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"I-it's not that, it's more like... um..." He frowned, and scratched at the scar across his nose. For a minute the need to express this properly was more important than warming up. "Back when the labs were destroyed... Or ending up in an emergency situation of some sort..."

Oliver was struggling, both to find words for what he was feeling, and also to admit it. Spending a couple months off island doing field work had leant him some quiet confidence, while the constant activity and physical work had benefited his naturally lean physique, but neither seemed to put his mind at ease.

"I-I'm not a very strong person," he finally murmured. "I'm afraid of getting too complacent, a-and then not able to do what's necessary if something awful does happen."

"I don't know," Oliver admitted, avoiding eye contact. "There's a lot of situations that are out of my hands here, and I guess until I'm a full hunter, that also includes where I get sent and what I end up working on."

He paused, smiling a little to himself. "Although it felt good coming back here. I missed it."

"I suppose it's easier that my room isn't in the basement... It's... more home than my home was, before I left," Oliver admitted with that same shy smile. The people he had met on the island filled spaces in his life that he hadn't even realized were empty, and those relationships kept him firmly grounded.

The unexpected change of topic caught Oliver visibly off guard. "Ah, y-yes! I can't remember the last time I had any though..."

Oliver followed, flustered and compliant. Being treated to so much kindness and appreciation just for completing a task he considered routine had swept him up in the encounter, and it didn't even occur to him that a polite refusal would set him back on his comfortably familiar isolated science-nerd track.

When they arrived at Melvin's room, Oliver gazed around with something approaching awe. He left his boots at the door, either from politeness or a sense of how meticulously clean the room was kept, but that much would have registered at a subconscious level. The young man was too busy being amazed at the large space and how livable it seemed. It was like having a little house safely contained inside the convenient dorm building.

"I-I think I'll be fine... Um... Thank you for all this, I-I hope it's not taking you too far out of your way," he stammered, trailing Melvin to the kitchen space like a confused puppy.

"Ah, um... Yes, b-but, inviting me over..." Oliver stammered for a minute, and then gave up. "Cookie dough would be wonderful, thank you..."

Melvin seemed comfortable enough entertaining guests, and Oliver let some of that casual relaxation ease into him. Something different wasn't always something bad. Sometimes it was just ice cream maybe.

"My mom always made hot chocolate in the winter," he said with a little smile. "Her favourite was the kind with the little marshmallows, but it was always really hard to find out where we lived."

"I think I'm okay, thanks," Oliver said with a smile. Melvin's borrowed coat had warmed him up well in the labs, and his hair was already starting to dry into wispy, unruly twirls. "I'm amazed though, you must do a lot of entertaining..."

Accepting the spoon an ice cream, Oliver was still unwilling to dig in unless he was following Melvin's lead. But that was habit, not lingering nervousness. "I grew up in Moosonee. It's um, northern Ontario, right on the bay. There's no road access up in that area, things only come in on a plane or boat..."

Oliver blushed brightly, and shook his head. "N-no, I was never very good at fishing..." His father tried to teach him, but he had always been too gentle for the sport. When he caught his first fish he had burst into tears, inconsolable over the damage his fun had caused the creature.

"I-I did a lot of canoeing though, a-and skating, and swimming... I don't even remember learning to swim, being that close to the river, my parents made sure I learned early." He smiled sheepishly. "We have a canoe here nobody uses, I sometimes take it out when I have to go collect ocean samples."

For a moment Oliver looked alarmed, as though the thought of being attacked on the water was a new one. "N-no I... I don't go very far out, just beyond what I can reach from the rocks, but nothing has ever really bothered me."

Thinking on it closer, it was a bit strange. There were giant titans out there, and occasionally he did see large things in the water, but the worst situation he had encountered was having to pull his paddle in and drift while a dark shape passed underneath. "Maybe it's because the canoe doesn't make as much of a disturbance as a motor boat would," he mused. "Or maybe the things in the ocean are satisfied with potato chips."

He took another spoonful of ice cream. "I miss the cold weather too. My first year on the island just felt... unreal, like time wasn't even passing. I didn't really celebrate holidays when I got here, not since I was a kid, so I didn't have much to miss in that regard."