Desmond blinked a little as he stared at the screen on his laptop, frowning slightly. It hadn't taken more than a few hours to get one, and he had spent a night reading the book outside of Raina's house, but she hadn't come home. So he had read in silence once, then read it again, frowning as he tried to drink all of it in. Then he had read cover to cover the book on computers for... dummies. He had been somewhat turned off by the title, but he when he had asked for help in the book store they had told him that it was probably the best book for his... competency level. Trying not to get insulted by that assessment he had reluctantly purchased the book. It had been a dry read, but no more so than the rest of the things that he had read on computers. The way that they talked made things seem so simple and yet foreign.
And so after reading 3 books on it, he had finally worked up the courage to plug it into the surge protector and then into the wall. He was uncertain how often electrical surges happened, but the person at the Best Buy had assured him that he was making the right decision by getting it and that it would protect him in case there was an electrical surge, of which there was a small but significant probability. Desmond had watched it as it charged, watching as it pulsed a little at him, like some great sleeping creature. A part of him had worried about him leaving it in too long to charge, but the manual had helped assuage some of those fears, and so he had watched it for a long time before finally giving up on out waiting it's charging time and going to bed.
The next morning he had paused, noting it was fully charged, and then unplugged it, and sat down upon his bed with it. It had turned on easily enough, and he had watched as the screen, like a television screen had started with a little bar on it that slowly filled like sand in an hour glass. He supposed, and rightly, that it meant that he was getting somewhere, though, to what, he wasn't certain. Then finally it had started up completely and he was taken to a picture of... he didn't know what. But this was a background, he was certain of that. And he had read how to change it!
Desmond paused, and then quietly changed the desktop. After 10 minutes, Desmond was rather proud of himself for having changed it. But it didn't really look quite like how it had in the little preview. So he changed it again, and again... and.... again. Finally, a good half hour later he found one of a nice happy grassy looking field. It was a little depressing though, because staring at a picture of a grassy field wasn't exactly the same as being in a grassy field, and it made him want to be in one instead. So he turned the computer off, and had gone to read out in the field, and was pleasantly happy. Except of course, for the fact that he still had no idea where Raina was...
And therein lay a problem. They had left somewhat amicably, he had thought, he had been willing to give her a chance at romance, a tentative one. And then she'd all but vanished from his life. Perhaps it was for the best though, he had no idea what it was that he wanted to give her, what it was that he could possibly offer her. His heart and soul were things that were under lock and key, and the first person who had truly touched them, truly reached out and grasped him and woken him up had then been someone who had hurt him even more. Raina, on the other hand, seemed there for him, accepting, soothing, wanting to give him a chance regardless of what had happened to him in the past...
And so it had gone. With him coming back to her room each night, testing the winds for the scent of her upon the air, and not finding her there, he would go back, and focus on mastering the computer. After several days, he had finally been ready to take the next step, and get on the thing that was called the 'internet'. Of course, he did not know how at all. Thankfully the campus had a computer lab with a help desk that claimed to be able to set him up in a matter of minutes. He had watched intently as they had gone through dizzying menus, clacking on the keys much faster than he could type in order to get him on the internet. And it had only taken a few minutes till she had been done.