fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Monday Evening

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Second Floor Common Room, Monday Evening

Andrew was fixing some fine food: tomato soup and grilled cheese. An American classic. There was a fairly large pot of the soup, and he had enough bread and cheese to share if anyone else was hungry.

There was also some groovy Latin jazz playing, and he was dancing about the kitchen, head bobbing and hips swaying -- sometimes in time with the music. Life was good.

[common room open as they are]

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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."

Smirking still, Adah nodded. "Even primitive tribes in Africa can get a year of mileage out of one; add medical expertise to the mix and I'd possibly press a good couple of years, although I wouldn't imagine wanting to feast on the same flesh for that long."

She paused slightly before adding.

"It's the right, by the way. My bad side."

"That's exactly what the world needs," Andrew commented, "Demon medical experts. Maybe we could start a scholarship fund to help put some of them through school."

He smirked. Then he took a mock critical look at Adah. "You're correct," he added, "the right side is definitely the bad one."

Adah sent another eyebrow-lifted glance toward Andrew at that last comment; what exactly had he meant by that? A joke? Or, like the Eel, did he just have the strange habit of stating restating the obvious. He he still not noticed that she'd done everything with her left, or was he just being a facetious smart ass?

"It's almost completely paralyzed, you know," she wrote, figuring the best way to find out would be to go directly to the source. And, if he hadn't realized, then she was banking on making him particularly uncomfortable out it. "Hemiphelia."

Andrew hadn't realized until that point. Well, he had realized, but he hadn't realized the realization until that point. It showed plainly on his face.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "Is it a nerve issue or like a muscular one? Like if someone was to stab you in the right arm while you were sleeping, would you know?

"Not," he added, "that I'm planning on stabbing you in your sleep."

Then he silently mouthed: Room 218.

Edited 2008-02-05 18:42 (UTC)

Adah snorted; please. Even if he was sincere about the effort, she'd slept with worse fears over her head than some kid stabbing her in the arm.

"Mostly nerve-based," she wrote. "The entire left hemisphere of my brain is almost entirely non-functional, so the synapses don't fire right. I can still feel stuff, though; I'm 'lucky' enough to not have fully paralyzing hemiphelia. So, yes, I would know. The response could be delayed, but it would come around eventually. And, if you don't believe me, we are in a kitchen. We have knifes at our disposal right now, if I'm not mistaken."

"I couldn't stab anyone," he said. "I'm much too docile.

"And," he added, "you might never communicate with me again. And then I'll always have to wonder what kind of snarky things you're saying about me in your head."

Because, naturally, she would write them all down.

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Second Floor Common Room, Monday Evening

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