thatsamilkshake | Room 505, Before Graduation

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Room 505, Before Graduation

Separation of beds? Check. Francine's bed was pushed back over to the window, and neatly made.

Mostly because it hadn't been slept in last night. The other bed? Ahahaha. Pile of rumpled blankets, pillows, and girl-in-a-slip struggling with the second pair of panty-hose this morning. Francine swore -- the Katchoo way and then the oathy way -- that one more run and she was just saying screw it and going bare-legged.

[OOC: For the girl and the Mom of Dooooom]

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Luckily Marie didn't hear the Katchoo part of the swearing, although she caught the second part, muffled through the door that she'd just raised her hand to knock on.

"Francine? Sweetie, it's me."

Oh God, showtime. "Just a second, Mom!" Francine called, and hopped across the room towards the door with one leg still out of her hose.

Curtain up! Light the lights! You've got nothing to hit but the -- waaaaaaaaaaaaaait.

"Is my big graduate girl not decent in there yet?" Oh, Marie. You have no idea.

"Define decen---- ahh CRAP!"

Pardon Francine while she struggled out of yet another pair of ruined hose before finally making it to the door in her slip. "Hi, momma."

"That's my girl," Marie sang, reaching out for a hug with a not at all subtle look into the room for any possibly unwanted roommates. Who were not being asked about, mind.

"Katchoo's in the shower," Francine said into the hug of momsquish, almost like she'd been asked.

"Oh." Let's not be too enthusiastic about that now, Marie. Really. The response to the unasked question, not the momsquish; that was plenty enthusiastic. "Is she graduating too?"

What? She didn't have a high opinion of Katchoo's academic, er, prowess.

"Of course! We're the same... well actually she's older than me." No, she wasn't going to get into how much, or why. "She's going to art school in the fall." That was... a start, right? It was an opener, at least.

"Really?" Don't sound so shocked, Marie. "Well, that's . . . impressive, actually. Not in the same place you'll be going, though?"

Right. Deep breath.

"Well... the school of art is in another building from the school of education, but..."

"Honey. Are you sure about this?" asked Marie. "Oh, well, it's not as if you'll be living together there."

Those powers of denial are genetic.

And right now they were making Francine want to run away and apologize to about, oh, ten people or so, for having to deal with hers for going on two years.

Or just run away.

"That was kind of the plan, actually."

"Is that really a good idea, Francine?" Because all the cleaning in the world wasn't going to completely hide the fact that the room had been, quite frankly, a little gross, and that was the most superficial of the objections. (But also the easiest to observe, since Marie was eyeing a stain on the carpet with considerable distaste.) "I know you two have known each other for years, but I just don't know, honey."

Francine moved away to reach for the dress she planned to wear under her gown, kicking the ruined nylons out of her way. "Who could be better than somebody I've known for years?"

The little twinges of cowardice almost sounded like a rooster crowing in the distance, or maybe that was Katchoo cackling off in the bathroom at the image of her being denied three times before sunrise.

"There's nobody I'd rather be with than Katchoo," she said, and if it wasn't explicit, at least there were no barnyard sounds in her head.

"God knows what kind of roommate you could get stuck with otherwise," Marie decided with the Sigh of Resignation. "At least we know Katina."

You know, even if she wasn't much a fan of her.

"Whatever happened to that boy you were dating, honey?" Hello there, more appealing topics! Full speed ahead! "The one with the adorable ears?"

Shhh, someone was imagining getting invited to royal events.

Edited 2010-05-02 22:28 (UTC)

"He's going back to Camelot." Francine was apparently the only one sure of that - why she couldn't pass on that certainty to people who'd be happier about that than she was, Fandom only knew. "And we're not dating anymore." Cock-a-doodle-dooooooooo... "We haven't been for a while." Slightly better.

"You're not?" That was dangerously close to a shriek. "Oh, honey, what happened? Did he not appreciate you enough? Why, when I get my hands on him . . . !"

Which was sweet, if incredibly misplaced. "Mom, no, no. It's not like that. We're still friends. He's probably my best friend, outside of Katchoo. We just weren't right for each other as a couple." Buck buck buck buckawwwwwwck! (The rooster was apparently not even going to dignify that with answer, so he sent his wife in.)

"Because we both had feelings for somebody else." There, happy, stupid chicken?

"He broke up with you for someone else?" Watch Marie interpret that exactly the way she wanted to. "When was this? Why didn't you tell me?"

Face. Palm.

"No, I broke up with him. At Homecoming. Sort of." Maybe lots of words would get through on sheer number where a few didn't seem to be doing the tricko? "It was both of us. All of us. I was just the one who finally said it."

"But Francine! You would have made such pretty babies together!" There was even photographic evidence to that extent. Framed.

Hope there was more facepalm where that came from, Francie.

Oh, there was more. So, so much more. "We might still, someday." Okay, shoot her if she kind of hoped to see Lily again, yes. Kind of a lot. "Just not as a couple."

She ducked her face down as she fiddled with the zipper at the back of her dress. Could she get clearer than that? Seriously?

Well, yes. Yes she could get clearer than that, but would it work? That was the question.

"Then as what?" Marie dropped down onto the edge of the neatly-made bed. "Is this because he's from Camelot, honey? Wouldn't that be hard on a child? Single parenthood would be hard enough, but imagine the joint custody problems."

Francine took a moment with her fingers poised on the zipper to actually imagine the joint custody problems if--- why, why was she taking that moment? Gah. The sheer force of the Peters avoidance power?

"It wouldn't be single parenthood, Mom. Katchoo and I were raising the little girl who came this year."

THERE.

Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational Peters avoidance battlestation!

"It's nice of her to not leave you to handle that alone, sweetheart," Marie conceded, quite graciously under the circumstances. "Goodness, that poor child's language habits . . ."

"Her language habits were just fine." Mostly. Kind of. Dress zipped, Francine ran a brush through her hair for the fourth time tonight. "She was adorable. And it wasn't nice of Katchoo; she was ours."

"If you were both raising her, of course she'd think so," Marie said quite agreeably. It was a big step for her. Following the rest of the logic . . . that step was a little too big.

See above re: fully armed and operational avoidance battlestation.

Yeee-es. Sigh.

And another sigh. There were plenty of those to keep coming. "Well, I think so too. I mean." Sigh. See? "I mean, I like that to happen someday. For real."

"That's because you would be a wonderful mother, honey." The dense. The dense is strong with this one. Willfully.

"Thank you." What did you say to something like that when it came from your own mother, besides thank you? "But I don't just mean having a child. I mean the whole thing. Being a family."

"Well, that's a given." Marie smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in the bedspread. "You and this new person you're with, maybe?"

. . . yes, Marie. Actually, yes.

...Francine was going to take a moment to actually bang her forehead against the mirror a couple of times.

Good time for Katchoo to get back from the shower, wasn't it?

"Francie?" she asked, pushing through the door. "What's going o -- oh."

That headbanging was looking kind of good.

"Oh," Francine agreed. "I was just telling Mom about Lily." She did the best she could telepathically add HINT, HINT to that statement. With the telepathy she didn't have.

And the mind-reading Katchoo didn't have to go with it!

Nor did Marie, for that matter.

Although she did notice --

"Lily?"

"Her name was Lily. Lillian," Francine explained. "We named her after your grandmother, I think."

"Oh." Blink. Blink.

And then, finally, "Well, that's a bit morbid, honey."

Francine turned to give her a look of confusion, which was at least a change from loving frustration. "Why? People name their kids after ancestors all the time."

"Oh, honey." Marie shifted awkwardly, glancing toward the door and back in clear, if mild, discomfort. "We don't talk about her much . . . it's such a sad story. She died so young."

Francine frowned. It couldn't have been that young; she'd at least had a son first. "I didn't know that. What happened to her?"

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Room 505, Before Graduation

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