More Like Run To Fetch The First Aid Kit (OPEN)

Roderick rolled over onto his back as Evelyn approached him, taking up the dampened towel from her and laying it across the length of his forehead. It did nothing to quell the headache, but it swiftly alleviated some of the searing pain on the surface of his injury. He exhaled in the relief, however minor it was. He was thankful that she hadn't dragged him into the infirmary. Roderick didn't get on particularly well with medical personnel. They knew too much about the human body - what it took to heal it, but also what it took to break it down and destroy it. Who really knew what sorts of substances they had in all of their needles and pills? Just thinking about it chilled him..

.. God, he needed a smoke. Being in pain only seemed to increase his need to puff on something.

"I'd rather not be a unicorn for the rest of my life," he grunted, combing his hair away from his face to make more room for the towel. With his free hand, he reached down to grapple at his pocket, feeling to see if what he'd left his dorm with was still there. "Say, ah.." He slipped his fingers into his pocket, pulled out a long, slightly-crumpled cigarette, and waggled it in the air between his index finger and his thumb. "How do your dorm-mates feel about ciggies?"

Evelyn sat on one of the sofa's arms, wrapping the other towel she had brought around her neck. The cold made her shiver but it was a welcomed change after the burning heat outside. She sat in silence looking at Roderick as he applied to towel to his injured forehead. At least she could do something to help the guy after she knocked him out.

And yeah, he was at it again. As soon as he pulled out a cigarette the Autumn snorted. "Go ahead. It's not like I plan on making many friends." she informed him with a nod of her head. "I hope you have seconds. Or a lighter, for that matter. It's not like I'll let you smoke into my room without me. I have principles." the girl grunted as she reached across the table to open the television. The background noise of the midday news filled the room, batting away the uncomfortable silence.

Roderick popped his unlit cigarette into his mouth and dug into his other pocket, managing to yank out a stubby white lighter and two balled-up late slips. He had left his dorm with three cigs, but he imagined the two that were missing had ended up somewhere out on the sports field after his mishap. Now he had one. Well, sharing was caring, right?

"If you don't want too many friends, then I reckon you should knock more people around with baseball bats," he mumbled around the obstruction between his lips, the beginnings of a grin forming on his features. He swept the late slips carelessly onto the ground and brought the end of his cigarette to life with a flick of his thumb.

The telepath sucked a gratuitous breath in, eyes hooding at the buzzing sensation that washed over his throat and lungs, and then held the cigarette up for Evelyn.

Evelyn expected the guy to have at least on more cigarette on him. She didn't know he for very long, but the fact that he was into smoking and what not was something she couldn't overlook. But he didn't, and seeing him slip his only one between his lips only made her craving for a hit greater.

"Does this mean you awen't my fwiend...? I'ma cwy..." she complained childishly, smirking back at Roderick and snatching the cig out of his hand as soon as he held it out. So he had some manners, she thought as she inhaled in relief and let the smoke spill out of her nostrils. She passed it back to its owner with a feeling of wicked satisfaction. "We aren't friends. We are smoking buddies." she coughed, grinning at the Winter.

He noticed there was now a faint, pink imprint of lip gloss on the cigarette as Evelyn handed it back to him.

"This is hardly a proper smoke." Rod scoffed and inhaled lightly. He watched the pathetically small cloud dissipate almost instantly as it left his mouth, growing the slightest bit more irritated that he had nothing else on him. The smell really wasn't doing anything good for his dizziness, but the tingling in his chest was a distraction from the aching. "Woulda stuffed my pockets if I'd known I'd be sofa-bound. And sharing." He took another small puff and then handed the cig off again.

He didn't want to think about running out. His approach to pain was to put himself into such a haze that he merely forgot about it. He imagined that when he did run out, it'd end up being a very long, very disoriented march back to his dormitory.. Unless this girl had a stash she was declining to mention.

Evelyn took the last hit off the cig, the strong buzzing feeling from before now just a feeble tickle down her throat. She scoffed and crumpled it against the coffee table, brushing off a few specks of warm ash. "And I was hoping I didn't have to do this." the Autumn said, vanishing into her room where she searched for a few minutes and returned with a brand new, unopened pack of cigarettes. She hopped back onto the couch, plopping down and tossing the pack into Roderick's hands.

"I bought these from the corner shop in Rosebury like, a while ago. That shopkeeper's son... You should be the one who knows what kind of things a jerk can say when he's in the mood to." she sighed remembering with a layer of uncomfortableness the annoying grin of the guy. "I was planning to slip one o' these in his back pocket after finishing it. See his face when he realizes something is burning in his pockets." Evelyn imagined the picture with a sly look on her face.

"But since you are my 'guest' I got treat you with something don't I? God, will my roommates hate me." she remarked, inhaling the smell of thick smoke that began to linger around the room. No way she was opening that window. She'd rather live with this smoke than let the entire room get flooded with the heat outside. "I never caught your name." she muttered to the Winter as she waited for him to open the pack, tapping her fingers on her knee in expectance.

Rod frowned and craned his neck to glance at where Evelyn had disappeared to, but a second later, a small white box came whizzing at at him. He scrambled to catch it before it tumbled off of the couch.

"I, ah.." The Winter could've sworn he'd told her his name.. Or, perhaps she'd asked, and he hadn't answered? His head was too scrambled to recall correctly. ".. Roderick."

He studied the label scrawled across the front of the cigarette pack as he began picking at the plastic packaging. Same brand he'd been buying since moving to Beata. Indeed, Roderick was quite familiar with the boy Evelyn had bought these from - the general store owner's son, out in Rosebury. He was a haughty money-grubber who sold darts, alcohol, and various other illegal curiosities to teenagers behind his father's back. He charged more than the items were generally worth, but most students at the academy with unlawful fixations had no other choice.

Pushing himself forward with his elbows, now biting the end of a new cigarette, Roderick sat upright and sank into the cushions lining the back of the sofa, making sure to tilt his head to keep the towel in place. His lighter flickered, and a second later, smoke streamed out of his nose. "Stick a cig in his pocket next time you see 'em. Bugger charged me extra because he was running low." He chuckled, but his throat was so raw that it came out more like a cough. "Maybe his arse will burn, if you're lucky."

Evelyn leaned back on the couch, plopping her feet on the coffee table and waited for Roderick to finish opening the new pack and lighting his cigarette. "I'd love seeing that." she chuckled, slipping one out of her pack and placing it between her lips. She took the lighter from the Winter and inhaled deeply, puffing out smoke a couple of seconds later. Her throat felt rash but it was nothing compared to the pleasure of the feeling caressing her insides.

"You look like the guy who would pay a ton for a pack of cigs." she commented, inhaling a second time and letting smoke escape through her nostrils. Her eyes were mildly watering as the dorm began to fill with smoke. "Gosh." Evelyn complained and hastily made her way towards one of the windows, opening it wide. This part of the school was shaded, she remarked, leaning on the window and puffing out another lungful of smoke.

Roderick blinked and crinkled his features up at Evelyn, who was now tipped against the window sill. The towel on his forehead fell onto his lap with a damp flop as he shifted. "Why's that?" He sounded a touch offended at the comment, but his grin remained intact nonetheless, hinting at insincerity. "Do I look that desperate to you?"

Why, he'd just showered three days ago! He was the tidiest he'd been in a while. Ignoring the head rush he received as he pulled himself up off of the couch, Roderick doused his cigarette on the coffee table and strode unsteadily towards the bathroom. He hesitated a little before stepping in.

It wasn't the enormous goose-egg on his forehead that struck him first when he caught his reflection in the mirror. He had expected that, at least. What he hadn't expected was how glassy and pink his eyes had grown. The rings around them, telltale of his poor sleep, were a faded yellow-brown colour. They seemed.. Bruised, almost. Like he'd been punched. He could feel uneven stubble dotting his jawline as he ran the palm of his hand along it - shorter in some spots, longer in others. His hair was wild. His bottom lip was dry and cracked. His fingers were stained with nicotine.

He stared. And stared. And stared.

No, he decided, turning away abruptly and pushing his growing discomfort away. He looked fine.

The Winter started towards the couch again, plucking a fresh cigarette from the pack and sinking back into the cushions. He picked the wet towel up and plopped it back onto his face, groaning incoherently that it'd covered his eyes by accident.

Evelyn grinned, propping herself onto the window sill, and scoffed at Roderick's response. Even the shadowed portion outside was an uncomfortable heat, but the Autumn decided to enjoy it 'til it wasn't too late. She blew a cloud of smoke outside and watched it break apart and lose into the azure sky.

"O-o.. um..." she spun around to look at the Winter as he crossed the room and vanished into her bathroom. On one side, the ragdoll girl was mildly embarrassed to have a guy stroll into her bathroom just like that, but.. there was something else bothering her too. "Geez, uh, have I said something...?" she asked hesitantly as he returned and plopped back onto the couch. It was rather awkward, she thought, her tough-girl attitude so easily broken. To calm her nerves, she took inhaled once again and released the smoke into the room, batting it away with the other hand.

"Whazzat?" Roderick lifted the cloth out of his field of view and tilted his head in Evelyn's direction, one sooty eyebrow arching. "Something what? About me looking like I pay heaps for cigs?" He waved a hand dismissively, slouching further into the sofa and inhaling gratuitously. As payback for said earlier comment, though, he slyly blew some of his smoke out of the side of his mouth into his host's face. "Doesn't mean anything to me. Kinda true, aye?"

It really was. The kid at the general store had blatantly overcharged him for no reason, but he hadn't even bat an eye. Where else was a student to get his goods, though, if not from that penny-pincher?

Evelyn covered her face with her arm, trying to avoid getting the malevolent smoke into her eyes. The corners of her mouth were twitching into an amused grin as the could cleared away, even thought her throat was raw and her mouth dry. "Whatcha do that for?" she scoffed, slightly coughing and dropped on the couch. The TV was still on, the news lady speaking about the raising number of smoking teenagers. "Old news." the Autumn mumbled, igniting another cigarette and discarding the last one on the coffee table.

His throat rumbled with a raspy, satisfied hu.m as Evelyn frantically tried to waft the smoke out of her face. Some smoker this girl was. She looked like she was suffocating.

Eventually she settled back down, and a mellow silence seemed to blanked the room, save for the soft drone of the television. Roderick watched the embers gnaw away at the end of his cigarette with a vacant expression as a program about teenage smoking rates yammered about in the background. Too dazed to process how conveniently ironic the report was, Roderick instead found his thoughts wandering right into Evelyn's head.

Suddenly, he snorted. "Joining the baseball team isn't why you were out practicing, was it?"

Evelyn's cheeks turned red in surprise at the sudden question. Her eyes had been glued to the television and she was on the brim of slipping into a light nap when Roderick snorted and made her jolt awake. A murky patch of her past few months at Beata started to clear up and now she recalled the reason for her new friend's out of the blue action: he was a telepath and beforehand he had read her mind and came upon an equally embarrassing thought from her in the past.

"And what's wrong with that?" she mumbled through the cigarette obstructing her mouth, crossing her hands over her chest. Part of her was trying to hide the thoughts in her head, feeling like the way Roderick was intruding was making her very uncomfortable, but another side of her just wanted to play it cool, act as if she didn't care. It was a difficult decision to be made, judging by the fact that hanging to this was her reputation.

He ducked out of Evelyn's thoughts and leaned forward to reach for the cigs again, straining to grab them from where they were lying on the coffee table. He hadn't meant to learn that she'd been looking to impress, his mind had just.. Wandered. On crummy days, the line between what a person was thinking and what a person was saying appeared a tad blurred to Roderick. "Nothing." He chewed the end of his newest cigarette. He'd once spent an entire weekend back in the seventh grade trying to sell lemonade back home to catch the attention of the local girls, so he didn't have very much room to judge. "You're good company. What's there to have a problem with?" Well, aside from her batting accuracy.

She had certainly caught his eye, but perhaps not in the manner she'd been hoping from random male passerbys. It kind of was hard not to take notice of someone who had clocked him in the face with a baseball..

.. Though now that Rod could actually focus, she was kind of cute, wasn't she?