A Moment's Respite(Willow/Jory)

[Willow Wenlock]

By the time Willow hit the table she had noticed that Jory was silent, not offering anything interesting. He was probably still thinking about his dorm mates and the trouble around the corner. "You know, I was here for the boat battle years ago, the teachers here are amazing, and if you have problems they'll help you. You just have to remember this quote. No one ever finds life worth living - one has to make it worth living. The situation may suck, but if you make the best of it, then you're thumbing your nose at them."

[Jory Addison]

Jory raised his eyebrow at Willow again. Boat battle? But she had moved from that to something that didn't exactly sound like the same thing. He rolled his eyes as he sat down. "What am I supposed to do? Smile and say thanks when they call me names or mess up my stuff?" Maybe that kind of thing worked for some people, but he just couldn't bring himself to be like that.

[Willow Wenlock]

It may sound like a load of bum, but Willow knew that it worked. "Maybe not smile, maybe not say thanks, but ignore them. Sounds like a raw deal, but if you don't give them a reaction, usually they'll get bored and go away." Usually may not always apply, but if you had the right attitude it could do well for you. "Listen, it's not about their attitude, it's about yours. Be positive, stay ahead of them, and love yourself. It doesn't matter if anyone else does." Willow wished she could say that advice from strangers was effective, but she guessed it was all going in one ear and out the other, probably because Jory didn't know or trust her.

[Jory Addison]

It went in one ear and out the other not because Jory didn't know or trust Willow, but because right now he couldn't see how any of it could possibly work. He had seen kids get picked on before, and though the bullies might get bored for a little while, they inevitably came back, sometimes even worse than before. "Whatever you say." He'd like to see her act like that if suddenly the world got flipped around and she was getting picked on for liking guys.

[Willow Wenlock]

The blatant dismissal in the comment rankled Willow, she was trying to be nice, offer a friendly suggestion. Intellectually she knew that he didn't mean to hurt her feelings, but from the same level she couldn't understand how someone could listen to that advice and then shrug it off with a casual whatever, the word in itself held a cultural medium of disrespect and disregard to the person that it was aimed at. Willow sat down and sighed, "look, no one else if going to love you or even like you if you brush off their comments. Your situation sucks, I get it...but one person can't change the world. And only you can change your mood."

[Jory Addison]

"Well no one's going to listen to your comments when you just act like you know better than them," Jory shot back, almost catty in his reply. "I don't want to change the world, I just want to stop getting insults thrown at me all the time." He looked up at Willow, then down at his hands. Another couple of moments passed before he pulled his knees up to his chest, propping his heels on the edge of the chair. His arms wrapped around his legs and he put his chin on his knees. "I mean, I still hear them talk about Dare in the dorm, and he hasn't lived in the school for like a year." That didn't bode well for him.

[Willow Wenlock]

She chose to ignore the statement about acting like she knew better. She wasn't trying, it was a byproduct of lots of reading, and little group social interactions. She had her flaws as much as he had his, she just didn't think he'd listen to that. Willow wondered at the name he'd mentioned though, Silver had mentioned it when she'd met him a couple of days ago.

"If you're talking about Dare Blackwood," she didn't know if his name had changed, but that was Silver's name, so it must have been his to at some point, "I have it on good authority that things are getting better for him. And he has a partner, so he must have been open at some point." Open to the words, just ignore them. Sometimes it was the only thing to do, and while being teased as a know-it-all hurt, she also took pride in it. It was part of who she was.

[Jory Addison]

"Well duh," Jory said. "He was with Michael before they were outed, and they went through it together. Markise and Ariel just came out a few months ago, but they were together, still are." Of course they would be okay, as far as he knew they had had already been deep into relationships and had someone they could lean on completely to get through it all. "None of them even live in the school, too." That wasn't a choice that he had.

[Willow Wenlock]

Willow's eye's widened and she felt like she was pounding her head against a solid brick wall. "Do you have a boyfriend to do that with?" Probably not since he implied that they had had it and he did not. "If you don't have a boyfriend, the only way to get one to go through this with is to be able to think about someone besides yourself." Willow shuffled her book into her backpack, "I really do want to get to know you as a person. But I can't change the world for you, or do anything to change who you are on the inside. You're gay, I'm okay with that. Take it or leave it."

[Jory Addison]

Jory hadn't even considered asking her to change the world for him, and he certainly didn't want her or anyone else to change who he was. He also wasn't exactly sure who else he was supposed to be thinking about when he didn't really have anyone to think about. "I didn't ask you to change the world," he said after a few long moments of staring at her, dumbfounded. "I definitely don't want to change. And...I don't have anyone to think about."

[Willow Wenlock]

How dense was he? Was everything she said going over his head? "If you want someone in your life, then you have to be more optimistic. No guy is going to look at you and say I can have a meaningful relationship with this guy. All you talk about is how the world sucks when you're gay. Believe me, it's something a lot of people already know. Try talking about other things, be interesting and the guys will come to you." At the very least if he could be interested in something else besides trying to point out how it wasn't fair, she would have done something.

[Jory Addison]

Jory hated it when people assumed he meant something or had said something when he hadn't said anything about it. Was she even listening to him? Or maybe she was just putting her idealistic views onto him when he would really just rather break down and cry. He apparently failed even more at getting the point across that he had never said anything about changing the world, and this wasn't even about finding someone, this was about everyone hating him for something completely out of his control.

Of course that was all he talked about, he was right in the middle of it, it was the most important thing in his life right now. He hadn't even intended on talking about it, though. He had come into the library hoping to get away from it all for a little while, then she had mentioned it and started assuming he was brave and not afraid. Then she had given the impression that it wasn't really all that big a deal and that he should just be able to somehow ignore it all. And then she had started pulling that change the world stuff out of nowhere and started talking about him being with someone.

Jory pressed his eyes against his knees and mumbled against the cloth. "I didn't want to talk about this, anyway." He had gone along with it because it might have helped. That had been a horrible mistake. How much could she expect from him? A lot more than he was able to give, apparently.

[Willow Wenlock]

Willow sat her hands on her satchel, resisting the urge to drum her fingers against it. She had tried to change the subject, but it hadn't worked instead he had been quiet. "Alright, we don't have to talk about it, I'm open to just about any other subject." Any other subject would be a welcome change, she wanted to talk about something else. Runes, Astronomy, DaDa, pretty much any school subject would be right up her alley, except for something that required her to feel more than a momentary sense of compassion on a subject that just didn't affect her.

[Jory Addison]

"Where did you go before you came here?" Jory asked, his voice still muffled against his legs before he forced his head up to peek at Willow. Anything to get the focus off of him for a little while. If he remembered right, she had said she used to go to Hogwarts, but apparently had just come back. Why would someone leave and then come back? Normally they stayed gone.

[Willow Wenlock]

That one was one that she felt safe answering, "Beauxbaton. In France. I wanted to utilize the exchange program, and I wanted to be able to come back to finish my education here, so I transferred out at the end of my third year, during the summer. To acclimate." It had been a larger adjustment than Hogwarts, she had been further away from her parent's then before. She hadn't known at the time that her parent's were engineering to get her over there in the first place, for what had followed afterward.