#oestarter

Jamie: I'll give you a pound if you try to shower in the chocolate fountain

The Spring Ball. 

Frivolous though these things might be, Nick’s life was an invariable bouquet of such frivolousness and this ball was, whether he liked it or not, painstakingly important. Not to Nick on a personal level, nor an emotional, but in respect to his reputation, his social status, and his life as he knew it as a golden member of the prestigious and elite. 

It was also an opportunity. Because with dates mandatory, this was an occasion in which tradition worked in Nick’s favour. Potential girls who would both look good on his arm and make him look even better, would look at him with more than apathetic amusement or attraction this week. They would be looking at him in consideration, if he were lucky. They would be looking at him and musing, were he to ask for the pleasure of their company on such an evening, would they say yes? Would he be a good candidate? 

He’d like to think that most of them would think, yes, he would. Because Nick Mercer was a gentleman. He was charming, well-mannered, polite. He had an infectious smile, one which some young woman could foreseeably take home to mother, a sharp mind, and he was flirtatious and sweet. He was also handsome and looked undeniably fine in a suit. 

Nick as the Nicholas Mercer he presented to the student population, was a catch. It was only in the privacy of his own dark spaces hardly even ventured in his head, where he had doubts, and even then, it wasn’t his handsomeness or his wit or his charm that he considered up for debate. It was his intentions and his motives that even he questioned. In his weaker moments. The ones he did his best to suffocate.

This afternoon, he was strolling casually through the breezy courtyard, lazily scanning the roves of students as he sipped on a sweet Americano. Lucas would of course be going with Lauren, so it wasn’t like Nick would have much of a wing man in his friend, in terms of finding himself a date. 

“Tired? You’re thinking of the wrong person. I’ve never once in my life been tired. I do have class in ten minutes though, so you’re going to need to show a bit of speed if you want to say anything,” he monologued, looking blankly at the air in front of him, exhausted but having the stubbornness to appear always fresh as his cup of coffee that morning.