He's much more on the ball this time, especially with her look, and steps in practically in unison with her, feeling a small surge of pride about doing it properly (and then feels silly about feeling good for doing something so straightforward and simple. He has the easy part, here, there's no reason to be proud of doing the basic stuff when she's putting all this work in). Nonetheless, he smiles at her a little and waits for her to continue. 

"Then I have important ritual tasks and you have a fidget toy, and then I catch your eye and make sure you see me cross the circle," she starts walking, "so you can stand to greet me." She makes her way over to stand before him, smiling. "I say my lines, you say your responses, and then we're done!"

(Fuck he wants to kiss her. He wants to kiss her really badly, even though there will be so, so much time for that later, and it will be even better because she'll be his.) "And then we're done!" he agrees. "And then you're mine," he adds, maybe a little sheepishly. "Should, um," fuck, what is he doing! No, she'll be okay if he asks. Right? "Should we um, practice the lines too maybe? I've already done them a bunch but I don't know I might have the intonation wrong or something and I want to be really sure this works out okay and stuff." And he really doesn't want to do it wrong! Maybe he's just being silly though. "Though we don't have to if you'd rather just get started. We can just get started if you want." 

"We can practice the lines but we have to do it back at the Witch Hut—it's a bad idea to do too many different ritual components on location before the ritual, and obviously the thing that's most important to practice on location is places, so we always do places on location and everything else offsite."

"Oh." Well, it's a good thing he asked first! Fuck, it would have been bad if he'd just started out saying the words or something, he could have broken things or something. "Then we could run through the thing one or two more times and then go back to the Witch Hut to practice our lines and whatever else you think makes sense. If you want, that is! I don't know that we need to do the places anymore, it's pretty straightforward and I've got it, at least my parts of it. We can be done if you want." 

"If you're sure you've got it then we don't need to do it again."

He's sure he's got it. (It might be safer to do it again, but there's no reason to make her worry, and he does have it. He's pretty sure. It's really not at all complicated.) "I'm sure I've got it," he says. "We can head back then, and practice, and then we come back here and stuff?" He's not sure why he keeps asking her things that are obvious and that she's told him what's going to happen several times, but well, he does seem to keep doing that. Ugh. 

"Mhm!"

She takes his hand and squeezes it, and kisses him on the cheek, and leads the way back to the Witch Hut.

John grins at the kiss (she's so good and cute and in love with him and she's going to be his, she's going to be his so soon he can hardly wait!) and follows behind her, trying his best to keep from skipping with all the excitement. 

Here is the Witch Hut, and here is the chair she set up for him to sit and wait on, and here is Rosy kissing him on the cheek again.

John blushes and grins and sits down and blushes and grins some more. (She's so good. He doesn't deserve it but that doesn't matter because soon she's gonna be his. Now is not the time to be turned on about that though, they have lines to practice.) Speaking of which... "Should we do our lines now, maybe?" he says. He's pretty sure he's got this memorized, right? He's practiced a lot over the past few days. Though he was busy with homework this morning (he had to get it all done in time so that mom would let him do this) and hasn't really done it at all today, and the practice should help, just in case. 

"Sure. So I say 'I come before you of my own will', and you say..."

"I acknowledge your choice," he says, with the proper gravitas the line calls for. He should probably not say her parts at all even though he maybe has been muttering them to himself a little bit when he's practicing. So instead he says it and pauses, waiting for her to say her line. 

"And I say 'I ask nothing, I offer everything', and you say..."

"I understand your offer." (He does have this! He knew he did. Or at least was pretty sure. It's not hard obviously, but still, he's glad he has it.) 

"And I say 'I give you myself', et cetera et cetera, and you say..."

(Aw, but the whole thing is hot, and he was looking forward to hearing her say it. She's probably not saying it in full for ritual and safety reasons; he shouldn't say anything about it, and besides, he'll hear it later. There's no good reason why he should be feeling disappointed about it now.) "I accept your gift," he says, with only the slightest distracted pause (he shouldn't have gotten distracted damnit!). 

She kisses him on the cheek. And wiggles happily.

And John grins back, and tentatively reaches out an arm to wrap her in a hug, if she's okay with that! (She's probably okay with that, he's just being silly, come on this is fine John!) 

Cozy snug! ✨

Oh, well good. (He keeps worrying about this! And he really shouldn't! She loves him and she's gonna be his and it's gonna be really soon. Fuck it's gonna be soon. He keeps being so silly about this.) He squeezes her in return, and smiles. "Do we want to go again," he asks after a moment, or should we just, like, proceed? If you don't mind. Whatever you think makes the most sense. I think I'm good." (Damnit, he needs to stop babbling!) 

Rosy may be just a tiny bit distracted by being so very cozy with her arms around him and her face nestled against his shoulder. Right, yes, words, talking, okay.

"If you think you're good then I think I can leave you here with your book and go set up." She kisses his shoulder and gives him a squeeze. "Once I'm done hugging you. It turns out I really like hugging you."

John squeezes her back, smiling softly at the kiss. "I'm really glad about that!" he says, lamely. "But maybe it's a good time to get started?" He makes no move to stop hugging her, though (it turns out he likes it when she hugs him too, and also it would probably be presumptuous and/or bad of him to push her away, even though everything is so close and they really should get started probably!). 

Squiiiiish. "Okay, I'm good. Lemme just grab the wheelbarrow."

The 'wheelbarrow' is actually some sort of collapsible dolly, onto which she loads a couple of big plastic bins from the shelves.

"I'll come get you when I have everything set up!" she says, rolling her load out the door.

Is it really going to take that much stuff to... no, she knows what she's doing, far far better than he does, (and also it might just be some stuff from each bin or something). 

Is this really happening? This is really happening. How does he feel about it? Excited (and turned on) and terrified. He doesn't know how he could possibly be deserving of anything remotely like this, but here he is, with an attractive girlfriend who wants to be his slave, and is working on a magical ritual to do just that. Fuck. Should he really just be waiting here? It's what she said she wants, and he'll probably just get in the way, but it can't really be okay for him to just be waiting here while she does all the work. Maybe he can go out there and... no. John shudders, remembering the last time he tried to do the right thing even though she said she didn't want him to. He's not doing that again, no. He should just.... sit here, and reread his lines (and maybe not whisper her parts because that might mess up the ritual now that he thinks about it), and reread Ender's game for like the seventh time. And play on his phone. And run his lines again. And read some more.