A/N: Here's my second chapter of the weekend! Yay!
Descension Back To Normalcy
"Uh, sweetie," Janet paused in the front hall, watching her daughter struggle through the doorway loaded down with more shopping bags than she could count. "Don't you think it would be easier to leave Sam's bags in the car, rather than hauling them all in tonight and taking them back out tomorrow morning?"
"Sam's bags are in the car," Cassandra huffed, disappearing into the living room and thudding upstairs to her bedroom.
"Oh they are, are they?" Janet asked, quirking her eyebrow and fixing Sam with a pointed look.
"Don't look at me like that," Sam stated firmly, stepping inside with dinner in one hand a bag of movies in the other.
"Might you have gone just a little overboard?" Janet asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
"If I'd let the guys come along like they wanted to, she would have come home with ten times as much stuff," Sam pointed out, kicking her shoes off and making her way into the kitchen to set her bags down.
"You people spoil her so ridiculously much," Janet said, rolling her eyes and following her friend into the kitchen. "Just because you're not the worst offender doesn't mean you're not bad."
'You love us," Sam reminded, tossing a grin over her shoulder as she set about unpacking the food. "Did you get the stuff for…"
"I set the blender up in the living room," Janet cut her off, opening a cupboard and a drawer simultaneously, pulling out three plates and a handful of spoons for serving the food up. "It made the most sense."
A series of thuds indicated that Cassandra was on the move again. The banging moved over their heads before changing, sounding more like jumps as the teenager mad her way down the stairs.
"Dare I ask how much junk she had?" Janet asked as her daughter literally bounced back into the room.
"I'm pretty confident that you're happier not knowing," Sam assured, handing the other two plates and starting to load up her own. It smelled delicious, especially after living off pizza for the last few days.
"You know, I am standing right here," Cassandra reminded, twirling a chopstick around her fingers while she waited for Sam to finish with the Pad Thai. "Besides, it wasn't that bad, mom. We had fruit."
Janet raised an eyebrow skeptically as she started filling her own plate. Looking back and forth between her daughter and her best friend confirmed that she was only getting part of the story. The wide-eyed innocent looks she was getting were a dead giveaway that they weren't being totally honest with her. Rearranging her facial expression to one she usually reserved for her most difficult patients, Janet fixed her gaze on the pair.
"Okay, fine. Sam had fruit," Cassandra amended a few heartbeats after her mother unleashed The Look on her.
"Banana split," Janet guessed, pointing a chopstick at Cassandra. "Which means you had a hot fudge sundae."
"Busted," Sam confessed, sharing a grin with Cassandra.
"Why is it that whenever you two get together, I end up feeling like a mother of two?" Janet asked rhetorically, shaking her head in amusement. Abandoning the giggling pair, she snagged the bag of movies off the counter and carried it and her plate into the living room.
Settling herself on the left side of the couch, Janet balanced her plate on her lap and dumped the movies on the coffee table. Scanning the titles, she couldn't help but smile. Ocean's Eleven, Solaris and Meet Joe Black. She wasn't surprised that George Clooney and Brad Pitt were invited to girls' night, and neither did the sci-fi or girly movies; the selections were par for the course when Sam and Cassie were unleashed on the nearest Blockbuster together.
As if on cue, Cassandra and Sam entered the living room, both giggling so hard that their food was in real danger of slipping off their tilting plates and onto the floor. Seeing the two of them together, Janet couldn't help but giggle to herself; they were a handful, but seeing how happy they made one another made all the chaos they caused worthwhile. Eventually they made their way to the couch, fortunately without any dinner-related mishaps, and began jockeying for positions on the couch. With only a marginal amount of jostling, Cassandra managed to win the middle seat on the couch and Sam settled on her right,.
"What are we watching first?" Cassandra asked, picking her chopsticks up off her plate and diving into her food enthusiastically.
"Ocean's Eleven," Janet answered immediately. "I don't want to wait twenty minutes while you two fight over seeing Brad or George first."
Grabbing the appropriate case off the table, Sam stood again and made her way over to the DVD player to pop the movie in. Meanwhile, Janet grabbed the blender from the end table beside her and poured its already blended contents into two margarita glasses. Studiously ignoring the pleading look Cassandra was giving her, Janet handed Sam a glass as she returned to the couch. When Sam was settled again, Janet started the movie and Cassandra twisted herself sideways, resting her back against Janet's shoulder and putting her feet on Sam's lap, fortunately before she'd put her plate back on her lap.
"Comfortable?" Janet asked wryly, switching her chopsticks into her left hand and struggling with the mechanics of using them wrong-handed.
"Extremely," Cassandra replied, twisting slightly to grin at her.
"How come this couch is so big, yet we always end up piled on top of each other?" Sam asked, balancing her plate on her knees since her lap was now occupied.
"Can't you flip around and lean on Sam's left side, at least until I finish eating?" Janet asked as she dropped most of the food from her chopsticks halfway to her mouth.
"No," Sam replied on the teenager's behalf, leaning forward slightly so she could take a sip of her margarita.
"Why not?"
"Because its much more fun to watch this way," Sam explained, grinning as Janet dropped her food again.
"Evil," Janet retorted, shooting a mock glare at her best friend.
"Shush! Here comes Brad!" Cassandra exclaimed, effectively ending the conversation for the next two hours.
A/N: This chapter sets up the next, but there was really no logical way to tie the two together so I broke them up. Rest assured, I'm already working on the next chapter and I'm hoping to have it up before tomorrow night.