anything you can do... -Pascal-

[GRACE HOLLADAY]

Grace wasn't quite sure what drew her to cooking. It had always come naturally to her, like she had some inner stay-at-home wife. The years she had spent travelling the world with her parents only added to her love of the culinary arts; different cultures all had their ideas of what was acceptable food-wise. The French loved pastries, sandwiches, foie gras, poulet frites, etc. Brazilians dined on feijoada and picadinho. Wherever it was the Holladays were stationed, Grace made sure to pick up the techniques.

Today, Grace had come to do some experimenting. She carried the dream of writing her own cookbook one day and if the recipes weren't original, they would all have to feature a little Grace. Luckily, the home ec. teacher at Baum loved Grace, so she was free to use the kitchen whenever it struck her fancy. Grace staggered into the large industrial kitchen, laden down with heavy grocery bags. Despite giving out a bunch of canned goods to a homeless family along the way, Grace was still overflowing with groceries and boy were they heavy. She'd have to work on her upper body strength if she was going to keep this up. Unloading everything onto a table, Grace sorted everything out. She wanted to try and make a baked ziti, but with ground duck (Grace's taste for "fancier" meats came from France) instead of a typical ground beef. It would mean adjusting the flavor of the tomato sauce to better compliment the meat, but Grace was up for a challenge.

With the duck sitting in a frying pan, Grace began to softly sing the first song that popped into her head, Katy Perry's "Firework".

"Do you ever feel, like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind
Wanting to start again?
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin,
Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?"

Grace continued to sing, her voice carrying softly around the room. She had a pretty voice, but not many knew it. One of Grace's more prominent traits was her humbleness; Grace was never one to boast about anything or to show off her own skills (besides cooking). No one had heard Grace really sing before, not even Jackson, come to think of it. Smiling, like she always did, Grace fiddled with her cross necklace as the meat simmered.

[PASCAL FISCHER]

Sometimes, Pascal felt like a plastic bag, in that plastic bags were remarkable tools for suffocating people and Pascal occasionally wanted nothing more than to suffocate certain less-than-pleasant bastards and bitches who seemed to have been born right out of Hell's pungent vagina. Sometimes, he felt paper-thin, in comparison to all the overweight losers that had come to populate the desolate country called the USA. United States of America? More like Unhealthy Sexless Assholes that ate, what, a billion McDonalds hamburgers a day? Pascal relished his body.

But he didn't need a fucking song to tell him that he was a hot-ass firework with all eyes on him. Really, what the fuck, Katy Perry? Did she think he didn't have a mirror, clearly dedicating such a pitiful song to someone who didn't even need it's poorly written lyrics to guide him to happiness? Pascal was already happy!– how could he not be, when he looked like he did, and had sex like he did, and won things like he did? He was very, very happy, happier than mere words could possibly portray. At least, when it came to just about everything unrelated to the scourge of the educational system. Home economics.

Pascal loathed the class, more than he loathed anything else in the world. More than he loathed Fredrick Foster, even, or any one of the other bastards that roamed Baum Academy. It was not that Pascal was not good at cooking, and the other bullshit lessons that were so frequently falsely advertised as "simple", an "easy A" on your GPA. Obviously not– he excelled at them. He was the top of the class, even! It was the teacher. She was simply enthralled with a boy the likes of Pascal Fischer, couldn't wrap her ladylike head around the possibility that someone like him could be so incredulously good at something like home economics. She was jealous, you see? Jealous that she, the teacher, could not possibly compare in talent to Pascal, who was but another student. Given, an especially talented student.

In the throes of envy, his teacher had given him a B. Not even a B+, though even that was nothing close to the sort of grades that Pasal deserved and expected. She had given him a goddamn B, in home economics– how the actual fuck did someone even get a B in home economics? What did you do to achieve such an inglorious grade, other than be so unnaturally good in the subject that you drove your educator absolutely mad?

He had come for answers, and he wanted them fast. Oh, Pascal would not take this tomfoolery from a woman so seemingly sensible as his teacher. If she dared to maintain this horrendous grade, he would take it right to the principal, or headmaster, or whoever the hell ran this damn pathetic institution! Did the home economics teacher have some sort of office? No, probably not. Why would a teacher of such low caliber deserve something so luxurious as an office? She probably had to stay in the kitchen all day and all night, sleep on the counters and shower in the sink. The idea alone drew a tentative smile to Pascal's face.

"Ms.–" was she singing? He cringed. "Hey, could you shut up?! I've gotta talk to you, and I don't need you singing that shi–" It was not his teacher, unless she had taken the arduous art of household management to a new and much sexier level. Gone from cleaning the counters to cleaning up her face? It had worked. "Uh, sorry, I thought you were someone else." Pascal made a face that almost resembled apology, a feeling that he frequently struggled with. Mostly he just looked confused.

"You have a... really pretty voice, by the way." He offered her a flimsy smile. He was the best at smiling, at least. "But, um, I don't suppose you know where..." What was the teacher's name again? Damn, he couldn't remember. His mind had gone blank– it was hard to maintain intellectual capacity, when faced with a darling damsel like the one before him. She was cute.

☆ COUNT 741
☆ NOTES pascace!! sorry this took forever LOL <3

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