you can't read my poker face {{Luke}}

[V?ronique Reine]

outfiit!

V?ronique Reine did not drink coffee. Coffee stained everything it touched, no matter what it was, and people who drank coffee ended up with yellow teeth. V?ronique had perfect teeth and intended to keep them that way for as long as humanly possible. She did, however, like the taste of coffee and found it quite acceptable as flavoring in things like ice cream and dessert, though she rarely partook of either. So it was a bit of a problem when she found herself in a coffee shop, absorbing the aroma.

But V?ronique was a master of willpower and she would not buckle under the pressure. Anyone else, when faced with a display case full of undoubtedly delicious desserts and the sounds of people enjoying their beverages would probably have to have something, but she was stronger than that. They weren't very crowded today anyway, so it was much easier for her to resist without the constant slurping of every person within three feet. Because there weren't people within three feet.

To replace her urge, she had gotten a green tea, sans sweetener, and a wrap. She didn't like eating bulky things like wraps in front of people since her vanity declared it unnattractive, but they hadn't had anything more elegant on the menu, so she hadn't had any other choice. She tried to get it down as quickly as possible without actually shoving it in her face and, as soon as the last crumb was gone, patted the bottomside of her face down with a napkin. She was certain that, after that, her lipstick was gone and so she pulled out her tube and compact to touch it up.

She was a pro, so the touch ups were done quickly and she was finally able to relax and sip at her tea. Her lips stained the rim of the lid pink, but she would take care of that later. The point of coming to the coffee shop had been to get some reading done away from the idiotic buzz of her roommates and the various other people who commanded her attention throughout the day, so from her tiny bag, she pulled a French novel and settled back to get some reading done.

Unfortunately, the coffee shop was not being its usual calm, despite its lack of customers, and V?ronique was finding it increasingly more difficult to concentrate. Her ironclad will couldn't even focus itself on the book and whoever was having the extremely loud conversation about menstruation behind her was really just asking to have a hot beverage poured onto their face. However, V?ronique was not one to cause scenes. She closed her book, scowling, and set it down on the table before taking out her compact. If anything, she could at least touch up her lipstick again.

GLaring into the mirror, lipstick tube poised over her mouth, she whispered "merde."

[Luke Homemdoces]

It was difficult for Lucas to eat in dining establishments. Not because he didn’t have the money to spare for delicacies like the so called, “AUTHENTIC Italian” biscotti that laid hardening beyond all reason in a plastic wrapper in front of him, but because he had a discerning palate. Things made with artificial sweeteners, lacking the absolute freshest and divine ingredients made him shudder sometimes, but more often they just simply pissed him off.

Today, Luke was already pissed off just taking his morning jog from the campus to town. Maybe it was the particularly persistent hangover that caused everything to grate against his nerves, or, perhaps he had just woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Not that he could even remember which side of the bed off which he had rolled. He grunted as he stared at the menu, further agitating the younger man who wanted to take his order so that he could go play X-Box, or whatever these kids did when they weren’t being forced to work to pay for their toys that weren’t immediately provided to them.

The chef decided on a cup of coffee, black, with nothing extra to detract from the smooth taste of the freshly ground beans. Surely, the half-witted child behind the counter couldn’t possibly screw that up. When it was finished, the white cup nestled on a matching saucer perked the man up just a bit. He liked it when things looked right. He muttered a “thank you,” his clippy British accent a bit gruffer than he intended it to be, threw down a twenty-euro note and walked off before the change could be made.

Luke would have simply walked by the baby applying lipstick, her eyes focused entirely on her pretty face. He would have saddled into his favorite booth and quietly downed his cup of coffee in an attempt to destroy the pounding in his head before it was time to address the kitchen staff. The pretty, pouting lips, however, uttered an almost unheard curse. Filth. Lucas snickered inwardly and knew he could no longer just continue walking and came to an abrupt stop, his cup clinking against his saucer as he did so. It was his duty to say what was about to flow from his lips, a civic duty to better the world! It was his moral obligation to set straight the girl’s education and her parents’ expectations, his obligation! Or, it could have just been that he wanted someone to feel as pissed off as he did today.

“There are only two things that can make a beautiful woman unattractive. Firstly, she could smoke a cigarette – a disdainful habit. Or, rather than that, she could curse. Even if it’s in a pretty language, it’s still a bit of filth, my dear.”

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