A/N: evi is a firm believer in living better vicariously. She therefore brings you this short and sweet college AU (Written in place of tomorrow's ANTH 329 assignment—priorities, you say? Meh, says I…) in order to alleviate her own gloomishness concerning her (nonexistent) love life.

Don't worry, she'll get over it. Meanwhile, consolation is as follows.

OPPOSITES

XxXxXxX

Opposites attract.

XxXxXxX

Leo figured he was the biggest nerd in the university's drama department, easy. Considering the collection of enthusiasts, queens (drama and otherwise), and all-around eccentrics that comprised said department, that was saying something—and normally, it would be considered a mark of pride.

Trouble was, he'd recently come to the realization that he was the wrong type of nerd. What else could explain the fact that while everyone else was clowning on the stage in blissful, after-hours freedom, he was sprawled over several of the auditorium seats below with a chemistry textbook in his lap, a calculus text open beside him, notes scattered everywhere, and his reading glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose yet again? It was a little embarrassing, really.

Not that he was the only one in the group with a 4.0—he kept his gaze firmly on the periodic table and emphatically didn't think about his roommate, who was declaiming one of Puck's lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream with malicious glee all of ten feet away—but he was the only one who actually had to work for it, and sure as hell the only one willing to.

Dropping his pen with an exasperated huff, he twisted gingerly before swinging his legs out of the neighboring seat and hooking them over the back of his own. Leaning backward to press his hands against the floor, he closed his eyes briefly as the maneuver stretched his stiff back and shoulders. Apparently, he'd been slouching again—he was just lucky that none of the posture nazis had thrown anything at him this time.

The memory actually made him wince. Nyota had one hell of an arm, for a ballerina.

Smirking ruefully, he opened his eyes and cast an upside-down glance at the stage. He was only startled for the briefest of moments when rich blue eyes met his own—it was hardly the first time he'd caught Jim watching him, after all. The aspiring actor claimed that "close observation of my fellow man is an integral part of the job, Bones."

He only wished he had an excuse half as plausible for his own wandering gaze. The sigh that he had to fight back as he raised an inquiring brow was surprisingly bitter, but the teasing wink he got in response made it completely worthwhile. Settling deeper into his chair, he decided to indulge in a few minutes of Jim-watching. After all, it wasn't like the spotlight hound minded. His roommate was a natural leader and a born star—though Leo had resolved years ago never, ever to tell him so. The man's ego had its own gravitational pull as it was. Still, he realized and accepted that Jim would be at the center of attention and adoring gazes as long as he kept breathing. That was just Jim.

Leo's inverted vantage did nothing to diminish his appreciation of the actor's motions as he worked through the choreography of a new sword fight with Hikaru. To the contrary, in fact, as a particularly lithe section of footwork made him tilt his head in blatantly erotic speculation—goddamn, but Jim could move. The thought was quickly quashed, though, and he let his head drop back against the seat with a muffled thump and a sigh.

"See something you like, Leo my love?" The sweet, amused voice came from right beside him, completely unanticipated. He startled, cursed, barely caught the chem text as it tried to nail him in the face, and cursed some more.

"Oops. A bit distracted, are we?" Her smile wickedly unapologetic, Nyota stretched one long leg across him to toe a precariously wobbling stack of notes into a more secure position, effectively pinning him into place.

Nyota smiled down at the handsome brunet and decided that it was probably kinder not to tell him how adorable he looked, twisting with unconscious grace to glare at her over the wire rims of his glasses. Though most of the guys in their quirky little group would take it as the intended compliment it was, the prickly pianist was, as always, the exception to the social rule.

She felt her smile widen with fondness as she regarded him, the oddity among their odd family of artists. Though Leo obviously enjoyed playing—and lord knew he had incredible talent—he wasn't an entertainer by nature. In fact, he'd once drunkenly admitted that he'd only accepted his music scholarship to piss off his father, the doctor. And it didn't take Jim Kirk's IQ to see that his real passion was reserved for the other two components of his triple major. Still, no one who mattered minded—if the sarcastic, bookish biochem major wanted to tickle the ivories in his spare time, instead of the other way around, they were nonetheless happy to have him.

More truthfully, they needed him. As the only one in their whole troop of ambitious visionaries with both feet planted on terra firma, Leo was the one who hounded them to eat, sleep, and relax on any kind of healthy schedule. He dispensed the perpetually necessary first aid with sharp words and gentle hands, and everyone knew that Jim wouldn't have the perfect average that he refused to admit he was proud of if his roommate didn't nag him so religiously about his assignments. He was everyone's implacable but gruffly affectionate big brother, and they adored him for it.

It sometimes gave her an actual, physical pang to realize that the very things that made him so precious to his friends meant that he'd be left behind after graduation, when the rest of them moved on to chase Broadway lights and big-city glory.

She shook herself out of her brief reverie to meet hazel eyes that had softened with concern. "Heavy thoughts?" he asked, his long fingers tapping distractedly soothing chords against her shin, and it was easy to smile at him again.

"Hey, isn't that my line?" He quirked one of his crooked smiles back at her.

"Beat you to it. So spill." Though she got every impression that he was still listening intently, his eyes flicked back to the stage where Jim was attempting an extremely entertaining rendition of a pirouette. She didn't hold it against him, though—that was just Jim and Leo. They embodied all those clichés about magnets and moths with flames. Opposites attracting with a vengeance. And everyone who knew them was eagerly awaiting the inevitable collision. She tangled her fingers in his silky, disheveled hair affectionately, and he shifted his gaze back to her.

"I was just thinking how much I'm going to miss you next year, when the rest of us move to New York and you're off wowing them in grad school, or whatever."

"Not grad school. Med school," he corrected automatically. Then his eyes widened in shock. "Wait. Shit. How did you know about that?" She frowned at him.

"Leo, everyone knows. You're obvious like that." She wasn't sure whether to be concerned or suspicious in the face of his distress. "But since we're on the subject, why haven't you said anything about it?"

His suddenly darkened eyes flicked to Jim, then back to Nyota again as he bit his lower lip in yet another of the world's most adorable nervous habits. It took her a moment to place his expression.

With almost a year yet to go, those hazel eyes were already regarding Jim Kirk with a subdued but clearly devastated resignation.

"Oh. Oh! Leo…" she began, searching for a diplomatic way to say he loves you too, you moron! Before anything came to mind, though, she found herself gently dumped back into her own chair as the idiot male swept up his books and fled without even the socially requisite excuse that he'd left the stove on.

She rolled her eyes at the typically Leo-like behavior, then narrowed them at the atypical cause, thinking quickly. If one-half of the dynamically dense duo had attained enlightenment, she felt no remaining hesitation in urging them along—close as they were already, it would only take a little nudge.

Smirking with sudden inspiration, she rubbed fingertips that still tingled with sensory memory. After all, the power of suggestion was on her side.

She knew that minor in Psychology would eventually come in handy.

Jim watched with growing concern from the corner of his eye as his roommate gave Nyota a stricken look before commencing to make like a jackrabbit, at which point he gave up even the pretense of unawareness. Hell, Leo hadn't even bothered to take off his reading glasses before he hustled out, and Jim knew for a fact that it bugged him walk around in the things—said it gave him a headache.

Nyota, for her part, was smirking mysteriously as Jim hopped down from the stage, closely followed by several of the others—though her mouth twisted into a frown at his stormy approach.

"Don't even start that overprotective shit with me, Kirk. You know I wouldn't hurt him purposefully any more than you would," she snapped, fortunately before he decided to open his own mouth and free the accusation that sat on the tip of his tongue. He took a deep breath before responding—Nyota's bad side was not a place he enjoyed being.

"Yeah. Fuck was that all about, though?" Nyota rolled her eyes.

"Nothing," she huffed. "He finally admitted he's planning to go to med school, is all." Jim felt himself grinning.

"Med school? Seriously? That's awesome!"

"Leo'll be a great doctor," Pavel enthused, and Jim had to agree—even the blind could see that the pianist had even more of a flair for medicine than he did for music, and he sure as hell had a surgeon's hands. Hell, Jim had only known the man for a few months when he noticed that bandaging strained knees and ankles put more satisfaction in his roommate's expressive eyes than even a flawless session at the keyboard did. Jim's only fear had been that Leo would keep avoiding his father's profession out of distaste for the man himself, despite his own inclinations. But since it had taken more than one night of alcohol-fueled confidences to get even that much out from behind his friend's sarcastic walls, he'd kept the opinion to himself.

If he was scrupulously honest—and he tried to be, at least with himself—that wasn't the only secret involving Leo that he'd been keeping. There was a small, guilty part of him that had been willing to let his friend make the wrong choice, if it kept him from leaving him. Leaving all of them, sure; the pragmatic, uncompromising Southerner was the competent right hand of their flighty little group. And yes, he absolutely wished he meant it that way, because Leo was smoking hot. But mostly, the impulse was more selfish than that, and had been ever since he'd bet his sexy freshman biology lab partner that he couldn't name all 206 bones in the human skeleton from memory.

He'd lost, of course. Best ten bucks he'd ever spent, too. Still, that didn't explain the situation at hand.

"Sooo…what's the problem, again?" he asked, pushing aside his own bittersweet reaction to the news. The ballerina glared at him.

"There is no problem, Jim. That's the point." When he just looked at her blankly, she rolled her eyes at him, rising to her feet in a graceful flurry of agitated gestures. "Okay, so the two of you are absolutely and without a doubt the most idiotic geniuses in the history of mankind. But aside from that, there's no problem." Someone snickered, and he made a mental note to exact revenge on Hikaru as soon as he figured out what the hell Nyota was going on about. She, however, just shook her head in apparent exasperation and made shooing motions. "Don't. Just go talk to him."

"But what—" he began, baffled by the convolutions of the female mind at work.

"Go. Talk. Now." She actually put a hand between his shoulder blades and pushed, so he shrugged and started forward. He guessed it wasn't a bad idea, anyway, if Leo was upset or whatever. They could go get a beer, get his mind off of it. He'd only made it two steps when a slim, strong hand on his sleeve drew him back.

"Oh, and Jim?" Nyota murmured, for his ears only. "His hair really is as soft as it looks." Then she shoved him on his way again, and he let himself be propelled out the door. Three blocks back to the apartment he shared with Leo, and he could only formulate one response to that cryptic observation.

What the hell?

One of the three of them had clearly lost their flipping mind. He just wished he could even begin to guess which of them it was.

Leo was in the kitchen when he burst into the apartment, perched on a bar stool and staring moodily into a can of generic cola. Jim opened his mouth—probably to ask his roommate what the hell his problem was, or something equally tactful—only to close it again with an audible click as Leo's gaze snapped up to meet his own.

The motion had been accompanied by the sharp, reflexive jerk that Leo used to flick his hair out of his eyes—it was longish in that careless way that somehow made it clear he'd just been ignoring it, rather than cultivating it for fashionable purposes like Pavel or Jim himself. Also unlike either of them, Leo's hair was perfectly straight, the glossy brown of it a chestnut so ridiculously dark that it only showed its auburn cast when the light hit it just so, like the late afternoon sunlight was now.

And damn it, Jim was going to murder Nyota, because suddenly the curiosity was killing him. Leo's hair did look almost unbelievably soft, and Jim had never had an excuse to touch it and find out. Did he even need an excuse, or were they close enough to engage in unjustified acts of random touching?

All this passed through his mind in the whirlwind of seconds before Leo's tense expression registered, at which point Jim decided that the correct answer was not yes or no, but fuck it. He sauntered across the room, stopping in front of the other man and propping his hip against the counter.

"Hey, there," he greeted, and Leo gave him an odd look, but played along.

"Hey yourself, Jim." His accent was heavier than normal, vowels stretching in the distracted way that meant he was worried rather than the purposeful one that indicated anger. Good news, but not great, Jim decided. Still, it gave him a little more space to work with. He waggled his eyebrows exaggeratedly.

"So. Come here often?" Leo choked on his soda before setting the can down with a thunk, coughing around his laughter.

"Jesus, Jim. Only you would subject a guy to bad pick-up lines in his own kitchen." He bowed with a completely unnecessary flourish, waiting for Leo's inevitably fleeting smile to fade before continuing.

"You left in kind of a hurry," he finally observed. Leo just shrugged, looking down dismissively, though his fingers tightened visibly around his drink. "Med school's a great idea. You're gonna be a badass doctor," he pushed, trying a slightly different angle of approach. He got another shrug in response, and fought the urge to sigh in frustration.

The conversation, such as it was, was going exactly as he might have predicted. Put his roommate in the middle of a moral or intellectual debate, and the man would happily make a public spectacle of himself until he either won or was shouted down. Ask him a personal question, and he made most aquatic bivalves look talkative—Leo was a stereotypical clam. Jim knew that, and he'd long since accepted it.

That was just Leo. When it came to feelings, he was just better at showing than telling. Jim suspected that was part of the reason that he felt so protective of the other man. That it was part of the reason he…loved him.

Ah, shit. He really was going to have to kill Nyota. Unfortunately, at some point his hand had begun acting without the input of his stalled brain. With barely perceptible hesitation, it reached out to card through Leo's bangs, which had fallen in front of his eyes again.

His hair wasn't as soft as it looked, after all. It was even softer, impossibly silky, and yeah, he was going to murder his best friend's other best friend. But though startled hazel eyes finally met his own, the brunet didn't pull away. Jim took it as tacit permission, and kept petting. The next move had to be Leo's, he supposed.

"Jim…what…" He paused, licking his lips nervously, and Jim changed his mind about leaving the ball in the other man's court.

Even if he'd never particularly noticed how goddamn pretty Leo's hair was before—thanks a million, Nyota—he'd sure as hell had fantasies about that mouth.

The first kiss was cautious, the barest brush of lips. The second held intent, a warning that not saying no meant saying yes. The third, Leo initiated—and it went on for quite some time. He tasted sweet, like his abandoned cola, and his fingers were refrigerator-cold against the back of Jim's neck, but Jim tangled both hands in that silky hair and enjoyed the hell out of every second. And when they finally pulled back, gasping softly, neither of them actually let go, and Jim was suddenly, absolutely certain of two things.

"The bitch set us up, Bones," he muttered. Incontrovertible fact number one.

"What?" Leo asked, blankly. His voice was decidedly husky, his eyes greener than Jim had ever seen them and slightly unfocused, and Jim felt inordinately proud of himself—until he noticed his own shaking hands and stuttering pulse.

"Nyota. She knew this would happen. She sent me after you." Leo lifted a skeptical brow.

"Why the hell would she do that?" he demanded, and Jim swallowed hard past the sudden lump in his throat.

"I…I think I might know." The brow inched higher, attaining what Jim thought of as Leo's do tell expression, and he forged ahead. "So, there have to be at least a couple of med schools in New York, right? Because I'm not going there without you, Bones." Incontrovertible fact number two.

He had no words for the expression that settled onto Leo's face with that declaration—he'd never seen it before, ever. Not even close. But as the brunet snapped one hand out to wrench the blinds closed, and pushed Jim firmly against the counter with the other before the rest of him followed, erasing the space between them, he decided that he liked it.

He liked it a lot.

Maybe he'd grant Nyota clemency, after all.