Who: Sammy and Linn

Where: MSHS lunch room

When: Lunch hour

Soup. It was perfect for the day, which was rainy and just...really, really unpleasant. Weather-wise and mood wise. Sammy stared down into the bowl he'd picked up from the lunch-line, just...staring into it, really. He hadn't taken a single spoonful, he just let the steam rise up, warming his face. The sounds in Sammy's ears were muffled and he was half-asleep in his seat, all kinds of miserable. News of more deaths on top of his dreams on top of...well, everything...Sammy just wasn't happy. He rubbed at his eyes - they felt like they were burning.

Linn made his way through the lunchroom, clutching his paper sack lunch in one hand. It had been kinda a crappy day for him. More bad news about freaky murders, plus he hadn't done very well on his science homework last night and was going to have to go back to Mrs. Wu's class after school for some help. Super suck. Oh well. Nothing a peanut butter sandwhich and a ho-ho -- hold on there. Was that Sammy Williams? He hadn't been in science class... Dang, he looked mad-sick. Linn ducked through the crowded noisy room until he got to Sammy's table. "Hey..." Without waiting for an invitation he plopped down next to the other guy.

Sammy looked up, startled, but for once managing to hide it. Kind of. Almost. He blinked stupidly at the boy sitting next to him for a second, trying to place him, and it took a few seconds before it clicked. Right! Chemistry…yesterday? Well, all the time since he’d started, but he’d met him yesterday for the first time, anyhow. He was Linn – right. Sammy nodded a greeting – gave a small wave – and moved his notepad from one side of the tray to the other, so it was closer to Linn. It had to be better than leaning over his steaming bowl of soup to try and read what he wrote. “Hey. Linn, right?” He so hoped that was the right name.

Evidently Linn hadn't made as big an impact on Sammy as Sammy had made on Linn. Oh, well. Whatever. He smile didn't waver while he nodded his head encouragingly. "Yeah, 'course. And you're Sammy." He was quiet for a moment, glancing at Sammy's bowl of soup, and then up at his pale face. "You weren't in class... Ms. Wu's... you sick?" He didn't think he would have ditched... but then again, he didn't know the kid really well. Maybe he would.

"Kind of." Sammy admitted, rubbing his free hand over his forehead. He had been. The second he'd walked into the chemistry classroom all the different smells had assaulted his nose and he'd had to turn right back around and leave. He'd made it to the bathroom just in time to bow down before one of the toilets and lose the contents of his stomach. It hadn't been pleasant, and he hadn't enjoyed it. "Better now, though. Again...kind of. Did I miss something important?" Was that why Linn was sitting beside him now?

"Nah, not really. Wu lectured about the next experiment we're doing tomorrow. I kinda took notes, if you want them..." Linn opened up his sack lunch, pulling out an apple. He bit into it, a loud crunch. "I mean... you know already that i suck in chem. So... the notes might not be all right. But..." He shrugged, looking at Sammy. Dang. He really DID look sick.

"Nah, I'll just...read the book. It'll probably help." Sammy half smiled at Linn, stirring his spoon in the soup, counter-clockwise. "But thanks for the offer, really." He studied the depths of his soup bowl, reversing the way he was stirring to see if he could create a whirlpool inside the bow. "Did you get your cellphone back yesterday?" Mrs. Wu had promised Linn it would be returned, but he hadn't stayed behind long enough to see if the other boy had got it back.

Another bite into the apple, and then speaking around the apple bits: "Yeah. Got a big old lecture about it, though. She told me if my phone ever went off again, I'd be doing detention at her house... doing her chores." He swallowed and grinned at Sammy. "Which means I will be seeing her this weekend." Because his phone HAD gone off again --the stupid thing seemed to have a mind of his own. "I'm so showing up at her house Saturday morning at 6 a.m., just to get even with her."

"...they can do that?" That seemed like an odd detention to Sammy - not that he'd gotten detention a lot in the past few years. To put it simply? He hadn't at all. "I mean, have you come to her house? I thought they stuck in a room with a bunch of other people who had detention and you had to sit there for hours..." He set his pen down and lifted up a spoonful of soup, blowing on it and making sure not to smell it.

Linn laughed. "No, way, man. She can't do it! Well..." He looked a little unsure for a moment. "Okay. I don't think she can. I think it was an empty threat. But, hey. I'm holding her to it." He put down his apple and eyed Sammy's soup. "...that looks good. What kind is it?"

Oh! So Linn had been kidding. Alright. Sammy nearly laughed, shaking his head as he looked down at the soup with a frown, shaking his head. "Mineystone? Er...no..." He looked up from the bowl and over at the little signs on the lunch-line, squinting at them all until he came to one that was similar to what he had spelled. "Minestrone."

"Oh, yeah... I've had that kind. Not here, though. My mom makes it without that squash stuff," Linn said, eyeing the soup again and seeing yellow butternut squash in it. "Not as a meal though... dang, aren't you going to be hungry if all you eat is soup?" Linn was moving on from his sandwich to a plastic baggy of Dorritos.

If I even eat the soup. “I don’t know, maybe.” Sammy worked on divesting his soup of the squash, setting it on a napkin that rested on a corner of his tray. “Probably not, though. I’m not all that hungry,” And if he did eat it, it could wind up all coming back up sooner or later if he got sick again. “Plus, it’s made by the cafeteria. I’ve found that that’s a bad thing, but I didn’t have time to make my lunch this morning.” To busy watching over Geo.

Linn held out his bag of Dorritos to Sammy, offering him one after popping another one into his mouth. "Yeaaah, I dunno what it is about cafeteria food. Like, where ever you live, it's alway the same plastic-y stuff..." He was eyeing Sammy's movements of removing the squash. "So you're allergic, too?"

"Ehn, no." His beads bounced against each other as he shook his head. "I just don't like the taste of squash, it's all...gross. Nutty." And if he did wind up eating it, he'd rather not have that in there. He politely declined Linn's offer of chips, pushing them gently back at the other boy. "So I'm getting it out of the soup so I can try and eat some soup." Th next spoonful was squash free and he ate the, stomach clenching as the warmth reached it.

"...Nutty, huh? Butternutty?" Linn was pretty sure it was butternut squash. He smiled a little awkwardly. "Wish I knew what it tasted like..." He reached into his bag for celery sticks and a tupperware container of peanut butter. "So... you normally eat alone like this?"

Sammy looked up at him, answering his statements and questions in the order that they'd come, scratching at his head. "Yeah. Butter-nutty. Ugh. You're not really missing anything not being able to eat it." He shifted the silverware and took another spoonful of the soup, fighting down the urge to spit it. "And yeah. This table, too, usually."

Linn read Sammy's words with interest, then dipped his celery stick into the peanut butter. "I don't have a place... I'm one of those wanderers." He bit off a big chunk of celery and chewed it loudly. He offered a piece of celery to Sammy, always the sharing kind of guy.

Sitting in the same spot each time was easier, Sammy thought. And, for the most part, he had sat here every time he'd been here. Except when he'd sat outside with Dean on Monday. Then he hadn't. "Doesn't it get annoying, never sitting in the same place?" He asked, eyeing the celery, thinking about the strings managing to make him gag. He shook his head - no thanks. No celery.

With a shrug, Linn said, "I guess no one place really feels comfortable to me..." He had only been in town for a few months, so he hadn't had a chance to really get to know people. Coupled with his difficulty in usually remembering names, it was hard to really get close. "I just sit with people that i recognize at the moment.... Guess people don't seem to mind." He dipped another celery into the peanut butter before saying, "You don't mind, right?"

Sammy couldn’t stop the twitch of amusement that had the corners of his lips curling upwards, eyes showing just a hint of mischief deep inside. “Of course I mind. You should have asked or something. I was sitting here by myself, and I liked it!” And that was a big, fat lie. It showed on his face as he thought about what he had written. He hadn’t liked sitting here by himself, it had sucked. “…er, never mind. That was stupid. I didn’t actually mean it.”

Linn's sinking-stomach feeling that had appeared at the first part of Sammy's message disappeared the moment Linn looked up at Sammy's face. "Trying to trick me, huh?" He poked at Sammy's shoulder, still holding the peanut-buttered celery in his fist, but being semi-careful not to get it on Sammy. What if he had believed him and left?

He was being careful, but he still got a bit of it on Sammy's shirt. Sammy eyed it with no small amount of distaste, grabbing a clean napkin off of the tray and wiping the peanut butter off before it could sink in and make him smell of it for the rest of the day. Okay, then hand with the celery had to go - he pushed it away carefully, sticking his tongue out. "Something like that, yeah. But it's really okay if you sit here."

The celery went away from Sammy's shoulder and straight into Linn's mouth, where he crunched it loudly. He didn't seem to notice that he had gotten peanut butter on Sammy's shirt until he saw him wipe at his shirt. Then Linn grimaced at himself and said with a mouth full of celery, "Sorry, man..." That was right embarrassing...

Sammy waved off the apology, shifting in his seat as he took another sip of his soup, the salt in the brother stinging as it made contact with the lip he’d cut biting it that morning. “No, no. It’s not a big problem. I just don’t wanna smell like Eau de Peanut-Butter, if that’s alright.”

Linn read Sammy's note and laughed. "Why not?" he teased before popping the rest of the celery into his mouth and reaching for his own napkin. He wiped at Sammy's shoulder, even though it was pretty much already clean. He was already over his embarrassment, and had moved on to being incredibly amused. "There's nothing wrong with peanut butter."

"There is!" Linn's helping hand was pushed away quickly since it wasn't needed - the peanut butter had all been wiped off, and that was good. "It smells funny, and it's...gross. And stuff." Much like the soup, which was rapidly cooling. Ugh. He should finish it before it got so cold that he didn't want to eat it... "And isn't a good cologne. As far as I know. Unless some fashion designer came out with a new scent like that."

"Pfft, I've always thought cologne and other smelly stuff was weird," Linn admitted, pulling a two-pack of Ding-Dongs out of his lunch bag. "Like, am I supposed to be attracted to someone that smells like that stuff?" He laughed. "If someone wants to get MY attention, they should make themselves smell tasty, not like some weird cologne." He opened the package, and pulled one of the chocolate cupcakes out, setting the package with the remaining cupcake down onto the table between him and Sammy.

The sight of the cupcakes - lovely, sugary, chocolate-y goodness - would normally make Sammy happy. He would normally grab it up and eat it before you could blink. But now...nope, not now. Sammy did not want to eat anything right now. Definitely not the cupcake, and most certainly not the soup which was so totally freezing cold right now. Gross. "So, like, if someone smelled like pudding or whatever you'd like them better than if they smelled like, uh..." Felicia was into fashion, and she could talk for hours about it, and that included colognes. Sammy remembered all of what she said. It was like a curse. But he wasn't going to mention names now. "...I don't know..."

Linn studied Sammy with amusement as he attempted to name a cologne. "Exactly," he said, when Sammy finally gave up and finished his sentence with an 'I don't know.' He grinned. "but, pudding, man? Wow... that's kinda nice...Chocolate or Pistachio?" If he could tell that Sammy seemed grossed out, he didn't give that away. He just kept talking about delicious smells, chewing away at his first cupcake still.

Finally Sammy had to stop him, shaking both hands, palm down, in a broad path in front of his chest. He dropped the hand not holding his pen onto the table, then, and looked down at his paper. "Different subject. Not food-related. Please." Oh, man, he wasn't gonna get sick again, was he? He couldn't be. Wouldn't be. Nope!

Different subject different subject different subject...Linn racked his brain. He couldn't talk about food. He had no INTEREST in talking about chemistry. Another glance at Sammy's slight frame assured him that he wouldn't be interested in talking about wrestling. His eyes wandered up to Sammy's face, finally settling on his braids. Linn's mouth broadened into a smile, and he said, "Alright. Let's talk about hair." Because to be honest? The two boys definitely had nice hair.

Sammy just blinked at him once. Then twice. And then he was cracking up in his own way, face turning read from his noiseless laughs as he slammed his foot into the floor of the cafeteria. "You want to talk about hair?" He asked, looking out of the corners of his eyes at Linn as just a little of his terrible feeling slid from him and he actually grinned. "Alright, we'll talk about hair, then. That's a better topic."

--End Scene!