Chapter Text
The shrill vibration of his phone was what woke Wemmbu the next morning, not his alarm.
He groaned, the sound muffled by the dense cotton of his pillow, and reached blindly across the cluttered nightstand. His fingers fumbled past an empty water glass and a half-empty bottle of Adderall before finally pinning the phone against the wood. Squinting through bleary, half-open eyes, he fully expected to see a chaotic flurry of group-chat notifications—Egg sending some ungodly loud video before eight in the morning, or someone complaining about the damp, freezing fog currently clinging to the dorm window.
Instead, a solitary message sat pinned to the top of his lock screen.
Flame: morning, bro
Wemmbu’s eyebrows knit together. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, dragging a palm down his face to wipe away the remaining haze of sleep.
Before his thumb could even swipe the screen unlock, a second message chimed softly into the dim bedroom.
Flame: save me a seat in lecture
He sat there in the pale morning light, staring at the translucent gray bubble on the screen for several long, quiet seconds.
That... was it?
No demands for public humiliation. No absurd, elaborate dares meant to destroy his remaining dignity in front of their friends. No making him carry a three-ton stack of textbooks across the quad, or parading around in something embarrassing, or paying for Flame's over-customized matcha lattes for seven straight days.
Just—save me a seat.
Wemmbu: that’s your first favor?
Flame: yea
Wemmbu: bro, you did allat just to make me reserve a chair
Flame: can you read?
Wemmbu: you’re wasting your victory bro
Flame: get there before me
Wemmbu tossed the phone onto the bed with a muted thud and swung his legs over the frame, the chill of the hardwood floor biting instantly into his bare feet.
The entire twenty-minute trek across campus was spent in a state of quiet, hyper-vigilant paranoia. The crisp October air smelled of wet pine, damp concrete, and the faint diesel fumes of early morning shuttle buses crawling through the gates. Leaves in violent shades of amber and rust skittered across the brick pathways, crunching softly under his boots.
Wemmbu kept his eyes peeled, convinced there had to be an angle he wasn't seeing. Flame wasn't a merciful winner. Flame was a strategist—a smug, calculating hybrid who took agonizing pleasure in watching Wemmbu squirm. This was a psychological trap, he reasoned. Flame was intentionally lulling him into a false sense of security before dropping something completely unhinged on him.
By the time he pushed open the heavy glass doors of the lecture hall, his stomach was tied in tight, anxious knots.
The room was vast, an amphitheater of tiered oak desks and velvet-plush fold-down seats that were usually half-empty for a nine-a.m. survey course. Wemmbu marched straight toward the middle section, picking two seats with a clear view of the projection screen—far enough from the back to look attentive, but far enough from the front to avoid being cold-called.
He dropped his heavy backpack on the seat to his right, marking it as occupied, and slid into his own chair. He pulled out his notebook, uncapped a pen, and sat back, he eyes glued to the double doors at the bottom of the steps.
Students trickled in like quiet ghosts, dragging by the light of their phones into the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.
The professor was already uncoiling the cord of his lapel mic when the back doors swung open with a quiet, pneumatic hiss.
Flame sauntered in.
He didn't look like someone who had rolled out of bed twenty minutes ago. His dreads fell into artfully messy waves over his forehead, and his tail swayed in a slow, hypnotic pendulum behind his long wool coat. His ears twitched lazily at the hushed chatter of the room, catching the pale morning light cut through the high clerestory windows.
He didn't glance at the front row, nor did he scan the back rows where their usual friend group tended to hide. His amber eyes locked onto Wemmbu instantly, a small, knowing curve already tugging at the corner of his lips.
Wemmbu felt a weird, sudden spike in his heart rate. He quickly leaned sideways, grabbing his bag off the adjacent seat and tossing it onto the floor beneath his knees, glaring as Flame descended the carpeted stairs with agonizingly slow, deliberate steps.
“Late,” Wemmbu muttered under his breath the second Flame slid into the newly vacated seat next to him. The faint scent of sandalwood, cool air, and rich espresso settled into the narrow space between them.
“What? I’m on time, bro,” Flame murmured, glancing at the clock on the wall, his voice a low, smooth rasp that sounded dangerously quiet. He leaned back, crossing one leg over his knee. “And it doesn’t matter either way. I’m guaranteed a seat anyway.”
“You’re an idiot,” Wemmbu grumbled, opening his laptop to avoid staring at Flame for too long. “What a waste of your stupid ‘master-and-servant’ week just so you didn’t have to look for a chair.”
“Did I?” Flame tilted his head, leaning slightly into Wemmbu’s personal space. His dark horns caught the harsh fluorescent glow overhead, throwing a faint, sharp shadow across the wooden desk. He rested his elbow on the shared armrest, his jaw resting in his palm as he looked at Wermmbu sideways with a mischievous grin. “I don’t think it’s a waste at all.”
“Uh-huh. It’s pathetic,” Wemmbu insisted, tapping his fingers against his trackpad with a little too much force. “I had a whole list of insufferable things planned for you if you won. You have no imagination at all, bro.”
Right at the faint, tapered tips of his horns, a prickle of violet light flickered—a brief, soft ember that flared and immediately died.
Flame caught it instantly.
“You didn’t spend all night worrying about what I was gonna make you do, did you?” Flame teased softly, his voice dropping an octave as the professor began to speak at the podium below. “You didn’t lie awake in bed, wondering how bad I was gonna make it for you?” He laughed at the thought.
“No,” Wemmbu said instantly, turning his head to look Flame dead in the eye. “Why would I? I just thought there’d be…more.”
The violet light at the tips of Wemmbu's horns burst back to life, glowing with a soft, undeniable, unmistakable radiance—pulsing rhythmically in the dim rows of the lecture hall like a neon sign broadcasting every single one of his hidden, anxious thoughts.
“Good to know," Flame whispered, his eyes lingering on the bright purple glow illuminating the side of Wemmbu's face.
Wemmbu frowned. “You could’ve just texted me.”
“I did.”
“No, like…you could’ve just asked, bro.”
Flame looked genuinely thoughtful for a moment before answering. “Could’ve. But would you have done it?”
Wemmbu opened his mouth. Closed it. “...Probably not.”
“Exactly, bro.”
The answer was so matter-of-fact that it robbed Wemmbu of any comeback he might have had.
Throughout the rest of the lecture, he found himself glancing sideways every so often, still waiting for Flame to reveal the real punchline. It never came. Flame took notes exactly as he always did, asked one question during class, borrowed Wemmbu's highlighter without saying anything beyond a quiet "Thanks," and handed it back before the lecture ended.
It was, objectively, the least dramatic use of a wager in the history of competitive people. Especially people with Flame’s level of competitiveness of all people.
Which somehow made it linger in Wemmbu's mind far longer than if Flame had asked for something outrageous.
The morning sun barely managed to pierce the heavy gray cloud cover when the familiar, aggressive rattle of Wemmbu’s phone hummed across the wooden surface of his nightstand.
He didn't even bother dragging his head out from under the duvet. He just let out a long, exhausted sigh into the darkness of his pillow, listening to the glass surface vibrating against the wood like a tiny, relentless jackhammer. He didn’t need to look at the lock screen to know who it was.
Flame: moooorning
Flame: another day, another favor, bro.
Wemmbu pulled the blanket down past his nose, staring up at the popcorn ceiling while a knot of quiet apprehension tightened in his chest. He reached over, snatching the phone, his thumb hovering over the glass. He was almost afraid to type out the response, fully expecting Flame to finally drop the hammer—to demand he hand over his leather jacket for the week, or force him to stand in the middle of the student union and sing the university fight song at the top of his lungs.
Wemmbu: what is it now
The three grey typing dots appeared instantly, pulsing with an infuriatingly steady rhythm before resolving into text.
Flame: study with me after class
Wemmbu scoffed. Studying? Was this guy serious?
Wemmbu: no way THATS what you chose bro
Wemmbu: that is UNBELIEVABLY boring
Flame: mhm
Wemmbu: why?
Flame: because i won bro
Wemmbu groaned aloud, tossing the phone face-down onto the mattress and throwing an arm over his eyes. The sheer audacity was almost impressive.
By four o'clock that afternoon, the autumn sky had turned a bruise-like shade of indigo, and a chilly, biting drizzle had begun to slick the cobblestone paths of the university grounds.
The café sat just off the edge of campus, tucked beneath a row of trees whose branches filtered the late afternoon sunlight into shifting patches across the outdoor tables. It was comfortably busy without feeling crowded, filled with the steady murmur of students typing away at laptops, highlighting textbooks, and pretending they weren't watching the couple arguing over a statistics worksheet in the corner.
The interior smelled intoxicatingly rich—roasted espresso beans, damp autumn coat wool, and the sweet, buttery warmth of freshly baked pastries cooling near the register.
lame ordered first, barely looking at the chalked menu before rattling off a drink with the practiced ease of a regular.
When it was Wemmbu's turn, he reached instinctively into his back pocket for his wallet.
"You don't have to," Flame said lightly.
Before Wemmbu could protest, the barista offered a polite, practiced smile.
"You're all set," she said, tapping the touch screen.
“...What?”
“He already paid.”
Wemmbu turned sharply toward Flame, his brown pulled low in instant suspicion.
“You bought my drink?”
“You came because of me," Flame said simply, shifting his weight onto one leg. His ears twitched at the sudden hiss of the espresso machine behind the counter.
“So?”
“So I invited you.”
“You didn’t invite me, you forced me.”
Flame shrugged. “A little.”
“And then you bought me coffee?”
“Yeah?”
“Why?”
“Because it would’ve been rude not to?”
For a moment, Wemmbu simply stared at him, his wallet still held uselessly in his hand.
He had spent the entire walk over preparing for some elaborate joke, some hidden condition attached to the favor, something that would justify all the smug confidence Flame had shown since winning the bet. He had braced himself for a cruel bit of theater, for Flame to flaunt his victory in front of the cashier or make him beg for a pastry.
Instead...
He had a warm, steaming cup of iced dark roast placed gently into his hand, a quiet corner table waiting by the tall window, and a rival who apparently treated buying coffee with the same quiet matter-of-factness as holding open a door.
"You're weird," Wemmbu muttered, pulling his hands back into his hoodie pockets as they walked toward a small wooden table tucked away in the back.
"I'm polite," Flame corrected smoothly, sliding into the chair opposite him. He set his own drink down, unzipping his bag with slow, deliberate grace. "There's a difference."
"No, there isn't. Not when it's you." Wemmbu dropped his heavy backpack onto the floor with a dull thud, sinking into his chair and wrapping both hands around his plastic cup, using the condensation to ground himself. "You're plotting something. This is a setup."
"I'm keeping your GPA floating above water, Wemmbu," Flame purred softly, setting his pen down with a quiet click. He rested his chin in his hand, his sleek dark horns catching the warm lamp light, casting long, elegant shadows across his cheekbones. "You should be thanking me. Most rivals don't offer free tutoring."
"I don't need tutoring from you," Wemmbu snapped, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table to narrow the distance between them. "I missed one question on that midterm, Flame. One. I don't need to spend my afternoon sitting here pretending like you're some kind of academic messiah."
Oh?" Flame tilted his head, his cat ears angling forward with dark, razor-sharp amusement. His smirk curled slowly into place, impossibly smug. "So you're not struggling with the reaction mechanisms in chapter four at all?"
"Not even a little bit," Wemmbu lied smoothly, maintaining eye contact with unshakeable conviction. "I mastered that section like, three weeks ago. I'm practically an expert."
Right on cue, at the tapered obsidian tips of Wemmbu's horns, a soft violet light flickered into existence. It didn't just flicker—it ignited into a gentle, brilliant glow, pulsing rhythmically like a purple neon pulse in the dim blue twilight of the conservatory. The light washed over Wemmbu's dark hair and cast a delicate, violet sheen across the mahogany table.
Wemmbu, completely oblivious to his body’s betrayal, kept his chin held high, offering Flame a triumphant, superior grin. "In fact, I could probably teach you a few things."
Flame stared up at the glowing violet tips hovering above Wemmbu’s head, his amber eyes glittering with intense, quiet delight. A soft, breathy chuckle escaped his throat, his tail swishing with utter satisfaction against the chair legs.
He leaned across the table, sliding a heavily annotated notebook toward Wemmbu, his fingertips lingering on the paper.
"Is that so, expert?" Flame whispered, his voice dropping into a smooth, teasing purr that made the hairs on the back of Wemmbu's neck stand up. "Then go ahead. Explain page ninety-two to me."
The violet light on Wemmbu's horns flared even brighter, pulsing wildly in the quiet room.
Flame pulled his chair around to Wemmbu’s side of the small wooden table, close enough that the soft fur of his cat tail brushed against Wemmbu’s knee with every slow, rhythmic swish.
"Look here," Flame murmured, his forefinger tapping a complex chemical structural diagram on his laptop screen. He didn't mock, and he didn't gloat; instead, his tone shifted into something quietly precise, his voice a low, soothing purr against the soft hum of the café’s jazz playlist.
Wemmbu leaned over, his shoulder practically touching Flame’s. He stared at the screen, brow furrowed in intense concentration as Flame broke down the spatial geometry step by step—drawing out orbital overlaps on a scrap piece of paper with fluid, confident strokes.
"So the intermediate state is planar..." Wemmbu mused, squinting at the drawing. He tried to sound completely unbothered, as if he’d known it all along. "Right. Obviously. I was just... testing if you knew that."
At the tips of Wemmbu’s horns, a quiet, lavender pulse flickered softly, casting a faint glow across the margin of Flame’s textbook.
Flame’s dark ears twitched, dipping slightly as a soft, breathy chuckle escaped him. He didn't even turn his head to look at the light show this time—he just traced another reaction arrow onto the paper. "Of course you were. Naturally."
An hour bled into two, and two into three.
The filtered afternoon sunlight outside the tall windows slowly bruised into a deep, velvety navy. The ambient chatter of the café dwindled to the occasional clatter of dishware and the low steam-hiss of the espresso machine being cleaned for the evening.
Wemmbu sat back with a heavy exhale, cracking his knuckles as he finally finished transcribing the last set of practice problems. His brain felt like melted butter, but for the first time in weeks, the material actually made sense.
“Okay, but what about this one,” Wemmbu said, turning his laptop toward his rival. “I did literally exactly what you said, and—”
He paused.
Flame hadn't responded.
Wemmbu glanced over, fully expecting to catch Flame giving him that insufferable smirk.
Instead, Flame’s head was resting heavily against his folded arms on the wooden table, cushioned by the sleeve of his dark wool coat. His ears laid back, completely relaxed and motionless, while his tiger tail hung motionless over the side of the chair, its tip resting on the floor.
Wemmbu froze, hand hovering over his trackpad. “Flame?” he whispered softly.
A strange, quiet warmth settled into Wemmbu's chest, surprising him with its sudden weight.
Very gently, so as not to wake him, Wemmbu reached across the table and nudged his own untouched jacket toward Flame, draping it over his rival's shoulders to block out the chill from the window draft.
Flame stirred faintly, his cat ears giving a tiny, instinctive twitch at the warmth, but he didn't wake. He just buried his face a little deeper into the crook of his elbow with a low, barely audible hum.
Wemmbu pulled his iced coffee closer, sitting quietly in the softly lit corner of the café, watching over his sleeping rival while the rain began to fall against the glass outside.
For a few minutes, Wemmbu did nothing.
Which, admittedly, was unusual.
Normally, silence around Flame felt impossible. There was always something—some comment, some observation, some irritatingly accurate remark that made Wemmbu want to argue purely on principle. Flame had a talent for making even the simplest conversations feel like competitions neither of them had officially agreed to enter.
But now, without Flame awake to challenge him, the quiet felt strangely unfamiliar.
The café had emptied out around them with time without either of them noticing. The once crowded tables were now scattered with abandoned coffee cups and open textbooks, the voices that had filled the room earlier replaced by the soft hum of the overhead lights and the steady tapping of rain against the windows.
He looked back at Flame, who had somehow managed to fall asleep in the middle of a study session like this was a completely normal thing to do. His notes were still open beside him, his pen resting loosely between his fingers. Wemmbu’s eyes drifted down to the open planner sitting beside Flame's laptop. It was crammed with tiny, frantic handwriting: double shifts at the campus library, upper-level seminar prep, research lab hours, and early-morning study blocks color-coded in dense, messy blocks of ink.
For someone who was supposedly always prepared, Flame looked surprisingly exhausted.
Wemmbu stared for a moment longer than he intended.
Then immediately looked away.
“Flame,” he said again, a little louder this time.”
Nothing.
Wemmbu sighed. “Are you serious, bro,” he mumbled.
The ambient noise of the café—the rhythmic clinking of ceramic mugs, the dull roar of the espresso machine, the soft pitter-patter of rain against the tall glass—seemed to fade into the background, leaving a strange, quiet stillness hanging over their table.
Wemmbu sat staring at the soft, steady rise and fall of Flame’s shoulders for a long moment before he finally reached across the small wooden expanse. He hesitated, fingertips hovering just an inch above the dark fabric of Flame's wool coat, before he lightly tapped his rival's shoulder.
"Hey," Wemmbu murmured, his voice softer than he had intended. "Wake up."
A low, muffled sound of quiet protest escaped Flame’s throat, vibrating gently against the wood of the table. He stirred slowly, blinking several times, his eyes searching the warm, dimly lit cafe as if trying to piece together where—and when—he was.
or a rare, fleeting second, the armor was completely gone.
There was no sharp, smug expression tugging at his lips. No sharp, teasing remark waiting on his tongue. No glint of dark, catlike amusement shining in his eyes. Just a soft, bleary sort of confusion that stripped away his usual untouchable aura, leaving him looking far less intimidating—and far more human—than he ever allowed himself to appear.
"...What time is it?" Flame muttered, his voice raspy from sleep.
Wemmbu leaned back in his chair, raising an eyebrow with a quiet sigh. “I don’t know bro, you tell me.”
Flame rubbed a hand over his face, dragging his palm down his jaw before turning his head to squint toward the vintage brass clock mounted near the counter.
“Oh. I didn't realize it got this late," Flame murmured, leaning back into his seat and looking out toward the window, where the steady rain had turned the dark glass into a blurry, distorted reflection of the café's golden hanging lights.
“Clearly.”
They began packing their things, but the sharp, electric friction that usually defined their dynamic had dissolved into a quiet, almost domestic rhythm. The loud, theatrical back-and-forth was replaced by a comfortable silence that neither of them seemed particularly eager to break. Wemmbu shoved his laptop and cords into his backpack, while Flame gathered the scattered sheets of paper between them, neatly aligning the edges of his handwritten notes despite the fact that he was inevitably going to reorganize them the second he made it back to his dorm room.
When they finally pushed open the heavy glass doors and stepped outside, the cold, biting evening air hit them like a physical wall, thick with the scent of damp earth and crushed autumn leaves.
Wemmbu shuddered against the damp chill, reaching instinctively to pull his denim jacket tighter around his shoulders.
His hands caught on thin air.
He froze in his tracks on the wet cobblestone path, blinking into the dark.
Because Flame was already wearing it.
His jacket—the black one with the faded patches that Wemmbu had draped over Flame’s shoulders an hour ago—was still settled snugly over Flame’s broad frame. Flame had simply slid his arms through the sleeves while still half-asleep, zipped it halfway up, and walked out the door without a second thought.
“...Wait,” Wemmbu blurted out, stopping beneath the amber glow of a campus streetlamp. “You’re still wearing that.” Wemmbu gestured vaguely toward Flame’s torso.
Flame looked down at himself, his eyes lingering on the dark fabric. “Oh.” He shrugged, the breeze rustling his hair. “I was tired.”
“That’s your excuse?”
Flame shrugged.
He looked at Flame—really looked at him—standing beneath the flickering streetlamp, still carrying the faint shadows of exhaustion under his eyes, looking warm and absurdly comfortable in a jacket that wasn't his. Technically, Flame was right. He had been exhausted.
And somehow, that undeniable truth made the fluttering feeling in Wemmbu's chest so much worse.
Wemmbu let out a defeated breath that bloomed into a cloud of white mist in the cold air, turning to walk again. "Whatever. Just don't ruin it."
hey fell into step side by side, heading back toward the student housing district, their footsteps falling into a easy, synchronized rhythm beneath the quiet, steady hum of the rain. The winding brick pathways were nearly empty now, the usual daytime rush of students replaced by the occasional late-night library goer hurrying past with an umbrella pulled low against the wind.
For once, neither of them seemed in any hurry to fill the silence with petty jabs or clever comebacks. It was a rare truce, fragile and quiet, lingering between them like the cold air.
Which was probably why Wemmbu noticed it.