\It turns out he has no need to give much mind to his new uncle (step-uncle?); he's barely there except for a few spare days on each weekend. Diana takes giddy pleasure in being shocking and referring to the man by his first name. William did this and William's coming by in a way that would have gotten anyone else paddled with a hairbrush.

And from his very first impression he can't stand Mark. Not that he was prepared to, but that question where's your accent from, huh? from someone who ought to damn well know immediately made his hackles rise. It's just teasing, and he can't stand teasing. All Blake wants to talk about is the war on in Korea. And yet somehow all of them are still having a good time; it's Adrian who's the dour little intruder. Fastidiously avoiding meat on picnics where his father wasn't present and vigilantly making sure nobody drowned in the pool. After the first two weeks, he feels like he's suffocating.

---
How mature this was, hiding under a big tree.
"What on earth are you doing out here?"

The smaller boy clutches his pad of paper defensively, and it draws Adrian's attention to the binoculars dangling around his neck. Oh, well, very well then. If people wanted to run around in the woods looking for ospreys and owls and things until it got dark, fine for them.

"Looking for my pencil!"

"I mean what in general."

"We're looking at birds. What are you doing out here?"

Adrian crosses his arms, expression slightly soured. The sensation of having his hair plastered to his forehead makes his nose wrinkle in a momentary imitation sneer, but Danny is too busy trying to blot the rain from his notepad on his sweater to notice.

"Looking for interesting plants, until the storm broke. Hiding under trees."

"D'you find any?" His little round face lights up, and Adrian is a little relieved; he nods. "My dad's got an umbrella, we could walk you back to the house until the rain stops."

(He'd rather be wet in the woods than spend an hour more in Aunt Lydia's summer house, but something about how the other boy says "the house", and just how far he is from the cottage by his reckoning, says he won't even have to.)

---

Forty-five minutes later, he's sitting on the floor of the Dreiberg's little library, leaves and stems laid out on the carpet. Daniel is sprawled out on his stomach, recopying his brief and clumsy notes onto fresh paper. It's nice of Mr. Dreiberg to give a damn about his son's hobbies; Mr. Veidt was only interested in borrowing Adrian's radio set and in being disappointed that he couldn't bear to hunt or fish. For a while Adrian stops laying out leaves and stems on paper, and just watches Danny write.

"So you're in fourth grade?"

"Mhmm. I skipped one."

He pauses, while the other boy continues writing. Is this babyish too? Terribly immature, and still second-best to having actual adult company to spend time with, but Danny seems lonely without an older sibling to share his pursuits, and it's painless for Adrian to oblige him.