Unstoppable

“Oh man, really? Dang. I would have slowed down.” He takes a sit and hums, trying to think about how he felt about the books. “They were really helpful, especially the ones about magic and nature. A couple of them were hard to read because of the language barrier, but I understood what I could.”

He nods. “If you ever have that trouble again, I can have the text translated for you.” And, just in case Vin might protest, he adds. “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Is this your way of saying that you’ve, like… looked this stuff up? Oh, man, have you done one of these quizzes before?” She pauses. “Do you have any suggestions for me, B-Dog?”

He laughs. “Nope, I got nothin’ for you, kid. If it’s not something you can find in the library, I don’t know how to help you. Although,” He scratches his chin. “Maybe if you looked enough you’ll find something about woo-ing someone. But that’s as close as you’ll get.”

Collin strolls in and throws himself into a seat facing the desk. “Anyone fail yet?” he asks with a grin.

“Uh, hmm.” He goes over and flips through a few papers on the graded stack. “A couple. One person cast a small illusion spell for faking material and hoped it would work. It wasn’t that badly done, either.” He reconsiders the paper. “Maybe I’ll give them a ‘D’ instead... For effort.”

“Business as usual.” She looked down at her nails. “I wanted to ask you something that has nothing to do with the Coven.”

He scrunches his nose and looks doubtful. “I don’t know, Amanda. That’s kind of outside my area of expertise.”

“Uhh – for… fun?”

“Uh--huh,” He nods. “Okay. There are probably better tests for this online somewhere, you know.”

“It reminds of the office of a teacher that gives too much homework.” She takes a seat in one of the two chairs and shrugs. “I was in the area after submitting a report to Rowan. Came to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m doing fine. Business as usual.” He straightens the stack of papers. “Assigning too much homework, you know. How’s everything for you?”

She enters without a word and glances around the room. “This is where the beast works? I like it, it suits you.”

He snorts and marks a paper with a ‘C’ before setting it in a pile of other papers. “Does it?” He also looks around, at the rather bland and undecorated walls, an overfilled bookshelf, and two very stiff chairs. He shrugs. “If you say so. What’re you doing here?”

He slipped into the office with books in hand. “I just came to return these. I wasn’t sure about your return policy so I tried to read as fast as I could.”

“Ah,” He says, turning his attention to Vin. “You could’ve kept them for longer if you wanted.” He gestures for Vin to take a seat. “How’d you like them?”

Smiling, Roman leans against the door frame. “Thank fuck,” he said, holding up two bottles of beer. “I’ve been waiting all fucking day to get pissed with someone I don’t hate. You in or what?”

He sets his pen down and smiles bemusedly at Roman. “I guess so. Why, what’re the occassion?”

“It’s totally a friend. Are you judging my friend? Wow, you don’t even know who it is… They could be super buff. They could kick your ass.” She wiggles a finger at him. “Remember that the next time you talk shit.” Thinking he’s done, she turns her attention back to the magazine in her hand, only to look back before she has the chance to read the quiz again. “Yeah! It’s either ‘pretty good’ or ‘I don’t even know what saucy means anymore’. So I know which one’s the closest to what I want, but I feel like I won’t get an accurate reading if I can’t go more in to depth about how fucking amazing Ams is in bed.” She pauses. “Wait, forget everything I just said.”

He laughs. “I can’t promise I’ll try.” He sets the book aside and leans toward Kaelin. “Why are you... why is your friend making you take this quiz?”

Kaelin squints at her magazine. “But what if my bae is better than just ‘pretty good’ when things are getting saucy? How am I supposed to know if my bae and I are real if they don’t have a ‘really fucking amazing’ option?” Looking up, she notices someone standing nearby. “Uh – I’m doing this for a friend.” She waves the magazine. “It’s someone else’s bae. I mean girlfriend. I mean partner!”

He lowers the book he was glancing over and looks at Kaelin with a raised eyebrow. “Uh-huh.” He says doubtfully. “A friend. Got it.” Then, just as he’s about to go back to his book, a second thought occurs to him. “Is ‘pretty good’ really the best option?”

I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fists.