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Two minutes till the anointed hour. It had always been such between them. You arrived at JUST the right time. JUST. Not a minute before or after, (unless you called ahead). And in arriving a minute early, Leonette just waited those agonizing 60 seconds outside of the door, looking at her clock. This was tradition after all.

The second the minute hand moved, she was knocking on the door. "Fallon, It's me, Leonette, you are ready?" Her mood was a bit more chipper today, and on top of that, she was a bit hungry.

Fallon had food ready. She knew it. Because this was tradition.

At least as traditional as Friday night puzzles could get.

Fallon's smile was quickly mirrored by Leonette's own. Slipping of her boots, (ugh, why in the world did the school give them BOOTS?), and putting them in the shoe cubby, it wouldn't be a bad bet to say Leonette felt positively chipper. She loved puzzles. She loved spending time with friends doing puzzles. So Friday night with a friend doing puzzles was always a good thing. ALWAYS.

The smell of tea bags made Leonette's stomach make a slight gurgle. Tea, oh she had missed it's delicate aroma. "I'll have the rose." She'd not get rose, this was how it was. Not minding, Leonette took her place on the other end of the tiny table, careful not to upset anything. "What puzzle will we aim to complete by tonight? I've been lacking since my mom took my last few, 'to focus on more important things'."

"All of my orders were cancled. Even the ones I made for this cute pair of leggings and new dangles for my hair. You'd think she'd be happy with me ordering clothes but," Taking a sip of her tea she sighed. "she then went about saying how I was spending her money of 'frivolous' things and 'should be focusing on work." A scrunched face and dismissal hand wave imitated her version of her own mother. At least it was what she expected her mother to say.

Putting her tea down, she saw Fallon's hand inching by the salad. Give a smile, she grabber her fork and took the first bite. Oh food~ Sweet magnificent food. How she had craved. A few bites in, Leonette was sated enough to talk. "Sorry, just hungry tonight is all."

The tea kettle must have masked the sound of the closet door opening, because the next time either of the two girls looked at the floor, the box cover Fallon had tried to hide from view had ended up there, about a foot or two away from Leonette. It lay with the picture of the puzzle face-up. The picture of the painting, whether real or fake, was the same as Fallon would have remembered it. Well, except that all the people in it had grinning skulls instead of faces here.

That's weird, vanitas was a Renaissance style.

Fallon liked to see Leonette a little ruffled, a light smile touching at the corners of her mouth. Though Serenade was the current object of her affections, Fallon had always held a soft-spot for her fellow puzzle enthusiaist. It was a secret mission of hers to get Leonette to recognize her desire for girls out loud, a desire Fallon assumed she had. (Though that wasn't saying much as Fallon assumed all girls were truly lesbians. Most of the time.) She didn't push the issue that night, and instead, turned her attention to her salad, eating it at whatever pace her guest set, which was a bit fast tonight.

Placing her silverware down in its proper place, she scooted up to the puzzle table, hand reaching for the piece -- and then she noticed it. The box. Fallon never misplaced things. Never. If something was ever out of place, it was either a joke being played at her expense, or a freak windstorm. When her eyes fell on the box lid laying by Leonette, Fallon pursed her lips and got to her feet. "Leonette," she said, voice hard and edged with annoyance. "You know not to touch my things. I have told you many times." Her pleasant face had switched to one of anger, and she crouched down, snatching up the box with a scraping of nails.

Her face changed again -- to repulsion. Fallon flipped the lid around to show a sea of grinning skulls where the faces had been. "Leonette, why did you do this?" she asked, a heated intensity filling her voice. Painted nails dug into the cardboard, creating identical divots. Leonette knew how important order was to Fallon. She knew how much it bothered her to have things out of place. Did she think this was funny? Color raced to Fallon's cheeks, her eyes growing fiercer by the second. It appeared as though it was all Fallon could do not to smack Leonette on the head with the box.

Which was probably true.

Fallon worked to keep her breath even, jaw working tightly. Leonette needed to explain herself, and she needed to do it now. In a quiet place in the back of her mind, a part of Fallon wanted to sit down, to let the incident roll off, to let it go. It was the same part of her that begged for her to leave her bed messy, to control her rage, to let something sit unorganized. And it was a part of her that never saw the light of day -- and never would. No matter where this conversation went from here, even if it ended this friendship, Fallon needed an answer, and the window for Leonette to respond was growing smaller and smaller as each second passed.

Despite the anger that rattled in Fallon's chest, she believed Leonette. The girl was obviously telling the truth; Fallon knew her well enough for that. This did not make it bother her any less. When Leonette pointed out that the actual puzzle pieces were normal, Fallon leaned down to check. She found two face pieces and clicked them together. Sure enough, it was a normal face, just like the puzzle she had bought.

"I don't like this," Fallon said, as if it weren't painfully obvious. After the little incident with the blood in the kitchen sink just a few days ago, Fallon was on edge. Which was saying a lot. Because she was always on edge, teetering between sanity and violence. "I don't like this." She lifted the box again and checked to see if the faces had been scratched out and then replaced with drawings of skulls. Lifting it to the light, she checked for signs of tampering. Perhaps Andeon had his panties in a knot about something and wanted to pester her again? Hm, but this was too well-planned to be his handiwork; there was too much pre-planning involved in it. Andeon would sooner pee on her carpet in a drunken stupor than go to the trouble of re-laminating the cover of a puzzle box to hide the evidence of his subtle tampering. Staring down at the box, Fallon frowned. "I don't like this," she said again, completing her compulsion.

It took her a moment to understand what Leonette was asking. What did she mean why did she buy it? "I didn't buy it like this. I bought it with normal faces. Someone... did this. As a joke?" Fallon sounded just as uncertain as she felt. Kneeling on the carpet once more, she passed the box to Leonette. "Who would be so thorough to play this kind of passive joke on me?" Fallon's hatred for surprises was legendary at Barren Pines. If anyone tried to throw a surprise party for her, they would probably be thanked with a frying pan to the forehead. Fallon just didn't do surprises. This little prank with the puzzle box was a passive surprise, but a surprise nonetheless.

Leonette might have been upset, but Fallon was too bothered to care at that moment. She just wanted answers.

Fallon was not pleased. Not at all.

She believed that Leonette played no part in it, but she would not rest until she had searched her entire room to look for other sides of tampering. "I think you should go," she said, casting her gaze to the closet. She would start there. Move everything out and reorganize it. It occurred to her that her curtness might upset Leonette. It was not her intention (and not at all polite) and so she forced a tight smile and said, "You must know that I am not mad at you. I simply need to be alone in my room for a bit." It was not like Fallon to outright say why she needed to be alone. Leonette would know her well enough to understand that she felt compelled to cater to another compulsion.

If the girl returned the next day, she would likely find the entire room rearranged and the offending puzzle would be gone. Fallon's head still buzzed and so she methodically dragged one finger down her arm. "Leonette," she said, strongly. It was all the controlled girl could do to stand where she was; she needed to clean, to reorganize, to regain power in her own bedroom.

She could not do it in Leonette's presence.