[OTA] Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

[headfollowheart]

She had been told, quietly and privately, to keep an eye out for activity on a few specific accounts. None of them had had any activity yet, which she reported to Katya daily. They were David's accounts, and after her conversation with Amy the day before - it had somehow managed to be more like a conversation than their usual confrontations - Zoe

Comments

[black0and0white]

"Zoe Kattalakis, how are you?" Excuse the hug - Adrien has not seen you in a while. "Steering clear of Raoul Fitzgerald like a good girl?"

[headfollowheart]

She squeaks a little bit before giving him a little grin. "Raoul isn't that horrible, considering." Considering some of his competition for horrible in the Spades, really. "But I think Victor makes him nervous, so that probably helps things."

[black0and0white]

"Right. He isn't that horrible, considering he's the actual legitimate spawn of Satan. Trust me, darling. I was there for his birth. The pits of hell opened up and out popped a baby." Absolutely serious. No joking here.

[headfollowheart]

"Did his head to the rotating around thing? Because that would be kind of disturbing to watch." She laughs as she leans against him. "I don't see him much, honestly."

She pauses a little and tips her head at him.

"Do you ever have to do, like, family gatherings?"

Chives was too obvious. :|

[bluntforces]

Who cares. Who cares about any of that. Who cares about that when they could be answering their text messages from grumpy, grumpy friends.

intro to accnt pract is dumb. tell me a nice story about how things are w/ you so i dont have to listen.

[headfollowheart]

She remembers that class. She did it in correspondence and spent a lot of time groaning through it. Though it wasn't quite as bad as the German philosophy her tutor had been fond of, so.

That was something.

A nice story...okay well my grandmother wants me to bring Victor home to Meet the Family.

It's not nice, but it's probably funny.

[bluntforces]

It's a blessing he can't drink in class, is what it is. Water would have been sent flying everywhere. All over the unnecessarily expensive textbooks and unnecessarily grumpy French-Canadians.

no shit?

And are people agreeing to this malarkey?

[headfollowheart]

She hasn't, technically, asked Victor yet. But knowing him, he'll wonder the most about why she's worrying over it.

Grandmama said I'd been sleeping with him for over a year and she wouldn't know him if she passed him on the street.

The Huntly matriarch did have a way with words.

[somuchheart]

"Hey, Zoe." Just the girl Blythe was looking for. She'll reach out to loop her arm through Zoe's, smiling up at her. "I have a question for you regarding significant others. It's not prudent to celebrate any anniversaries before- well, the one-year mark, right?"

[headfollowheart]

Blythe has her blinking out of her reverie, and she smiles over at her. "Well, I didn't really do anything for my one year anniversary..." But then, Victor. Monty wasn't Victor. "It depends, I think. What's coming up? Oh, six months?"

[somuchheart]

"Yeah. It's... pretty ridiculous, actually. But I couldn't help thinking about it." She shrugs. "I just- wanted to ask, I guess."

[headfollowheart]

"Six months is pretty important, though." She laughs a little, ducking her head. "It took about that long to stop being secretly convinced that Victor would dump me like yesterday's newspaper if Elani looked in his direction."

[eucre]

"Something's topsy-turvy." Just. An observation. Nothing to make of anything. Piper glances at Zoe from behind a curtain where she's cleaning a window. "Or maybe straight. How's the Tarts-turned-Sharp?"

[headfollowheart]

It's odd, Zoe thinks; sometimes Piper reminds her of Chives. It's in the tilt of the head and the odd incisiveness of the stare more than any particular physical resemblance. "Hm? Oh, it's nothing major. Just a family dinner."

[eucre]

"Dinner? That's not topsy-turvy, you silly billy!" She laughs, raising a hand to her mouth to cover up her giggles. "That's delicious!"

[headfollowheart]

"It might be served with a side of interrogation, though." Zoe pushes a hand through her hair as she hits a few buttons on her iPhone. "I'm not sure how well that goes with German chocolate cake, frankly."

[morallydefunct]

Zoe had a significant advantage in this department- Victor was not as traumatized as Elisha when it came to family. He also imagined that Vivienne Bernard or Luka Novak made for a much starker impressions than Mrs. Jessica Huntly would.

"You look worried," Victor commented as she approved, though he stood to move around the table and pull out a chair for her. "I would think account watching should not be that troubling."

[headfollowheart]

Grandmama was a Heart. Maybe a little sharper and a little less sweet than the current trend among Hearts, but she didn't often exercise her capabilities in the bitch department.

So to speak.

"I do do other things, you know," she told him, raising her brows even as she slid into the seat and picked up the pot of coffee. "But it's not work."

[morallydefunct]

"Of that I am quite aware." Least he point to his over flowing closet of late. Not that he minded, exactly. It was a strange sort of comfort to share space, but he still frowned at it when he opened the door in the mornings and it seemed as if there were less and less room for his suits.

"Might I ask what is troubling you then?" He asked, pushing her seat in for her before resuming his own.

[headfollowheart]

It wasn't even the shopping - Zoe firmly adhered to a one in, one out system when it came to clothes, otherwise she really would have enough dresses for every woman in Spade Castle - but the fact that her clothes kept moving from her room to his. And never making their way back.

What they needed was more space, but she wasn't quite ready for that conversation.

So she just eyed him for a moment as she added cream and sugar to her coffee, and then intoned: "We've been summoned."

It wasn't entirely inaccurate, after all. A kinder, gentler kind of autocracy was still the real thing.