When Life Slows Down

[iwillcatchup]

It is a major downer for Peter to have a leg cast right now. His whole life seems to be crawling along at a snail's pace. He is used to being the first to class... but is now the last. He is used to living life in the fast line... but is now stuck behind some senior going half the speed limit. And he feels like he is that senior.

And he can't focus right. Which is why he was headed to his hide-away in the attic, and took all that effort to drag himself up one step at a time...

When his head popped up in a whole new area that definitely was not the attic. His eyes went wide as sights and sounds surrounded him, and he was not even all the way out into the Nexus plaza yet.

He tosses his crutches onto the ground of the plaza, then pulls himself all the way up out of the hole in the ground that is his Nexus portal. And sits there on the ground for a moment. His eyes seem to move very quickly surveying everything around him.

He doesn't seem concerned about moving off the ground right now. His finger tap quickly on the floor beside him. More than anything in the world he wants to see everything... visit every Nexus shop... sample every exotic treat. But the cast has him contained. Sullen and contained.

"What would be your version of 'being between a rock and a hard place'?"

Comments

[anticdispossession]

"A collection of personal bugaboos. The Scylla and Charybdis of everyone you meet?"

[iwillcatchup]

"Um..." Peter is utterly confused now. "Just looking for conversation. Really."

[anticdispossession]

Geoffrey looked down. He must have read too much into it. "It seemed like an oddly specific question," he muttered. He began to drift away, feeling awkward, but not really wanting to stick around and be quizzed about Ellen. Or audiences for that matter. "Good luck."

[iwillcatchup]

"You have never played 'Would You Rather' before?" Peter asks. Not wanting the other man to feel awkward.

[anticdispossession]

Geoffrey paused a moment, glanced back, wary and deep down weary. Playing at questions... This round of questions was getting to him.

But doing his best to smooth over the remaining awkwardness (for whose sake he wasn't sure), he said, "Is that anything like spin the bottle? I do remember being too young, a few times. When I was old enough, I found my fun in all the traditional ways. Drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling-- That's as far as I went."

[iwillcatchup]

"No." Peter chuckles. "Spin the bottle is trying to get someone you like to kiss you. 'Would You Rather' has you deciding between two really bad situations."

"Like... would you rather kiss a pig, or kiss a horse?"

[anticdispossession]

"Ah." Very adolescent, no wonder he'd skipped ahead to duels at dawn in the tales of his well spent youth. Ellen, of course, was later still.

"Unbruised youth with unstuffed brain," he murmured. "It's a mercy indeed to be old and full of cares. Thank you for the reminder." He was serious, or relatively so, but the words woke another set of memories. He grinned then, a brief flash of true memory, unselfconscious, there and gone.

[iwillcatchup]

"I guess having a mind of cares is typically with older folks."