(Untitled)

[turnedtoproust]

Generally, Scripps has found a sort of calling in playing the background for the whimsy of his friends, allowing them to sing and act and be fools around him. It's not to say that he doesn't partake, but every group needs a steady anchor to provide the backing music and the task has fallen to him. It's not as though he's the most responsible, per

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[madeofstories]

She's come to the rec room looking for a book. Not that she doesn't love the ones that she has back at her hut, but Grace is hoping that she'll have luck finding something new today. Instead, she finds something quite a bit better.

Quietly, Grace takes a seat on one of the couches to listen to Scripps sing and play. The last thing she wants to do is interrupt, especially when he sounds so lovely.

[turnedtoproust]

He's noticed her, of course. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd seen her creep in, but he changes little. In fact, he hams it up because it's been his experience that an audience is cause to perform and when he's through, he lets the last note fall away and offers her a proud smile. "Were you really just going to sit there and not join in, after our last discussion?" he asks as though offended.

[madeofstories]

"I didn't want to interrupt," she says, and while she fully remembers their last conversation, it still seemed rude to barge in while he was in the middle of playing.

"Besides, I never got a visit from Winston the pigeon, so I wasn't sure that I was invited."

[turnedtoproust]

"Winston the pigeon has failed me wholeheartedly," he informs her, leaning his elbow on the edge of the piano where the rough skin meets a smooth surface. "Honestly, I'd be surprised if he was anything but dinosaur chum at this point. A terrible fate, to be sure, but what good is a messenger pigeon who can't deliver a message?"

[madeofstories]

While Grace is fully aware that Winston the pigeon is not a real pigeon, and that they've only made him up, the idea of him being eaten by dinosaurs is still an unfortunate one.

"Then I suppose his trainer's only to blame," she says, "for sending him somewhere so far off route. I don't live anywhere near the dinosaurs."

[turnedtoproust]

"I hope you won't report me to the bureau," he says with a fraught look of concern hinting about his eyes and his pressed lips. "I have been given two warnings and I truly don't know what they'll do to me next. It's a terrible situation, really."

[madeofstories]

"I think the next step is complete banishment from pigeon handling," is Grace's response, and she stands to walk over and take a seat next to Scripps on the piano bench. "But I think I'll let it go, just this one time."

[turnedtoproust]

"And then, whatever will I do with myself?" he asks, face stricken with horror as he gives Grace a fond smile. "You'll have relegated me to training turtles for marathons against hares," he says, hopelessly. "And it will all be your fault."

[madeofstories]

"I suppose it's lucky for you that I'm being lenient this one time," she replies, her smile widening. Then, she turns her attention to the piano.

"So, what were you planning on playing next?"

[turnedtoproust]

"Anything your heart desires," is his automatic answer. It's just that he's grown so used to playing music for other people that he's not entirely even sure how his tastes run anymore. "Is there a hankering you've been having? So long as I know the general tune, I can give it a go."

[madeofstories]

"Are you familiar with West Side Story?" she asks him, "How about "Tonight"?"

Maybe if Grace is lucky, she can convince him to join her in the duet.

[turnedtoproust]

"I have long been convinced to learn West Side Story," he confesses with a pained and rueful look on his face. "Such was the summer when I turned sixteen and we'll never speak of the fact that my friend Timms made an abhorrent Maria." Though, Lockwood had been rather fetching as Tony. "Here, hold on a moment," he insists, trying to hum out the notes to search back through the notes for some form of recollection.

[madeofstories]

"Were you made to go to an all-boys school?" Grace asks him, thinking of her time at Mayberry's and how she spent so much of her time there wishing that her parents had let her pursue her education elsewhere. It wasn't until sixth form that they'd even thought about letting her go anywhere else.

...and even then, her father apparently hadn't meant it to be permanent.

[turnedtoproust]

"There was really no other choice," he confesses with the hapless shrug that announces it is what it is and never the t'wain shall he complain. "It was a generic sort of group, but as we marched closer and closer to the end, we became tight-knit, the lot of us. Honestly, for ages, the only female I ever witnessed was Fiona and I knew more about that poor girl's bedroom habits than I think she ever had cause to worry about."

[madeofstories]

"We were never as tight-knit at my all-girls school as we were when I started attending Roundview," Grace says, and if she hadn't felt some sort of camaraderie with Scripps before, she certainly does now.

"And there's always a choice, isn't there?"

[turnedtoproust]

"An all-girls school?" Scripps lets loose an impressed whistle, arching a brow. "Now, of course, you realise that to my dastardly male mind, it goes to a place of such loveliness and curves and kilts. I'm being inappropriate now, aren't I?"