Chapter Text
‘Okay, that should be the last of it.’
Mari sets the box she’s holding down onto the bedroom floor to join the six other identical ones, distinguishable only by sharpie-scrawled labels like BATHROOM and CLOTHES and BOOKS that their mom had insisted on, fretting Sunny would lose everything the second he left the house. Honestly, she was probably right - the room isn’t huge, but it’s bigger than he’d expected, and he’d take any help organising he could get.
‘Do you want me to stay and help you unpack?’ Mari’s smiling, but he can hear the worry in her voice. ‘Or I could help make you dinner, if you want to spend time decorating.’
He turns to her and plasters his best I’ll-be-alright-please-don’t-worry smile across his face, trying to convince himself just as much as her. ‘It’s alright,’ he replies. ‘I’ll call you when I’m done.’
Mari furrows her eyebrows. ‘Are you sure? I’m happy to stay. Hero won’t be home for ages, he’s giving his brother a ride here too.’
‘I’m sure,’ Sunny replied.
‘Okay,’ Mari smiles, nerves still visible in her eyes. ‘You’ll be okay?’
‘I’ll be okay.’
‘And you know I’m literally ten minutes away if you need me? Or Hero, if I’m not home. We’re never far-’
‘I’ll be okay,’ Sunny repeats, a more genuine smile replacing the other. ‘Honestly, Mari, I’m good.’
‘Okay.’ She grabs her phone from the end of his desk, tucking it into her pocket and stepping towards his bedroom door. ‘It’s so weird,’ she says, ‘that my baby brother is in college now.’ He wants to object - he’s not a baby, he’s eighteen - but he knows better than to interrupt her when she’s on one of her sentimental rants.
‘I’m here visiting enough anyway,’ he grins, ‘the only weird part is that I’m living by myself and not taking up space on Hero’s sofa bed.’
Mari smiles, shaking her head. He can see tears forming in the corners of her eyes, and knows he needs to kick her out before she starts another sibling-wide crying session - the third in the last day, not that he’s counting.
‘Okay,’ he starts, ‘I’m gonna start unpacking.’ He pulls one of the flags his dad had brought him as a going-away present out of the box marked DECORATIONS and squints, turning around slowly as if to picture where it’d look best on his walls.
‘I’ll take the hint,’ Mari smiles, stepping out of the door. ‘I love you. Call me when you’re done - and Mom, so she doesn’t worry.’
‘I love you too,’ he replies, but he’s not sure she hears him; the door slams shut before he’s finished speaking.
Okay, so this is real. This is it - he’s moved out, officially. This is his bedroom, and he can step out of the door and walk, like, ten paces to his new kitchen. He’s a good solid four hours away from the only home he’s ever known, and in a week’s time, he’ll start classes and be a Real Life College Student.
It’s not complete independence - Mari’s only a street or two away, and he knows she’ll be checking on him at every given opportunity - but he’s still here, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.
Fuck.
His room is completely empty, except for the boxes on the floor and the chai latte that he got with Mari from a Starbucks drive-thru on the way here perched on top of one of them. He takes a sip. It’s lukewarm. Great, he thinks, throwing the cup into the trash. Now I’m gonna need to get myself another coffee.
He folds up the flag and glances around the room, trying to mentally position the keepsakes and decorations he’d brought. There wasn’t much to it - a bed that was small but seemed comfortable enough, a desk that stretched across half of one wall, a closet, some bookshelves, the door to his bathroom, and a window looking out onto the parking lot. Mari had woken him up at 4AM, insisting they arrive early to avoid the chaos, but he could still see swarms of other students outside - some moving boxes identical to his out of cars and into their new rooms, some mid-tearful goodbyes, embracing their hysterical parents as they unpack.
His mom hadn’t been looking forward to him leaving. No parent would be, he guesses, but she really hadn’t taken it well, crying every time he or Mari had even mentioned the word college for the past two weeks.
‘I’m just protective,’ she’d said, laughing through tears one night over dinner after his dad had brought up driving down to visit them both in a month or so. ‘I’m only just over Mari leaving - Sunny, my only son… I don’t want to lose you as well.’ He’d tried to tell her she wasn’t losing anything - he was moving to college, not joining a commune - but there was nothing to be done about her terminal empty-nest syndrome, so he left it. That’s why she’d chosen to let Mari drive him down; as well as meaning she didn’t have to drive back home, it’d save the inevitable floods of tears when she left him after moving in. Leaving home at 4AM had meant she was too tired to cry too much, which was a blessing.
Still - listening to his mom sob down the phone at nine in the morning isn’t exactly at the top of Sunny’s list of ways to spend the morning, so he throws his phone onto the bed and watches it hit the star-printed sheets with a slight bounce. The bare white walls remind him, weirdly, of a strange recurring dream he used to have as a child. He picks up one of the boxes and starts unloading its contents, eager to breathe some life into the room and pick up another caffeine boost before the people he’s living with start piling in.
---
Basil is used to the early morning campus weather, but the chill of early September has him wishing he’d worn something warmer than just a sweater. He crashes through the door of the library with a sigh of relief and a distinct lack of grace, grateful like never before that the heating was turned up to max. The sole worker at the cafe counter raises her hand to him in a wave, her eyes having lost the surprise that they held the first time she’d seen him there this early.
‘Hi, Basil,’ she grins, already pulling a disposable cup from the stack next to her. ‘The usual?’
‘Good morning, Polly,’ he replies, squinting at her name tag to make sure he hasn’t screwed it up and tapping his student card preemptively onto the payment machine. ‘That’d be lovely, thank you.’
He crosses the floor to one of many empty tables, slipping his laptop out of his bag and opening it to his first page of notes.
‘Here you go,’ Polly says, pushing his hot chocolate over the counter towards him. ‘It’s not even the first week of classes yet.’ She shoots him a quizzical look. ‘How do you have enough pre-semester work to have a 10AM library habit within a week of moving in?’
He smiles, shaking his head slightly. ‘This isn’t work,’ he replies. ‘Not actual work, anyway. I’m working on something for a blog.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah,’ Basil replies, fidgeting with the end of his sleeve. ‘I run a photography blog.’
‘That’s awesome!’ Polly’s eyes widen in excitement. ‘What kind of photography do you do?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing fancy or anything,’ he answers, chuckling nervously and pulling his phone out of his pocket. ‘Here, I’ll show you.’
He opens one of the folders in his camera roll titled SUMMER 2022 and turns the screen to show her, swiping through the photos slowly. They're mostly candids, taken on days out with his friends when he knew they weren’t looking: one of his friends mid-theatrical jump into the lake near his house, the sunset framing her and casting a shadow on the water; the grins of the group as they sat down to eat on the grass; the reflection of a smile in a glass of orange juice on a diner counter. He didn’t think they were anything special, really, just a way to document moments he enjoyed with his friends, but they’d liked them enough to insist he put them into some kind of album, and he's far more handy with years-old Tumblr HTML codes than he’d ever be with physical film and photo albums, so he’d set one up at their request.
‘Basil, these are awesome.’ Polly looks at his phone, and then at Basil, and then back at his phone, almost in disbelief. ‘You’re not a Photography student, are you?’
‘No,’ he replies, sheepish. ‘Biology.’
‘ Why?’ Polly shakes her head, disappointed. ‘You could totally make a career out of this, these look great.’
Basil laughs, slipping his phone back into his jeans. ‘I think it’s really better as a hobby,’ he says. ‘That kind of work isn’t very sustainable.’
‘I guess so,’ Polly begins, but she’s cut short by the oddly noisy gust of wind that blows through the door as it opens and slams behind another surprise library visitor.
Basil spins around in confusion, eager to see who else is crazy enough to spend a day in the library a week before semester begins. Part of him expects some kind of stereotypical bookish artsy student, travel mug in one hand and backpack slung around the other, nose in the air, the whole nine yards. The boy that’s standing in the entrance maybe couldn’t be further from that - he’s not carrying a bag, instead clutching his wallet in one white-knuckled hand, visibly shaken from the wind. He’s paler than Basil - it makes a welcome change, though he doesn’t quite have Basil’s permanent blushed cheeks and nose - and quite a bit taller than him, too, but judging from his lack of weather-appropriate clothing, lacks the same amount of common sense. He’s very obviously completely lost, and it’s almost cute, but Basil doesn’t let himself think anything more of it. Almost is fine. He can deal with almost. Anything more than that, and that’s where trouble starts.
He runs one hand through his dark and dishevelled hair, and makes a beeline towards the counter.
‘Can I help you?’ Polly asks, smiling slightly in amusement.
‘Sorry,’ the boy begins, only now taking a look around the almost completely empty first floor of the library. ‘I read on a sign that this was the only coffee place on campus open so early.’
‘That’s right,’ she replies. ‘What can I get for you?’
The boy’s eyes dart over the menu and he runs his fingers over the edge of the sleeve of his hoodie, biting his lip slightly. ‘Could I get a chai latte?’
‘Of course,’ Polly replies. The boy smiles gratefully, but his eyes continue to dart around the counter in confusion. She follows his gaze to the payment machine. ‘You can use your student ID card to pay,’ she explains. ‘We’re usually good to take cash, too, but there’s a bit of a teething problem with the new cash register, so that’s not ideal for today.’
Pretty Library Boy grimaces, flicking through the cards in his wallet and gritting his teeth together in disappointment. ‘Actually, I don’t think I have it w-’
‘I’ll get it,’ Basil interjects, tapping his card to the machine and turning quickly away to re-take his seat. God, that was the smoothest he’s ever been. Thank God he didn’t have to open his mouth, that would ruin the whole thing.
‘Are you sure?’ the boy asks, turning to place one cold hand on Basil’s shoulder. ‘You don’t have to, I can go back and grab it.’
Awesome. This is so great. He has such a great history of not making a fool out of himself around new people.
‘Yeahthat’sfine,’ Basil replies, jerking his shoulder away and practically running to his seat.
So smooth. Smooth as butter. Could not get any smoother. For God’s sake.
The boy smiles as Polly passes his drink to him and thanks her, leaning closer to the counter.
‘Do you know his name?’ he asks, shooting a confused glance towards Basil. ‘I wanna be able to pay him back when I find my card.’
Polly grins. ‘Basil,’ she replies. ‘He’s in here a lot, you won’t miss him.’
Basil cringes from his seat, berating their apparent inability to be quiet in any capacity. Way to go, Polly. As if Cute Library Boy didn’t think he was strange enough, now he’s aware of the library habit. And so his typical nerd status has been established before classes even begin.
‘I’m Sunny,’ he hears the boy respond. ‘I’ll definitely be back.’
The door swings closed behind him as he leaves, and Basil barely has time to register Polly’s chuckle as he leans his head into his hands, turning the name over and over again in his mind.
Sunny. He takes a look outside, watches the wind whip around the leaves of the campus trees. Ironic, but he thinks it fits.