For Only So Long (reserved)

[Skye Malizia]

(Elliot Davis)

You could get away with it for only so long, and Skye was milking it as long as she could.

She was a Cavan student, and her personality would support that through and through. She was solid and decisive, loyal and proud, gentle but strong... one word could sum her up, and that was Skye. She was Skye and there was no getting away from it.

But alas, she didn't like the Cavan common room as much as she liked the Almasy room. She'd stumbled across it accidentally two days ago and took an immediate liking to it. So, taking advantage of everyone's lack of knowledge, she settled in and made herself comfortable. Unless a fellow Cavan spotted her, she should be fairly safe curled up in an Almasian loveseat working on her History project by hand because she couldn't remember her username and password for the computer labs.

Normally Skye wasn't a stickler for handing in homework on time. Nor was she a fan of projects or any sort of schoolwork. However, seeing as how she had a fresh start; a new beginning, she wanted to take full advantage of it and see if she could make herself more studious and more responsible.

Fat chance, but it was worth a shot. Surprisingly she wasn't fed up with the project. It was sort of interesting, in a morbid 17th century death rate of the Fae kind of way, but she was intrigued and hence could not find it in herself to throw the three-ring binder away just yet.

She might not have been able to toss the binder, but somehow she managed to flick her pencil across the room during one of her self-assigned 'breaks'. Skye nestled back and tapped the binder with the end of her pencil over and over so a light, constant 'tap tap tap' filled her own personal bubble. But during one of these tapping sessions, the pencil jumped from her hand to the floor in one spectacular leap, which proved to be very inconvenient.

Skye pouted, debating how much she wanted the pencil back. She only had a couple more point-form notes to jot down. But by the time she retrieved the writing utensil she'd probably forget them, and it would be a lose-win scenario. She could politely ask someone to fetch it for her, but by the time it arrived she would forget the points and it would be a win-lose ending.

Actually, any way she looked at it, she figured she'd forget her important points. She was thinking about this so hard that she didn't realize she'd already forgotten them.

"Here pencil, pencil, pencil..."

Well, it was worth a shot.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Elliot descended from her dorm room just as Skye began calling for her pencil like some sort of lost puppy, obviously too apathetic to bother actually looking for a the damn thing. The rest of the Common Room was mostly deserted, save for a few other souls scattered about the corner of the shared living area, trying to focus on their own private world of books and homework and cell phones. Her lips curled upwards, expression settling into something resembling an amused smirk at the sight before her - Almasians had always been on the self-absorbed side of the spectrum; not that she was any different.

Though she didn’t have anything to do for the next few hours, and all of her distractions were either running low or preoccupied, and because of such, she was feeling a bit more generous, not to mention terribly desperate for some activity, this afternoon. The only problem being that Elliot hated other girls.

Well, in truth, which is a gray area rarely home to Elliot’s mind, she didn’t really abhor girls or anything, she had just grown so exhausted of getting ridiculed and harassed by them, that the blonde generally just steered clear of any females even remotely her age, save for Peyton, and as of late, Morgan. But she was still a little tipsy from the wine she been drinking in between applying her dark eyeliner and trying to manage her remarkable, and incredibly unruly, ringlets, and this girl, Skye, was really cute, not to mention completely harmless looking - plus, Elliot was pretty sure she had spoken to the other girl before, though, not that she could remember the time or place to save her life.

Stepping down the last stair, Elliot had already spotted the other girls pencil and bent down to pick it up from under the coffee table before reaching over and handing it to the other blonde with a charitable smile. Dressed in a ridiculously long striped shirt, a simple denim mini skirt and her very favorite boots, she looked sweet and nearly normal, and fleetingly, the Almasian found herself hoping that the other girl was new, because she hadn't seen her around until recently, and it greatly decreased the chance that the girl had heard the mountain of rumors spreading like an unchecked fire, about the wicked Elliot Davis; and they were nearly worse than ever now, since Jessica seemed to be kicking the rumor mill into full gear, purely out of spite.

"Here." She began, still smiling as she held out the writing utensil. "Figured you cou- Fuck!" Just as she leaned forward to offer Skye back her wayward pencil, Elliot's cell phone slipped from the pocket of her skirt, crashing into the edge of the table with enough force that she had half a mind to think the damn thing had committed suicide, and broke into several pieces, scattered about her boots.

"Oh goddamnit. I just got out of bed and I already fucked up." Sighing in the most dramatic fashion, the Almasian dropped to her knees once more, trying to gather up the mess of plastic and wires that had once been her phone.

[Skye Malizia]

"Oh. Thank you," Skye replied automatically when the pencil was handed to her. This was the girl she'd briefly spoken with during History. She seemed nice enough, and definitely a favorite among the boys at the school. Skye was thinking this upon receiving her pencil that when the phone fell from Elliot's pocket, she was startled at the noise. Jumping in her chair and already pushing aside her homework, the Almasy-admiring Cavan student was leaning over to help the poor girl collect the broken pieces of her phone.

Not sure what she could say, Skye tried imagining what she'd feel like if her phone had just broken into a million pieces. She'd feel horrible and panicked, and the only thing that would matter to her would be the SIM card.

"Is the card okay?" Skye asked, figuring this was the safest and most on-topic thing she could think of saying. It was much more appropriate than 'Man that sucks!' and definitely more sympathetic. Skye's voice was filled with sincere concern, and already she wondered that kind of plan Elliot's phone was on and what company it was a part of. They might send her a free phone if it still had its warranty...

"Here, be careful," Skye advised, delicately extracting the tiny chip from the wreckage. She held it in her palm and presented it to the blond girl, pity in her eyes. It was a really cute phone - it looked as though it had been customly decorated. Maybe she'd be able to get another one just like it. Or an even better phone she'd been vying for lately. Valentine's was coming up - there was most likely a series of red and pink phones coming out this year with the latest gadgets. Which reminded Skye to ask her parents for a new phone.

"You should keep this safe so when you see the phone company they can add your numbers to your new phone," she instructed, hoping her directions made sense. Long sentences were a little more difficult for Skye. She understood English perfectly (aside from lengthy jargon and profane sayings), but it was trickier speaking it. The grammar was the most difficult for the Italian, and she didn't like the lack of lilt the language had in comparison to her own romantic tongue. It was choppy and to be frank, tasted funny in her mouth. It really was like chewing a cheeseburger, as her friends had joked back home, than slurping up a long strand of spaghetti.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

This girl was absolutely adorable, Elliot decided to herself as they haphazardly pulled together her cellphone, ignoring the other side-swept looks from the rest of the Common Room's inhabitants. Setting her pile of chips and wires on the table and retrieving the card from Skye, Elliot couldn't help but sigh once more, her striking blue eyes lingering on the ruined phone for a long moment before she looked back to the other blonde.

"Yeah, it'll be alright. I just really liked that phone." Elliot laughed weakly, reaching over her shoulder to touch that spot on the back of her neck, a habit she had picked up from Noah. She'd been spending an awful lot of time with him lately, mostly to tease the poor boy about Morgan and the mess he had gotten into, but regardless the reason, she was beginning to mirror his mannerisms.

Tucking the SIM card into a side pocket of her enormous purse, the pretty Almasian listened to Skye speak, trying to pin down her accent without asking. She wasn't a stranger to hearing them, having a precise British accent herself, along with a best friend who was decidedly French and another was a staunch New Yorker. Plus, with all the time she had spent running through Europe, hiding from her self and the ghosts that chased her from back home, Elliot had gotten pretty good at picking out people's origins based on their dialect.

"You're Italian, right?" Finally venturing a guess, she tucked her knees under her self, brushing away a golden curl as she studied the pretty girl before her with interest, ever the curious cat. Skye's accent reminded her firmly of Eve's, and her first days away from school in the sun, knee-deep in wine and the boy who had rescued her from herself.

"My boyfriends best friends girlfriend -" Elliot laughed at the title, opting to correct herself a second later, "- my friend, Eve, is from Italy. I recognize the accent. It's pretty." She smiled gracefully, ever charming.

[Skye Malizia]

Skye smiled sadly when Elliot informed her that the phone was desired - that always made it more painful when having to replace it. Hopefully she'd find another phone she could become equally attached to. When the girl commented on her heritage, Skye smiled, nodding. Her explanation made her laugh a light, carefree laugh. Eve's elongated title was as confusing as Elliot thought it was, and Skye appreciated her sense of humour. The little Italian girl liked Elliot immediately.

"Yes, I am Italian. Fresh off the plane," her smile reached her eyes, and she pushed back some hair. "I'm Skye," She introduced herself while straightening up in the armchair she'd nestled in, "you're in my history class, no?"

She already knew where she recognized Elliot from, but it couldn't hurt to reiterate, in case the other girl had forgotten Skye. Meanwhile, Skye was hoping Elliot wouldn't know which house she belonged to, otherwise it might be awkward trying to explain why she was here. Skye didn't enjoy lying, but she might resort to it to save a little face. Exaggerations were alright, so long as they didn't hurt anyone. She could just say that she was lost. Which was only a half-lie.

"If you have any phone calls to make, you can use my phone," Skye offered, pulling her pink chocolate LG phone out of her back pocket. No one ever said Skye didn't believe in accessorizing.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

"Elliot," she replied with a smile that was much more than curt, raising her eyes to meet the other girls gaze as they traded names. "I just flew back from there about, oh.." she paused, trying to calculate the time in her head. It hadn't been long, but it felt like years, and she could look back into those memories and only see a stranger. "Two and a half, maybe three months ago?" The blonde smiled, tucking away another curl as it slipped over her shoulder, thinking back to her vacation.

"Well, not Italy I guess, I only spent June there, then I was in France and Amsterdam and," she ceased, looking at her hands folded neatly in her lap, her smile just as precise - she was rambling. "Well, you get the idea." A nervous chuckle was all it took to ease the anxiety from Elliot's face, her genial grin lighting up once more. No matter how far she had run, and how much she had grown, there was still a touch of the small, insecure girl she had once been hiding beneath Elliot's pretty exterior.

"Oh yeah," recognition dawning, "we do have that class together. I remember you. And no," she politely waved off Skye's offer. "I'll be fine." Shifting slightly, the girl locked eyes with the other blonde once more, suddenly wondering about something.

"Have you ever been to Rome?"
It was in Italy after all, and she just had to ask. It was her dream, Rome, and yet, she had chosen not to visit while in Europe, too harrowed and hungover and completely unsentimental to bother.

[Skye Malizia]

"You travel in Europe?" Skye sighed, homesick. Europe was beautiful. And this Elliot seemed to have a healthy respect and admiration for it. As Elliot had taken an instant liking to Skye, Skye had discovered she really liked Elliot too. Skye was fairly well travelled as well - it wasn't nearly as impressive in Italy to say you'd been to Paris or Barcelona. In America it was rare to find someone who would push aside their ignorance and jump the pond just to appreciate different cultures. Americans were far too self-absorbed... at least that's what their stereotype was. Her friends in Italy would joke about how Skye would never fit in - the American's wouldn't stop and see how pretty she was. They would be too entranced in their own lives to even notice a newcomer to their society.

But Elliot had noticed. And Elliot was learned. And... wait, she was asking about Rome?

A wide grin broke across the Italian girl's face. "Rome is just two hours away from where I live! Pescara, it is on the Adriatic coast... I visit Roma and the Vatican City very often. It is beautiful. You see... uhm... saw it?"

Here she was raving on and on about Rome, and she didn't know if Elliot had been to the city or not. She wanted to get to know the girl - an adventure she couldn't partake in if she just babbled about herself the entire time.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

"Just once, I spent the summer traveling abroad." More like running away. Amidst all the problems she had caused for herself and unable to hide from the way life in the UK seemed to be suffocating her, Elliot had just ran. She had packed up her bags one particularly harsh night in June and disappeared without telling a soul, terrified that they would somehow hinder her desperate flight.

"I'm definitely going back though. After I finish school I want to move there." Her location was unspecific because she wasn't even sure where herself, just as long as it was Europe. Barcelona, Amsterdam, Prague, anywhere seemed more cultured and beautiful and alive than here.

She listened to Skye talk about Rome and truthfully, she only wanted to hear more. Part of her wished she had gone, but another part knew she wouldn't have been able to handle it.

"No, I really wanted to go, but I missed out." Tucking away a loose curl, Elliot raised her gaze, and at first her smile was a touch forced, but after a second it bloomed into something much more genuine.

"We just might have to become best friends so I can come visit you and make you show me around Rome." Laughing, the pretty blonde stood up, her knees beginning to ache from sitting on the floor. Dusting off her skirt, the Almasian sunk into a comfy armchair across from Skye, her smile still firmly in place.

[Skye Malizia]

Skye was now sitting cross-legged on her loveseat, arms locked straight in front of her while the two girls talked. She listened as Elliot related her story and the Italian girl would smile when it was appropriate.

"L'Europa è bella," Skye breathed, feeling a little homesick now. Her suggestion about becoming best friends made her smile, and the reasoning behind it made Skye giggle.

"I don't mind this idea," She mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully, "I visit my family the next break. Perhaps if we are best friends then, you will come?" Not that Skye thought she needed to bribe Elliot into becoming friends. It was just for fun right now. But it was obvious she was honestly entertaining the idea of a true friendship. Skye was looking to make friends, after all, and it would be wonderful to bring a friend from America to Italia with her. That way her family would see she was adjusting nicely, and her girlfriends wouldn't send so many worried letters across the ocean.

"The boys there..." Skye kissed her fingers to express just how beautiful Italian boys were, "If you like dark hair and good bodies..." she let the sentence trail off suggestively. And as if that weren't enough, she lifted her eyebrows twice. Skye had always had a weakness for a guy with a nice body. Tall, tan... however she found awkward more endearing than the suave personalities every Italian man tended to adopt. She was thrilled to find how much awkward Americans there were... however, Skye also had a weakness for lighter colored hair, whereas most Italian boys bore short dark curls.

American had its sweet supply of blond and brown-haired men. Skye was torn.

[Elliot is on the edge.]

Elliot smiled, imagining disappearing on one of the school breaks off to Europe with this terribly new friend. Rome was a hurdle all it's own for the poor girl, and while she had missed her chance for all the right reasons, the wound wasn't as raw now, and in truth, she suspected that the best way to finally see the city was with a friend, not to mention a almost-local.

Laughter came freely as Skye turned their conversation to boys, one of Elliot's most studied subjects. It was a true statement if she had ever heard one, that European boys had something special, something just naturally devastating and alluring, at least at the first glance. For the first leg of her trip, Elliot had brought along her own boy, always too afraid and insecure to be alone, but they had split up in Paris, and from there on, the boys had been charming and numerous, yet each one remarkable, memorable.

"I agree," her smile was warm for once, natural, "and for some reason all the boys over there have such better smiles." Not that American boys had awful ones, but Elliot had fallen in love with quite the cache of Italian boys just for their smiles over the summer.

[Skye Malizia]

(So sorry for such a late reply!)

Skye smiled, "They do," she laughed in agreement. European men had charm and finesse. Those smiles were just the tip of the ice berg.

The Italian girl shoved aside all her work so it would have no chance of interrupting her friend-making. She combed a hand through her hair to make sure it had that 'windswept' look she always loved, and leaned forward just a little.

"I don't mean to be rude, but," She paused, debating whether or not to ask. She probably got it all the time, "the name 'Elliot' is usually for boys, no?" Skye blushed a bit, "At least, all the Elliot's I have hear... heard of." She was of course, thinking of T. S. Eliot, whose poems when translated to Italian were wonderful and fluid even if they did not rhyme. She studied him in her English classes, and he really was what inspired her to say 'yes' to an American school. English-speaking people... however she had yet to meet anyone who could transform such a clunky language into something as beautiful as he had.

"Do you have nicknames?" Skye asked, wondering if perhaps her middle name was more feminine, or if Elliot was shortened to something less masculine. But the more she studied Elliot, the more the name suited her. She could really pull it off. Skye always thought of herself as a Skye. She didn't really like the name 'Schuyler'. It was strange even for her. Plus, teachers mispronounced it all the time. 'Shooler' 'Schooler' 'Shyler'... And if someone tried to spell it, it was always 'Skylar' until instructed otherwise.

Names could be so complicated!

[Elliot is on the edge.]

At Skye's inquiry, Elliot found herself reacting much differently than she probably would have on any other day. Generally questions about her namesake had the girl scowling and muttering at the general small-mindedness of people, but the Italian was so inoffensive and chaste, that the blonde merely smiled in return.

"It's a unisex name, technically, but yeah it's mostly just used on boys." Sometimes she loathed her father's choice of names for his youngest daughter, especially when his oldest had been gifted with such a pretty handle, but other times, she revered it just for it's origin. "My father named me after T.S. Eliot, the poet." She paused a minute, searching for a spark of recognition on Skye's face. "He's a writer." She added quickly, only to amend herself again, not a full second later "- My father, not, T.S. Eliot. Well, T.S. is a writer too, I just," and from there the pretty blonde sort of trailed off, looking particularly sheepish for a moment after the verbal trainwreck.

The poor girl wasn't generally used to making conversation with other girls, and fatally, she had begun to wonder if girls talked about things differently than boys did, and from there had she more or less fallen apart.

"A nickname?" Elliot shrugged, shifting in the armchair a bit as she recalled the only few nicknames - pet names, really - she had ever known. Daddy called her sweet potato and Mae called her El, as if she had some Spanish title to follow, like 'El Matador' or the less fitting, El Diablo, and boy called her boo, or some days blue, and in truth, Elliot knew that was the end of the list, and so she shrugged once more, a little more humor blossoming in her smile as she shook her head and finally replied. "Nope, just Elliot I guess."

[Skye Malizia]

Skye clapped, overcome with her enthusiasm. It was more a reaction to the fact that she had just been thinking about the poet when Elliot brought him up.

"Dio santo! I love him! The poet I mean, however I am sure I would like your father very much," Skye thought it was just a little witty to play on Elliot's correction concerning her father and the writer. She smiled to celebrate it, but mostly it was to commend herself for seemingly making a new friend. It was growing into quite an interesting hobby.

She didn't even think twice about Elliot stumbling with her words. Skye frequently had trouble with her English, she supposed the English-speaking people had their qualms with it too. It was a terrible excuse for a language, in Skye's opinion, unless you were T.S. Elliot.

And it looked like Skye would get to call the girl by her name, seeing as how she didn't have any known nicknames. She'd always be thinking of T.S. Eliot though. She might have to go and research some of his work so she could find a suitable name that would fit her. She seemed like an original girl. She deserved an original nickname (not that her name wasn't original enough. Nicknames were a big part of Skye and her friends lives in Italy).

"My name is really Schuyler," She said conversationally, sensing Elliot's discomfort. Skye was a social butterfly - she was comfortable talking to basically anyone her age, regardless of gender, the language barrier, or any other usual hinderance. It was mostly older people she was awkward around, and small children. "My friends change it to Skye. They say I have my head in the clouds," she laughed lightly and shook her head. That wasn't the only reason, but it was the easiest explanation. Elliot might learn soon enough.

"It might be... forward, but I cannot stop myself. This school is for very different people. What makes you different?" She was trying to ask what the girl's gift was. Skye liked showing off her own power, even if it wasn't exactly refined yet. She found that the best way to go about this subtle forgetfulness of modesty was to inquire what the other person 'could do'. She gave Elliot an open, encouraging smile. Some people could be shy about their powers.