Strangers = False

Grace
[Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Grace sends the text out after her last class of the day, before lab work starts. There's a window of time where she's 'free' as it were, as free as can be expected when she has weeks of homework and tests to make up.

It goes like this:

Hey, Whitney. Would you like to come over? Not sick, it's safe.

Whitney
During daylight hours her commute is shorter than if she receives a text when the rest of the world is winding down. DU is a lot closer to the center of things than the place she's calling home for now but only one person really knows that when she goes to the place she's calling home for now that she has to leave Denver proper.

That's neither here nor there. Whitney responds within a matter of seconds.

r u hungry? can bring food. be there in 20.

Grace
Sure. I could eat.

In reality, Grace was never really hefty to begin with, and when the disease struck, she lost a lot of weight. Not as much as the skeletal Sera, but still, it remains a problem.

In the remaining time, she puts away her tools -- scissors, tape, newspaper... Tidies up the small, barren space a bit. She's still not the best of hostesses, but she gives it an effort.

Whitney
Eighteen minutes pass between the receipt of the text message and the holler of the buzzer announcing her arrival. When Grace lets her up she can hear the rustling of plastic in the corridor and Whitney's shoes pacing along. She swapped out her running shoes for a pair of Timberland boots, her shorts for jeans. Her skin still retains vestiges of summer's glow. She was not one of the ones who nearly died from infection. She has lost neither weight nor color.

At the door itself she knocks and waits and when Grace opens the door her eyebrows lift at the sight of her.
"Oh... my god," she says and then gapes at her own lapse in manners. "I mean…" Clears her throat and tries it again: smile! "I'm so glad you're okay." Holds up the bag. "I brought pho."

Grace
Grace, well... she tries to smile. It comes out wrong, but she, again, gives it the effort. Grace is even paler than usual, which is saying something. Dark circles under her eyes speak to the sleeplessness and work she's put herself under recently. But, she's not shivering, she's not sweating, she's certainly not throwing up blood, so even with all that, she probably looks better than the last time Whitney saw her.

"It's okay. I know I look terrible," she says, her voice distant and tired. "And oh, you know I love pho. I'll get us some bowls, hold on..."

She walks off into her kitchen, pulls out some large plastic bowls, and sets them on the 'dining room' table.

Whitney
Assisting with the notion that she looks better than when Whitney last saw her is the fact that Grace is not laid up in her bed surrounded by used tissues and sweat stains, coughing and shivering and excreting fluids that had no business being outside her body. She looks as if she's still in the throes of illness but she isn't sweating or fighting for breath so this must be the convalescent stage.

Whitney hesitates before she comes inside. Not out of fear of catching the virus that has been eradicated. Whatever thought goes through her head before she shuts the door and follows her fledgling host into the apartment stays inside her head.

"Everybody loves pho," she says as she finds her way to the table and starts unpacking the contents of the bag. "Except like... vegans. And I'll bet even vegans have their own no-animal version. Cheaters."

Grace
"I can't even imagine vegan pho. All the good stuff is in the marrow bones and fermented fish," Grace says, then walks off. When she returns, she's holding a package, carefully wrapped in funnies from the newspaper. It's thin and rectangular, and she puts it on the table next to Whitney.

"I... um. I got you something. Er, well, Kalen got me something, and then I got me something, and I don't really need two, so..."

She briefly flickers a smile.

Whitney
By the time Grace returns Whitney has set down her messenger bag and peeled off her outerwear and portioned out rice noodles and broth. Her presentation of the soup is not fastidious to the point of compulsion but she does toss the spent quart containers and cutlery wrappers into the takeout bag and stack the paper napkins neat in the center of everything.

Then Grace returns with a newspaper-wrapped package and Whitney laughs at the sight of it. Drops the liberated baggie of toppings onto the table beside everything else and pulls a bemused face as she tries not to laugh again at Grace's stammering.

That brief smile is met with a beaming healthy one and Whitney stammers, "Alright. Thank you. I... what is it?"

Grace
"Open it," she says, with a shrug.

She walks over to her chair and sits down in front of that bowl and just smells, before grabbing chopsticks dug out from the cutlery wrappers, and digging in. It tastes... entirely not like blood. Which is good. Oh so very good.

She doesn't even stop to doctor it up with toppings.

Whitney
Open it.

Whitney suppresses another smile and a sort of wariness comes across her eyes but it doesn't turn to suspicion. By now she's beginning to realize Grace doesn't get out much and has the social skills of someone who spent her formative years willingly locked in a basement with nothing but an Internet connection serving as access to the outside world.

She lifts the package to her head like she's going to shake it to try and figure out what it is before she tears off the paper. Something does stop her from shaking it. She doesn't Work to help guess either. She sits down in her chair across from Grace and balances the package on her thighs.

Turns out she's one of those people who opens presents along the seams instead of just tearing them open. Grace might want to reuse the newspaper. Who even knows.

Grace
Upon untaping the seams and folding back the paper, Whitney will find a sleek, thin, light, brushed-metal laptop with a large ASUS brand on the top. It's not a bomb. Really.

Grace just glances up over her pho bowl with noodles hanging out of her mouth, unsmiling but expectant. There may be a slurp.

In any case, when she can talk, she says, "I thought you might be able to use it. Happy unbirthday."

Whitney
Not unused to receiving or giving gifts but Whitney was not expecting this when her phone buzzed and pulled her eyes off of the pamphlet she had been reading at the university's library. It had interrupted an intense internal debate over whether she wanted to study art like her uncle thought she wanted to or if she wanted to approach this in a utilitarian fashion. Study something that would produce the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. Go to law school or something later on.

So Grace hadn't interrupted much of anything and now she slurps up her soup to make room for an explanation and she can see that the Euthanatos girl is touched but not overcome by emotion. She brings a hand up to cover her mouth and like the mask she'd worn during her brief stint as a bedside nurse it conceals her expression everywhere but her eyes.

"Oh my god," she says when her hand lowers again, "thank you so much. I can totally use it."

And she finds a place to set it down so she can leave her chair again and throw her arms around the apprentice's shoulders.

Grace
Grace has been a little numbed emotionally lately. Either that, or breaking apart. So when Whitney hugs her, she doesn't exactly jump out of her chair or stammer a plea to stop.

This should have been expected, right?

Instead, it's with only slight discomfort and a bit of extra tension that she pats Whitney on the back, like someone wholly unused to hugs.

"That's, um... good. I was hoping you didn't already have one."

Even if Whitney did, this thing is new and top-of-the-retail-line (because Kalen bought the most expensive thing in the store).

Whitney
"You're gonna have to show me what it can do before I leave. I don't even know how to like, turn one on."
With that confession Whitney gives Grace one more squeeze for good measure and then releases her from the agony of physical contact with a -

Well they probably can't refer to each other as strangers anymore. Whitney did use Grace's blood to divine her future and all.

She sits herself back down across the table and casts a glance at the laptop one more time before she starts drowning her still-steaming soup in sprouts and lime juice.

Grace
No, they definitely cannot be called strangers anymore. That's the thing about risking your life to care for another, it tends to form bonds.

"Oh, of course. Of course. And if you need any help, you can always call me and I can lead you through whatever problem you have. It's the least I can do, really..."

Grace pays attention to her soup. It's easier than saying anything. Instead, why not just inhale pho like you're starving, and let the social graces fall where they may?

Whitney
Other than what she has read on her not-so-smart phone Whitney has not been able to glean much from the Hydra incident other than this: she can't imagine what the other women went through. She doesn't know how to help and other than refusing to leave when Grace was practically drowning in her blood Whitney has done little to actively try and help.

Sometimes she can convince Grace to do things outside of her comfort zone. Today is not one of those days and she wouldn't make the attempt anyway. Grace looks as if she escaped a fate worse than death. For as buoyant as Whitney's good mood was even seeing her stood in the doorway wasted and worn out the expression of her good mood does not exist. She may only be nineteen years old but she has some semblance of awareness of the people in the world around her having their own needs and wants.

Normally she would have chattered on until the meal was over and then let herself out. Now that Grace has done what she came over here to do Whitney doesn't feel the need to propel conversation. The apprentice isn't being quiet because she's shy.

"Cool," Whitney says, and then, "I will," and then nothing. She concentrates on eating her soup.