Never Too Early

[Duke Bell.]

Duke felt strange; not like, "I've got a stomach full of Xanax," or any other type that he wasn't familiar with. His strangeness was like world-off-kilter strange, like them snow globes that didn't have snow in it, and instead depicted a sea and a horizon, and it was like someone had turned it all around and he was now watching the waves adapt to the sky. He realized then, that this girl was quite bad for his health.

Fuck me, he thought, because he found her adorable and to be completely unlike his previous assumption of her. Duke Bell, you are an idiot.

"The world hates me," he commented quietly, "everyone hates me, so you couldn't have possibly invited me back to the Academy with you."
The grin he wore was even more quiet in volume; demure on his face and barely there, but it was there, and he found that he could feel the brightness of his gaze.
"Luckily for you," and here, he was being smart, "I was headed there anyway." That was his not-admission that he would have rather liked to continue talking to her, but he wouldn't even nearly begin to admit that he was having a human moment.

"You talk a lot," he noted, offhand but blunt and completely random. He said nothing else on that matter, and so didn't indicate whether he liked it or not, but he was a difficult person on a good day, and because today was especially good, he was being especially difficult.
"Are you going to be fine with your bags?" he asked her, a change of topic and perhaps a slight hint of thoughtfulness.

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

“Ah! See, I was right. You are one of those ‘whoa is me’ musicians,” Kellan joked. There was no way she was going to let a comment like that slide without having something to say. Her teasing ended there, though, because although Duke seemed like a nice guy, she didn’t feel like she knew him well enough to joke with him too much. She didn’t even really know him at all. Luckily for her, and probably unluckily for him, he agreed to go back to the Academy with her, which meant she had the whole walk back to pester him.

Just like Duke, Kellan chose not to comment on his observation that she had a hard time shutting up, even if he had said it in a nicer form. If he told her to be quiet, she would. She didn’t take those kinds of requests personal because she knew how annoying she could be, but it didn’t seem like he was complaining, so she left it at that.

“I might be a girl, but I’m a girl with arms,” she pointed out, as if he couldn’t see for himself. “But thanks though.” The peculiar comment was her way of letting him know that she didn’t need some guy to help her carry her bags. Kellan wasn’t anything close to a feminist, but she was every bit of an independent, and she made sure that people knew that.

“So, Mr. Bell,” she began, drawing out his name. She took a few steps down the street, waiting for Duke to follow her. “I don’t know anything about you except that you play music. What else is there?”