fandomhighdorms | Impromptu St. Patrick's Day Party; Second Floor Common Room [03/17].

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Impromptu St. Patrick's Day Party; Second Floor Common Room [03/17].

Summer totally had this party planned out since the beginning, really. She definitely didn't just throw something together because she'd forgotten about St. Patrick's Day until just this morning when a squirrel pinched her awake because her pajamas were pink. She toyed around with the idea of actually skipping a party, but....it was suuuuuch a party holiday. Once it was there in her brain, only the liberal flow of alcohol in a dormitory setting would satiate the beast.

So she got to work in a flurry of impressive party preparation and shot off a text to the student body:

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!
Come celebrate in the Second Floor Common Room, 9 o'clock!
<3 SUMMER

She threw together a cute outfit (as far as she knew, she wasn't really Irish, but...with a surname like Smith, who even knew, and where else would she have gotten her red hair if it wasn't in there somewhere?), hit up Turtle & Canary to buy the shit out of all their green party supplies, and hurried back to the common room to get everything set up in a whirlwind of green and clovers (and a more than a few hearts, stars, and horseshoes, thus the big sign on the cereal cabinet that read: DO NOT OPEN!!). Streamers, glitter, green beer and Guinness.

Summer looked over the hastily thrown together ordeal and nodded firmly to herself. Not too shabby at all! So now she just hoped everyone got the text...or even just wandered in, wondering what was up with all the green.

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The bulk of any party, arrive and mingling with your fellow students and either celebrating the time old traditions you're already familiar with or boggling over the weird things that this universe/planet/dimension/time period decides to celebrate...

... Sorry, Summer. Apparently the first person to wander down to the second floor common room to investigate what was going on was going to be... well...

"Oh, right. St. Patrick's Day."

Norman was looking into the common room with a kind of uncertain, speculative look on his face, right there. Mostly wondering if maybe he ought to call the whole day a write-off and head back to his room.

...no, Summer wasn't staging what looked like a mess of used cups and empty bottles and crumbs and pizza crusts on the counter to make it look like it was a totally hopping party for her Instagram, why do you ask??

But the sound of a voice definitely made her look up, just as she got that perfect shot. "Oh, hey, Norman," she said. "Come on in!"

And, of course, she did a cursory glance over him in the customary check for wearing green.

"Please save me from drinking all of this myself."

Because she'd do it. She couldn't just let it go to waste.

Edited 2018-03-17 23:26 (UTC)

It was fine, Summer. Norman would rescue you, just this once.

Him and his t-shirt that just happened to have green sleeves. It was actually a total accident that he'd pulled it on today. He'd been slightly distracted by a badly-dressed gremlin who had half-drowned in some breakfast cereal.

"You want me to drink with you?" If he sounded slightly dubious, it was mostly because he wasn't entirely sure she wanted him anywhere near her, really. "I mean, I can. Uh. What is there?"

Honestly, Summer just wanted anyone to drink with, but she wasn't about to tell Norman that.

What a weird contrast to last night at the bar, too. There, she felt almost like an adult, drinking with adults, and now? Here she was, her first arrival the dorky kid who reminded her of her nerdy brother.

Ugh, she just needed to graduate already...

Also, geez, don't sound too thrilled about it, there, Norman.

"Well," Summer ventured, "the whisky and the Guinness'll probably keep, but the green beer's definitely going to get a little funky after today. I'll pour you some!"

"Some green beer," Norman echoed, looking toward the drinks. "Hey, sure."

He paused.

"What makes it green, exactly?"

Look, he talked to ghosts, but besides that he was mostly a good kid. Had he ever put alcohol in his mouth before? Nope.

"It's just food coloring," Summer shrugged as she poured from a pitcher into a nice green Solo cup, and that lifted her spirits a little. It was hard not to feel festive with all that green on green action. "It's actually not that good; I've never tried making it before, but it'll do the trick. Here."

She handed it over and then went to top of her own cup.

Norman took the cup with a little nod, looking into it thoughtfully for a moment.

"Thanks," he said, contemplating the contents. So green. So beery. "For what it's worth, I'm not really a great judge of good beer, anyway."

"Perfect, then," Summer said with a faint smirk.

Not that she was much better, really; if it wasn't some ridiculously sweet cocktail, she didn't really like alcohol much. It had always been regarded as something you just sucked up because everyone else was, and that was exactly what she did now because, yeah, she'd had a lot of shitty beer in her life, but this was....pretty up there with the shittiest. But she was going to suck it down like it was the best beer she'd ever had.

Especially since she didn't exactly know what to talk to Norman about, and she drank instead of just being awkward in silence for a moment before she came up with something.

"So, uh....you usually do anything for St. Patrick's Day back home?"

"Do?" Norman needed to punctuate that moment with a mouthful of his own beer.

And then he needed to put a lot of effort into not making a face. Oh god. Why was he putting this into his body? His tongue was going to be green for a month.

"For St. Patrick's Day? Not really. Forget to wear green. Get pinched a lot. My Grandma's usually been there to remind me to wear the right color, the past few years. At least there's that."

Riveting conversation from Norman Babcock.

Summer recognized that face. Or the attempt to not be a face. That had to be a first-sip-of-beer face. Was this Norman's first beer? Summer didn't know if she should feel proud or apologize to him profusely, so she just wasn't going to acknowledge it at all.

"Safe to guess this," she pointed with her cup hand toward his green sleeves, "was just pure luck, then?"

"Well, pure luck and an avalanche of Lucky Charms," Norman admitted. He looked into his cup and wondered if he'd just die outright if he continued drinking the contents. "Since I got here, the island's been mostly just... super normal, except for whatever was going on on Wednesday." And the ghosts that he was just straight-up not mentioning. "And then I was almost drowned in breakfast cereal. It was hard not to figure out something was up, then."

"Yeaaaah," Summer narrowed her eyes a little, "Wednesday was a little weird, even for me." And she felt that was a very high bar to set. "I almost feel, like....whatever it is that makes this island so whatever it is needed a vacation, too. Like, we all went to China, it got to breath a sigh of fresh air, and then when we got back, it revved the weirdness back up after a rest."

Norman nodded a little at that.

"I had actually kind of gotten that impression," he admitted, and then willed his hand to move his cup up to his mouth again.

Hnnnnghhhnnn. Yep. That definitely tasted like green.

"I got all the warnings about the weirdness when I started here, but it's a completely different thing when you're accidentally ignoring how basic physics work for real, in person."

Okay, Summer couldn't do take this anymore. Each reluctant glance down at his cup just made her feel terrible.

"You don't have to drink it, you know," she offered. "It's okay. I appreciate the effort. Honestly, down the drain's probably the best place for it."

And that thought kind of made Norman feel guilty in turn. He grimaced a little.

"You're sure?" He glanced around the room. "I mean, you put a lot of effort into all of this. I kind of feel bad wasting this."

Even if it was probably going to kill him.

"Yeah, man," Summer waved a hand, "it's cool. You already look like you're going to hurl, and I am not nearly drunk enough to want to deal with someone else's green puke."

But at least she wouldn't have had to hold his hair back?

She let a faint grin surface, though. "I do feel kind of proud that your first beer is my skunky green St. Patty's Day swill, though."

Hey, holding Norman's hair back wouldn't be a problem anyway. It kind of held itself back. Hands-free vomiting.

"It has definitely been an experience," he decided, making his way over to the sink and doing away with the contents of his cup the safe way, down the drain. He paused to rinse the beer out, and then made his way to the fridge to rummage for some Coke or something. Anything to get the taste out. "But... It's a St. Paddy's party, and my first year off at boarding school. It kind of seemed like one of those 'no better time to try this' things, if that makes any sense."

"It does make sense," Summer said with an assuring nod. "Another reason this school is weird as hell, though, I guess. I feel like if this was any other boarding school in the universe, this party would be lit."

She glanced ruefully at the very green room, wondering idly what kind of return policy Miss Blackstone might have.

"Whatever," she shrugged it off. "I'm just going to pretend there was a signal block and no one got the text." For all she knew, that might have been true anyway. "And just hope it wasn't blocked because of some approaching alien ship or an oncoming tropical storm filled with narwhals."

"Not a bad assumption," Norman replied, smiling faintly. "I didn't get one, but..."

He shrugged. He didn't actually think Summer would have sent him an invite, and wasn't about to call her on it. But in case she had, maybe she'd like to know?

"What would people even do about a storm filled with narwhals?"

He'd seen the sharks. He had so many questions.

Summer had sent Norman an invite. She thought she'd sent a mass text to everyone, which by default would have included Norman, so she breathed a sigh of relief that there could be a chance something had gone awry in the sending and it wasn't just a massive lukewarm ugh another Summer party? response across the board.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Freeze them like we did the sharks? I feel like that'd be even more dangerous, what with their horn things thrown into the mix."

And, after a second, knowing the conversation could go stale and awkward at any moment, she hastily added, "You know one of those sharks we had actually crashed through my bedroom wall?"

Well, that was a conversation starter right there. Norman, meanwhile, was thankful that she'd said something else before he could say something stupid like,'that explains why some of the sharks are covered in icicles.'

"You had a shark in your room?"

"Yeah," Summer said, clearly still very offended by the idea. "There's, what, at least a hundred rooms in this building, but only one gets a shark in it! I mean, sure, a lot of the business in town got hit, but none of the other dorm rooms. My roommate and I were just sitting there, chilling, having a nice quiet evening trying to avoid the storm and the sharks, but I guess this shark had a different idea. Giant gaping hole, all of our stuff got wet, and we had to push the thing out. Ever hear what a shark sounds like falling out of a second floor window? It's not pretty. I'm just glad we weren't further up, I think that'd had made it even worse."

...yeah, Summer had no problem filling in conversation if she got started on the right rant.

"That is a sound I can honestly say I've never heard before," Norman replied, his eyes going a little wide.

And he thought Sidon could get talky.

"So it just... smashed into your room and trashed all your stuff? Did they at least put you up in another room while they fixed things?"

"Nah, man," Summer shook her head and took a swig of her beer...the kind of swig that sort of forgot how terrible it was, but it was too late after the fact. "They just threw up some boards. I slept in the common room a couple of those nights, but they were still pretty quick to fix it and replace some of our stuff."

Norman grimaced a little.

"But... there are plenty of empty rooms. Why... wouldn't...?" He winced. "I suppose at least they replaced some of your things. That's better than nothing, huh?"

"I guess..." Summer realized slowly after a moment of thinking about it, "we never really though to ask..."

"You... didn't ask for a new room, after a shark trashed the one you were in?"

Norman was just kind of tilting his head at her, now, looking a little bit as though he was trying to figure out why.

"Trauma?"

It was as good a guess as any.

"Maybe?" Summer said, but she definitely didn't sound convinced. "Probably just laziness, though. And as far as living conditions go, I've dealt with a lot worse."

Which just made her start to wonder how much else in her life she'd put up with due to low key trauma, and once she got started....hoo boy. It would be easier to pick out moments that weren't probably just low key trauma kicking in...

And look whose cup was now empty, look at that!

"Well... for what it's worth," Norman said, pouring himself a solo cup of Coke, "if a shark were to come crashing into my room, I probably wouldn't have it in me to go beg the school for favors. I don't think that's necessarily laziness. It's just a... a 'one thing too many' kind of deal."

The Solo cups were green that day. There's the usual pretzels and chips, but also some beer dyed green and a cooler filled with bottle of Guinness. A few bottles of Irish whisky and things to mix them with.

And Summer even found time to make a shamrock-shaped lime jello mold. With....yup, those were definitely Lucky Charms marshmallows in there.

And the pizzas all had green pepper. It seemed more thematic that way.

Edited 2018-03-17 18:25 (UTC)

Even the shadows seemed slightly tinged in green today, but they're still effective for lurking and brooding, should the mood strike you.

I get to be stuck at work tonight like a loser. So I'll party in the fake world instead. \o/

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Impromptu St. Patrick's Day Party; Second Floor Common Room [03/17].

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