-- LET US DRINK THE STARS [Sandra]

Sandra was up to a fat load of nothing. She had nothing to do ever, and really she should have been studying for her Global Issues test the next day, but this was the very last thing she wanted to do. Instead she was stuck on the couch watching re-runs of some Spanish soap opera, shouting at the TV the only words she knew of Spanish -- por que, Maria, por que?! Admittedly, though she'd seen two and a half episodes already, she still had no idea what was going on. This was probably due to the fact that she... well, didn't speak Spanish, and also because she'd tuned in halfway through their marathon on TV. She was also, however, just kind of very bored, and she had nothing better to do but sit there, watch as Juan slaughtered Diego in a game of tennis and then proceed to fall to his knees as he got the phone call saying that (from what Sandra could tell) Maria had been involved in a tragic car accident. Oh, soaps. They were so predictable in any language! Matthew was out still, and she didn't expect him back until much later, so (while she probably shouldn't spoil her dinner) she was just munching on potato chips as she laid there. Hm... For once she wasn't even tired, and yet she had nothing to do! That was hilarious. She was, however, glad when she heard the short tone telling her that she had just received a text -- from Devin Thatcher, as her phone told her. She grinned as she pressed 'Read'.

Hey beautiful! I'm kinda bored and wanted someone to hang out with. Are you up for the challenge? You can either accept or deny. Sandra smiled as she typed her reply, thanking her lucky stars that Devin had such impeccable timing. I'll bring snacks! She glanced at the time on the TV before turning it off -- the bus heading in that direction should be there in about... just 10 minutes, actually, if she was doing the Math correctly. She didn't have it memorized, after all, only knew the specific times that had to do with her everyday schedule. Then she clipped up the bag of chips she'd been eating -- it was half done so she opted for a new bag instead, which she threw into a larger plastic bag with chocolate-covered almonds and a bunch of candy from her, ahem, secret stash of sweets. Right. That was it, then! She made sure to grab her wallet too, as it had her bus pass, though it was tragically empty in terms of actual money... and all of that done and the lights turned off and what-not, she had exactly enough time to sprint out of the building and to the bus stop before it got there. Oh, Sandra had very good timing... except when she didn't. She flashed her bus pass and said a happy, "Hello!" to the bus driver before making her way to the back of the bus -- a courtesy thing, really. The bus was pretty packed, also, but she could see an empty seat back there, and she set her bag of snacks on her lap as she sat. At the appropriate stop she got off and walked just the extra few minutes over to Devin's place, knocking, but the door opened almost immediately.

"Hey Athena," she greeted pleasantly. "Your brother here?" She supposed that he hadn't actually even said he'd be at home, but she'd assumed he had been judging by the fact that he'd said he was bored. Athena let her in and pointed her in the direction of the living room, and Sandra found her way there easily. She had been here quite a number of times before. "Hey, Dev -- woah, you okay?" she asked, frowning a little bit as she took note of the position of his ankle. She walked over to where he laid on the couch, and then dropped the bag she was carrying down next to her as she took a seat on the floor next to him.

The words "poor baby" kind of indicated that something was wrong with Devin, and this kind of worried Sandra briefly. He looked alright when she saw him, though, or at least he didn't look like he had any broken limbs or anything, which she supposed would just have to be the best she could hope for. On the floor now, she crossed her legs and gave him a suspicious look at the mention of an accident. This seemed so common somehow that it shouldn't really be surprising at all, at this point, but still she knew that Devin didn't normally get hurt enough that it was actually a serious problem. She loved the boy, he was a good friend, but she was pretty sure she had good reason to worry about his well-being sometimes. "But are you really okay?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him as if this were a serious interrogation, but she ruined it next moment by smiling -- it was a very small, kind of rueful smile, but it was a smile still! Oh, Devin would manage to find ways to hurt himself... Sandra honestly wasn't that much better. They were both sort of walking disasters. "I mean, you're kind of confined to a couch," she pointed out, giggling a little but then feeling bad for laughing at his pain. To be fair, he was the one insisting that it was okay! If it wasn't, he really shouldn't say that it was. It would give her the wrong impression!

She listened to his explanation with a still wary look on her face, but she couldn't lie -- the pat on the head kind of made her feel better somehow, even though technically she was the one who should probably be making him feel better. Uh, oops. Sandra just sighed a little and gave him a look as if she were very exasperated with his constant accidents. This was by far an exaggeration, though. When he wasn't seriously harming himself (or anyone else, but mostly himself) the clumsiness was kind of adorable. It was only when he really did wind up hurt that Sandra ever though there was a real problem. She gave up this supposed exasperation for a small pout, though. "Nah," she said, deciding to answer his question first before anything else. She smiled. "Wasn't doing anything actually, so you kind of have perfect timing! If I never have to watch another minute of a Spanish soap opera again I'll be totally okay with that. Totally okay." She giggled, but sobered up more as she uncrossed her legs and walked on her knees over closer to where his head lay. "Oof, you must have fallen pretty hard," she said, sighing a little again as she leaned in to brush his hair, short as it was, away from a pretty large bump forming on his forehead, on the side closer to her. "Are you sure you're okay? Do you need anything? Unless it's actual medical care. In which case I can't give you that without probably injuring you a lot more," she joked, but she still pouted a little as she examined his... battle wounds. Sandra was allowed to fuss over her friends a little bit, okay?

The situation reminded her of how she'd worried about him at prom, honestly, and how he'd had to skateboard home that night too. Luckily, he'd been alright then, but apparently he'd managed to hurt himself today... in clear daylight, even. Apparently clumsiness liked to strike at weird moments, which she guessed made sense. At least he'd only banged himself up a little bit, though. She was glad he hadn't like, tumbled down into the road and gotten run over by a bus. No... that wouldn't be good. "Still!" she said, huffing a little bit, but she smiled, not really that serious -- well, she was serious about worrying about him, obviously, but it wasn't worth getting upset with him over. "That's true, nobody's poking at you and it doesn't smell weird like medicine and stuff," she said, thinking of hospitals and how... clean everything was. There was nothing wrong with things being clean, but except for the waiting rooms and stuff, it was kind of weird to Sandra. Then again, she'd be worried if hospitals appeared less clean and sterile, so it was quite the conundrum. Luckily she didn't have much reason to go to the hospital very often. "Except me. I can still poke at you," she teased, prodding at his ribs a little bit and hoping that she hadn't just found another bruise there by accident or something. That wasn't the intention at all.

She smiled. "I'm positive!" She loved hanging out with Devin... even when he was confined to a couch for some kinds of injuries. Actually, it wasn't that uncommon. He really was pretty clumsy. She laughed when he asked about the Spanish soap operas, though. That was sort of the funny part... "Nope, not at all. It was on the actual like, Spanish channel... So they didn't have subs and I was just sitting there like --" She paused to re-make the blank, confused face she'd made while watching at first. "I know a bit though, like the basic stuff and stuff that sounds similar to English... I think it was about how this guy, Juan, was like... some epic tennis player, but his rival was Diego and then Diego stole his girlfriend and then I don't know what happened..." She didn't know why any of this was pertinent information, but she nodded a few times to enforce her point. It had been pretty lame, though. Soaps weren't really Sandra's deal, nor were those teen dramas that everyone liked to watch so much. They were just too... dramatic. She cocked her head a bit to the side when he stopped talking, but didn't push it or anything, and she smiled a little when he finished his sentence, more quietly and in a lower voice. "If you're sure," she said, smoothing his hair away still but turning her gaze away from the purplish bruise to meet his eyes. She felt her face growing a little warm as they sat in relative silence -- despite being the one to initiate it, she hadn't realized how up close she'd gotten.

Acutely aware that she was probably blushing, Sandra looked away again, focusing instead on where his ankle was sort of propped up. It was too bad she didn't have real healing powers or something. She could be like... Super Nurse. She almost laughed out loud at the idea, but he was talking again, and she settled down a little bit in her mind -- seriously, it wasn't like she hadn't cuddled up to all her male friends before, Devin included, so there was no need to get flustered or anything -- as she tuned in. "Ice pack? Gotcha," she said, nodding her confirmation but staying put for a while, playing with his hair... Huh, apparently she'd started just doing that at one point. She was about to finally get up after a few seconds, when a voice behind her interrupted her in this, and she turned with wide eyes like a deer caught in headlights or something. It was just Athena, though... but that didn't stop the blood from rushing back to Sandra's face again once the other girl had withdrawn again. She took her hand back even as she shook her head a few times at Devin's sort of kind of explanation. "No no no, it's okay, I mean... I kind of get it, I'd make fun of Matt too if he were... Not that we were... Um..." She blushed. Sandra was really, really, really not used to dating or anything even remotely close to it, and while she was okay with being close with her guy friends and with having feelings -- not that she had "feelings" for Devin, no no no -- it was... different somehow. "I'll get that ice pack now!" she said instead of finishing whatever she'd been trying to say (even she didn't know), and she got up and scurried into where she knew the kitchen was. She took a little bit of extra time in digging around for an ice pack, trying to take advantage of the cold air to cool her face down a bit or something, and it was a few minutes later when she returned with the pack in hand. "Here... sorry," she said, smiling a little again, trying to pretend like she hadn't just totally been the most embarrassing mess this side of the planet. "Do you need anything else?"

This was true, she supposed. Devin seemed too nonchalant to have actually gotten seriously injured, with a broken limb or anything, and though he was a fairly positive person from what Sandra knew of him -- at least in the sense that she'd seen him put on a brave face for many things before -- she doubted he would be that okay with being more badly hurt. "Okay, but one of these days..." She heaved a long, very fake sigh, leaving the sentence hanging. One of these days, he might actually manage to wind up in the hospital for something, and Sandra wouldn't like that at all. She didn't like when anybody got hurt. "Right, exactly! So no more getting hurt, you might not always be able to crash on the couch if something happens," she said sternly, managing to keep a straight face for all of about two seconds before it cracked into a smile again. She almost felt bad when he described the poke as torture and said that he couldnt' fight back, but this was obviously untrue as a few seconds later he managed to get her right in the side -- actually a pretty impressive feat considering he was much less mobile than she was. She squeaked and giggled a little bit, grabbing onto his hands to prevent him from doing that again. "You say that now. You can't beat me, Dev," she said, grinning in the mischievous way that was so characteristic of most Waters.

Sandra laughed when he scrunched his nose at her -- that reaction was seriously kind of adorable. "The Spanish wasn't so bad. I think the actual soap opera part was worse," she said, shaking her head a little. The Spanish had made it a little amusing, at least, but she always thought it was amusing to hear people shouting at each other in a language she didn't understand -- and there had been a ton of shouting going on during that one tennis match, she had to say. "Subtitles are better, though. Or things just being in English, but other languages are cool too." She spoke English, she spoke Japanese, she spoke enough French and Mandarin Chinese to have very short, simple conversations. Sandra did not speak Spanish. She giggled a little bit when he called the actual show itself cliche, though. It really was. TV usually was, though -- people liked to see the same thing going on again and again, apparently. Sandra bought into it a little bit too, but she didn't watch all that much TV on the whole. "They should switch it up sometime... Make someone steal the other guy's like, pizza or something." Then they could have a food fight instead of a fistfight. Sandra was brilliant sometimes. She found herself easily-distracted by Devin himself, though, even if they weren't doing anything. His eyes were a really bright shade of blue, she noticed all over again. She tended to make these observations pretty often and forget almost immediately thereafter. In this case she didn't really mind.

She was comfortable there, for a second, just sitting in silence, more or less. It was easy somehow to lose track of time. She knew that she wasn't really helping in any big way, and she honestly probably wouldn't have been able to even if the situation called for it (Sandra was really pretty useless with many things), but he seemed to relax, almost, and she liked to feel that she was helping somehow. She was pulled back just a little when his hand moved to her hair, too, but in a good way, and she smiled at that, but kept her gaze averted all the same. She didn't know why it was so awkward now of all moments. Athena's comment did nothing to help, either, and though she nodded a couple of times in answer to his question, managing a quick, "Yep, I'm okay!" she still pulled away. "It's... yeah, it's just... No no, you don't have to say sorry!" She was pretty much just squawking randomly at this point, and it was lucky that she had the excuse of leaving to grab the ice pack. Upon her return, she was slightly calmer. Devin seemed a little more composed too -- not that he had been freaking out to nearly the same degree -- and she smiled softly in return. "I know, I just... sorry for freaking out," she said, knowing that her face was probably going red again but she tried to ignore it this time. She was apt to accidentally hurt herself if she actually flailed around too much. Sandra took a seat next to him, busying her hands this time with pulling the snacks and things she'd brought out of the bag. "I'm the best company!" She giggled. "Chips? Candy?" She offered him a lollipop (and indicated the rest of the bag), turning a bit to look at him properly. Ugh, she didn't even know why she was blushing again, still.

She nodded almost solemnly. "One of these days," she agreed, though she'd already said that. Devin didn't really seem all that worried, though, and she would have almost wondered why that was if she weren't so used to his ways already. They'd kind of been friends for years now, and without her really knowing it, she'd... gotten used to the ins and outs of a friendship with Devin. Yes, that was a good way to put it. "I am always correct, don't you know! Except when I'm wrong. Which is a lot of the time. But other than that!" She grinned, trying and failing to wiggle her eyebrows at him. "Does that mean you weren't trying not to get hurt before?" she asked, laughing a little. It could have very well been the case for all she knew. Sandra was a little careless too in that sense -- there was always a tomorrow to worry and fuss during. Today was for living! One day, maybe there wouldn't be a tomorrow anymore, but she hoped that by that time, she would have done all the living she ever needed to do. "You will so not!" She laughed a bit when he squeezed her hands. Then, once they were relinquished, she made a show of folding them up and putting them in her lap. "See? Truce for today. Mostly because you're hurt and it wouldn't be fair to pick on you," she teased. "Can't out-ninja me!" That was a lie. Sandra could be out-ninja'd by like, a hippo.

To be honest, she didn't really know if there were any other shows in Spanish. To the best of Sandra's knowledge, there was only one Spanish channel, and apparently it was having an entire marathon of that... show... the name of which she'd already forgotten now, mostly because the title was really sort of long and complicated and she didn't actually speak the language. "Huh... not sure there was anything else on in Spanish!" She shrugged. "Oh, but one channel was showing the news in Thai. Oh! And lacrosse in what I think was Romanian." There were also of course the French channels, of which there were always two or three in a row because of Canada's bilingualism... but those had been even more boring than the soap opera. At least she liked the soaps sometimes when she was really bored or in the mood to cry about stupid things. "So lazy!" She laughed, but she just had a pretty hilarious image in her mind of Devin struggling to keep up with the subtitles, and this kind of made her just want to pat him on the head or something. "I don't mind subtitles so much! Though sometimes if they get too wordy I stop paying attention and then I fall asleep." Sandra did watch a couple of things with subtitles at times, though, but this didn't make it any easier to watch things if she didn't have interest in them in the first place. "Right? So the guy decides to get back at him by stealing his chicken wings too. And then it's war!" She laughed, then laughed even harder at the almost sad look on his face as he rethought it. "But me too... I guess I'd just have to have food whenever I watched." It sounded hliarious, though. She should write a script and send it into the Food Network.

Sandra tried to get herself to calm down -- breathing exercises and all that. The air went in through her nose, out through her mouth in slow, long breaths that she hoped weren't too noticeable. She didn't know why the blood had decided to all rush to her face, but now it felt very hot in here all of a sudden, or maybe that was just her, and she wished that it wasn't like this. Sandra wasn't usually awkward about snuggling up to people, making herself perfectly at home on their laps or attached to their sides. Close proximity didn't usually bother her in the slightest, and she didn't know why it should be any different this time, but she decided that she would just go with it. By "go with it", of course, she definitely meant ignore it until it went away and until then just act totally normal. Luckily for Sandra, normal for her just meant talking a lot, and if there was one thing that she was good at... "I'm not... bothered, I swear," she said, smiling at him, shaking her head. He seemed worried now, though, and then she just felt bad for concerning him. On a more normal day, she might have just wanted to cuddle up to Devin in the hopes that he'd stop worrying. Today she just smiled at him a little, in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "Pfft, you should know that wherever I go food is never far behind." She laughed. Just talking was better than having to worry about what the heck was going on with her blood pressure or whatever it was that controlled this type of thing. "I'm fine, seriously!" she squeaked, though she could swear that she grew all the warmer at his touch on her forehead. She was sort of glad when he removed his hand. "Mm... do you wanna just watch a movie?" she asked, thinking this might be easier. Plus, she just liked movies. "Do you have anything? Or we can do whatever you want! I'm okay either way." She really was, too. Sandra was also fairly easygoing.

(I DON'T KNOW WHY SHE HASN'T FIGURED HER OWN FEELINGS OUT YET, she's so obvious to everyone except devin and herself i swear. )

He sounded like the typical TV kind of dad, but Sandra's dad didn't really talk like that at all, and this kind of amused her. Ew, how weird. Devin was a good friend, her "study" buddy -- but a parent he was not, or at least certainly not hers. "Devin, you just said that I'm right even when I'm wrong, but I'm the one being confusing?" she asked, scoffing a little bit at him in mock offense. There was nothing to get offended at, though. Sandra never was easily bothered by that type of thing, not in the slightest. "But I forgot. Just don't get hurt anymore!" she answered, after a brief moment of consideration. She'd asked that question a while ago, a whole couple of seconds, and that was definitely long eough. She just didn't want her friends to get hurt. Was that so bad? She didn't think so. "Though maybe you're kind of lucky you're hurt this time," she continued, narrowing her eyes at him as if to say that she was watching him and he should so be scared... Now, if only she were even vaguely scary. "Not fair to pick on someone who's injured. So I won't! This time." She grinned, already plotting.

There were stations like OMNI, too, which were just multicultural and she could never be sure what language was going to be on at any given point in time. Then again, maybe if she actually watched that kind of thing seriously and out of necessity -- if she needed the news in a language apart from English or something, though she was fluent (having been born here) -- she would be able to memorize the schedule and know when her programs were on and such. As of right now, though, Sandra didn't have the need, and she wasn't easily bored enough to. "I figure there are a bunch, actually!" she said, now that she'd noticed it. "Lots of people who don't really speak English, too, you know? That kind of thing... and then all those Quebeckers and their French." She knew that the term was Quebecois but she never had liked that French "oi" sound, in the sense that her mouth had never been able to form it properly. "Please don't fall asleep on me. I'd probably have to resort to napping on the floor!" she whined a little, but she laughed. Actually... she probably could nap on anyone's floor, no problem. Hopefully nobody would step on her or anything, that was all.

She made a kind of "pfft" sound and waved a hand at him. "They should argue over everything! Multicultural, Dev, come on." She poked him a little bit, but in the arm now, this time with no intention of tickling him or anything. Sandra was really just palying, though. "Or, or, they just argue over candy and by the end of their candy food fight fiesta it'll be like a pinata threw up all over the place." Well, if it were a pinata, it'd probably be more like it started bleeding everywhere, but ew... Then again, it was kind of gross either way. She couldn't even control the things that came out of her own mouth sometimes, seriously.

Devin didn't look like he believed her much, and she felt kind of bad if she made him... worry or whatever it was. "I'm sure! I promise," she said, holding up a pinky and wiggling it for extra measure. She pulled a face, going cross-eyed, then smiled at him in reassurance. It was all good, definitely. Definitely! Okay, that situation had still been really weird and she had no idea what the heck had just happened, but it was fine. She had talk of food and movies and hte like to distract her. "I'm not sure it counts as being a personal chef if I get to eat the stuff too," she pointed out to him with a giggle. "But I can't turn down that kind of job, I mean... food. And money! Unless you're paying me in food. Which is cool too. I'd like my payment in the form of cheeseburgers, please." It was the first food to pop into her mind for some reason. Now that she had gotten on the ball and talking again, the situation had eased up a considerable amount in her mind, though, and so she was going to just blab and blab.

She let herself fall over onto her side out of pure laziness once he mentioned that the movies were all the way on the other side of the room. "Too... lazy... to move," she complained, rolling onto her front and wondering if she would be able to worm-crawl over to where he kept that collection of his, but after a few seconds of lying there she decided that it wasn't worth it. Clambering to her feet, she wandered over, glancing through his collection. "Oh, oh oh oh, I got one!" She turned around and grinned at him, but only briefly before she averted her gaze back to the DVD in her hand. If she played the movie, she could maybe avoid looking at Devin -- not that she didn't like looking at her friend for any reason, no, and not that he was hard to look at, but it was... She didn't know what it was. She felt like a flaily mess anyway. At least Disney Pixar would help, she thought as she put it in, fiddling with the remotes. "No looking, it's a surprise!" she sing-songed, skipping through whatever she could quickly and then scurrying back only once she'd actually played the movie. Ratatouille was her favourite... or, okay, one of her favourites!

(sorry if there isn't a whole lot to work with at the end, i'm exhausted. XD)

She gave him a skeptical look as she listened to his explanation, but she was pretty sure that she just looked funny in her... confusion, sort of. Devin didn't really make much sense, but it was kind of hilarious and adorable in that... nonsensical way. She had a strange idea of adorable though, she was pretty sure. "I'll take that," she said after rolling it around in her mind for a few seconds, and she laughed. "Don't overthink it, now," she advised, sounding like a mom or something (jeez, now it was her turn to be the parent... how weird). "You'll give yourself a headache and then I'd have to deal with a headachey Devin." She pouted a little, but she was joking. Sandra wasn't that whiny... though she could be when she wanted to, sometimes. Her brother would attest to that.

She nodded. "Quebec is definitely special," she said, giggling. Ah, Quebec. Quebec was interesting indeed, kind of different from the rest of Canada, but Canadian all the same. She liked Quebec, despite having never been there. "Some are fun," she said, smiling. She was pretty shameless with some of the things she liked to watch too, but she knew that it wasn't everyone's cups of tea. For the most part, though, she was too lazy and unfocused to really watch anything on the regular. "Most of them are kind of ridiculous, though... There's too much TV in general!" Then again, Sandra loved things like that, stories with happy endings. She was like a kid in that way.

Sandra giggled, but the idea kind of made her worry. "Please don't actually do that and hurt yourself more," she instructed gently. "At least not with your ankle like that!" She looked over at where his leg was sort of propped up still. Oh, Dev. She could swear that if he hadn't already recently gotten hurt at any given time, then he would be just about to. Even so it worried her sometimes, even though it was so minor most of the time. "And hot dogs and poutine and ramen noodles and... Ohhhh, dang it Devin, I'm hungry..." She would be okay, though -- she had brought food and such, even if it was just chips. That was good enough! She and Matthew usually ate together pretty late anyway... and Sandra had developed a habit of just snacking her day away until dinner. "Good. And you'd better not make me cook my own payment, either," she said, laughing. She'd love an employer who actually paid her in food.

For some reason, she actually giggled a little bit... nervously, maybe, when he called her adorable. It didn't even make sense that she did, though! She probably heard "adorable" or "cute" a couple of times every week, just because people somehow made it a point to tell her... like she was a four-year-old kid or something. She didn't mind it so much, of course -- there were few things she really minded. Somehow, it was different all of a sudden, in this moment, with Devin being the one who'd said it. She decided not to answer. The giggle had probably spoken for itself anyway, she thought, kind of hating that she'd done it now. Oh, Sandra. "Good," she said instead, when he informed her that he was not, in fact, able to see through her to the DVD. "Otherwise I'd be very upset that you were keeping your x-ray vision from me." She laughed, glad that he seemed to be happy about her choice. There was nothing better than a Pixar-animated rat cooking fancy French food, okay? Nothing. "Mm... I'll get a pillow, you don't have to move!" she decided, feeling a slight blush again. Part of the reason for her choice really had been that she didn't want him to move on her behalf, not with his ankle hurt and all... and also partly because it still felt weird now, somehow, being close. Why was that?! She couldn't even tell. She knew the way to his room, though, and she scurried off quickly, returning with a pillow, sitting back down and hugging it. It was big, fluffy, comfortable -- oh, dang it. "If I fall asleep, just poke me," she said, smiling lazily at him and suppressing a yawn.