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Chris’s dorm room always stays dark. It doesn’t matter what time it is, it’s dark. Of course Mitch complains about it, prying open the blinds on weekdays. It’s one of their spats that you’ve learned not to get involved with. Chris wants to sleep in, and seeing as he doesn’t go to class the lack of morning sun to wake him up is a plus. Mitch operates off his circadian rhythm so he insists upon having the sun to wake him up, otherwise his body decides it’s time to catch up on all the sleep he’s depriving of it. So, all in all, Chris’s room is dark when you wake up.
His bed is nice, despite everything. Maybe because it’s full of his sprawling form, warm with his body heat, scented with his smell. It’s always heartbreaking to pull yourself from it. Especially with his arms bracketed around your waist, trapping you against him. His fluttering eyelashes as he wakes ever so slightly with your movements tickling your neck. If he wakes up with you he’ll whine, hold fast to your wrist, forearm, hips, anything he can get a hold of. If he wakes up, you don’t make it to class, he’s always so persuasive.
You can hear Mitch roll over in his own bed. You need to get up and get out of bed soon. It’s not that Mitch is unaware of your relationship with Chris, or that he’s even against it. It’s simply because he gets up with the exact amount of time he needs to get ready left between when he wakes up and when his first class starts. If you’re to make it back to your dorm with enough time to get ready you need to get up before him. Today, especially, you can’t afford to be late to your first class, you have a quiz you’ve been dreading for weeks. This unit just hasn’t made sense to you at all, nothing clicked. It’s actually why you had spent the night in Chris’s dorm, he’d been talking you through the unit, explaining everything with that gentle voice he always got when he explained things to people (excluding Kent). It had been really nice, you’re just hoping it’s enough.
Both geniuses need their sleep. Mitch is working himself to death every waking moment, so he needs (in most people’s opinions, though no one says it) to minimize his waking moments. Chris is still recovering from 3 years of that sort of lifestyle. You do your best to extract yourself from Chris’s embrace, without waking him or Mitch.
The lack of light means you can only see the outlines of things, including the shape of your boyfriend curling in on himself into the warm patch on the bed in your wake. Your shorts were somewhere on the floor. A worn down t-shirt from your highschool hanging loosely around your shoulders is not enough to travel across campus in. You honestly don’t mind if Chris ends up keeping your underwear, you’ll be back in his dorm at the latest by the weekend, but most likely by tonight. You just need your shorts.
Your bare feet pad across the cold flooring. You can only squint in the lack of light searching for the outline of your shorts. You walk around for a little bit, trying to tip-toe, until you see them. Once you do you quickly pull them on, they hang a little lower around your hips than normal, which is odd but whatever you’re too tired to tie it anyways.
You walk as quietly from the room as you can, holding the door till it clicks shut, taking every possible step to keep the boys asleep. So you don’t notice Ick staring at you, and by the time you turn around he’s managed to corral his shock into a somewhat intrigued expression. You roll your eyes, it’s not really a secret you sleep in Chris’s dorm more nights than your own, and most of the time Mitch is there too! There’s nothing scandalous about it really, and you had thought everyone had given up on giving you shit for it. Today really wasn’t your lucky day.
You glare at Ick and he raises his hands in surrender. Good.
“Want some ice cream?” Ick asks, gesturing to a bowl of pink ice cream that looks absolutely heavenly. You were planning on running by the dining hall and grabbing the first somewhat nutritional thing you saw. But now that plan is creeping out the window as your mouth waters at the sight.
“Yeah that would be great actually,” you respond, smiling in thanks. The bristles he’d raised with that weird look disappearing when he gestures for you to take a seat while he scoops some up into a bowl for you.
The bowl is chilled to, almost cold enough to create that burning feeling, but it is absolutely worth it when that ice cream reaches your tongue. It melts immediately, the flavor faint but amazing. You can’t quite discern what it is, but all you know is that it’s really good.
Jordan comes bustling in a minute later, her arms full of gifts for Mitch (and a couple you think is probably for Chris too, though they’re always given to Mitch under the guise of he might need it and Chris always ends up taking it from Mitch in one of his fits of motivation later. She smiles at you both, waving around the mass of objects.
“Ice cream?” Ick asks, even more amused than he was when you walked out of Chris’s room. Jordan nods passionately, but drops into a crouch to place all the items on the floor one by one. Ick serves her up a bowl too, she ignores it again in favor of pulling you into a hug as a greeting.
“Oh I missed you!” She declares, despite the fact you saw her last night, “did you sleep well? Is Chris’s bed comfortable enough? Do you want me to make an addition to it?” She rambles on either ignoring or ignorant to the bowl Ick is holding out to her.
“No, thank you though,” you shut down politely. You’re quite content to be crammed next to your boyfriend, it means you can listen to his heart beat and play with his hair.
Jordan looks like she’s about to say something else but Ick clears his throat and she notices the bowl with an exclaimed “oh!” and quickly grabs it and digs in. She sighs as soon as it meets her mouth, eyes rolling back in her head as she gives Ick a passionate thumbs up. The ice cream is a sure fire hit.
You’re scraping the sides of your bowl when Kent walks up. He’s clearly eyeing the ice cream, whether in distaste or interest it’s unclear. Ick, however, ignores him in favor of serving you another round. When you go to protest he shakes his head.
“It’s healthy, designed it specifically with you in mind,” he says. You give him a confused look. “It should give you enough energy to get through your quiz no problem without you getting hungry.” Oh, so everyone knew about your quiz, huh?
Kent looks even more intrigued now. Ick makes no move to acknowledge him, leaving Kent to clear his throat and go “can I have some?”
Ick makes a show of looking at how much is left in the bowl and then back at Kent before eventually scooping him out a meager portion and handing it over. Kent is clearly pleased with himself and takes a big bite, not even seeming to notice Ick skimped him.
“This is fantastic, what’s in it?” Kent asks, after having moaned loudly at the taste of Ick’s mysterious and supposedly healthy ice cream. Ick grins, it’s practically a mirror of Chris’s own whenever he’s about to get up to something.
“Oyster,” Ick says, which shocks you since you had been waiting for his signature "I'm not sayin’.” You try not to laugh, taking another bite, despite the look of horror Kent throws you, he’s really so gullible.
Kent drops his bowl on the little table, he’s careful enough not to break it but he does snap his hand back to his side as if he’s afraid it’s going to bite him. He looks at Ick who’s serving himself another bowl and you and Jordan continuing to eat the “oyster” ice cream in utter disgust. Kent shakes his head and walks away, he even shakes his hands and arms out as if to dispel the “oyster” ice cream from himself.
You laugh as soon as he’s out of earshot. Ick gives you a funny look.
“He’s so gullible,” you explain, taking another bite. Ick glances and Jordan who is fully focused on her ice cream as if trying to inspect it for traces of oyster.
“He is,” Ick says, almost sagely.
“Okay, but seriously, what’s in it?” You demand. Jordan nods, pointing her spoon at Ick in accusation. This time Ick laughs, fully and almost mocking as if you and Jordan are incredibly dumb.
“Oyster,” he repeats. The fact he’s telling you and not hiding it seems like evidence enough that it’s a lie.
“Bullshit,” you accuse.
“I’m serious,” he says, “oyster, water, lavender, and plankton.”
Jordan’s face screws up in disgust. She looks at her ice cream, she’s clearly trying to figure out how those ingredients all culminated in probably the best thing you’ve eaten since you were home with your family for Christmas.
“How?” You ask finally, giving in.
“I’m not sayin’.” Shit. So he’s telling the truth. You’re luckily full, so you’re just going to put this to the back of your mind and try not to think about how much oyster you consumed.
You stand up, your chair scraping, causing Jordan to wince. You throw her an apologetic look. You really need to get back to your dorm to get ready for the day.
Just as you make it out of the little kitchen Chris’s dorm room door slams open and Mitch walks out rubbing his eyes and yawning, Chris behind him rolling out his neck.
“Morning my love,” Chris mumbles, blinking blearily. You open your mouth to respond in kind, but no words come out when you see Chris’s expression. His mouth is slightly agape, his hands clasping and unclasping at his side as if he’s holding back from grabbing something, his pupils dilated and eyes seeming to bug out of his head. He normally makes a show of admiring you, but it’s normally accompanied by showering you in praise. So his silence is unnerving.
“What?” You ask after a few seconds. Mitch is silently taking the bowl of oyster ice cream none the wiser from Ick. Ick is smiling and looking at you with a look that clearly says he knows exactly what is going through Chris’s mind but has no inclination to share.
It’s Jordan who explains: “you’re wearing his underwear.”
Mitch is the only one who has a bigger reaction than you. He drops his bowl of oyster ice cream which makes Ick go scrambling for it—no college student likes to clean so really any of you will make a dive for things and skin up your knees if it means less of a mess. Jordan doesn’t seem to understand the reaction, while Chris just blushes profusely. You do something similar, after you whip your head down to look and confirm that yes, in fact, you are wearing Chris’s boxers, the checkered ones to be exact. They’re your favorite pair of his boxers, so he could very well be thinking you did this on purpose. The look in his eyes makes you almost want to tell him it’s on purpose, but you really need to get to class today.
You give him the most apologetic look you can muster “I’m so sorry, but I’ve really got to go.”
He looks helpless, utterly wrought with a lovesick puppy expression. He’s close enough to touch you now, reaching out half-heartedly to run his fingers up and down your forearms, he knows you have to go to class, he knows how important this quiz is for you. He pouts but he says nothing for a little bit.
“Go,” he whispers eventually, and your heart aches.
“I’ll come back right after,” you promise.
“You better,” he murmurs as you kiss him on the cheek and walk hurriedly out of the room. You’re already behind schedule, but your dorm is now a vital stop. Chris’s checkered underwear are somewhat famous on campus and you definitely couldn’t live it down if you went to class in them. Although it would probably make his whole year if you did. Some evil part of you preens at the idea of wearing the Chris Knight’s boxers to class, everyone knows you’re dating but a couple kids on campus could use some reminders.
Is it anyone’s business but yours that when you crouch down to pick up the pen you dropped outside of the lecture hall that the waistline of his boxers become visible beneath your pants? No, it is not.
You end up acing the quiz, Chris tries to convince you between placing hickies on your neck as a reward that it was his boxers that brought you the luck. You open your mouth to say a snide comment about how it wasn’t your own fault you did so well, but you know the kicked puppy look you’re going to get, so you smile and tell him maybe you’ll wear them again for the final. He groans into your neck when he hears that.