The next morning Pierce found that he hadn't needed the ice water. There were no intrudes in the night, and what shocked him more, there wasn't a knock at the door at eight seventeen. Now, Pierce may not have been the most intelligent creature in Wonderland, but he had enough common sense to think through something like this.. He knew that when someone who was as mean as Boris was tormenting you, and then they just vanish, they MUST be up to something even worse. It was just how things like this worked, and Boris couldn't possibly upset that pattern. That meant he was out somewhere, probably being the dastardly cat that he was.

Pierce then realized that if Boris wasn't knocking on his door, then that meant that Boris wasn't at his door at all, which made it safe to open. He was feeling particularly adventurous that day, and he decided to do just that. Pierce found that he almost immediately regretted taking that step outside. Today, there were two boxes on his steps. Both were taller then either of the other 'presents', and they were once again packaged in matching black and pink wrapping. One was a perfectly square pink box with black ribbons, and it was big enough to comfortably hold a soccer ball. The black box was a little taller and a lot thinner, and he soon discovered it was also much lighter than the other.

Pierce picked up the pink box, or more accurately, tried his very hardest to pick it up. That didn't go so well. He was not expecting it to weigh as much as it did, and almost dropped the box. Instead of taking that risk a second time, he pulled off the black bow, grabbed the lid, and yanked it off. At first he didn't want to look. The other boxes had all held disturbing, and very much dead, things. Pierce really had no desire to be in close quarters with small, dead animals. It wasn't pleasant. Not in the slightest.

He took a moment to gather himself, and looked down into the box, knowing that it was going to be something horrible.

The contents surprised him, but not in a particularly bad way. It was so mundane, yet so random.

It was a goldfish in a bowl.

Pierce couldn't find any possible meaning in a goldfish. The other two boxes, they had meant death. He'd figured that out the second he'd opened the bird, but a goldfish? What could Boris possibly be trying to say?

He pulled the bowl out of the box, and set it down next to him. The little yellow fish peered up at him. It looked innocent enough. There was no way that a goldfish could cause him any bodily harm, so he decided to keep the little thing.

Pierce brought himself down to the fish's eyelevel, and looked him straight in the face.

"So, fishy, what's your name? Is it Rosemary?", he thought bout it for a moment," Naw, you can't be Rosemary, you're a boy! What about Mint? You don't look like a mint, so that can't be that either."

Pierce shifted so that he was lying flat on the porch, with his head perched on his arms.

"I think you look like a Basil. Are you Basil?"

He took the silence as a yes, and so the fish was named Basil.

Pierce stood, and grabbed the bowl to take his new friend inside. In the process of standing, he nearly launched the forgotten second box off of his porch. He decided that his new playmate was more important than the mystery box, and took a moment to take Basil inside. Pierce brought the fishbowl to his table, and positioned him exactly in the center of it. He made a return trip to his porch, grabbed Basil's old box and its twin, and sat it all down at the table.

"So, Basil, what else did he bring me?"

The fish didn't answer, and Pierce felt that the silence translated to 'I've no idea, Pierce! You should open the box and find out!'

He decided to listen to the fish's fictional response, and went through the normal process of bow removing, followed by lid lifting, and then the fear of more dead creatures. For the second time in ten minutes, Pierce was incredibly surprised by the boxes. This time, he wasn't even sure what it was, only that it was a potted plant. It was long and thin, and covered in little white flowers. Pierce had no idea what these things were supposed to mean. Two days of terror, followed by a day of humdrum, but confusing gifts was something that Pierce comprehend. If Boris was sending threats, then why a fish?

He thought about it, and realized that he didn't mind the humdrum one bit. It was always better to be confused than it was to be scared, and so the odd presents were welcomed with open arms. Pierce let Basil live on his kitchen table, and the mystery plant found its home on the front porch, right next to the door.

Boris wasn't sure what he had done the day before to deserve a bucket of ice water to the face, but he knew he never wanted to make Pierce that angry again.

Ever.

Not if his life depended on it.

So, instead of continuing the theme of 'I caught it myself' he decided to take a different approach. He decided he'd bring two very different presents, and whichever one Pierce seemed to like best, Boris would follow up on. To help him think of what these two drastically different things could be, he took a walk around the amusement park. The first thing he saw on this walk was a carnival style game, where the winner got a goldfish in a bag. That seemed perfect. A goldfish was a low maintenance, simple, but cute pet, and something that someone like Pierce could easily take care of.

Boris played the game for an hour and a half before he won, but it was worth it. He knew Pierce would love that fish.

The next present wasn't so easy to find. He took into consideration Pierce's personality, and decided that he needed something to help keep him calm. He knew the perfect thing.

Boris didn't realize that catnip only had a calming effect on cats, and would only look like pretty flowers to anyone who wasn't a feline themselves.

It was probably for the best that Pierce never found out that the flowers on his stoop were basically drugs for cats.

Author's Notes:

-Oh, Boris. You're so persistent. At least it wasn't dead this time, you're improving with your gift giving!

- I was so happy to get to use the word dastardly, It's a little bit ridiculous how excited I was when I typed it.

-The names that Pierce goes through for the fish prove the fact that I'm a botany nerd. They all come from the same plant family, Lamiaceae.

-Basil the fish is in honor of my friend, Chelsea. She has a fish with the same name that she speaks to in a British accent.

Onto the Serious Note:

I actually quite like this chapter. It's an almost decent length, and shows that Pierce is getting used to having Boris popping out of nowhere. Also, it proves that Boris is just as dense as Pierce sometimes, he's just better at hiding it. In my mind, the fact that Pierce didn't fear the fish is kind of the first step towards those two actually getting along, and eventually being in a relationship.

~Ali