The nurse led Daniel from the Library, where he had been for all of ten miserable minutes, into the Sun Room. He toted his pen and journal, and walked, again, with a downcast face. It is better not to be curious... isn't it?
He looked around for a seat, and saw one open near an older man, a man around Lunge's age, tall and on the slim side, hair mostly gone to gray. It would take a while to train himself not to catalogue these details. A black and white cat sat on the man's lap, where it received what appeared to be desultory attention.
Most of his time not spent in seclusion had been spent with his father, when his father had the time; thinking of him, Daniel experienced a brief pang of nostalgia. I... miss him? Yes. Based on this, and knowing that it was a flimsy basis for a decision which would otherwise have been completely arbitrary, he took the open seat.
He sat normally, rather than in L's outlandish perching crouch. That, and talking to other patients -- learning to see them as people, rather than as a collection of evidentiary statistics, behavioral profiles, and useful pawns -- might assist in his recovery.
He hesitated, trying to think of something to say. When something came to mind, he said it in a soft tone, less assured than it might have been a day earlier. "Do you like cats, Mr -- ?"
The fact that old habits were likely to die hard, if at all, presented itself yet again. He knew that the constant accusations of social awkwardness were fair. On top of that, he would have to force himself to stop leading all of his conversations in directions that would encourage people to give him personal information while allowing him to reveal nothing about himself.
no subject
The nurse led Daniel from the Library, where he had been for all of ten miserable minutes, into the Sun Room. He toted his pen and journal, and walked, again, with a downcast face. It is better not to be curious... isn't it?
He looked around for a seat, and saw one open near an older man, a man around Lunge's age, tall and on the slim side, hair mostly gone to gray. It would take a while to train himself not to catalogue these details. A black and white cat sat on the man's lap, where it received what appeared to be desultory attention.
Most of his time not spent in seclusion had been spent with his father, when his father had the time; thinking of him, Daniel experienced a brief pang of nostalgia. I... miss him? Yes. Based on this, and knowing that it was a flimsy basis for a decision which would otherwise have been completely arbitrary, he took the open seat.
He sat normally, rather than in L's outlandish perching crouch. That, and talking to other patients -- learning to see them as people, rather than as a collection of evidentiary statistics, behavioral profiles, and useful pawns -- might assist in his recovery.
He hesitated, trying to think of something to say. When something came to mind, he said it in a soft tone, less assured than it might have been a day earlier. "Do you like cats, Mr -- ?"
The fact that old habits were likely to die hard, if at all, presented itself yet again. He knew that the constant accusations of social awkwardness were fair. On top of that, he would have to force himself to stop leading all of his conversations in directions that would encourage people to give him personal information while allowing him to reveal nothing about himself.