The concept of socialization was one that David still found just a little bit strange. For years, when life had been normal, he'd been one of the guys you always found around the water cooler with light jokes and casual gossip. When everything had turned itself upside down, he'd bonded with a group of people who had become his entire life, and it didn't really count as 'being social' when every moment spent awake was spent in the company of the same people, when it was about staying alive and staying sane more than it was about exchanging pleasantries.
Now, here at Xavier's, David was having a hard time really understanding how the situation worked. Life was hardly 'normal', at least not in any definition he was used to - he was here helping mutant kids fight themselves, and helping a team of renegade superheros out of one of his old comic books fight injustice ... but they didn't hide in the darkness, they weren't scraping by. In fact, they had some pretty good perks - like the couches in the teacher's lounge - and the deli he'd found a few months back made pie almost as good as his Gran had.
Still, David wasn't entirely sure how one fit in, when you weren't at one extreme or the other, and so he tended to spend most of his evenings reading a book in his room not because he didn't want to interact with other people, but simply because he wasn't sure whether or not that would be appreciated. He was relatively new here, didn't want to step on anyone's toes - but there was only so long that he could advise children and adults alike to take a deep breath and do things that might be just a little bit frightening, before he had to suck it up and do it himself.
So he ended up in the teacher's lounge without really realizing it, ostensibly to retrieve a piece of that pie from the fridge, and wasn't terribly disappointed when the glow of the television revealed another person in the room. David didn't immediately speak to her, getting his pie and setting it going for thirty seconds in the little microwave nearby to warm it up before he actually turned to see who it was or what they were doing. And laughed at the sight of ice cream, a low, warm sound.
"Seems I'm not the only one with a sweet tooth," David commented, loudly enough to be heard over the television without breaking that Witching Hour feeling that hung in the air. He knew Arla in passing, the way he knew most people, but hadn't really spoken with her - if she wanted to simply ignore him, he'd give her the chance. "Somehow, that makes me feel better." The microwave beeped, and he set to finding himself a fork.