Sully
April 08, 2013 4:08 PM
Awkwardness with Josephine Owen by Sully
The second challenge was done and there was only one left between Sullivan Quincy and The End Of The World. Or, at least, the End Of Fifth Year, which was just about the same thing. CATS were bad enough at the best of times - Sully considered, in this context, last year's bonfire the best of times - but this year had two additional complications.The challenges were not as bad as they could have been, even teamed up as he was with both Carrie O'Malley and Jhonice Trevear. If anything, they provided a welcome distraction from both studying for, and conversations about, the upcoming Doom. He even almost considered them CATS training. If nothing else, if he found himself facing a velociraptor in the DADA practical, he would now be able to accurately identify it as a boggart in the moments before his death.
The other complication was less welcome, mostly because, as a guy, most of the onus of finding a date for the Ball lay in his court. On the plus side, he didn't really think any of Sonora's girls were expecting him to ask them, so aside from a few awkward moments when he thought about asking someone to the event but then chickened out, there had not yet been any irreparable damage to his acqaintanceships with his female classmates.
The notion had come up with a handful of girls. The first had been Hope, because he had kind of gone with her sister (cousin? relative?) the last time. However, they were neither close, nor was he - adoption into the California Pierce clan notwithstanding - from the same social class as she was. If they went together it would only be because they didn't want to go alone. It wouldn't even be 'going as friends' as that required the prerequisite of being friends.
The second girl he almost but didn't ask was Valerie Lennox. However, she had most of The same drawbacks that Hope had. She was a few steps closer to an actual friend, though, as he liked working with her in DADA where he didn't feel like a dunce quite so often as in other classes and he could indulge in chivalrous actions around the frail girl, so they might be able to 'go as friends' a little easier than he could with Hope.
The problem was, though, that Sully didn't really want to 'go as friends' with anyone. Firstly, he wasn't really good friends with anybody. Secondly, when else would he have such a strong impetus to ask a girl on a date and stand a chance of her saying yes? Girls needed dates to this thing, too, especially prefects, and girls outnumbered guys at Sonora. If he ever had a prayer of getting a date, it was now.
Which led up to this moment.
He had noticed how pretty Josephine Owen was at the Opening Feast and she had not become less so in the intervening months. Plus, she was a prefect, so she needed a date, and though she could surely do better than Sully, he was hoping he'd beat any competition to the question and she'd panic and say yes before she thought about it too much.
He would find out for sure in just a few minutes. Here she was.
Sully stood up from his cushioned seat as she entered the common room. (He was not stalking. Stalking required some knowledge of her schedule. He'd just been working under the assumption she would have to cross through the commonroom sometime between dinner and curfew.)
"Hey, Josephine," he said in greeting, then ran a hand nervously through his already messy blond hair because talking to girls was nervewracking enough even when he wasn't trying to ask for a date. But he could do this. He would do this. Right now before some other guy did. "Um, hi. Uh, do you, er, that is, would you, um, er. There's a ball," he told her, feeling like an idiot.
Of course there was a ball. There was a ball every four years and this was the year it happened. Everybody knew that. Ask the stupid question already. Then she can say no and go with somebody who wasn't a complete moron and he could sink into the floor and mercifully die from embarrassment.
"Er, you going with anybody yet?"
It wasn't quite what he'd meant to ask, but it was a question and it was a start in the right direction. She could probably figure out where he was going with this and let him down easy because Josephine was a kind person who wouldn't torture him by drawing it out.
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Sully
Awkwardness with Josephine Owen
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Sully
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Josephine Owen
April 19, 2013 3:41 PM
I am She by Josephine Owen
"Hey, Sully," came the automatic reply to being called as she made her way across the commonroom. As a Prefect, it wasn't unusual for Josephine to be called by other students in Pecari while she was within their domain, but it didn't happen sufficiently often for it to be considered the norm, either. Whilst she didn't think it very likely that Sully needed her for her title, she couldn't think of any other reason for him to jump up just at the sight of her - they had chatted a few times, and exchanged small talk now and thene, and while Josephine liked him well enough, she wouldn't list him as one of her friends - unless Jade had caused trouble again, which was always a possibility. "What's up?"A great deal was up, apparently, including Sully's inability to form a sentence. Josephine waited him to find some words, half wondering whether she should ask if he was okay, or whether this would further exacerbate the matter. Just as her left brow had dipped as a result of her difficultly in figuring out what was going on, Sully uttered that there was a ball. "Yes," Josephine said, confirming the statement. "I know." Really, that had hardly been worth the preceeding stammerings. She could only presume that there was more coming, and so she waited, pleased at least that she was informed of the topic of their conversation; if Sully's current efforts were any indication, it would be useful to have this clue to interpretation.
"Er, you going with anybody yet?" Sully asked.
Josephine's initial reaction was to be taken aback. Admittedly she had done much better over the past couple of years in making friends and feeling at ease inside her own skin, but two years of positive changes apparently didn't adequately compensate for a decade's worth of inferiority. The paranoid part of her she had been successfully squashing to the back of her mind rose up defensively, assuming that anyone asking about her partnership status would only be doing so in spite or to tease her. Luckily, common sense and self worth resumed their positions before she'd had time to react. Whilst the words she uttered were the same they would have been if based on her original recoil, they were instead spoken with a questioning, playful smile that would hopefully deflect derision from either party. "What's it to you?"
In her mind, which was struggling to keep up with her emotional imbalances, there were a few part-formed reasons she could perceive that Sully would be asking this. The most likely being that he was making small-talk that would lead up to enquiring whether one of her friends, maybe Addi or Waverly, would be likely to go with Sully. Another, less likely, possibility was that Sully was finding out on behalf of someone else who had considered asking Josephine to the ball, but she couldn't fathom who that might be.
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Josephine Owen
I am She
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Josephine Owen
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Sully
April 22, 2013 9:47 PM
As I am He by Sully
His face burned a little as Josephine confirmed the existence of the ball. He had been practicing this in his head all day. How did it go so bad so fast? Worse, she didn't just say she had a date already and so he could safely slink away and pretend this whole thing never happened. Neither did make it easy by reversing the traditional gender roles and ask him to the dance instead. Of course, there was no surprise there. He had just clearly demonstrated he was an idiot who had, at best, only a weak grasp of the English language.And now he had to keep using it to finish off this conversation. For a moment, the notion came to him to just make some kind of remark that would let him escape, but (a) he couldn't think of something clever enough to extract him from the situation off the top of his head, and (b) he'd already made a fool of himself, he may as well see it all the way through. So he took a deep breathe and pressed on.
"Well, see, if you didn't have plans yet, I, uh, was going to ask if, um, you wanted to go with me?" He wasn't quite sure if he was asking her to the dance, or if he was asking what his plan had been. He hoped dearly that she'd interpret it as the former. And then tell him nicely that she'd like to, but make a transparent but ego-soothing excuse for why she couldn't. That was the best case scenario he could imagine resulting from the hash he'd made of asking her out.
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Sully
As I am He
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Sully
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Josephine
April 26, 2013 4:32 PM
Genders have thus been established. by Josephine
"Oh." Josephine didn't manage to conceal her surprise as Sully finally revealed the eventual reasoning behind their somewhat disjointed conversation. Still, surprise wasn't necessarily a negative reaction; it could perhaps be interpreted as modesty. It wasn't as if she had fallen off her chair in shock or anything, so Sully probably wouldn't take offense.Of course, the far more pressing matter was not Sully's intepretation of her surprise, but Josephine's proper response to his question. Statement. That had been phrased as a question. Whatever - now was hardly the time for Josephine to argue with herself about semantics. She had been hoping for someone to ask her to the ball this time around and here it was happening. Admittedly, none of the various scenarios Josephine had daydreamed had featured Sully, but she was not in a hurry to discount him now that she knew he was a contender - the strongest contender, in actual fact, seeing as he was the only person thus far to actually ask her. Josephine was tempted to go with him simply for that fact alone; there was no guarantee she would have a repeat of the offer from another individual. Of course, Sully was in the year below, and Josephine wasn't sure how she felt about going with a younger boy to the ball. Then again, a younger boy was better than no boy, and as Josephine's birthday was in July it was possible that he was only a few weeks younger, anyway.
Merlin, that was a lot to think about all in a very short space of time. She was going to need to lie down if this conversation carried on for much longer.
"Okay," Josephine managed to reply before the space following her syllable a surprise became sufficiently long to be uncomfortable. She opted for easy logic. She wanted to go to the ball, and she would like to go with a person, and Sully had proven to be nice thus far, plus he had expressed an interest in wanting to go with her. The sixth year had nothing to lose, and potentially nothing to gain if she declined him. "I would like to go with you. It'll be fun." Certinaly more fun than showing up alone, at any rate.
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Josephine
Genders have thus been established.
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Josephine
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