Chapter Text
ACT I
The chilly middle of October was stealing the last leaves from the mystical, antique branches, abandoning them on the dusty concrete of the University’s Campus. The dorms had a similar scene: students face-planting into their beds after that boring-ass Shakespeare lecture, a history pop quiz that not even God could ace (curse you, Mr. Robins!), or a day survived with exactly six cups of coffee and zero minutes of sleep.
And Dorm 437 was no different.
Ignis was clutching her pillow as if she was trying to exorcise it from the demons she’d screamed into it, doing her best not to cry over a damned fifteen-page essay. That was due tomorrow.
It’s not like it wasn’t her fault. It totally WAS. She’d had a whole month, and now she was regretting every nap, every cat-slash-anime-slash-anything sketching session, and especially every “I’ll do it tomorrow”. With a melodramatic groan, she raised her head and grabbed her mechanical pencil and a random notebook she found under her bed, scribbling down vigorously, only to cross half of it afterwards. She glared at her laptop screen, which looked like it was mocking her with each flickering pixel.
“Alastor,” she muttered dangerously sweet without looking up, “If I stare at this blank Word document any longer, I’m gonna commit a printer-based arson.”
Alastor, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed and watching like a concerned mother, pushed his round, thin-framed glasses up his nose and mumbled, “Well, technically, burning down the entire university with just one printer-”
“Don’t you dare go nerdy on me now,” she practically growled, turning to face him. “I don’t fucking care if it’s unlikely, I’ll manage it anyway!”
He blinked slowly, on the verge of tears, not because she was scary, but because she was stressed and adorable and so very pretty.
“Do you need your apple juice?”
“...Please.”
He unceremoniously flopped off the bed and walked to the mini-fridge, holding her apple juice box like it was a holy sacrament. She watched him with dramatic suspicion, as if he’d poison her with a 1$ drink. This was normal.
They’ve been best friends since they were five, ever since she’d pushed a boy twice her size off the swings for calling Alastor “four eyes”, and then immediately tripped and fell faced-flat. That sealed the deal. An unbreakable bond built on dirt, scrapped knees and playground justice.
Now, fifteen years later, they were dorm mates at some artsy-slash-geeky no-important-name-for-our-story college, still helping each other with homework, still playing guardian angel, and obviously still arguing whether The Lord of The Rings was better than Harry Potter.
Alastor handed her the juice box like a dutiful cupbearer. “There you go, my lady.”
“May the Lord bless your dorky soul, my good sir”, she replied, with an accent that would’ve made Hamlet AND Juliet sob in jealousy.
Alastor plopped down on her bed, looked through her notes, then at her, his wide doe eyes hitting her right in the heart.
“I wanna help.”
“No, you don’t”, she cut him off, “I’d feel bad for you contribute to this mess because I can’t be responsible and make it in time.”
He looked at her from under his lashes, a small frown crossing his eyebrows. Her absolute weakness. Her eyes flickered form the notebook to the white-clean Word to him and groaned softly.
“Fine”, she sighed, “but just with a few ideas.”
He immediately perked up, took her laptop and started typing bullet point after bullet point, as if he had personally time travelled to interview Da Vinci just so he could write her ideas for that essay. As he typed down, mumbling to himself and occasionally pushing his glasses up, she found herself staring. Again. She quickly looked away, as if suddenly the opposite corner of the room was a portal to Middle Earth.
After about 8 minutes, she read at least 14 paragraphs. She stared at her laptop screen, then at him, and, from that light, from that angle, he looked like a God.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re a human or a robot.”
“You’re giving me too much credit, really.”
“You used quotes without googling them.”
“...Valid point.”
She took the laptop from his lap, opened a new document and started to write her essay (in Comic Sans, Times New Roman is for losers). Alastor watched from behind, over her shoulder, just a breath too close. While she was typing down, googling and sipping on her drink, he’d chime in correcting sentences for the flow of it, helping her choose an image and not-so-subtly slipping in a stupid joke about our good ol’ man Leonardo. They were acting as if there was no tension between them.
Except it was. There ALWAYS was.
There was tension when silly laughter faded, leaving them in a rom-com-coded kind of staring. There was tension when their hands “accidentally” brushed while walking. There was tension when she leaned over him to grab a book, or when he leaned over her to explain something in the textbook.
But denial said it was fine. And who were they to deny denial?
When the stars outside softly whispered about the dreams they’ll become after midnight, the soft sound of tapping against the keys stopped. Ignis was.... drained, to say at least, but she smiled. She finished the blasted essay.
“Al..? Thank you, really. Mrs. Myra would’ve killed me if this essay hadn’t sounded like I consider Da Vinci a Godsent or something.”, She muttered with a chuckle. When he didn’t give her a witty remark or at least an amused snort, she looked behind her, and, when she found nothing... down.
Alastor was asleep behind her, his glasses slightly crooked and snoring softly. Her expression softened immediately, and her hand slowly reached for the glasses. She took them off his face, folding them and placing them on the shared nightstand. She didn’t want to wake him up. Why would she? It melted her heart to see him like that on HER bed. She laid on her stomach beside him and began playing with his hair, fixing his curls and simply enjoying the silk-like strands through her fingers. When drowsiness came over her, she stood up and put a blanket over him. They had one rule and one rule only: No sleeping in the same bed, even when watching horror movies and someone (Alastor) clutches a pillow and screams like a medieval widow.
She glanced down at him for probably the millionth time this evening. Hesitantly, she leaned in and let her lips brush against his forehead. The touch felt like heaven and hell at the same time, and her heart wishing for this moment with him awake. She climbed into his bed, letting the slightly cold sheets and the faint scent of him embrace her, soothing her in a peaceful slumber.
***
The hours passed, and the sun slowly took control of the sky, letting the night fade in the distance. Alarms started to buzz through the whole campus, announcing a new day. With almost practiced groans, students started to rise, their bodies moving on their own towards the coffee machine.
In their room, Alastor was the first one who woke up. He always was. After a few seconds, he realized that the bed wasn’t his. He glanced at the other part of the room, and there she was: in his bed, curled up in the most back-breaking but too adorable to be interrupted position. His heart skipped a few beats, and his mind screamed the word “cute” in every language he’d ever learned.
He groggily rubbed his eyes, to erase those thoughts and to coax his brain to remember how the hell they’d ended up like this, then it clicked. The essay. His eyes panickily darted around the room, searching for her laptop. Once he spotted it, he practically dove for it. Of course he knew the password- there were no secrets between them. A deep sigh of relief left his lungs. She had finished it.
And honestly? She’d done an absolutely amazing job. If he ignored the picture of a cat dressed as Mona Lisa at the end of the essay, that is. His shoulders relaxed and his eyes stole another quick glance towards her.
Reluctantly, he prepared their coffee, a part of his mind shouting at him to sink back into her bed, back to the strong scent of her perfume and the softness of her plushies, but his logical part knew he couldn’t. They’d be late, and if she woke up, she might think he was a creep.
As the scent of the hot drink filled the room, Ignis slowly stirred and opened her eyes. They locked eyes for a few seconds.
“Good morning”, he greeted her softly.
“Hey...”, she muttered as she ran a hand through her hair.
He handed her a cup, not mentioning the bed situation. He gave her a look, though. And they silently vowed that this mildly awkward moment will be buried with the rest of the mildly and not-so-mildly awkward moments they’d had.
“Great job with the essay. You’re gonna lose points with that picture, though.”
She snorted “Worth it. The teachers have to grow up and accept my personality.”
He rolled his eyes, taking a long sip of his coffee. “One day, your personality is going to get us both kicked out.”
“And yet,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “you’d follow me out the gates.”
“That’s because someone has to make sure you don’t trip over your own dramatic exit,” he admitted, hiding his smile behind the rim of his mug.
She stuck her tongue out at him before dragging herself out of bed. The floor was cold against her feet, and that short morning shiver ran up her spine, mocking her for leaving the warmness of the blanket.
“C’mooon, Ignis. Clock’s ticking,” he called from his side of the room, already halfway into his sweater. “You’ve got—” he checked his watch, “—exactly seven minutes before we’re late again.”
“That’s plenty of time,” she lied, rummaging through the pile of clothes on her chair.
“Plenty of time for what? Picking an outfit or singing all of King George's parts from Hamilton?”
“Both.”
They moved around the room in a quiet sort of choreography — him shoving papers into his satchel, her searching for her sketchbook, trading little sarcastic jabs without thinking. She brushed past him to grab her bag, and for a moment their shoulders bumped. Neither of them mentioned it. By the time she’d found her headphones, he was already standing by the door with their coffee cups in hand, the eternal picture of patience he absolutely wasn’t.
He grabbed his bag and tossed her the hoodie she’d claimed as hers last semester. “Come on, the Renaissance awaits.”
“Yay,” she deadpanned, tying her hair in a bun that screamed artists don’t give a fuck so why would I. “I can’t wait to hear about perspectives for another two hours.”
“Let’s go, Comic Sans,” he said.
“Lead the way, Times New Roman.”
And just like that, they stepped into the chaos of the hallway, the scent of coffee and the echo of unspoken things trailing behind them, and the conversation had shifted to whether Tolkien or Rowling would win in a fistfight, and the mildly awkward moment from earlier had already been filed away in their unspoken “we’ll never talk about this” folder.