Kite sighed in frustration. Sure, this desk had been the site of plotting a ridiculous amount of mayhem, but she and her sisters-by-heart had done plenty of actual classwork in here as well. But then, perhaps that was the actual problem. Kite was alone in her room now, virtually any time she'd tried to do legitimate work at this desk it had been to the background music of the timeless classic, "Sapphic Interlude in Double Major," and the silence of lacking that, of the island of peace and love hidden within the island of endless violation now being naught but ghosts and memories bit and tore at Kite's mind.

No. If she wanted to ponder destruction and violence, to make hate into physical objects to inflict injury, that she could still do here, forge loss and rage and hate into implements of externalizing vital fluids. But that wasn't what Kite was trying to do right now.

Kite gathered her things, a few notebooks, pens and pencils, a much abused compass (its tip was smashed in, but she wouldn't dream of replacing it, the wobble introduced by the smashed in tip created some very interesting curve variance, and the smashing itself was a rather treasured memory), and the cobbled together cluster-calculator that rose from the grave of four TI's found in abandoned dorm rooms.

She didn't bother to change clothes, she wasn't planning to actually leave the building, so unless she was completely out of date the uniform rules didn't apply. Wandering out to the common room with high pigtails pulled tight to keep her hair away from her glasses, a safety-orange sports-bra, baggy beige shorts, and pink socks with no shoes, she didn't consider the fact that especially combined with the visible signs of her... erratic sleep patterns she was painting a truly demented picture while shuffling into the common room to flop onto one of the beanbag chairs like something the cat dragged in. Wedging her notebooks into the spongy mass as well, she attempted to set back to work.

The question of why even bother trying to pursue academic inquiry here was occasionally a predatory one. She knew it was almost impossible that she would ever be returned to earth. She didn't truly WANT to return to earth. Her reasons were venal, and bitter. The school had a presence on earth, a reputation, it needed graduates, it needed academics... it needed to publish at least the occasional paper. And if Kite were to have some paper or another pusblished in such a way, make some tiny mark back on earth from so far away... in her mind, this twisted into some sort of revenge against it.

She looked up only occasionally as she continued to struggle with the nuances of her current project, seeing others working, others lounging, others playing videogames... she still couldn't focus, only now she had the tightness behind her eyes that let her know what was actually going on in her head. Kite was spoiling for a fight. She couldn't do much about it physically. Starting a fistfight in the dorms there was no way she'd get the urge out of her system before getting dragged off to find out if there was still a set of shackles on the wall in the basement with her name carved into the wall above them.

Kite looked around in more detail, and saw someone else who appeared to be carrying a load of 'I want to be left alone in public' along with them, pulled into one of the larger armchairs and with her face buried in... Dworkin's Intercourse. Well, that would be nice and sincere to pick a fight over. And she was even at a decent distance for loud-talking-that-isn't-quite-shouting, too. Being at times a petulant little bitch, Kite flung an eraser to hit the other woman in the knee, and then 'introduced herself' when the woman looked up, "That book is drivel. It's endemic of the worst sorts of parasitic hyperradicalism that is a means only to enable undermining of the cause it claims to represent, as rational objectives become marred by cognitive association with raving lunatics."

[OOC: i hope this is suitable as an intro for the plan?]

[OOC: Perfect!]

Chris turned over in bed and stared out from the covers at the horrible, encroaching light. She'd been enthusiastic about having a western-facing window when she'd first moved in, but now that knowledge only carried the shame that she'd clearly slept past noon. With such a small sociology department even at the undergrad level, and no women's studies one at any, she'd been given an academic adviser and a couple weeks to start putting together a self-study plan. Which, of course, had rapidly escalated into her spending most of her days bumming around campus and lazily flipping through old books she'd brought with her. She needed to get some sort of plan put together, and quickly, she knew, but the animal part of her brain kept complaining of a lack of beer. And cigars. And blowjobs. Fumbling, she dragged herself from the covers and sought out something resembling clothes and food to hopefully shut the addictions up.

Thirty minutes later, she was staring at her bookshelf and trying to think of where she might finally find some sort of inspiration. She'd had plans of an ethnography of the lesbian community on campus, but that sort of behavior was simultaneously so both ubiquitous and so disorganized that she threw it out. What she really wanted was good access to sexual histories of the students, but she doubted that sort of research would get approved in her first year. It was going to have to be something theory or nothing, at least to start with, she supposed, until she got permission to start taking histories.

Bleary brown eyes settled on the top shelf of her tall, thin bookcase. She rubbed at her eyes and stretched, enjoying for a moment the way the loose, black undershirt slid over her bare skin beneath. With a small shake of her head, she hooked her thumbs into the hem of her pants and looked at the shelf again. It was sparser than the others, and each book was stuffed with random scraps of paper to mark varying sections of import. These were her old friends, the tomes she could trust and rely on, with their dog-eared, battered pages and spines permanently obliterated from overuse. She reached up, barely able to make it to the shelf of interest, and let her fingers examine. For a long moment, they paused on Capital Volume 1, but she wasn't sure what good Karl could provide her today. Simone seemed a more promising prospect, but she wasn't sure what else could be gleaned from The Second Sex. A small smile creased her lips as she felt at another cover.

Five minutes later, Christina padded into the common room, a pale blue hanky dangling haphazardly from her left pocket. Reading needed to happen, but maybe she could work on one of those addictions as well. Her bare feet kneaded happily at the carpet as her eyes scanned for somewhere to begin digging in. A few undergrads turned their eyes briefly her way, and one's eyes lingered on the word carved into Chris's shoulder. She turned as one younger woman slid out, caught her eye for a moment, and favored with a little wink and tilt of the head. If the dark-haired woman noticed, she didn't show any indication as she hurried away. A few more steps, and Chris fell happily into a heap upon a big, plush chair with her book in one hand.

She opened up and began listening intently to what Andrea had to say, seeking out some sort of analysis she could do without heavy research. Occasionally, she grumbled softly and flipped back a page, insisting Andrea repeat herself, and more than once Christina rolled her eyes and jumped forward to keep the conversation from getting to heavy. It was easy to lose herself when talking with Andrea, which is why she was so perplexed when she looked up to see what had bounced off her right knee, hanging as it was over the arm of the plush chair.

Oh Goddess damn it, she thought, her eyes narrowing in frustration. She replaced a little salmon-colored scrap of paper where it had been and closed the book, then brushed a loose clump of mangy brown hair out of her face.

"That's cute. Did your boyfriend give you notes on the book, or did you actually attempt to read it before coming to the completely wrong interpretation of what Andrea's saying?" Chris said, rolling her eyes. Intercourse settled into the cushions to her right as she sat up in the chair, ready to defend her old, dog-eared friend.

For a brief moment, Kite looks honestly disoriented, "Boyfriend? No, though i used to occasionally wonder what having one of those might be like." She leans forward on the beanbag with her legs crossed, elbows on her thighs and chin on crossed hands.

"i meant exactly what i said, the moron paints a picture where every man can express no emotion but conquistador-porn and women are either victims or enablers or lesbian. i'm not saying there's no problem, i'm not even saying a significant fraction of humans of any gender are these mythical 'good people.' What i'm saying is if you want to change society you don't start by accusing the people who could actually be open to changing their behaviours of being Robert E. Howard caricatures! And you certainly don't claim anything so obviously deranged as that rape is a uniquely male phenomenon. There are no angels, not in any place you'd care to name."

Chris slid forward onto the arm of the chair so she could lean tighter into the brewing debate. A wave of confusion passed over her face, and she gave her opponent another once over. The purple haired girl didn't seem queer, but Chris' ability to spot her own seemed thrown out of whack in this school. She kept debating whether that meant everyone here was hetero, or if it was just too inundated with sapphic passions to get a clear picture of who was and wasn't interested in other ladies, but at the moment it just meant she had a new word to use. Some part of Chris knew she shouldn't, that it would be making enemies, but she really didn't care to hear Andrea called a moron.

"Oh, so, what, we shouldn't be mean to men because there are good ones and bad women? We can't name the fucking enemy because it might hurt their feefees to be reminded the oppression they perpetrate is killing us?" Chris asked sarcastically. "'Oh, please, Master, can I have my rights?'" she continued in a mocking tone, "'I promise to use them responsibly.' No. You don't win wars by asking the other side to please stop killing you. Also, for goddess' sake, shut up, go get a copy from the library, and actually read the damned book you're fumbling after before you make yourself look even more foolish, breeder."

"Not what i said in the slightest." Kite sneers, otherwise not moving. "You wear a badge carved into your shoulder. You got to choose your scars." Kite's left arm twitches violently, once, "You draw your line in the sand... What have you seen? What have you done? What have you BEEN? You, like your beloved idolized author, turn potential allies in a search for equality into those terrified to do anything but oppose you. You call yourself soldier of a war that you have never fought as more than a cheerleader. Because it isn't a war. You have your uniform and you have your flag, and you have your chant and you have your martyrs. But you do nothing to incite the changes you so scream for, only the fossilization and entrenchment of your enemy. Both your true enemies and those who you force to be your enemy because you will not have them as ally. You are not looking for your rights, if you follow her. You are looking for vengeance for old wrongs you have felt only by munchausenian proxy, and for blood."

Kite leans back, reveling in both the argument, the shouting, the frenzy of emotional intensity... and the fact that she still could. That this did not seem to be triggering any of the things inside her but not her. "Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with being out for blood. But vendetta is so much more satisfying when you call it by its true name, when you let yourself revel in the truest shapes of hate and kill for the joy of killing." Her face twists into a grimace, and she sits forward again, grinding her right palm into her eye with a gasp. That... that evidently went too far. "But if you want to make changes, then actually analyze the situation and find a real path to your goals. Marching and shouting about a war you refuse to actually fight is just for children who want to feel special. Every revolution contains within it the seeds of its own counterrevolution. But every system has back doors. There exists no wall that can neither be scaled nor pierced. The human animal despises change of any kind, and resists it to its dying breath. Even more so admitting it has acted wrongly. It would rather perpetuate the falsehood, at any cost, rather than admit to having been in the wrong. The first surgeon to discover bacterial contamination could be carried from patient to patient on the doctor's hands was fired, dispossessed, and eventually killed because his contemporaries were unwilling to admit that they had killed hundreds by simply not washing their hands and tools well enough. The more you scream, the more resistance you will meet. If you truly want change, then you subvert, you make your changes happen swiftly and silently, so that there is no period of turmoil, things merely go from normal, to differently normal. Anything else, and you will have your war, as those who you take your rights from seek to take them back."

"What in all the hells are you even talking about?" Chris said. Her body was starting to tense and coil, she suddenly realized, as if the argument really were about to become physical. "First, Andrea earned a fuck of a lot of scars in her life, and don't go fucking pretending you know how posh my life has or hasn't been. If you want to get in a dick-waving oppression contest I'll need to go pull on a pack." The brown-haired woman pressed her fingers together, counting things off. "Second, holy shit are you high? Take everything over at once in some weird fucking coup? Did you miss the 101 lesson where the patriarchy isn't actually a shadowy cabal of men plotting mischief and mayhem?"

Christina was starting to twitch slightly. She knew this wasn't a good place to argue from; some part of her kept screaming to take a deep breath and try again, but it was hard to hear over the pounding in her ears. Her eyes darted to the sides as she realized a few of the other students were starting to pack up and quietly scurry away from the ensuing verbal brawl, though Christina found herself at once pleased and troubled that some were sticking around and stopping whatever they were doing to watch the proceedings. Of course, some, either buried in headphones or just numbed to such things, kept on with what they were doing as if nothing were awry.

"Third, obviously people hate change," Chris said, charging ahead. "Trying to get the message played down so potential allies find it more palatable is a waste of time. You aren't going to reach some people, and the ones who are willing to throw away an entire cluster of work because they were misled by the very forces we're trying to fight as to what it's actually about without investigating for themselves are usually lost causes. Everything you've said so far has so blatantly been seeded from the very culture that's the problem." Finally, Christina paused for a deep breath. "And fourth - dear Goddess I can't believe I'm having to do such 101 shit at a women's college - do you think, maybe, slightly, you should shut your stupid mouth about fighting a war you're clearly afraid to act on if you're not guaranteed victory? I ain't one of the 25%, but I sure as fuck do my duty as field medic, okay? So unless you want to start discussing something sane, like maybe engaging with what Andrea said, I suggest you go take a walk."

Kite smiles again, watching the woman she was arguing with grow more and more agitated. And Kite stays, at least outwardly, calmish. It was an argumentative technique of a ridiculous age. "Dick-waving contest. How quaint. The feminist straps on some male anatomy to declare how much the males have wronged her? To show how much she despises that which it was copied from? You miss my point again. No, the partiarchy itself is not a 'shadowy cabal' but that is how it is maintained, the power brokers who control the politicians who make the laws, the media moguls who shape the spin the majority sees. Two groups that have a large overlap of the same people. The same exceedingly rich men. To most of the patriarchy it is a thing of which they are not even aware, a thing so ingrained in the background of their lives that they cannot see it, cannot imagine that it even exists much less that it is wrong. And every single hyperradical they can paint as "oh the feminists are craaaaaazy" is one more nail in the coffin of real change."

Kite straightens up, twining her fingers and stretching her arms forward with audible popping of her shoulders, "You keep calling it a war. Who do you fight? Who do you kill? Men? Which men? All men? Better get on that parthenogenic fertilization research. All men you cannot control? So equal a world you shall build upon 'obey or die'. What does a 'field medic' do in your war? How is it fought? A war is not won by who is right. Only who is left when the bodies have cooled. i have told you what i think of what Andrea said. You have yet to tell me anything other than that you take her words as gospel, and that i am some man-loving heretic for doubting her holy writ. If you seek to create change through words, you must change the system from within. If you wish to kill an enemy, you chop off its head."

Again the twitch of the left arm, violent enough that Kite grabs hold of her own wrist to quell it, her expression momentarily darkening with frustration, though the falsely calm smile quickly returns. "So tell me, woman born of woman, rather than denouncing me for the cardinal sin of disagreeing with you about how to achieve equality, if that is indeed your goal, how do you interpret your beloved Andrea?"

Christina went cold as it struck her how clearly she was being toyed with. Her mind went blank for a moment, losing proper focus on her new rival's words, though she followed well enough to realize that the war analogy was falling apart and should be abandoned. Fingers dug into the plush arm of the chair as she absorbed both the shift of the debate and the curious eyes settled on the two grad students.

Chris stiffened slightly as she realized she'd been questioned. Something sharp formed on the edge of her tongue, but she bit it back carefully. There were students present and she'd just been given an opportunity to hold class. A thin idea struck her, and a smile flashed across her lips. Andrea had been the right choice, she supposed.

Chris ruffled her hair slightly and took a deep breath. "Intercourse is primarily concerned with the ways society uses penetrative, heterosexual sex to diminish women and their status under patriarchy," Chris said, a slight tremor betraying her otherwise calmed voice. "It's often misunderstood to be about how the act of penetration is inherently oppressive, but Andrea made it clear later in her life that she meant no such thing, and was rather critiquing the social understanding of intercourse." The brown-haired woman smiled softly and resettled her eyes on Kite's. "At least, that's how I read it. What did you get out of the work?"

Kite smiles again watching her erstwhile opponent force herself to calm down. This was good. It had been so very long since anyone had carried an argument with her this far, and the last one hadn't been fun since it had been objectively provable rather than about subjective interpretation.

"Mostly, what you, and Andrea, call a misunderstanding of her work is by and large what I perceived in it. Of course, no doubt you are familiar with the concept of how getting carried away with vehemence can readily allow one's words to convey a meaning different than one's intent." Of course, Kite was more than happy to stop talking about war, the better to keep her own violent urges from showing, "The reason I call Intercourse specifically drivel is that she narrows her focus far too much in order to draw what she clearly sees as a forgone conclusion. The language with society surrounds sex is clearly and banally patriarchally stilted, anyone trying to argue against THAT is delusional, and Dworkin's work in that field is quite insightful. And she is correct that the act itself is by and large treated as a commodity of control. But it is traded in the form of one who is sought for sex seeking behavioural influence over they who provide it, regardless of gender or social strata. The permutations of gender, of numeration, of geography... hetero, homo, bi, mono, poly, open... none of it seems to change that fundamental, and fundamentally broken dynamic. Excepting the increasingly rare case of actual psychoemotional connection between some form of equals forming the basis upon which 'sexual chemistry' is built, for whosoever finds themselves libidinous, they are not asking themselves 'With whom do I have the connection to have emotionally and spiritually uplifting communion?' but 'What do I need to do to get someone to touch my mucous membranes?' To acquire their bodily desires, rather than those of mind or heart, through exigencies of behaviour or gifts, or intoxicants, or more directly with currency itself."

Kite breaks eye contact to lean back with a sigh, "For many of them, they simply do not know any better, the media and society they grew up in never allowed them to ever conceive of anything else. They do not know that anything else exists. They have been raised and taught that everyone else is as selfish as they, if not more so, and when shown proof of a better way they simply see a different interpretation of their own trading. True of men and women both, speaking as a statistician, pattern-theorist, and technically an ex-whore. It is only in the rare case when instead of attempting to build a relationship on as fragile and ephemeral and maintenance-heavy thing as sexual chemistry, the sexual chemistry is instead built upon the foundations of some more meaningful connection that this paradigm is broken."

Kite fishes her compass back out, not for any real reason, just to twirl it between her fingers to keep her hands from feeling idle. "The problem with sex is way bigger than men vs. women. Have you read any of the neoamorist philosophers? Gayle Rubin is usually feminist enough that she might have passed your way, but her usages extrapolate well to an anti-denoministic analysis of sociosexuality." Kite grinned in truly honest enjoyment. Whoever this woman was, she had stood up to trading verbal blows, and now that she'd decided to get a handle on being offended, there might even be some real discourse and debate! Someone else who could do BOTH! If that held true on other topics, this woman was definitely someone Kite wanted to get to know and spend more time with!

Chris frowned. She'd really been hoping the commentary about Andrea's work being 'drivel' was in the past. She took a deep, frustrated breath before she continued.

"But that transaction doesn't even play out like that. It's entirely one-sided, especially in heterosexual relationships, with the threat of rape meaning that a male aggressor never has to actually trade intimacy or companionship for sex." Chris paused for a moment and tilted her head. Something in the way the compass twirled against Kite's fingers was whispering that Christina had made a very poor judgement. Or maybe it was the knowing gloss of the other grad student's eyes. Chris shook it off and grumbled about false negatives internally before continuing. "You are right that it's too narrow to count as a fully comprehensive text, but no work is truly comprehensive. It's flawed, I'll give you that, but the words you use to describe it are the words of those that are terrified of liberated women. It's the words used to denigrate political lesbianism from without, as opposed to the more reasoned arguments of those from within the movement."

Chris sat back a bit and caught a piece of her lip between her teeth. She hadn't realized before how hard her heart was thumping in her chest, nor the way her breath came slightly ragged.

"And yeah, I've read some of Gayle's stuff, as well as most of the other half of the old sex wars. Both sides have their merits and their flaws. The sex-positive side, though, is the one that got co-opted by capitalists to sell women less clothing on the principle that it would 'empower' them to be more sexually aggressive, so long as they stuck to the old hetero model. The other side allied itself with the worst parts of the social conservatives and made some awful mistakes by patronizing to women, but it's not all worthless drivel, and you can't write a manifesto to appeal to those that will never support you," Chris said, taking another deep breath that pulled the bottom edge of her undershirt just past the hem of her pants.

"Not to totally dovetail this," Christina continued, charging ahead despite her misgivings about this track, "but most of Gayle's writing I'm familiar with is her histories of the men's leather community. Have you gotten your hands on those at all?" A small, crooked smile creased Chris' lips.

Kite sits up, her own frustrations starting to show as she almost shouts, "Yes, and the one-sidedness is the problem far more than who is on which side! It is aggressor and aggressed far more deeply than it is an issue of man versus woman! To declare 'It is wrong for you to point such aggression at me!' does nothing to address the fundamental flaw of what should be an act of communion becoming an act of aggression! Sociosexual transactiveness is just as much a chronic societal disease as patriarchal oppression, and like any disease if you treat the symptoms without addressing the underlying causes, you accomplish NOTHING!" Despite the anger in her voice, her face is slightly flushed, and her eyes not entirely focussed.

And then Kite sinks back, looking almost deflated, briefly. "i've not read those. Tried, once. Found it too painful." Despite her earlier forceful tirades, she is now quiet, perhaps almost vulnerable. "Too close to places i don't want to go back to. Places of too many transactions," despite the rest of Kite's body laying slack in the beanbag chair, at this word her left fist clenches, digging fingernails into her palm where the hilt of the sward tattooed on that arm lies, "and not even a dream of communion."

Kite sighs softly, trying to shake off the brief fugue. "i should really try again. Plenty of other things are... less sharp, so far removed from where they occurred. Do you have a copy?"

Another shouted response about the balance of power being clearly gendered died on Chris' tongue as she watched the other student crumble. Christina bit her lip again, chewing it for a moment, then let her shoulders go slack. Things started clicking into place, and she realized she'd just nearly stepped on a serious landmine.

"Yeah, I've got one of hers and some other stuff back in my room," she said, keeping her voice as soothing as possible. She folded Intercourse up under one arm and rose cautiously. Their audience kept vacillating with the anger levels of the debate, and most of them seemed to have realized the distraction was about to disappear. "It's just upstairs. C'mon," Christina continued. The warm smile on her lips couldn't help but betray the hint of playfulness tugging the corners of her eyes.

---

Chris pushed open the door to the space she shared with three other women and found herself in another awkward mess. Sarah looked up from the couch, glowered slightly at her newest roommate, caught a glimpse of Kite, and glowered further. Apparently, the worst thing in the world wasn't having one's gaydar throwing false positives; it was when, after making a pass at someone you share a kitchen with, you discover they're a Catholic seminary student whose senior thesis was on the perils of lesbianism.

"C'mon," Chris muttered to her guest, ducking quickly through the kitchen and into the solace of her own room and ushering Kite in behind her. Bitter green eyes followed them both through each step until the door shut softly behind the two grad students. Andrea slid up into her regular home, and Christina hid the faint, irritated flush of her cheeks by searching over the bookshelf for Gayle.

The bed was still an unmade mess of sheets and blankets, the second pillow hanging off the edge. A hamper piled with clean clothes stood next to a pile of dirty ones at the foot of the bed. The desk seemed to be developing into another shelf dedicated to whatever was in Chris's pockets when she made it back home, mostly note scraps and folded pages of information. The dresser, oddly enough, was the most organized surface in the room, with a neatly-arranged array of broad-based silicone dildos settled in front of an assortment of lubes and barriers, all within easy reach of the bed. The one thing that ruined the image was the pair of specialized briefs with a ring cut in the front and an extra bit of fabric hanging haphazardly from the corner of the drop drawer.

"So I can't seem to find my copy of The Valley of the Kings, but I've got Leatherman's Handbook if you want something more instructional and Speaking Sex to Power if you want something more, uh, personal," Chris said, turning back with the two texts loosely stacked in her hands. The eggshell-blue handkerchief crammed in her back pocket had come a bit loose in the chair and now fluttered slightly with the movement.

Kite hesitates only a moment before gathering her own things to follow, mind awhirl. What was she doing? So fresh from finding herself the only one of the family she built here 'released back into the wild', and now following someone else to their room? Still... Here, this school, was the only place she had ever known communion, and absolute solitude was unbearable.

Being greeted by a death glare from one of the other woman's roommates was rather unexpected. After so long, she herself couldn't have a reuptation anymore... Ah. well then it mustn't be she whose reputation was under scrutiny. In Christina's bedroom, Kite looks around curiously, smiling softly. With the exception that her desk stayed clear as a work surface and the books on her shelf were all math, physics, and chemistry, there was a great deal of similarity, and comfort of a sort to be drawn from it. So there's a great deal more life in Kite's voice as she replies.

"Speaking Sex to Power then, certainly it's usually easier to learn the more passionate one's instructor is being. i'd offer something in trade, but nobody else reads math books for fun." A nervous flick of Kite's eyes down and then back up as she notices the handkerchief for the first time, reflexively licking her lips with the realization that, no, most likely that's not for hay-fever stirring a different side of her. "i just realized, i don't actually know your name... i'm Kite." The days of being seducer or seducee without such information were something Kite wanted to stay LONG behind her.

Chris set the manual aside and handed over the collection of essays. The smile on her lips creased sharper as she caught Kite's tongue wandering over her own. Signs were pointing to at least one clear reading in this messy new locale.

"I'm Christina," she said, intentionally brushing her fingertips against Kite's as the book exchanged hands, "but call me Chris." Christina hooked her thumbs into the hem of her pants and pressed down until the faintest whisp of brown was showing over their edge. "I'm really sorry about calling you a breeder, by the way," she said, her smile evaporating into a slight frown. "I'm kind of out of sorts adapting to the campus. Like, all the normal ways of spotting the other queers don't seem to work here, y'know?" Chris rolled the frown across her lips, then shrugged and softened into a friendly smile again. "Anyway, do you need to get going, or do you want to, maybe, stick around for a bit?"

Kite smiles a bit sheepishly as she accepts the books, fingers twitching slightly at the brief contact. Her eyes drawn briefly downward by Chris's deliberate lack-of-panty flash. "It's alright. i'm kinda used to that sort of thing. This school's the only place i've ever really felt at home, but it took a long time to admit that. ...For various reasons." Kite gratefully siezes on the chance to change the topic. A brief panic in her eyes, she doesn't know what Chris has or hasn't... seen. And it'd be a hell of a bad way to form a new friendship by nixing their 'protected' status. "It's certainly harder than it used to be to spot who's interested in who... i remember a few years ago the easiest way to spot someone who was into girls was take note of who was shagging in the common room."

"i'm happy to hang around for awhile. Aside from eating and sleeping i don't have much of a schedule anymore. i take a couple of classes just because they're interesting, but once you start doing theory-research in math the expected behavior is generally to lock the door and come out when you run out of wall to scrawl equations on." Kite's head tilts slightly as she makes eye-contact with Chris, "Did you have anything in mind? i definitely enjoyed our fight, but don't think i'm quite up for another quite so soon. Call it a neural refractory period, if you like." Kite grins, hoping she can get away with such a joke.