"Yes, that Kyle. I'm obviously okay with girly shit! And girly people! And girls! And I could never wear a skirt because, I'm tired of epiphanies actually can they stop." He drops his head onto his hands again.

"You literally can put this aside for the rest of the day, skip school, and play video games at my place," Vivian points out. "Or even go back to class. Or for that matter smoke with me, I know you've got your but what if it fucks up my development thing but I'm pretty sure your notebook can just straight-up fix a couple of holes in your brain. And it would probably calm you down."

"You're not smoking, I'm the protagonist not you," he tells Felicia.

She rolls her eyes. "I don't want to."

"Cool," Vivian says. "C'mon, Pete. MK, uh, no offense but if you're coming you bring your own weed or $50, this is a medical intervention not a charity. Felicia... I guess you can come along if you feel like smelling terrible but not getting anything out of it except maybe a contact buzz? Gabe, you should probably go back to class before I give you an embolism."

"...yeah fuck this shit I'm going back home."

"I'm going back to class with Gabe," she says, taking pity on him; he looked like he was having a ton of internal conflict.

Peter hups to his feet, then. "...I, uh, might want more help from you guys later. But I think I'll probably put this down for today."

She leads him deeper into the park, from the part with picnic tables to the part with nature trails. A few hundred feet down one such trail, she takes him off the path; picking their way through the underbrush, they reach a spot with good tree cover by the side of a creek.

"Ash in the water, and dip your roach when you're done with it," she says distractedly while retrieving her tools of the trade. "Only you can prevent forest fires."

"You're gonna need to walk me through this process in a lot more detail than that," he observes. "I hear it involves 'rolling' something."

"You're not rolling shit," she says. "You'd end up with a cough drop wrapper."

Her arcane rituals result in two joints, one thicker than the other. She hands the thinner one to him. "101 time. Breathe into your mouth first, then your lungs after the smoke cools. Don't hold your breath longer than like three seconds, it doesn't do anything. Tap it between every two puffs - again, over the water - so the ash falls off then and there instead of whenever it wants and all over you. Do not fall victim to hubris about how much you can inhale. Are you ready for me to light you, or do you need any of that repeated."

"How do you breathe into your—this is probably better with practice. I'm going to cough and wheeze horribly, aren't I. Alright, hit me."

"You are going to cough hilariously," she agrees, and lights him up. Then lights herself up, and inhales demonstratively - into the mouth and throat, hold, into the lungs, hold, release.

He tries that. It goes exactly as predicted.

"Fucking hell," he says between coughs, eyes watering.

"Mazel tov!"

He keeps coughing for a little while longer because he also got some spit in while he was coughing which didn't help. "I hope it gets less unpleasant with practice."

"You will note that I'm not coughing."

Inhale. Hold, in, hold - cough, small coughing fit, larger coughing fit as she lets the smoke escape. "Fuck, hubris."

(She's still coughing less and less violently than Peter, though.)

He laughs, shakes his head, and tries again. Coughs again, although this time it's mostly from having triggered the previous cough.

Smoking!

Vivian relaxes noticeably. She'd been a little sharper-edged and wary since the first revelation of the day, but now the tension starts going out of her. Not coughing gets easier for both of them as their reflexes dull and muscles loosen. Viv ends up sitting on a tree stump, not even gargoyle-perched, just kind of sitting with her legs crossed.

"Kinda want to apologize to Marcus," she admits eventually. "It's not really his fault he's a dumbass. Or like - you know. Actions have consequences but I didn't have the slack to meet him halfway, you know."

Peter's leaning against a tree, now, and he's been uncharacteristically quiet. He's not—quite—a chatterbox, but he's not the kind of person you'd typically associate the phrase "companionable silence" with.

(He's trying to focus really hard on his thoughts and watching them sliiiiiiide is kind of scary but kind of fun and he's not sure what he was just thinking about. Oh right, thoughts.)

He looks over at Vivian when she speaks. "Apologize? What for?"

"He came to your magical adventure prep event and spent the whole time listening to us talk about gender, putting his foot in his mouth, and getting shit for it. I could've spotted him a little weed for his trouble. But, like, I didn't actually want him smoking with us, because he'd gotten on my nerves. So I brushed him off. Which was kind of a dick move."

Peter snorts. "Being a dick is how he bonds. If you're a dick to him he'll think you're friends. Kind of. Probably I think he does."