Wylan had figured it all out.
Every single detail, written to the core. It had been so well done, an excellent plan executed to the very finest edges. It was a ruthless plan, designed to screw him over as hard as it could.
Whoever had designed it was evil. He would personally make sure they died painfully, screaming and sobbing for whatever they had inside of them, because nobody with a bit of heart would dare do something this cruel.
"Alright Wylan," Inej said patiently (re: vindictively). "I highly doubt this was their intention."
"Nope," Wylan said shaking his head rapidly. "I'm telling you Inej - this is their plan, and it's the worst thing anybody could ever have done to me. It's evil."
"Wylan," she said with remarkable gravitas. "It's not their fault you forgot to study for finals."
It was two AM, December seventh and exactly eight hours before Wylan had to take the tests for the end of the semester. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to study until then due to everything else that had come up in his life, and now Inej (who was a saint) was the only other one awake so they could study together despite the hour. Matthias had gone to sleep five hours ago, after making them both cup'pa noodles and telling them to go to sleep before one. Jesper was stress-studying in the other room, and Wylan reminded himself to check on the other boy before going to bed himself.
Naturally, they hadn't.
"At least after this we have winter break for a good two weeks," Inej said stretching out. "Come on, we only have a few problems left."
Wylan narrowed his eyes as he removed an earbud. "What'd you say?" he asked distractedly, pausing the audio book that was recapping most of the semesters notes.
"We have winter break after this," Inej repeated. "Hurrah."
He made a face. "Yeah. Hurrah."
His father generally wanted him back home around this time, so rather than having fun or anything, he would probably be at the mansion bored out of his skull and terrified of hearing the door open for fear of his father returning. When he was younger, he used to go to Kuweii's, but their relationship wasn't the best anymore so it was generally just a text-as-a-last-resort kind of thing. Kuweii didn't even know about his recent issues.
"Get back to your studying," Inej said, whacking the side of his head (but like, gently). "It's two in the morning and I'm exhausted."
He smiled. "You know, you can go to bed right? You don't have to stay with me here. I'll just play music and listen to my notes again."
"How does that work? Doesn't the music mess with the audio for the notes?" Inej asked.
He shrugged. "One earbud plays music, and the other earbud plays the actual stuff I need to study. The music is softer, so I can hear what I need to. And vice versa, if I want the teacher to think I'm studying but I'm not really."
Inej nodded, looking amused. "Alright, well," she yawned despite herself and Wylan smiled.
"You should probably go get some rest," he told her and she nodded looking tired. "You look exhausted."
Ruffling his hair, she reminded him to go to bed soon before disappearing into the hall. Watching her fading figure for a few moments, he clicked the unpause button and lapsed back into silence, listening to the monotone voice explain the importance of angling pneumatic pistons to increase the efficiency of fluid thermodynamics of a hypothetical model vehicle's systems.
Ring ring
He scowled, pausing the narrator again. Twisting around to look for his phone, his eyes narrowed as he saw the headline: Kuweii
"Why are you calling me?" Wylan muttered underneath his breath, pulling the phone closer to him. "It's like, two firstly, and I am studying for my life right now." Clicking the answer button, he held it up to his ears as he removed an earbud.
"Hello?"
"Hey, this is Wylan," he responded. "Kuweii?"
"Hey, um, Wylan," Kuweii responded. "I wanted to talk because my college lets out in a week for winter break so I wanted to know if…" he trailed off.
"What?" Wylan asked, exhaustion seeping into him. "It's like, two Kuweii. I'm studying, and finals are today morning."
"Ah," Kuweii said delicately. "Well, do you want to come over for winter break? I know you and your dad don't have the greatest relationship ever, so…" he trailed off again and Wylan's brow creased with confusion. Kuweii and him hadn't talked in forever - they texted, sure, but they had just grown apart over time. It had been years since the last time they had seen each other.
Well, it was better than his father, and he was sure the rest of the Barrel had their own plans.
"Sure," he chose. "I'd love to. That'd be great. Thanks."
"Cool, cool," Kuweii said awkwardly in return. There was another long pause before he spoke again. "Well," - a sound like he was clapping his hands together - "I'm going to leave you to your studying, bye?"
"Bye," Wylan said before cutting off. As he put it down, he frowned at it briefly.
That had been strange.
#
"AHHH!" Wylan screamed, clutching onto Matthias. "Let me goooo!"
"NO," Matthias yelled back. "Get up!"
"NO!"
"YES!" With a mighty tug, he grabbed Wylan's hips and yanked him straight out of the bed. He landed on the floor with a clatter, and helplessly grabbed the bedpost to make up for the loss of warmth. God, he was exhausted. And cold. Matthias was a bully.
"NO."
"YES."
"NO."
"YES - hold on -"
"NO!"
"I HAVE COFFEE."
Wylan paused, suspiciously gazing at him until Matthias heaved a sigh and revealed the cup that had been left on his bedside table. Pouting, he mumbled his assent before climbing off the floor and drinking the coffee all in one go, tipping it back.
"Wait that's fresh-"
"Holy shit!" he practically screamed, putting the cup onto the table. "Motherfucking son of a - something - crapton of shit Jesus Joseph and Mary on a mother-fucking bicycle that's hot!"
"I told you that," Matthias said irritably, now that Wylan was fully awake. "You didn't have to burn your throat."
"I need water," he croaked miserably. "And I need to brush my teeth. And I need a shower."
Tossing him a towel and some spare clothes, Matthias gestured to a door somewhere. "Go for it," he told him. "You have exactly five minutes to get all of that done, so I hope you run."
Grumbling under his breath, Wylan walked to the bathroom until Matthias screamed "RUN!" and made him burst into a run to cover the whole five foot distance.
"Goddammit," he mumbled under his breath as he reached the shower. Walking - clothes and all - into the shower, he peeled them off while inside, grabbing his toothbrush and brushing his teeth while inside the shower as well.
It wasn't graceful, but five minutes later he was out of the shower with soaking ginger hair and smelling of Eucalyptus leaves.
"Hello," Kaz greeted with no small amusement when he entered the kitchen. Of them all, he seemed the calmest - Jesper was at the oven cooking something and almost neurotically gave Wylan a wink, paused, thought about it, and gave him another wink which honestly made it seem like his eye was spazzing out on him - Inej had her head buried in her toast and Kaz was subtly trying to make sure her face avoided the food itself, Nina wasn't there at all (bitterly he remembered that she was done with semester finals already), and Matthias was drinking something that looked a lot like tea, but smelled like a cross between a small wet dog and something strongly citrus based. Maybe it was Russian.
"Waffles?" Kaz offered, giving him a small plate filled with them. "I hear there was quite a commotion with Matthias trying to get you out of bed this morning." Wylan made a face as he accepted and began digging in, rushing up a bit as he saw the time.
"Yeah, Matthias is a lifesaver," he said honestly. "Thanks."
The man in question gave a distracted hymn and blankly swallowed, cringed, made a face of immense enjoyment, and then repeated the process. Wylan watched this with fascination.
"It's Russian," Kaz explained. "Apparently at first it tastes like something you'd expect a small wet dog to smell like, but then it turns into something amazingly citrus-y." Wylan blinked. His guess had been surprisingly accurate.
"Has he tried orange juice yet? Lemonade?" Wylan hazarded.
"Only ten million times," Jesper added, walking towards them with a platter filled with bacon. Silently Wylan reached over and took a couple, Jesper in return stealing a waffle. Kissing his cheek affectionately, he returned to his waffles and thoughtfully ran over some sums in his head.
"You two are gross," Nina complained as she entered the room in a rush. "Also are you guys okay? I remember last testing season and hoo boy was it stressful."
Kaz rolled his eyes. "Yes Nina," he said sarcastically. "We're ready."
"Is Inej ready?" Jesper asked, cocking his head. "She looks about ready to drown in her toast."
Wylan recalled how easily Inej had repeated each concept and nodded. "She'll do fine," he said confidently. "C'mon Inej - get up from your toast and actually eat them."
Inej hesitantly lifted her head, gave one a nibble before making a face. Pushing them away from her, she looked at Wylan's waffles and grudgingly he handed her one.
"Does anybody want some," - here Matthias pronounced a word so disastrously complex Wylan tuned it out entirely - "with their own breakfast? It really helps me during tests."
They all made a face. "You can keep your small wet dog slash citrus drink," Kaz said distastefully. "We don't want to be poisoned."
Matthias looked offended until his eyes caught sight of the time, let out a sharp squawk of horror, dragged Wylan, Jesper, Kaz, and Inej up, and promptly ran out of the room silently.
"What was that about?" Jesper asked before they all looked at the time and let out a curse.
"Run! We're going to be late!"
#
Semester finals were over.
They were finally over.
They were ovER.
Wylan was exactly five minutes away from ducking into the nearest bathroom and breaking into sobs of gratitude, while thanking a god he didn't actually believe existed with eternal loyalty. Maybe not eternal loyalty, he reiterated as he thought about it, but there would definitely be some loyalty. At least another fifty seconds, possibly an entire minute if he got good scores on his test.
Screw it - if he got a good grade on his test he would definitely devote an entire minute and a-fucking-half (bam non-existent god above, beat that) of faithful faith to a god.
Oh who was he kidding? This was a job done seventy percent by Inej [as soon as he tracked her down he was going to choke her to death with a hug and then probably die because if he knew Inej then she was roof-leaping again and with his coordination (or lack thereof) they were going to plummet off the very edge and die. But at least he would die after taking his semester finals.] twenty-five percent himself, and five percent the idiots that decided to force him to procrastinate studying for semester finals. Evidently, it hadn't turned out all that bad.
Of course, unless he had just failed his finals.
In which case the job was a full fucking hundred percent the job of the godawful people that made him procrastinate studying.
"Wow you're really sleep deprived aren't you?" Jesper mused with a small smirk, eyeing him over. Wylan sleepily mussed his hair and cocked his head in confusion.
"You've been saying all your thoughts aloud for the past couple of minutes," Jesper said mildly. Wylan's cheeks began beating a furious red and he pulled the shorter boy into a kiss that lasted only a few lovely seconds before Matthias coughed and shoved them away from each other hurriedly.
"Please guys, not in front of me," Matthias pleaded. A sparkle lit in Jesper's eyes and as a protest began to be told, Wylan quietly laid a hand on his arm.
"Jes, not now," he begged. "I'm tired," - this was interrupted by a loud yawn which he felt really only proved his point - "and I just really want to spend the rest of the day cuddling with you."
Jesper's gaze softened as he looked at the lilac creases under Wylan's normally bright green eyes and instead kissed his forehead gently. "Of course," he said softly, "you need to catch up on sleep."
Matthias snorted. "You both need to catch up on sleep. Shoo, shoo." Making a distinct shooing gesture with his arms, Wylan stumbled a few feet in his hurry to speed up, only to slow down, take a few normal steps, and stumble again. After witnessing this Jesper let out a sigh and picked him up easily in a bridal style position.
"Jesper!" he began to protest weakly, already sinking into the other boy's warmth. "Jes…"
"Let me do this for you," Jesper said smirking. "After all - it's not like you're not going to fall asleep right now or anything."
Wylan would have protested, but unfortunately, he was too busy proving Jesper right.
A/N: HAHA this has finally been posted! :) (If you couldn't tell by how much everybody was telling Wylan he was sleep deprived, I too, am very much sleep deprived and accidentally started using Wylan as my vessel of sleep deprivation. Oops...).
Alright so, confession time: school has just started for me today which means that my schedule is going to get a hell of a lot more busy now. I'm really sorry but updates are probably going to be slower than normal for a while.
HOWEVER, NaNoWrimo is right around the corner (and Acka, you say patiently, 'don't you mean, it's during freaking NOVEMBER'and yes, yes I know) but I'm totally going to be participating in NaNo so either I'm done with this story by then, or you can get ready for a hell of a lot more frequent updates by the time November comes around.
Also (one last thing I swear) guess what I've just discovered?
this is glorious and I'm going to now use this as often as I can, wherever I can.
Thanks for reading,
acka (formerly Acka, now acka, because no capitalization is what all the kool cids are doing ;).