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"Hey," Shadow says, slinging his backpack onto a chair. Several students look up from nearby tables with narrowed eyes, none brave enough to shush him but all visibly displeased with his entrance. He stares back, unrepentant, until they are suitably cowed and return to their work.
Vio barely looks up from his notebook, writing at a feverish pace. Shadow's hand cramps just watching the pen move across the page, even though he knows Vio writes with fountain pens so that he can write a metric zillion words a day without pain.
Shadow opens his laptop and dicks around on the internet for a while, deliberately ignoring the ten notifications from his university email account. Responsibility can wait until he's ready.
Vio, still absorbed in his work, mumbles, "Are you going to actually do anything at the library?"
"No," Shadow teases, "I'll just watch you work so studiously. My profs will love it."
Vio rolls his eyes. Shadow watches the whites of them reveal themselves and then slip back into hiding, like a momentary eclipse. Vio's dark, sharp eyes fall back into their pride of place—watching, wondering—and meet his. "I'm sure they will. Well, it's not my problem if you fail out," he said, caringly, with an air of giving a fuck.
"Sure," Shadow says, dragging out the syllables. "Whatever you say, smart guy."
Vio ducks his head closer to the page than it had already been; his nose smudges a wet, plum-coloured sentence. Irritated, he wipes the ink onto the back of his hand. His nose is still pigmented, like a cat's snout.
Shadow laughs, and it's only a little cruel. He licks his thumb and tries to rub the stain off, but Vio makes a face and squirms away. Shadow catches his jaw in his other hand, pressing his sharp fingernails into the soft skin of him so he doesn't move, and rubs the ink away. His thumb comes away tinted magenta. He licks it; the ink tastes peculiar, like blood.
Vio, embarrassed and prickly about it, wipes at his face with his sleeve with a sour expression.
Shadow holds up his hand and asks, "Whose corpse did you harvest for this ink?"
Against all known principles of reality, Vio manages to scowl harder. "It's an iron gall."
Shadow tilts his head and licks at his thumb again. "Why?"
"The ink dries down a different colour as the iron oxidizes. Historically, it was used a lot in archival work."
"Nerd."
"You attend university willingly."
Shadow scrunches his face. "Don't remind me. I'm tempted to drop out every other week."
Vio makes a familiar face; this conversation is well-trodden ground. "You know my opinion on that."
"It's a joke," Shadow whines, knowing damn well he meant it. Again, Vio rolls the eyes that see through his lies.
Wow, Shadow is a poet and he didn't even think it was possible. He opens his notes app and haphazardly enters the thought, to be forgotten until he combs through the strange archive of him in a year.
Vio has sunk back into his work. His face gets so pinched when he hunches over his work like that. He really should improve his posture, Shadow thinks, slouched so far down his chair he's halfway to lying down. He opens a game of Hetris and crushes some fools playing online until he gets bored and opens one of his assignments. He reads two paragraphs, decides it's time for a break, and plays another four rounds of Hetris.
Two hours have passed when Vio lifts his head and stretches. His thin, pale student's body is nothing to ogle at, but Shadow defies all known logic by appreciating the way his sweatshirt rides up over his midriff. Vio rolls his wrists and stretches his hands. Shadow watches the tendons flex and does an admirable job of keeping a straight face about it.
"Well," Vio sighs, "I've done enough for today, I think."
Shadow glances out the window. The sun is low in the sky, just beginning to burnish from yellow to gold. "Wanna get dinner?"
Vio deliberates for a moment, then agrees: "I have nothing else to do tonight."
Shadow gasps and splays a hand across his chest. "What, you're saying I'm not your first priority? You'd ditch me for some nobody?"
Vio reaches across the table and playfully shoves Shadow. "My life can't revolve around you all the time, Shadow dear."
Vio, acerbic and guarded, is being sarcastic. Shadow's heart has always been slower than his head, though, and his body warms and trembles like Vio means it. Like he wants him.
Shadow has taken too long to get his shit together. Vio is watching him like he's a well-characterized bacterial species giving an unexpected result in culture. Or something. Shadow is, at most, halfway paying attention when Vio yaps at him about staining procedures and microbial taxonomy.
"Anyway," he says too loudly, his voice cracking on the first syllable of the word, "let's go get dinner. Sushi?"
Vio grimaces. It makes him ugly, but like, ugly-cute. "I've had sushi three times this week already."
"Pizza?"
"Whatever, fine. Split it with me."
Shadow grins and puts in an order. Half of it is covered in disgusting black olives, and the other is a blissful brine-free paradise. He even restrains himself and only makes fun of Vio for his food preferences once. Vio, accustomed to Shadow's repertoire of bullshit, lets the ribbing land on him like water running off of a duck's back.
Shadow is only a little bitter that he has to work harder to get a rise out of Vio now. The rest of him is, annoyingly, grateful that Vio sees past the interference he runs between himself and the rest of the world.
The food is fine. Vio's face melts on the first bite, because he's an idiot and doesn't eat when he's stressed about school until he feels like he's worked enough to deserve it. Shadow hides behind his slice and pretends not to feel anything about watching Vio be unwound. Tries not to think about what kind of faces Vio would make if Shadow helped him relax and take his mind off of work.
Shadow is still nibbling distractedly by the time Vio has packed his side of the pizza away. "What's up with you?" Vio asks shrewdly, eyeing Shadow over his glasses.
"Nothing," Shadow pouts. He scarfs down the slice in his hand to avoid further questioning. He finds he is hungry after all, and the rest of the food disappears quickly.
"What should we watch tonight?" Vio asks casually. Like it's a given that they'll be spending it together.
"My show," Shadow answers immediately, in lieu of showing sentimentality about it.
"Which one? You have, like, ten that we've started together." Vio only sounds mildly annoyed about leaving so many open threads between them.
"The one with the robots," Shadow answers authoritatively. Vio nods.
The trip back to Vio's dorm is short. They talk about nothing important; their hands brush four times, because Shadow is counting, and it means nothing, because Shadow says so. It has to.
They sit together on the cramped bed, because there are no couches in Vio's single room and the desk doesn't fit both of them. Vio is stiff and uncertain about the closeness. Shadow rests his head on Vio's shoulder even though it's at an uncomfortable angle, because Vio relaxes after a while when he does.
The time passes easily then. It's two in the morning when Vio closes the laptop, after five episodes and a season finale. Shadow blinks himself awake as the artificial light leaves the room.
"You headed back to yours?" Vio asks? His voice is low and tender in the dark. It means nothing.
"Yeah," Shadow says, yawning halfway through the word. He sits up and stretches. The crick in his neck from leaning over for so long throbs painfully.
"Okay," Vio says distantly. "Get home safe."
"It's literally the building next door."
"Get home safe," Vio insists, firmer this time.
Shadow rolls his eyes. Vio can't see it in the dark, but Shadow's sure he can hear it in the drag of his voice as he groans, "Fine."
Shadow extricates himself from Vio, which is both easier and harder than it should be. Vio's arm found its way around Shadow's waist while they were watching the show, but he lets Shadow go easily. Shadow wishes he would cling. Wishes he had the guts to cling to Vio.
The walk home is cold and starless. Shadow feels the warmth of the night leach from him. He lays awake, counting the dots on the popcorn ceiling, too hopeless to pray but not hopeless enough to call it quits.
He dreams of Vio's hands, flexing around his pens, around Shadow's wrist, around his neck. He wakes exhausted and wanting, and shoots a text to Vio before breakfast: Library today?