(Untitled)

[needthepractice]

There's a select group of people scattered throughout the Compound today, any of which someone might happen to run into, but only if they know where to look.

In the IPD Office, there's a tall woman with long brown hair sitting behind one of the auxiliary desks and filling out some long-neglected paperwork. She's been putting off her patrol

Comments

[highf]

When one spends as much time around the stage as Kurt does, heights... start fading away. The rest of the world starts fading away, away to a black that blankets the whole of the auditorium, leaving few faces visible to the eye. The effect isn't the same on the roof of the Compound, where it feels like one can see impossible distances, feel small by comparison, but it's a stage that Kurt likes to visit nonetheless, if only for the thrill of rising above. Having a place to wow the audience, if he so desired. Wichita's hair color and cut alike are distinctive enough that he recognizes her from a distance, lips immediately curving into a smile, even as he carefully makes sure to have his steps sound, trying not to startle her.

"Living on life's edge today?" he asks, sauntering over until he can seat himself neatly next to her, folding his hands over his knees.

[hastrustissues]

"It's nice up here," she admits, her eyes still closed as she keeps her face tilted upward, seeing the orange-red colors behind her eyelids and feeling the warm air against her face, the heat that's occasionally punctuated by bursts of cool salty breeze, keeping things just on the cusp of general comfort. It's definitely warm enough to make her cheeks pink, but she won't be getting much of a burn now that the sun's already past its peak height of the afternoon. She'd learned that lesson the hard way after trying to get a tan in the middle of the day, but now all she tends to be on the receiving end of is one too many freckles peppering her cheeks, the bridge of her nose and the tops of her shoulders, all clearly visible at this point.

She lets her legs swing a little more, absently kicking before gravity has them swinging back. "How's it going, Kurt?"

[highf]

"It's going," Kurt replies at once with a sigh, full of ennui, tilting himself back until he feels the strain at his abdomen, precariously balanced as his eyes skirt over the range of colors above. To feign such boredom is, he knows, not entirely fair. The island is still beautiful, its inhabitants on the whole quite kind, and Kurt is far from settled in any way, shape, or form. Were it a goal of his, he'd have adjustments to make for months to come, at least. He shouldn't be bored. He shouldn't be idle. If nothing else, he has classes to keep him busy, and yet.

Yet, he'd rather pretend that none of it bothers him at all, to be frank. Would rather play it up on a stage where no one's really watching, but where he'll feel comforted all the same, being able to put up a front that few can see through.

"Have to admit, it feels weird being without glee club practice in the early afternoons, but I suppose I'm doing enough singing and dancing. It's just strange not to have the two together." Turning his gaze towards her, he asks, "And you

[hastrustissues]

"Not really sure I know what to do with all these free time on my hands," Wichita finishes, even if that barely scratches the surface of what she's been feeling lately. It's been an up-and-down rollercoaster of emotions this week, last week. She goes from missing her sister like crazy to hardly thinking about her at all, being perfectly content in her situation to longing for something she doesn't have the words to describe. If she were the type to self-analyze, she'd probably tell herself that she needs something to give herself purpose, to give her entire existence here some form of meaning, but she's not, and so all she manages to amount to, mentally, is that things are beyond frustrating these days.

"Glee?" She raises an eyebrow, cracking one eye open as she turns her head slightly to glance back at him. "I knew you could dance, but I didn't know it was a package deal."

[highf]

"Free time's a bitch. I mean, when you have it in the proper amounts, of course it's great. You get to catch up on sleep, unwind, destress, but... as soon as you have more than you know what to do with, it's like everything goes careening in the opposite direction entirely," Kurt nods in understanding, hearing the slight tension in her voice, energy that's being suppressed and has nowhere to go. He understands it well, tries to occupy himself with anything and everything available on the island just in an attempt to stifle the sensation he gets when he thinks too hard about this place, the one that has him climbing walls with all of the uncertainty. "I've been, personally, filling up all of that space with class, but... problem is, the classes I'm taking still leave my mind occasionally free to wander. Then it just ends up being counterproductive

[hastrustissues]

"I know, right?" Wichita chuckles then, a sound that would've surprised her a few months ago. It's a reaction she welcomes now, though, even if there's a part of her that still experiences some panging guilt over being so happy in these little moments without her sister here to share it with. Maybe she has enough tiny bursts of contentment to make up for her growing level of frustration, or maybe not, but right now, she's actively choosing to not care, to not dwell too deeply in her feelings so she isn't bringing herself down, and the best part of this conversation is that right now, Kurt gets it. Or it seems like he does

[highf]

"I feel like Broadway in of itself narrows the window a little, but even within that, admittedly there are some shows that are more to my taste than others. For instance, I mean, I love Rocky Horror for what it did, it was kind of revolutionary in its time, but it's. Not really me," Kurt explains with a tilt of his head, laughing lightly as he thinks about the time the glee club decided to put that on as a show, and the fact that Kurt had chosen to play someone at the very fringe of it all, the furthest from the overall theme of sex and scandal which seemed to be such an integral part of that show. "More me would be Chicago, or... Wicked, I love Wicked. Shows with pizzazz and that are about finding oneself in a more... motivational way, than necessarily something shadowed and sordid. I'm also just a sucker for the classics, romance and the brush of fingers, and

[hastrustissues]

For a while, she chooses to just listen, quietly observing as she focuses on not just the words he's uttering but the way he chooses to utter them, that way he speaks almost bashfully about things like love and romance, and way back when she would've been totally avoiding of people like that, the kids too innocent for their own good, but now it's something of an endearing quality, and Wichita finds herself smiling slowly, nodding along with his explanation. More than that, though, she suddenly feels compelled to keep an eye out for him, especially on the off-chance his trusting face backfires on him.

"I remember the musicals the kids in high school used to put on. Wasn't really my scene, though," she replies, shrugging briefly. "School in general wasn't really for me back then, come to think of it."

[highf]

"Yeah, well. If you listened to my erstwhile principal, she'd say that the arts don't really count as school, anyway, in which case, I guess school wouldn't have been my thing, either," Kurt confesses with a light shrug, thinking back almost fondly to Sue Sylvester's time in office. Not because he thought that she was the best candidate for watching over McKinley High- maybe she had her own advantages over Higgins, but there were enough biases that she pushed in full that had Kurt unable to admit that she, in any way, deserved to be considered a good educator. But more because... when it came to certain things, when it came to the subjects that mattered, she had responded more on his behalf than any other parent, save his father, had. It was impossible not to be grateful for that. "Really, I was decent at my classes, I had good grades, but... glee was about it. I didn't have a passion for history, outside of the history of theater