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“I just think you should take some time to consider it.”
Azul smiled across the table at Jamil, hands folded neatly in front of him. An icy glare stared back at him in response, something Azul had grown very used to and quite fond of with every passing day the two spent together.
Jamil tapped his pen against the papers in front of them — schoolwork for their group project. He wasn’t sure how he’d let Azul convince him to work together on a project that would require seeing more of each other outside of the required class time, but, there they were. “So you’ve said several times now,” he grumbled. “You can’t honestly expect me to leave my position of Vice Housewarden just to come to Octavinelle and be a regular, run-of-the-mill student?”
Azul chuckled. “Oh, you and I both know, titles aside, you're anything but run-of-the-mill, Jamil. Besides, who's to say I’m not in the market for a new vice housewarden, myself? Jade can be oh so troubling, you know.”
Jamil crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah? You’d just toss out everything you’ve worked together to build with the twins without a second thought?”
“I’ll have you know I give all my choices several thoughts. You clearly already have a stellar resume in that regard, after all.”
“…No way. You’re bluffing, for sure.”
Azul’s smile only widened. “Think so?”
“Definitely. You of all people wouldn’t dare crossing the twins so carelessly to make an enemy of them. Either you’re bluffing, or the three of you have some slimy, over-complicated scheme going on behind the scenes.”
“Well, well, how very cautious of you,” Azul said, idly flipping through the pages of the textbook in front of him. “I suppose you are in Scarabia for a reason. Still, you can’t blame me for toying with hypotheticals. Even if I couldn’t risk putting you in the vice housewarden’s seat, I could guarantee you’d be in high ranks. Octavinelle’s students would look to you in the same way they look to Floyd—“
“I don’t want that.”
“—the power may be unofficial, but that doesn’t make it ineffective.”
Jamil rolled his eyes. “…nothing would stop me from challenging you to a housewarden’s duel, you know,” he said, a grin forming on his face. “Maybe I’ll come in and take it all for myself.”
Azul remained undeterred. “Oh? Well, you’re certainly welcome to try. I promise I won’t hold it against you when you lose.”
He winked, and Jamil pretended to be too focused on sipping from his glass of water to notice.
“...At any rate,” Jamil set his glass down and met Azul’s eyes. “I’m not transferring, and I never will. You don’t need to waste your time with your incessant asking. You and I both know it’ll never happen.”
“I can’t help that I’m an ambitious man,” Azul sighed. “But I suppose, for now, I will settle for cherishing our time together as classmates.”
“Ugh…” Jamil leaned on the table and rubbed his temples. “...Can’t you just ask me to dinner or something? Like a normal person?”
Azul, for once, was silent. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and his cheeks flushed. He stared at Jamil, who, once again, locked his own stare back down at his glass of water.
“...I… Ahem, uh…” Azul fidgeted with his bowtie, which suddenly felt all too tight. “Is… Is that something you would… Be interested in?”
“Who’s to say?” Jamil asked, a tiny smirk playing on his lips as Azul squirmed. “Maybe I’m just toying with hypotheticals.”
Azul cleared his throat again. “Well. It… Doesn’t have to stay hypothetical, does it? I would say that, ah, dinner plans are far less of an outlandish commitment than transferring dorms, no?”
Jamil shrugged. “Perhaps. I wouldn’t know, seeing as I haven’t been invited.”
Azul frowned as he watched Jamil’s smirk grow wider, realizing that Jamil was in fact relishing in the moment of making Azul spell it out for him… But, some things were worth the temporary moments of humiliation. “How about tonight, then? Stay a while longer, after we finish our work for the evening, and I’ll treat you…?”
Jamil rested his chin in his hand and relished at Azul’s increasingly flustered face. “How generous. I suppose it would be nice not to have to cook for myself tonight. But… I’ll still have to–”
“We’ll put together something extra for you to take home to feed Kalim.”
Jamil closed his eyes and sighed. His shoulders relaxed, and a more genuine smile spread across his face as looked over at Azul again. “You really do prepare for everything, hm?” He reached across the table and gave Azul’s hand a squeeze. “Alright, fine,” he said, as if this whole setup wasn’t literally his own suggestion mere moments ago. “It’s a date.”
Azul let out a sigh of relief. Maybe embarrassing himself for the sake of a genuine request here and there was worth it, sometimes.