who: sonny & [OPEN] ! what: reworking his game plan after spending all of orientation doing guerrilla marketing for margot rowe’s living bard’s society presidential campaign instead of formally reuniting with his friends and/or working on the relationships he’s supposed to be forging if he wants to do what he came to cherry to do ! where: the ccu cafeteria !
Sonny worked on the docks for a few years, back in San Francisco.
The other workers used to tease a group of old sailors-turned-fishermen, who were always driveling on about their neurotic superstitions. The fishermen wouldn’t set sail against a red sunrise, because that meant a storm is coming. They all had gold hoops piercing their ears, not because they were hip, but because it was supposedly good luck to have some gold in you. They said redheads weren’t allowed on their ships, because they were usually soulless Pagans. Women were dangerous to have on board, because they’d distract the crew; but statues of women on the outside of the ship were good luck, because nothing calmed the sea gods like the sight of a topless lady on the bow. Whistling was bad luck, because it took a fool’s hubris to challenge the wind. You couldn’t set sail on a Friday, because that was the day of the week that Jesus died, nor the first Monday in April, which is the day that Cain killed his brother Abel, nor the second Monday in August, which is the day that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, nor December 31, which is the day that Judas Iscariot committed suicide. Tattoos were lucky, and the fact that they looked badass was just an incidental bonus. Albatrosses were unlucky, because of some arbitrary poem a guy wrote in the 1700′s. And, god, bananas? Total shit-sucking catastrophes, the devil’s final yellow omens; keep them as far away from the ship as possible, and don’t you dare ask why; the simple act of mentioning them could compromise the whole voyage.
It made sense, though, the more Sonny thought about it while watching the freaky geezers pour wine all over their decks for good luck. He figured that the sea was such a powerful, scary, deadly, unpredictable frontier, with no one around to save them if something went wrong on the ship. They were completely at the mercy of something greater than themselves. Of course they would do anything to keep themselves from getting psyched out. They were challenging something too mighty to wrap their heads around, venturing into an infinite expanse filled with unspeakable evil.
Sitting down at an empty table in the CCU cafeteria, he rubs one of his ear lobes between his thumb and pointer finger and wonders if Clarissa Teller would know anybody who could give him a little gold hoop piercing.
Sonny drops his stuff on the seat beside him and glances down at the last few flyers he had to terrorize the campus with — ♡ Vote Margot! ♡
When the eyes of this woman he’s never met before today stare back at him, he has to ask himself how he jumped headfirst into this mission without stopping to ask if Ted Lewis was running for the same spot. Remember Ted, Sonny? That’s the guy who you’re actually supposed to be building a relationship with. He never even stopped to consider it, not consciously. Just committed himself to a chipper stranger he had no baggage or tension with. It was always in his nature to throw his heart and soul into random ventures completely on a whim, but he knew he wasn’t doing this in the name of impulsive philanthropy. It would be nice to see a sweetie like Margot win— he’s never found an underdog he wouldn’t root for— but he knew he was doing this to procrastinate the real mission that brought him back to Cherry.
In the most charitable explanation, he was doing this to get his mojo up to snuff before he got down to business with his old friends. He couldn’t function like a good little detective with the way his heart sunk like an anchor every time he saw a familiar dimple of someone he left in the dust, or heard about any more ways the gangs’ lives changed for the worse since he betrayed and abandoned them. He’s hiding ulterior motives from them all over again, he’s still lying to them about what he did to the Freeses, and some of them — including sweet, hopeless Mac, of all people — he’s completely using, building up their trust with the endgame of taking advantage of them the same way he did Scott. It’s hard to keep his head in the game when he’s so busy feeling like a nasty little devil. He has to psyche himself up and get to work before the incomprehensible evil that lurks in Cherry decides to reveal something he doesn’t need people to know. He needs to ease his conscience, feel like he’s boosted his karma, and remind himself of who he is despite his dirty, dirty deeds.
He can’t just focus on karma or luck, though. He only has a chance to save Libby for as long as he’s safe and trusted around town, and he can’t waste time on random crusades for outside parties. He’s at the mercy of some treacherous greater power that could expose him at any second, and he needs to move faster than the tides. Spiritually, he did some good work today, but he needs to do something that matters in a tangible way. Compromising with himself, he decides to do something that will get his investigation moving even if he isn’t ready to talk to the gang yet: he should do some work for Ted’s campaign now.
He folds up the last few Margot Rowe flyers and moves to shove them into his bag, but his boney elbow accidentally knocks over a salt shaker in the process. Before he even registers it, his hands are raking up the spilled salt and tossing it over his shoulder without taking a split second to see if anybody was behind him. He goes back to sticking the flyers in his bag and pulls out a spiral notebook and ballpoint pen, blissfully unaware that he just threw a handful of teeny-tiny white rocks into some poor schmuck’s face. He bites the cap off of the pen and starts drafting his first groundbreaking slogan idea: TED 4 BIG BARD.
