fandomhighdorms | First floor lobby, Wednesday

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First floor lobby, Wednesday

Selling dance tickets was probably Tip's least favorite part about being on Student Council on a normal day. On a day where she'd much prefer to be hiding in her room . . . weren't her hormones tired?! The rest of her was! Her arms still ached from smashing metal in class yesterday! Among other things!

But here she was, as a dutiful StuCo representative, sitting at a table with a cash box and a roll of tickets for the prom, trying to distract herself by scrolling through Tumblr.

And kind of wishing her tumblr aesthetic had gone more for "absurdist comedy" than "things I find pretty".

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Well, Norman was out of money. He'd given his last five to Uma yesterday because she'd asked for it, and so he couldn't just make a run out into town to get himself a tea and yell and jerks who were being mean to baristas at the Perk today. But maybe a walk?

Still, he sort of slowed down in the lobby once he noticed there was a table set up, and a familiar face seated behind it.

"Hey, Tip, what's this?"

Conversation! Conversation meant distraction, right?

Sort of!

Tip had now been in a permanent state of blush for long enough that even she wasn't noticing anymore, so she just kind of gave Norman a nod and shrug.

"Prom tickets? One of the many joys of Student Council work."

"Fun," Norman said, in the tone of a guy who didn't much care about Prom either way. "So you get to sit at a table selling tickets to upperclassmen for an event that you can't go to anyway?"

Not that he could imagine her wanting to go to a school dance this week. It would just be too-short skirts and people dancing way, way too close, he was sure.

"Actually, I went to last year's," Tip said. "I had this awesome red suit -- anyway, this school is so small I don't think they actually bother turning anyone away. But yeah. Technically."

And now Norman was picturing Tip in an awesome red suit. His head was filling in some blanks here and there, and he didn't much care to keep letting it do so, so he inhaled, exhaled, and just nodded.

"Kind of cool that you managed to get in, then," he offered. "I think I'm still going to not bother with getting tickets, though."

What with... dancing. And...

"Seems like it might end badly?"

"The, uh. Atmosphere might be a lot more . . . charged, this year," Tip allowed. "Even before someone spikes the punch."

"The atmosphere is already pretty charged," Norman noted, wrinkling his nose. "And it's everywhere. I actually picked a fight with a jerk at the Perk yesterday, you know?"

Because frustration in one sense apparently meant no patience in any other sense. But also because Seivarden was, in fact, a jerk.

Tip suddenly wondered if the island's ghosts were getting all randy, too. She decided not to ask.

"We did blacksmithing in my weaponry class yesterday. Even pounding on hot metal for an hour didn't help much." She sighed heavily. "It'd all be a lot easier if I had any idea what to do with it."

She knew most girls her age probably had that worked out by now, but she figured she got a couple years of delay by reasons of alien invasion, if nothing else.

"I know how that goes," Norman replied, wrinkling his nose. "I just keep feeling more and more frustrated, but I don't really want to do anything about it. Well, I do, but I don't? I mean, ignoring the fact that it all kind of feels wrong right now anyway."

Since everybody was kind of effectively being drugged into feeling this way. Which... uh.

"I think I was being flirted with yesterday and I had no idea what to do with that."

Besides making a mental note that Uma really knew how to work her hips, for all that was worth?

Tip had to laugh a little at that one. "You're not even used to most people being friendly with you, so that makes sense." Poor Norman. "I get you, though. Like -- it's like -- when you're hungry, but none of the food you can think of actually sounds satisfying." She sighed, putting her head down. "Everyone here is so pretty, but then I try to throw in . . . you know . . . and, like, I can see it, but not with me in the picture."

Norman nodded, maybe a little more fervently than he otherwise might have.

"Like that," he agreed. "People do things like that all the time, but I'm really not those people. Not that there's anything wrong with those people? I don't know where I'm going with this."

So he was going to shut up and blush some more.

"But everyone else is those people!" Tip had never said any of this out loud before, so she was getting a little worked up. "Like, am I just super delayed or something? Or way too picky?"

"I mean, if you're picky, that's your right to be, isn't it?" There he went, blushing again. "I mean, if you're going to do something with somebody that way, you want it to be because you... you know. Want to be?"

He bit his lip.

"That part is important. The wanting to. And maybe sometimes people just... don't want to. Even if maybe their bodies do?" It wouldn't be so easy to scrape these thoughts together if not for the fact that, for once, someone else seemed to be feeling the same way. "All I ever heard back home from my sister was boys boys boys, and until I caught up to her in age, I thought maybe she was just really obsessed."

But now here he was, and everyone else seemed to be kind of functioning the same way, and he... wasn't. Girls were okay? He was friends with some?

Tip frowned a little. "I mean, I don't even not want to, necessarily. I just . . . I don't know. It's so weird. Like I should know immediately if I'm into guys or girls, and there's even a 'none of the above' category but I still like thinking about it sometimes. And I do do, you know. Stuff." Oh hey, it turned out she could blush harder than what had been her base-level blush for three days. "Just not with . . . other people."

Maybe she was really self-involved? Or kinky.

Why did this have to be so weird?

She glanced up at Norman again with a smile. "At least we get to be weird together. I've never actually talked about any of this stuff before."

Norman smiled back, deciding that a 'me too' at just this moment, when talking about doing, you know, stuff just not with other people, was maybe not actually necessary.

"I mean, apparently it's normal to talk about doing it, at our age," he noted. "But I don't think I've ever really met anyone who wanted to talk about not doing it. It's my first time having a conversation like this, too. I mean. I just kind of figured maybe I got burned out on being around people, but that's apparently not the case either."

On the living. Burned out on the living. Not that he'd been interested in the dead that way, either. Thank god.

That would be a whole extra level of weird.

"So at least we've got that?" Tip said. "I mean, this whole pollen thing is really gross. But hey, I probably wouldn't have ever brought any of this up otherwise."

Norman nodded his agreement, there.

"It... kind of feels good, getting it off my chest. Like this different kind of frustration that I don't have to worry about, now? This whole thing is stupid, and I don't really want any part of it, and hey, it isn't just me."

He paused.

"But really, the pollen can go away now."

Tip rolled her eyes in a way that only a teenager could manage. "Oh god yeah. Like, people need time to rest up and rehydrate or something."

"How is the clinic not full yet?"

Not that Norman knew whether it was or not, but they were four days into this, now. Somebody out there had to be dehydrated or about to pass out from sheer exhaustion.

"Only in Fandom is 'death by horniness' an actual concern."

Norman had no idea how badly he needed that laugh until he was laughing, but here he was, getting that out of his system, and then shaking his head with a smile.

"Only in Fandom, I guess," he agreed. "Hey, would you like some company while you sit here? I can keep to the other side of the table."

"To make sure I don't jump you?" Tip teased. She pushed the other chair over with her foot in invitation. "Sure. You're much more distracting than the internet is right now."

"To make sure I don't jump you," Norman joked back, and then slipped into the seat. "But the internet is a dangerous place to be right now, anyway. Unless you're playing on one of those pet sites or something."

If you were getting uncomfortable looking at Neopets, something was definitely amiss.

"Tumblr," Tip admitted. "It was a tactical error. But weirdly a step up from reading romance novels in the library."

"Huh," Norman said, looking thoughtful. "You'd think it'd be worse, with with all the, um, visual aids?"

He had no idea how this sort of thing worked for most people, he was realizing.

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