A/N: Valentines Day present for Ariel! ILY, dearest friend, and hope for many more to come. Sorry I'm such a slacker about your gifts ≡≡≡=(ﾉTдT)ﾉ

"So it's Valentines Day," Roxy announced, clunking her lunch tray down next to John's.

"You don't say," John groaned, pushing his tray away so he could bang his head on the table. Maybe that would get rid of the migraine building behind his eyes.

The cafeteria was pink. Not even like a-few-tacky-decorations pink. It was like, some-brilliant-prankster-bought-out-the-food-dye-and-paint-at-the-prank-store pink. It was that pink.

It was testament to how pink it was that John only slightly wished he's been the mastermind behind this one. He would have done it more tastefully.

Less headache-inducing.

Same difference.

Roxy had been silent an awfully long time, for Roxy. John pulled his forehead from the table to find out why and found her staring at him with a spacey sort of little grin on her lips, mascara'd 'lashes feathering delicately against her cheek.

"What?" he asked cautiously, wondering if he really wanted to know.

Roxy jumped. (Jumped? She'd been staring right at him? Why would she be jumping?) "I," she said, regaining her composure with a grandly casual air that meant she wasn't feeling casual at all, "think we should go on a date."

What.

"What."

"A date!"

John's face got over the shock before he did. He was pretty sure he was a nice mutant cherry candy red now.

"Why?" He would deny his voice squeaked until the day he died.

"Because it's Valentines Day!" Like that was a perfectly logical reason to stop dancing around this thing they had. This "we're friends who flirt a lot but we don't know how serious we are" thing. This thing that John had been sure was mostly in his own head.

Wishful thinking, as it were.

(Roxy was attractive. Really attractive. And flirty, and nice, and bubbly, and funny, and…

and John hadn't been looking, but he'd been looking, yeah, and he was pretty sure she was set on Dirk, not him.)

(and that was okay!)

(but…)

"You aren't…" just doing this to make Dirk jealous, right? "serious."

"I am serious John. The seriousest. There is no one more serious than I am right now. I am simply the best there is." Valentine pink eyes, like prom dresses and bubblegum and cake frosting and beach sand at sunset, sparkled with badly suppressed mischief.

And, fuck him, John's actually thinking about it. "The movies'll be packed, you know. And the pier. And probably even the park."

"Netflix," Roxy says the same way philosophers proclaim the meaning of life itself.

"Is that even a date?"

(But even as he says it, he imagines marathoning a bunch of bad action flicks in her dark living room, hand-holding over butter-drenched popcorn and crylaughing the cheesy lines and singing along to the montages off-key, and his heart twists a little, longing.)

"It is the best date."

"…Okay."

"You're doubting-" She does a little double-take, cavalier mask slipping for a second while John watches, entranced. The corners of her mouth go soft, vulnerable in that tiny moment, eyes widening like she needs to see him a bit clearer to see that he hadn't actually turned her down. Like she was honestly expecting him to refuse.

(he doesn't know where she got those insecurities, but he can make a guess.)

(he's torn between violently hating Dirk and being profoundly, guiltily grateful to that little slip.)

(maybe this means more to her than a mild distraction from her doomed crush.)

"You're not doubting! Right," she says, squeakily regaining her composure. It's every level of adorable that exists. "So, tradition says chick flicks."

John makes a face.

"No chick flicks then."

"We haven't watched Avengers in a while…"

"Is it still streamed?"

They go back and forth for the rest of their lunch break, and then continue to debate over text for their next few classes, until Ms. Paint confiscates his phone.

John wakes up on the Lalonde's couch to the sound of a digital camera shutter.

He blinks muzzily through the blue light of the Harry Potter title screen. There's a Rose-like figure standing a few steps away.

Lalonde.

Rose.

Couch.

He tries to sit up to take better stock of the situation, tries being the operating word. There is something very heavy on his torso. Someone, he amends when the weight grumbles and buries her face in his neck.

"Rose?" he rasps instead.

"Go back to sleep, John."

John is too tired to argue. "M'kay."

John sleeps.

When he wakes again, he finds out that Rose posted a picture of him and Roxy asleep, cuddled together like puppies, to every social media platform she has. Every last one of the rest of their group proceeded to reblog, retweet, repin, like, and comment on the picture.

(he'd be angry, but Roxy greets him with a big grin and a kiss on the cheek, and not even the combined teasing of all his friends can bring him down.).