First drabble ft. CollegeAU!Ida and Astrid trying to be nice people
anywaysthey'reclosefriendsandAstridisdoneexamsandshe'satotalsweetheartbutIdon'tgettoexplorethatfullyintheactualstorysoIwantedtoincludeherdoingsomethingreallycuteit's4amohgod
I'm so tired
IMPORTANT REFERENCE (and yes, these are their canon names and appearances and nicknames):
Ida "Dee" = Dactyl (tall, dancer-skinny, shoulder-length messy light blonde hair and too pale skin)
Astrid "Ally" = Iliad (short, kiddish, dirty blonde, grey eyes that can see)
Callisto "Cally" = Aegaeon
More notes at the bottom if you're interested (nothing more that you need to know though)
—
Getting to Know You: Chapter 1 (in which Astrid is an angel and Ida really doesn't want to see angels until she's actually dead)
3 AM. Stats midterm tomorrow. Pizza boxes stacked tall enough for her to be genuinely concerned for their collective health. Ida couldn't believe she was putting up with this.
"I just want to be sure we're all on the same page—" Astrid began, grey eyes shining before her irate friend cut her off.
"Page? We're not even in the same library! What makes you think—" and here Ida paused to gesture, but put her hand down when she could find something specific to gesture at "—this was a good idea?"
Currently, the two girls were sitting in the two-person dorm shared by the minute dirty blonde and her roommate Callisto, who had had the good sense to hole herself up in the library instead of attempt to brave the tornado (shitstorm, Ida's mind supplied tiredly, but she supposed either one works) that was Astrid after a three-hour essay-based exam. It was also her last exam for the next month. Even worse.
Astrid had the nerve to look offended at Ida's common sense, scrunching up her small nose and squinting across the table. Seeing no change in her friend's expression, she sighed and set another stack of pizza boxes on the table before turning around to face the other occupant in the room.
They'd been over this, she swears on it.
"They'll appreciate this, really! Who'd refuse free food? We can be Astrid and Ida's Pizza Delivery Service! Saviour for all university students trapped in the death throes of midterm season. Rescuer of hungry bellies." Astrid throws in a sweeping hand gesture here in reference to their imagined future empire filled with grateful, sleep-deprived subjects.
Ida watches with pursed lips as the large movement throws the other girl a little out of balance. She rights herself by grabbing the back of a chair, grinning as if nothing happened.
"You just want to see the cute British boy again." She deadpanned. Her friend shrugged shamelessly.
"Attractive people are like flowers, Dee. Nothing wrong with a little admiration."
Ida sighed when she realised that there was no way out of this, not unless she wanted Astrid's money to go to waste and the pizzas to go cold and unconsumed.
She's so lucky that her parents are paying her tuition, she muses tiredly about her impulsive friend before tugging a hand through her own blonde hair and flipping open the nearest cardboard box to check.
At least she had had the good sense to get cheese, the most inoffensive and basic pizza topping ever. If it had been anchovies and jalapeños again Ida might've cried because it would've taken that much longer to find takers. That being said, this meant that she wouldn't been sleeping for another two hours and she thanked whichever god listened to tired university students for giving her the foresight to finish studying a few days before. At this point, she's basically memorised the z-table for how much she used it and was absolutely confident that her GPA is very safe from Astrid's crazy whims.
It is for this reason only that she hoists six pizza boxes into her arms and ignores the other girl's too-smug Cheshire grin.
"Come on, let's get this over with," Ida grumbled, nudging the door open with a toe tip. She holds it there until Astrid is outside with the rest of the food, throws one last glance at the long mirror that hung from the other side of the corridor to check that —yes, for all the stressed pulling, worrying, and tousling her shoulder-length blonde hair could not yet house a nestful of baby birds—before she lets the door close behind her. Astrid waits impatiently in the middle of a deathly quiet corridor, which was fitting because there did not appear to be any other intelligent life on the floor.
The reading rooms in the library would be a full place tonight.
At the sound of her door closing and the click of the automatically locking door, the younger girl whirls around and heads for the stairs. Ida follows, wishing for once that her friend wasn't so damn nice and sweet for wanting to feed the hungry souls that haunt the halls of Interstellar University (Ad astra per aspera!).
Well, that was what makes her, her hmm?
The taller blonde squashed a fond smile, hastened her paces, and hoped that she wouldn't find grease stains on the insides of the arms of her navy pullover.
—
The CollegeAUwill return bc it's just such a pliable, wonderful thing to work with. Like putty. Like playdough. I live vicariously through these characters who have the courage to do more with their university lives than cold email 50 professors in hopes of a research position.
While the story is not canon(duh), the dynamic between Dactyl/Ida and Iliad/Astrid is and I wanted to explore their close friendship in a different setting. In the real story, Iliad is Dactyl's strength and she has steel in her bones, but when she doesn't need to be the support she's more than happy to be a kind, quirky marshmallow who is simultaneously a force of nature by will alone and this is just me testing that out I guess
Anyways, this isn't edited (might do that someday). I hope you enjoyed reading and any feedback is appreciated!