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The second Leo woke up, he went to his closet and stayed there for approximately fifteen minutes before Nic ever gathered the strength to leave the warmth of his loft. Kingsley had yet to turn on the heat—either that, or their room just didn't have a working heater. Either way, it meant that Nic dressed in layers of two socks, sweatpants, and a sweater over his sleep shirt. Leo had mounds of blankets he hid under, but now he stood with his bruise exposed to the mirror in his closet.

They hadn't drank anything at the party, but Leo looked seriously hungover with how pale he was. There was a glossiness in his eyes when he looked at Nic coming around to rifle through his own closet. Nic stopped and looked at him expectantly. Secretly, he was taking in the sight of the red and blue mark on Leo's cheek. It was faint, but blatantly obvious to anyone who so much as glanced at him.

Nic didn't want to admit he sided with anybody, and in some ways, that made him feel like the bad guy. They started the week by not talking about it, avoiding it, even at dinner when he and Sav went to the dining hall and she made a beeline for the other side of the sitting area. She and Sav sat at one of the smaller tables, so the entire Kingsley Gang couldn't sit with them at all.

She acted almost like nothing had happened, and if it weren't for the fact that they were on the complete opposite side of the dining hall from the rest of their friends, Nic was sure he'd agree that of course nothing happened.

"Seriously? Are you going to keep acting like this?" Nic complained. "Leo has a fucking bruise on his face. I'm kind of worried for when his manager asks what gives."

"He'll just say something about 'defending the honor of his residence' or something and his manager will brush it under the rug," she muttered with a flippant wave of her hand. She picked up a french fry and stuffed it into her mouth. "Whatever. S'not like I care."

Nic sat there, jaw slack as she continued to eat. She was staring at her food up until the point where she went for a drink, and pointedly made eye contact with Nic. "Are you serious right now?" Nic said, eyebrows raised. He nervously adjusted his position in his seat. "Like... sure, Leo's kind of an idiot sometimes. But you know how stupidly smart people are! They don't get social cues and shit."

"So you're calling me not-stupidly-smart."

"You know what I mean."

"Please, enlighten me." They stared each other down until Sav relented. "Sorry. I know I'm being a bitch, but I'm just blatantly avoiding that detail so I can go on and continue to be a bitch. Leo's an ass and I never want to speak to him again."

"Why though? You didn't need to punch him for trying to get you to dance with a guy," he remarked.

"It's not just that. He's been an ass to me for a while now. He's like... my parents," she hissed out, aggressively jabbing her hand towards Nic. She leant back in her seat, crossing her arms with a defiant look on her face. She frowned at the people around them, all chatting away and eating and having a good time. "Like the second he found out I don't like guys or girls he think's I'm some weird alien mutant that needs guidance. I don't fucking need guidance. I hate when people tell me what I should and shouldn't like, you know?"

"Reasonable."

"I know right? Is that too much to ask?" she muttered, glaring at her food for a moment.

In her silence, Nic said, "Do you want me to try and talk to him?"

"No, you're terrible with confrontation," she admitted, and as Nic was about to argue, she added, "Well, except for this time. Kudos on bringing it up. I wasn't sure if you had the balls to confront me on this."

He glared at her relentlessly for the rest of the meal, only breaking the hostility to laugh at a joke, tell a story about how figure drawing was going in class—how ridiculous everyone got about their own five minutes of posing after Nic went up and practically stuck his leg in the air for every single minute of it. His peers snickered a little, but it became a competition to see who could hold the most dramatic pose for those five minutes. Some people balanced on one leg, others using the pillar to prop themselves up upside down. Half-break-dance moves. Dramatic swoons. It was pure insanity.

"I'm fairly positive my professor's fed up with us," Nic confessed with a laugh. "On Wednesday we're gonna try and convince her to let two people go up at a time, just to reenact The Titanic."

"Why are art students so unbelievable," Sav grumbled, though her bemused smile gave her away. "Shouldn't you guys be taking this seriously?"

"We are! We're just having a little fun," he explained. "And besides—for us it's the drawing that counts. We've already learned general anatomy and drawn the damn skeletons a bazillion times within the past week. By now it's just muscle memory."

When they left the dining hall, Nic saw out of the corner of is eye their entire Gang moving to get up at the same moment as them. He heard Sav mutter a curse under her breath, and hastily dumped her dishes away before making a legitimate run for it out of the dining hall. Stuck between walking and running, Nic hurried after her, smiling apologetically at their friends, only to squeak when he realized they were all running after them.

 "Go, go, go!" Nic yelled, pushing Sav ahead of him and bolting for the stairs.

"You can't run from us!" Flo screamed, no more than a few paces behind Nic before she lunged at him and tackled him from behind. He staggered, her weight pressing into his back as her legs wound around his waist. She was still hollering like a maniac in the middle of the Kingsley lobby.

"Run Sav! Don't look back!" Nic shouted, just as Wes swung up and threw his arms around them, rocking them back and forth before they eventually collapsed in a fit of laughter onto the couch. Sav was already gone through the dorm wing door, and Nora barely made it before it swung shut and locked itself.

"Dammit! We almost had her," she whined, and looked back at them in distress.

Leo sauntered up a few paces behind them all, hands in his pockets and bruised cheek turned pointedly away from the front desk where his coworker sat. "You guys are ridiculous and loitering right now. Off the couch, c'mon," he chastised, and the instant Flo hopped off, Nic fell onto the ground with a scream.Wes was still sat in the couch, slouched with his arms over the back cushions. He lifted a hand, an annoyed look on his face as he said, "You made no attempt to catch her."

Nora stepped up, hands on her hips. "Yeah! What's up with that? What? are you chicken?"

Leo turned a bland look over at the both of them before saying with a sigh, "I don't need your guys' help resolving a conflict with a friend."

"I don't think Sav considers you guys friends anymore," Nic confessed, pushing himself off the ground. "She doesn't even want to talk about you, let alone with you."

For all of Nic's shortcomings, he was relatively good at maintaining eye contact, if only just to see the reaction he'd get for what he said. Leo tried to do the same, but faltered, and dropped his eyes to the ground. He had the same crease between his brows that he had that morning.

Eventually, Leo looked at Nic again, and it was with the sort of look that made Nic cripple with fear. He'd definitely be sleeping with one eye open that night. Clearly someone wasn't happy about this new divide between their Kingsley Gang.

Kieran: What are you doing right now

Nic: Um... working on a project. Why?
Another impromptu date I assume

Kieran: I can hear your sass all the way from the gym where you're going to meet me in fifteen minutes
Assuming that's how long it takes for you to get your ass over here

Nic: Are you suggesting I'm fat and that I need to work out

Kieran: You aren't fat.

Nic: I swear I can never tell if you're sarcastic even in real life

Kieran: I'm not being sarcastic. You aren't fat.

Nic: Stop patronizing me !!!

Kieran: o my god get your fat ass over here

Nic: don't say that!

Kieran: Nic

Nic: NO

Kieran: I LITERALLY JUST WANT TO WORK OUT WITH YOU
IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK

Nic: o why didn't you say so

Kieran: I am dating a drama queen

Nic: ^^ sarcasm ;)

It took fifteen minutes, just as Kieran suspected, for Nic to arrive at Arnette's gym. As he walked up, he spotted Kieran sitting on the steps, his elbows on his knees, leaning over his phone. It wasn't until Nic was a step away from him that Kieran ever realized that someone was approaching.

Kieran tilted his head back and squinted at Nic. "Why'd you have to be so dramatic about this?" he asked.

Nic rolled his eyes. "Did you expect anything less? Also, I asked Milo to join us."

"Ah, yes. The guy that caused Bev to ransack our paint supply to make a poster that says 'NO EXCEPTIONS,'" Kieran mused aloud as he pushed himself to his feet.

Nic was well aware of the new addition to the Co-Op's sign collection. Milo mentioned it to Nic during their last class together with the description of how he stood on the other side of the road staring at it for approximately five minutes thinking "How passive-aggressive it was to make a sign targeted at me." In small font at the bottom of the sign it read, "(how's this for size?)," but Milo didn't get close enough to read it, in fear of being pelted with potatoes.

"You don't hate Milo, right?" Nic asked, frowning at Kieran.

His boyfriend shrugged, saying, "He's my lab partner, and I never really hate anyone. I think he's a good guy."

"But do you agree with Bev? That every frat guy is a terrible human being?" Nic asked, and Kieran shook his head. They ended the conversation there because as they stood in the cold, they spotted Milo crossing the road and waving to them as he hopped onto the sidewalk.

Nic stepped up to him and grabbed him by the hand for a bro-hug. "Hey, what's up buddy? How's it been?"

Milo sighed and said, "Could be better. Midterms are kicking my ass, so this is a good break." He greeted Kieran with the same half-hug before they headed indoors away from the cold. The university gym was larger than any place Nic ever went to, considering throughout high school he simply used their facilities rather than an actual nice gym.

The three floors were intimidating to say the least. The main area had an opening that showed all of the levels—from the treadmills to the weights to the track on the first floor. They swiped in at the front with their student IDs, and walked through those metal contraptions that resembled airport security along the way.

Nic's eyes went up, and he spun around to see it all. Sure, he had a tour of it during Welcome Week, but he never thought he'd ever actually set foot in the building. When his eyes came back down to floor-level, Milo was grinning at him and slapping a hand on Nic's back. The force of it nearly sent Nic straight to the ground. "You ever been here before?" he asked.

Discretely, Nic reached behind to rub his back. "Yeah, once. Where's the pool anyway?"

"Basement," Kieran answered. "You two swimming together or something?"

"Yeah. I always wanted to test it out as, like, part of my exercise routine. And Nic here used to be in swimming and all, so..." Milo started, and ended with a shrug towards Nic. "What floor are you gonna be on?" he asked Kieran.

"My modeling professor has us doing core exercises in our free time. So I'll be on the second floor doing abs," he explained, slapping a hand over his stomach with a sigh. He frowned down at it. "I've been doing this for weeks now. I feel like at this point I could stand in a store window and no one could tell the difference between me and the mannequins."

"They totally could. You're more attractive than any of the mannequins," Nic said.

"Aw!" Milo squeaked, though Kieran gave them both a dull stare before pointedly turning on his heels and walking off. The cuteness of Milo's smile faded and turned to panic. "Wait! I didn't mean it! Well—I did, but you have to admit that was cute!"

"He's probably going to flip you off," Nic whispered in warning, and not a second later as Kieran waltzed up the stairs of the gym, he turned to stick his middle finger up at them. "See? Told you."

Milo deflated a little. "Whenever I compliment him on our teamwork in lab, he gets like that. I don't understand," he said. The two of them descended to the basement where the scent of chlorine filled their noses, and the echoing of water lapping against the vents came to their attention. He sighed a little as they waited in line to grab a locker key to share. "It's almost like he doesn't like to be addressed at all. Even at the start of the semester when we picked lab partners, he was already so quiet.

"I mean, people would talk to him and stuff. Don't get me wrong—he has the potential to be a people-person, but it's almost like he's an accidental extrovert sometimes, you know? Anyway, I think everyone, even just a little bit, likes the attention," Milo explained just before it was their turn to get the key.

As Milo exchanged his student ID with the girl behind the desk, Nic said, "I don't know. I feel like he's just... really strange in any social situation. And everyone seems to know him, so he must talk to people, right? Even just a little?"

"Well, he's glued to his phone during class all the time. I'm surprised he gets all his work done on time if I'm being completely honest," he confessed with a snort. He stuffed his student idea into his wallet, and took the key from the lady before guiding the way to the locker room. "Wait—so how long have you two been dating now?"

"I think almost four weeks now. I think? I mean, we never really put a label to it. I'm sure my Ma is entirely prepared to hack into my Facebook account and make it online official, though. She's been harassing me about it on a daily basis," Nic confessed with a nervous laugh. He was honestly terrified. He wouldn't put it past his Ma to find someone to help access his Facebook account.

"Yeah. And what's this about modeling classes? Is he really gonna be a model or something?" he asked, and quickly added, "That's not to say modeling isn't a decent career choice! He could make bank if he really tried at it. All I'm saying is that I just thought plants and environmental science was, like, his thing, you know?"

"He's just trying it out. I don't really know what he's gonna end up doing with it," Nic confessed, and really, that just meant he didn't want to know if Kieran planned on modeling for Arnette fine arts figure drawing courses. That would be the ultimate call for Nic's demise.

They chatted as they turned their backs on one another and changed into their swim trunks. Being in swim for so many years made the process easy and smooth of Nic, and in a matter of less than two minutes, he had his clothes stuffed into his bag and stuffed into the locker along with his jacket and shoes. His goggles hung from his neck and his towel over his shoulder.

He never really worried about his body image much. His Ma was the sort of person to remind them all that they were what they were, and that was that. Sure, he could work out and be more toned in general, but for now... he was who he was and it was because he had school to worry about. Free time could be spent however he wanted, and while he could have used it to work on his project, he'd spent all semester doing that and avoiding the gym altogether. There's nothing wrong with skipping a month of going to the gym, he told himself as he stood in front of the mirror waiting for Milo.

They swam for two hours without even realizing it.

It felt so great to be in the water again, and the pool was mostly empty considering the time Kieran decided to drag Nic and Milo over at. Nic dipped into the water, and slid in from the ledge. It was warm, like most indoor pools were. It reminded him of a smooth, freshly cleaned comforter wrapping him close in its warm embrace. He dipped down until his nose was submerged, and he stared across the surface of the water with his breath held in his throat.

They had two lanes to themselves after a while, and they'd race one another with Nic always coming out in first. He thought Milo the basics of flip turns and the motion of freestyle arm strokes. They would challenge each other to see who could hold their breath the longest, all while staring at one another through their goggles underwater.

Milo's head of black hair stuck up on all sides, and as bubbles pebbled out of his nostrils, he started to smile. Nic grinned back, giggling a little and only losing more breath on it. Suffice to say Milo won that round.

By the time they met back up with Kieran, their fingers were prune-y and the baby hairs framing Kieran's face were damp with sweat. They found him on the second floor, folding up and down on the sit up bench, twisting his torso right to left on every lift. Even if a ratty, sweaty t-shirt, Kieran managed to make working out look good.

Nic went to stand at the raised foot of the bench, where Kieran popped up and reached out to ruffle Nic's damp hair before lowering himself back down at an agonizingly slow pace. They couldn't be sure how long Kieran had been there doing sit ups, but it just made Nic's own stomach cry out at the thought of pushing it that far.

"Are you two done?" he asked between breaths, laying flat before maneuvering to get off the bench. His feet slid to the ground, loose and clearly worn out from holding him up for so long.

"Yeah, but if you aren't done I don't mind sticking around a bit longer," Nic confessed, leaning his hip up against the sit up bench and glancing over at Milo. "You got shit to get back to?"

"More or less," he confessed with a laugh. "But... I actually had a question. For Kieran."

Kieran sat up from where he was bent over, and rose to his feet, saying, "What's up?"

Milo scratched at his mess of damp hair and sucked in his breath through his teeth. "I know we talked about Bev before. But... I'm just wondering if it'd be possible to talk to her some time? I still feel bad about blowing up at her."

Nic looked over at Kieran, watching his expression as Milo talked. The corner of his lips turned up, but he repressed it—amused. Kieran didn't think it was possible. "Look—I've been friends with Bev since our first semester here," Kieran started, shaking his head, "and I love her and all that. But she can be a real bitch sometimes. Don't take it too personally—she picks fights with a lot of guys like you."

"I know! But I'm not like those guys. I don't want her to think I am," he insisted, and Nic just rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, man."

Nic snorted and said, "You seriously sound like a cliche rom-com right now. 'Oh, I'm not like other guys! Bev, you can trust me—!'"

Kieran threw his head back and laughed, wincing at the pain in his stomach as he doubled over. Milo groaned and shoved Nic as he laughed, "Fuck you! That's not what I mean!"

Nic clasped his hands together, twisting on his toes and popping his shoulder up. "'I think if you really tried to understand me, you'd see that I'm a great guy! I would never hurt you!' 'Oh Milo, you're the greatest guy I've ever met!'"

"Fuck you!" Milo yelled, smiling wide as he pushed Nic again, and tackled him into a chokehold. Nic shrieked, squirming and pushing his foot into the back of Milo's leg to get free. He accidentally jammed his heel straight into the back of Milo's knee, and they went down hard onto the gym floor with Kieran scrambling to get out of the way. By that point, people were watching and grinning to themselves as Nic yelled, "Free me, you demon!" all while laughing so hard his stomach hurt.

Kieran: I want to go to the art museum
Ellen's gonna come with

Nic: Um... okay ?? Good to know

Kieran: I'll be at Kingsley in twenty minutes

Nic: Since when did we agree to this

Kieran: Are you at Kingsley or not?

Nic: *sigh* yeah I am

Kieran: then stop complaining

Unknown Number: Hey Nic its Ellen Kieran wants to know where you are

Nic: I was just tryna find you guys
I go to the bathroom for a minute and y'all disappear
Also why didn't Kieran just text me

Ellen: You know how he is sometimes
He doesn't feel like texting you rn

Nic: Is he mad at me or something?
I'll just stick to this sculpture of some dude killing a snake its cool its fine

Ellen: Pff he's not mad at you stop being dramatic
Wait you're by the sculptures?

Nic: yeah

Ellen: O cuz Kieran wanted to come for the sculptures. We're gonna mimic the sculptures and shit

Nic: this is definitely something I did not sign up for

Ellen: Don't worry about it you'll just be taking pictures of us
He wants to practice different poses and shit
He just said he wants to go to the mall or something and imitate the mannequins

Nic: why am I not surprised? whatever sounds good to me

* * *

Nic was on his phone before class the day after—a Monday—forever amused by the photos he took the day before. He leant over his oversized sketchpad and rested his head against his forearms, flicking through pictures of Kieran and Ellen in the Forever 21 window mimicking the ridiculously long-legged mannequin women. Inside the store, Kieran went and climbed on top of a table next to a mannequin and they barely got a picture before one of the retail workers chased him off. There was a blurry picture of Kieran scurrying off the table, his nervousness portrayed in his grimace, and the worker a mere blur across the screen coming for him.

Nic laughed into his arm and turned up again to check his Instagram where Ellen tagged him in a photo of he and Kieran in the museum reenacting a painting. Nearly three hundred likes. I've never been so popular on Instagram before, he thought to himself with a smile. She had a lot of photos of Kieran on her Instagram, but most of them were for aesthetic shots. The only reason Nic could tell it was Kieran in some of the pictures was because he recognized the shape of his boyfriend's hands, his boney wrists, and his natural stationary pose with his arms crossed or hands on his hips.

People were mingling around the class up until the point where the professor walked in and shut the main lights off, and the spotlights on. They focused on the central platform in the room, where Nic's professor walked to after setting her bag on the desk in the far corner.

"All right everybody! Today's the day," she announced, clapping her hands to silence everyone. She strode up onto the platform and said, "Just a reminder: Phones away and be courteous—the models that we'll be drawing for the next three weeks are professionals and it's important to take their work seriously."

The door to the storage closet opened and the model came in wearing a silk robe in the style of a kimono pattern with a black hem. Nic bent down to grab his case of pencils and shit before turning up and realizing that the model was so familiar and expected that Nic almost didn't think anything of it. He associated Kieran so much with going to modeling classes that it wasn't all that much of a surprise to see him standing there as his professor said,

"Everyone, this is Kieran. He'll be our model for this first week."

Kieran's eyes passed over the desks that formed a crescent around him before he ever made it to where Nic stood in his usual spot—on the far side closest to the neighboring studio room. He had that same stupid smirk with that same stupid hair up in a stupid bun and before Nic realized it, his professor was across the room after explaining that they'd be doing quick, five-minute sketches and—

—Kieran's robe dropped.