Ryan dribbles the ball across the court, the sweltering heat blinding his vision with salty sweat. The timer's bout to go off and the raging athlete in him pushes him to snatch every possible point even with his team's tenfold point advantage. He fakes a step to get the guy guarding him in a muddle, spinning around with the ball still in his possession. Right at the 3-point line, he perches on his toes and shoots.

The ball soars high in the air, every eye on it.

It's already over in his head. He knows it'll go in. Always does.

"Alright, that's a game! Good work everyone!" The coach announces, "I want everyone here on time for tomorrow's match. Y'know the drill, warm ups, do your free throws - do not provoke the other team like last time, alright." He scans through the group of players, stopping at one in particular. "Harlan! You trot in late tomorrow with a damn Starbucks cup in your hand again and I'll personally kick your ass off the team. Got it?"

Harlan tenses next to Ryan. Straightens up like a soldier in the army during roll call. He lets out a shaky Yes, Sir while the rest of the team unanimously divides between throaty chuckles and ruggish sneers directed towards him.

"Ryan!" Coach hollers, "Make sure they all arrive on time!"

On that high note, practice ends for the day. One by one, they depart from the boiling cement of the open court. Some head straight to the dorms to shower while others find shade to rest their weary bones first.

Harlan collapses on the ground. "Ugh, I don't know which is worse, the fact that my mom's new boyfriend is two years older than me or that I still can't get over you beating me for captain of the team."

"She has a new boyfriend already?" Ryan raises a brow. "And to answer your question, the first one. The first one is definitely worse." He twists the cap off a bottle, quenches his thirst and then passes the water down to his friend.

"When's your next class?" Harlan stretches as he sits up.

"One thirty. Think I'm gonna take a few laps before heading back, you can go ahead without me."

The eye roll couldn't have come any faster. "What's been going on with you lately? You're either running from class to class or running like you're training for an upcoming marathon, on top of basketball practice. And there's still like a long way to go until midterms. So what're you so stressed about?"

"Who says I'm stressed?"

Harlan gives him a long stare. "If there's one thing I know about you, it's that you're a stress exerciser. Now c'mon, tell me, what is it?" he insists, "You got an A minus on a test and your parents grounded you?" -

Ryan crosses his arms over his chest, can only smile at Harlan's inanity.

- "Got the wrong shampoo at the drugstore? Too many love letters piled at the bottom of your door -" His eyes widens with such abruptness, "You broke up with her. My god, you did! You finally broke up with Faithy!" he declares with way too much enthusiasm for such a sombre event.

"I didn't."

"What?!" Harlan jumps up. "Said you were gonna do it last week, what happened?"

Ryan looks at him and looks away. "Nothing, I just... "

"Don't tell me, you changed your mind?"

"No, it's... " He sweeps a hand through his hair. He was dreading this, hoping Harlan wouldn't bring it up. Up until now, it's always been easy to blame all his procrastinations (not that he had many) on school but there isn't much going on, as Harlan said, and there's no fucking way he'd tell him what went down between Faithy and him.

"Look," Ryan pinches the bridge of his nose, "Let's drop this, I don't -" His gaze focuses past Harlan to the students bustling about in this mid-morning, more accurately onto one person. Silky black hair, shifty posture, timid footsteps.

He sees Ari walking across the green field towards the campus parking, carrying a box in his hands.

"What are you -" Harlan starts to turn.

"Be right back."

He doesn't really think first, which Ryan wonders about himself. He's been taught to always think first, assess the situation from a logical standpoint, weigh the variables, pick his best move with the most beneficial outcomes, the consequences of those outcomes. This is why he excels in sports.

The calculations, the probability and energy needed for an event to work in his favour, this precision that helps him dodge dummies and win trophies.

But with Ari...

Everything blurs out because Ryan just wants to talk to him.

"Ari," he calls, loud and clear, "Hi, how've you been?"

Ari works past the initial surprise and recovers with a small smile. "I've been good, you... " He takes some time to study Ryan, glittery eyes bathing in the warm sunlight, appearing more grey than green, " ...just finished exercising?"

"Mhm," he nods to the court behind him, "Training, actually - do you like basketball?"

"Who doesn't?" Ari's smile widens. "Is there a big game coming up?"

"There is, for now there are these ongoing matches leading up to the finals. There's one tomorrow, you should come."

"Me? Am I allowed to?" He repositions his hands over the box for a better grip.

Ryan sees that. "Of course you can. Everyone is welcomed. So..?"

He doesn't answer right away, words stalled in this indecisiveness between agreeing or turning around and running away. Ryan almost wants to tell him that it's fine if he doesn't want to. But he doesn't and waits instead. Either Ari has an excuse and forgets it or doesn't want to come watch some university's basketball team he's never heard of before play.

Eventually - "Yeah... sure, I'll be there."

"Good." Ryan passes him a lazy smile, the sun and sweat and shadow revealing two identical dips in his cheeks. Faint, rare as an eclipse. "What's with the box?"

Ari sighs. "Ava," he answers, "Just assume that I'm always here because of her."

"Is she -" He glances at the box again, awfully burdensome and looking like it weighs ten times more than it actually does in Ari's frail arms. "- moving somewhere?

"Oh... no, no, she's not. I had to drop something off for her and these are some things that she didn't want anymore."

"I see... " Ryan's tone fades out and they're just looking at each other.

Ari exhales audibly. "They were... cluttering up her room, and y'know how stuffy it gets."

"Do you need any help?"

"No - please, I mean, no thank you," he refuses as politely as he can, "Just have to put this in the car, I can do it myself."

Ryan isn't too anything by his response, he just knows he'd rather be carrying that box instead of Ari. "You better go then, it looks heavy."

"Yes... " Ari hesitates, looking everywhere and then finally at him. " ...bye, Ryan."

The man scurries away before Ryan can open his mouth to utter a goodbye. He watches him until his silhouette disappears into the crowd of students and he thinks this is the first time he's heard Ari say his name.

"Who was that?" Harlan asks when he gets back.

He almost forgets about his friend. "None of your business." Ryan turns and starts gathering his stuff.

"C'mon, tell me. You talked for quite a while. Is he a student here? Is he moving into the dorms? Is he your new roommate?"

"Enough -" Ryan sighs, "He's Ava's brother."

Harlan pauses, confusion pinching between his brows. "Who?" He gasps. "Oh, Ava, you mean Faithy's annoying friend?"

Ryan secures the bag strap over his shoulder. "She's okay," he mutters, not too interested.

"Um hello?! Are you forgetting that night at the bar, during our break," Harlan exclaims, "You left early to take Faithy home and I was stuck with her. She talked my ear off, and she's handsy when she's drunk. I hate her, she's a know-it-all. I swear if her brother's anything like her, then -"

"He's not," Ryan quickly interjects.

Silence floods the space between them and Harlan's giving him this funny look.

Ryan lets out a breath. "I mean, I've only met him a few times but he seems like a decent guy," he shrugs, "I invited him to the game tomorrow."

"Really? Think he's gonna show?"

"Yes."

The following day, they gloriously sweep the win against the other team. The gymnasium breaks into a celebratory parade of sorts. Crowds cheering, feet stomping, the amount of times Ryan's had someone come up to him to congratulate him with kind words; a sheer validation of his natural born talent and hardwork put into the sport.

All the satisfaction and excitement buzzing in the air lifts him high and into an unmovable state of ecstasy. Ryan suddenly remembers, seeks to share this victory with Ari.

He scans through the bleachers and after the third time, he decides to accept it.

"He didn't show, huh." Harlan pats him on the back.

Fuck. "Whatever."

⟡

The last place Ari would want to spend his Sunday night is at a party. Much less one at a university he doesn't even go to. Unfamiliar faces, crowded hallways, conversations about nothingness that have him rolling his eyes, but maybe he's a little jealous too.

"Will you just stand there?" Ava blows the smoke in his face and it throws him off from the nice breeze of this chilly night. "Go in already," she says annoyingly and he wants to smack that aloof attitude there right off her manicured fingertips.

"I don't know anyone here."

She fails to acknowledge how nervous he is. "So? Talk. Get to know them. Why are you acting like such a baby?"

He sighs. "No. The real question is why am I here?"

"What would you rather be doing?" She takes another drag, the incandescent red dot at the end of the cigarette breathing to life for a few seconds. "Watching reruns of some lame sitcom you've seen a billion times before? Enough is enough. It's time for you to get used to parties, go and do something instead of living in that little world of yours."

It's monumentally hard not to get offended by her words but since Ari's known in his family for being temperamental, he stays quiet. He doesn't want to get into it with her, especially not when she's had a few cans. He thinks of something else. "Don't you have class in the morning?"

"Who cares? I'm not gonna blow through university attending boring lectures and spending all day with my nose buried in a book, like some antisocial geek, lord of the nerds -" She smirks at him, "- no offence."

"Whatever." Ari hugs himself, watching more people stroll into the building blasting with music.

"And y'know what's the worst part?" she adds, "It's that you're not even in school and you study harder than someone who is."

He hates that reminder. The urge to walk away has him bouncing a leg impatiently, to get the last look and jump off this train of insults she's granted him a first class ticket to but where can he go exactly? So Ari waits. For her to finish smoking, for her to reapply her lipstick, for her to pop in that mint.

All the while reminds himself of how by the end of tonight, he'll be snug in bed buried under ten blankets, dozing off to the distant sound of the TV running in the background.

The boys' dormitory is a lot like the girls'. A communal space takes up the whole ground floor which has now been repurposed to a dance floor. The building cavity ringed with corridors each level makes for more room to breathe, straight to its dazzling skylight. People are scattered from the first floor and up outside their rooms talking, drinking, enjoying the music or simply gazing down at the swaying bodies; the heart of the party.

Ari loses all surrounding sense for a bit as he watches the dancing folks. He notes the appropriate song stimulating their movements, some subtle and others stripper-pole worthy. In a blink he only sees the vacant oak flooring, glossy from the ray of moonlight and the intense bass thumping underneath his feet with nobody's voice except the singer's in the song echoing into his ears.

Ava calls for him in the next second and he's suddenly back at the party. Overwhelms himself with the massive crowd all over again.

"Y'know what?" She slings an arm around him. "Let tonight be a lesson for you," she says, guiding him up the stairs, "I'll show you how to have a good time. Just watch and see how it's done. Talking isn't that hard."

Maybe not for you, he rolls his eyes.

"Tell 'em about yourself... you have to sound intere -"

Ari struggles to pay attention to her when they're passing by stranger after stranger until he catches sight of a familiar face. His eyes go wide, a chilling splash of guilt washing over him.

It's Ryan, there, oh - Ari is such an idiot for not expecting to see Ryan here, like duh! He fucking lives here, for goodness' sake! He looks this way and Ari goes as still as a corpse. He doesn't know what to do while those deep ocean eyes hold him tightly in place. He hears Ava squawk something beside him.

Ari focuses on a smile, a polite and apologetic one.

To his surprise (but not really though), Ryan glances away like it's nothing.

There's an instant tightness in Ari's chest, he just doesn't understand how missing one game feels about the same as leaving the stove on and coming home to see your house on fire.

⟡

Ryan halts in his steps, a puff of breath escaping him.

Ari?

He whips his head around to check but he doesn't see him.

Harlan appears by his side. "Here," he hands him a soda, "Y'know you're the only one here who's not drinking. C'mon, Faithy's with her parents again. Loosen up a little."

"I've got an early test tomorrow."

"Do you realise how much of a nerd you sound like right now?" Harlan sips his beer bitterly. "I'll never wrap my head around the fact that you can be this boring and still have everyone in school worship the ground you step on. Is it the money? I think it's the money."

God. This cannot be his whole night.

He watches the other occupants of this social gathering delighting themselves in cheap booze and shameless courtships. He's starting to regret leaving his dorm room in the first place. The test tomorrow is nothing big, certainly not worth staying up late to study. But he already had that new video game loaded until Harlan dragged him out here.

"Oh yeah. Who's that guy you were talking to the other day? After practice -" Harlan makes a thinking face. "- Ava's brother! Yeah, that's it, I just saw him -"

"What?" Ryan turns to him.

"Mhm," he nods, "I was going to say hi but Ava was there too, showing off her new navel piercing and I have a feeling it's got a long-ass origin story, don't want to get caught in that."

"Where?"

Harlan purses his lips. "Is there really a more clear way to describe a navel piercing?"

"Not that -" Ryan groans. "I'm talking about her brother, where did you see him?"

"Oh... " He points in a direction. "Wait, are you gonna lea -" Harlan sighs, watching the man stride away, "- of course you are."

He sees Ava preoccupied with a guy, no sign of Ari anywhere near them. Minutes of searching go by, he runs into a couple more of his friends... finally it becomes apparent that he's swimming upstream with this quest. He's not finding Ari. Not with this crowd, the distracting music and the colourful strobe lights making the place look like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

Instead of going back to his friends, Ryan heads up to the fifth floor where the sound of the music and combined chatter of students starts overlapping into this distant distorted noise. He's two doors away from his room when he sees someone right across his door standing against the railings, peeking down at the party.

Ryan thinks he's imagining it at first, has to blink a few times to be certain.

Fortunately, it's all real.

"Ari," he calls, tries not to startle the man but who's he kidding?

Ari is surprised, skeleton jumping out of his skin type of surprised.

Ryan approaches him carefully. "Hey, what're you doing here?" he's quick to add, "On this floor, I mean, everybody's downstairs."

"Just... " Ari averts his gaze to the side. "Just wanted to go somewhere quiet. It gets really crowded down there... "

The silence sits between them and Ryan can see that something's different here. He's fallen under the impression that Ari enjoys conversing with him, as long as nobody else is around. Ryan checks their surroundings. They're the only two people standing within a close radius.

"Ari," he calls again, softer this time. He wants to ask if everything's alright but one look into those gloomy eyes, like a green field under storm clouds, and he stops himself, sighs and, "You wanna come in for a while?" Ryan points to his door. "I'm gonna assume you haven't had anything to drink?"

Ari stares at him, taken aback. He probably didn't expect this. Neither did Ryan.

"Can I?" he asks in a tiny voice.

Ryan bites into his bottom lip to keep from full on grinning. "Of course."

He must say, this is a fresh turn on things from having some people - not naming names - just barge in without so much as a single knock first. Speaking of the dorm, Joe usually spends the night elsewhere so it'll relieve Ari of his selective mutism for the night. Ryan holds the door open for him, he doesn't budge.

"What's wro -"

"I'm sorry," he suddenly says.

Ryan watches him closely, and he thinks he finally knows why Ari's been acting iffy. "For what?" He plays along.

"The game." Ari frowns. "I should've let you know that I couldn't make it. I was gonna tell Ava to tell you but it slipped my mind. I'm so sorry."

"Okay." Ryan leans against the doorframe. "First of all, I'm not upset if that's what you think and secondly -" He looks at Ari and gets an idea, "- I am... a little upset actually, and I think the only way you can make it up to me is by accompanying me for a drink."

"You mean, like... beer?"

Even the word 'beer' sounds foreign on his tongue. Ryan shakes his head. "How about just tea today?"

He makes way for the other man to enter first.

"I am sorry, y'know," Ari mumbles as he passes Ryan.

Goodness, he's known Faithy for years and she hasn't apologised more times than his fingers can count. Ari definitely has her beat.

"I know." Ryan clicks the door shut. "And I'm really not upset, I was just messing with you." He looks around and pulls out his desk chair for Ari. "Make yourself comfortable, gimme a sec -"

Ryan reaches for a bottle of unsweetened tea from a bulk of identical beverages arranged neatly inside the closet amongst other boxes. He closes the door and turns to find Ari awkwardly standing there between the two beds.

"What are you doing?" Another smile pecks at his lips. "C'mon, have a seat."

Ari jolts into action. "S-Sorry, yeah - I mean, thanks." He accepts the tea with another thank you.

Ryan plops himself down at the foot of the bed, where the desk is pressed up against, on the one spot that isn't covered in books and scattered papers. "If you like the tea, I can give you more. I personally prefer coffee."

"You have a lot of these." Ari raises the bottle in his hand after having a mindful sip.

"Yeah," he agrees, "My parents often make me bring back a whole convenience store with me whenever I visit them."

"Do you visit them often?"

"On some weekends... and long holidays."

"What do they do?"

"Oh." Ryan combs through his hair, glancing to the side momentarily. "They're both high-achieving academics, multiple doctorates, professors in their own field. My dad teaches microbiology and my mom, she's an English professor."

Ari gapes. "Oh... that's incredible, so sunday dinners at your place must be... "

He leans back on his outstretched arms. "Mhm, it's exactly what you think. Debates about current issues, insights on classic literature, Mom loves those - they sometimes even try out their lectures on me first and if I don't understand a word they said, then they know it's ready for their students to hear."

"Oh no... poor you." Ari covers his mouth but the genuine lines around his eyes give away his gleaming grin.

"All this, and I wasn't even in high school yet."

"They sound like great people," he says, holding the bottle close to his chest.

"They are." Ryan sighs and stares into a distance. "Most people think that I got into physics because they pushed me into it. That's not the case at all... what about your paren -"

"So why did you?"

He turns to Ari. It really, really feels like they're back at that lunch. "Why did I choose this field?"

"Yeah." Anticipation paints his features.

Alright. "Physics explains how everything works, and I guess I like knowing stuff," Ryan states, "It's kinda cool to get to say I discover the secrets of the universe for a living -" He almost feels the cold dew from those orbs of greenness consuming him, he clears his throat, "- and other reasonable factors, of course. I've always been good at calculations, physics had been my favourite subject in school and it just seemed natural to pursue it."

"You're so cool."

Ryan laughs. "Really? I've been told that I'm quite boring."

Ari sits up straight. He attempts the guise of an angry person but looks more like a moody cat, a cub, a lion cub - a pouty lion cub. "Now who in their right mind would say that? You're passionate about something, I respect that so much."

The bed makes a noise as Ryan stands up. Gives the other a quick smile before he goes to get the man another bottle of tea.

"You're not boring. I could talk to you all day."

Ryan stops, finds himself right behind Ari. He's seeing a whole different side of him today.

He opens his mouth to say something -

"What's this book?"

Ryan peeks over him to his messy desk at the book in question. "It's poetry," he says.

"You're kidding." Ari brushes his fingers over its hard cover. "You read poetry?"

A chuckle. "Would you find me more interesting if I did?"

Ari is silent at first, whispers a maybe.

"Then I do."

Ryan's not looking at the book anymore. He can't argue that the lights in the dorms are the best of quality and who knows, his mind might be playing tricks on him.

It's just damn sure hard to ignore the deep red tint seeping into the back of Ari's neck.