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The dorm room is empty. Bland. Potato tasteless.
Asriel surveys his brand-new domain with hands propped on his hips and a frown on his face. This will have to be fixed. Boxes cover the floor at his feet and he pushes and shoves until he's got them all stacked up in one corner of the room. His toolbox is the first thing he pulls out, conveniently placed in the first of his boxes. And then he gets to work.
The wall shelves go over the bed with little fuss, the long silver nails sliding through the wood like butter with the force of small drill behind them and fitting neatly into the walls. They're a deep polished brown, the closest in color they could find. The bed is neatly made, freshly laundered sheets fitting over the mattress, pillows strewed artfully across and the heavy quilt settling on top a perfect finish.
He pulls clothes out of his boxes and stacks them in the closet, puts away his books and plugs in his electronics and works through each box with singleminded focus. By the time he's done the sun has set and he's left blinking at its last rays through the window, the sky running out of purple and into blue. It makes something rise up in his chest, a little scared but mostly excited.
He can't wait for tomorrow.
The next morning finds Asriel awake hours before orientation and he scarfs down breakfast with one eye on the tablet balancing on his knee and the other on the clock. He finishes and gets dressed, throwing on an extra sweater in honor of Kris, reigning monarch of always staying warm. He's early when he gets to orientation but it's still a madhouse, students and professors milling about, people passing out flyers and free items.
Asriel throws himself into the fray and emerges from it hours later with his eyes bright and smile stretching from ear to ear, armed with knowledge and more free t-shirts than he can probably wear in his lifetime. He's early for classes too.
He finds himself a middle seat in a corner and watches the sunlight dapple, throwing light and shade onto the wooden tables. The windows are open and it smells like autumn, crisp and warm. The professor walks in with a stack of papers almost as tall as she is and Asriel watches her progress with wide eyes. The papers thump down onto the desk and the professor stands tall, gaze sweeping through the room with a sharp grin and a twitching tail. Her eyes are liquid gold. The class begins with a snap of her fingers.
The first week of classes is an exhilarating rush. He's learning things. The second week of class is a wind-up for a pitch that slams him sideways into the third. Things pile up and run together. He rushes from one deadline to the next, sleepless and worried that he's falling behind. He just barely makes it to class one day and it feels like the end of the world even though, in his head, he knows it isn't.
Suddenly, he's noticing things the rush made him forget, like how empty the other side of his room looks, how silent it is at night when it's just him staring at the ceiling with no even breathing to lull him into sleep. He picks up his phone three times in one day but the screen is still black and he can't bring himself to say anything anyways. It gets harder to make himself move.
Asriel thinks of how much easier it was to care about things when Kris was there with him, when he was responsible for pulling them forward with him, how carrying them to school made it more fun for him to go too, all those afternoon chocolate breaks and cram sessions at night when they were supposed to be sleeping and. It's just. The road ahead looks empty without them by his side.
He's hunched over his desk, staring down at the blank lines of his notebook, when it comes to him.
Hey Kris, he writes. I miss you.
The words keep coming.
Saw the roundest bird in the world yesterday and thought of you.
He writes them in the margins of his notes – It rained for five hours yesterday and I had so much hot cocoa – on napkins – Bet you're having so much pie right now you lucky little – and his textbooks – Suddenly I can't remember how to read. He drags himself up one morning before the sun rises and writes a whole letter about how it makes him feel. He takes pictures of the sticky notes on the bathroom mirror, the stack of origami cranes with words under their wings, the long rambles about the weather and homework and the way he leaves the fairy lights on at night so they look like blurry stars.
He saves up all the little moments when things line up perfectly, his professor's snappy excellent work on a paper, the morning he smells snow coming on the wind and it falls at night and blankets the campus in powder white, the librarian he meets in the back stacks at 3am who makes him laugh so hard he snorts and gives him sagely advice but only on Thursdays afternoons. He gets his phone fixed and works out a new service plan.
It's one morning, half-wrapped in blankets with a steaming mug of golden flower tea and his fifteenth attempt at homemade pie on the plate beside him that his phone beeps. He picks up and it continues to vibrate in his palms, a steady stream of images filling up his messages. The last one is a rose bush under the moonlight, lightly dewed and just barely opening up.
He grins.
Me: You're in soooo much trouble
Krispy Kreme: !
Krispy Kreme: ;]
They talk.
The next week there's knock on his door and he opens it to find the world's most bewildered freshman. He gives them the biggest, warmest smile he can.
"Howdy!" he says. "I'm Asriel, your roommate!"