Closing her eyes tightly as she thought about how to respond to the question she'd just been asked, Annette's first reaction had been to say that no, she wasn't going to be interested in going to the social event she was invited to, but she couldn't come up with a good reason for why she couldn't go. "As long as it goes better than the last time you took me out with you," she said through teeth slightly gritted, keeping her face scrunched in thought. "I don't think I can live through having to wash dishes to cover the bill again."

"Come on, that was one time, and this time it's prepaid on the food and drinks so I can't possibly order more than I can afford." Ingrid laughed, playfully hitting Annette's back at the exact moment that she reopened her eyes, causing her to feel like her eyeballs were about to be forced out of her face. "Plus, Mercie's going to be there, and you know that if I somehow eat us out of out wallets, she'll cover for us. Or for me, anyway."

"Because owing someone else is a great idea." Annette had gotten rather used to this sort of behavior from Ingrid, having gotten closer to her in the past year since they'd unexpectedly ended up as next-door neighbors in their college apartment. She'd gotten caught singing loudly about the dinner she was cooking one night and Ingrid had managed to overhear her and invited herself over for the meal; from there they'd learned they had a mutual friend that they were more than willing to go spend time with and their friendship had blossomed from beyond the casual acquaintances they'd been while attending their private high school. While Annette really enjoyed Ingrid's company and her strong-willed attitude towards things, she wasn't as big of a fan of the social commitments she kept getting roped into because of her, or the gigantic bills on meals they'd rack up because of the blonde's almost inhumane appetite.

By the time Ingrid had gone back to her own apartment, Annette really wished she'd turned down the offer to be her plus-one for the event, because the more she heard about the supposedly swanky deal that Ingrid had stumbled into, the more she suspected it was a ruse to get their money out of them. Just one night of revelry and fun was going to run them nearly a quarter of their rent each, and even though Ingrid insisted she'd foot that bill in ways that she wasn't going to tell her friend, it just seemed too unrealistic to actually be something that was going to happen on their college campus. "I can't believe I've let her talk me into this!" she lamented when she laid in bed that night, pulling her pillow over her face to smother most of her screaming. "When everything goes wrong, she's going to pin the blame on me for it, and I didn't do anything except tell her I would go!"

While her fears were ultimately unfounded, Annette spent the next weeks dreading the night that Ingrid had told her the event would be taking place. They'd met up several times in the interim to plan their outfits (nearly matching blue dresses, with Annette's being longer than Ingrid's only because the lengths were what was available in their sizes), and when the day came around somehow Mercedes had been dragged in to do their hair and makeup while still doing her own. "I'm so glad we'll be sharing this experience together," Mercie said while she was running a brush through Ingrid's hair, preparing to braid it into a tight coil. "I've never attended something like this before."

"What exactly is it?" Annette asked, playing with her long and loose hair that she'd requested be left down for the night. "Ingrid hasn't told me a word of what we're going to and I'm still not exactly sure it's real, you know?"

"Oh geez, did I forget to tell you anything?" Rolling her eyes as she chuckled quietly as to not interrupt Mercie's work, Ingrid explained, "You know about the Blue Lions fraternity, don't you? Well, they have the Blue Lioness sorority as their counterpart, which, uh, Mercie and I know each other from being members of it. And tonight is the mixer for the members on both sides to get to know each other, but it's open to all students on campus."

"Wait, you have to pay some giant amount of money to attend a party that your own sorority is putting on?" Sounding confused at how that could possibly be fair, Annette turned to look at Ingrid right as she was wincing with Mercie's fingers beginning the braiding effort. "Don't you already have to pay giant fees for being a member of the sorority? That's why I never bothered trying to actually join any of them here…"

"Only non-members have to pay to get into the mixer," Mercie replied, not bothered at how Ingrid was reacting to her heavy-handed braiding, "but rumor has it that someone begged the head of the Blue Lions to let you in without paying."

Gasping as she heard that, Annette wanted to ask if it was true, but Ingrid answered before she had the chance. "I've known Dimitri since we were children, it was more like reminding him how much dirt I have on him that I could let slip if he doesn't help me out." After a quick pause where she mumbled asking for Mercie to braid a little less roughly, Ingrid added, "Plus, because I'm part of the Blue Lionesses, I know that I can't possibly end up getting charged for food. I just…didn't know how to tell you that part without telling you the rest of it as well."

"You could have just told me all of it, I would've appreciated it." It was true, Annette would have loved to know that she was friends with a sorority girl, and that their mutual friend was also a sorority girl, but she was more concerned with how she'd agreed to attend a mixer without knowing that was the plan. "Here's hoping that we're dressed up enough for this, so that maybe the guys will want to actually talk to me…"

At the same time, both Ingrid and Mercie told her not to worry about that. "You look great!" Ingrid assured her, before flinching at another hard tug of her hair. "Ack, sorry for moving on that one, Mercie. Totally my fault that time."

"If this braid ends up being uneven the whole way, I'll remind you that you said it was your fault," Mercie teased in reply, continuing on with braiding like nothing was going on around her. "And if your hair is what costs you finding someone tonight, that's not my problem. That's all on you."

Now that she knew it was a mixer they were going to, Annette was beginning to regret her choices in wardrobe and appearance. She was going to be constantly compared to Ingrid not just because they were wearing almost the same dresses, but because she was there on her insistence, and everyone in the hosting fraternity and sorority were going to know it. Even if there were other outside guests there, it was not going to be a fun time for her to be know as Ingrid's plus-one for this one occasion. Looking at herself in the mirror, she considered slathering her pale face with makeup that would mask her appearance completely, making her unrecognizable, but what stopped her was the light makeup job that Mercie had done for her before she'd moved onto Ingrid's appearance. She couldn't waste her friend's time trying to cover her insecurities, after all.

The event being called a mixer was sort of a mistake, as even though it was mixing the fraternities and sororities at the sprawling college in Garreg Mach, it was more of a speed dating event at its core. When the trio of ladies arrived, not a question asked to them about where Annette's fee was at the door, the burly man standing there giving Mercie and Ingrid a nod as he stepped aside to let them in. "That's Dedue, he's the right-hand man in charge of day-to-day operations of the Blue Lions, with Dimitri as the leader and public voice, I'm sure you'll get to meet them both tonight," Ingrid explained to Annette, while they walked to the table assigned to the three of them. They all sat on the same side, the chairs on the opposite side assigned to male names that Annette certainly didn't notice, Ingrid didn't see, and Mercie scrunched her face at.

Whoever they were, they didn't come in until after the initial round of food had been delivered to the tables, and all three ladies were eating their meals quietly. "Whoa, look at who we get to spend tonight with," one of the men loudly announced as he took his seat, while the other two looked a lot less thrilled with where they were sitting. "I was hoping we'd get paired up with some lovely ladies, and it looks like it happened!"

As he was throwing fists excitedly into the air, Mercie swallowed down her current bite of food and told him to calm down, that he was only going to be there for a little bit after the meal ended. "I've been trying to explain that to him on the walk over here," his sleepy-looking companion said, sitting across from Mercie and looking down the table at his rambunctious friend who was glancing around for where his food was. "But, like always, Caspar really does not care about what the truth is about tonight."

"I'd be inclined to agree with his excitement, however," the third man said, looking directly across the table at Annette, who had stopped eating and was looking much like a deer in headlights at how he was staring at her. "Why, I don't think I can say I'll be able to find another woman in this whole room as radiant as the first one I'll be getting to know."

Just that was enough to get her to want to leave, but Annette was stuck in that seat due to social conventions, and after the second and third, for the more ravenous eaters in the room, rounds had been cleared away, the event went into full swing. They were given three minutes to get to talk to the person directly across the table from them, then when the timer went off all men had twenty seconds to move on to the person to their right, going around the room until they'd gotten to talk to every woman in the place. From there, they'd get to pick who (if anyone) they'd want to get to know better, and the whole thing would be over.

Those first three minutes of having to actually talk to one Ferdinand von Aegir was absolute hell for Annette, because beyond her getting to say her name and her major, he controlled the conversation. He was in the middle of telling her about his family history in Adrestia when the timer went off, and he blew her a respectful kiss when he switched over to talking to Mercie instead, her next conversation being with Caspar. There was still that high amount of energy that he'd had when he'd walked in, but he was at least easier to talk to than Ferdinand had been. At least he was interested in knowing that Annette had interests beyond her classes and what she was studying as he didn't do what his friend had, but he felt to be too much even for someone spunky like Annette was.

The timer going off again signaled the next person coming over, and from there it wasn't anyone that they'd gotten to know from the meal itself so Annette wasn't as prepared for who they were or how they were going to act. Sometimes she'd look at who was in the seat across from her and recognize them from a class, or sometimes she'd know who they were from their prominence on campus. Since everyone was going to come around eventually, she was preparing herself mentally for the inevitability of Dimitri being in that seat, him being such a popular and respected student in the college despite his well-documented problems of years past, but she didn't know that before she got to him, she'd have to go through a wide variety of others.

At one point, about forty minutes into the whole mixer, Ingrid reached over and put her hand tightly on Annette's leg, squeezing it tightly. When the timer for that round went off, she leaned over and whispered into Annette's ear, "Don't fall for this one, he's mine if I can get him later," before sitting back up and greeting her new match with a smile. That led Annette to take a look at the man across from her, his dazzling smile the first thing she noticed about him, followed quickly by how he was holding a hand out for her.

"The name's Claude, it's a pleasure to get to be in your presence," he greeted, to which Annette did her best to not get transfixed by it. She wanted to help Ingrid out if she could, but she didn't know what there was to do that wouldn't accidentally come off as rude, so she accepted the handshake and they got to talking. He really was charming, and she could see why Ingrid wanted to get to him after the mixer if she could, but after their three minutes together Annette was almost considering tagging along to see if he was more interested in her than her friend.

Almost being the operative word, of course.

The next hour droned on, with very few people of the same quality as Claude coming through their table. There was one she knew from her intro to art class that seemed just as nervous about being there as she had been, and when he'd moved on to Mercie she could hear their conversation going much better than hers with him had been. There were people who didn't let Annette say anything about herself (like Ferdinand had to start) while they went on with every possible detail about themselves in an attempt to endear themselves to her. And then there were people who sat there and stared at her silently for the three minutes, not interested in knowing any further people after someone they'd gotten to meet previous to their table.

There was a second time that Ingrid's hand ended up on Annette's leg, but this was not because she'd become smitten with someone on the other side of the table; rather, it was her way of informing her friend that there were familiar faces (to her) that were coming her way. The very next person was someone that Annette did know somewhat well, because they'd shared a lot of experiences in classes together. "I wouldn't have expected to see you here, Ashe," she joked when he took his seat and smiled at her. "I didn't think you were a member of the fraternity."

"I could say the same for you about being in the sorority," he replied, and after a pause both of them assured the other that they weren't. "I got in because of my floormates, they invited me and footed the bill. How'd you get in?"

"Ingrid talked to Dimitri about me, I guess." They shared a laugh, and those three minutes went by quickly because they were having a conversation as friends, not as potential romantic interests. Ashe didn't seem like he was really interested in finding romance there anyway, so Annette was fine with the friendly, pleasant conversation. When he left, she felt like they'd have to continue the conversation again someday, just in a setting that wasn't as romantically-charged as their current one was.

She was also familiar with the next guy, although nowhere near as comfortable with him as she had been with Ashe. He was someone he'd seen come in and out of Ingrid's apartment and wave at her as he passed, but the moment he opened his mouth she wished she didn't have that low level of familiarity with him. "I've heard all about you," he said, not letting her do any introducing of herself before he was talking about what he knew because of Ingrid. The whole time, Annette sat there in shock, glancing over at Ingrid and how she was talking (or really just sitting in silence) with Dedue from the front door.

Eventually, she clued in to the fact that this man had no interest in her on a romantic level and was going about it in a different way than Ashe had. He wasn't even talking about himself, he was talking about what he knew about Annette and her life story, which was not anything she really needed to hear. It was quite a relief when he was on his way and Mercie immediately shot him down before he could even get in the chair across from her, with a stern, "Sylvain, I am not interested in your advances today or any other day. Just go ahead and do to me what you just did to poor Annette."

Thankful for a friend like that, Annette was appreciative of the three minutes of stoic silence she got from being paired with Dedue, even though it was Dimitri who was coming after him. That gave her the time to mentally prepare for talking to someone so dignified, although as it turned out, when it was her time with Dimitri he was quite easy to speak with, because he responded to anything she said with one-word answers or silence. "Sorry, this has all just been so much, I should've thought through the event plans better when I made them," he apologized at the end in his gruff manner, clutching his fur-lined jacket closer to himself as he bowed his head towards her. With an apology like the one he just gave, Annette realized that he was in over his head just like she was, and his behavior in their talk was probably not indicative of how he would speak to her otherwise.

The moment the next guy sat down, bringing their journey almost to an end as she could hear Caspar loudly talking at the next table over, Annette was ready to give a sigh of relief at making it through the scariest part, but then she looked at the man across from her and her whole body felt chilled. He was looking at her with narrowed eyes, unkempt hair hanging loose down past his shoulders much like hers was, except much darker, and before she had a chance to ask him if everything was okay, he asked, "You're the girl Ingrid says sings while doing chores, aren't you?"

"I-I am, yeah," Annette replied, almost shocked that of all the things Ingrid would have told someone, that was the one that got brought up. "It's just something I do in my free time, it's nothing too—"

She had wanted to say serious but she was cut off by him slamming his hands down on the table, startling everyone around them while she sat there completely unsure of what to do. "I've heard you, while I've been visiting with her. Your voice…it's something you should be proud of having. Your songs are unique. You actually can sing."

"—um, thank you?" She was really at a loss, as the only person who'd ever told her about the quality of her singing before had been Ingrid, and that had been enough to start their friendship. Now she was getting more compliments from one of Ingrid's friends, who happened to be one of her three-minute dates at the mixer. "I'm not actually sure how to respond to that, I'm never really great when it comes to the compliments. Which song did you happen to hear?"

"Many of them. Cooking, cleaning, homework, you've got songs for all of them."

Her teeth gritting together as she realized how often she must have been overheard, Annette's first reaction was to want to apologize, but then it hit her that bringing this up had to have been this guy's way of flirting with her. "I mean, if you want to hear more of them, I do make them up all the time. And maybe next time, you can hear them not through the wall of Ingrid's apartment!"

"A bit forward, aren't you?" he asked, eyes still narrowed at her, and while his tone was off-putting with how brash it was, he didn't seem bothered. "However, you're the first person I've spoken with tonight that hasn't either been someone I have the displeasure of already knowing or just couldn't stand upon first greeting, so perhaps your offer might be considered. That's the goal of this whole damn thing, after all, to meet new people."

She'd wanted to correct him and say it was to meet new romantic interests, but she didn't want to lose the conversation completely. "Then it's a date, except it's not really a date and we haven't set up a, well, date for it yet." She laughed, while he couldn't help but crack a smile on his otherwise stony face. "I'm sorry, I've just…not really had the chance to meet anyone who I didn't already know that I actually felt good talking to tonight, so this is all super exciting. We'll really have to meet again after this!"

His smile faded and he grunted, leaning back in the chair. "We'll see about that. You haven't even caught my name yet."

"Ooh, you're right!" Clasping her hands together, Annette leaned in closer to the table. "What is your name, mister grumpy mixer stranger who knows more about me than I'd have expected he would?"

"Felix," he replied, saying nothing more and nothing less as the timer went off and he moved over to Mercie's part of the table. For the rest of the event, his name was rolling through her mind, just so that she couldn't forget it, and she couldn't bring herself to really get into any of the other conversations she still had to have. All she wanted was to go find Felix when everything was over and set up a time where she could properly sing for him on her own terms, and nothing was going to stop her from doing just that.

Except there was one tiny little thing that did stop her, that being that as soon as the mixer was over and they were permitted to mingle however they pleased, she watched Felix and Sylvain slip out of the building and never seemed to return. While that could have been a horrible thing to happen, she knew that she could always count on Ingrid to help her talk to Felix later, provided that Ingrid didn't get too distracted by something else. "I'm surprised you didn't try to leave right away," Mercie said to her after Ingrid had bolted from the table to do as she'd said she would, while Annette remained seated. "The whole time you never seemed like you were quite into it."

"Yeah, I really wasn't for a long while, but then I met someone and…I think I might have a date that isn't a date happening in my near future?" She giggled, while a look of relief crossed Mercie's face. "What about you? Did you find anyone of interest?"

"I may have, but we'll see. I'm not going to pursue him if he feels I'm not worthy of it." Seemingly at peace with the fact that she could walk out of the mixer alone, Mercie let their conversation go on for quite some time, until the shy artist (well, since Annette knew him from art class that was what she was thinking of him as) man came up to their table and asked to speak to her; she apologized to Annette for needing to abruptly end their talk but she did get up and go somewhere else in the room to speak with him.

"I hope that he's the one you're waiting on," Annette mumbled under her breath as she watched Mercie and the artist walk away, looking at the door once they'd gotten lost in the crowd still in the room. "And I hope the one I'm waiting on comes back in, I'd really like to get that taken care of tonight!"

At one point Ashe came by while Annette was still sitting by her lonesome, just checking on her to make sure she wasn't sitting there because she'd been left out. After assuring him that no, she was just fine, he nodded happily at her. "I'm going to head out myself, I came and had a good enough time but this really wasn't the place for me. While I, er, did meet someone, I'm not entirely sure she'll give me a second glance after today, she seemed quite popular with the guys after everything was finished."

"Oh, be positive, she'll come running to you the first chance she gets! You're definitely someone worth giving a chance!" She gave him a thumbs-up before he thanked her for the encouragement and went on his way, and as she watched him go out the door she really hoped that those other guys would be coming back in, but there was no such luck.

What felt like an eternity passed with her just sitting there, watching the door while she hummed to herself songs about waiting for her friends and her potential date to come back; the next person to return happened to be Ingrid, red-faced and clutching her phone to her chest like it was her most prized possession. "Guess who managed to arrange a date with the head of the Golden Deer fraternity next week," she challenged Annette, who went wide-eyed at the credentials she'd just dropped. "Yeah, sure, his friends were all laughing when I asked him about it, but he really shut them up and told me he thought I was interesting and that he'd love to go out with me sometime. Then he just kind of told me that he's their head and he was looking for a nice girl from an unrelated sorority to get to meet and I fit the bill and I…I think I might be in love, Annette!"

"Calm down, you haven't gone on your date yet, hold those feelings in until you really know the guy." She was happy for Ingrid, she really was, but she also didn't want Ingrid approaching this date like she approached all of her meals, with full vigor and intensity. "I think Mercie met a good guy too, she's been talking with him somewhere for a long while."

True to Annette's word, when Mercedes came back all she could talk about was how she'd also arranged a date with someone she'd met. "Now, I can't say that I see myself doing too much with Ignatz, but he's a sweetheart and I would definitely enjoy getting to know him better over a cup of tea," she explained. "I do hope that you both found someone you'd like to know in the same way here tonight."

"I sure did," Ingrid replied, tacking on a slightly dreamy sigh at the end. "I'm still dazzled just thinking about how lovely Claude's eyes were in this light…"

"I think we've lost her, Annie," Mercie said to Annette with a laugh. "But what about yourself? You find anyone of note?"

On one hand, answering that question honestly while Ingrid was so distracted by her own thoughts would be safer, but on the other she knew that she risked the man she mentioned by name being someone Mercie knew as well. "I might have, but he left before I could say a word to him so I don't think it matters," she sighed, deciding that leaving it vague would be best for her at the time. "It was a good effort, though."

"If you're talking about a certain dark-haired fraternity man who spent his entire time with me staring at you, then I think you might be mistaken on how much it matters." Tilting her head to one side, there was a twinkle in Mercie's eye as she winked at Annette. "Sylvain happened to send me a text while I was speaking to Ignatz, he wanted to apologize on Felix's behalf for rushing out of here like he did, but he didn't know how to get through to you without it being through me or Ingrid."

"Oh, that's…unexpected," she replied after realizing that she'd most likely seen them leave because Felix didn't know how to handle talking to her about what they'd discussed. "I mean, I don't think I'm that intimidating. He said he liked my singing and didn't seem bothered when I suggested us having a date that isn't—"

"I'm hearing that a triple date is probably in our future, am I right, ladies?" Ingrid interrupted, grabbing both Mercie and Annette by the shoulders and shaking them a bit in her excitement. "We can all get to know the new guys and Annette can really get to know Felix and it'll be fantastic!"

"She's letting the imaginary wedding bells get to her head already," Mercie muttered as she was being shaken around by her over-enthusiastic friend, but Annette didn't really see a problem with the suggestion, not from her perspective of things. As long as she'd be able to sing for him privately sometime, not in the presence of the others, she would be perfectly fine with having a triple date with her friends and their potential boyfriends.

Maybe being dragged as a plus-one to the mixer wasn't as bad of an idea as she'd first feared.

A/N: I was told to write Annette and Felix and Ingrid and somehow this is what came out of it, lol