sideways at him expectantly, hoping he won't say he's fifteen or something. He doesn't look fifteen. And really, if she were honest, she was only four, almost five years old in reality.

"Yeah? The beaches around NYC are always cold and kinda tend to be rocky, but we used to go every once in a while when I was a little kid." The rambling is okay. Peter can appreciate a good ramble.

His eyebrows go up a little. "Oh. I'm--" he reaches back and rubs the back of his neck. "I'm seventeen. Back home, I'm in my senior year of high school, but I'm thinking of going to NYU." He'd actually really been thinking of going to MIT, but Uncle's Ben death and becoming Spider-man had changed that.

"That's cool that you got into Berkeley though. It's a hard school to get into."

Listening to the fish

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