Chapter Text
-I have to go now, class starts in like 10 minutes and I’m still a way away
-sorry
Fearne sighed as she sent the message. As much as she’d love to continue her conversation with her friend, she really needed to bolt. She was convinced that her wildlife studies teacher was actually evil incarnate, and would probably steal her soul and feed it to one of the more magical plants in the greenhouse if the fawn was late.
Fearne’s hooves made the loudest sound across the cobblestones of the courtyard as she ran for the greenhouse. The sound echoed off the whitewash walls of the academy. The fawn curled further into her jumper against the cold and rushed on.
Fearne was, in the end, only slightly late for class. The mismatched crowd of druid students along with anyone else interested in Nature studies stood backs turned to the greenhouse door as she entered the warm space.
Her phone vibrated. Ducking a bit lower and opening her lock screen, Fearne saw an answer from her friend, GemsandDaggers. Well, internet friend. Fearne’s best friend. Who the fawn totally wasn’t slightly obsessed with. Absolutely not.
-no worries! I probably should head off too, although I’m already pretty late
-oops
Fearne smiled and closed her phone. Gem (Fearne thought of her friend as simply Gem, since real names had never been brought up during their conversations) was apparently also an academy student, although Fearne had never asked where the other studied or even lived. Gem was an Eldritch lore and Thrown Weapon student, and although Fearne longed to know more, she had never asked about her friend. Their conversations mostly consisted of stories, video games, and fashion advice, and Fearne wasn’t about to change that.
Turning her attention back to the class, Fearne put her phone away and prepared herself.
---
Dariax had a problem with his roommate.
Not the kind that made him want to change rooms, although sometimes said roommate did make him want to run away from society and become a hermit.
No, this was the kind of problem that made Dariax wish that there was one bed less in their bedroom. The kind that made for very awkward moments when changing after a melee weapons class.
What was worse, Dariax’s roommate seemed completely oblivious.
The thing was that Dorian Storm (such a cool name, Dariax thought) was generally very intelligent, insightful, all the things academy students were supposed to be. But somehow, despite sharing the same living space for a week now, the bard hadn’t responded to any of Dariax’s flirting and seemed to have not noticed the dwarf’s obvious crush on him.
Said dwarf was currently staring daggers at the wall of the locker room of the melee weapons hall, trying to not think about the shirtless bard behind him. He had decided that he should wait for his roommate after class, and hadn’t really thought of what that would entail. He’d only wanted to not miss out on any conversation that might happen on the walk to lunch.
That was the thing. The two talked non-stop. Dariax would consider them good friends, despite having only known the bard for a week. They had similar senses of humour, went to most of the same classes, goofed around, played the same card games, listened to the same music, watched RuPaul’s together some evenings….
A tap on Dariax’s shoulder, and Dorian’s amused voice.
“I’m curious what that wall did to deserve such a scolding, Dariax,” the bard remarked with a chuckle. That was another thing. Dorian used the dwarf’s name constantly, even when the conversation really didn’t call for it. Hearing it in the bard’s soft voice was not helping Dariax’s situation in the slightest.
“I can stare at walls as much as I want, you know,” Dariax replied, turning round and grabbing his bag and spear. “Come on, buddy, I’m starving and lunch will not wait for us!”
---
After her (thankfully) last lore lecture of the day, Opal decided that she needed to meet new people. It was like a switch being flipped in her head. Suddenly the idea of going out into the common area of the dorm didn’t seem like a terrible idea, suddenly she wanted to know everything about the people on this floor no matter what they were like. Maybe they were friendly, maybe they would end up being her best friends like in the films the warlock had watched when she was younger. Sure, Opal’s roommate Fy’ra Rai seemed nice enough, and the two had bonded over favourite shows and a mutual love of Italian food, but the genasi seemed very focused on her lessons.
Stepping out of her bedroom into the living room, Opal remembered how little she’d talked to her best friend today. Well, maybe best friend was a little too much, since she didn’t even know her name. The mysterious LittleMistersMum and Opal had begun talking after Opal commented on a photo of the other’s pet monkey, Little Mister. Who even had a pet monkey? It seemed rather weird at first, but after getting to know F (as Opal knew her) the warlock knew that her interesting pet choices were the least quirky thing about her friend. F was the most interesting person Opal had ever met, and she hadn’t even met her. Druid student, pet monkey, lovely aesthetic, insightful advice. Opal was pretty sure she was in love.
The human plonked herself down onto the sofa that resided in one corner of the living room. She decided to open her phone, and if anyone else appeared from the doors in the corridor, she’d go up and start talking to them.
Opening her chat with F, Opal started typing.
-I’m done with lessons for today
-how’s it going? plants treat you good today?
---
Fearne’s phone buzzed, surprising her roommate out of his stretches he was half way through on their floor. Said roommate, Orym, was a Melee Weapon student, but he also attended ballet lessons and therefore had been taking up their shared floorspace most days of the week that Fearne had known him. He seemed like a generally nice person to share a living space with, humourful and quiet. The two had bonded over their shared love of hiking and nature, already having gone on a weekend trip together. It had been a nice break from schoolwork, and Fearne had gotten to know her halfling roommate better.
When Fearne opened the chat app to view her messages with Gem, Orym actually came over and sat next to her.
“Is that your friend?”
Fearne read the messages and smiled. “Yes. Gem was asking about how the plants treated me today,” she chuckled. “You were at that lesson, what do you think? Were they being nice to us?”
Orym scoffed. “Of course not, the greenhouse plants have absorbed enough of the essence of the professor to become the meanest out there.”
Fearne laughed. “I’ll quote you on that.”
---
At some point during the evening, Orym had decided that he wanted to migrate to the living room in the hopes of finding the two people from his melee weapons classes that he knew lived on the same floor as him and Fearne. From what the fawn had gathered, they seemed to have made quite the impact, Orym having impaled one of them through the leg earlier that day. Those things happened in melee weapons class, Fearne assumed.
When they relocated themselves to the armchairs next to the fire, Fearne suddenly believed in love at first sight.
Sitting on one of the sofas was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen. Beautiful dark skin, iridescent hair flowing down their back, bright pink polo neck jumper, tight jeans and an air of careless beauty about them, this human seemed to sparkle. Even as Orym sat down and seemed about to start a conversation, Fearne stood transfixed, entirely unsure what to do. At a beckoning glance from the halfling, she went to awkwardly perch on the arm of his chair.
“Hi,” came the small voice of Orym, unsure if he should interrupt the human’s life. They seemed to be furiously typing out something on their phone.
Suddenly their head whipped round and Fearne was met with the full force of gleaming eyes and a face full of joy.
No, Fearne wasn’t gay panicking. She was a functional lesbian, and this was decidedly disaster lesbian behaviour. It would not stand. She needed to get a grip.
“Hi! I’m Opal! Oh, and I go by she/her. Are you also living on this floor?” Opal’s voice was exactly as melodic as Fearne had expected, and it was doing things to the fawn’s heart already.
“Yeah, we’re just over there,” Orym answered, seeing Fearne’s stunned expression and taking pity on her, “I’m Orym, I go by he/him. This is Fearne, she goes by she/her too. We’re roommates.”
Finally managing to get some words out, Fearne muttered a nice to meet you and dipped her gaze back to her phone.
---
The beautiful creature in front of Opal talked.
Holy shit.
The small muttered words could have been the most eloquent symphony for the way they captured Opal’s attention. Damn the fawn was cute. She needed to tell F all about this later.
The warlock struck up an easy conversation with Orym, while occasionally texting F some comments on the Mister photos she’d just sent. All the while, Fearne seemed to be utterly transfixed by her phone, not lifting her head once during the entire conversation. Gradually, Opal’s initial shock faded down to the occasional butterfly. Sure, this Fearne said the occasional little comment, usually slightly sly and teasing, but overall, the fawn didn’t seem very interested in talking to her. That was fine with Opal. Totally fine.
Eventually the conversation died down, and Opal excused herself to go to bed. Before she went to sleep, she texted F.
-I met the coolest people today, some of my neighbours apparently
-one of them was reeeeeeally pretty, totally not panicking rn jsdhgjvbf
The answer came almost immediately. They did live in the same time zone after all.
-you disaster bisexual you
-anyway I’m proud of you for putting yourself out there! That sounds so cool!
-I also met a new person today
---
Fearne sighed. Of course her best friend was crushing on someone. It had happened before, briefly, and Fearne had gone a couple of weeks with fewer messages from Gem, until the other had finally decided that whoever they had been obsessed with was Not Worth It. Fearne had missed Gem’s presence in her unreads enough that she had stayed up for a good seven hours talking to her friend after the whole situation. Fearne hoped beyond hope that history wouldn’t repeat itself. She cared about Gem a lot, after all.
Fearne turned over and went to sleep.
---
Dorian wasn’t exactly complaining about his current situation. No, this was totally fine.
Maybe if he said it to himself enough, it would magically become true.
It was a late evening, one where neither him nor Dariax had classes before lunchtime the next day. Today had been a bit of a rollercoaster so far, given in the morning’s melee class, a halfling had impaled Dariax’s calf with a sword to stop him from careening head first into a wall. The dwarf had been fine after a couple of healing spells, but the entire experience had shaken Dorian enough that he wanted to have a relaxing evening doing absolutely nothing.
Relaxing was not what this was. Dorian had voiced his request of peace and quiet, and Dariax had happily agreed in the way only a clueless dwarf who didn’t realise that peace and quiet also meant being left alone could.
As it was, they had ended up building what Dorian had been told was called a “blanket fort”, and had ended up cuddling up on the floor of their dorm.
Dorian could hear the soft snores of the dwarf who had, at some point, fallen asleep on his shoulder. Dariax was warm and took up a surprising amount of space in their little blanket hideout. Dorian could feel the heat bleeding through the quilts, and felt himself slowly relaxing into whatever this situation was. This was cool. Totally fine. Just peachy. Maybe Dariax would eventually wake up and extract himself from the situation, although knowing Dariax, he’d probably not even care.
The dwarf didn’t seem to have any problems with physical touch, judging by the number of arms round waists and shoulder grabs. Of course, Dorian understood if someone was naturally a touchy person, but he’d never been around someone quite so careless before. Certainly, his previous company had been much more sedated in their affection. Dorian didn’t mind this new situation at all, but he still found it a bit awkward sometimes. He wanted to loosen up, and he was really trying. Others touching him no longer made his skin crawl, so he supposed that was an improvement.
Trying to extract himself from the dwarf’s half-lean, Dorian tried to scoot out of the blanket fort and into his own bed. His plan backfired, and the bard felt panic course through his chest as Dariax slipped sideways, so that he was lying down with his arms round Dorian’s waist.
Okay. Totally fine. He could work with this.
Slipping down into a lying position himself, Dorian resolved that all problems feel less problematic after some sleep. He’d just take a nap, and then migrate to his own bed later.
The steady breathing of the dwarf beside him lulled the bard into sleep faster than any lullaby ever could.