fandomtownies | Graduation Brunch: The Park, Sunday, mid-morning to mid-afternoon

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Graduation Brunch: The Park, Sunday, mid-morning to mid-afternoon

It was the Grads' Brunch in the park today, as the brightly coloured banner -- CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2008! -- indicated.

There were lots of tables and chairs set up in the park, under sails for shade, and long tables groaning under the weight of the food and drink. Not just traditional ~~moddable~~ brunch foods, but a wide selection of ~~also moddable~~ greek dishes and delicacies.

Coffees, teas, punch, juices and softdrink were only some of the ~~also also moddable are you sensing a theme here?~~ wide range of drinks.

Music played quietly in the background, the speakers hanging from the trees, and bocce ball and croquet had been set up. There was even space for dancing, a hard floor having been laid over the grass between the trees.

It may be the Grads' Brunch, but everyone was welcome! Come and congratulate the class of 2008!

[ooc: What it says up there! This is a picnic to celebrate the 2008 graduates and their guests, but it's open to all of Fandom.

Plz wait for OCD

OCD? We has it.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The duck of Adah's head now had nothing to do with trying to extract herself from the event; instead, it was working to her benefit to hide the soft smile and the light blush that seemed to come up in response to hearing him describe the first time they met. Her hand curled up a little, tingling with the memory of grass, and she felt that maybe this awful debacle of Rachel's existence might have been worth it just to hear him say that.

"...Nice?" Rachel's facade dropped to frown at Lee, her theory of potential insanity coming back around again. "Are you kidding me? What kind of things has she bee--"

She paused, blinking in confusion.

"Wait, told you? Geez oh man, Ade, what? Have you been going through writing so many notes that you've probably killed the whole Redwood forest?"

"She talks to me," Lee told her, careful not to fidget around with his hands by laying them flat on the table. "At first, she wrote me notes and I just talked and now she talks to me and I talk back. She has written me anything in...awhile. And, like I said though, she hasn't told me much about Africa so I'm just guessing by what I've heard and seen."

Edited 2008-05-05 22:19 (UTC)

For a moment, Rachel looked like Lee might as well have been talking to her in Spanish (but not French or Afrikaans, of course, since she knew those). But one glance at his careful placement of his hands on the table like that and one glance at Adah acting even stranger than she normal, than she remembered, and she knew that this guy probably wasn't making this up.

Although, really, if Rachel were an annoyingly speechless genius freak, she'd probably talk for this guy, too.

"Well, kiss my grits," she muttered, shaking her head. This was officially weirder than the whole earthquakey thing. Definitely.

"Either way," she said, straightening with the conviction that she wasn't going to allow this whole thing to sink into too badly, by turning the topic of the conversation to her favorite one: herself. "Believe you me, Africa sucks. It's hard enough even making the civilized parts livable. But I do what I can, on what little I can with what Eeben brings in. Maybe if you and Ade are ever there, you'll have to drop into Johannesburg and see us, although I doubt it, because I can't even get Ade to answer my letters."

Clearly, too busy talking to cute boys and getting her education. You know, the things Rachel was supposed to do before their parents ruined their lives.

Well.

Some of their lives, clearly. She couldn't exactly contain much of a fleeting glare toward her sister.

"You sound like you're doing pretty good for yourself," Lee said, half smiling and half nodding. "And it was nice of you both," he continued, gesturing at Adah's sister and mother, "to come for graduation."

He hoped he didn't sound like too much of an idiot. "I don't graduate till next year so I've got a whole other year left all by myself now. Not sure what I'm gonna do without..."

He trailed off when he realized he had no idea how to end that sentence. "I guess I'll have to find a hobby."

Orleanna brought in her comment before Rachel even had a chance to offer something stupid in response. She really didn't need to sit through a whole drawling rant about Eeben and the timing of their fight that left Rachel reluctantly leaving Africa until things blew over. "Of course I'd be here," she said, with a slightly hard edge and still not sure what to think of this. She thought she'd just be relieved that Adah'd decided to seek out male company, but...that didn't seem the case at all. "Adah and her sisters didn't really have a chance for...a normal teenage experience..." She winced a little choosing those words; even if there hadn't been Africa, with skipping two grades and her disability, Adah wouldn't have had that anyway, but she moved on quickly before Rachel could comment, because Rachel would have, "and now she's graduated and going on to medical school. We-- I'm extremely proud of her."

While Orleanna had talked, Adah had found a napkin and a pen in her pocket and had written something down. She covertly tried to slide it toward the Eel.

"Oragami?" it suggested.

Anything to get her mind off this trainwreck.

Rachel, of course, noticed; she'd been watching the two of them like a hawk, almost more intrigued by it to completely ignore her mother and all her jabbering on about how she ruined their lives just like that, like it was nothing, like it was baking a cake.

"Not sure what you're gonna do without what, Lee?" she baited, since this was way more interesting than how their mother was just so proud of the little cripple. Thank God Leah was still probably lost in the Congo with her savage love. If Adah was doing this well, she'd hate to think of what Leah'd get herself into to upstage her yet again. "Ade's gonna be too busy chasing the impossible dream for a boyfriend?"

Lee dropped the napkin onto his knee, digging his own pen out of his pocket and scribbled something.

"You really want me to wreck paper that could be used for writing?" it said when he dropped it on her knee, eyes still on the other two women at the table.

"Of course you are, ma'am," Lee said, smiling brightly and just a little falsely. It was hard to fake cordial after hearing what he'd heard about her mother. Still, he tried. "I'm proud of her too. She's probably the only reason I'm at this ceremony."

And he turned to Rachel and said, "Without her. And I don't know what all she's going to be doing in medical school but I'm not planning on losing touch with her, if that's what you're asking. Probably the opposite, in fact. I'll probably visit her a lot."

Adah had quietly waited out hearing the Eel's response to all that before she even started to shift the napkin from her knee to where she could subtly take a peek at what he had written. She had to take a moment, anyway, to prevent herself from wanting to use the pen in her hand to stab her sister. Impossible dream! Maerd elbissopmi. So sorry, Lehcar, that she decided to do something more with her life than marrying a dirty pilot spy who treated her like crap. Rachel's clear views on Adah going to college made it seem like Nathan's daughter without a doubt; but, no. The fact that seemed settled in her lot in life of tying herself down to the first man that offered the slightest hint of something more made it clear that she took after Orleanna after all.

But the Eel's response softened her a bit to a grin. Orleanna would probably be able to see right through his response to her, but that he'd handled Rachel's petty little ribbing as he did....well...

She passed the napkin back.

"If you'll be visiting, there'd be no need for paper. But you'd probably be pretty good at underwater basket weaving, too. Always the modeling you can fall back on, too."

Ugh. Give her a break. Rachel usually reveled in getting food that was made from normal animals, but here she was starting to lose her appetite over a response like that. Clearly, this guy was just trying to show off for their mother. Eeben had done that, too, when he was courting her, and then the second someone looked the other way....it was good-night, Charlie, back to being a complete skeeze. She tried not to roll her eyes. "Well, isn't that sweet..."

Feeling Rachel's fire finally dying, Orleanna took a slight sip of her coffee, which hid a quiet sort of observation of how the boy conducted himself and how Adah did as well. Passing notes. Just like she and Leah always did. And, just like her and Leah, completely unaware that she noticed. "A year, you said?" she asked congenially. "Any big plans for once you graduate, or is that still too far on the horizon?"

"You just want to see my arms and maybe other things," Lee scribbled and slid the note back over, barely holding back a smirk.

"Thank you. Not the word that people typically use to describe me but thanks," Lee said, smiling pleasantly at Rachel before answering her mother. "I haven't really thought that far yet, ma'am, really. There's a few things lined up that I'm probably going to end up doing but nothing concrete. Do you know what you're going to be doing in a year? Maybe we could swap information."

He didn't know where that'd come from but it was too late to take it back now.

Adah, eyes down, bit her lip slightly, although she wasn't sure if it was her own smirk that she was trying to hold back or if it was something else entirely, something else more along the line of the wordless response she gave the Eel, a scribbled little drawing of the mushroom-cloud effect of that nice little atomic bomb he dropped.

Meanwhile, Orleanna was starting to pick up a better hint on why Adah would be interested in this Lee fellow. "Perhaps we should," she said. "I intend to doing exactly what I'm doing now, enjoying a well-deserved retirement from the world, with the exception of taking care of all those rabbits my daughter decided to dump on me, thinking I'd enjoy their company." Which she did, but that was beside the point, really. She was willing to put up with sarcasm from her own daughters; they earned it, and she deserved it from them. Some boy she didn't know with eyes for one of them, however...

"As to whether or not that's what I'll be doing is unknown, but at least it's an idea. I'm sure if you talk to Adah as much as you do, she'd have an answer for what she aims to do in a year, as well."

She cast a slight glance at Adah.

"Odds are, what she wants to do and what she will be doing actually will be one and the same for her, though..."

Lee just drew a little smiley underneath the mushroom cloud and passed it back to her, this time not holding back his smirk.

"She's told me what she's going to be doing in a year. And she knows where I'll be a in year. We've talked about this, yeah. Too bad that I won't be retired in a year or I'd keep you company. I'm a pretty good cook. I cooked your daughter grilled cheese the other night."

He smiled too brightly at her. "If you really wanna know what I'll be doing in a year, I officially invite you to my graduation next year and I'll have a solid answer for you."

Why, why, why had Adah thought this was a good idea? Although she appreciated the smiley face and she knew she would appreciate all this immensely after a few hours of distance had been put between herself and the situation, she didn't know where this was going to lead to. Not with that smile on his face. She remembered when she'd slapped Rachel once for trying to pull this; Rachel remembered it, too, and, while the wide-eyed stare she was giving the Eel right now was pretty priceless, it made her nervous. Orleanna would either suck it down and hate the Eel in silence, or she would react, and Adah didn't know, and she hated being unable to predict things like this.

So she did the only thing she could think of to divert the attention away from the Eel being a sarcastic little bitch.

"And ham," she said, quietly in the brief silence that had followed. "It was grilled cheese and ham."

And then she went back to sipping her tea, body angled defensively away from all of them so they could all go back to talking over her and pretending she wasn't there, okay, thanks.

Sure enough, Adah's comment diverted their attentions pretty well, and another moment passed with Rachel's wide eyes and Orleanna's hard ones settled on Adah suddenly pretending they weren't looking.

"Well," Rachel finally commented with a snort, although she still sounded slightly confused, "so long as he can cook."

"And ham. And we had potato chips too," he agreed, turning and smiling at Adah. "I can do a lot of things, actually. I'm very talented."

He made note of Adah's expression and winced internally. Maybe she'd just deck him later on. He couldn't help it, though. There were stories ringing in his head and he was feeling like...a sarcastic little bitch.

"I could make you both a list, if you want," he said and mimed writing. "Maybe you could take it home with you. My gift to you."

With one daughter gawking at her with an expression that seemed to just want to know how it was possible that the mother that slapped her was just sitting there as cool as a cucumber and the other daughter turning red from an indeterminable reaction (Adah had been slipping in her ability to hide her reactions to things), Orleanna just kept a steady gaze on this Adama boy and his sizable brazen disposition.

"You could use the back of that napkin you and Adah were passing back and forth," she said, nodding toward where it settled unanswered on Adah's knee. "That is, unless you think it's too small to account for all of your fine attributes."

"And close your mouth, Rachel, you're starting to catch flies."

She of all people shouldn't be looking at her like that. This boy still had nothing on that awful Axelroot.

"Oh, did you wanna see our note?" Lee asked, nodding to the note on Adah's knee. "Nothing on there that I haven't told her before. Nothing on there that she hasn't said to me before. And she's probably cursing me out in her head right now and she's done that before too. Again, a talent of mine."

He wanted to do two things. He wanted to wink at her mother but he figured that might get him a split a lip. And he wanted to drape his arm around the back of Adah's chair but he thought that might get him...well, she was closer to him and could potentially do some damage.

"As for my fine attributes, it'd take a stack of napkins, front and back to do me any justice," he said rather smugly. "Maybe we could compare! Hey, skill swap! I'm sure there's a lot of things you could teach me and I'm sure, in return, I could...pretend to learn from you."

Adah was wondering if her lip was going to start bleeding from how hard she was biting down on it; it was the least of her concerns at the moment, as she wondered how she could make her silent vow to make sure he never, ever talked again come to fruition.

Well, he did say he could talk. That's what she got for underestimating him.

"All those napkins," Orleanna said with a small shake of her head. "All that work. You'd better get to work, then, sugar; we've only got a few hours before we're leaving."

And, for all the boy's audacity, it wasn't him that Orleanna was looking at this time, but Adah. That last line really pushed it, and had her feeling like she'd never thought she'd actually preferred Adah's sapphic tryst to this. He had an ego to match those arms, much like another man in Adah's life that she could think of, and Adah was supposed to be the smart one to avoid this. Hopefully, though, it would just go the way of the lesbian, and end up just another phase.

"Why waste a perfectly good brunch with work?" Lee asked, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed. "I'll send them to you, though. I promise."

And, instead of winking, he smirked at her mother.

"Hey, we could be penpals," Lee said sarcastically, again, adopting a rather brilliantly fake smile. "You tell me how retirement is and I'll tell you about all my future plans. Maybe even send you my recipe for grilled ham and cheese. Maybe you could meet my father one day. I haven't mentioned Adah to him much, either. I should considering I'm thinking of sticking around this place for a long while because of her."

And that was new and never said and he kind of held his breath afterward.

As if the tension between the two of them right now wasn't enough to make her spine seize up with painful tightness as she tried to slump over and just disappear and pretend that this was turning out better than it was, the Eel had to go and throw out a statement like that which made it almost impossible to move save for a small shifting of her eyes his way. A small, curious sort of glance over through her hair, wanting to go unnoticed but also not, which quickly dropped down, wondering what she thought about a statement like that at a time like this, and if what she thought about it was enough to be grateful for it from at least taking her mind off of the trainwreck.

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