Author's note: Hello everyone, this chapter was a pretty fun one to write, I hope you all enjoy it! Also just a side note, the past few chapters have been occurring within days of each other, this chapter is about one-half the way through the first trimester in mid Septemberer. Any questions just msg me. Enjoy.
My wake up this morning was nicer than it was most mornings. Normally an alarm blares and shows that it's a horrible time in the morning. This Saturday morning, I was awoken by a pillow being thrown from across the room. I opened my eyes and looked to see Alek standing there by the base of his bed, with his clart eating grin, and pointing at the clock. I turned to see that it read 6:15. My eyes widened. I flung myself out of bed.
"It can't be! I set my alarm!" His smile only grew.
"And it was your alarm that woke me up on your day to get up first." I was at my dresser at this point getting my clothes for working out. We had started going in the mornings before classes, it was there and we thought it might be useful. Alek wanted to also try and get a one up on that clart face Fitzroy. I quickly changed in the bathroom, grabbing an extra towel and shoving on a tank top, and a baggy shirt with a pair of gym shorts. I walked out and Alek had also changed, a pair of blue gym shorts and a plain gray T-shirt. His reddish brown hair was mussed up, and pushed back, it only added to the- Nope, do not continue that, it's not going to happen. Focus. I crossed the dorm and grabbed my phone and room key. We were about to exit when I heard Alek behind me.
"Ahem, you know the rule." I groaned and went back to my desk. I took a dollar from the surface and put them in the tin coffee pot on Alek's dresser. He had found it while in mechanic's class and brought it with him back to the dorm with an idea. Because I was always sleeping through my alarm, he said for incentive I'd put money and he would as well every time one of them slept on one of their days to wake the other up. We still had no clue what to do with it at the end of the year but that'll be a problem for another day. So far he was winning, I was losing by three days while he only had one day where he missed his alarm.
Alek was smirking again, I pushed past him as we exited the dorm and started on our way to the Gym building.
Normally when we got there we would work on the machines for thirty minutes, run three times around the indoor track and make our way to the pool. At first, I was adamant, I had my wrappings on but I couldn't go shirtless. Luckily some of the other kids there had shirts on to give more 'drag' for training, probably a load of clart but it works as an excuse. For the rest of the time until seven twenty-five we would swim, talk for a bit in between strokes, and even in the past few weeks, I have noticed a change. I had a bit more lean muscle and I was getting more definition on my biceps, Alek on the other hand with amount of motivation he had was training way harder and it showed, he was still slim but his lean muscle had started filling out more, with more definition, on his arms and back, which he showed off alot in mechanics, I constantly found myself trying to get myself to focus on other things. I'm not going to go down this road, I can't let a silly crush blow my cover. That's how it went these past few weeks, and today was no different.
We finished in the pool and made it back to the locker room to get our clothes and head back to the dorms.
The tiles were wet as we came into the locker room, and as always, clumsy Alek slipped and fell, landing and with the momentum sliding a few feet on the floor. I started laughing as he lay on the ground, writhing slightly. I had a daft idea and backed up a few steps and started forward and slid myself across the ground on my side and slid up to him, poking him in the forehead,
"How's the daft prince doing?" He groaned at my inquiry. at this I let out a bit of laughter and stood up, extending my hand to him, he grabbed it and got up, his face red from embarrassment.
"Let's just get our stuff and go to breakfast," he mumbled slightly. I started laughing again and I could see his ears burning.
As we were leaving, he looked longingly at the fencing area, Of course the barking prince fences. After this, he did as he always did, expressed excitement for the week that our gym course will be teaching it. He was like an energetic puppy, and his green eyes got a spark of pride. He would talk about how his uncle Volger coached him from a young age. He always talked about his uncle, but he made no mention of his parents, which seemed odd to me, whenever it came up he would act like he hadn't heard. I normally left it at that not wanting to make him uncomfortable, I can understand not wanting to talk about parents, my mum trying to make me all girly and stuff me in dresses, my aunts all disapproving of my decisions, especially when it comes to being a pilot and then, well, there's my Da….. I don't talk about it much with anyone, so needless to say, I get it.
The time was now Seven Forty and we were waiting in the Goethe building common room for NewKirk to meet us to go to breakfast. I had changed into a pair of pale caramel colored slim fits and a flannel that was mainly black, with white and brownish stripes that matched the pants and was easy on the eyes. Alek wore a pair of slim jeans and a maroon LSA T-Shirt. We both had our backpacks so we could start on the boatloads of homework that was assigned after breakfast in the courtyard outside. whenever I complained about it to Alek he smiled slightly and would say, "I didn't know 4 assignments that can be done in two hours to be considered a boatload." I would throw my arms up in the air and yell,
"You too!" It would normally take longer for me unless it was aeronautics, I would hyper focus on that. But on the other side of the spectrum, German would take ages to do, having to ask Alek for translations and arguing when he wouldn't just do the homework for me. I won most of the times, triumphantly cheering but regretting it when he is walking it through to me when completing it, making it take much longer than it needed to. Which isn't my fault for being difficult.
When Newkirk came out of the stairwell he looked like he had just rolled out of bed, and he probably did. His hair was nappy and flat on his head, and he was wearing simple sweat pants and a black T-shirt. He waved to us as we got up and made his way to us. We said our good mornings and he apologized for being late, again. I wanted to make another bet with Alek to win back some cash but he knew better than to bet on Newkirk's tardiness. Plus, we had all become better friends with Newkirk over the past few days, even though the middies and the "clankers" weren't supposed to get along. Newkirk and I mainly bonded in Aeronautics and our math class, while his and Alek's friendship was based on something else entirely. After the first week they both had found that they enjoyed the same video game, a game called Civilization V where you picked a country/ nation and well built a civilization. Their nerdiness also sucked me into the game and most weekends we went to Newkirk's dorm after dinner and played 'till the way past curfew. We could stay in our dorm but the connection is clart. Most weekends we played a World War One sim, Alek as Austria, of course, Newkirk as Britain, and me as Scotland. It was no holds bar chaos, but the chaos brings us together.
Normally, Nikola Hall was empty Saturday mornings as people opted to stay in and sleep and just catch lunch, and today was no different.
We made our way down the near empty food lines and split off into separate ways. The amount of food they had was incredible. They had to feed many students of many different cultures, palate types, and lifestyles. Newkirk was off at a different food section every day wanting to try every single food by the end of the school year. Maybe I should get him haggis from home and see what he thinks of that. Usually, on the weekends, I would have a proper Scottish breakfast with eggs, beans on toast, and Lorne sausage, along with coffee. which it was my turn to buy today because I missed the alarm. At the far end of the lunchroom, costa had a small shop run by some students set up, for myself I would get a black coffee and then add tons of cream and sugar while, Alek got something called earl grey cream tea, with only a spot of honey and one sugar so as not to overpower the flavor. He didn't really like coffee, even though Vienna has some of the best coffee in Europe apparently.
I made my way out of the lunch lines and went up the stairs to the dining area to find Newkirk and Alek. They were already sat down. Newkirk was trying some type of steamed pork-filled bun called a baozi. Alek had his normal Saturday breakfast of a Semmel, a type of roll, with apricot jam, and to round it off, a few slices of ham and a boiled egg. They were in a heated debate about who would win the Civ game later. I set down Alek's tea and put my food down to eat. Alek thanked me and then started to get up with it.
"Where are you going?" I asked curiously as to why he was getting up. He looked a bit confused,
"I'm just gonna go put in the sugar and honey, as I normally do," he looked at me questioningly.
"Oh I had them put it in." he looked a bit surprised at this and I could almost feel the embarrassment.
"I guess you've been paying attention then," he said with a smile sitting down. A little too much attention, I thought berating myself.
"Well, it's not hard when you order the same thing every day." He nodded and conceded my point.
"So I should remember to get you six creams and five sugars in yours?" I could feel my heart skip a beat and it wasn't due to the caffeine. He nailed it exactly.
" How did you...?" I managed to stammer out "it seems like you've also been paying attention." His daft smile breaking out on his daft face.
" Yea that or maybe you have six empty cream containers on the table and five sugars." I could feel my face heating up. Embarrassment, the daft feeling sucked.
The courtyard outside the Goethe building was wonderful for ignoring Alek's lessons in German. The grass was nice to lay in and the sun was still warm as the seasons were moving into autumn. When we had come out here the past week I normally drew the leaves and trees as Alek tried to coach me in German, droning on and on about how repetition and paying attention is key. Today he didn't really try. He was sitting on the bench under a now orange and gold tree. The sunlight filtering through catching his hair perfectly. Ignoring my advice to stop acting like a daftie I grabbed my sketch pad flipped past the trees, cracked out the Copic pens and began to draw. He was slightly hunched, one leg bent up on the bunch the other one flat to the ground. His white undershirt was poking out from his collar and the hem of his shirt in random places. His black jeans were scrunched up around the cuffs where they reached his shoes. His fiery hair was pushed back but still a few strands well forward into his face.
Alek stayed stoic like that, working on the lab report Barlow had given us due to their new job with her, for around an hour and a half. Whenever he focused on something, it got done no matter what, no breaks, no little procrastination temptations. Even though him procrastinating got him into the problem of working with a one track focus through not one of the day's assignments, it was a real skill. By the time he put down the science book and stretched I had finished the drawing, rather good of I do say so myself, the pens couldn't get the exact right light and shade of colors but it looked near perfectly like Alek. His ears were a bit rough to size.
During the drawing time I thought about what I was doing, you're being daft, you're not going to let one …. Reasonably attractive boy get to you. I responded to my inner dialogue, I'm only drawing this because of artistic reasons, though I couldn't really convince myself of that. So what if I have a slight crush. At this point I was halfway finished with the drawing and realized it may be a tad more than slight, but I would just have to live with it.
Alek stood and picked up his bag and said over his shoulder, "We should probably go back to the dorm and get ready for Barlow's. I'm ready to be done with this report process. What'd you get done today?"
Oh, you know, just drew a very detailed picture of you, no biggie. "Not much, I just drew." He laughed at that, as If he knew what I was going to way before I did. I packed up my bag but Alek decided to just carry his lab book and notes with him, his bag was full up of his other assignments he didn't have to bring out to work on but did anyway.
As we were walking back into Goethe, Fitzroy and his cronies walked out. We had been able to avoid them most of the time but things just weren't fated to go our way today. His goons were laughing their dumb laughs when Fitzroy sneered and flipped his arm up into Alek's books as we passed, scattering his laborious workmanship into the mud. He stared for a second as Fitzroy started to walk away laughing, I could see Alek's ears starting to redden with embarrassment and what I could only assume was rage. But before he could do anything and I could think of an appropriate response, I stepped forward and shoved him. Hard. He wasn't expecting it, Fitzroy tumbled to the ground ripping his jeans in one knee. He seemed shocked, his friends did, Alek did, and I felt shocked as well. I mean he deserved it, but I may have escalated things.
His friends rushed over to help him up. He pushed them off and glared at me and Alek who was picking up his papers off the ground. Fitzroy's face was red with anger, he spit on my shoe, he started walking towards me, but as he did a group of teachers who were leading the study groups in the common areas of the dorms walked out. Fitzy balked at this and stared me down and said the most cliché line I never thought I'd hear from a bully, "You're going to regret that Sharp!" and then he was off. I turned to Alek as he was getting back up with his now muddied papers.
"Thanks Dylan, but you didn't need to provoke him."
"I know but why do you let him treat you like that! He just can't keep getting away with treating you like clart!" Alek shrugged looking down at his papers.
"It's just how things are gonna happen, I'll figure it out, but again, thank you. You're an amazing friend." I could feel a small bloom in my chest at that and we continued to the dorm to get ready for the job with Barlow.
Work had finished and we were making our way down to try and make dinner. Alek looked bored and tired as he normally did after this. He was on ferret duty, watching the ferret that broke out of the cage on the first day. The ferret was pregnant with genetically altered babies from Dr. Barlow's work with CRISPR. He sat in the back room cleaning and organizing the files alphabetically as I fed all the pets which took a good hour and a half to fully complete. Then it was helping with experiments and being Guinea pigs for lesson plans for the last hour and a half we were there for, but during this time we went over them in the backroom watching over the ferret.
On our way to Nikola hall Newkirk texted me, yo Dylan don't bother with the dining hall my roommate ordered a bunch of pizza and he has leftovers so we can launch into civilization. I showed Alek the text, he started laughing but he looked grateful that there were fewer stops in the night.
We swung by our room, grabbing our laptops, then making our way over to Newkirks. When we got there, his room smelled like excess air freshener and all the windows were open. His roommate was passed out on his bed behind his privacy curtain, three boxes of pizza were on his nightstand.
"Hey guys sorry for the overpowering smell, my roommate was at it again." By at it again he meant that his roommate had gotten incredibly high, and we expected no less from him. He had a reputation around the school of being out of it ninety-five percent of the time, the other five percent was when he was selling to people, he was pretty well connected. Alek looked like he wanted to pompously upturn his nose and scowl in disgust, but as soon as he set up his laptop and had some food he looked like he could care less.
"It's all good Newkirk. My cousin Jaspert would do it all the time with his friends throughout high school." Bloody, made the house smell like clart. He nodded sheepishly. Newkirk wouldn't abide by his roomie's habit and had tried to be switched but all of the dorms were full. He had to deal but at least he had the best connection to the internet in the building. We all booted up and logged on and began the game.
We started at around six thirty, the time was now nine o'clock and Newkirk was on a warpath. Normally, Alek would have been able to win diplomatically at this point, but Newkirk had seen to the computer-based characters Alek allied with and had begun moving in on "Austria" which Alek had put little defense into. I had been knocked out an hour ago and was squeezing in next to Alek, to micromanage his game. He was frantically trying to push the foaming at the mouth Newkirk back. Normally it was a race to the finish between me and Alek but this time, we had caught late starts and Newkirk shot ahead. This was the closest he'd come to winning.
Needless to say, Newkirk won, but me helping Alek kept the game alive until eleven-thirty. In that time I noticed a few things; Alek is a pro at this game, Newkirk is also a force to be reckoned with, and not playing was drop dead boring, so much so that I dozed off on Alek's shoulder. He was too invested in the game to notice, so when I woke up in the throes of the last few turns of the game and realized what had happened I could feel my face go red and scooted away to pack up my things. Once the game had concluded and all of the electronics were stowed in our bags, Alek and Newkirk shook hands gave the complementary, "good game, good night" that the last two players did and we left.
The dorm hallways were dead quiet, granted we were out past curfew but at least we were in the building. I unlocked the door and entered the room, the now familiar smells of the dorm hit me, Alek and my deodorant, the detergent that the school used, a bit of Clorox for the spill that may or may not have been my fault and the attempted-to-be-hidden smell of shoes sprayed with air freshener. The small dorm felt like a home away from home now. The desks with sketches strewn about and German homework, the messy bed, and Aeronautic diagrams hanging on the wall. It was near perfection. I went off to the shower before Alek could call it.
I got out quick because I didn't want Alek to fall asleep before he had the chance to shower. I opened the door, changed into a baggy white undershirt and a pair of long flannel sleeping pants. I called out to Alek that the shower was all his but he didn't respond, he was off in his own world looking at something in his hands. I called again and he jolted a bit. He quickly put away what he was looking at, a nice picture frame with two people in it, a man and a woman in front of a cathedral in what looked to be casual clothes but like fancy casual, the lady had brown hair as did the man but It was streaked with grey and he had a bushy mustache. Alek closed the nightstand and walked into the bathroom.
As I laid in bed, I thought about what that picture could be, most likely one of his parents, but why would he keep it put away? When Alek returned from the shower I almost asked but, I felt I would be invading his privacy. As I fell asleep that night all I could do was wonder, what is going on with you Alek?