Laurent had been having a bad day. He had gotten 60% on a midterm despite understanding the material perfectly. Some dick had bumped into his arm in the library, causing him to draw a jagged line through a page of his perfect and pristine notes. And, now, he had just walked into the rink which he had booked at the start of the semester to find that it was already occupied by the men's hockey team.
One of the hockey players skated over after spotting him. He leant over the barrier around the rink and pulled off his helmet. His hair positively bounced out. He was attractive too, and that just made Laurent even more angry.
"Are you lost?"
Laurent contemplated murder. "No, you imbicile. What I would like to know is why you oafs are on the ice during what is clearly my time slot."
The hockey player's smile stiffened. "Ah."
"My explanation, if you will." Laurent smoothed his hand through his hair.
"The team got into the championships so we decided to increase practice time. I talked to the university and they agreed, so we had to shuffle around some time slots to make it all work out. You should have gotten an email a couple of days ago about it."
"Oh so this is a classic case of the university bending backwards for you brainless packs of muscle but the arts getting neglected? As per usual?" Laurent's eyes narrowed.
The rest of the team had skated over in the meantime and were clustered around Damen at the edge of the rink.
"And what does it matter for you?" Another hockey player joined in.
Laurent adjusted his bag, slung across his shoulder. "Because," he said, with the tone of voice usually reserved for speaking for a particularly whiney toddler, "as a world-level figure skater, I need to practice. To stay. A. World-level. Figure-skater. I need the rink."
"Don't you just have to learn the spins and whatnot and just string them together? Just do that in the smaller rink." The second hockey player added. He crossed his arms. "We're not sharing the rink with you. We can't do proper matches with half a rink."
"Nikandros— " The first hockey player started but Laurent cut him off.
"My mistake. I wouldn't expect a bunch of muscleheads to understand what true art really means," Laurent directed at Nikandros, his tone icy. "All brawn and no brains. Skating by with a hockey scholarship and majoring in Sports Studies no doubt. When was the last time you lot touched a textbook except to move it out of the way?"
"Excuse Nikandros," the first player cut in, "but can't you just practice in the smaller rink today? Those twirl things really don't take up much room, right? I'll talk to the people in charge of the rink to make sure the mix-up doesn't happen again."
"What I want," Laurent said, "is for your head on a stick. Failing that, I'll settle for my rink and my time slot back."
"Hey Damen! Why are you even humouring this bitch anyway?!" One of the other players butted in to nods and voiced agreements from the others.
The hockey player named Damen sighed. "Look. We already set up and everything so we can't give you the ice. Just," he made an aborted hand motion, "cut your losses for today and book another time slot, ok?"
"Yeah," the third hockey player from before added, "Stop being a fucking drama queen. It's not like figure skating is that hard. You just do pretty princess twirls anyway." One of the team members cheered and clapped him on the back.
Laurent gritted his teeth. "And I suppose," he started, "that you would know exactly what it's like to maintain a 4.0 gpa in medical school while skating for at least 3 hours a day, right? And I suppose you all know what it's like to fall so many times when first learning a 'pretty princess twirl' that you had to get driven to the hospital because you couldn't move your leg? Not to mention the sprained ankles and wrist fractures and muscle tears but, of course not. It's easy to be a figure skater. My fucking mistake."
"Look," Damen snapped, "I'm sorry we're taking up your time slot but we got express permission and it's not like we can just give it back to you anyway. There's no reason to be a dick, your majesty."
"Fine. You can have the goddamn rink," Laurent bit out. He straightened his glasses and turned to walk out but couldn't help himself from getting the last word. "It makes sense that you would know all about dicks given that yours is entirely in your personality."