fandomhighdorms | First Floor Parlor, Saturday Afternoon

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First Floor Parlor, Saturday Afternoon

All right, Eleanor hadn't had as much sleep as she might have liked. Those stolp bugs had been singing Fri-ee-day, Fri-ee-day continuously, and the cat had been nervous about her new surroundings, insisting on sniffing every last corner and climbing up to the highest possible perches. And then she would settle down and nuzzle against Eleanor and nap.

Eleanor could have watched the kitty for hours. And had, to be honest. In the wee hours of the night, she had wrapped herself around the warm fuzziness and stolen a few hours' sleep herself.

Soleil -- that was the cat's name, you see, Soleil -- had been a bit upset by the ferry crossing, but seemed to be settling in to their new temporary home just fine. The house was full of interesting smells, and shadows to chase.

It was weird, how Eleanor felt like she could hear someone tsking at her. Probably just the wind. But Eleanor herself was in a lovely mood, and the parlor was so very, very open.

(Is there a tag for the first floor parlor? I couldn't find one. ANYWAY OPEN!!!)

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Joker wasn't sure the new rooms were any better than the old ones -- sure, there weren't any annoying singing bugs, but there was something about his lamp that was weirdly unsettling. It was probably just the Swedish design. Anyway, he left the room for the safety of an open area, and who should he see but his favorite person in the world? Well, the day was definitely looking up.

"Hiya, babe! How are you liking the new... is that a cat?" He stared at the cat. "Aw, hell, not again. Lemme guess -- Celia?"

"Not Celia, Soleil," Eleanor said, correctly him warmly. "She isn't anyone in disguise. She's her own self, and she's mine. Or I'm hers. It seems weird to call it ownership, all things considered."

The cat, for her part, had stopped abruptly at the sound of another voice. She was tilting her head and watching Joker from where she sat, not sure yet what to make of him.

"You got a cat?" Joker asked, restating the obvious. "That's... definitely a new thing. You miss having Elsa around to snuggle with?" He grinned mischievously as he found a place to sit on the couch. He tried not to get too near Soleil, just yet, to avoid scaring her off or stepping on her or something.

Soleil watched Joker, solemnly, and flicked her tail once. Not sure what to make of him just yet, but the Eleanor didn't seem afraid of him, so that was good.

"You think you're joking, but that was a lot of it," she said easily. "There's something reassuring about having something small and furry to accompany you through the day. Evan convinced me to go to the shelter and Soleil decided we were meant to be."

"Well, she made a good decision," Joker replied. He leaned over a little and gave Soleil a smile. "You chose well, kitty," he said. "This one's a keeper. Me 'n you are gonna have to share her, okay? Get used to me, 'cause I'm not goin' anywhere." He patted his leg and clicked his tongue softly. "You wanna come 'ere and say hi?"

Intriguing: the new human appeared to be soliciting her attention. Soleil stretched herself, then cautiously strolled over, stopping within striking distance of Joker's leg. Waiting. Watching.

"It's okay," Eleanor said softly. "He's nice. Can you say hi?"

When had she started cooing at her, like that? Oh, well. It seemed natural enough when she did it.

Joker chuckled. "Nah, probably not. I'm a new person. I'm only interesting if I'm ignoring her. It's all right." He gave Eleanor a shrug. "I don't stand up much, and I'm not really a cat person. I give it ten minutes before she's on my lap."

If he needed help ignoring the cat, perhaps Eleanor ought to get off the floor and join him on the couch. (Kissing him on the cheek was just saying hello.)

"I didn't know cats were drawn to those who resisted them," she laughed. "Why aren't you a cat person? I've just discovered I am one, which means this might be a fundamental incompatibility for us."

Soleil, emboldened by the humans not looking at her, was going to inch closer and sniff at Joker's pant leg.

"I didn't say I minded having them around," Joker answered, stretching out his arm on the back of the couch behind her. "There's no compatibility problem here, I promise. I'm just... I dunno. They're nice to have around, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get one of my own, you know?"

"Why not?" Eleanor asked. "She's clean, she's fuzzy, she purrs, and she can kill any rodents that might come by. I feel I must understand your cat vendetta before I can decide if our relationship will be negatively affected."

Soleil was now rubbing her face on the edge of Joker's pant leg, and moving on to sniff at the bare skin below. People smelled interesting.

"Vendetta? Oh, yes, I've got SUCH a dislike for them you don't even know. No cats for me, no sir!"

Which didn't stop him from leaning over and reaching a hand down for Soleil to sniff.

"I dunno. They're no good for conversation, and they can't feed or clean up after themselves. That's all."

Soleil froze when the human moved, but after she waited several seconds, seemed to decide that all was safe. Ish. Joker's hand was getting the sniffing of his life.

"So ... they're not as ideal as, say, pyjaks," Eleanor teased.

"Oh, you did not!" Joker sighed. "Look, just because head-trauma-me had a space monkey doesn't mean that any sane, rational person would keep one as a pet. They belong in zoos or something. Cat's aren't smelly, aren't needy, don't steal things you like... I didn't say I didn't like them, just... I dunno."

He slowly reached up a little, to see if Soleil would let him scritch her head.

Hey, now! She might be sniffing his hand, but that wasn't an invitation to pet her. She was now going to pull back and sniff his hand even harder.

"It's a shame," Eleanor sighed, trying to look serious. "I had thought our relationship was going rather well, too."

Yeah, that was what he thought. If she didn't want to jump straight into being petted, Joker wasn't going to force her. She'd come around. He lifted his hand back and sat normally again.

"It was, too," Joker sighed back, shaking his head. He looked down at Soleil. "Do you hear that, Baby? She's breaking up with you."

Eleanor leaned a bit over Joker's lap so she could see Soleil's eyes.

"Don't mind him," she said airily. "He's grumpy because he just got dumped. Yes, he is. Who's a pretty kitty?"

Well, will Eleanor leaning over Joker's lap, he could lean in and get close to her face. He looked at her with very big, very sad eyes.

"Meowwwwww?"

He was getting a kiss for that. And after the kiss, she was going to tug his ball cap off and try scritching behind his ear.

"Are you offering to be my kitty, now?" she laughed. "That position's been filled. I can't think of where I can fit you in."

Joker grinned and leaned into the scritches. "Anywhere you want me, Baby. Anywhere you want me."

Joker earned himself a dirty look for that one. She ought to have known he could make that dirty. Wasn't that part of his expertise?

Just as she began a rather cutting remark, Soleil saw fit to leap up onto the couch, next to Joker's lap. She glanced between his eyes and his face repeatedly before deciding to hesitantly walk onto it.

"She is contesting your right to oust her," Eleanor grinned.

"Told you it would happen," Joker pointed out. He gave Eleanor a smug smirk and reached out slowly to pet Soleil. "She knows we're gonna get along just fine."

Eleanor leaned over to rest her head on Joker's shoulder. It was rather cozy, sitting like this, wasn't it?

"She, like all females, has fallen prey to your charms," she said softly.

It was. It really was.

"Well, I'm just irresistible like that," Joker answered. "Also, she's a very friendly cat."

"She needs time to warm up to people," Eleanor explained. "She's a little hesitant. I feel like she's affection-starved but scared to trust."

Yes, she was aware of the parallels.

Know what's fun? Trying to get a dinosaur and a dog across the water to an island that both animals agreed just altogether didn't feel right, without either of them leaping overboard and trying to swim back to Fandom. Evan was looking perhaps the slightest bit shellshocked as he made his way into the parlor, Old Lace pretty much hugging his side.

Ozzy, at least, he'd managed to get to stay in the room to get some sleep. OL was a little more difficult to appease with biscuits.

"Staying all the way out here is going to be a problem," he mumbled as he glanced around the room for a place to sit. "Is selective deafness a thing? Can it be?"

"You could try earplugs," she said. "Are your pets not responding well to the new location?"

She found herself instinctively scooting a few inches closer to her cat. It wasn't that she didn't trust Old Lace, or that she imagined for an instant that Evan would bring her to the parlor if there was a chance that she might make Soleil into a tiny popcorn snack. It was just ... well, call it a protective instinct. One she had the good graces to blush about.

Was that species-ist of her?

Naaah. Evan had been worried, at first, that OL might chow down on Ozzy while he wasn't looking. It seemed like a normal concern to him.

"They mostly just don't like the ferry trip back and forth," Evan admitted. "OL hunts her own meat out in the preserve, and I really don't trust the woods here on Ingvar. I might have to start buying beef roasts to feed to her while we're here, or something. Dinosaurs aren't made for boats."

He smiled a little as he noticed Eleanor's protective scooting.

"How's she settling in?"

"Can she swim?" Eleanor asked. "I don't know how deep the water gets, but she might prefer a brisk swim to being cooped up on a ferry boat." She paused to consider Old Lace herself. "Though I don't suppose having such small upper arms makes it very likely."

Those strong legs could help her kick, but if her weight was bottom-heavy, she might have trouble keeping her snout above the water line.

Eleanor glanced back at Soleil fondly. "Very well. She's curious about everything. Insisted on sniffing every corner of the room, and cried for most of the ferry ride. She doesn't like being cooped up."

Really, who could blame her?

"Her tail is pretty strong, so she might just be able to eel her way here from the island," Evan mused, "but it's a long enough swim that I would be worried of something happening halfway and her being stranded in the middle of the water. I can be pretty strong when I need to be, but I'm not sure that includes, 'lifting a dinosaur' strong."

He'd picked up Daken and Sabretooth once in a fit of rage. Or had that only been in his head? The Shadow King's telepathic lies had been so real, even now he had to remind himself that none of it had been real.

"Anyway, I can relate to your new little girl's aversion to being cooped up. Who likes being in tiny little cages for any amount of time? Especially when bobbing up and down on a ferry boat."

"Best not to risk it," Eleanor agreed. "It seems the pot roast would be the far safer option. I don't think anyone likes being caged, even if it was for her own good."

She hated that expression, even if it happened to, in this case, be absolutely true.

"Yeah... 'for your own good' is sometimes a pretty subjective thing. Especially when you're saying it to someone who hasn't had great experiences with cages."

Old Lace bonked her forehead against Evan's shoulder, and he smiled at her and gave her a pat on the muzzle.

"At least it looks like we're going to be here a while. A whole new breed of stolp bugs... that would probably be some sort of entomology breakthrough worth being applauded, if it didn't mean we were stuck here."

This whole place gave him the creeps.

Eleanor was nodding. "It's hard to say where that line is -- better for you, or better for me, as the one caging you. At least I can say I had Soleil's best interests in mind; she might have panicked and fallen into the water. It's still not something I feel comfortable with, caging her."

Soleil, for her part, seem unfazed by the ferry trip; she was now approaching Evan to see if he still smelled as interestingly as he had the day before. Hello again!

"There could be practical uses, to their music generation," she mused. "If it weren't that they all imprinted on the worst possible song."

If this was what Joker meant when he said twenty-first century music was horrible, she could see his point.

Evan smiled down at Soleil and offered her his hand, still giving Old Lace scritches with the other one. He had two hands! He could multitask.

If Ozzy hadn't been sleeping in his room, he'd have been doomed. Or forced to grow another one. One of those things.

"I'm sure there are worse songs than that," he decided. "I just... haven't found any, yet."

He hadn't really been trying, either.

Soleil of course had to sniff all of Evan's hand before leaning in to his touch.

For her part, Eleanor was blushing.

"I work at the music store," she offered. "I sometimes choose selections at random? And there was a song that ... I didn't hear most of, but the words consisted of a woman ... explaining ..."

This was difficult.

"That she found certain men inadequate, because of their physical ... shortcomings."

That was probably the most polite way that she could explain the song lyrics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1w8OQEcplY&feature=kp).

(that link is so NSFW)

Evan smiled a little and gave Soleil a scratch behind the ear. Who was a pretty kitty? Was she a pretty kitty?

"... Oh." Well. That certainly sounded like a... a song. Was Evan blushing a lot? Yes? Imagine that. "That, um, that sounds like an interesting find."

"I ripped the disc out of the machine," Eleanor said. "So if there were fascinating songs about cultural struggles or the beauty in the world later on in the album, I'm quite content not to know about it."

Personally, she doubted that any album started with 'displeased about size of lover's genitals' but moved on to 'save the whale habitats.'

Evan was going to take Eleanor's word for that one. She sounded as though she knew what she was talking about. After all, she worked at the music store, and he... tended to try to avoid it, where possible.

"I think maybe you made the right choice," he decided. "There are moments when I regret picking up random books either at the library or the bookstore, too. People sometimes write about the strangest things."

"Well, now I have to ask," Eleanor laughed. "Do people write books about ... how frustrated they are, with their lovers' physical inadequacies? Or do you find yourself two chapters into a book before you discover that its author has gone horrifying directions?"

"Sometimes they make it two whole chapters," Evan agreed, making a face. "Or there are just... magazines, dedicated to photos of, um, naked people. But it's hard not to know one of those for what it is when you look at the cover."

Pleased at the state of her unpacked trunk, finally, Celia wandered out to the parlor. (The parlor! The whole house, eerie though it was, was a relic from her own time, it seemed.)

She watched Eleanor and Soleil for a moment before venturing, "You brought the cat with you, didn't you?"

Much though she rather liked the house, she didn't much fancy the idea of picking up its strays. But Celia was fairly sure she'd spotted Eleanor with a cat on the ferry over, which was both intriguing and fairly delightful.

[*forces SP upon you omg*]

"I did," Eleanor said, before widening her eyes. "Oh, no, I didn't ask. You aren't allergic, are you? I didn't expect -- this was entirely impulsive, on my part. I promise she'll behave ..."

"She's lovely, and I'm not allergic to anything," Celia said hastily, holding up a hand to reassure Eleanor. She smiled, wandering over offer the kitty scritches. "What's her name?"

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First Floor Parlor, Saturday Afternoon

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