Chapter Text
“Whoever fucking did this is so dead,” Mickey mumbled quietly. Both he and Ian leaned against the fence that surrounded the college campus with ridiculously ineffective blankets around their shoulders. Parts of their faces were covered in soot and others were flushed darkly due to the cold. “I swear if any of my stuff is burned—”
“Relax, it wasn’t that bad,” Ian said, willing his teeth to stop chattering. The building had emptied out and everyone was in a state of sleepy shock. Panic was buzzing in the frigid cold air of the night, infecting everyone with anxiety. But Mickey didn’t seem anxious to Ian. He just seemed pissed. There was going to be hell to pay.
“Not that bad? I’m covered in this smelly black stuff and I could barely breathe in there!”
“That’s just because we took the wrong way out. We should have taken the fire escape like everyone else. Like we were supposed to.” Ian glanced at Mickey. “Like we would have if you hadn’t insisted on taking the main way.”
Mickey grimaced. Reportedly, the fire really hadn’t been too bad, and had started in the dorm kitchen. It hadn’t spread to any of the rooms and aside from some issues with inhaling smoke, no one was harmed. “I heard it was cookies or some shit. Someone set fire to the kitchen while baking cookies.”
Ian shook his head in disbelief. “How would you even know that?”
“I said that I heard, not that I know. Keep up.”
A fireman came to check up on them. Ian was kind of disappointed because firemen are supposed to be stereotypically hot but this guy was the farthest thing from eye candy. After the fireman was sure the two were fine, he left them alone.
“When do we get to go back inside?”
“I doubt we will,” Ian said. “At least not tonight. We’ll probably have to stay in a different dorm.”
“Well that’s just fucking great.”
Mickey left to go find someone to talk to about sleeping arrangements while Ian stayed by the fence. He clenched his toes, which were in flip flops as he hadn’t had the time to pull on his winter boots when the fire alarm went off. The blanket that someone had handed to him was old and uncomfortable and didn’t do anything to shelter his body from the wind.
Mickey came back and began pulling him in the direction some people were already headed. "Come on, I need sleep and according to the Dean, I’m not allowed to abandon my roommate.”
The administration registrar had whipped up a placement sheet for everyone so that they knew which of the empty rooms they were staying. The rooms themselves were mostly bare, but some were in squalor from people having broken in to party late at night.
Mickey and Ian’s room was pretty clean if you didn’t count the thin layer of dust on everything. It didn’t really matter to them—they were told that it was only for a night anyways. The fire department was sure that the smoke would clear out by the next night.
Exhausted, and with thoughts of whatever tests they had or assignments were due the next day, they both got under the thin covers, missing their own warm duvets.