#hate the fact that my money just goes straight to her awful pockets every single month cos i cant afford anything better

[90sbee]

repeating in my head like a mantra "i need to forget abt my hobbies and 70% of my joy this year and just work work work bc if i don't get an apartment soon i will die"

[philliamwrites]

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Fandom: All For The Game (Nora Sakavic)

Pairing: Neil/Andrew

Tags: #math nerd neil, #neil with glasses, #no exy

Summary: In which Neil hates his new prescribed glasses until they attract the interest of a certain Andrew Minyard.

Commissioner: Ziegenkind

Notes: Title taken from Billie Eilish’s ‘Ocean Eyes.’

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Dude, it’s just a frat party. Who doesn’t go to frat parties?

     The message flashes Neil’s screen white, its sender none other than his roommate Nicky who is supposed to study for an upcoming test in Public Policy in exactly nineteen hours. That’s what Neil writes him. Nicky’s reply comes instantly.

Those who study tend not to party. You know. Like you.

     Neil leaves him on read. If he wants to party, he’ll lock himself inside his room, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s by his side while watching every existing compilation of cats attacking people on the small screen of his phone. He knows how to have a good time, alright. Not everyone has to set their scale like Nicky: More than once Neil has been the spectator of him coming back to the dormitory completely wasted, but still eager enough to get frozen waffles from the fridge. Being too drunk to put them in the toaster, he usually just climbs up to his top bunk and puts them between his thighs to eat them partially defrosted. It’s this fragile line between genius and stupidity that has Neil doubting if he should fill in a request for changing roommates or just live with the fact that Nicky Hemmick is one special kind of man.

    So instead of spending his night curled into himself, wall against his back and eyes on every stranger distributing awful shots, Neil sits at the Math Tutoring Centre on the west side of the campus and gives group tutoring sessions.

    Math comes to Neil like breathing. Like Bertrand Russel said, not only does Mathematics possess truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture. It is sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. It is poetry—elegant and deep—of logical ideas to create harmony in a written line. Once he tried to explain that to Nicky over microwaved Mac n Cheese with Girls running in the background, clearly overestimating him, because Nicky only stared into space for a few seconds, and replied, “You really need to get laid, man.”

    Reluctant at the beginning, Neil only agreed to join the Tutor Program because his math professor promised to throw in some extra cash. Something about raising the graduate numbers in order to get the board of education off his back. That’s where Neil’s jurisdiction of interest ends, but he has enjoyed it more than expected—the empty hallways, the harsh light of the ceiling lamps, the smell of chalk, the faint echoes of students still lingering in classrooms. There’s this magic about the Palmetto State University at night—a vulnerability that can only live once the sun sets behind the horizon. When else would he find a kid sleeping under a table in the library, or seniors breaking down in tears for exact 10 minutes before continuing their studies as if nothing has happened.

    There’s another reason he’d rather spend his evening on campus, one Nicky doesn’t need to know because then Neil won’t hear the end of it. That reason being 5’0’’ tall chemistry prodigy Andrew Minyard, sitting in the last row of Neil’s math sessions each Friday. He only knows about him thanks to Nicky’s never-ending complaints, but that never really stopped him from throwing a few or more glances in Andrew’s direction. Just curiosity, of course.

    So when he stands in front of the blackboard now, putting away his lesson papers which are full of numbers and equations—the kind that has enough letters to look like sentences—he feels dozens eyes burn holes in the back of his neck, and one pair belongs to Andrew. No one asks why he’s here, but everyone knows he doesn’t need to be.

    In his one year of giving tutoring sessions, Neil has learnt that exactly three types of students exist: Students who are really good, certainly not in need of the extra lessons, but going anyway for some extra ego-buff and unnecessary brain-flexing. The second type is students who are okay, doing their tasks, following the lesson, not really attracting any attention safe for some crude jokes. The last type has Neil questioning his belief in the educational system of the whole state because he doesn’t understand how they are allowed inside the sacred halls of PSU.

    Andrew is a special type on his own—the enigma that keeps Neil awake at two in the morning because he’s desperate to solve it, but without knowing where to start, he’s just running in circles. His fingers itch to solve an equation with multiple variables, to find the solution to a problem and get it off his mind.

    He doubts it will be this easy with Andrew.

    “Before we continue to look at scalar products in R- and C-vector spaces, we’ll consider bilinear and semi-bilinear forms in general, and link them to matrices for their representation to chosen bases.” Neil’s hand flies across the board, leaving letters and parenthesizes that look like bizarre drawings—art in its most complex form. Once he’s finished, he takes a step away, wipes the chalk on his fingers off on his jeans, and turns to his audience. “What happens to this equation with the semi-bilinear form σ?”

    Two hands shoot up immediately. He ignores them; no need to feed their ego, and instead picks a freshman who’s been staring at his phone for the last ten minutes. Making way, Neil moves back to the student’s seats and leans against a desk.

    Is it the farthest place away from the board? It is.

    Is it the closest that will get him to Andrew? Might be so.

    It certainly gives him a good look at what Andrew’s been doing since Neil started—and that is not solving a single task on the paper Neil has handed out at the beginning of the session. Andrew, apparently bored before it even started, has taken out a slip of paper with a sudoku puzzle on it and is solving it against his leg, completely linked out of the instruction.

    Neil tries not to stare too much at Andrew’s bare arms, and instead looks back at the board.

    “Does that look right?” the freshman—Rhys or Rheeze or something like that—asks, turning around.

    Neil narrows his eyes and squints at the board. He can’t make out a single thing, and that’s bad, yes, but his feet betray him, staying rooted where they are instead of reducing the distance until he can distinguish σ from a.

    “Where does the l come from,” he asks. Multiple heads snap in his direction.

    “That’s a j, Josten,” someone says from the other side of the room.

    Neil squints harder. “And the u?”

    “A μ.”

    “No, it’s a v,” a girl next to Neil says, and that’s when the everyone starts shouting about what’s on the board and what isn’t.

    Neil bears it for a solid minute before he surrenders. He pulls a small case from his pocket, opens it. Puts his glasses on.

    The whole room goes silent.

    Neil checks the equation, nods. “Correct. Who’s next?”

    Multiple people stir, one manages to get up, and walks straight into a table leg. Neil questions that ‘straight’, because only then the freshman guy stops staring at Neil and steers his attention to the equation on the blackboard.

    It was a bad idea, and Neil still hates Allison for forcing him to go. She’d dragged him to the doctor last week to get his eyes tested, annoyed by his never-ending questions of ‘What’s written there?’ or ‘Is that a six or an eight?’.

    “They’re my eyes,” Neil had said, arms crossed as he sat in the office and waited for his turn.

    “And it’s me who has to see your ugly squinting face,” Allison had replied.

    Two hours later Neil had finally his prescriptions but that didn’t mean he was free from Allison’s clutches. He would have been fine with some glasses from the dollar store, but she insisted that if he’s going to wear them more than once a day, he should get designer glasses—thin frames and a color that matches his copper hair. She suggested gold. Neil picked black. The look of disappointment on Allison’s face was something that deserved its own painting to commemorate it. But once they’d finally chosen the right pair, she’d given him the very same look most of the students are giving him now—a mix between slight awe and disbelief as if he’s grown a second head. Or owes them all a month’s worth of lunch money.

    “Well,” had Allison said at least, turning away to pack up and go home. “Tigers have their stripes. I have my eyeliner.” She threw him another scrutinizing look over her shoulder. “You have your glasses.” If it was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t work, and right now he regrets nothing more than allowing Allison to drag him around.

    Neil’s eyes land on Andrew’s sudoku puzzle, now half-hidden under his papers, and he sees now that he isn’t even solving the thing, but simply coloring in the empty squares.

    He takes a second too long and meets Andrew’s eyes staring back at him.

    “Problem, Josten?” Andrew asks with a blank expression, tapping the end of his pen against his monochrome picture of black and white squares.

    Neil wants to see how far he can push until he walks against a brick wall and breaks something. He returns his gaze to the board but feels Andrew’s eyes like a solid touch on the back of his neck.

    After the session, the students hurry outside, still throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Neil and if he could merge with the back of his chair and disappear forever, that would be totally okay. It isn’t until a shadow looms above him that he looks up from his own homework and draws in a careful breath when Andrew towers above him.

    Neil raises an eyebrow. “Problem, Minyard?”

    Andrew’s face gives nothing away, and when he stretches out a hand, Neil doesn’t flinch. His glasses slip off easily, held between Andrew’s thumb and index finger.

    “Nicky told me he’s trying to convince you to join him tomorrow,” Andrew says. Neil needs a second, because that is the most words he’s heard out of Andrew’s mouth.

    “I have no reason to go,” Neil says, his eyes jumping up and down, from the equation that makes his sight blur to Andrew leaning his slender waist against the table.

    “You have one now.” It’s barely neutral enough to not sound like a threat, but Neil stares at Andrew nonetheless, and when he puts Neil’s glasses on, Neil’s heart does a weird stutter. He’s still starring at Andrew when he leaves the room, and no, his eyes don’t stray, they stay on Andrew’s broad back, and if they dip lower it’s because of the light.

    Once he’s alone, Neil takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Puts his head in his arms and counts to ten in French first, then again in German. His heart still does this weird thing, trying to bruise his ribs from the inside.

    He gets his phone, texts Nicky he’ll go to the frat party tomorrow and puts it away, not interested in his roommate’s reply. There’s still the equation he needs to solve, but for the first time Neil’s heart isn’t really into math, and he is quite alright with it.

[miafic]

a couple weeks after zakk gets married, lucas’ grief is really starting to set in, so he goes to a bar the minute he’s done at peace and purpose. 

just as he’s getting a little drunk (more than tipsy but way less than hammered), ‘to make you feel my love’ comes on the speakers. he hurriedly puts some money down, gets up, and leaves. walking briskly down the sidewalk. hands stuffed into his pockets. head down. angrily wiping tears every once in a while. 

he lets himself into megan’s apartment, and she’s still awake because he hears her call out a friendly, “hey!” but he doesn’t respond or even look over. he stalks straight into his bedroom and shuts the door. he manages to send her a text (sorry, not feeling great) before he tosses his phone onto the mattress and collapses facedown onto his pillows. 

zakk’s at the house, so lucas knows that he’s not fucking vanessa right at that moment, but they might be on the phone. 

or texting. 

or sexting.

lucas huffs, rolls onto his back, and covers his face with his hands. “fuck,” he mutters aloud, because he hasn’t had a drink in quite a while. the ceiling is shimmering, and that’s definitely not supposed to be happening. 

if that stupid song hadn’t come on, lucas would still be drinking, maybe enough to forget about everything. zakk was still his best friend. seeing him made lucas happy. there was no pit in the bottom of lucas’ stomach whenever zakk walked into the room; there was a smile on his face instead. 

“fuck,” lucas says again, sharper. he sits up. picks up his phone. types out a message to zakk - fuck you - but doesn’t send it. he deletes the letters.

he types another: miss you. 

delete. 

i hate you sometimes.

delete.

i’m so mad at you.

delete. tears well in his eyes. 

why did you do this to me?

he stares at the sentence for a long time before he erases it.

do you even realize that i’m upset?

he goes to hit the backspace, but he accidentally hits send. his hand flies up to cover his mouth, fingers digging into his cheeks. “fuck, fuck!” he hisses, and - quickly thinking back to a trick he’d learned a year or two earlier from the internet - sets his phone to airplane mode. he leaves it there for two full minutes, staring at the wall. his teeth are clenched, and he can feel that he’s breathing hard. he’s terrified.

fuck. 

he’s such an idiot. 

he turns the phone back on, praying to god and jesus and the holy spirit that the text didn’t go through, but it did. 

and zakk has called him three times. 

lucas exhales heavily. he’s screwed. 

his phone lights up, signaling that he has a text from zakk: did you block me????

lucas buries his face in his hands. it’ll say ‘delivered’ so zakk will know he hasn’t, but this is a fucking mess. 

zakk calls again, and lucas lets it ring. this time, zakk leaves a message. 

lucas wants to delete it without listening, but instead he hurries to text, sorry, wrong number. i’m drunk, so at least zakk will know he didn’t have time to listen to the voicemail and send that in response. 

lucas lies back on the bed, holding the phone over his face. he stares at the voicemail notification for several moments. according to the time displayed at the bottom, the message is long.

zakk doesn’t text him back, keeps not texting him back. 

it’s almost two in the morning. 

lucas presses play. 

hey, zakk’s voice says with gentle urgency. thanks for letting me through. lucas, of course i know you’re upset, man. you don’t even look at me anymore. what the hell happened? i can’t stop thinking about it, and i don’t know what i did to you. you were fine, and then as soon as i left for the honeymoon, it was like you hated me. you wouldn’t text me back or answer the phone for me, and now you spend every day giving me the cold shoulder. 

dude. i know you’re upset. and i need you to tell me why, because i don’t know. i don’t understand. i’m not getting it. if i did something to hurt you, you’re going to have to tell me because i can’t think of anything, lucas. not a single thing. and i’ve spent a long time trying to figure it out, and all i know is that we had the wedding, and everything was fine, and you wrote me the most beautiful letter in the world. and then i left for the honeymoon and a switch flipped, and all of a sudden, you can’t stand me. 

i don’t know why you’re acting like this. the kids have been asking me if we got into a fight. have they asked you, too?

is this about vanessa? is it about the fact that i was gone? we talked about it, man. you were the one who encouraged me to take a break and go on a trip. and it was only four days! 

did something happen while i was gone? with your family, or one of the kids, or... i don’t know. 

he falters, and then his voice softens significantly. my other guess... i remember that you asked me not to talk about it, but is this about luke? or chance? because if it is, i can help. unless you don’t want me to. it’s okay for you to still be upset about them. but i want to help if i can.

there’s another moment of quiet. when zakk speaks again, he sounds simultaneously worried and defeated. 

lucas, i know you.

lucas presses the phone closer to his ear and shuts his eyes. he misses zakk so badly that it aches, but there’s still so much resentment and anger and sadness... 

and that means that i know that you only admit that you’re in pain when you’re in too much pain to handle. i don’t know what’s going on, but i need you to let me help you make your pain stop.

“you can’t,” lucas whispers out loud.

i know you think i can’t, zakk says, and despite how awful he feels, lucas manages a little huff of amusement, and i know you’re gonna tell me to stop counseling you, but it’s my job, man. and i’m good at it, and you know that. please let me help you. he sighs and reverts back to the original topic. of course i know you’re upset, lucas. how could i not realize? i see it all over your face every day. 

there are a few seconds of complete silence. 

call me back, please, or just come home. wake me up if i’m asleep - i don’t care. we really need to talk. i’m gonna stay up for a while in case you call, so... any time, okay? please call me back. i love you. okay, bye.

lucas picks the phone back up.

no, that text was for me, zakk has replied. i don’t care if you’re drunk. it might actually be better that you are. please call me back. 

lucas doesn’t. he doesn’t brush his teeth or use the bathroom because he doesn’t want to leave his bedroom, but he does go get a pair of pajama pants out of his drawer, remove his shirt, and let his hair out of its ponytail. he climbs into bed feeling a little dizzy from the alcohol.

lucas, i know you, echoes around in his head. i know you. 

and then he realizes that he can smell zakk’s skin on the sheets.

lucas groans and covers his face with both of his hands. it’s going to be a long night.