fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Monday Evening

Andrew was busy flipping hot grilled cheese on the stove, but he glanced back towards the door and saw the girl who had been looking at him so strangely at the pool.

He smiled. It couldn't hurt, right?

The smile was returned with a vague expression back as Adah looked at him a moment longer. Her eyes then left him, giving the room another slow and careful consideration. When they circled back toward Andrew at the stove, they fell first to the food he was preparing. She made a slight movement into the room, around the doorframe, still keeping against the wall, still clutching her notebook like armour to her chest, before her eyes dragged back toward the chef. So that was the faint underlying of something else she had picked up beyond the soup, and, better yet, it looked like he could make them without burning them, unlike her sisters. Would she still be able to enjoy grilled cheese without the lingering taste of char to accompany it? She quirked a questioning, slightly hopeful eyebrow. Was the chef willing to share his culinary expertise so that she might find out?

Andrew watched her, interested. He flipped a fresh and steaming sandwich onto a plate and held it out. "There's plenty," he said.

"The soup is from a can, but I think it's pretty tasty."

Holding a steady gaze toward the chef a moment longer before she dropped her eyes to the offered plate, Adah lamented to herself the woeful tendencies of the properly-brained to take advantage of having sufficient use of both arms. Of course she couldn't hold it against him that he didn't even think she might not have a hand to take the offering when she held her notebook, and she took a moment to consider. She gave a sharp, slightly jerking nod of her head, to show him that she was interested as she pushed a little off the wall she leaned on to support herself. She limped over to the kitchenette, a slow determination sped up slightly not by a reluctance to keep him waiting, but by the desire to not have her limp be watched. Once she reached the counter, she very carefully leaned forward against it, hip digging slightly painfully into one of the knobs of a drawer. She held her arm out away from her chest; the notebook slid free, flopping imperfectly onto the countertop. She took a moment to straighten it, lift it and quirk it so that the pages laid straight, smoothed it out with her hand before turning back toward the chef to finally, ultimately take the offered plate with a nod of her head in appreciation. Not thanks. Appreciation. There was a difference, and, as she took it, she lifted her chin to catch the aroma of the soup, which she had to admit was far more intoxicating than the grilled cheese, but not nearly as manageable. The grilled cheese would do. She turned slightly to set the plate beside her notebook, so that she could then have a hand to eat with.

"I'm Andrew," he said casually. "Do you want some soup? I'll fix you up a bowl."

Adah grinned at the fact that she very naturally and out of habit brought her hand to her mouth, which was chewing the first bite of her sandwich, as she nodded, as if she was worried by breaking some social taboo by talking with her mouth full. As if she'd actually talk tonight. Either way, she nodded, figuring that she could manage well enough with the counter here, or maybe move to the table, but she'd been sitting all day, she sat mostly every day, so a chance in position was good for her legs. She set down her sandwich and plucked the pen out from behind her ear. She figured it worked out well that the time it would take him to fix a bowl would be enough time for her to write down a response and slide the notebook closer for him to see.

It was marked, so far, with just a single word: "Adah."

Andrew ladled in some soup for the girl and grabbed a spoon and napkin as well.

He slid it in her direction. "Adah," he read. "Pleasure to meet you, Adah. Would you like crackers with your soup this evening? Maybe a glass of water?" He sounded very much like a waiter.

She'd noticed, and it caused another quirk of her eyebrow as she eyed him, quietly working toward passing a judgment, but still not quite sure of which judgment it would be. Wasn't he the one in the pool on that unfortunate, disappointing venture into the deep subcockles of the school? Cooking on the second floor, which would lead her to guess that he lived on this floor as well. She took up her pen again instead of the sandwich or her soup, to write down another, singular word: "Water."

"Ice?" he asked, watching her for a response and reaching up into the cabinet to pull out a glass.

At least that was something Adah could answer without writing. She considered, carefully, looking at the sandwich as if considering it instead of ice, and then gave a casual shrug, sure, why not?, before dipping a corner of the sandwich into the soup and stirring it idly. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. A staple of the Price household before Africa; a veritable feast of balance and nutrition afterwards.

Andrew grinned and went to fill her glass with ice and water.

He sat it down next to her bowl, and then went back to toss another couple of sandwiches on the stove, seeing as how people seemed to be hungry this evening.

"Do you like jazz?" he asked. "I could change the music, but I was just feeling the need for something upbeat."

Again, this time with an indifferent expression to match it, Adah shrugged her left shoulder, her attention still focused on the soup swirling as it moved around the path of the corner of the sandwich. Jazz wasn't exactly a commodity in her life; devil's music, as was most music, although Rachel had smuggled a record or two that never lasted long before they were snapped and she was sentenced with the Verse. It was nice. Like he said, upbeat, and, she realized idly as she paused her stirring, took a second to hold the dampened sandwich over the bowl to drip the excess of tomato soup, she was probably in the need for something like that, too. Carefully, she leaned forward, left leading, so that she didn't trail any soup on the counter or on herself as she took a bite. Soup dribbled lightly on her chin; she casually wiped it away with the back of her hand.

Andrew gave the soup a stir with one hand and nudged the napkin a little closer with the other.

He wondered if she had a condition or if she just really didn't like talking to people, but figured it would be rude to ask in either case.

"So are you on this floor?" He really should take the time to stick his head in more doors.

The nudge of the napkin didn't go completely beyond Adah's notice and she looked at Andrew slightly because, apparently, the fact that she did everything with one hand and that it wasn't exactly easy to manage several things with one hand was completely slipping from his notice. Either way, she let it slide like the food down her throat as she swallowed, and gave a nod. And then, carefully, slowly, she dipped the sandwich back into the soup and traced out numbers that disappeared almost as soon as she made them. A two. Lift, and then the sharp, singular drag of a one down the middle of the bowl, followed by the smooth, never-ending curves and loops of the eight.

Andrew smiled, because he got it! "218! Right?

"Or was that first one a three?"

Adah promptly gave Andrew a deadpan look. Yes, the first one was a three because she magically had the only room on the floor that didn't start with the number two. She smirked a little, shaking her head at the question before devouring a bite of that which helped her write her numbers.

"So it was a two," Andrew said.

"Well, if you need anything else, just, um, write at me." He was getting the feeling that she was annoyed by him. It seemed familiar. And he was surprised to find it bugged him.

Adah swallowed again, slowly, carefully, her head nodding in a sort of fashion that suggested that there was something else, but she didn't want to do too much at once. Food set on its proper path toward her stomach to be digested and be divided into energy and waste, she carefully set her sandwich back on her plate so her hand could take up her pen and she could write 'at' him again.

"Do you do this often? Cooking?"

Look. Conversation. Sound the alarms and alert the presses.

Andrew glanced at her pad out of the corner of his eye as he flipped the sandwiches.

"Not as often as I would like," he replied. "If I wanted something to eat growing up, I pretty much had to make it myself. Though, honestly, I usually just opted for cereal. I'm no gourmet."

He still wondered if his poor diet had stunted his growth.

Adah nodded slightly; she set down the pen so that she could take another bite of her sandwich, taking her time to swirl it in the soup again first, chewing, swallowing, before setting it down and writing again. Conversation, indeed, always too patience with Adah, in this form, which she was craving, feeling that she'd been talking way, way too much to fill her idiom. So she picked up the pen and wrote again, without even bothering to notice or care if Andrew was still there flipping his sandwiches or had moved onto other things.

"This isn't too bad, though, so compliments to the chef."

"Aww, thank you!" Andrew exclaimed. "You're a peach.

"The key, I've found, is two slices of cheese and twice as much butter as you think is necessary."

He shrugged. "So not exactly health food."

Adah had to admit; Andrew's choice in words of calling her a peach made her grin sharpen a little more toward the amusement side of things. And made her really rather crave one of those tarts that she might have to give Luke a hard time about getting her addicted to.

She decided to write first, eat after, this time.

"There are worse ways to die than excess of cheese and fat."

"That's very true," Andrew said after reading her statement. "I was just researching the Mangokalli demon. It's a flesh eater, but it only eats skin from a living human and it only eats one small sliver at a time. They've been known to keep a victim living for half a year."

He stirred the soup again.

Adah, her smirk brimming on amusement and not at all above noticing the congealing quality of the soup if left untended, just like blood itself, slid her eyes toward Andrew. She'd have to be honest with herself for a moment and admit that she wouldn't have expected something like that from all her surface judgments of him, which made it all the better. She thoughtfully chewed her bite of sandwich at him for a moment before writing her response.

"Half a year? That's all? Amateurs."

And that got a full on laugh. "Yeah? You think?"

Andrew smiled over at Adah. "Remind me to never get on your bad side."

Second Floor Common Room, Monday Evening

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