Chapter Text
Wiley steps back from his new, freshly decorated dorm.
Well, decorated isn’t the right word.
He has his books and his computer and a neatly-made bed, but besides for the small cactus he put in the corner for decoration, that’s about it.
That’s all he really needed though Wiley isn’t one for flashy decoration and scenery. He breathes a sigh of relief and climbs onto the abnormally tall dorm bed and falls down onto it. He’s just glad he didn’t get a shared room, it would’ve been a nightmare to figure out how to communicate because of his mutism and he would rather not deal with that.
For now, Wiley just has to think about how he will get through these first couple of days with orientation.
He looks at the time 6:00. I have to be out by 7:30 to make it to those stupid orientation activities. He groans to himself and lets his eyes drift to a close.
***
Wiley wakes up and looks at the clock,
7:45. Shit, I have 15 minutes to make it.
He jumps out of bed as best as a groggy college student can. Normally he wouldn’t go to events like these because he finds them a waste of time. However, since everything is still so new to him here he thinks why the hell not. Wiley then throws on his best up old converse, not even bothering to tie the laces and bolts out the door.
He finds himself running across campus since he doesn’t know the bus route, nor the times and decided to just take the sprint. Once the auditorium is in view he slows his pace to a jog. Being on the cross country team in high school, Wiley has found himself accustomed to running a bit. He was not at all fast, on the contrary, he was usually the anchor, he still enjoyed the bit of endurance exercise while he could. When he found himself in the auditorium, he looked around and found not a single person there. Whilst pulls out his phone and checks the orientation email he had gotten; 8:30. He grumbles and drags his palm slowly down his face. Since there was nothing better to do, Wiley sits down in a chair and waits.
After some time a group of three other students entered the auditorium, frankly, quite loudly.
“Oh my god bugsy shut up!” A girl’s voice rang out. When Wiley turned to put a face to the voice it was just what he had imagined, a blonde girl with hair pulled back into a claw clip, with a perfect face, a button nose, and a pair of ice blue eyes.
Great so this is what I have to deal with… Wiley thought to himself as the rest of the trio started to talk over each other
“Hey I can’t help it! You know how long it’s been since the three of us saw each other!” Said a male voice with a slightly nasally quality to it, Wiley assumed it to be the ‘bugsy’ character the girl had mentioned
“Ith’s only been three months truly-“ said the last and third voice with a clear and obvious lisp which Wiley questions as to how it hasn’t been corrected since those things get corrected back in elementary school. However, he remembers he doesn’t hold the ability to say words, so a lisp must be better than nothing.
At this point the trio catches Wiley looking dead at them. His eyes give off a piercing glare unbeknownst to him and it seems to creep the two guys out. The girl on the other hand, walks around and takes a seat right next to him.
“Oh my gosh hey! Do you mind if we sit here you’re kind of the first one here and we’re not really sure where to go so is it like a first come first serve or an assigned thing or…”
The girl trails off as she takes a seat directly next to Wiley without even letting him answer. Once the blonde is done with her rant the guy with the nasally voice speaks up.
“Lola, why don’t you give the poor guy a rest huh? He looks a bit overwhelmed from how much you drone” the girl, Lola, looks offended by the comment and starts to give the guys a lecture. Wiley ends up locking eyes with the guy with the lisp and signs,
[are they a couple or something?]
To which Wiley gets a response as if he’s talking in tongues, or well, hands.
Once nasal-voice-guy notices the fourth person who isn’t currently being sidetracked by a Lola he begins to say
“Hey I don’t think we’ve met before, I’m Beau Buchanan, but people just call me bugs. That over there is Lola. And on that side is-“
“Daniel Ford, but people around here juths call me Daffy”
Wiley tries to think of a way to introduce himself while still having the group understand him. He then gets a genius idea and pulls out his phone and types.
‘Hello, my name is Wiley Coyote’
He turns the phone around and gives it to bugs so he can sign the exact same phrase.
Lola seems to light up at his signing “wait stop, I took a class on this one time for a few weeks at the library, they had a program about deaf people and taught others ASL so can you hear us then?”she raises her already loud voice slightly “Did you hear us? Oh my gosh I’m so sorry” she does the sign for ‘sorry’
‘No, I can hear, I’m just mute’ and signs accordingly.
He then doesn’t bother typing and test something out
[can you understand this?] he signs to Lola
“To an extent, yeah” she exclaims
Wiley shrugs, he’s never met someone who can truly understand him whenever he signs and it’s nice to have one person now who somewhat does. He always loved being alone, but in a way it feels nice to have someone who can understand him even if that is slightly. After all, humans are supposed to be social creatures.
He zones off for a minute, putting faces to names still. Bugs with his blonde almost icy hair and wide toothed grin. Lola with a high tied ponytail, she looks like she would be the star of a movie and Wiley doesn’t doubt that she may actually be one. Finally daffy with messy black hair to which he can relate since Wiley isn’t exactly the most ‘well groomed’ when it comes to his hair. He then starts to come back to reality with the conversation between the trio still going on.
“Wow Loh-lyyyy, you’ll have to teach us some things so we can chat with our new friend” Bugs interjected. He sounded sort of smug, but still genuine about the ‘friend’ part. Which confused Wiley for a second
“Ew I told you to never call me that ever again.” Lola spat out, her eyes staring at Bugs with pure coldness.
“Sorry, Lola” Bugs looked out with a deadpan expression prepared for a lecture which he surprisingly did not get this time.
“Hey thso is it like a thspeech thing with your vocal chordths? Like how did it happen” Daffy finally speaks up after listening to his two other friends bicker.
Wiley types on his phone to give to Daffy and signs over to Lola
‘Neurological disorder, surprised didn’t get more messed up in my head.’
Lola tries to follow the signing and smiles crookedly “yeah… I might need to practice a bit more ASL… I understood like four words of that” she says gently with some obvious confusion in her voice.
Wiley smiles at the genuine remark. He is enjoying this new group of friends and realizes this may not be such a horrible experience after all. More and more students start to file in for orientation and sit around Wiley and his new companions.
***
Once orientation is over, Wiley finds himself exhausted from all the new information and people. While he is majoring in engineering, all the information about this school gets to him a bit. As he walks he begins to slow down until he hears a voice calling his name
“Wiley, helloooo, earth to Wiley” that same nasally voice exclaims from the entire orientation to which Wiley knows to associate with Bugs. Wiley turns around and tilts his head [what?] he additionally signs.
“Everyone is going out to eat, wanna join us?” The same wide toothed grin greets Wiley, just like the one Bugs flashed when he first met the small group.
[sure, why not?] Wiley looks over to Lola to see if she truly understood what he had said.
She squeals and starts to walk to her car, “then we’re off!”
Everyone piles into Lola’s car, a smaller but still sizable suv that looks a bit expensive from the inside. As Wiley looks around it’s exactly what he imagined a ‘girl’s car’ would look like. Lola then rolls down all the windows and starts blaring some songs that he isn’t familiar with, but just deals with it.
“We wanna go into the city to eat?” Lola asks over the loud music
“Sure, I honestly can go for anything to be honest as long as we eat.” Bugs exclaims from right next to her
Once Lola starts driving, she floors it on an open road. The sudden movement startles Wiley a bit and makes him try to tame his hair which is now flying in every which way. Once he gets used to the breeze he looks over to Daffy sitting right next to him.
“Thsup?” Daffy says casually with a glance to the side
Wiley shrugs, he wants to find some way to communicate that isn’t his phone but it’ll have to do for the time being. For now, he types out ‘do you know where we are going?’ He faces the phone towards Daffy so he can read it clearly. He signs along with it as if under some miracle it would help the ASL-illiterate man piece together at least some vocabulary.
“Not thsure. Hey Lola, any idea where we’re going?” Daffy shouts up front
“Not sure, are you all good for burgers? No wait, maybe sushi? No, that's risky, how about noodles? Hm, no…” Lola continues on her tangent while everyone just listens to the rambling. Once she finally decides that burgers were in fact the correct first instinct, Wiley is now able to just relax a bit with the wind blowing in his hair.
The group finds a place to park and they all walk together. Wiley still feels a bit left out within the group but everyone always makes sure to match his pace when walking at least. Once they make it to a local burger joint, everyone sits down and orders.
The rest of the time there is filled with laughter and stories of everyone’s times in high school. Wiley was the only one who grew up in a different part of New Mexico, to which Lola, Bugs, and Daffy were all very intrigued about. Wiley then begins to think that this may not be such a lonesome experience after all in a new location like this
***
Lola drops Wiley back at his dorm first. It’s already dark outside when he returns and the building lights emit a sterile glow from the inside. I have to make sure to buy some kind of new lights. Thought Wiley as he groaned about having yet another errand to run. Once he makes his way up to his room he falls down onto his bed.
The entire recollection of the day plays on repeat. It was an eventful day for Wiley. All he could think of right now was some good rest before the next morning