(John blushes a little more when she calls him her love and darling.) He squeezes her hand back. "Okay. I just... it's still a little bit of a surprise to me that you don't dislike me for liking all this stuff, even though we're about to... to have a whole ritual about it. I just... want to know what the house thinks about it, even though it's a house and not a person, I guess? It still feels like it's gonna hate me for it." 

"The house will not hate you for it." She lets go of his hand, the better to hug him with both of her arms. "It'll be okay. Okay? I'll go out into the sitting room or the hall or something, and tell the house what we've decided, and come back and snuggle you some more."

(And then the ritual, right? Right? No, snuggles would be good to have beforehand. Also it's probably a bit uncouth to bring it up now. He can be patient, he can.) "Okay," he says, arms wrapping around her in return. "I'll be here. Thanks." 

She gives him one last big squish, and kisses him on the cheek, and starts disentangling herself.

John (reluctantly) lets her go, giving her a small smile and a little wave (silly of him and totally unnecessary and makes him look like a dork) as she untangles herself from him. 

A cute dork. A cute dork whose adorable face must be kissed.

Oh. Oh. John grins surprised and bemused and happy as she kisses him. 

"I love you." She kisses him again, square on the nose this time, and finishes getting out of bed.

He still feels like he should say it, especially in cases like right now, but "I'm glad," is what he actually says in response. 

And with a little wave, she steps out.

And John... reflects. He's tense and worried and having a good time (right?) but also scared that everything is going to go wrong. He's so very close to having her be his (as long as nothing else goes wrong, and he'll stop things if they do, but he really really really doesn't want things to go wrong) and he's excited about it but he's also scared that maybe she'll change her mind or that the ritual won't work or something. He wonders how she's getting on with the house. It's probably not that complicated, won't take all that long, but it'll probably take longer if he's waiting like this and not distracting himself with something else. Even if he is worried. John pulls out his phone to review her notes, to go over them for the 500th time (probably not quite that many, but he wants this to go right) and make sure he has his lines memorized and that he won't do anything wrong (though not doing anything wrong mostly consists of "sit still and be very very quiet" which is really not that complicated but maybe this time he'll notice something important that he hasn't noticed before (he won't, but it's good to be really really really certain). 

About five minutes later, she returns, with a bounce in her step.

"The house is adorable."

John looks up as she enters. "Oh?" he says, doing his best to hide his disappointment at not being there to witness it. "What happened? What'd it do?" 

"I mean it just flickered its lights at me but it flickered them very adorably."

"Oh." he really wishes he'd been there to see it. "Well, I'm glad. Everything go over well? Were the lights... understanding? Confused? How did it go?" What did it think of us, he doesn't say. 

"It went fine! I set out the rules and did the best I could to explain what we were getting up to and then I double-checked that it understood the rules and why they were important and the house sort of... I don't know how to describe it. I got the sense it was wishing us well, in a friendly sort of way? 'You guys have fun', sort of thing?"

John lets out a knot of tension that he didn't quite realize he was holding onto and breathes a sigh of relief. "Oh, okay, good. Good. Good. I'm glad!" He does really wish he could have been there to experience it for some reason, but he trusts Rosy, and she probably is better able to communicate with the house than he can. (He wants to be able to properly talk to the house, though.) 

"And now, the Promised Snuggle." Into bed she hops!

Right! Snuggles. Does he maybe want those? He really wants to get started with the ritual (he's really excited about the ritual maybe) but also apparently snuggles sound good. (Also, Rosy is really cute when she talks about things like that. He can almost hear the capitals.) He puts out his arms to snuggle her. 

She nestles cozily upon him, as was foretold!

And he feels her love (she really does love him, and he still is glad about it no matter how complicated it feels), and enjoys her snuggles! (Maybe he could sneak a kiss? No, maybe not, now is probably not the best time. And also he doesn't want to get her too distracted.) 

Bed so soft. Snuggles so warm. Boy so loved.

Okay.

"Time to start getting set up?"

It's probably not a good idea for him to be showing how excited (and nervous) he is about this (why not?) (and also how he's relieved that this is actually happening when it seemed like it might not only a little while ago) but it's a bit hard for him to entirely contain himself. (She's going to be his, for real.) "Sounds good to me!" he says, sitting up with excitement. 

"You're adorable." She sits up and kisses him on the nose. "I feel it is incumbent upon me to remind you that the task you're getting so excited for mainly consists of sitting around while I do ritual setup. Well, okay, first we do the pre-rehearsal and I show you the range of available fidget toys and the place where you'll sit around and we'll leave our clothes and so on. Then you sit around while I do ritual setup."

"That's... true," he says, with mild disappointment. (Pre-rehearsal is a good idea also, since it's really really important to do this right, since he wants to make sure everything is good and doesn't need to worry about feeling bad about doing this. She really does want to be doing this, as impossible as that is to believe.) "But I suppose it's the end result I'm excited for. And I do really wish I could help. Still, I'll be happy to see what fidget toys you have available? And read a book while you do setup." It's one he's read before, but he know he likes it, so there's little worry to be had here that he'll get bored of reading, he's not going to get bored of reading.