(no subject)
There was like some kind of unspoken rule between all of them. If, for some glorious reason, they found themselves free for the morning, if there were no classes about to plague them in a few hours or coursework being hung around them like a tight noose, they’d all find themselves out of their rooms, perfectly dressed and ready, and walking to the café on campus. The campus was big, different colleges had different buildings and there was always the spare coffee cart here and there but, the thing was, they wanted to sit down, wanted to pull their feet up and look at each other’s faces when they talked instead of the road ahead.
And, the thing was, no one else really did. They weren’t slackers or anything; in fact Gaius was pretty sure they’d all been called brilliant at least once by the professors teaching their major, they just found it in themselves to see light in the dark classrooms in their friends.
Gaius learned early on that Uther liked crowds and was very much a people’s person -go figure- so it wasn’t much of a surprise that the people he surrounded himself with was a mix of more than a few young men and women. He ordered his normal -hot chocolate and a ham sandwich (Uther joked once that it was a kid’s order, like it was an insult)- and sat down next to Uther as he always did.
At the beginning of the year, it was just Uther and Gaius, roommates trying to get to know each other, sitting at a small table at the corner of the café, then Uther met Nim and he described her as a sort of firework and invited her to join in on their mornings. Gaius could see it as well, the spark, in her eyes and in her way, and everyone always seemed to be caught in her one way or another. Afterwards, Uther was introduced to Gorlois, the son of his father’s friend and formed a bond through the fact that they both thought they weren’t just shells of rich men’s sons.
Soon after, Gaius found a love in Alice, a fellow pre-med student who had lips he could kiss; lips that formed a smile and smirk all the same. The table felt full with good company as Gorlois invited his friend, Rupert, and girlfriend, Vivian, both beautiful and handsome in most classical sense but, when he met Geoff, there was no way he wasn’t bringing him along. Geoff had been awkward a bit at first but he found his rhythm, which was good because he didn’t want his good friend to feel alienated in Gaius’s group of friends; he wanted him to be comfortable, at ease, like he usually was when it was just them both.
He caught his eye now and smiled. Geoff looked at him and kept it in his laugh as he gestured to Gaius’s chin where the mayo was running down from eating his sandwich and he almost stopped his own conversation with Rupert because of it. Geoff was sometimes just too absent-minded.
Gaius looked down to his watch and sighed. He nudged Geoff with his elbow and stood up from the table. “I’m leaving,” Gaius said to Uther.
“Oy, where are you going, then?” Uther asked.
“Picking up Hunith from the station, don’t you remember?”
“I was supposed to follow you, wasn’t I? Why aren’t you kicking me yet?”
“Geoff’s following me instead,” Gaius answered, putting on his jacket.
Uther looked over to Geoff and gave him a thumbs-up, saying, “Bless you, mate. It’s not that I hate Hunith or Gaius or anything, I just-”
“He’s got to stay here so we can work on him finally getting over his absurd infatuation on Ray de Bois!” Gorlois yelled excitedly and Viv smacked him on the arm, as if to say that having a woman to want in life wasn’t the worst thing in life.
“Have fun with that, you lot,” Gaius laughed -mostly because he saw Uther blush from it, hinting the fact that he didn’t want to get over his crush on Ray.
He leaned down to kiss Alice goodbye (with a dirty promise being whispered in his ear) until Geoff interrupted with a cough. Right.
He and Geoff walked to his car and Geoff started driving because he knew better than to let Gaius drive before noon, so Gaius sat in the passenger seat, trying to find a radio station that didn’t make a habit of playing Ke$ha every five minutes. When he found one that was playing The Killers, he leaned in his seat, almost wanting to press his feet against the dashboard.
“Hey, Geoff?” Gaius asked.
“Yeah, Gaius,” Geoff said back, eyes on the road.
“You like my friends, right?” he asked, not really know why he was asking but also knowing he had to.
“Yeah, ‘course I do, I mean, they’ve all got their pros and cons but so do I. and, besides, they seem to be a solid lot if you think they are.” Geoff shrugged.
“Okay,” Gaius smiled to himself, happy with the answer.
“Why?” Geoff asked after a few moments of silence.
“Why what?”
“Why did you wanna know if I like your friends?”
“Cos you’re my friend, too, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Geoff said, eyes still on the road but Gaius couldn’t help but feel like he was looking at him, anyway. “But just because I’m your friend doesn’t mean I should be theirs, too. I could just hang out with you and not them.”
“I guess but they’re important to me and you’re kinda important to me, too and it’d be nice if all the important people in my life got along. And, you know, just cos you’re not with me sometimes, it doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
“Oy!” Geoff managed to smack him on the arm with one hand on the wheel. “I got a life outside of you and the Prat Pack, thank you very much!”
“I really don’t think so, I think your life revolves around me and when I’m not around, you think about me constantly,” Gaius said jokingly and Geoff laughed a bit, like it was an awkward joke and he was only laughing to be nice. “Geof-”
“So, Hunith,” Geoff said, making Gaius snap back to reality without really knowing he ever strayed. “Your cousin? Why is she here?”
“She’s in her last year of high school, starting to scope out colleges. She wants to see if Caerleon could be a good fit for her.”
“Would you like it to be?”
“Dunno, her choice really, but it would be nice having some family here and I love the girl to death,” Gaius shrugged. He did want her to stay, though. they’d been best friends when they were kids and it’d be nice to form that bond with her again. And he didn’t want to feel like he was losing his old family just because he found a new one because that would mean he was a massive prick.
“Oh, I love this song,” Geoff suddenly said and Gaius smiled.
“I never pegged you as a Daft Punk sort of guy, Geoff,” he said.
“Oh, I’m all sorts of guys, Germaine,” he said happily and started singing out the lyrics, albeit a bit pitchy, “Don’t stop, come a little closer…”
Gaius joined in, despite himself, because that’s what friends did, right? They refused to let the other be idiots without them. “As we jam, the rhythm gets strongerrrrr”
“There we go!” Geoff urged him on, clapping on the steering wheel.
The station was pretty much empty when they arrived and they had some time to kill before Hunith arrived so they bought some tea from the nice lady selling and hung around together. They explored the train station -it wasn’t much- and Geoff had this absurd idea to hide behind the pillars but the pillars were thin in concrete and his body showed.
Gaius started laughing and Geoff said something along the lines of, “So this is a rubbish place to play hide and seek,” to which Gaius replied by saying, “Or maybe you’re just rubbish at hiding.”
When that debacle was over, in which both of them agreed to never play hide and seek with each other unless they were hit with some kind of spell that suddenly turned them both into five-year-olds, they resorted to just sitting on the bench.
The clock struck twelve and Gaius said, “Hunith should be here soon.”
“Funny,” Geoff said, “I almost forgot about Hunith.” And Gaius realized he almost did, too.
Gaius promised he’d wait for her under the clock at the station but, as the two of them pushed through the sudden crowd of people that weren’t there before, he saw that she was already there. He must’ve not seen her for a while because, the last time he saw her, she was a small, adolescent girl. He vaguely remembered how her hair was tied to the side, her cheeks pink from the snow (he was visiting last Christmas) and how she smiled up at him when he carried her around the snow-filled yard.
Now, now, she was slowly becoming a very pretty young woman. Her brown hair was dropping below her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face; he barely recognized her, save for the eyes. The same eyes he used to look into during staring contests until one of them laughed.
“Gaius!” she yelled out excitedly and Gaius couldn’t help himself. He ran towards her in a really clichéd way and hugged her tight.
“You’ve grown, haven’t you?” Gaius asked, pulling away but still holding on to her skinny frame by the arms. “You’re too skinny, though. We have to feed you up while you’re here.”
“Mind you, he and Uther just survive on takeout,” Geoff interjected.
“Well, takeout is still considered food, isn’t it?” Hunith asked him.
“Not the healthy kind,” Geoff smiled. “Sorry. I’m Geoff, Gaius’s friend.”
“And his escort, I take it,” Hunith pulled away from Gaius’s embrace and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Geoff.”
“Likewise, Hunith.”
They exchanged pleasantries and Hunith started reminiscing about ‘the good old days’, prompting Geoff to ask every sordid detail of Gaius’s childhood, especially the most embarrassing ones. “I think you and I are going to be good friends, Hunith,” Geoff smiled at her as he loaded her bags to the car.
Sometimes, she wondered why a subject the academy didn’t normally teach or a subject that wasn’t very widespread among the students got the funding to have a whole building to themselves when they’re in class or practicing. Maybe it was the fact that they didn’t want any magic-related accidents happening around campus.
The Mirare Building of Magical Studies -a pretentious name the school board made up to make themselves seem more important than the colleges that weren’t teaching magic- was a decent walk from her dorm in Sarras Hall. She didn’t mind, though, she liked the walk there. Hardly anyone used the path to Mirare because hardly anyone really took the classes.
It was funny how people always seemed to look for magic but when it was within arm’s reach, they itched away from it like they wanted the magic from their dreamscape instead of the one reality offered them. Magical Studies only started becoming an official thing in the past few years. Before that, it was just there, it wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t legal, it was just in that space of actions no one knew what to do with.
People watched magic on the news, saw the coverage from Druid camps all over Northern England when their movement became so strong that they couldn’t tear their eyes away from it. Before magic became official and legal under the proper circumstances, Nim knew that it was just a subject people talked about over tea and suspicions.
They talked about this whole new race of people, who would ‘invade’ them with their spells and magical incantations; they wondered about the change this would bring to their country, even the world. The truth was, though, when it happened, when the Druids came out just as being Druids and getting the respect they deserved, when more and more magic users were coming to late, it served no real change.
People were still people; it just turned out that some people could levitate their coffee mugs to where they needed them. Some people just chose to be a little bit different.
Nim didn’t have that such luck, however; she was born with this difference. Magic users were mainly made, not born. Their skills were honed through endless research of spells and whatnot, taking classes just like the classes she was taking at Caerleon. Their effort to be magical was just that: an effort. She, however, needed effort to keep it in.
While the other students were just learning how to recite their first spells to make them happen, Nim was learning to recite them properly because she knew that she could make the product of these lessons happen -like ignite a fire- without even trying. She had her ethics, though, she wasn’t about to blow up the school just because she could. She had to learn the proper ways to conduct herself because it was the right thing to do.
She didn’t want to quote Spiderman or anything but those comic geeks were right, weren’t they? The responsibility came with the power, it was the occupational hazard of being magic.
Nimueh opened the door to the class, which was just about as normal-looking as lecture classes went. There was about twenty-plus students in the class, all of them deep in study already. She looked at the watch and saw she was a little bit late so she smiled apologetically to the professor -a middle-aged woman who’d probably seen better days than just teaching a bunch of younglings how to tap into their minds and extract from there some sort of magical ability.
“Walk went a little long there, did it?”
“You’re a sod,” Nim grumbled to him.
“Yeah, but I got the notes for class so you better start grovelling,” he smiled.
Balinor, when he wanted to be, was a really cheeky bastard. Not as much as Uther could be on a good day, obviously because Bal could actually see the shit when someone threw it to him without the help of a pretty blonde, but still. Nim really didn’t know why she surrounded herself with glorified pricks sometimes -besides Gaius, obviously, Gaius was the sweetest guy she knew in Caerleon- she just chalked it up to it being a source of entertainment.
Regardless, Nim was grateful for Balinor. He was pretty much her only friend in the class. Sure, friends weren’t really a necessity in a class to make it good but it was always good when they were there. This was her space away from the rest of her friends, away from Uther and Gaius, so it was nice to spend time with a fellow misfit.
“Any idea what’s on the agenda today?” Nim asked him.
“Theory lessons,” Bal grumbled.
“Well fuck that,” Nim groaned, landing her head on the table.
She could hear Bal laughing a bit and said, “My thoughts exactly. Go on, then, I’ll wake you up when it’s over.”
“You’re glorious, you are.”
“I thought I was a sod.”
“Yeah, well, that, too.”
Her head met the surprisingly cold surface of the table and it all turned black for a moment before it turned gold. All her life, Nimueh had been plagued with these dreams, well they weren’t dreams, per se, they were just looks outside of her own life, telling her something was coming. It was a sign. Along with believing in fate and destiny, believing in signs was also in the territory.
It was like small dejavus, belonging just to her. While dreaming, she wouldn’t quite remember what she was dreaming about she knew that when the dreams increased in frequency, that there was something coming. There was something she should look out for because her dreams had told her beforehand. She just had to remember.
She never quite got the grasp to remember, though. When the dreams invaded her every night when she was eight years old, she never remembered what they were telling her until her mother was packing her bags. One day, she would remember. One day, she’d know things before they happened.
She didn’t want to be psychic or anything but she felt like she had to be.
Destiny and all that crap.
Balinor woke her up like he said he would and Nim, as always, just took a while to reassess her surroundings. This was how it always was, in the end, the fact that she knew she had a dream, she just didn’t know what it was about.
“You alright?” Bal asked.
“Yeah,” Nim managed a smile. “Always.”
“Come on, then, I’ll treat you to lunch at Union. ‘s not like I can afford anything else.”
They decided to take the longer way to Union because Bal said he needed to pick up his paper outside his professor’s office. She didn’t mind, though, like she said, she liked walking.
Caerleon Academy was located in the very heart of Nottingham, far enough from the real city to get some peace and quiet but not too far that it was ghost town. Outside the university, there were just a few roads and a field and further ahead, was a clock tower and then shops. She always did like Nottingham, well, more than she did London, anyway. She liked the cities that didn’t quite have that city feel in them. It was probably because of where she grew up because Wales was just...Wales. At least to her.
The uni itself was pretty big. There were five residence halls and all her friends were scattered around them, with Uther and Gaius in Constantine -the biggest hall, which should be expected because Uther Pendragon lived there- and a bunch of people in Cornwall, where Gorlois roomed with Rupert -they weren’t originally but Gorlois was a persuasive bastard- and Viv roomed with Ray de Bois, Uther’s long-running catch and her own dorm was in Sarras Hall. It was pretty okay, Sarras Hall, once again, it was detached from all her other friends like the magic classes were.
She sometimes did wonder if it was just supposed to be that she would have her own life, void of her friends. Or maybe she was just a bit antisocial when she didn’t want to be social. That was a possibility, too.
She and Bal ended up in Constantine on the way to Union and she saw Gaius there, being overshadowed by bags, but he still took the time to wave a bit at her. Geoff was there, too, opening the door to the dorm shared by Gaius and Uther, along with a pretty girl with dark hair. Hunith, that must be, Gaius’s cousin and old fond memory of his childhood.
Nim wanted to wave at her as a hint that they’d probably be spending some time together the few weeks she was to be here but she clearly didn’t have her attention.
Hunith, the dear girl, was looking at Bal, her eyes flicking up in a fey-like glance and Nim tried to conceal her chuckle.
Ah, to be young and in love.
When the trio went inside the room, Nim turned to Bal and asked, even though she knew the answer, “Who was that?”
“What?” Bal cleared his throat, trying to keep up the pretence he was just this big guy who had no feelings whatsoever. Bullshit, where she stood.
“The girl you were sharing intense eye gazing with.”
“I don’t know her,” Balinor said to her clearly.
“Yet,” Nim finished his sentence for him. “You don’t know her yet.”
“You know, you’ve got your annoying times, as well.”
“Oh yes it’s incredibly annoying when I’m right,” Nim smirked at him. “Come on, lad.”
When he saw her next time, it involved actual conversation. But her smile and her eyes, they told him that she recognized him in a passing glance and they were almost like they knew him already. Balinor almost felt like blushing under her gaze. It wasn’t one of those concentrated stares that involved staring him up and down, seeing who he was by what he chose to give, it was sweet and innocent and naïve and that was what made him almost feel red around the cheeks.
“So, uh,” Balinor said, “you’re new around here?”
“Not really, no, I’m just visiting my cousin and I’m trying to see if here would be a good option for me to go next year,” she said. Right, she looked young, he should’ve figured, something around the cheeks and eyes.
“Sorry, I’m Balinor,” he outstretched his hand.
“Balinor,” she slurred the name around her tongue, getting used to it. “Can I call you Bal?”
“If you must, I suppose,” Balinor said, smiling.
“I’m Hunith,” she said, finally taking his hand. “And, no, there’s no short form of it that doesn’t sound unattractive so don’t bother at all.”
“Yeah and Bal isn’t unattractive?”
“Well, it’s acceptable, at least,” Hunith -Hunith- smiled at him. He hated to admit it but there was this moment. It was only for a second, though, but he couldn’t deny it was a moment. That sucked because he never actually believed in moments before; he instead found time and it was always fleeting.
But here it was, a moment with a girl he was strangers with, and he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“I should go, I have class,” he said instead.
“Okay,” she smiled again. “I’ll see you around, then, I guess.”
“Yeah, see you around,” he said and left, not knowing what he was actually leaving.
The last time he had a girl like that, in that way, he was sixteen and he was in high school. Two years since he had a girl in that way, where he would feel comfortable to hold her hand -even though he rarely did want to but it was just that possibility that he could- some people would say he was weird or something. He was weird, though, always had been. Always the problem, always the odd one out; it was just the way he was programmed, he figured.
The point was, Hunith was looking at him the way she used to look at him, only with a tiny bit more intensity, if that level of intensity could even be reached by adolescents their age. And he really didn’t know what to do with it.
He didn’t know what to do with anything in his life, really, especially as of late. Especially with things the way they were at home and how they were supposed to be in his life now that his father was dying and it was his inheritance that he kept the trait going on until he had his own to pass it down to. That was easy, though, the preservation of a noble race of men, as his father liked to call Dragonlords, even though it didn’t sound like it.
This wasn’t easy, though, the look Hunith was giving off.
He was probably over thinking this, like he always was. Maybe it wasn’t a look, maybe he was just looking at her wrong or maybe she looked at everyone like that. Or maybe she had a rare genetic disposition that left her with that expression whenever she encountered someone new. Or maybe he was just a wanker who didn’t want to deal with his feelings.
Feelings. Huh.
Well, it was definitely too early to start using the word feelings.
Viv said that the movie was about to start soon, as said in her text to Gaius, but, as fate would have it, Alice found a dark hallway close to the common room and dragged him there and tried to kiss the sense out of him. It worked for a while, really.
She was being pressed up against the wall and her hand was in his hair, slowly tangling her fingers around the red strands of it. She traced her tongue along his bottom lips and he groaned deep in his throat.
“We’re not about to have sex now, are we?” Gaius asked, smiling against her skin. “Because it’s bloody cold here and I really do not want my balls to be frozen.”
“Later, then,” Alice promised him with another soft kiss on him.
They intertwined their hands together and embraced the cold night. Movie nights at the Cornwall common room; Gaius wanted to say it was a beloved tradition between all of them that was formed through managing to fight about which Harrison Ford movie was better until they all agreed to watch the best of the best until they fell asleep on the couch. Truth was, though, movie nights only happened spontaneously.
Someone would decide during the day that there was nothing better than huddling around watching movies and word would circulate. For some reason, the common room was always void of people but Gaius was highly convinced that the reason was Gorlois, who could pull anything off, really, with his charm or otherwise. Gaius was beginning to suspect that he was James Potter reincarnated in real form.
“Where have you been?” Hunith asked after them when she finally caught.
“Dark, dastardly deeds that I’m sure you don’t want to hear about from your cousin,” Gaius told her and pulled her in for a headlock. She’d been adjusting well here for the past few days. She followed along to classes, switching between Uther, Alice, Gaius and Geoff, who had all taken upon themselves to be her guardians in Caerleon.
“If you don’t wanna hear about them from your cousin, I’ll be sure to tell you, Hunith,” Alice said with a smirk.
Hunith pulled a disgusted face as they arrived at Cornwall. Geoff said he’d meet them there but Gaius didn’t get a message that he was already inside in the building. He said he had a meeting that might run late, though. What kind of meeting, he wasn’t exactly sure.
But he was about to find out because a loud voice yelling, “Oy!” was after them and he saw Geoff running towards them and catching his breath between Gaius and Hunith.
“Hullo, Running Man,” Hunith said to him. “Was the Chariot of Fire theme song playing in your head when you were running a sprint?”
“No, as a matter of a fact,” Geoff said, breathing deeply, “it was the Rocky theme.”
“You’re cheerful,” Gaius noted. He also noted the new purple band around his wrist.
“Meeting went well,” was all Geoff said.
With that, they entered the building and went up to the common room. Everyone was there, except Nim, who always did like running a bit late to everything. It seemed like girls and boys were being divided on the couch, some of them even taking pillows and lying on the floor.
Gaius took his customary seat next to Uther on the couch and Geoff took his usual seat next to him. Alice went over to Viv and her surprise guest, Ray de Bois, and Hunith went there, as well. Gorlois was lying on the floor in front of Viv with a sleeping bag all around him who was throwing popcorn to Rupert, who was sitting cross-legged on the other side of Uther, trying to catch them in his mouth.
“Should I pop in the movie?” Viv asked them.
“Nim would kill us if we started without her, though,” Gaius reasoned, which was met with a chorus of agreement. Right at that moment, speak of the devil, the door opened, revealing not one, but two figures.
One was obviously Nim but the other guy was someone Gaius occasionally saw around uni with Nim. Balinor, it was, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“Waahoo!” Gorlois and Uther yelled simultaneously.
“I would say that the party don’t start til I walk in but the point is there for all to see so then it’s no use, really,” Nim said. She gestured to Balinor and said, “You guys, this is Balinor, who’s a poor pathetic sod I met in magic class who I forced out here.”
“Because you’re a stand-up human being, obviously,” Gaius retorted.
“Obviously,” Nim nodded. She looked at Balinor and said, “Go on, Bal, there’s a seat between Rupert and Hunith over there. Make some friends, would you?”
“Bitch,” Gaius could hear Bal mutter and smiled a little. Yeah, he’d fit in just fine.
“Always,” Nim responded but Balinor did it anyway, he sat between Rupert who immediately stood up to shake his hand because he actually was a stand-up human being, and Hunith, who looked down before looking at him. Hmm.
“Okay, go on, then, Viv,” Nim said, sitting between Uther and Gaius and pressing her feet up to the couch.
The lights dimmed and the movie started -Inception, chosen by the women of the group- and Gaius managed to poke Uther on the shoulder and gestured his head towards Ray. He picked up a ‘Shut up’ from his best friend and it was pretty much insured that the guy wouldn’t be able to understand the fuck Leonardo Dicaprio was saying if Ray de Bois was sitting just a few feet away from him.
Geoff handed him a few M&Ms -not the yellow ones, he knew Gaius hated the yellow ones- and Gaius just sat there, starting to enjoy his fidgeting best friend and the respective movie.
And, the thing was, no one else really did. They weren’t slackers or anything; in fact Gaius was pretty sure they’d all been called brilliant at least once by the professors teaching their major, they just found it in themselves to see light in the dark classrooms in their friends.
Gaius learned early on that Uther liked crowds and was very much a people’s person -go figure- so it wasn’t much of a surprise that the people he surrounded himself with was a mix of more than a few young men and women. He ordered his normal -hot chocolate and a ham sandwich (Uther joked once that it was a kid’s order, like it was an insult)- and sat down next to Uther as he always did.
At the beginning of the year, it was just Uther and Gaius, roommates trying to get to know each other, sitting at a small table at the corner of the café, then Uther met Nim and he described her as a sort of firework and invited her to join in on their mornings. Gaius could see it as well, the spark, in her eyes and in her way, and everyone always seemed to be caught in her one way or another. Afterwards, Uther was introduced to Gorlois, the son of his father’s friend and formed a bond through the fact that they both thought they weren’t just shells of rich men’s sons.
Soon after, Gaius found a love in Alice, a fellow pre-med student who had lips he could kiss; lips that formed a smile and smirk all the same. The table felt full with good company as Gorlois invited his friend, Rupert, and girlfriend, Vivian, both beautiful and handsome in most classical sense but, when he met Geoff, there was no way he wasn’t bringing him along. Geoff had been awkward a bit at first but he found his rhythm, which was good because he didn’t want his good friend to feel alienated in Gaius’s group of friends; he wanted him to be comfortable, at ease, like he usually was when it was just them both.
He caught his eye now and smiled. Geoff looked at him and kept it in his laugh as he gestured to Gaius’s chin where the mayo was running down from eating his sandwich and he almost stopped his own conversation with Rupert because of it. Geoff was sometimes just too absent-minded.
Gaius looked down to his watch and sighed. He nudged Geoff with his elbow and stood up from the table. “I’m leaving,” Gaius said to Uther.
“Oy, where are you going, then?” Uther asked.
“Picking up Hunith from the station, don’t you remember?”
“I was supposed to follow you, wasn’t I? Why aren’t you kicking me yet?”
“Geoff’s following me instead,” Gaius answered, putting on his jacket.
Uther looked over to Geoff and gave him a thumbs-up, saying, “Bless you, mate. It’s not that I hate Hunith or Gaius or anything, I just-”
“He’s got to stay here so we can work on him finally getting over his absurd infatuation on Ray de Bois!” Gorlois yelled excitedly and Viv smacked him on the arm, as if to say that having a woman to want in life wasn’t the worst thing in life.
“Have fun with that, you lot,” Gaius laughed -mostly because he saw Uther blush from it, hinting the fact that he didn’t want to get over his crush on Ray.
He leaned down to kiss Alice goodbye (with a dirty promise being whispered in his ear) until Geoff interrupted with a cough. Right.
He and Geoff walked to his car and Geoff started driving because he knew better than to let Gaius drive before noon, so Gaius sat in the passenger seat, trying to find a radio station that didn’t make a habit of playing Ke$ha every five minutes. When he found one that was playing The Killers, he leaned in his seat, almost wanting to press his feet against the dashboard.
“Hey, Geoff?” Gaius asked.
“Yeah, Gaius,” Geoff said back, eyes on the road.
“You like my friends, right?” he asked, not really know why he was asking but also knowing he had to.
“Yeah, ‘course I do, I mean, they’ve all got their pros and cons but so do I. and, besides, they seem to be a solid lot if you think they are.” Geoff shrugged.
“Okay,” Gaius smiled to himself, happy with the answer.
“Why?” Geoff asked after a few moments of silence.
“Why what?”
“Why did you wanna know if I like your friends?”
“Cos you’re my friend, too, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Geoff said, eyes still on the road but Gaius couldn’t help but feel like he was looking at him, anyway. “But just because I’m your friend doesn’t mean I should be theirs, too. I could just hang out with you and not them.”
“I guess but they’re important to me and you’re kinda important to me, too and it’d be nice if all the important people in my life got along. And, you know, just cos you’re not with me sometimes, it doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
“Oy!” Geoff managed to smack him on the arm with one hand on the wheel. “I got a life outside of you and the Prat Pack, thank you very much!”
“I really don’t think so, I think your life revolves around me and when I’m not around, you think about me constantly,” Gaius said jokingly and Geoff laughed a bit, like it was an awkward joke and he was only laughing to be nice. “Geof-”
“So, Hunith,” Geoff said, making Gaius snap back to reality without really knowing he ever strayed. “Your cousin? Why is she here?”
“She’s in her last year of high school, starting to scope out colleges. She wants to see if Caerleon could be a good fit for her.”
“Would you like it to be?”
“Dunno, her choice really, but it would be nice having some family here and I love the girl to death,” Gaius shrugged. He did want her to stay, though. they’d been best friends when they were kids and it’d be nice to form that bond with her again. And he didn’t want to feel like he was losing his old family just because he found a new one because that would mean he was a massive prick.
“Oh, I love this song,” Geoff suddenly said and Gaius smiled.
“I never pegged you as a Daft Punk sort of guy, Geoff,” he said.
“Oh, I’m all sorts of guys, Germaine,” he said happily and started singing out the lyrics, albeit a bit pitchy, “Don’t stop, come a little closer…”
Gaius joined in, despite himself, because that’s what friends did, right? They refused to let the other be idiots without them. “As we jam, the rhythm gets strongerrrrr”
“There we go!” Geoff urged him on, clapping on the steering wheel.
The station was pretty much empty when they arrived and they had some time to kill before Hunith arrived so they bought some tea from the nice lady selling and hung around together. They explored the train station -it wasn’t much- and Geoff had this absurd idea to hide behind the pillars but the pillars were thin in concrete and his body showed.
Gaius started laughing and Geoff said something along the lines of, “So this is a rubbish place to play hide and seek,” to which Gaius replied by saying, “Or maybe you’re just rubbish at hiding.”
When that debacle was over, in which both of them agreed to never play hide and seek with each other unless they were hit with some kind of spell that suddenly turned them both into five-year-olds, they resorted to just sitting on the bench.
The clock struck twelve and Gaius said, “Hunith should be here soon.”
“Funny,” Geoff said, “I almost forgot about Hunith.” And Gaius realized he almost did, too.
Gaius promised he’d wait for her under the clock at the station but, as the two of them pushed through the sudden crowd of people that weren’t there before, he saw that she was already there. He must’ve not seen her for a while because, the last time he saw her, she was a small, adolescent girl. He vaguely remembered how her hair was tied to the side, her cheeks pink from the snow (he was visiting last Christmas) and how she smiled up at him when he carried her around the snow-filled yard.
Now, now, she was slowly becoming a very pretty young woman. Her brown hair was dropping below her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face; he barely recognized her, save for the eyes. The same eyes he used to look into during staring contests until one of them laughed.
“Gaius!” she yelled out excitedly and Gaius couldn’t help himself. He ran towards her in a really clichéd way and hugged her tight.
“You’ve grown, haven’t you?” Gaius asked, pulling away but still holding on to her skinny frame by the arms. “You’re too skinny, though. We have to feed you up while you’re here.”
“Mind you, he and Uther just survive on takeout,” Geoff interjected.
“Well, takeout is still considered food, isn’t it?” Hunith asked him.
“Not the healthy kind,” Geoff smiled. “Sorry. I’m Geoff, Gaius’s friend.”
“And his escort, I take it,” Hunith pulled away from Gaius’s embrace and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Geoff.”
“Likewise, Hunith.”
They exchanged pleasantries and Hunith started reminiscing about ‘the good old days’, prompting Geoff to ask every sordid detail of Gaius’s childhood, especially the most embarrassing ones. “I think you and I are going to be good friends, Hunith,” Geoff smiled at her as he loaded her bags to the car.
Sometimes, she wondered why a subject the academy didn’t normally teach or a subject that wasn’t very widespread among the students got the funding to have a whole building to themselves when they’re in class or practicing. Maybe it was the fact that they didn’t want any magic-related accidents happening around campus.
The Mirare Building of Magical Studies -a pretentious name the school board made up to make themselves seem more important than the colleges that weren’t teaching magic- was a decent walk from her dorm in Sarras Hall. She didn’t mind, though, she liked the walk there. Hardly anyone used the path to Mirare because hardly anyone really took the classes.
It was funny how people always seemed to look for magic but when it was within arm’s reach, they itched away from it like they wanted the magic from their dreamscape instead of the one reality offered them. Magical Studies only started becoming an official thing in the past few years. Before that, it was just there, it wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t legal, it was just in that space of actions no one knew what to do with.
People watched magic on the news, saw the coverage from Druid camps all over Northern England when their movement became so strong that they couldn’t tear their eyes away from it. Before magic became official and legal under the proper circumstances, Nim knew that it was just a subject people talked about over tea and suspicions.
They talked about this whole new race of people, who would ‘invade’ them with their spells and magical incantations; they wondered about the change this would bring to their country, even the world. The truth was, though, when it happened, when the Druids came out just as being Druids and getting the respect they deserved, when more and more magic users were coming to late, it served no real change.
People were still people; it just turned out that some people could levitate their coffee mugs to where they needed them. Some people just chose to be a little bit different.
Nim didn’t have that such luck, however; she was born with this difference. Magic users were mainly made, not born. Their skills were honed through endless research of spells and whatnot, taking classes just like the classes she was taking at Caerleon. Their effort to be magical was just that: an effort. She, however, needed effort to keep it in.
While the other students were just learning how to recite their first spells to make them happen, Nim was learning to recite them properly because she knew that she could make the product of these lessons happen -like ignite a fire- without even trying. She had her ethics, though, she wasn’t about to blow up the school just because she could. She had to learn the proper ways to conduct herself because it was the right thing to do.
She didn’t want to quote Spiderman or anything but those comic geeks were right, weren’t they? The responsibility came with the power, it was the occupational hazard of being magic.
Nimueh opened the door to the class, which was just about as normal-looking as lecture classes went. There was about twenty-plus students in the class, all of them deep in study already. She looked at the watch and saw she was a little bit late so she smiled apologetically to the professor -a middle-aged woman who’d probably seen better days than just teaching a bunch of younglings how to tap into their minds and extract from there some sort of magical ability.
“Walk went a little long there, did it?”
“You’re a sod,” Nim grumbled to him.
“Yeah, but I got the notes for class so you better start grovelling,” he smiled.
Balinor, when he wanted to be, was a really cheeky bastard. Not as much as Uther could be on a good day, obviously because Bal could actually see the shit when someone threw it to him without the help of a pretty blonde, but still. Nim really didn’t know why she surrounded herself with glorified pricks sometimes -besides Gaius, obviously, Gaius was the sweetest guy she knew in Caerleon- she just chalked it up to it being a source of entertainment.
Regardless, Nim was grateful for Balinor. He was pretty much her only friend in the class. Sure, friends weren’t really a necessity in a class to make it good but it was always good when they were there. This was her space away from the rest of her friends, away from Uther and Gaius, so it was nice to spend time with a fellow misfit.
“Any idea what’s on the agenda today?” Nim asked him.
“Theory lessons,” Bal grumbled.
“Well fuck that,” Nim groaned, landing her head on the table.
She could hear Bal laughing a bit and said, “My thoughts exactly. Go on, then, I’ll wake you up when it’s over.”
“You’re glorious, you are.”
“I thought I was a sod.”
“Yeah, well, that, too.”
Her head met the surprisingly cold surface of the table and it all turned black for a moment before it turned gold. All her life, Nimueh had been plagued with these dreams, well they weren’t dreams, per se, they were just looks outside of her own life, telling her something was coming. It was a sign. Along with believing in fate and destiny, believing in signs was also in the territory.
It was like small dejavus, belonging just to her. While dreaming, she wouldn’t quite remember what she was dreaming about she knew that when the dreams increased in frequency, that there was something coming. There was something she should look out for because her dreams had told her beforehand. She just had to remember.
She never quite got the grasp to remember, though. When the dreams invaded her every night when she was eight years old, she never remembered what they were telling her until her mother was packing her bags. One day, she would remember. One day, she’d know things before they happened.
She didn’t want to be psychic or anything but she felt like she had to be.
Destiny and all that crap.
Balinor woke her up like he said he would and Nim, as always, just took a while to reassess her surroundings. This was how it always was, in the end, the fact that she knew she had a dream, she just didn’t know what it was about.
“You alright?” Bal asked.
“Yeah,” Nim managed a smile. “Always.”
“Come on, then, I’ll treat you to lunch at Union. ‘s not like I can afford anything else.”
They decided to take the longer way to Union because Bal said he needed to pick up his paper outside his professor’s office. She didn’t mind, though, like she said, she liked walking.
Caerleon Academy was located in the very heart of Nottingham, far enough from the real city to get some peace and quiet but not too far that it was ghost town. Outside the university, there were just a few roads and a field and further ahead, was a clock tower and then shops. She always did like Nottingham, well, more than she did London, anyway. She liked the cities that didn’t quite have that city feel in them. It was probably because of where she grew up because Wales was just...Wales. At least to her.
The uni itself was pretty big. There were five residence halls and all her friends were scattered around them, with Uther and Gaius in Constantine -the biggest hall, which should be expected because Uther Pendragon lived there- and a bunch of people in Cornwall, where Gorlois roomed with Rupert -they weren’t originally but Gorlois was a persuasive bastard- and Viv roomed with Ray de Bois, Uther’s long-running catch and her own dorm was in Sarras Hall. It was pretty okay, Sarras Hall, once again, it was detached from all her other friends like the magic classes were.
She sometimes did wonder if it was just supposed to be that she would have her own life, void of her friends. Or maybe she was just a bit antisocial when she didn’t want to be social. That was a possibility, too.
She and Bal ended up in Constantine on the way to Union and she saw Gaius there, being overshadowed by bags, but he still took the time to wave a bit at her. Geoff was there, too, opening the door to the dorm shared by Gaius and Uther, along with a pretty girl with dark hair. Hunith, that must be, Gaius’s cousin and old fond memory of his childhood.
Nim wanted to wave at her as a hint that they’d probably be spending some time together the few weeks she was to be here but she clearly didn’t have her attention.
Hunith, the dear girl, was looking at Bal, her eyes flicking up in a fey-like glance and Nim tried to conceal her chuckle.
Ah, to be young and in love.
When the trio went inside the room, Nim turned to Bal and asked, even though she knew the answer, “Who was that?”
“What?” Bal cleared his throat, trying to keep up the pretence he was just this big guy who had no feelings whatsoever. Bullshit, where she stood.
“The girl you were sharing intense eye gazing with.”
“I don’t know her,” Balinor said to her clearly.
“Yet,” Nim finished his sentence for him. “You don’t know her yet.”
“You know, you’ve got your annoying times, as well.”
“Oh yes it’s incredibly annoying when I’m right,” Nim smirked at him. “Come on, lad.”
When he saw her next time, it involved actual conversation. But her smile and her eyes, they told him that she recognized him in a passing glance and they were almost like they knew him already. Balinor almost felt like blushing under her gaze. It wasn’t one of those concentrated stares that involved staring him up and down, seeing who he was by what he chose to give, it was sweet and innocent and naïve and that was what made him almost feel red around the cheeks.
“So, uh,” Balinor said, “you’re new around here?”
“Not really, no, I’m just visiting my cousin and I’m trying to see if here would be a good option for me to go next year,” she said. Right, she looked young, he should’ve figured, something around the cheeks and eyes.
“Sorry, I’m Balinor,” he outstretched his hand.
“Balinor,” she slurred the name around her tongue, getting used to it. “Can I call you Bal?”
“If you must, I suppose,” Balinor said, smiling.
“I’m Hunith,” she said, finally taking his hand. “And, no, there’s no short form of it that doesn’t sound unattractive so don’t bother at all.”
“Yeah and Bal isn’t unattractive?”
“Well, it’s acceptable, at least,” Hunith -Hunith- smiled at him. He hated to admit it but there was this moment. It was only for a second, though, but he couldn’t deny it was a moment. That sucked because he never actually believed in moments before; he instead found time and it was always fleeting.
But here it was, a moment with a girl he was strangers with, and he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“I should go, I have class,” he said instead.
“Okay,” she smiled again. “I’ll see you around, then, I guess.”
“Yeah, see you around,” he said and left, not knowing what he was actually leaving.
The last time he had a girl like that, in that way, he was sixteen and he was in high school. Two years since he had a girl in that way, where he would feel comfortable to hold her hand -even though he rarely did want to but it was just that possibility that he could- some people would say he was weird or something. He was weird, though, always had been. Always the problem, always the odd one out; it was just the way he was programmed, he figured.
The point was, Hunith was looking at him the way she used to look at him, only with a tiny bit more intensity, if that level of intensity could even be reached by adolescents their age. And he really didn’t know what to do with it.
He didn’t know what to do with anything in his life, really, especially as of late. Especially with things the way they were at home and how they were supposed to be in his life now that his father was dying and it was his inheritance that he kept the trait going on until he had his own to pass it down to. That was easy, though, the preservation of a noble race of men, as his father liked to call Dragonlords, even though it didn’t sound like it.
This wasn’t easy, though, the look Hunith was giving off.
He was probably over thinking this, like he always was. Maybe it wasn’t a look, maybe he was just looking at her wrong or maybe she looked at everyone like that. Or maybe she had a rare genetic disposition that left her with that expression whenever she encountered someone new. Or maybe he was just a wanker who didn’t want to deal with his feelings.
Feelings. Huh.
Well, it was definitely too early to start using the word feelings.
Viv said that the movie was about to start soon, as said in her text to Gaius, but, as fate would have it, Alice found a dark hallway close to the common room and dragged him there and tried to kiss the sense out of him. It worked for a while, really.
She was being pressed up against the wall and her hand was in his hair, slowly tangling her fingers around the red strands of it. She traced her tongue along his bottom lips and he groaned deep in his throat.
“We’re not about to have sex now, are we?” Gaius asked, smiling against her skin. “Because it’s bloody cold here and I really do not want my balls to be frozen.”
“Later, then,” Alice promised him with another soft kiss on him.
They intertwined their hands together and embraced the cold night. Movie nights at the Cornwall common room; Gaius wanted to say it was a beloved tradition between all of them that was formed through managing to fight about which Harrison Ford movie was better until they all agreed to watch the best of the best until they fell asleep on the couch. Truth was, though, movie nights only happened spontaneously.
Someone would decide during the day that there was nothing better than huddling around watching movies and word would circulate. For some reason, the common room was always void of people but Gaius was highly convinced that the reason was Gorlois, who could pull anything off, really, with his charm or otherwise. Gaius was beginning to suspect that he was James Potter reincarnated in real form.
“Where have you been?” Hunith asked after them when she finally caught.
“Dark, dastardly deeds that I’m sure you don’t want to hear about from your cousin,” Gaius told her and pulled her in for a headlock. She’d been adjusting well here for the past few days. She followed along to classes, switching between Uther, Alice, Gaius and Geoff, who had all taken upon themselves to be her guardians in Caerleon.
“If you don’t wanna hear about them from your cousin, I’ll be sure to tell you, Hunith,” Alice said with a smirk.
Hunith pulled a disgusted face as they arrived at Cornwall. Geoff said he’d meet them there but Gaius didn’t get a message that he was already inside in the building. He said he had a meeting that might run late, though. What kind of meeting, he wasn’t exactly sure.
But he was about to find out because a loud voice yelling, “Oy!” was after them and he saw Geoff running towards them and catching his breath between Gaius and Hunith.
“Hullo, Running Man,” Hunith said to him. “Was the Chariot of Fire theme song playing in your head when you were running a sprint?”
“No, as a matter of a fact,” Geoff said, breathing deeply, “it was the Rocky theme.”
“You’re cheerful,” Gaius noted. He also noted the new purple band around his wrist.
“Meeting went well,” was all Geoff said.
With that, they entered the building and went up to the common room. Everyone was there, except Nim, who always did like running a bit late to everything. It seemed like girls and boys were being divided on the couch, some of them even taking pillows and lying on the floor.
Gaius took his customary seat next to Uther on the couch and Geoff took his usual seat next to him. Alice went over to Viv and her surprise guest, Ray de Bois, and Hunith went there, as well. Gorlois was lying on the floor in front of Viv with a sleeping bag all around him who was throwing popcorn to Rupert, who was sitting cross-legged on the other side of Uther, trying to catch them in his mouth.
“Should I pop in the movie?” Viv asked them.
“Nim would kill us if we started without her, though,” Gaius reasoned, which was met with a chorus of agreement. Right at that moment, speak of the devil, the door opened, revealing not one, but two figures.
One was obviously Nim but the other guy was someone Gaius occasionally saw around uni with Nim. Balinor, it was, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“Waahoo!” Gorlois and Uther yelled simultaneously.
“I would say that the party don’t start til I walk in but the point is there for all to see so then it’s no use, really,” Nim said. She gestured to Balinor and said, “You guys, this is Balinor, who’s a poor pathetic sod I met in magic class who I forced out here.”
“Because you’re a stand-up human being, obviously,” Gaius retorted.
“Obviously,” Nim nodded. She looked at Balinor and said, “Go on, Bal, there’s a seat between Rupert and Hunith over there. Make some friends, would you?”
“Bitch,” Gaius could hear Bal mutter and smiled a little. Yeah, he’d fit in just fine.
“Always,” Nim responded but Balinor did it anyway, he sat between Rupert who immediately stood up to shake his hand because he actually was a stand-up human being, and Hunith, who looked down before looking at him. Hmm.
“Okay, go on, then, Viv,” Nim said, sitting between Uther and Gaius and pressing her feet up to the couch.
The lights dimmed and the movie started -Inception, chosen by the women of the group- and Gaius managed to poke Uther on the shoulder and gestured his head towards Ray. He picked up a ‘Shut up’ from his best friend and it was pretty much insured that the guy wouldn’t be able to understand the fuck Leonardo Dicaprio was saying if Ray de Bois was sitting just a few feet away from him.
Geoff handed him a few M&Ms -not the yellow ones, he knew Gaius hated the yellow ones- and Gaius just sat there, starting to enjoy his fidgeting best friend and the respective movie.