"What's shaking, doucette?"

She spun around in the computer chair.

"Don't 'doucette' me!" She indicated the picture on the grocery web site displayed on the monitor. "That is 'doucette'! All this time I thought it meant something like 'sweetheart', from 'doux', y'know? Now I'm looking for new recipe ideas and I find out it means lamb's lettuce?" She stood up and offered a wounded stare. "According to you I'm the love of your un-life and your pet name for me is a word meaning 'salad greens'!?"

How he came by the endearment he couldn't even recall. It was a little odd, now that she mentioned it, but after so long he'd become rather attached to it.

Shrugging innocently he observed, "Well you are a vegetarian." The wounded look remained, enhanced by a gathering of her lower lip. He took a step closer.

"And your eyes are green…" The eyes in question widened a little. He reached an arm around her waist and gave her neck a light bite before stepping back to smile persuasively.

"And you are undeniably tender and sweet…"

A narrowing of her eyes and a twist of her pout morphed "wounded" into "nice try".

Charm wasn't working. Time for challenge.

"Well according to you I'm the love of your life and your pet name for me is a word meaning 'squeaking insect eating disease-carrying flying rodent'. The plural of it, in fact. Care to explain your rationale for that?"

While her expression remained unchanged the animation behind it evaporated, lending it a painted-on look. She hated it when he verbally outflanked her.

"Yeah… well... thanks a bunch anyway... because since I am a vegetarian from now on when you call me that for the rest of my life I'm gonna feel like a, like a... cannibal." It was lame, but worth a shot. "Yeah, a cannibal. What've you got to say now?"

Smiling brightly, he raised his shimmering glass of human vintage.

"Welcome to the club, doucette."