Chapter Text
Raphael wondered, not for the last time, if he should even be allowed to own an ipod. All it ever brought him was humiliation and a risk of losing his job.
He wasn’t sure what was worse; the times when Ivory caught him dancing on the job, or the times when Luvander did. See, Luvander would tease him horribly and make Raphael promise all kinds of outrageous favors to keep his misbehavior a secret from the very stern, absolutely terrifying head librarian who was already one thousand percent fed up with undergrad shenanigans while on the clock, but at least Luv tended to forget most of those promises after a few hours unless it was convenient, like for example if he was too lazy to go get himself a coffee while studying. Ivory, on the other hand, demanded nothing- and Raphael could think of a few things he wouldn’t mind doing to buy Ivory’s silence, but heaven help him, that didn’t seem fucking likely to ever happen. No, Ivory would just creep up behind him and pluck the headphones right off his head, sending Raphael into a careening panic every time because the bastion fucking headphones disabled whatever innate proximity alarms he’d had. The last time it happened, he’d actually been shaking his butt and had managed to grind his hips back into Ivory and both of them had sprang apart like startled cats, and Ivory had hissed at him to pay fucking attention before running off.
Basically, Raphael sort of wanted to die from embarrassment. He didn’t stop listening to his ipod, though. The siren call of Meghan Trainor was just too strong.
He spent his entire coffee date the following day with Luvander with his head in his arms on the table, softly wailing about how unfair the universe was. Any universe with horrible, vampiric librarians who frowned on bootylicious pop music and disgustingly attractive blondes was not worth existing in and deserved correction. Luv, for his part, smirked at the right places (Raphael assumed, since he was too busy hiding his face to actually look up), sipped the iced coffee he’d blackmailed Raphael into buying for him, and patted Raphael’s shoulders with a mixture of comfort and condescending amusement.
“I’d feel worse for you, Raphy-pants,” he grinned, “If you were even a fraction less responsible for your own situation. You could, for example, stop wearing your headphones at work. Which, I might remind you, is expressly against the rules.”
“The last time I tried going without, I ended up reading the books instead of reshelving them.” Raphael’s voice was both muffled and miserable.
“Okay, I know you, so that is absolutely fair. However, there’s the other matter to consider. Like. Why not simply talk to your handsome blond.”
Raphael raised his head and gave Luvander a wan smile. “I am talking to my handsome blond,” he tried. Luvander snorted and waved him off, but he could never quite keep a straight face while being abjectly flattered.
“Please. You could never support me on a librarian’s salary.” Luvander leaned back and looked haughty. It wasn’t easy; Luvander was a beanpole of a man, and even dressed to kill like he always was, he looked slightly comical. When Raphael was honest with himself, he could admit that he was extremely jealous of Luvander’s looks. The man had legs that went on for days and zero fucking fat anywhere on his body, he looked like a model even if only below the neck. Even above, Raphael thought, he was better than average but he’d learned not to press the issue or talk about modeling at all or Luv would go on for hours about the fashion shows he watched religiously and while Raphael could appreciate a body in underwear, he tended to lose focus after the first fourty minutes or so. Luvander dressed like the most fabulous fucking cindy on campus, skinny jeans hugging him in the most filthy indecent places and enhancing those distractingly long legs under blazers and scarves cleverly designed to attract attention to all the right places. Unfortunately, there was some sort of truth to his snide self-assessment of a few centimeters being the difference between beauty and awkwardness, and so here he was at college studying fashion and history instead of walking on a runway (despite his amused assertions that there was more to it than a few centimeters, which Raphael refused to hear).
It was maddening, sometimes, to see him look so casually good and know he was single. Other times it was comforting- if Luvander couldn’t snag his boy, looking like he did, maybe Raphael wasn’t such a failure after all. That comfort lasted until he looked in a mirror at flyaway curls, baggy clothes disguising more chub than he was entirely comfortable with, and the awful shape to his own nose. Raphael could look in a mirror in the best mood and come away from it ready to set everything on fire.
Most people, when meeting Raphael and Luvander together, assumed that they’d been best friends for years. The truth of it was though that they had just started talking to each other last semester. They’d known each other, of course, or at least had known OF each other, sharing a few classes here and there and rooming at the same dorm if not sharing a room, but somehow neither had actually introduced himself until Raphael, in typical fashion, had tripped over nothing and spilled his entire bookbag over the floor while walking into a class they shared. Luvander had been the first to stop laughing and the only one to kneel down to help him collect his things, and had taken him out for a coffee afterwards. He had known the entire time that he was a sort of charity project or something, and had resented it at first, but Luvander had won him over with a wicked sense of humor, hilarious gossip and a penchant for being every bit as much of a disaster as Raphael himself, with the dubious grace of hiding it better. Raphael found himself on even footing pretty quickly, bringing Luvander to a poetry slam or indie theater presentation for every fashion show Luv made him sit through and letting Luvander cry on his shoulder about He Who Must Not Be Named every other weekend.
“You know, I don’t know why I bother,” sighed Raphael, sinking back into the welcoming embrace of his own arms upon the table once more. “Because not only is he gorgeous, Luvander? Not only that? But he has the best taste in books. He reads Milton, Luvander. For fun. He reads Keats. A man like that could have anyone. I bet, fuck, I bet he’s straight.” Raphael’s arms absorbed most of the wailing, soft though it was since they were out in public.
“Nobody reads Milton for fun,” Luvander’s cryptic comment came hand in hand with an audible grin that permeated every syllable. “Also, you might be surprised. Just. Talk to him. Say hi. Ask how his semester is going.”
“No,” Raphael pouted into the table. The table remained impassive. Luvander rolled his eyes.
“You remain the very spirit of courage,” he muttered, but it didn’t have much force behind it since even Luvander had some shame about being so hypocritical.
~
Luvander spent more time than he strictly should have deciding whether it was feasible to only ever eat food from off-campus. Or, perhaps, just switch colleges altogether and thus save himself from further humiliation.
While the campus did have a few restaurants, the dormitory food hub was widely considered the best food on campus. One could go there at any hour of the day, in any attire, to study, socialize, or just grab a quick bite. One of the most convenient things about it, though, was the delivery service that extended to the edges of campus. Luvander’s on-campus apartments, happily, qualified for that service. He’d made frequent use of it too, once he found out that a handful of members of his scholarship program were running amok behind the food counters. Magoughin, Niall, Chastity and a handful of others in the program were taking advantage of the free meals that went with the otherwise inglorious job of food service, and their varying schedules meant that anytime Luvander wanted to drop into the hub in person, he was almost always guaranteed to be greeted with a friendly face and a dirty joke.
Last night, Luvander’d had every intention of making himself a salad and curling up with the memoirs of a certain famous general and war hero that he was supposed to have read last weekend in order to write the report that was due tomorrow. Last night, Luvander had in fact turned on the tv, opened a beer, and found himself caught up in a romantic movie he’d seen a million times before. He always ended up feeling lonely and sort of desperate for companionship on those nights, but he knew if he walked down to the hub he wouldn’t get any work done at all. It was a perfect storm of emotion that made him pick up the phone just to hear a familiar voice on the other end. Before he knew it, he was calling for a delivery and saying friendly hellos and lies about brain food to Magoughin, who saw his bullshit for what it was and laughed that damnably sexy laugh. Luvander, as week in the knees as always for a pretty face and prettier voice, had playfully invited Mags to bring the order on over himself.
He’d finally settled into the memoir when he heard the knock at the door, and, hope springing eternal, Luvander jumped up to greet the delivery person. He’d called through the door as he unlocked it that he’d been waiting an awfully long time, that his delivery driver had better have something piping hot for him because he had a terrible craving for something to put in his mouth- only to freeze in petrified horror when eyes the color of dark chocolate gave him a very appreciative once-over and lips that were just fucking unfair on a man curved up on one side.
Luvander vowed eternal enmity on Mags for about the fifth time, took the parcel, stepped back and slammed the door before any words could be said. He realized his mistake as soon as it was done, of course, and winced in horror. Niall knocked again and Luvander brushed his hair back out of his face, taking a few deep breaths in a vain effort to calm himself down before opening the door again.
Luvander gave Niall a shaky smile that he hoped was charming and took out his wallet. “Sorry about that,” he said, focusing on counting out bills instead of looking at Niall’s lips so that hopefully he could refrain from further ruining his reputation in front of this horrible fucking Adonis. “This part is much easier without a great big box between us, right?” Smooth, Luv. Real smooth.
“I agree,” Niall smirked. “I like not having any barriers between us.” Luvander had to close his eyes for a moment because holy shit, what?! He reminded himself fiercely that Niall undoubtedly flirted with everyone and he shoved the money at Niall with a forced smile. There was a reputation, you see, that painted Niall and his sexy, sexy lips as one of the biggest womanizers on campus and, gender and sexuality issues aside, Luvander didn’t actually want to be a notch on anyone’s bed.
Somehow, Niall was still talking to him as if they were having a perfectly normal transaction. “Studying alone tonight?” Luvander wished, desperately, that he wasn’t doing exactly that. He wanted to be going to a campus party, or having extremely interesting foreign exchange students over or skydiving or fucking anything other than being a pathetic, lonely little cindy who couldn’t even look his crush in the eye for fear of blurting something horrendously awkward out.
“The struggle continues,” Luvander laughed, wondering what he even meant by that and why he’d said it and why he was laughing when a calm affirmative would have been perfectly acceptable.
“Shame,” Niall smirked. He tucked the money into his back pocket, drawing Luvander’s attention to that general area and Luvander thought he had better get inside before he was caught staring. “If you ever need a study buddy, give me a call. I’m pretty caught up in all my classes.”
“…Then why do you need a study buddy?” Luvander asked, distracted by the way Niall’s jeans hugged his hips and feeling very out of his element. Niall just grinned, waggled his fingers to make Luvander glance up at his face, and very deliberately winked before turning and whistling as he took the stairs leaving down from Luvander’s third floor apartment two at a time.
Luvander did not, in fact, get much studying done that night.