I thought in over a thousand years I&#39;d seen all there was to see.

Jack's eyes swept over to the boy, lingering just a moment on Irina along the way. "He looks so young," he decided. "And that hair -- I see what you mean about 'aggressively gay,' but it suits him."

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"It does," Kate agreed. Her voice quieted to a murmur, only for Jack to hear. "He's –– he was sixteen. Car crash, about two years ago."

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Jack couldn't keep the pity and horror at that -- and at the whole situation -- from going across his face for a moment. "Irina's a little older than me; she probably made it to 25," he said, equally quietly. "She died of tuberculosis after I came here. She was my first -- girlfriend."

Girlfriend wasn't quite the right word, but it was the closest he'd come without being gratuitous.

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It was good enough. Whenever he used terms like that, Kate just tended to assume he was making due with a term that didn't entirely fit. Paraphrasing.

"She's pretty," she said. "This is fucked up. I know this has happened here before but still. This is pretty fucked up."

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"It didn't happen to me last time," Jack said, because that point was important. "And yes, I always thought she was."

He leaned back against the bar, considering it. "Maybe it's good for me," he said, as if he were trying to believe it. "I don't like to think about her or anyone else as being dead, but --."

But it tended to happen when you moved ahead a hundred years.

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Kate hadn't gotten a visitor last time, either. Bod had, but... It was a lot different when the visitor was someone who'd died before their time, instead of middle aged ghosts who'd been long dead before ever meeting their visitee.

"But that happens anyway," Kate supplied, glancing at Lionel again. "Yeah. I don't think I can spin it that way for myself."

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"It's one of the few advantages of being 130," Jack told her, lightly as he could manage. "So -- how are you going to spin it so you can make it through the weekend?"

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"I don't know," Kate admitted with a sigh, resting her chin against her hand, her elbow against the bar. "What am I supposed to say to Moosh? Is it unfair if I tell him? Is it unfair if I don't?"

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"Could he get here before Lionel has to go back?" Jack asked. "If he can't or wouldn't want to -- maybe it's better he never know."

Edited Date: 2013-02-01 03:37 pm (UTC)

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"I really don't know." She sighed again. "He's doing so good, though. So the most likely thing is I'll keep it to myself and let Bod talk me down. He gets this shit."

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Jack bit his lip, echoed Kate's sigh. He didn't have any better suggestions on Marshall, much as he would have liked to. "You're lucky to have him," he decided. "Emma's got her brother visiting, so I know she'll be distracted."

By yelling at him.

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"Yeah, I heard." And she couldn't even start imagining what that was like. "Hope she doesn't spend all her time yelling at him."

"Who's yelling at who?" Lionel asked, sliding closer, and reaching out to stuff the napkin he'd been writing on into Kate's pocket. She didn't even ask. She'd look at it later.

"No one," she said. "Lionel, Jack. Jack, Lionel."

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"Nice to meet you," Jack said, affably enough. "The yelling is -- nothing to worry about."

He tilted his head at Lionel, realizing he looked familiar. "Were you at Kate's graduation?"

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"Yeah." He tempered his smile into something milder, and added, airily, "Marshall's plus one."

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"Then you were lucky," Jack returned, equally airy. "Or as lucky anyone who stumbles into a Fandom graduation ceremony is, anyhow."

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"Mm, you know, for a place that gets so much wacky publicity," Lionel noted, "this doesn't seem all that crazy to me."

"Says the boy who's not even supposed to be here," Kate remarked.

"I'm just calling it as I see it."

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"You're dead, I'm a werewolf, and the brunette with curly hair over there died of tuberculosis over a hundred years ago," Jack said. "I think it's weird enough."

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"Eh." Lionel shrugged. "It's a little... supernatural young adult fiction gone crazy."

Or maybe he just didn't like seeming weirded out.

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