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"Oh, yes!" Laney chirped, "this is my new baby, isn't it lovely? I think it's from a secret admirer," she confided giddily. "I'm calling it Seymour, but the poor thing is in such bad shape. But, with just the right care and affection, I'm sure my baby will blossom into a beautiful flower."

She took up the pen and carefully wrote on the notecard:



She passed the card back. "Everything smells delicious, wow. It seems like it's been a busy morning. Seymour and I have a busy day planned, yesterday we got through the entire score of the HMS Pinafore. Today we're doing an epic mp3 marathon of Sondheim's works while I work on my essay for Poli-Sci. Actually I'm looking for someone to sprout-sit for Seymour while I go to Model UN later, any takers? He loves show tunes and anything by John Mayer. And he'll brighten your life!" Laney looked around hopefully.

Pierrette shot her hand up, even though her mouth was full of raw steak and egg yolk. To be honest, she was a little disturbed at how good it tasted to her. The egg was runny and the steak was perfectly cut. If only the dream's meal had been that perfect--

"No, don't think like that, Pierrette. You ate another student. That isn't something to be contemplating on! You'll regret this meal later when your tummy gets mad at you for eating raw meat." Pierrette thought as she put her fork down contemplatively.

Oh, she had raised her hand for something.

"I'd be happy to take care of Seymour while you're busy! I'm Pierrette, and I don't have any John Mayer music, but I do have a CD of some show tunes that he can listen to."

Laney bounced in her seat, which nearly made the stool tip over. It didn't, but only because she slid into Andeon (with a squeak of "oops, sorry!"), who had the misfortune of being seated next to Laney and Seymour. At least Seymour kept to his own side of the table. "Oh, wonderful! Pierrette, the adorable french transfer student! But not transferring from France, of course, just from around the corner at Meadowview. I worry that he'd get lonely otherwise, he's been through such an ordeal with his near-death experience. But of course Seymour doesn't like Andrew Lloyd Weber, so you have to be careful not to go all Phantom on him." She picked up her plant mutant ("plantant"?) and sidled over to where the curly-haired redhead was sitting.

"You have to rotate him ninety degrees every fifteen minutes or else he starts to go all come on I lean on you and I feel like that's bad for his stem, he looks all droopy like the saddest sunflower ever grown." (Seymour, as anyone could very clearly see, looked nothing like a sunflower, not a sad sunflower or a happy sunflower or a sunflower in any sort of mood. Perhaps, at a stretch, a sunflower that had a case of the Black Death. But even that was only at a stretch.) "I think you'll have fun," she informed Pierrette sagely. "Seymour likes you."

Pierrette's eyes started going wide when Laney rattled off facts about her. They got even wider when she started discussing the rigorous caretaking that she would have to accomplish. And, they looked like they were about to fall out of her head when Laney sat next to her.

She leaned forward, looking intently at the plant, then at Laney.

"Are you sure I'm ready for such a big responsibility? If he almost died... what if I mess up? What if I turn him a minute too soon? I don't want him to be a sad..."

As cheerful and sweet as she was, not even Pierrette could call him a sunflower.

"A sad... bud."

Well, that was somewhat nice.

Then, another thought occurred to her as she finished off her deliciously raw steak.

"Is he okay with Guys and Dolls? What about songs by Ethel Merman?"

Andeon was just about to make another obnoxious comment when his face seemed to attract a hot, greasy spatula. It hit the side of his cheek with a lout splat, followed up by some strange, annoying, grating sound. Oh, wait, that was just Fallon's voice.

“Bringing the crazy extra hard today, Fells?” He said with a wide grin, using a bare arm to wipe the grease from his cheek. He gave a wink to his Big Gay Fallon, before turning his attention to the rude but nevertheless do-able redhead. “Fiesty, I like it. Of course, you can alw-” He stopped short as she made the comment about the dream, listening as the others confirmed it.

Then there was some talk about plants.

Then there was some other stuff that happened that Andeon couldn't focus in on, because he was too busy glaring at Ara. Ara, who was trying to make his Snuzzles out to be some sort of monster. His Snuzzles, who brought him his glasses whenever they fell off. His Snuzzles, who he was training to steal Fallon's panties out of the dryer. His sweet, precious little snuzzles.

“Bug attacks, riiiight,” Andeon said, shaking his head. Again, he made the gesture to suggest that Ara was insane, before turning around to rest his chin on Fallon's shoulder. He gazed up at the girl with the biggest, best puppy dog eyes he could manage.

“Feeeeeeells, is my steak done?”

Nihls: clearly unaccustomed to being physically accosted, squeaked and dropped the pack of bacon, holding up his hands in self defense. "I didn't throw it away! I just put it someplace where someone who could take care of it could adopt it!" He protested.
it had certainly seemed more logical to HIM than letting it die on his bookshelf, or letting Sue's stray-cat Bartholomew chew it to death. "I've got a black thumb!" He protested further, his expression suggestive that he was praying for divine intervention, or... that failing. classmate intervention on his behalf.

Dear God.

Crazy people. That's what they were -- all of them. And not the kind of crazy that Fallon was, which was, in her opinion, a controlled, refined crazy, the kind of crazy you might find in an upscale department store -- Saks Fifth Avenue, perhaps? No, these people were being back roads you looked at my sister wrong white trash slap-fighting crazy. Lovely.

Knitting her brows together, she did her best to Not Freak Out. The quiet girl who had come in earlier caught her attention, a welcome diversion from the yammering of everyone else. "Yvette," she said, taking a moment to search her mind for the girl's name. "If you would like to eat, simply put your name on the card." Fallon tapped it again in the same practiced manner she always did.

Bringing her hand back to the stove, she slid Andeon's food on to a plate just as he approached her again and leaned on her shoulder. Though part of her wanted to drive an elbow into his gut, Fallon was busy holding his food. She swung it at his chest, landing hard enough to smart but not enough to disturb the meal. "There you go. Now scamper off to renew your quest to molest Kirin." For a moment, Fallon contemplated sharing the fact that Kirin was actually a male with Andeon. Kirin appeared to be an attractive girl, but he lived on the male floor of Barren Pines, which apparently hadn't tipped Andeon off. It had raised an immediate flag for Fallon. Why would ONE girl be placed on the all-male floor? In her mind, it was obvious that Kirin had to be a male, regardless of how he dressed. Barren Pines didn't make exceptions for anyone; if he was on that floor, she assumed he had to belong there -- to be male. Fallon had never said anything about it to anyone. Why would she? It didn't affect her at all. Andeon, of course, was not nearly as attentive to the living arrangements of Barren Pines as Fallon was. Oh well. Instead of pointing it out to Andeon, she smiled sweetly and kept her mouth shut. He would have to learn for himself; it was the only way the lesson would sink in to his thick skull.

Moving on to Laney's food, Fallon dropped another hunk of meat onto the sizzling pan and gave it a shake, drizzling sauce and spices down with both hands. This was oddly crowded for her usual group, but she could manage. Hell, she considered it a personal challenge. Besides, she had absolutely no desire to enter into the idiocy of the conversation flickering between Laney and Nihls, or the ranting of Mason about some magical bug creature that attacked him, or to draw further attention from Andeon. Andeon was a friend, but an insanely annoying one whose friendship Fallon questioned on a daily basis. Nope, Fallon was just happy to stand at the stove and cook -- and to try to forget about the pleasure that had flooded her body when she took that first bite of Serenade's flesh.