Welcome to Gaia! ::

Earlier that morning they had met at the gym after breakfast to try and work off a few extra calories. It had been his idea, amazingly enough, spawning from the thought that he had to do something other than flump around between training sessions and near-death missions.

The workout had been short-lived, devolving into conversations about which starter Pokemon was the best (Charmander, obviously, no matter how many times Jasper tried to insist that Cyndaquil was the better fire starter) and conversing about Ninja Turtles and other things that they had grown up on.

Agreeing that it might be best to continue the conversation elsewhere, for the benefit of anyone else who might want to use the gym equipment without their banter, they had suited back up and stepped outside to head back towards the dorms. He had grabbed the tails of his coat and was about to do his best Darkwing Duck impersonation (getting as far as "I am the terror that quacks in the night...") before the clouds started to roll in, giving no warning before opening up to pour down on them.

He was not the most graceful thing running across the green that currently kept them from the dorms, especially not after splishing through a puddle that soaked through his boots. His running could easily be mistaken for galumping and it wasn't long before he fell behind Jasper's offer of a sheltering coat long enough to stand in the rain and strip his boots off. Wet was wet and he certainly wasn't going to get any dryer, right?

Right.

Arland let out a wild hoot of triumph followed by a howl as he snatched up his boots to run once more, this time at a considerably more spirited pace.

"Well, if you're lucky enough to get one made of a water-resistant fabric..." He managed a smirk to accompany his breathless laughter, hands on his knees the second after he had dropped his boots to the concrete just outside the door to the dormitory. The wind hadn't changed, so for the moment there was a dry space to drip on before heading inside.

"I don't know if I want to go upstairs and watch it from the window in my room while drying off... Or strip down and play in it." He made a gesture at the rain that was still bucketing down as he straightened himself out.

"You going to come with me and share in the experience?" His brow quirked as he glanced at the other, already halfway through peeling off his coat so that he could ball it up and squeeze a bit of water out of it before heading inside. "I've got some music we could listen to while watching the rain if you're not interested in playing in it... You don't have anything bad to say about the Dead, do you?"

A very brief look of 'how can you not' crossed his face when Jasper didn't get the Grateful Dead reference, but he let it slide when the other hunter began singing another classic instead. He began whistling along himself as he stooped down to scoop up his shoes before grabbing the door to usher them inside.

"...Watch the lightning when it lights up the sky..." He caught in on a well-timed chorus of the song as thunder rumbled outside seconds after the outside lit up with a flash.

"You remember which room is mine, right?"

"It's only bad if you remembered and you weren't ever actually planning on coming to visit." He spoke simply and honestly as they dripped down the hall, pausing long enough for him to pull out the key to unlock the door to his room before glancing back at Jasper again.

"Could do that, but only if we got the ones that had a double on the bottom. Ever try spooning on the top bunk?" The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them and then it was too late to take them back so he was turning back towards the door so that he could nudge it open, dropping his shoes just inside only to head to the closet for a hanger.

The room was sparsely decorated as a result of the lingering trauma from the trip to the Sahara, but he had slowly started to put things back on the walls. There were sketches tacked up to a cork board above his desk and he'd managed to tape one of his favorite galaxy prints back up over his headboard so he had something to stare at on restless nights.

"Make yourself comfortable, yeah? I'll try to find you something comfortable and dry to put on."

He snagged a few hangers out of his closet, shaking his head slowly with a soft, sympathetic laugh at the other hunter's story. "I could totally picture you as a top bunk kind of guy, but that's gotta be rough as tall as you are. Unless you're more of a sheet drape and pillow fort bottom bunk kind of guy." He flashed Jasper a smirk as he set the hangers down before opening the trunk at the foot of his bed to draw out two pairs of pajama pants.

Out of his layering habit he also snagged two muscle shirts, one white and one black, and a long sleeved knit top before pausing to unball his coat, intending to hang it so it would dry faster.

"Love listening to it, though... Especially when it gets wicked like this. It's music all its own."

"Unisex section of a new age shop back home. Pretty damn sure they're meant for women, but." A wry grin was directed at the other hunter as he brushed off his own self-consciousness to strip off his own layers.

Few people on the Island so far had seen him without his usual covering; the medics, for one, Inoke, from their time on the beach, Ceres, from when she'd bandaged him up. Most wouldn't understand why the generally outgoing young man seemed so shy when it came to skin.

He liked to joke that it was due to how pale he was, commenting on how he could probably blind someone in the right light, but that had little to do with it. It wasn't his figure either, or it hadn't been since he had started being a bit more active after highschool, at least. It wasn't even the tattoos; more the scars hidden beneath them and how awkward it had been to explain them every time someone asked...

Arland snagged a towel once his sweater, t-shirt and undershirt were off, patting himself dry only to make a grab for one of the muscle shirts he'd left on the bed, certain the dark ink against his pale skin was likely to draw some sort of attention, even if his not-quite Man 'O Steel physique didn't.

"There's gotta be a catalog, though, that makes ordering easier..."