5th Floor Common Room, Saturday Morning

[sampippy]

"What?! It's not even Valentine's day for like another two weeks!"

That sound, up in the fifth floor common room? That was the sound of Xanthippe Voorhees scrolling through her Snapchat and her insta feed and suddenly seeing basically nothing from her friends in New York except, like, cute couple photos and gross PDA videos. A ton of them. Like a flood of them.

What the hell? Was Valentine's Day suddenly in this year?

She was so out of the loop.

And starting to panic about it. Her social media presence was pretty much the only thread she was hanging onto her old life by and if she couldn't get on everyone else's level, she might as well just die right this instant.

"Oh my God."

She needed to plan.

"Wh-- shit."

... Possibly after she'd cleaned up the counter, because she'd kept pouring milk into her bowl of cereal all through being antagonized by snaps, and had only just now realized a fair bit of the milk was no longer strictly speaking in the bowl anymore, but, you know.

[ooc: Open common room is open! Some weekend SP in effect.]

Comments

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

Excuse you, his hair was amazing.

"Uh huh," he replied slowly. He ran his metal hand through his totally awesome hair reflexively at the smile.

[sampippy]

Honestly, the metal hand was a bigger issue than the hair. But it could probably be passed off as a totally cool biohacking thing.

Xanthippe wiped the rest of the milk off the counter, even forgetting to be embarrassed about her prior klutziness now that she had a stronger priority at hand. "So, like, how've you been, Rhys?"

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

Maybe steampunk would make a comeback? You know. Ironically.

"I'm good," Rhys replied, sort of suspicious, but probably not about the right thing here. "How are you?"

He was trying not to look at the milk.

[sampippy]

At least the milk was going to be gone in a few more seconds? For the most part, anyway.

"I'm super, thanks for asking," Xanthippe said, like she was genuinely pleased that he had. "Well, for the most part, anyway..."

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

"For the most part?" he asked despite himself.

This is why you get involved in stupid adventures, Rhys. This and you wanted a promotion. Oh, and the Jack thing.

That too.

[sampippy]

He really was lacking in self-preservational instincts, wasn't he?

It got him big, totally fake sincere eyes. "My dating schedule is super empty." A little hair twirl around a finger always helped, right? For the level of suggestive she was going for. "I could use some help with that."

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

He really was. But he hadn't gotten as far as he had at Hyperion by being completely oblivious to these sort of things.

Rhys pursed his lips, eyeing the hair twirling. "Wow, you are really laying it on thick," he said with his usual level of charm.

[sampippy]

And since Xanthippe was not even half as smooth as she thought she was, there was a flash of annoyance on her face before it smoothed out into a mock confused expression instead.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Don't you want to, like, get to know me better?"

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

He liked her for the fact that she reminded him so much of being back at Hyperion. That hive of awful people. God, he missed it.

Which would be why he smiled at her. "Sure."

[sampippy]

She would've absolutely taken that as a compliment.

Her posture relaxed just the tiniest bit. "Great!" she said, brightly – and had zero idea on where to take this next. Now, it was showing she should've taken time to plan before aggressively pushing forward. "So, um ––"

Should've maybe thought of an actual sentence to say before trying to start one.

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

He continued to smile and nodded along. "Rhys," he offered, feeling so awesome about himself right now.

[sampippy]

"That's not what I was looking for." Which was actually sincere and true for once, but unfortunately it was pretty hard to tell with her. "Rhys." Also that was awkardly added, which didn't help, and she knew it. "Anyway. So, you want to go out sometime? Before Valentine's Day."

A beat.

"Not that there's like a time limit."

Sure there wasn't.

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

Suuuure there wasn't.

"What's your game here?" he asked, crossing his arms over his scrawny, scrawny chest.

[sampippy]

"Game? What game?"

A little defensive there, maybe.

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

Rhys raised his eyebrows at that. Raised them so much.

[sampippy]

"What?"

Like she didn't know.

"I can't want a semi-cute guy to go out with me without there being some kind of a game involved?"

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

"First off, I'm not semi-cute. I'm handso--" He trailed off on the word, making a face. "I haven't styled my hair yet."

Rhys, focus.

"And second, no. I didn't get as fair as I did at Hyperion by trusting that."

[sampippy]

Xanthippe's face was scrunching up. "I don't know what that is, but this sounds like -- like social status based profiling."

Which was definitely not an actual thing, in this context.

"And that's, like, totally uncool."

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

"It was the most cut-throat corporation possible." Literally. "But close."

[sampippy]

"Well I'm totally not playing a game."

Liar.

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

"So you just want to go on a date with me for no reason, but it has to be before Valentine's Day," Rhys replied, nodding along like he believed it.

[sampippy]

"Yes."

Hey, maybe he'd somehow miraculously believe that.

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

"You tell me why and I'll do it." Because honesty was totally going to happen here.

[sampippy]

God, why was he making this so difficult? "But I already told you you're se-- cute."

See, she was even trying to appeal to his vanity by dropping the prefix!

[got-hijacked.livejournal.com]

"Semi, you were going to say semi-cute!" He was super cute, okay? Super cute.