Chapter Text
The clock showed 6:30am when Vincent arrived in the room’s kitchen. His classes only started at 8am, but he wanted to get some time to study a little more. However, he needed breakfast first, or at least a hot chocolate and toast would be enough.
By the time he made his beverage and took it off the microwave, his roommate Victor came in, yawning without putting his hand in front of his mouth.
“Your hand, Victor,” Vincent said as a greeting.
The redhead looked at him, still yawning with an uncovered mouth, but this time just to annoy his roommate. “Morning, Vincent.”
It worked, as the latter gave him a pissed off gaze.
Victor responded with a satisfied grin, then took a seat next to him on the little table. This was the usual interaction those two would have almost every morning, for a year and a half now. The conversation, most of the time, continued with the same following: ‘Slept well?’ from Vincent. ‘I didn’t hear you snoring,’ from Victor. ‘That’s because I don’t snore, you know it.’ Vincent, annoyed. ‘I also reckon that you told me you wouldn’t go to sleep at 2AM yesterday.’ Victor, retorting like a revolver. Usually, this was the part when Vincent opens his mouth to say something back and realises he had nothing to say, because Victor was right, and that upsets him to admit it. So he just looked down, to at least ignore his roommate's grin.
Victor enjoyed this face of him when he could shut him up, as most of the time Vincent wouldn’t quit and add something to the bickering; it would only end when one of them checked the time, panicked and rushed to his classes.
That was what almost happened today, when Victor turned on his phone, and looked at the screen. “Oh.”
“What ?” Vincent looked at him.
Victor showed his phone, indicating the current date. “It’s Valentine's day.”
Vincent looked at the screen, where Thursday the 14th of February was, indeed, shown on it. “Okay.” He continued to drink his hot chocolate, which seemed to astonish his roommate.
“What's that reaction?” Victor asked.
“What ? It’s indeed February the 14th, what else should I say ?”
“Well it's a special day…”
Vincent gazed at him, with an unfazed expression on his face.
“Don’t tell me…” Victor started.
“Then I won't tell.” The black haired took the last sip from his cup and went to the sink to wash it down.
Victor watched him from a distance. “... You never celebrated Valentine's day, Vincent ?”, he asked, not knowing how to put it another way.
“You seem surprised by that ?”, his roommate pointed out, as he left the freshly cleaned cup with other wet dish plates.
“I don't know, you could have…”
“Why would I ?”
“I mean,” the redhead started, “it's a day when you celebrate your loved one, so… I don't know, I thought, maybe?”
“Well, I never did Valentine's day, it's not mandatory to think that today should be a special day because some people decided for everyone else.” Vincent noticed his tone was a bit harsher, which surprised both him and his roommate, but luckily Victor didn’t seem to point it out.
“Then, what do you do instead?” The latter simply asked.
“Do what ?”
“To celebrate your loved one?”
"There are many kinds of ‘loved ones’.”
“Come on Vincent, you know which one I mean.”
This time, the black haired seemed to hesitate, which wasn't ignored by his roommate.
Vincent looked down, hiding his face, as if he were ashamed to admit it. “Well, if you mean that, then I don't think I ever had this type of loved one.”
A small bump grew in his throat. Did he feel bad about it ? But why ?
“I see…” Victor started, “I mean- it's not a bad thing, it’s up to everyone to choose of course-” he stopped talking, as something came back in his mind, “-Oh, also the Students Council is distributing the boxes today.”
Vincent looked in confusion at his roommate’s sudden change of topic. Sure, he was used to this occurring, the only difficult task that came with it was to find out what Victor was talking about. “The boxes ?” He asked.
“Yeah, the chocolate boxes. In the last two weeks people commissioned those so they’d be given to the people they wanted.”
“Oh, I see… They didn't do that last year though,” Vincent noticed.
“Yeah, they replaced the staff members who graduated last year. Now it's a third year in charge who wanted to organize that. I don't exactly recall their name though, but they’re definitely one of the romantic kind.”
“Hm.” Vincent now half listened. Needless to say, he found it quite pointless, to pay people to distribute a gift you wanted to give to someone else. There was a smarter way for it, such as doing it yourself in the first place, instead of all this masquerade.
“You think you’ll get some, Vincent ? The boxes I mean…” Victor asked, snapping his roommate back to reality.
Vincent shrugged his shoulders “I don’t know, maybe, I mostly hope nobody is expecting me to give them one.”
“Yeah, I think I bought one…” Victor looked in the void, seemingly lost in thoughts before shaking his head, “meh, doesn’t matter.”
“For whom have you commissioned it ?”
“What, the box ?”
“What else would I be referring to ?”
“I don’t know… anyway, I don’t even recall if I did, so we’ll see if that was the case or not.”
“You seem quite relaxed about forgetting whether or not you made a gift for someone…” Vincent commented.
“It’s not—” Victor was going to say it wasn’t a big deal, but quickly realised how stupid this would sound in such a context. Instead, he just sighed, “True enough…”
“Doesn’t this worry you ?” Vincent insisted nonetheless.
“Why are you fixating on this ?” Victor retorted, frowning as he looked at his roommate “Looks like you’re more concerned about it.”
“You don’t remember if you care about someone, that sounds worrying enough, if you want my opinion.”
“It’s just a box Vincent ! Geez, you don’t have to make a fuss about it.”
Vincent’s eyes widened. “I beg you pardon ?”
Victor paused and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, that looked more like a sigh of annoyance to Vincent. “Sorry, that was rude.” He went for the cupboard, where he seized a glass and made cold chocolate milk.
Vincent looked at him in silence, a small bump in his throat as he then avoided his sight. “No, you’re right, I got too worked up about this. It’s not my business…”
And they both continued their breakfast in an awkward silence. Once they were done, Victor left Vincent to his studying and went to class, then the black haired took his leave around twenty minutes later.