Xaviers!

"Now this is a good start. Thank you much!" he said, practically tearing off the lid of the tin to get at the cookies inside.

"Yeah, not a lie at all - just a lie of omission. Goin' to campus in mah belly," he grinned, picking one up. Holding it under his nose, he inhaled deeply, savoring the aroma of fresh-baked chocolate.

"You know, I think I could live in a bakery. Just, like, 100% of the time, with all the wonderful smells in the air and the lovely things to eat. Maybe I'll start one up one day when everything's done and finished."

"I've a feeling if you waited for everything to be done and finished, there would be nobody to eat your sweets."

"That wouldn't be the end of the world," Will chuckled. "More for me. I can pack away quite a few."

"Does it ever mess with your head? Being able to live that long?"

"Mmph?" he said, now with a mouthful of cookie.

"Well, I mean. Yes. Yes it did. Does, I suppose. But it's yet to really...come up, as it were. I mean, I'm not that old. Not really.

...Well, I am that old, but most of that time doesn't count."

He chewed as he thought. "It's...I haven't really lost anyone yet. Not for good, anyway. So maybe that's when it will hit the most."

"It's something I wonder about."

"I mean... Tereza might live an awful long time."

Will carefully chewed his cookies. "That she might," he said, noncommittally. "Werewolves don't follow natural aging curves, I'd gather."

"Well the one that bit her is some sort of German gingerbread witch, or something."

"Oh, man, I wish. That'd seem like a great adventure. But you probably mean the kind that lures children in and gets a bunch of nasty fairy tales written about them, with cutting off of toes and chopping hands and grinding bones to make bread and all that. I'll take the Disney versions, thanky.

Bit her. Honestly. The things some people will do."

"I'm starting to think that when you've got vampires and werewolves running around, some amount of biting is part of the territory."

"People aren't for biting! I mean, yes, great that Tereza has had her inner whatchamacallit let out and feels freer and more in tune with everything, and the world could always use more shifters. But geez, like, a nature class or some meditation might have helped just as much without the gnashing of sharp pointy teeth," Will chuckled, biting 'savagely' into a cookie for emphasis.

"I'm more saying that the ship might have sailed expecting good behavior from the centuries-old werewolf."

"Oh god, don't tell me that's what I'm going to be like when I get old and grey. Always complaining about how you young whippersnappers don't do things like they did in my day, where we burned witches at the stake and cut off our big toes to fit in fancy shoes."

"From the look of things, 'old and green' is what you are, and will be for quite some time."

"Well, don't put me in the grave quite yet; I'm still young at heart. And probably at kidneys and liver too, when I can be bothered.

And green's just an affectation, anyhoo. You saw me all grey and squishy in that box over there."

"Aye, but almost everything's an affectation for certain kinds of shapeshifter."

"Hence your parents' pegged weirdness meter, aye?"

"I still... look like what they recognize as me. I mean... I look like I've been working out, but that's not entirely wrong."

"True, though cause and effect don't always have a one-to-one correlation here," WIll said, chomping down on another cookie and letting himself swell to comically large muscular proportions as an example.

"But I know what you mean. Sara used to tell me that whenever I would visit home, I'd look a good ten years younger. People around us and expectations really do shape what we look like, don't they?"

"I don't think I've been doing that. God, I hope I haven't."

"I've got to grow up sometime, and all."

"You'll always be 12 here," Will said, looking around at the bric-a-brac of Sam's earlier life.

"Tap shoes?"

"Aye. Didn't you ever wonder where my sense of rhythm came from?"

"You know, just the other day, I was saying to myself 'if only I could decode the secrets of Sam's rhythm," he grinned.

"Modern tap, or was it the whole pink tutu experience?"

"Well you certainly took the time to tease me for being a dumb drummer," she smirks.

"I've taken a lot of dance. I've done modern, but there's also some embarrassing photos of me in a step dance get up."

"That's Riverdance shite to you yanks."

"Well, that's what you do. Smelly drummers in the back hittin' on pieces of metal in something vaguely resembling a time signature. Pfft," Will laughed. "Almost as bad as bass players."

"Embarrassing photos, you say?"

"You're probably not going to get to see them that much. Mum's got them up on the mantle downstairs."

"Oh, well, that's a pity."

Oh, well, that's a challenge.

"...you know your brain kind of leaks like a sieve, aye?"

"So I've been told," Will grinned.

"Just so we understand each other," she smirks.

"Oh, keeping anything secret from you is a real challenge. But, then, I suppose that's why The Morrigan encouraged me to sneak into your room so often?" Will said, innocently.

"I don't... think I want to quite get into that here. No offense."

"None taken," Will said, mildly, putting his hands up. "Just trying to get your goat, is all."

"The problems here have mostly been more mundane, like my sister filching biscuits."

"Kind of nice to deal with those for a while, huh? Regular people problems."

"Aye. It was kind of selfish of me in retrospect, panicking when Tereza shifted."

"It's bringing the outside world into your little safe bubble here. Doesn't matter if it comes in a power fluctuation or a mysterious package in the mail; it's unwanted. Maybe it is a tad selfish, but it's not unreasonable."

"Makes you wonder if this sort of stuff is just drawn to us, aye?"

"Well, I'm fairly sure campus was built on some kind of mystic equivalent of an ancient Indian burial ground, but yeah -- this shite follows us around.

Or it does me, anyway. I can't speak for what happens when I'm not around; I'm not there at the time."

"Well I guess it makes sense, too. After all, we're someone else's weird shite, and all."