Chapter Text
Nuch waves Gram off insistently, and he pouts at her, fake cries, and kisses her on the cheek cutely before finally leaving. Their faculty senior laughs and says, “Your boyfriend’s obsessed.”
She nods and hums, because it’s true, but she’s not what he’s obsessed with right now. It’s his mission, as well as her job, that he wants to see done. Of course, if he came along, he would definitely get in the way of both her task and his goals, which are more compatible than he thinks (but, crucially, incompatible with his actual behaviour).
“Well, P’Tee, have you met the new guy in your year?” she asks.
He laughs, “Changing the subject on me? Someone’s shy... Yeah, we have those lectures with his faculty, I've seen him. You thinking of trading up to a senior? Because-" he leans in teasingly and she bats his hand away.
“No,” says Nuch with a roll of her eyes. “I want to interview him for the page – you know people have been talking about unfair admissions, and some new guy arrives a few months into the year? There’s a rumour that he didn’t even leave his last school in good standing. I want to hear his side, get it out there - can you introduce me?”
Tee slows down his steps and sounds concerned when he says, “You're not getting involved in that sort of stuff, right? It’s not really safe-"
“Aow, I know that – I’m getting his side, didn’t I just say?”
The boys in her faculty are all idiots. Gram’s going to be annoyed about the slant of her article when it’s written, P'Tee's worried she’s doing the interview at all – it’s annoying. This rich Politics student probably won’t be any better, though – he's as likely as Gram to figure out whose side she’s really on.
At least they know to listen to her anyway – Tee keeps leading her to the Politics faculty even after that exchange.
“Has he spoken in your shared lectures yet?”
He laughs – “He's only been in two of them. I know him by sight and because I tripped over his dog, that’s all.”
“Was the dog okay?”
Tee ignores her as he catches sight of their target, pointing and saying – “Oh, at the picnic table by the tree!”
He seems to be about to run off, so she grabs his arm and scolds, “I said I needed you to introduce me. What, are you scared to talk to him? P’Tee, did you kill his dog?”
He grumbles and returns, saying, “The dog was fine, I’m not that clumsy, I just have places to be- I'll introduce you, but then I really have to go so Fon doesn’t kill me.”
“Alright, alright. You are that clumsy, though.”
After that they’re nearly at the side of the guy with dyed hair, sitting with his back to them, so Tee doesn’t have a chance to protest her completely correct description of him. There’s no dog in sight, and she finds herself a little bit disappointed at that. She can't tell much from his back, but he's in uniform and his shirt looks well-pressed.
Nuch waits a few feet back as Tee approaches him and says, quietly enough she can only sort of make it out, “Hey, man. One of my juniors is with the campus news page, she wanted to interview you about the transfer process, is that alright?”
Blondie says something back, even quieter than Tee.
Tee looks over Blondie’s shoulder and widens his eyes at her as he says, “The news page isn’t official anymore, but it isn’t... banned, or... anything...”
He’s trailing off because that’s not exactly true, but it’s not exactly a lie either. Nuch shifts on her feet while Blondie responds.
Tee’s shoulders relax, and he waves her over while talking more loudly, telling Blondie, “Yeah, this is my junior, Nuch – she’s a good person to know, everyone knows Nuch! And Nuch, this is-"
Blondie turns around, and she doesn’t hear the end of Tee's sentence.
Um.
By the time her brain's rebooted, Tee’s running off, and Blondie is smiling politely at her.
“Nuch, right? Would you like to sit down,” he says with a gesture across the table.
He sounds sort of blank, no emotion in his voice, but maybe she’s just comparing him against what she generally expects of his... little brother? He must be, there’s no way they aren’t related, but...
She takes a seat.
“Thank you, P'-" not Blondie, fuck, she hadn’t listened, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t catch P'Tee's introduction.”
Fantastic, Nuch, wonderful way to start an interview.
Blondie doesn’t seem to mind, though, giving her a slightly-less-polite smile as he says, “Tee is fast-moving, isn’t he? It’s White.”
She bets it's White.
A single hysterical giggle bubbles out, but she reels it back in. White is starting to look alarmed.
“Right. Thank you, P'White-"
“-There’s no need to- Um,” he interrupts, and she watches his face as he seems to struggle with something. “It was never an issue back- Don’t call me phi, we're probably the same age. It’s just White.”
“Oh, you’re twins, then? This is going to make him look like a dick.”
There’s a pause.
It’s so unprofessional to blurt out whatever she’s thinking, but this is weird, okay? The guy fully has Black’s face, it’s just framed by pale blond hair. Nuch is realising that Black must have dimples when he smiles, it’s a game changer, she can’t be blamed for losing it a bit!
She cringes.
White’s mouth opens, but he doesn’t speak.
Oh, she is not a good interviewer.
Before Nuch manages to apologise, her interviewee finds his voice.
“What?”
Fuck it. It’s already going this badly, she can at least get the gossip, so Nuch puts her phone down.
“I mean, Black’s been so public about protesting the chancellor... not recently, I guess, and I thought that was because he was planning something big, but,” she glances at White, who looks shocked, and thinks maybe he didn’t want to criticise his own family? It doesn’t seem like Black, but she only really knows him through Gram anyway. “I mean, the whole thing was more about the embezzlement and bribery stuff than unfair admissions, but that was-"
“-What do you mean,” White says urgently. He’s gripping his bag tightly, to the point his knuckles are white.
On more solid ground now, she answers, “The various scandals around the chancellor, they’ve been piling up for a while now. You hadn’t heard about them?”
White shakes his head, looking no calmer, and says, “No, I know about those. I’ve read back through your page, actually. No, I mean-“
Another pause, longer this time. She’s curious despite herself.
It’s practically in a whisper that White asks, “You know Black?”
Nuch nods.
“Black’s a student here?”
She nods again.
White sits back in his seat, and the resemblance is suddenly a lot weaker – Black’s never looked this vulnerable in his life. The way he looks makes her want to tread delicately, so instead of asking any of the new burning questions she’s faced with, Nuch magnanimously decides to pretend nothing weird has happened.
With forced professionalism, she says, “So you've skipped a year? Is that why you’re younger?”
White nods, slow to catch up.
Then he seems to realise she’s giving him an out and says, “When we were kids, yeah.”
If you don’t want me interrogating you about the Black situation, she thinks with frustration, but he looks so shaken.
“Why the mid-year transfer?” she says instead.
He seems to finally start calming down as he answers, “I was studying abroad, the academic year there only just ended. I could have waited to start my third year next year, or I could just make sure to catch up the first couple of months. I wanted to wait, but my dad was-"
He breaks off and looks at her uneasily. Maybe he thinks Nuch knows something about his dad, but she has no idea what it could be. Black’s even more of a closed book than she’d realised, after all.
More importantly for the interview, this is exactly the kind of admissions decision that the chancellor’s been criticised for in the past.
(By Black.)
(This is going to be so fucking awkward.)
Faux-casual, she says, “Is your dad connected to the chancellor, then?”
“Aren’t they all?”
It’s the most like Black he’s sounded, and Nuch doesn’t know how to answer; seeming to realise this, White pastes on his polite smile from earlier.
“Never mind. I think they’re friends, but if you want to know about the financial allegations... I wouldn’t know anything about that. Everything was handled before I knew about it, anyway, like-"
He trails off again.
She texts Gram under the table.
He's always leaving the library at weird times.
White’s never been great at keeping track of time, and he prefers to get through a whole reading list before moving, so sometimes he’ll find himself walking out at three in the morning, having walked in when there was still daylight. Today’s time isn’t as weird as that, though.
It’s probably around six in the morning, and he’s been in since yesterday, but anyone passing won’t necessarily know that; he'll look like an early-riser, someone who’s diligent instead of someone who spends as much time on twitter as they do on their notes.
But nobody’s passing, because it’s six in the morning and this is a university campus. If it were winter, the empty corridors would be all dark and creepy, but the sun has already risen so it’s just peaceful. He’s sworn to himself: in second year, he’s going to have a watch with alarms, so he never ends up here in the dark again.
He’s nearly to the exit when he spots her.
She’s fairly covered up, that’s the first thing that strikes him as odd – a red blazer over a black button-down isn’t the outfit you’d expect of someone drunk enough to collapse under a noticeboard like that.
That’s why he goes up to her.
“Are you okay?”
Just putting his hand on the back of her head is enough to make it clear that she’s not.
His mind goes blank, he gags, and he scrambles backwards. It’s automatic, the way he gets his phone out and dials the emergency number. Later, he won’t remember saying or doing anything. He will remember one thought, though. As the paramedics finally arrive and make the pronouncement he’d been expecting, he looks up through tears and sees the wall above her – a security camera.
Good, he thinks. They'll be caught.
He’s not wrong, but he isn’t right either.
Sean’s picking at Black again, and Gram can’t help but feel guilty about it.
“-how bad this makes us all look? You’re a fucking hypocrite, Black-"
“It’s got nothing to do with you! Your hands are clean,” Black’s answering. He hopes it doesn’t come to a fight again.
Ever since they met Gumpa, Black’s been getting better and better in a fight, but he’s relied on fights to solve his problems since before then, and Gram’s old instincts to pull him away before he gets hurt are still going strong.
Interrupting Sean’s point about Black being one of the faces of the cause, Gram says hotly, “Hey! Black didn’t even know his brother was transferring, I was the one to tell him, so how can you blame him? He’s not a hypocrite because he didn’t even do anything-"
“-Thanks, Gram,” Black spits.
He storms outside and Gram watches with confusion. What did he do?
Gumpa follows him out with a look at Sean, who shakes his head with irritation.
Gram looks at him.
“Oh, I thought we'd- Never mind. Want to spar?”
“Not really, you usually win,” Gram says, but he’s taking his shirt off anyway.
Sean laughs.
“Did he really not know?”
Stretching his neck, Gram hums.
“Fucked up, man.”
It’s as close as Sean’s been to offering Black sympathy, so Gram will take it.
“You hadn’t met him yet?”
They go to the mats and step apart, and Sean shakes his head, saying, “I don’t spend a lot of time at the faculty. I’d definitely remember a blond version of Black-" he breaks off laughing. “Fuck. Just remembered what the faculty rumours about the new guy were.”
Gram tilts his head.
“Yok! Come over here and call the shots,” he yells.
As Yok’s grumbling about the paint-job he was in the middle of, Sean says, “Yeah, about the cute new senior they all had crushes on.”
Gram laughs.
Black's a lot of things, but... “Cute?”
As Yok arrives, Sean says, “They must all be crazy.”