Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He didn’t know whether to be scared or horny.

(Probably some mix of the two)

In front of him, the wolf raises his head, expression unreadable.

Swan clears his throat, suddenly very aware of how long those teeth were.

“Right,” he says, trying very hard not to sound like prey. “So, how did this happen again?”

Six Months Prior

“And this is the key to your room!”

Swan looks down at the paper tag looped through the end.

‘Abstemiousness’

He glances up, eyebrow raised questioningly.

They’d already moved onto the next student.

Huffing, Swan slings his bag over his shoulder and, grabbing his luggage case, moves off in search of the dormitory that was to be his for the next year.

‘ Probably would have helped if they told me what building it was in.’

He’s left with two options: wander through each building individually until he found someone else with the word ‘abstemiousness’ scrawled on their tag, or he he could ask one of the students already in uniform who’d managed to divest themselves of their luggage if they had any idea where he was supposed to go.

Pride and common sense battle briefly but before he could make his mind up, a student walks up to him.

“Hey there!” he chirps. “You look lost! How can I help?”

Swan blinks down at him, blinded by the glare off his teeth.

“Uhh-”

“Ah! An international student! Let me show you around!”

Why does this kid have so many teeth, what the fuck.

“I am not lost,” Swan interjects. “I am looking for my room.”

“There’s no need to be ashamed! Plenty of people struggle on their first day!”

‘ Deep breaths,’ he thinks to himself as his self-appointed guide starts cutting a swathe through the crowd, chattering away about the perils of starting a new school and how he mustn’t be upset if he gets homesick because everyone goes through it when they start at boarding school.

He’s so intently ignoring the tripe spilling out of this guys mouth that it takes him a minute to realise they’ve arrived at a dorm building with ‘Beresford’ carved into the stone over the door in solid block script.

“-ron, though of course isn’t your fault at all, and really who among us hasn’t had to deal with negative influ-”

“That’s great,” cuts in Swan. “Thank you.”

With that, he neatly sidesteps the student and strides through the open door, leaving the poor guy gaping on the steps.

Once he gets inside, he starts understanding why he didn’t get an actual room number. 

All along the corridors, the rooms have different words in place of the standard numerical system. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the actual words, and whoever came up with the names seems to have gone out of their way to use the most convoluted and unusual synonym they could.

A whole corridor determined not to be ‘like other girls’.

As he shuffles down the hall, passing other students, some with parents wailing tearful goodbyes, some with parents opting for a more controlled send-off, some students seemingly alone.

Someone has music playing on a Bluetooth speaker and Swan feels his pace change slightly until he’s taking a step every second beat.

He looks at the doors he passes, mumbling their names as he does so.

“Tact, Serenity, Nuance, Certitude”

‘ Who the hell names these things? ’

Eventually he finds his way to one marked ‘abstemiousness’, and pushes the door open.

Inside the curtains are drawn and it seems his roommate is already well established - probably a student who stayed there over summer break.

Shutting the door behind him, he puts his bags down on the unoccupied bed and looks over at the other side of the room.

The space over the bed is dominated by a sizable collection of photos and smaller ones that look like polaroids, though it’s hard to determine what most of them actually show through the gloom.

He steps forwards, squinting to try and get a better look.

Most of them seem to be candids of different combinations of the same group of  four or five teenagers against various backgrounds.

One picture in particular catches his eye. 

It looks to have been a selfie of the group, taken by a boy with bright blue hair. 

Swan is about to shuffle a little closer when a small noise comes from the bed and the duvet shifts slightly and he jumps back, trying not to trip on a discarded hockey stick.

A tuft of that same blue hair pokes out from what Swan had thought was just a pile of clothes but on closer inspection turns out to indeed be a pile of clothes on top of a duvet and - apparently - a sleeping teenager.

He’s just glad he hadn’t woken the guy, he must be exhausted to still be sleeping soundly at two in the afternoon.

Realising that he didn’t actually know the guys name, Swan looks around to see if there’s anything with the guys name on it, moving almost comically slowly to try not knock against anything. 

Turns out he didn’t even have to look that hard, strewn across the large desk wedged between the beds are two jerseys bearing the Aglionby crest, one proclaiming ‘Prokopenko’, the other with ‘Jiang emblazoned across the back.

‘ Well that’s no help.’

Oh well, he decides, he’s going to have to introduce himself at some point.

His mother had instructed him to force himself to stay awake and then crash at nine pm in order to stave off the worst of the jetlag, but she’s a continent away and Swan is suddenly feeling very tired and his bed looks so very comfortable.

When he wakes up, the setting sun has lit the far wall on fire, warm evening orange catching on the glossy paper of the photos.

He can vaguely make out the dark blur of his roommate silhouetted against the window, bracing himself, before he drops out of the frame and out of view.

‘ Fucking Americans,’ he thinks as he drifts back to sleep. 

Classes don’t start until Monday, and somehow he manages to go almost the whole weekend without catching a glimpse of his elusive roommate.

He gets his schedule, and manages to decode the borderline nonsensical acronyms - though GeAgSc is still a mystery. He spends Saturday wandering around the campus and trying to figure out his routes between classes. There’s a shortcut from PE (nine am on Monday mornings - illegal and disgusting) to English that goes through a small copse of trees to get there. 

At first, Swan lets himself daydream about it being virgin territory, that no one else had ever realised this secret passing place before, but he finds a scattering of cigarette buds behind a thick root that, when he perches on it, makes a pretty good bench.

The noticeboard in the central courtyard has a variety of posters advertising different clubs and activities, and he makes note of times for the hockey trials.

There’s a moment when he lingers over the ‘football’ one, but reasons it’s more likely than not American football and disregards it. There’s also a poster for something called ‘exy’ which just sounds like wannabe lacrosse, so he ignores it.

He’s crossing the courtyard when he hears shouting and, against his better judgment, his head turns to follow the noise.

A crowd has already gathered in the carpark, a mob of excitable teenage boys forming a neat circle around the source of the ruckus.

Swan joins them, quietly relishing the fact that his height advantage allows him to just peer directly over the tops of their heads.

In the centre of the circle, he can see two students going at it.

It’s far from the half-hearted shoving one normally sees in what usually amounts to a ‘fight’ in Swans old school. Rather, the ferocity with which these guys are beating the shit out of each other is almost jarring. Even as Swan watches, the shorter guy lands a particularly vicious blow on his opponents jaw, sending him stumbling.

A voice rises up over the din.

“Hell yeah! Get him, K!”

Swan looks over to the source to see two guys sat on the hood of a white car, one of the doors hanging open. The guy who yelled is sporting an almost-familiar shock of blue hair, the other seems to be grabbing his belt so he doesn’t topple forwards and into the brawl himself.

The guy who caught him says something to him, going by how Blue Hair Guy reacts, but it’s too low to catch from a distance.

Someone yells that a teacher is coming and in an instant the crowd disperses, students scattering faster than Swan can blink.

The two guys slide down off the car, immediately joined by a third who had seemingly been slouched in the passenger seat of the car. 

Meanwhile, the shorter guy had managed to get knocked on his back by his opponent, and was gurgling out an ugly laugh, and getting in jabs about parentage and what the other guys mother did in her spare time between blows.

Blue Hair ducks down to the ground to grab some of the items dropped by his (apparent) friend - a wallet with a generic gucci logo and a pair of white sunglasses that Swan recognises from the photo wall. 

As he does this, the guy who’d emerged from the car reaches down and grabs the shorter guy by the collar, pulling him out swiftly so that the assailant's next blow strikes the ground.

“Proko, you bitch!” he struggles against the hold. “Let me go! Put me down, I’m not a damn cat!”

To his credit, ‘Proko’ simply ignores him, directing his next words at the other guy.

“You can settle this later, Lynch.”

With that, he drags him away, the other two following after him, Blue Hair chattering away excitedly.

Lynch draws himself to his feet and spits, a glob of saliva and blood landing just in front of the now abandoned car.

Swan quirks an eyebrow.

“Classy.”

Lynch doesn’t deign grace him with a response, opting to scowl as he shoulders past to where two students stand, one watching reproachfully, the other in an animated conversation with a teacher - probably the one that had been about to break up the fight.

Rather than get caught up in something before he even knew which side of the fight he'd been on, Swan opts to make a swift exit.

Chapter Text

Monday arrives aggressively early.

Swan wakes at seven and grants himself a whole ten minutes to lay in bed and fume silently at the idea of getting up, only to have to get dressed and walk more than ten metres just for breakfast - indeed the whole concept of boarding school in general - before rolling out of bed and pulling his PE gear out of where he’d packed it away yesterday.

The rattle of the drawer rouses his roommate.

“Désolé,” he mumbles. “My bad.”

He needn’t have worried, because soon after, an alarm starts going off on the guy’s phone and a pale arm extends from the rumple of duvet and slaps the desk vaguely until it finds the phone, grabbing it and holding it aloft.

The charging cable pops out as he lifts it, fiddling with the screen one-handed until the alarm, some obnoxious hyperpop anthem, shuts off, arm dropping back down to the sheets.

A mumble.

Swan looks around, before realising it had to be directed at him and feels foolish.

“Excuse me?”

A groan, and he sits up.

“Fuckin’... uhh.. fuckin’ what time is it?”

“Quarter past seven?”

“Why the-” a yawn “-why the everloving fuck are you up?”

Swan is confused.

“For school? And breakfast?”

The guy rolls his eyes theatrically, twisting to look at Swan directly.

“What’s your name anyways?”

“Swan.”

“Damn,” he leans back on his hands. “What’d you do to get saddled with that as a name?”

Swan bristles.

“It was my fathers name, it is my -uh, my surname.”

“Sounds fake but okay.”

Swan takes a deep breath.

“And you?”

He quirks an eyebrow, scooting back against the pillows. 

The duvet slips down enough that Swan can read ‘Prokopenko’ typed across the chest of his well-worn jumper.

“Prok- prokop? Pro-”

The guy laughs.

“Aw, man, he’d do your head in if he heard that.”

“He?”

He stands from the bed, and Swan realises he’s only wearing the jumper.

“Oh my, uhh” he looks at the ceiling. “I just was, uh- your name? If we are to be roommates, I would like to know how to address you.”

“Christ, you’re formal.”

He flops back down onto the bed and reaches down for a pair of boxers.

Swan finds himself totally fascinated by the weird patterns in the plaster.

“Skov.”

“Hmm?” 

Swan looks directly at him, noting with some relief that he was now wearing underwear.

“Mikael Skovron,” he bounces to his feet, holding out a hand. “But people just call me Skov.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” says Swan, shaking his hand. “I’m, uhh, Swan. You already knew that.”

Mikael- Skov rolls his eyes good-naturedly.

“Where are you from?” he asks as he roots around in the mess on the floor. 

“Uh, France, Digne-les-Bains? Do you know it?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“It’s near Nice?”

“Ooooh,” Skov looks weirdly pleased. “ Now that one I know!”

Swan looks at Skov curiously.

He waves a hand dismissively.

“I’m just glad I don’t have to share with some American!” he says, somehow making the word sound like a slur.

Swan rubs the back of his neck, surreptitiously checking the time.

Half seven.

Skov is staring at his bag morosely, Swan takes pity on him.

“You know we have PE first, yes?”

Skov groans.

“Man, I literally could not be fucked to go to class today.”

Swan stares at him, agog.

“It’s the first day?”

“ Yeah ,” Skov says, speaking slowly as if Swan is a particularly slow child. “And that’s when they, like, put all the pressure on you to, y’know-”

“Attend class?”

“Yeah!” agrees Skov empathetically. “Now you get it.”

‘ I really don’t but-’

“Okay, sure.”

With that, Swan grabs his gear for the day and leaves, bewildered by his whirlwind of a roommate.

PE goes… better… than Swan thought. 

Despite being horrendous by pure virtue of being a nine am PE class on a Monday, it’s actually bearable.

The PE teacher, Mr.Jones, has them run the beep test to gauge fitness, and Swan is pretty pleased with his result. He manages up to the nineteenth level before having to stop.

Despite the ungodly hour, it does feel good to finally get a chance to stretch out his stiff muscles after a sixteen hour flight and a weekend mostly spent cooped up in his room, sorting out his schedule and unpacking.

The other students in his class mostly leave him alone, preferring their pre-existing friendship groups to interacting with the new guy.

It’s not until the teacher calls attendance in the next class that he realises both that Skov must have genuinely committed to simply not attending classes for the day, and that this was far from an unusual occurrence, if given how the teacher simply slides past his name on the register.

At least none of the teachers so far have tried to pronounce Swans first name - it’s not even hard to pronounce, he’s never understood peoples problem with it - which suits him just fine because he’d rather eat sand than have people know it.

Indeed, the school seems old-fashioned in a lot of ways, some of them more irksome than others, but one that Swan finds himself liking is how everyone seems to address each other by surname, rather than first name. And, asides from Skov, no one really questions him when he introduces himself as Swan, either because of how uncommon it is (though coming up against heavy-hitter names like ‘Richard Campbell Gansey III’ in his Latin class makes him feel positively mundane) or because they think it’s his first name - it doesn’t matter.

It’s not too bad, actually.

Breaktime comes and Swan’s hopes  to go back to his room and crash for ten minutes are swiftly derailed by that Gansey guy, who seems to have decided Swan is his new best friend and has roped him into joining him and his friends for the short break.

As soon as he sits down, he recognises one of the guys across from him as one of the two students he saw brawling yesterday.

The guy sees him looking and looks away, glaring at the ground and rubbing his split lip.

“Oh, honestly, Ronan,” chides Gansey. “If you don’t stop at it, it won’t heal.”

Ronan bristles but stops.

Swan hovers, unsure how to go about fitting himself into the dynamic (or if he even wanted a part in this).

“Anyways,” continues Gansey. “This is Swan, the new boy. Swan-” he gestures to the two students in front of him “-this is Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish.”

Swan nods politely, recognising the names from Latin.

The slightly shorter of the pair, Adam, holds out his hand.

“Nice to meet you.”

Swan shakes it, noting that unlike the other two, Adams' voice sounds more like how he’d expected people to sound in the southern states.

Adam nudges Ronan, nodding meaningfully at Swan.

Ronan inhales through his nose and then shoves his hand in Swans direction, mumbling his own surname.

Swan shakes it quickly, feeling a little like he’s meeting his step-father's business friends.

Gansey watches this whole awkward exchange as though waiting for some kind of pin to drop, and when it doesn’t-

“So, how are everyone’s schedules?”

Adam pulls out his, and begins comparing it to Ganseys while Ronan lists a handful of subjects and times and leaves it at that, seemingly unbothered by the idea of skipping the majority of his classes.

‘ What is with these students and skipping? Are they not worried they’ll miss things? Or get in trouble? ’

Swan's concern seems, at some level, to be shared with Adam and Gansey, who chide him gently, reminding him of some deal he has with the school, though they don’t go into more detail than that.

Feeling very much out of the loop, Swan pulls his bag off his back and pretends to look through it for a moment.

Gansey notices.

“Lost your timetable already?” he says sympathetically. “If you want, I could ask for a new one for you from the office?”

“That is very kind of you,” replies Swan, zipping his bag shut and brandishing a pen. “But I already have mine memorised, I received it on Friday.”

Gansey blinks, but recovers smoothly.

“So, why have you decided to join us here at Aglionby? It can’t be easy, making such a big move  in your last year of school.”

“Personal reasons.”

“Those being..?”

Swan feels his face flush, and he opens his mouth to reiterate that he moved for personal reasons, and that he has no desire to discuss them, but is cut off by Adam.

“Leave him be, Gans, it’s his own business.”

A surge of gratitude wells up in Swan just then, and he glances meaningfully to Adam.

“It is nothing so serious, but my family are private people, and I have only just met you all.”

“Fair.”

And, just like that, the subject is dropped.

For now.

His next class is Biology, and Swan mistakenly goes to the science room, before being turned and informed that his class is, in fact, in a different building today.

'God forbid the science class be in the science building'

He spares a moment to be thankful for his height, and strides off in the right direction, trying desperately not to look like he’s running, though by the time he gets there, the class is already mostly full.

Students are either sitting daydreaming at desks or else they’ve dropped their bags to claim a spot and are across the room talking excitedly with their friends about some such or the other.

There’s a seat open next to another student on the far side of the room, and Swan carefully makes his way over to where he’s slumped across the desk

He looks up at Swan, then gestures wordlessly to the empty seat.

A grunt, and his head is back in his arms.

The teacher enters and calls attendance, sliding carelessly through the names.

“Jameson-Power?”

“Here”

“Jiang?”

The guy slumped next to him raises one long, lazy arm.

“ Here,” he sighs out, as if that one single word took every ounce of energy he had.

The teacher, like the PE teacher before him, seems used to this and moves on without pausing.

“Sullivan-Sanders?”

“Here”

“Swan?”

“Prése- present.”

The teacher either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care for his slip up, and finishes off calling the role before putting it away and turning to face the class properly.

“Okay, so-”

Swan dutifully notes down everything important as he details the syllabus for the year, explains the structure of his classes and marks out in advance when their first test will be.

They’re left to their own devices during the last ten minutes of the class, the idea being that they use the time to catch up with the person next to them, the teacher assuming that everyone was a returning student.

Swan briefly considers trying to strike up a conversation with the guy next to him, Jiang, but given that Jiang has seemingly slept through the whole class, he opts instead to read over his notes and slot important dates into his school diary.

Jiang mumbles something.

“Pardon?”

He groans and turns his head to face Swan.

“You the new Morris then?”

‘ Who? ’

“Who?”

“Morris,” repeats Jiang. “You’re his replacement, right?”

“I am sorry, but I don’t know who that is.”

Jiang stretches out his arms in front of him, arching his back as he yawns, jaw cracking harshly.

“Skov said that his new roomie is called Swan or some shit, that you?”

“Oh! Yes, I share a room with Skovro- with Skov.”

Jiang raises an eyebrow, assessing.

“Are you, uh,” Swan falters slightly. “Are you his friend?”

Swan does, in fact, recognise this guy as the one who sat next to Skov during the fight, but it’d be creepy to say ‘yes I know you’ to a virtual stranger, so he just fidgets awkwardly as Jiang nods, still half-asleep.

Swan has never been more grateful for class to end.

Lunchtime sees him roped back into spending it with Gansey and Co.

Swan is dreaming wistfully about his bed and how he could have had a nap for a whole forty minutes and cursing his inability to seem rude when he’s jolted from his thoughts by Ronan yelling something obscene.

“Ronan!”

Gansey looks quietly scandalised.

Adam just seems tired.

Looking around, Swan catches the tail end of about four students laughing and shoving each other, the shortest one still flipping off their table.

He catches sight of Skov in the middle of the group, headphones jammed over his distinctive hair.

“Why do you not like them?” he asks the others at his table. “Did they do something to you?”

“Yes.” says Ronan.

“No.” says Adam.

“It’s complicated.” says Gansey.

“I am listening”

Gansey sighs as he sits back, adjusting his glasses.

When he speaks, he seems to choose his words very carefully.

“What you must understand, Swan, is that Kavinsky and his… ilk, they’re- well, they’re of a rather unsavoury sort.”

“Oh?”

“A rough crowd, you don’t want to get involved in them, you see. Mixing with that sort is only ever harmful, both to you and to your reputation.”

‘Oh, is that so?’

Swan turns to Ronan.

“So, it was not you I saw fighting in the dirt?”

Adam snorts quietly.

Gansey leaps to Ronan’s defence.

“Well, you see Kavinsky is-”

“Did he hit you?” interrupts Swan. “Yesterday, I mean. Did he hit you first?”

“He insulted my mother.”

“So, no? He did not hit you?”

Again, Sir Gansey the White Knight butts in.

“Ronan’s mother… passed away last year.”

Swan doesn’t break stride.

“I am sorry for your loss, but who hit who first?”

“I hit him,” Ronan mumbles, surly.

“Right,” says Swan coolly, appraising.

Adam looks like Christmas came early.

Silence descends on the table.

Gansey clears his throat.

“Right then, uh-”

Before he can continue, Ronan has snatched his schoolbag and is storming off towards the carpark.

“Ronan-!”

With scarcely a pause, Adam has scoops his belongings into his own bag and tears off after him, slowing to walk side by side once he catches up.

Swan stares after him, nonplussed.

“I did not mean to-”

“No,” Gansey cuts him off, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly. “Ronan is a lot more sensitive than he lets on. Really, I am shocked he made it this far through the day without finding an excuse to ditch class.”

Not quite knowing how to react, Swan returns to picking at his lunch in uncomfortable silence.

Chapter Text

Later that evening, Swan is sorting through his homework when there’s a commotion behind the door and Skov ambles in, followed by Jiang and the guy that must be Prokopenko.

Skov tosses out a greeting as he passes Swan.

“Oh, hi Mark”

There's an intonation to it that suggests he's quoting something, but for the life of him Swan can't put his finger on what that might be. 

Skov doesn't break stride, going straight to his drawers, rooting through the contents and pulling out clothes, adding them to the already worrying pile on his bed.

As he does so, Proko casts an appraising eye over Swans side of the room, coming to rest on Swan himself. 

“So, you’re Morris’ replacement then, huh?”

‘Again with the Morris comments? Who was this guy?’

“Uh,” Swan clears his throat. “Yes? Apparently? My name is-”

“-Skov, have you found it yet?" he interrupts."K’s gonna be pissed if we’re late.” 

‘Well that was rude.’

The others either don’t notice or don’t care about Proko’s apparent lack of manners.

“Have you looked under your bed?”

Skov rolls his eyes.

“It’s not under my bed.”

“Have you checked?”

“No, because it isn’t under my bed!” 

Skov crosses his arms petulantly, dropping to sit on his clothes-covered duvet with a dramatic sigh.

“It’s not under my bed, so why the fuck would I check?”

“I am actually going to throw you in the lake,” says Jiang, crouching down to grab the edge of Skovs bed frame with his left hand. “Just fucking check so we can go before K wonders what’s taking so long and has to waste another dre-”

He cuts himself off with a slight grunt as he straightens his knees and lifts the end of the bed, Skov and all.

“Show off,” mutters Skov, wriggling around to lay on his belly, draping his head over the edge to look at the veritable maelstrom of schoolboy debris underneath.

He doesn’t seem at all surprised or bothered by Jiang’s feat of strength - something Swan is having a hard time looking away from.

Proko catches him looking and glares.

Not one to be cowed by some private school asshole with an attitude problem, Swan stares straight back.

Proko is the first to look away with a haughty sniff.

“Got it!”

Skov lunges forward to grab something in the clutter, and in doing so manages to inadvertently flip off the bed with a dull thud.

Jiang barks out a laugh and drops the bed. 

“Dumbass” 

Skov groans and rolls over before bouncing back up onto his feet, clutching something in his fist.

Swan catches a glimpse of something shiny and metallic before Skov is bounding off through the door, Jiang and Proko following behind, slamming the door behind him.

He stares at the shut door for a moment before he looks back down at his homework.

What had been making perfect sense before is now an incomprehensible jumble of scientific jargon and acronyms, and he sighs, slamming his book shut in defeat. If he had been going to learn something, he wasn’t anymore.

Swan gets up and stretches, feeling as well as hearing the crack and pop of his vertebrae clicking back into place. 

Still fiddling with the pen in his hands, he pads over to the window and looks out across the rear student carpark to the woods beyond. 

Looking out, he sees the trio approach a white car with a frankly hideous design on the side. 

From this distance, Swan can’t make out what the owner intended it to be, but it’s clear that the result was what his mother would refer to as 'un gaspillage d’argent'. 

The boys climb into the car and it immediately springs to life, tearing off out of the carpark at a speed which was probably far from legal.

A sudden rush of loneliness hits him then, taking him entirely by surprise, welling up in his throat until he’s almost choking with it, and he’s halfway to calling his mother, thumb hovering over the little green button before he catches himself.

Home is six hours ahead. 

‘She will be asleep by now, or at least getting ready for bed. It would not do to make her think you are unhappy. You have friends-’ and here he pauses, thinking of Ganseys weirdly condescending tone compared to Adams quiet support ‘- or at least people who are friendly. You will adjust. It will be fine.’

It doesn’t do much to quiet the growing unease, but it will have to do. 

He’s just about to turn his phone off for the evening when the screen lights up.

The number is marked as private, but he reasons it’s the school, and answers.

“Allo?”

No response.

“Who is this?”

Frustration bubbles up in him and he’s just about to hang up angrily when a voice shouts out from the other side to hang on a second.

“Swan?”

He knows that voice.

“Swan, you there? Sorry, man, I dropped my phone.”

“Who is this?” he repeats, unable to place the voice over whatever that weird ticking noise is in the background.

“It’s Adam- shoo, you ugly bastard, g’wan git!”

His voice has an odd quality to it. That same accent Swan had noticed earlier is- not exactly thicker but more... rounded. Softer. 

“Are you okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah, nah I’m fine, one of Lynchs d- uh, animals being a pain.”

There’s the sound of shuffling, and then a door shuts and the ticking noise fades.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to meet up after school tomorrow? We could show you around Henrietta a bit, help you find your footing?”

It’s not a terrible idea, and it would most certainly be helpful to be able to find his way around outside of the school grounds.

“Why are you asking me this evening? You could have asked me tomorrow?”

“True, but I always feel it’s a little rude to make plans last minute, so I figured I’d ask now, since I didn’t think of it earlier.”

Swan feels himself smiling. 

“Something we agree upon, then.”

Adam laughs on the other end.

“Don’t worry, we won’t have you gone too long, we’ll have you back before the last call for dinner.”

“Thank you, I appreciate this.”

“No problem! Now, I hate to have to run, but Lynch’s calling me out to help him with something, see you tomorrow, man.”

“See you-”

The call disconnects unceremoniously.

Carefully toeing off his shoes and shrugging out of his uniform, Swan ruminates on the idea of wandering around off campus tomorrow. It was true that he did not know much about the surrounding area, as any research he’d done had been specifically on the school, rather than Henrietta itself.

Still, he reasoned as he pulled on his pyjamas, it would be a good opportunity to get to know the others. Today had probably been high stress for them as well, given how much distain Ronan had had for… everything.

Carefully tugging the covers over his shoulders, he allowed himself to wonder what it would be like if he were with Skov and his friends right now, if he'd been unceremoniously roped into his roommates friend group rather than Ganseys. 

Probably wouldn't have been a good idea. After all, he thinks as he carefully turns off his phone and double checks it's plugged in, he preferred the comfort of his routine, at least until he'd settled into life here. 

Swan lays back and slowly, carefully, begins to relax his body. 

Bit by bit, hissing slightly through his teeth at the pain, he unwinds. Feeling each muscle group scream in protest as he deliberately releases tension until he's left boneless and sore. 

'It's just as well Skov is always off doing God knows what,' he figures. 'Imagine him having to listen to that every time. Mon dieu' 

In the final moment before he blacks out he's struck with the memory of Jiang not only lifting Skovs heavy bedframe with ease, but also the weight of everything on that bed- three drawers worth of clothing, a mattress and a whole (though admittedly slight) teenage boy. 

The hell did they feed people here?