fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Saturday afternoon

Alexander was never letting Maladicta drag him out to the bar ever again.

Well, okay, it had actually been a very fun time, so he was never letting her drag him out on an evening preceding a day where he had anything planned. He had woken up late in a most terrible state, feeling ill with the most pounding headache he'd ever had. Thankfully, there was a hand in the room that provided him with a large glass of water and two little white pills. He was naturally quite suspicious, but, well, curiosity got the better of him, and he was now feeling well enough to go downstairs and meet up with Scully.

Well enough. He was certainly far from his best.

"Er, hello," he said, running a hand through his hair which did not seem like it wanted to behave; the hand that had helped him followed behind. "Have you already started?"

"No, I was just considering what we had to work with," Scully said, giving Alexander a perky smile, then frowning. "You don't look so well. Are you sick?"

The second hand hadn't been noticed yet either. It waved to the first though, and the first jumped up and down on its fingers, pointing at the food preparations.

Alexander's hand, the one attached to him, ruffled through his hair some more. "Er, yes, I, um, am just feeling a little under the weather today. There was a bit of an...adventure to the tavern last night and I'm afraid I took too little caution with the amount of beverages I found myself consuming..."

"Ohhh." Heh. Scully smothered a smile, and offered, "Maybe a hangover remedy should be first? I know I saw some V-8 in the fridge--" She opened the door, and reached in for the canister. A hand inside passed it off to her.

Scully closed the fridge door and then did a double-take. "Was that..?"

"What was what?" asked Alexander, now intrigued, and he tilted his head. The hand at his feet also tilted to peer, as well.

"And do you suppose it will help? I had some water and some little pills that seem to be aiding the pain, although not nearly as much as I like. I suppose one should not be disapproving of what help does come his way..."

Despite four months in Fandom, Scully still found it easier to think she was imagining things than to say something like 'there's an animated hand in the fridge', so she shook her head, blinked hard, and said, "Nothing. I think... And it should help, drinking alcohol dehydrates you-- have you ever been seriously drinking before?" She canted her head sideways, looking like an inquisitive puppy. "V-8 has nutrients that'll help. We could add in soda water so it's easier on your stomach."

The fridge door opened behind her, and the hand inside was holding out a bottle of lemon juice behind her back.

"I must admit," said Alexander, a little shamefully, "that it certainly was my first evening of excessive imbibing. I have, previously, only had a glass of wine with court dinners before..."

He trailed off slightly, though, noticing the hand, and he nodded its way. "I think," he suggested, "you may have forgotten something?"

"Hmmm?" Scully raised her eyebrows, turned around, and jumped back. "AH!" Then saw the hand on top of the fridge, cheerfully pointing to a bottle of soda water. "Aagh!"

With a response like that, Alexander couldn't help chuckling a little, though he did offer to help cushion the shock by stepping up to take the bottle of soda water.

"I take it you've never seen helpful hands before," he guessed.

...Alexander's childhood was special.

"Singing flowers," Scully said, managing to keep it together enough not to back away any further. "And monsters. Not... weirdness like this." She took two deep breaths, and stared at the hands, one of which was still offering the lemon juice. "Thank you?" she tried, voice rising with uncertainty as she took the bottle.

The hand gave her a thumb's up, and hopped out of the fridge, scuttling over to join the one that had been following Alexander. There ensued a rapid flurry of sign language-- or just very expressive gesturing, Scully wasn't sure which-- and then they were climbing up to the counter and beginning to unpack the grocery bags.

"You've seen this kind of thing before?" she asked Alexander, staring as they got out some pasta and started to play catch with it.

Edited 2010-09-04 20:06 (UTC)

"Not very often," Alexander admitted easily enough, setting the soda water on the counter for the moment. "But every so often. It's...hard to explain. These ones are far more helpful than ones I've seen before; Manannan's experiments were mostly to make my life more difficult, but these are so kind. At least, they seem to be. Mordack, the wizard who kidnapped my family, kept a lot of things like this, too. I wonder, is there a student here who is into that sort of...alternate science? Perhaps he will be wondering where his hands went..."

Scully shook herself out of her staring to give Alexander an alarmed look. "Oh God, I hope not. Imagine what else they might have been working on." Or, no, really: don't.

She pulled a glass out of the cabinet and poured it half full of V-8, then added the lemon juice, and then a hand was there offering soda water. "Thank you," she told it again, bemused by now, and then mixed it together, handing it to Alexander. "They do seem eager to please. Now that the shock's worn off. And they're not-- bleeding, or anything like that." Which was *her* biggest familiarity to chopped limbs. "Manann..an? And Mordock? Are there a lot of mad scientist wizards where you're from?"

Alexander ducked his head a little as he took the proffered concoction, though he was eying it with suspicion. "Thank you," he said, and not immediately taking to drinking to it. He answered her question first, letting himself mentally build himself up. "And just mad magicians, although, really, magic, where I'm from, can be very similar to science. And cooking, for that matter, mixing ingredients, sometimes cooking them..."

Well, he couldn't put it off too long, so, feeling the need to plug his nose, Alexander tilted back the glass and sent the drink down his throat.

Really, it wasn't anything worse than some of what he'd been drinking last night.

"Zounds!" he said, and then let out a little burp. His face went almost as red as the tomato juice. "Excuse me."

Scully was giggling at his reaction, although trying to keep it low-key, and now was helping the hands unload the rest of the groceries. "I hope it helps. I had one of those weird weekends here and had to use it after I got drunk then. Never, ever doing it again." She was far too young now to have more than a glass's worth of tolerance. Scully pulled out some pots, trying to decide on food again.

"So you've done a lot of cooking before, you said." She was trying to make sense of what he'd already told her on Wednesday, with this. "Cooking before you found your family? And helping with magic?" A hand walked over and insistently offered a box of bow-tie pasta in multiple colors. "How can hands have preferences?" she wondered aloud.

"Well, not the magic," said Alexander. Not that anyone knew of, anyway. "That was strictly for the magicians, and they'd have killed me if I had even thought about it and they caught me." Thank the heavens that they did not!

He somehow fell smoothly into a pattern of helping the hands sort out the groceries without even thinking about it.

"But all the cooking and the cleaning and the maintenance of the castle, that fell to me. I was doing it for as long as I can remember, so it was quite a shock, when I escaped and found my family, to not even have to do any of those things anymore."

Scully frowned as she put the last of the spices away in the cabinet, and asked, "How old were you when you were returned to your family? And would the magicians have actually killed you for disobeying?" It sounded like growing up a slave, really.

She put the box of pasta in one pot, and told the hand, "Okay, okay. We'll do those. With a sauce." Scully reached for the fridge handle, but a hand was there first, and was pointing to the crisper. "Right. Okay, chopping vegetables first."

Well, it was growing up a slave.

"In a heartbeat," Alexander said, with a grave nod, although he seemed to be talking about this all rather easily. It was the work; it felt so natural and made him almost feel more himself. "It was a few years ago, so I was about thirteen? Manannan usually killed his servants when they reached a certain age, so it was either escape then or meet the end."

And, as smoothly as if he had just been talking about the weather, he asked, "Which vegetables shall I chop? What sort of sauce were we thinking? Maybe a nice marinara, or perhaps something a little lighter, or with cheese?"

"Something lighter, maybe? Like a primavera sauce?" she offered, opening the cabinet and trying to reach the olive oil. A hand nimbly climbed up and fetched it for her, and she grinned. "With cheese melted in, that would be good."

Scully didn't know what to say to Alexander's explanation; he seemed fine with it, and apologizing would have been ridiculously awkward. Thirteen was young, but it had to be at least three or four year ago for him now. She settled for, "I'm glad that you got away." She frowned. "How did you get away, if he had magic, and well, things like these hands, to help him out?"

A type of sauce decided on, Alexander reached for some garlic and onions.

"Oh," he said, a little bit of nervousness finally starting to sink in. He was fine talking about the situation, but he hadn't thought far enough ahead to anticipate questions of the hows. "Well, he didn't have any at the time. Just a really nasty cat, and, believe me, that was enough. And I just...had to be...resourceful. Sneaky. The threat of losing your life can be a powerful motivator..."

"I hear that. Good for you, then." From a number of situations, really, and many of them didn't bear too close questioning either. Scully gave him a sympathetic smile, and then started chopping a cucumber. Until a hand tapped on the back of her arm, and made a little gesture that seemed to be offering something, then took the knife out of her hand. Chopchopchopchopchopchop!

"I didn't anticipate all this help," she said, trying to stifle a laugh. "Maybe we should make some other things too?"

"This is almost too much help!" Alexander admitted with a laugh, and then shrugged, glad to focus more on the food than his daring, magical escape. "Bread, maybe?"

"Yes, bread," Scully decided. "And a salad. And hey! I like this part," she told one of the hands, pouring oil into a sauce pan, and taking a handful of cut cucumbers and now peppers to put in it. "If you're determined to help, find a salad bowl."

They very much were, and two scampered off to find one. "That doesn't get less weird... So did you ever say why you were here, instead of home?" Hopefully that wasn't an awkward subject too.

Only slightly. Thankfully, Alexander had gotten quite good about avoiding the awkward part, and the fact that Scully had gotten so much of the rest of the background, it made his question even easier.

"My mother thought it would be good for me to go out and see the world," he offered, finding more garlic. "Especially considering how sheltered I was growing up in Llewdor. She felt that going away for school would be more beneficial to me than remaining in Daventry."

He then tilted his head curiously. "What about you?"

"That was probably smart of her," Scully said thoughtfully, stirring more vegetables into the oil, and turning up the heat before reaching for the salt. "And you can't say you won't meet a variety of people here. Are you liking it?" A prince who'd been raised a slave deserved a wider experience before anyone asked him to rule anything. Even if his parents were the sensible types he'd described at the Reserves meeting.

She was sick of lying to people, and after her talk with Rosalind this week, Scully had given some serious thought to telling as much truth as she could. So she carefully said, "It's not really safe for me to stay at home. Have you ever heard of the witness protection program?" It was close enough to the truth that she didn't feel bad about fudging the details.

"I am liking it a great deal," Alexander admit, his smile growing. "Much more than I would have expected."

He had even managed to go amazing amounts of time without even thinking of Cassima, although, as with this current moment, it always eventually came right back around.

"But I'm afraid I haven't heard of such a thing. What is it?"

Scully's smile widened as she carefully added cream to the sauce, stirred it again, then watched the hands continue to chop up zucchini and carrots. "I'm glad. I've gotten fond of it over the summer. The worst of it seems to be balanced out by the day-to-day fun. Like," she gestured around them. "Random handy helpers." She shook her head in disbelief still. "Magic. I'll never understand how it works."

"And the witness protection program is a program to project people who have witness crimes," she said, her voice very deliberately steady. "If there's a chance that those they testified against in court would harm them. I'm not in the government program, but it's similar. I didn't even know I'd be eleven years in my future, but it really is the best place to hide."

"Zounds!" said Alexander, after a moment in frowning in thought at the garlicy buttery sauce he was whipping up for the bread. "It's a pity they don't have a Magician Protective Program; something like that would be incredibly useful, especially considering how easily wizards fall into revenge..."

"Do they?" Scully wanted to tread lightly, but she was still curious about the people who'd imprisoned him. "And I'd guess they would be as hard to get away from as organized criminals. How's your head feeling?" she checked, and poked at the glass of hangover remedy. "Are you going to be able to eat this when it's done?"

"Definitely going to be able to eat," Alexander assured her with a chuckle. "I haven't actually even noticed my head hurting until you've mentioned it. Thank you so much for reminding me! Behold the power of a good conversation, I suppose. And, yes, wizards are terrible about revenge. Manannan's brother kidnapped my whole family except for me father and our entire castle out of revenge for what happened."

"These people need to get lives," was Scully's diagnosis. "That's insane. And I'm sorry I reminded you about the hangover. Drink your remedy." She grinned sideways at him, and asked, "Did you have enough fun last night to make it worth it?"

"Right, right," said Alexander, grinning, but glad for the remedy as the pain started to squeeze its way back into his consciousness. He took a break to sip at it and shook his head slightly.

"I had a very good time, indeed," he said. "Maladicta makes for a wonderful companion, and the barwench on duty was very good about teaching me how she mixed a variety of different drinks. I met another nice young lady, and I should very much like to spend another evening there, just perhaps with a more careful eye on how much I decide to drink. Even the band is quite good, though I was a little skeptical. I suppose you can't judge a group of magicians by their appearance."

Or, let's face it, their smell.

"I've only been in there once, and I was--fairly intoxicated," Scully admitted. "I do remember dancing on the bar, though. And Tara sang, she has a great voice. So I suppose the band can't be as bad as you'd expect for zombies." She frowned. "I keep meaning to go in there and get a closer look to see how they're even possibly mobile, or undead, or whatever. Maybe next week." She shook her head and added the rest of the vegetables to the sauce, and more butter. More chopped garlic and onions. "And did you say barwench?" Laughing would be rude, but she was having trouble believing Alexander had said that so matter-of-factly. Medieval culture, right.

"I...did," said Alexander, eying Scully a little closer to try to discern why she had had asked. "Is that not the proper term?"

"Um," Scully tried to think how to say it, "Well, not so much, any more. Mostly the 'wench' part. It's... old-fashioned. And some people might take it wrong. Bartender is more common. I think a great many people have an image of wenches from movies and TV that's probably not accurate." There, that was clear. Right? "I think we should start boiling water now?"

"Oh," said Alexander. "Bartender. I see. Yes, that makes sense as well; I should have to keep that in mind." He offered a smile. "Thank you. And, yes, allow me. Now seems to be an excellent time to start the water."

"Sorry. I hope you're not offended," Scully said, smiling back. "Everything's pretty different here, I'm guessing."

The hands were now squirting lemon juice into the pan, stopping to shake some oregano, doing little spicing things seeming at random, all of which were making Scully's mouth water.

"Are you guys going to make off with some of this?" she felt like she had to ask. A negatory shake back and forth had her smiling again. "Well, definitely thank you for the help, then."

"Absolutely," Alexander joined in on the appreciation of the hands. "Your assistance, good hands, have made this process not only easier, but also quite enjoyable."

Then he turned another smile toward Scully. "And I'm not offended at all; in fact, I should thank you for the clarification. Part of the reason I'm here is to pick up on how to avoid such social gaffes. I am only glad that I did not actually make that mistake to the lovely lady's face."

"That might have gotten an interesting reaction," Scully had to agree. "Depending on the lady. No way to predict it, here. Some people get very upset about things I find confusing. The decade separation from my own time doesn't help me guess that at all." She dumped the pasta in the now-boiling water, and took a breath. "And I'd say we were ready to east, as soon as this is done cooking. Thank you, hands. I feel like I should offer you hand lotion or something." One of them might have bounced up and down at that idea, and Scully laughed.

She smiled at Alexander, and said self-deprecatingly, "This has been even more fun than I expected. I think maybe I have been working a little too hard."

Juuuust a little, Dana.

"You must have been," agreed Alexander with a laugh, "if your relaxation from work is essentially still work. What has got you so occupied, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Studying," Scully said, checking the pasta, and stirring it a bit. "I'm taking four classroom classes, and then four more on-line classes. Training for a marathon. And working on Thursdays. I actually got to the reserves meetings this week, which was a huge accomplishment in not going back to studying again for me." She wrinkled her nose, looking rueful. "I don't do well in crowds, most of the time."

Alexander bit his lip against a grin as he checked on the bread. After all, that sounded an awful lot like his own schedule, only it was lighter on the extra classes. But he wouldn't say anything.

"I never even knew what a crowd really was until I came here," he said instead, chuckling slightly. "So many people! But I do feel that, the more the merrier when it comes to those reserve meetings. And it's a good thing you did come, or else we wouldn't have made plan to make lunch together!"

"Exactly," Scully said, cheerful. "I'm happy to stay on the sidelines and listen to people in most of those meetings." The worry about giving herself away stayed manageable that way. "But it would've been a shame to miss out on cooking with you... and hands." She gave the high-fiving hands a weirded-out look. At least she'd progressed from trying to figure out how they worked? She really was certain that there was no way she'd find out, at this point. "We should do this again."

"Maybe we can make a habit of it?" Alexander suggested with a smile. "A nice relaxing bout in the kitchen to relieve the stress of the week?"

"That would be great," Scully decided. Something she wasn't being graded on, even by herself. And... how long had it been, since she'd done that with a friend? One good thing about Fandom; she didn't have to temporize about her day-to-day life. "Ooo. Pasta's done." She smiled at Alexander. "Next week, you pick what we'll make."

"Sounds like a good plan," said Alexander with a laugh, "but I think, before I commit myself to anything, I should like to see how the fruits of today's labors may have turned out."

"Fair enough," Scully allowed, turning down the heat under the skillet. The hands were already dishing up pasta. She snickered, and said, "I must remember to hand over that lotion later. If it didn't turn out well, it isn't because they didn't try."

"That's true," agreed Alexander. "It would likely fall on our own hands, distracted by conversation. If it tastes as good as it smells, though, I'm sure we're both in for a good meal."

Second Floor Common Room, Saturday afternoon

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