Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Okay..." Freddie was drifting further into strange and trecherous waters. There were dozens of things he could have asked, but most of them he struck out as revealing too much about how he was feeling. Part of him was still livid at the fact he was reduced to reaching out to one of them in any way that wasn't violent. The other part was starting to realize it would never end well.

"What d'ya do? To pass the time? Stay sane?"

He had to know, because he had no ideas beyond fighting... and how many more fights could he stand to lose. He knew a little of what the other islanders did, but thanks to gossip that information was grossly distorted. The things he heard could lead one to believe it was one big fuzzy orgy. But who'd want to screw him now, anyway? All the liquor and the world wouldn't help.

He stuffed the last of the cheesecake into his mouth, screw the salad.

"Yeah, but..." He cut himself off. He was going to complain about the chance of running into the other freaks, but what did he think he was doing now? This was giving in, this was admitting defeat, this was... this was him running out of cheesecake. Bia's smile kept him in his seat for a little while longer.

"Hold on a sec... You like it here?"

"Yeah..."

Freddie stood up and went back to the line to get another peice of cake. If he was going to be miserable with boobs, what difference would being fat and miserable with boobs make?

"Shoulda read the goddamn fine print," he muttered as he sat back down. He could have stayed home, maybe bounced around correctional institutes until some disgruntled inmate finally shanked him. He resumed eating, the salad now completely ignored.

He paused in the middle of chewing as he realized he'd said that out loud. He swallowed- with some difficulty- and eyed Bia. She probably recognized the uniform, everyone else seemed to, so why bother lying? At the moment he was still of the mind that everything he attempted was hopeless anyway.

"I'm sayin', you work here for years, but since you know too much when they give ya the boot it's right into their damn playground."

He jabbed his fork into the cheesecake. "******** bastards."

"Awright, more like one!" Freddie admitted irritably. He wasn't even sure if it had been that long, but the daily routine made it easy to overlook the passage of time outside of when you were on and when you were off. It sounded more impressive, more unfair as years, but of course he couldn't even get away with that. "But it felt like years, okay?"

He raked his fork through his cheesecake, over and over, until finally he scooped away a little bit more. He shoved it in his mouth before he could say anything more on the subject.

"Yeah, well..." Freddie paused to swallow. "Now you know."

He looked down at his plate and wondered why the hell they had to make them so small, then it was back up to Bia to abruptly pick his original problem back up. "I swear I seen you before... I mean before."

"New York?" Freddie scoffed. "I never went further north than Virginia."

Up until the island, he'd done an excellent job of staying what he perceived to be his own kind. As picked up his sweet tea, he thought of the simplest question, the one he should have asked at the start of the whole awkward conversation. "What's yer name, anyway?"