The Better to See You With (My Dear)

To Get To Know One Another

"For your information, I paid full price for your coffee!"

"I'm sorry to hear that my two-dollar coffee wounded your wallet, Vega," she rebuked teasingly. "How can I ever make it up to you?"

"Well, now that you mention it..." Tori began, the mischievous grin tugging on the crevices of her mouth only widening as Jade let out audible noises of frustration. "You can start by telling me a fact about you."

"You're at the very top of my hit list," the raven-head stated flatly.

"How about something I don't already know. If it helps, I can reveal something about myself, too," she proposed. An indiscernible, yet vaguely curious, look clouded over Jade's face.

"I guess ," she grumbled after some reluctance. "I like to collect butterflies and display them in my room."

"See? That wasn't so bad. That's really cool actually," Tori remarked with a certain fondness. "I would have figured it'd be... I don't know, skeletons of small animals or something."

Jade attempted to conceal the smile that crept up onto her lips by sipping on her beverage.

"I used to own the skeleton of my brother's dead hamster, but my stepmom wouldn't let me keep it in the house when she moved in," she mentioned nonchalantly. "Just the idea of it being in my room was too 'feral' for her. Apparently, she was fine with the dead butterflies though."

"She really sounds like a Negative Nancy," the singer commented, but then rushed to retract the statement. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that about your stepmom-"

"No, no, it's cool. I've called her waayy worse things to her face," Jade expressed with a surprising coolness. Tori nodded, hitched between concern for her friend and respect for her privacy.

A silent stream of air blew out of Jade's nose. "So I get to ask you a question now."

"Woah now, I never said anything about this being an interview. I thought that this was just us telling each other random things about ourselves!" Tori appeared to visibly shift in her seat, coaxing a snicker from the goth.

"What, are you afraid that I'd make you confess to something really embarrassing?" Jade taunted. "Look, I'll try not to be too brutal."

"Emphasis on try ," Tori noted with a faint eye roll. "Okay, if we're going to do this question system, then I should be able to ask you a question too."

"I suppose that's fair," she agreed. There was a pregnant silence that followed as the pair each stuffed a donut hole in their mouths.

"So this morning, when we were talking about the whole Oregon fiasco, you didn't seem all too thrilled about our friends tagging along. Why was that?" Jade prompted as she wiped crumbs from the corners of her mouth.

"What do you mean? Of course I'd want my friends around. Why do you think I wouldn't?" Tori responded with the tilt of her head.

"Tori, you may be decent at acting, but you cannot disguise your emotions to save your life," the rebellious teenager deadpanned. "You're doing that thing where your nose wrinkles and your body looks like it's about to implode."

"My body is not about to implode!" Tori let out an indignant scoff and glossed over the slight tremor in her right leg. "Believe me, I don't have any problems with the gang coming. What kind of friend would that make me if I did?"

"The kind that looks out for herself too?" she supplied. "Listen, I'm saying this because I know our friends. They get in over their heads and set themselves up for disappointment. They can sense if you're not having a good time, and they have this annoying habit of thinking that it's their fault. So if you don't want them to come, just say so. Don't lead them on and insist that it's perfectly fine."