5th Floor Common Room, Saturday Morning

[sampippy]

"What?! It's not even Valentine's day for like another two weeks!"

That sound, up in the fifth floor common room? That was the sound of Xanthippe Voorhees scrolling through her Snapchat and her insta feed and suddenly seeing basically nothing from her friends in New York except, like, cute couple photos and gross PDA videos. A ton of them. Like a

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[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo couldn't spend all day in her room feeling sick to her stomach. Especially since that seemed to be a recurring thing. A late breakfast was the easiest thing to keep down for her these days, so she forced herself to head for the common room to scrounge something up.

"Hey, Xanthippe," she said, trying to muster up a smile for her roommate when she spotted her. But it lacked Ringo's usual level of energy.

[sampippy]

Xanthippe, being the terribly self-centered person that she was, did not notice. Yet, anyway. Too busy frowning hard at her phone. Like she was offended by it.

"Yeah, hi," she said, without looking up. Who even was this guy Simone was apparently hooking up with now?

[soniaroadsqueen]

It was actually kind of a relief that Xanthippe didn't comment on Ringo's attitude. Maybe she'd also refrain from commenting on how badly Ringo had been sleeping this week.

"Anything interesting to eat?"

[sampippy]

"What?"

Yes, Xanthippe, people outside your phone existed. Especially ones who'd last spoken to you mere actual seconds ago.

"Oh. There's like, cereal or whatever."

[got_hijacked]

"Are you okay?" Look, Rhys as apparently only running into this girl when she was having some weird meltdown.

He was sensing a pattern that totally didn't include him. For once.

[sampippy]

Run awaaay, Rhys! Because Xanthippe's attention locked right onto him as soon as he was in the door. He was... okay-looking (nothing that couldn't be fixed with better styling), and hadn't seemed like, poor.

Plus she was in a low-level panic so casting some nets even before outright planning seemed to be in order.

All this added up to an attempt at a dazzling smile. "Hey! Hi, no, I just like... Spilled some milk, you know? Totally no big deal."

[got_hijacked]

Excuse you, his hair was amazing.

"Uh huh," he replied slowly. He ran his metal hand through his totally awesome hair reflexively at the smile.

[sampippy]

Honestly, the metal hand was a bigger issue than the hair. But it could probably be passed off as a totally cool biohacking thing.

Xanthippe wiped the rest of the milk off the counter, even forgetting to be embarrassed about her prior klutziness now that she had a stronger priority at hand. "So, like, how've you been, Rhys?"