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Lexington despised cafeteria eating and cafeteria seating. He found it a nigh guarantee that the food bordered poisonous, the company proved lacking, and the seating left him stranded among a group of people with which he had nothing in common. On certain days, cafeteria eating went over without issue - but those days occurred back in high school, when he had actual friends. Here, on Hawaii's redheaded cousin, he knew few people and liked even less. Thus, the cafeteria seating problem compounded.

As Lex walked with his tray leveraged against his hip, he surveyed the tables to find a busyness about the place, but seldom a familiar face - only Zeke stood out for being slumped over his coffee, and further reconnaissance turned up no signs of Gretchen. He assumed she ate earlier in the day, and made a mental note to drag his a** out of bed sooner.

Or, he noted as he stopped at Zeke's table, stop eating altogether.

"Hey a*****e," he greeted as neutrally as he could, "you look like s**t." With the tray perched carefully on the table, he took a seat. Tiny breakfast sausages sat next to a bowl of muesli and an unopened yogurt. A styrofoam of tea sat steeping in the corner of the tray, exiled from the rest of the foods. He spared a glance at Zeke's notebook while he worked on opening and mixing the yogurt into the muesli. "You know, you could learn more if you swam off ze edge of ze island. Might meet a shark tête-à-tête."

Von's greeting, sweet though it was, was met with a little more then a flick of pale eyes and a grunt of acknowledgement. He didn't bother arguing with the assessment of his looks, because it probably wasn't that far from the truth. He knew he certainly felt like s**t, what with sleep deprivation now mingling with laziness. At the very least, he still smelled good. His exhaustion had not fallen quite so far as to effect his daily showering.

He took a drink of his coffee, turned the page of the notebook, and was taken by a long yawn before he could answer. "I could," he agreed, voice a little less tired sounding than he looked. "But since I'd rather not being eaten alive..." He trailed off as he heard the woman, sighing as she rounded the table and flipped the notebook closed with a definitive snap. "Harley." She didn't seem to hear him, and instead continued gathering up their things to drop them unceremoniously into an empty seat out of his reach.

Oddly, the Mist didn't seem terribly bothered by this, and responded to the theft by sitting up a little straighter in his chair and leveling an expectant sort of look at the red head as she threw herself in the chair across from him.

He'd wait, patiently, as she introduced herself to the newbie beside her, the shadow of an amused smile beginning to flicker into existence. One that grew as she hit her stride. Zeke took it all without protest, sipping his coffee, nodding periodically as she continued to lay into him.

{She is right, you need sleep.}

No time to sleep.

{I do not think she will accept such an answer.}

Probably right.

When she had finished, Zeke set his cup on the table again, large hands circling it loosely. "Good morning, Gingersnap. You look lovely today." Avoidance wasn't going to work here, but she did look lovely. "I see your arms feeling better, that's good." He tipped his head towards Von. "This is Lexington, he woke up early New Years Eve." About eight hours before he'd found Harley laid up in an infirmary bed with her arm in a sling.

Harley did not, in fact, hear him say her name the first time. Oh no, she was already on a roll, and much more interested in her little tirade and the stranger than to pay attention to something as silly as her name. When Lexington gave his name for the first time, Hattie gave him a salute, and then went back to briefly ignoring him in favour of letting Zeke have it. Well, having a minor it, anyway. They both knew she could get much worse.

His avoidance techniques were legendary. She almost fell for it. Almost. It did do a great job of quieting her down though. So much so in fact, she simply stared at him for a second or two, incredulous. Then, instead of answering him at all, she turned in her seat to better face Lexington, who had also piped up at this point.

"Yeah man, sorry to barge in. So what's going on, is that he's probably slept maybe six hours in the last two weeks, and that's me being generous. Now I know we have a lot to do, and I know s**t happens, but he's also being a giant baby who refuses to go for a nap. Because he's a giant baby." That point was apparently very important, seeing as she reiterated it. "As for the rest of it, Zeke's one of my many...many-" She was sure to toss a pointed glance Zeke's way, with a devilish grin as she weedled at him. "-lovers, but pretty soon he'll also be a skeleton in the closet if he doesn't get his a** to bed, so you pretty much pegged two of three. Not bad!" She clapped for him with a laugh, quite enjoying this, under the circumstances. "And for your payment, I'll also toss in a bottle of whiskey." Her hand went out, ready to seal the deal.

"I'm overpaying because it's also a welcome present! Though if smutty romance novels or hoards of candy is more your thing, I can always substitute the whiskey. I might even have vodka. So, welcome to Deus, and can you please help me make Zeke be a responsible adult?"

Lexington raised no qualms at the two pairing off to squabble; their doing so left him time to eat some of his mixed yogurt and muesli. Choking down the mix was a veritable effort, however, as he discovered that the quality of their cafeteria food proved mediocre. He set it aside to try the sausage next and found a similar verdict: it tasted dry and largely devoid of flavor. How could one ******** up a sausage? Perhaps he'd stick to a bread diet in the future. No one ever screwed up bread, right?

Lex was in the midst of sipping tea when Hattie mentioned many lovers, and he nearly choked himself. Grunting, he retired the styrofoam cup to his tray. Evidently people still got laid here, though that meant little in regards to his all-but-dead sex life. "I see." He knew not whether to take her seriously. Was she joshing him? It would explain why Zeke appeared more bemused than upset at her admonishings.

"And why, pray tell, would she offer you whiskey as a welcoming present if she wanted to hurt you? You're beginning to bore me with all your paranoia, Hunter."

Lex stiffened at Malicious' own judgment of the situation. She had a point, and she knew it. "Sanks," he offered back, though it lacked enthusiasm from his own internal reprimands. "It sounds like he should be paying me, not you." His gaze slid sidelong to Zeke, where the tired man looked content to be fawned over by the redhead. "So how about it, Zeke? In exchange for some cigarettes, I can explain to you how someone wis' six hours of sleep over ze past weeks is less functional zan a drunk." It sounded the better option; Zeke looked demonstrably larger than him in weight, and Lexington lacked the muscle mass to haul anyone about with ease - much less someone who would likely fight the locomotive efforts.

"It sounds like he prefers to ******** up his ozzer duties by not sleeping. Or maybe he just wants to drop dead from exhaustion. How long was it for zat? Eleven days or somesing?" Lex bit off the rest of his sausage. "If you haf' many, many lovers, zen what's ze harm in letting one, ah, how do you call it… Destroy himself?"

For all that this entire conversation revolved around his being accused of a negligent and irresponsible hunter, it actually seemed like Zeke might have been enjoying himself. At the very least, he found it all terribly entertaining, and really, what else did you need out of life? He'd moved, sitting forward now so he could lean his weight onto his arms where they rested on the table. That benign, insufferable smile remaining, even brightening briefly at the name shark boy.

Oh, and he definitely didn't miss her calling him her favorite. He knew it as true, but hearing her admit it was always nice. She might have been joking, but every joke held a kernel of truth.

He would turn that pale gaze from the vivacious redhead to the dower rookie sitting beside her, and though his expression didn't appear to change much, there was a noticeable lack of warmth to it now. "You want me to pay you to tell me things I'm already aware of?" It didn't sound like a very beneficial deal for him. "She's exaggerating," he'd continue on, tone level. "It hasn't been two weeks." Six hours in three days really wasn't that large of an improvement, but Von didn't need to know that, and he wasn't going to give Harley the satisfaction.

She, however, knew the right things to say to pickle at his sense of responsibility. Not to his job, but to her, and anyone else that actually cared about him. "I'm not going to die." Which wasn't that large of a reassurance, considering past experience.

All protests aside though, Zeke was well aware he wasn't going to win this, and all attempts to argue the specifics were merely a delay.

"Okay, fine, it's been ten days." Harley huffed, rolling her eyes as if it were a great chore, being corrected. Ten days was still an exaggeration too, but she refused to let up on her point. Exaggerating simply worked in her favour, or so she belived.

"He doesn't fight me because I'm adorable, and I'm right, and he can't argue with me because of those two very important things." If she could sparkle with delight, that would have been about the time she'd do it. But, seeing as she couldn't, she simply had to settle with grinning like a fiend, and a light elbowing of her new friend. Right up until Zeke said he wasn't going to die.

"You're damn right you're not, because if you do, I'ma kill you." She pointed accusingly at her beau, dropping her grin for the moment, in favour of this rather more important thing, and very legitimate threat. After that though, the grin didn't come back, and she looked curiously between them, as if taking stock of them for the first time. A couple things seemed to jump out at her now that she wasn't on a rampage of aggressive care, and as she gazed between the two, her curiousity mingled with thought, her gaze eventually looking at the ceiling, without tilting her head.

"Zeke!" She gasped out suddenly, making sure to sound as overly scandalized as she possibly could. "You were mean to a newbie? This poor new babin!" Without any regard for personal space or consideration towards his level of physical comfort, Hattie threw her arms around poor Lexington, pulling him as close to her and her chest as he'd let her. "It's okay, he's only sometimes an a**. Usually when he's sleepy." She assured him, patting his hair with one hand, as if that would soothe everything. Granted, Zeke was never an a** to her, of course, but she did have ample opportunity to watch him with others.

Zeke's eye was keen to Lexington's suffering, as he suffered greatly beneath the nonconsensual hug. Immediately he wedged his hands between himself and her shoulders, then tried to push her away with tentative force. "Nononononononono," he hissed through a cringe, "I don't need hugs, I promise." <********, this plan is backfiring really hard —

Attempts to touch his hair were met with physical interception, where he tried to pluck her hand off his head by the wrist and return it to her general sphere of personal space (or where it should have been, if she had one). Already Von looked deeply frazzled and stiff. Clutching his tray, he stood and swapped sized to the other end of Zeke, if only to ensure some space between him and the touchiest girl he met in years. Zeke wasn't as much of a looker, but he wasn't as much of a toucher, either; Von decided to take the trade for less eye candy in favor of personal comfort.

"So," he cleared his throat, "you were talking about dragging Zeke to bed. Zat's definitely somesing wors' sinking about right now." Beats dealing with the newbie treatment and hugs and other bizarre inanity.

"I'm beginning to wonder if you've ever interacted with another human being before this day, Lexington. I've never heard of a human so skittish around other humans…"

Not you too.

"You also mentioned cigarettes for payment and I'm past due for one about now." Grinding his teeth, he looked over to Zeke. He stared at him thoroughly, intention clear - I'm blaming you for that and you're going to pay up with interest. He knew not how he intended for that to happen, but the recent switch to the island left him with a lot of time on his hands - and a restless, creative mind.