(no subject)
On the third day of February, Liam looks up from his coffee. "I'm pretty sure there's a black hole in your dorm room."
Laura looks up from her notes, scrawled over the margins of several textbooks, and pushes her goggles into her hair. "What?"
--
Aedan lives down the hall. He wears the same goggles as Laura for class, except Aedan doesn't stop at class. No one knows what his actual eyes look like. He has spiky brown hair that isn't so much purposefully spiked as looking like he hasn't brushed it the entire time he has been alive. The second day of lab, he sets the third row of the classroom on fire. Liam likes him immediately.
--
Laura opens the door. She looks severely displeased. She is also not wearing very much clothing. Liam tries to file this away like a good scientist, but fails, because she is not wearing a shirt, and she is so hot she makes his eyes water a little bit.
"It's three AM."
"I figured out what we were missing," he whispers, excited. "The secret to time travel--this is why we've been messing up--"
"I think you misheard me. It's three AM."
--
This is how Liam and Aedan become friends.
Friday night, Liam goes to a party on the Alpha Ki's floor. Alan makes him go. Liam wants to sit in his room and watch anime until he passes out around two like any other weekend, but Alan likes a girl who's dating an Alpha Ki and he says that they need to show up so that she has an opportunity to see that he's a cool guy. Liam has known Alan long enough to know that if he tries to argue about this Alan will just frown all weekend and play Halo until four and not shower for three days, so he agrees to go for the sake of his sanity and their dorm room's atmosphere.
The party is loud. Someone has apparently decided that squeezing thirty people into a ten by ten foot dorm room is a good idea. Liam lists all the reasons this is a terrible idea in his head, one by one, ticks his fingers against his good black jeans (he just washed them yesterday and now he is going to have to wash them again). The music is thumping out of the wrong sort of bass. Liam lists the reasons that that is a terrible idea in his head, one by one.
"STOP IT," Alan yells at him (he has to yell, where are the RAs) and hands him a drink. It's luminescent green.
"I'M NOT DRINKING THIS," Liam yells back. "IT'S GLOWING."
"YEAH, I THINK SHE IS! I'M GOING TO GO TALK TO HER." And then Alan is gone, oh god, Alan has disappeared into a crowd of girls wearing almost nothing, and now they are all taking body shots off each other's chests. Liam stares at the ceiling and tries not to have a panic attack and counts the number of holiday light fixtures.
There's a hand on his hip and a warm voice in his ear, followed quickly by the strange sensation of metal and rubber brushing gently against his neck. Liam tries not to jump three feet in the air. It doesn't work. "That's Bacardi, Citron, Midori and Red Bull," says the voice.
"Eeeep," Liam says.
"No," Aedan says, and Liam recognizes him now, "I mixed it. This is not an 'eep' situation. This is a 'Wow, you did a great job,' situation."
"Um," Liam says.
"It's not an 'um' situation either."
"Thank you," Liam says.
"That's better." Aedan grins, and Liam realizes, in a weird, headspacey moment, that underneath those goggles, Aedan's eyes are bright green. Brighter than the drink. He feels lightheaded.
--
The first time Aedan kisses Liam, he isn't sure it actually happened until the Tuesday afterward, because:
Liam is standing in the bathroom, contemplating what shower to use, barefoot because he can't find his shower sandals, and Aedan walks past the door, sees him there, and thank god Liam is holding his towel tightly because suddenly Aedan just grabs his face and is kissing him, goggles and everything, and they fog up a little bit (this is very important, Liam notices the goggles fogging up halfway through and wonders whether this happens to bugs' eyes), and then Aedan pats his cheek, says "Third stall," and is gone.
It's a very surreal experience and Liam spends another five minutes standing exactly still afterward, wondering whether he accidentally fell into a black hole.