“such a well rounded student” she regards playfully, smiles her radiant smile up at him. really, she has no idea how he keeps up with it all, or how he manages not to be nearly as tightly wound and type-a as the majority of the kids that attended houghton who’d managed to rack up an entire laundry list of extra curriculars. she grins to herself when she thinks it could be due, at least in small part, to the role she plays in his unwinding.
she takes his self-depricating humor as an invitation to toss a pillow at him out of the sea of them strewn across the bed, because clearly she didn’t think anything about their little arrangement was stupid. and even if she did, it had never stopped her before.
she’s absentmindedly toying with his hands in hers when she threads her eyebrows together at his response to her snack suggestion. “you’re about the only other person i know that doesn’t try to burn me at the stake for liking hawiian pizza” her head tilts slightly and she considers him for a second and can’t help but wonder aloud “what other weird food combos are you into?”
all of this lounging around makes her think of their impending summer vacation, and her heart swells at the possibility of being completely and utterly free for the first time in nine months. it makes her think to ask, “got any big summer plans?” because surely his family had planned out some grand vacation to a destination reserved for the rich and erudite, like tuscany or geneva.
“you know what we should do? go skinny dipping–” this time she doesn’t think twice that it might be an overstep. scarlett’s never been the best at maintaining boundaries anyway. to her it simply sounds like a blast, and she’s with princeton when the idea dawns on her, so who better to invite?
“i’ve never understood why you’d burn a witch in the first place. magic sounds absolutely awesome.” of course, he does understand that the “witches” in history weren’t actually witches blah blah, misogyny and all that. this is just the type of stuff that he says. he can sound like a ditz sometimes, without meaning to.
“hmm, i dunno. i mean, i don’t think they’re weird, but these are some of the food combos i like that have made people call me a godless heathen: honey and spicy ramen; marshmallows and tacos; hazelnuts and paracetamol tablets, but the last combo, i immediately had to stop taking as snacks, because doctors told me to stop or i’d die or something. it wasn’t a ‘getting high’ thing. i just thought the flavours and textures were interesting together!”
for all his confidence that was sometimes downright blustering bravado, he quietly hopes that she laughs at his words instead of losing interest in him, because he’s not taking things seriously, or because he’s an idiot. he hopes she stays for a while more. “i don’t know. i think i’ve heard ‘hiking in norway’ recently, but i haven’t checked with them. but something like that.”
he feels a twinge of guilt at the own boredom in his tone. but it’s true, exotic european trips ceased to be novel for him long ago. “why? did you want to come with?” he asks this with a lighthearted, endearing little smile, but he’s pretty earnest about it. why couldn’t she come with him, really?
his eyebrows lift at her suggestion. “right now?” the quirk of his lips grows more mischievous. “i’m not saying no, but i gotta be clear.”
