College was everything he'd expected.

It was everything he'd expected because Dinah had made a point of actually listening to his dad's tongue-in-cheek cynicism at face value until his mom made an aggravated noise and threatened to climb out of the car window. Dinah, on the other hand, felt fantastically well-prepared for the avalanche of administrative errors that descended on the freshmen like snowflakes made of poop-an observation that he couldn't help sharing with the guy standing next to him.

"Shitvalanche," his neighbour agreed, as they waited in line for the registrations desk to stop being so on fire.

"Avaturdche," Dinah suggested.

"Turdnado," the guy countered, as the line moved forward and someone at the back started sighing really pointedly.

"Shitnami," Dinah said. The guy next to him in the line was nearly a foot taller than him. Obscenely tall. Not that Dinah was exactly unused to the experience of having people loom over him-he was pretty sure he'd just straight up stopped growing at 14-but this dude was tall. He looked like a whole basketball team in one person. A human noodle.

"Poopcano," said the guy, and the line moved again. "Do you like, know what you're gonna major in besides poop jokes?"

"I can't major in poop jokes?" Dinah asked in loud, mocking horror, grabbing at his head with both hands and hitting himself in the face with his paperwork. "Oh my god, I have to go-"

"That's theatre," said someone further down the line.

"Ew," said Dinah. He dropped his hands from his head, and held one of them out to shake. "Hi, I'm Dinah, I have no idea what I'm doing."

The guy with the poop jokes, who was wearing a t-shirt that didn't quite reach the whole length of his torso, and had a profile like a statue of an African king Dinah saw on a museum trip once, gave Dinah's hand a cautious shake. "Hi, I'm..." he paused for slightly too long. "Gumball. Definitely Gumball. I'm... not even sure if I'm allowed to major in my major. I came up on a sports scholarship-"

"Basketball?" Dinah said, still shaking Definitely-Not-Gumball by hand. "You look like, basketball height."

"Football mascot," said Not-Gumball, shaking his head and Dinah's hand with equal ferocity. "I used to be a cheerleader."

"Get out," Dinah choked, unable to stop shaking his hand now he'd started. "You can't get a sports scholarship for being a football mascot! Can you?"

"I guess I can since I'm here," said Probably Not Gumball. He was wearing a Dead Kennedys t-shirt, which Dinah wouldn't have expected, and he was still shaking Dinah's hand. "At what point does shaking someone's hand become weird?"

"Oh like at least thirty seconds ago," said Dinah, as someone at the front of the line started arguing, very loudly, with the registrations clerk. He carried on shaking Not Gumball by the hand, and tried to make eye contact, to establish if not dominance, then at least that he fully understood what he was doing, which he in fact did not. "But... we've started now."

"Shall we see how long we can keep this going?" said Not Gumball, showing his teeth. It was probably a smile, thought Dinah, who had been assured that he looked himself like he was figuring out how to eat people when he smiled too much.

"Sure," said Dinah, "Let's make it weird."

"I think," Dinah said, hanging out of a branch of the campus lime tree while Not-Gumball kept watch, "I might major in philosophy."

"You can't," said Not-Gumball. The squirrel Dinah was attempting to get his Cheeto packet back from gave him a startled, bulging-eyed look, and hopped further into the branches. "I forbid it. My parents named me after a philosopher."

"What, 'Gumball'?" Dinah said, inching up the tree.

"Sure," said Absolutely Not Gumball.

The squirrel raced further along the branch with a flick of its tail. The branch was thinner at the other end. The Cheetos were, impressively, still clenched in its teeth.

"I know that's not your name." Dinah grabbed at the branch above for balance.

"But you don't know what *is*, so it's still Gumball," said Gumball The Liar, watching the squirrel dangle from the end of the branch. "Did your parents name you after the president? I was gonna ask."

"Nope," said Dinah, concentrating on the slippery bark ahead. "The Swiss theologist. Dad wanted to piss off Mom's mom. She's Lutheran."

"That's so incredibly petty," said Secret Gumball, following Dinah along the branch. "Did it work?"

"My dad is the most cynical man alive," said Dinah, as the squirrel sprang away into the air like a little furry rocket, and hit the next branch up without any apparent effort. "Also, I uh, I unscrewed the heads off all her weird, creepy Victorian dolls and put them behind the stove and they melted, which worked even better than calling me-oops-Dinah."

"You could just throw something at it," Gumball suggested, as Dinah began to wobble.

"Oh, now he tells me."

But it was too late. He'd begun to lose his balance. The squirrel hung down off the branch above and dangled his Cheetos just out of reach, smug triumph all over its fat, furry face.

Dinah threw out an arm to catch himself on a branch that wasn't where he thought it was going to be, fell backwards, and landed with a loud yelp and a bump directly on top of Not Gumball, who rapidly became Flat Gumball, and immediately rolled Dinah off him with a screech of dismay.

"Campus Security!" he hissed.

"I'm going to lie on my back," said Dinah. "If anyone asks, I'm sunbathing."

There was a second, quiet plop of something from above. Dinah turned his head.

The bag of Cheetos was lying unopened on the grass.

"I should probably look into Ritalin," Dinah said, surveying the burnt wreckage of his microwave with a special kind of horror. "I... I think I'm the reason we're not allowed these in dorm rooms."

"How's Ritalin going to help?" asked Not Gumball, eating tuna out of a can with chopsticks, watching the smoke spiral out of the extractor fan. "It's not flame-retardant. I tested it to find out. It also doesn't give you superpowers. Checked that too."

"I heard it was supposed to be good for impulse control," said Dinah, vaguely. He looked at the trash. It wasn't really big enough for the microwave. "My mom made me see a child psychiatrist and they suggested it because I put Susy in a headlock in the middle of a presentation in 5th grade instead of answering her dumb question about afterburners."

"Nope," said Assuredly Not Gumball, flicking tuna at Dinah. "It just made it easier to focus on having no impulse control."

"Maybe you just need to take more of it," said Dinah, picking up the microwave with an oof. It was heavier than it looked. He'd kind of assumed it wouldn't be as difficult to get rid of the evidence now he was an adult.

"That's meth," said Gumball, in a scandalised voice. "You can't tell a black man to take meth. A cop will literally materialise out of the side of that refrigerator and shoot me before I even get to the end of the sentence."

"Can he shoot me first," Dinah asked, dropping the microwave's corpse on top of the trash. It didn't even slightly fit. "Then I won't have to explain this to anyone."

"Explain what?" said Gumball, handing him the tuna can. "I didn't see anything. I was here the whole time and I definitely didn't see you put an entire baseball made of aluminum into the microwave for twenty minutes. So it can't have happened."

"You should sit in on my epistemology class," Dinah suggested, as they left the kitchenette.

"Fuck no," said Definitely Not Gumball. "It clashes with Intro To Green Space Engineering."

"Oh shit," said Dinah, as they watched the Dr Pepper can detonate somewhere over the roof of the oncoming convertible. "I think we should be somewhere else."

"I think we should be at Denny's," One Hundred Percent Not Gumball said, leading the way off the interstate footbridge at a pace that Dinah couldn't hope to keep up with. He did his level best, but Tall Not Gumball was already waiting at the bottom of the steps by the time he even reached the top.

"This would be so much easier if either of us could drive," said Dinah despondently, stumbling down the last few steps. "We could beat a hasty retreat in style if you'd bothered to get a license."

"Me get a license?" Gumball snorted as they tramped away from the verge and into the darkness. It was a four mile walk to the nearest Denny's and Dinah was already beginning to regret whoever's smart idea it was to come out here. "I can't. I'm constitutionally unsuited to driving."

"Too tall."

"Nope."

"Too ADHD."

"Nope."

"Too-" Dinah snapped his fingers and frowned. "Oh, wait, I got it! Too many racist cops!"

"Ding!" said Entirely Not Gumball, reaching through the dark with unerring accuracy to poke Dinah in the middle of the forehead. "A Gold Star for Captain Dinah for reaching Level One of Woke White Person: Cynical Comments About Police Brutality!" He poked Dinah in the side of the face and whipped his hand away. "My mom wouldn't let me behind the wheel of a car in my hometown because of life expectancy.~" He paused. "Speaking of murder, as we nearly were-if I get shot in the back for yeeting Peeber cans at someone's Midlife Crisis Trophy, I need you to do me a favour."

"I will give you the most indecent burial possible," said Dinah, his hand uselessly on his heart. "I will bury you upside-down in the biggest vat of Lucky Charms I can legally acquire and I will tell everyone you died a noble death, defeated by the natural enemy of all man: the leprechaun."

Not Gumball But Definitely Exasperated reached out of the dark and slapped him on the back of the head.

"No, you genius, tell my mom I wasn't doing anything whatsoever, or she will dig me back up, resurrect me, and murder me again herself." He sighed into the cool night air. "She is, uh. Kind of fierce. A bit of a tiger, if you will."

"I don't think you're allowed to call someone a tiger mom unless they're Asian," said Dinah, thoughtfully. "And even then I guess it's ... kind of racist."

"Good thing she's Asian then," said Gumball, distantly. "And yes, that's why I will and you won't."

"So are you like..."

"Adopted? Yes."

"I was going to ask if you were up for pretending to be unconscious so I can try and get us a ride back to campus," said Dinah, not entirely truthfully. "My shoe is wet."

"Well you should have learned to drive then," said Not Gumball, cheerfully.

"Yeah, but I'm not constitutionally suited to it either," said Dinah. "Also, my dad said I wasn't allowed to learn until every other living person on the road was both blind and deaf and possibly also dead as well."

"Okay I really have to ask," said Dinah, lying face-down on his Gumball's bed while Gumball sat, hunched up like a very long gargoyle on the study desk, completely ruining his roommate's sketches.

"I don't have any left," said Gumball.

"Not the question," Dinah said, trying to get unwashed pillowcase out of his mouth. It smelled of eucalyptus and menthol and a bit of vanilla, which wasn't so bad, but it definitely tasted of unwashed college student pillowcase.

"Yes, but only on Sundays."

"Still not the question," said Dinah, hunching up like a cat with a hairball. "Ugh ow." He slid back into position again.

"If you gotta ask, you gotta ask," said Probably Not Gumball, fiddling with his phone. "I will consult The Magic Google."

"Did you really come here on a Sports Mascot Scholarship?" Dinah asked, lifting his face out of the pillow with the crook of his arm.

"... No, you idiot, there's no such thing. I took out a loan like everyone else." Gumball sounded faintly disappointed.

"Have you ever actually been a sports mascot?" Dinah persisted.

"Uh," said Gumball, warily. "No. I was a cheerleader. But I wasn't 'funny' enough for the school mascot and they gave it to this kid in my class with Downs who didn't even want to do it because they wanted him to feel included, which was bullshit, because Shawn just wanted to be on the swim team and they wouldn't even let him be swim team mascot so no, I was not."

"And you're totally not bitter about it," said Dinah, with a smirk that only the pillow saw. "Which brings me onto the real question."

Gumball sounded even more wary, like he had an inkling what Dinah was about to say. "How many were you planning on asking?"

"Oh, like, three or four hundred."

"I guess it is a while until lunch," said Undoubtedly Not Gumball. "Hit me with your question-baton."

"Did you want to be a school mascot because you're like, a furry?" Dinah asked, idly.

Gumball gently slumped off the desk as if he'd been physically wounded and rolled under the bed like a movie marine. From the darkness of the dust and million-year-old carpets, he said in a hollow voice, "Maybe."

"Cool," said Dinah, letting his hand dangle off the side of his bed. "I found your old deviantart account, I think."

"CAL-vin," Gumball groaned, from under the bed, "that is the literal opposite of cool."

"Hey," said Dinah, wiggling his fingers. "You remember last... Thursday? When you told me about the try-outs for the Mars preparation mission in Russia and I got so hype that I swallowed a whole box of mechanical pencil lead and then I was really freaked out it would puncture my intestine so you offered to go fishing for it down my throat with a magnet on a string and instead I just ended up puking half-digested bagel on your phone?"

"Vividly," said Gumball, from under the bed. "Also... why?"

"I dunno," said Dinah, as Probably Not Gumball But Who Cares, Really, clasped his hand from under the bed like a friendly monster and more-or-less engulfed it. "I just remembered. I mean, you're a total loser. But I am too."

"Yeah," said Gumball, squeezing his hand lightly. "Also, what exactly were you doing to find that goddamn account anyway?"

"I mean what did I just say about being a total loser?" Dinah asked, shoving his head against the wall so he could shout down the side of the bed. "Yeah, go on, take a wild guess. A really wild one."

"Cool," agreed Never Has Been Gumball, still hanging onto Dinah's fingers with his preternaturally large and very soft hand. "So, how long can I hold your hand before it starts being strange?"

"Dunno," said Dinah, down the crack of the bed. He sneezed. "Let's find out."

Gumball gave his fingers another squeeze. "Let's make it weird."