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Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:16 am
"No, no," said Gale, waving a hand and trying to dispel some of the awkwardness. He felt his face flush a little. "Don't apologize, you're fine. I was just...thinking about some things, is all."
He gave her a slight smile meant to reassure her, absently twisting the cuff of the glove, tugging on it as his expression turned mildly exasperated. "Yes, well..." he said dryly. "Allan is...well, he's definitely one of the more exuberant leaders, that's for sure. He's a cheerful sort, so it's hard to actually make him mad...I think...he's sort of an enigma."
Stormy not having met Aria yet wasn't entirely unusual. Many of the new trainees were flung straight into battle without any sort of training (he'd been one of the few that had gone through the mock simulation after awakening from the mods), so Stormy's confession wasn't met with surprise.
"It's all right," he said, the small smile back. "You'll meet her soon. She can be tough (all of the leaders and assistants are, except maybe Mark who's just a doufuss), but she's good. A lot of my friends are in Mist Division, including my older sister."
His smile quirked a little thinking of Candace, and he patted down the side of the dog, brushing away more excess snow. Giving a little shrug, he said "It happens. I'm not too fussed about it anymore, to be honest. What will be, will be, as they say."
For a moment there was an awkward silence, both of them working on the dog without actually looking at each other. Gale fumbled around for conversational topics. Clearly it had been too long since he'd actually talked with someone his own age - if she even was his own age, that is - and now felt exceedingly stupid.
He blinked up at Stormy, momentarily taken aback by her sudden trivia. There was a slight pause.
A grin broke out on Gale's face. "Yeah, and the world record for the fastest solving of the Rubik's Cube is 5.66 seconds."
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Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 9:25 pm
"Forty-three quintillion combinations, one solution, five point five seconds in finding it. So short! Humans can be almost inhuman at times," she remarked, pleasantly surprised that he knew a little about the fascinating cube. "Lots of space in the brain to fill with whatever you want. Dad says I know a lot of things I don't need to and not enough what I should. Like . . . There're sixty-four squares in a regular American checkerboard, but one hundred and twenty-one on a Chinese checkerboard. Or how there's two hundred and twenty-five squares for Scrabble, buuuuuut only a hundred used for letters if I remember right~"
She looked particularly happy to be dispensing such useful knowledge as she smoothed down the snow dog's back, checked Gale's work, and then gestured for him to help gather snow for a fluffy tail. "I don't mind tough leaders to be honest. Last fight told me how directionless I really am, so I need someone yelling orders at me," Stormy said as a matter of factly. "I just jumped around to wherever I was needed and did what I was told, but I wasn't really spectacular at anything - well except maybe dragging Jake to base before we got mauled. Still, guess that's why I'm in Mist, huh? Doing whatever the team needs me to be."
"So who's your older sister?" she prompted curiously. "It's nice that you got family here! I helped wake up twins like a day or two ago, and even though they bickered a nit while I tried to get them oriented, I think deep down they're glad they're not alone . . ."
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Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 3:13 pm
"Sounds pretty impressive to me," said Gale with a nod. "Maths was never my strong suit, I'll be honest, so it's always rather fascinating to find that the human mind can move that fast."
A smile tugged at his lips. "I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with knowing a lot about everything. I mean, I'm not nearly as well-versed in things as you are, it sounds, but it doesn't mean that I don't find it fascinating. And you are obviously quite intelligent, so I think it works out nicely."
Pushing a pile of snow around to help shape the snow, Gale gave another nod in agreement, brushing at the cuff of his sleeves. "I'd much rather prefer a leader who is tough than one who doesn't try," he said honestly. "It's might be easier to have a leader who lets you get away with a lot, but you wouldn't learn much.
"And I see you've met Jake already," he added with a grin. "He's...quite a character, isn't he?"
Smoothing out the tail, he said "Well, she's not really sister by blood, just by mutual circumstances. Her name's Candace - you're bound to meet her at some point."
His expression was soft. "She's a really good person. Someone I didn't expect to be as close to as I am now. It's nice knowing that there's someone I can always trust to have my back."
Memories of Leslie flitted briefly into his mind - especially with the mention of new twin trainees, and Gale pressed his lips together, forcing the sad thoughts out.
"My actual sister never woke up," he said, in a quiet sort of voice, though it was calm and matter-of-fact, not bitter, or sad or angry. "So Candace sort of steps into the role that was missing."
He smiled, almost a little shyly, over at Stormy, though his expression was gentle.
"So don't worry; if you feel alone, you won't for long. We look out for each other here, whether biologically related or not."
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 4:44 pm
"Intelligent"? "Memorizing trivia isn't very hard," she countered in a mumble, a slightly pinker tinge to her ears and cheeks. "Someone decided I'd be a sponge for useless facts is all which, while fun for conversation makers, isn't all that great otherwise. I almost failed geometry because instead of theorems and proofs, all I could think about were random things when teach gave us tests and quizzes. Like once, I thought about how the average American weight is about one hundred and seventy-eight pounds and how my teacher looked like she ate maybe two and half average Americans herself." She pushed her hair back, making a face. "Geometry was hard."
Numb fingers began shaving the edges of the snow tail to define cartoonish fluffiness. "He seems okay, Jake," Stormy commented with a little smile of her own. "Really frowny faced and acts like he doesn't care about people, but okay. No todos pueden estar sonriedo. Really nice guy when there's Joy, though, so I think he's just hiding his sun with those scowl clouds." She flicked her fingers of excess snow and rubbed feeling back into them, surveying her work with some pride.
Of course she had to hit the family nerve without knowing, though; she winced sympathetically in spite of his calm tone. "Sorry to hear. I'm glad she's like that for you, though. This place seems scary enough without knowing you can depend on someone." No comment was made about the rest of his response, however, just a tacked on smile and a small nod of her head. Maybe someone would genuinely look out for her instead of doing it out of duty, maybe not; she had trouble as it was connecting with people on anything more than a conversational level and had found that not having expectations was safer, even if it was lonelier.
Stormy then clapped her hands both to break brighte the mood and to act as a non-sequitor. "Okay! Almost done with this guy, then you can stop being pestered by me~ See if you can etch out a collar for him while I put some ears and eyes in." She gathered up snow and bega to shape them into soft triangles before gently plastering them onto both sides of the snow dog's head. "The real ones were a little floppy, but I don't think I can make them without breaking something . . . Anyway, um, so what's your favorite part of being a Hunter?"
-kurotomato belated merry christmas <333
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 7:13 pm
His smile was a little crooked as he said, "Maybe the trivia isn't exactly the same as theorems and proofs, but the fact that you can memorize what you do is still pretty impressive, regardless what the information is."
Gale shrugged, his hands freezing as he began to bundle up a bunch of snow to look like a dog bone he could stick by the dog's front paw. "I think that's pretty cool, if you ask me." There was a slight grin as he added, "And I did terribly in maths as well. Algebra was my downfall, though admittedly I got out before I got too far."
"And yes," he said. "Jake is, er, frowny faced, as you put it, but I actually like him, despite what he probably thinks. He's a good guy. There are a lot of people who were angry like he was when they first got here...a lot of people are still angry, actually."
He gave a small sigh and a smile. "Unfortunately not everyone here is all peaches and cream, but for the most part there are some really good ones." he said. "Obviously I'm not gonna tell you who to be friends with and who to avoid, since I'm pretty sure you can do that for yourself."
With the semi-smushed bone in place, Gale gave a nod to Stormy and gathered another handful of snow, slopping it somewhat messily onto the dog's neck. Or, at least, where the dog's neck was supposed to be. He still felt slightly awkward around Stormy, and wondered momentarily whether she still didn't trust him or not.
Then he reminded himself that she had only been on Deus for a week at most and had been thrown straight into battle, and therefore her first taste of life here had been chaotic, to say the least.
"My favorite part?" Gale repeated, slightly surprised, as Jinhai made a small hum in his mind. "That's an interesting question..."
He thought about it for a moment, tilting his head a little, and then said, a bit cheekily, "Getting to shoot stuff."
By way of explanation, he said, "My weapon is a sniper rifle."
His smile was faded a little as he contemplated a more serious answer. "In all actuality, probably the fact that this is something that I can do. As you probably noticed I'm, ah...relatively....short...and young..."
Gale's cheeks had tinged slightly pink, but he added, with a hopefully casual shrug, "Being a hunter makes me feel as though I'm not either of those things...if that makes any sense whatsoever."
Hastily he ducked over the collar, fiddling with it.Ol-j-man Merry Christmas dear! C: <33333 Also my tags are always longer than I intend them to be :T........
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 8:17 pm
The trainee just smiled to herself, inwardly preening. "I wasn't bad at algebra, but geometry was like the devil. Then again, I sorta doodled too much in class; couldn't help it with all those shapes." But she paused to give him a curious look when he mentioned not having gotten far either. Hmm . . .
"Is 'angry' the right word? I put 'serious' down in my journal," she mused after a moment, tapping her chin. "A lot of people here are no-nonsense, or at least the ones I met were. But then there are people like Sherry and Patches who keep it light too. I peg you aaaaas a serious guy when the Joy runs out." It was hard not to given how straight-faced he was with Caelius and Sam about Mei, let alone his previous story of wanting to rise in the raks. Yet Stormy gestured to the bone Gale had created with a warm smile. "But like with Jake, you've got a sunny side too. Or at least a few rays that can get through even snow-bringing clouds like today."
Stormy finished up the ears and was dabbing on a little extra snow for a snout when he mentioned shooting and a sniper rifle - while she kept her smile through the first (boys would be boys after all), it faltered at the second. "Totally makes sense, don't worry, I know exactly what you mean. That's pretty neat, though!" she chirped nevertheless, pressing two holes to finish the nose off. "Big ol' sniper rifle. Heh.I wouldn't dare call it cliche in case you decided to shoot me, huh?"
Bad stilted joke was bad and stilted. She pushed the conversation on before she started makings things more awkward, rubbing her hands together while making a face. The negative side effect to Joy seemed to be that, given the influece on her normally languid emotions, she didn't know how to control them, let alone what she said if a certain one peaked thanks to bad memories.
"To be honest I, uh , wasn't sure how old you were. I met a woman I thought was like sixteen once since she was around my height and really bubbly, but she was actually in her twenties. And I've been told I look and sound like a high school freshman, but I'm actually . . ."
She paused in thought, blinked, blinked again, then asked, "What year is it again?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 8:42 pm
"I don't know whose idea it was to put shapes in math, but the two just do not mix well together," said Gale, in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice as he pushed around more blobs of snow. "Or letters in math, because that always confused me too."
He glanced over at Stormy, blinking, and then gave a half sort of smile. "You're right, maybe 'angry' isn't quite the right word for it. I think 'brooding,' or perhaps 'frustrated,' even, works a little bit."
Her comments made his cheeks flush a little pinker, Gale shifting a little in the snow so that he was kneeling instead of sitting cross-legged. "Well....yes, I'm relatively...serious..." he mumbled, slightly embarrassed, but pleased all the same by her description. "I wasn't exactly, er...well, let's just say my childhood didn't allow for much...childhood. I'm used to being...well, as Bix once said, a grumpy guts. He always tells me I'm too serious for my own good."
The collar looked more like a collar once he brushed off some of the excess snow. Gale poked his finger at it to make little circle indentations for the holes, and said with a laugh, "I wouldn't shoot anyone on Deus. With the exception of Bix, whenever I spar I sort of use Jinhai as a bat. Hold him by the barrel and sort of swing around, rather than shoot at people, since it's not really easy to spar when one person has a gun and the other a sword or an axe or something."
Gale shook his head, smiling a little at Stormy. "I look like I'm twelve, according to everyone on the island," he said, a bit dryly. "But I just turned 17 a few weeks ago."
He glanced down at the collar, than back up at her, brow furrowing in mild bemusement. "2012. Er. Yes. 2012."
This was followed by a somewhat belated, "Who's Patches?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 10:24 pm
2012. She had to sit there for a moment and count off her fingers, twitching one by one until, after several seconds of casting her eyes skyward whilst calculating, she blinked and came back down. "Curiouser and curiouser. I've lost a whole year of my life in those pods." She might have said "the sky is gray today".
Still, she paused to appreciate the magnitude of twelve months going by, seeming to wilt a little even when she really considered it. No sad thoughts, no sad thoughts. You're with company.
"I was sixteen when the recruiter found me, so...I guess I'm seventeen now too?" That sounded just as strange, and she fiddled with her hair with a slight frown. "Weird. I don't think my mind can figure that out, so maybe mentally I'll always be a bit behind my age but...well, that's what I get for sleeping on the job, huh?" It was a better joke than before at least.
"Oh whoops! Patches is Ofelia," she clarified. "She was the hunter who woke me up. I thought she was the inflight attendant offering me drinks and a snack before I fell asleep again, actually, since she had a sandwich in her hand. She looked like a pirate to me, and all those scars looked like patches on her skin, and Patches is sorta a pirate name right? I dunno, it sorta stuck." Stormy shrugged a little with a smile. "If you can't tell yet, I pick silly names for people too, not just myself."
The collar and muzzle finished, all that was missing were a few details and the eyes. Not trusting her tracing skills, Stormy began scrounging around for two different colored rocks. "So you're seventeen and been here for two years?" She attempted to give a low whistle of appreciation, but her lips were too chapped and dry to get more than a forced breath of air. "That's pretty amazing, I think, surviving for that long despite being short and young. So does that mean that coat you were wearing back there was a real full blown hunter? 'Cause I'd say you deserve it."
At the mention of no real childhood, she stopped her search to give him a quizzical tilt of her head. "...Have you ever built a snow anything? Or got into a snowball fight?" These seemed to be pretty important questions.
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Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 7:24 pm
It took Stormy a few moments to figure out exactly what was going on, and Gale sat waiting, smushing more snow onto the dog and adding a bit of spikes to the collar.
"So the same age as me," he said, slightly relieved to hear this. So many times it had seemed there were others his age, when in all actuality they had been older. Stormy seemed a bit lost in her memories, but then she snapped out of it.
"Oh, Ofelia," said Gale with a smile, rubbing his numb hands together, the damp bandages itching a little. "I rather like her. She's a bit eccentric, I think, but she's got a good heart and a good mind and I like her quite a bit.
"And I think Patches fits her nicely," he added.
Her observation of his stay here at Deus made him nod, Gale shaking his head a little to get some of the hair out of his face. "I came to Deus when I was fifteen. Youngest hunter on the island for a long time - until now, actually," he said, with a pointed look at Stormy, the smile still on his face. "It was...hard, at first. Nobody took me seriously - who would? I was just a kid. Well," he corrected himself. "No one except for Bix, which is why he's my best mate. But I worked hard, and, well, here I am."
The flush on his cheeks deepened slightly. "Yes. I was promoted a few months ago to full hunter, so I'm no longer a trainee. It took...quite a bit of work, but eventually I got to it."
He brushed a bit of snow from the top of the dog's head, slightly taken aback by her questions, but he shook his head. "It doesn't really snow much in England," he said with a shrug. "Mostly it just rains. I remember a few snow days, but they were hardly enough to do anything like sculpt or snowball fight with. I did get into a sort of fight last year with some of the other hunters, but it wasn't really a snowball fight. More of a 'let's just stick snow down each other's shirts squabble' kinda thing, if that makes any sense."
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Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 10:49 pm
"Pretty nice, yeah," she agreed, half-distracted. So here sat a kid her age (in and of itself a nice bit of knowledge she filed away), a full rank Hunter no less, and he hadn't had a proper . . . Huh. She tapped her chin thoughtfully as Gale added spikes, her inner streak of personal OCD put aside (Thackery didn't have spikes and looked too cuddly for them, she figured) in a strangely impulsive decision to fix this.
"We had a few snow days in Germany when we visited, but we never got into fights either . . . And here television was telling me it was the first thing on people's minds, huh?" Gently as she could, Stormy lodged two mismatched rocks as eyes for the snow dog, looking pleased with herself. "Didn't even get to the snow shoving part, so that's another one up on me."
After a moment of surveying their work, she clapped her hands, nodded, and pushed herself to her feet. "How about this, Mr. Hardworker: we should have a snowball fight sometime!" she chirped, smoothing out the snow from her hoodie and trying to rub feeling into her hands again. "Not right n-now of course, we need to warm up first. But who knows when we'll get this opportunity again. You could invite your hunter friends if you want~" She could too, but well . . . Jake probably wouldn't have the Joy effect anymore and tell her to piss off. But Patches might, maybe even Miss Sasha!
Orrrr they might give her a look like fun was some awful disease not to be talked about.
"Or just us if you want, it doesn't matter~" she added airily, offering a hand up most belatedly. "Just as long as we don't hit Snow Thackery over here. He's supposed to be the guardian of the field."
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Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 10:51 pm
She was staring at the spikes on the collar with an expression Gale couldn't read. He faltered a little, his hands slipping away, and cleared his throat, deciding to move onto smoothing the back of the dog and making sure it wasn't chunky from the thick snow.
"You lived in Germany?" he asked curiously. "It's a nice place, there. A bit too rambunctious for me, though. Not that London doesn't have its craziness, I just prefer the crowded streets of England than other countries." He shrugged, slightly embarrassed, and added, "No that I don't mind going to other places, that is."
Grateful for the topic change, Gale felt a smile on his face. "I'd like that," he said, and sat back away from the dog, cupping is hands around his mouth and breathing onto them to warm them up. "I could introduce you to Bix or Candace. Or, you know, if that's awkward, just us is fine too."
He smiled at Stormy, and then glanced back at the dog, giving a little laugh. "We'll put a sign, or something," he said, reaching up to take her offered hand, pulling himself to his feet. "Do not touch, or something like that."
Rubbing his hands together to warm them, Gale added, a little hesitantly, "Thanks for letting me join you. I know I must have seemed like I was intruding abruptly, but I...er, just wanted to say hi...and...and all that," he finished, somewhat lamely.
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Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 11:54 pm
"Visited," she corrected gently, "though like two years ago, before prices got really high, we went once for a whole month. Family and Christmas and all. Felt like we were living there by the time we left, even though I still think my uncle was only tolerating me for four weeks." She mused over a private memory with a small sigh that turned into well-needed heat to get her hands warm again.
Regardless, the dog was finished and Stormy couldn't be happier, and once her fingers had feeling in them again she quickly dug in her pocket for the cellphone she'd been given along with her coat. "These phones take photos, right? If we put up a sign, it'll probably just make people want to take him down . . . Reverse psych and all. But yeah, if you want to see if they're interested, I'm game for a two-versus-two: kids versus adults~"
She paused in her search, the item in hand but still within the hoodie, and tilted her head at the snowy Thackery even as she continued to address Gale; the girl seemed to have a thing about no eye contact. "Nothing says hi like helping a stranger with a snow dog, huh? It's weird how people will make stuff like this when eventually it'll melt away or get kicked down or something, but . . . also fun in a way. Thackery was really nice to me when he didn't have to be, and you were nice enough to help even though you didn't have gloves, so . . ." She offered him a sidelong glance and a shy smile. "Thanks. I made a snow dog in his honor, but I'll figure something else out for you. Well, unless you want to make a snowman and possibly lose a finger to frostbite~"
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Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:02 pm
"Oh," said Gale, feeling mildly stupid. "Did you grow up in the States, then, or elsewhere?"
He brushed snow off of the back of his legs and then the front, beneath his knees, as Stormy dug around in her pockets, clearly looking for something. His gaze flickered towards her briefly, and he gave a half sort of smile as he replied, "Good point. Like that time I told Bix not to eat my sweets, and I came home and there he was, a bag of them in his hand."
She wasn't looking at him, though she was speaking to him; for a moment, Gale wondered if there was something off putting about his face - maybe there was something on his face (inwardly he panicked for a moment, his mind going back to the PB&J he'd had for lunch - was there peanut butter on his cheek or something?), but then Stormy was talking again and Gale was diverted from his temporary fluster.
"I suppose," he said, and shrugged, looking back at the dog. "But that doesn't mean we can't have a good time doing it anyway."
He gave Stormy another hesitant smile to match her own, his cheeks reddening slightly, either from the cold or from his social awkwardness, he wasn't entirely certain. "I'm also sort of, erm...biased, I guess," he mumbled, and this time it was obvious where his embarrassment was from. "It's so rare to have someone here my age I sort of...jumped on the chance to meet you."
"But I'm glad I did," he added hastily. "You're really nice and, well I'm sounding stupider by the second, I'm just going to shut up now, I'm sorry."
Once he'd managed to stem the flow of ridiculousness coming from his mouth, Gale smiled a little, his cheeks still lightly pink. "And I say let's wait on the snowman. Maybe next time we can just have nice, warm hot chocolate instead of getting frostbite."
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:51 am
Snap went the camera; one memory of a snow dog captured for posterity, though she hoped he lasted at least until all the snow was melted. "That sort've bias is cool by me~" she replied cheerily, blissfully unaware of the boy's tinged cheeks (or chalking it up to the cold weather) as she checked her photo. "I probably would've followed you around at some point anyway since I don't know a lot of people here, let alone kids like me. Still might too. Patches says I'm good at sneaking."
Then she glanced at him again and waved her hand as if to dismiss his claim, even giggling a little at how silly it sounded; hello, Joy. "If it helps any, Gale, I think you sound very non-stupid!" Not "smart": "non-stupid". "You know what you want and you know where you stand and, hey, you're a full rank Hunter at seventeen! Sounds pretty opposite of stupid to me. I bet people are jealous if they aren't proud 'cause you rock them like a hurricane."
Nope she was not the least bit ashamed of trying another lame joke again, least of all vaguely singing the line.
But really keep talking you British person you, don't hush. emotion_kirakira Accents were the second best thing to listening to an actual foreign language.
Capitalizing on his idea, Stormy finally turned to him and curled a hand under her chin in thought, the other slipping her cellphone back into the hoodie pocket. At being called nice, she merely smiled to add to that assertion, knowing full well that part of that impression came from the Joy infection - but she wasn't going to let that go to waste if it meant making friends. "How about this? Let's talk over hot cocoa sometime. I'll tell you about Germany and the States and stuff and promise not to doze off until you're bored." And he could just say whatever the heck he wanted because accent. "I might prattle on a bit about Disney if I'm not careful though," she added most seriously, extending a hand should he say deal. "Just a fair warning. Somehow it always slips in."
-kurotomato  Happy New Yearsssss~ <3
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 9:17 pm
As soon as the JOY was out of his system, he would probably be mortified at how idiotic he sounded, but for the time being Gale just let it go and smiled, inwardly pleased. "Well, you're free to follow me around anytime you want. I'll be your friend and guide."
He rocked back on his heels, a grin playing at the corners of his lips. Gale scuffed the toe of his shoe into the ground bashfully and said, "Thank you. I mean, I do try. I work hard and..."
He trailed off, looked at Stormy, and giggled. "Rock them like a hurricane? With gale force winds, right?"
Snickering (and ignoring Jinhai, who was laughing inside of his head, the dragon clearly entertained), Gale brushed his hair away from his cheeks and nodded, a few flakes of snow settling on his cheeks. "I won't doze off," he said. "Not unless you're Marcus rambling on about girls again or Bix with his whole Gimli thing."
He glanced down at her hand, hesitated only a fraction of a second, and then reached out, wrapping his fingers around hers with a smile.
"It's a deal. And for the record, I don't mind a little Disney."Ol-j-man  Happy new year dear!! * U* <33
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