Miss Jane Tobias (smarts_n_crafts) wrote in st_margarets, @ 2018-11-27 22:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | character: fisher drosselmeyer, character: neculai antonescu, location: kitsune dorm |
Thread: Money, meet mouth.
Who: Neculai & Fisher
What: A deal is a deal is a deal.
When: November 8th, 2018: evening [backdated]
Where: Kitsune House: Fisher’s room
Rating/Warnings: TBD
Weeks upon weeks and months upon of months of begging, beseeching, and blatant bribery - and what finally gets the boy to capitulate in the end? Pumpkins.
Pumpkins.
There was, Fisher decided, simply no understanding some people. But if delectable squash products were what Neculai wanted then, dear Gott, he would have them. Even if Fisher had to rob the mayor’s own pumpkin patch to do so. Luckily, post-Halloween Maine was rife with neglected squash. She was easily able to stock up in preparation for colonizing one of the school kitchens.
The results, in Fisher’s humble - Ha! - opinion, were pretty damn delicious looking.
There was a sweating pitcher of pumpkin shrubs. Lumpy but plump chilled pumpkin rice balls. A creamy tangle of pumpkin fettuccine. Flaky pockets of pumpkin and feta strudel. Clean lipped bowls of pumpkin soup with a cheesy popcorn topping. A richly dense and chewy pumpkin brown sugar babka. At the head of the table sat the crown jewel: a picture perfect pumpkin pie.
The whole banquet made for a very neat distraction from the scrupulously plain box of enchanter tools stashed under the table.
Stuff ‘em then bag and tag ‘em as Uncle Kurt would say. Fisher adjusted one of the place setting with the edge of her finger and waited.
***
With Brendan tied up with practice or, Neculai suspected more, someone else, the summoner was on his own to go to see what Fisher meant by “studying”. If he were being completely honest with himself, Nick would admit to being a little concerned. Worried. Because Fisher was not known for doing things normally. Not that St. Margaret’s was a normal place, but still. Still. It was disconcerting to Neculai for it to be called a study.
Brendan could be right, too. It could be, best case scenario, just a pick up line and Fisher wanted to make out or something. He searched his memory on his way to Kitsune dorms for a time when he’d ever heard of Fisher hooking up with anyone. She’d been after him for this study of hers for a long time and he’d always turned her down.
So why had he accepted this time? Nick knew it wasn’t about the pumpkins. He could go to the kitchens and ask for pumpkins, he assumed. Maybe she’d just been persistent enough to wear him down. Or maybe he should stop walking and turn around and wait until one of his reliable friends were freed up.
It wasn’t until after Nick got to the door of Fisher’s room and knocked that he realized why he was so anxious about this. It was Sorin. Sorin and Anton castle. Sorin’s memories of being poked and prodded and bled - all in the name of a study - for ten years. He had to let out a slow breath to calm his racing heart.
Should’ve waited for Brendan. Should’ve waited for Brendan. He told himself over and over while he waited for Fisher to answer. If only he could disappear.
And what smelled so good?
***
The door slammed open as if someone on the other side had been preparing to pounce.
"Willkommen." Fisher beamed at her targe—er, guest. She bid him with a broad sweep of an arm. "Come in, come in. Hausschuhe, sorry, the slippers are to your right."
Considering Fisher's tendency to loot everything within ten feet for spare parts, most people expected her to look like a magpie nest. And it did – before.
It wasn't that the room now was entirely Fisher-free. There was collection of odds-and-bits, stored neatly in a wall of color-coded plastic bins. There was a lovingly scuffed drafting table by the window and three ornate clocks on the walls. A massive lithograph of labyrinth, the print big enough to be a carpet, was tacked up over the bed. Fisher's Halloween costume, a full scale cosmonaut suit, was slumped over in a corner like a sleepy chaperone. It was not, by anyone's standards, a "gloomy" room.
But there was a curious unfinished air, too the impression of someone moving in or out rather the sense of presence suggesting someone had been sleeping here since September. One couldn't help thinking that everything had recently been disinfected.
The sense of sterilization clashed heavily with Fisher's paint dotted T-shirt, scuffed slippers, and unrepentant look of playfulness.
"No bodyguard after all?" She raised her brows. "How generous. What have I done to suddenly inspire this trust?"
***
Neculai startled at the sudden appearance of Fisher but he covered it well, clearing his throat and nodding his acceptance to her welcome. He moved inside and quickly glanced around. Neculai had been in several other students’ dorm rooms, and each one was unique to fit the individual, and Fisher’s was no exception.
“Brendan couldn’t make it,” he said absently as he took in the room.
What drew his attention the most was the spread of baked goods on the table. Neculai’s stomach rumbled hungrily, always ready to eat, and he absently slipped out of his shoes to replace them with slippers and padded over to the feast.
“You made all this?” He asked her incredulously, some of his misgivings about coming to be studied slipping away.
***
"I have no distracting hobbies, like sports or sleeping." Or studying, and wasn't that becoming something of an issue. Still, Fisher was lately fond of subscribing to the theory that proposed anything worth truly worrying about could be repressed until later. Her cheer hardened into a shinier glaze at the thought.
"Lately the Gorgon at the library, she says I cannot borrow the books when nobody is there. Or maybe it was burrow in the books? Ach, who knows." She pulled out a chair with a completely unnecessary flourish – and a digging gleam in her eyes. "Mahlzeit! Eat, eat, or you make me a cheat."
***