Title: All-Nighter
Author: Tsuki
Pairing: 1+2+1
Warnings: none?
Notes: *insert disclaimer here* Ficlet. Just because I've had way too many of these this year, already. And hooray for gaining an hour from daylight savings (even though this took more than two). From merith's prompt (thanks Mer).

All-nighter

You type away at the keyboard, one eye on your notes and the other on the clock, mentally calculating the hours until daybreak. Wondering if you'll finish the assignment in time. Wondering if there's a point to handing in this assignment at all.

You wonder why people go through school and university if this is what it entails. Night upon night of all-work-and-no-play-makes-you-a-dead-boy. Is this really more painless than dying in your Gundam? Your mind can't think and your body protests, back hunched over and bum on the hard wooden surface of the chair - whoever designed them clearly never stayed sitting in them for fourteen hours straight - and elbows bent and suspended awkwardly. Your hair feels limp and wants to be rebraided. Your notes make no sense, but still you keep the keyboard clacking.

Music beats from the tiny speakers on your desk. It's the same music collection you listened to in your Gundam. It energized you during the war, and it energizes you now. Contrary to popular belief, you never blasted it while you fought, just as you aren't blasting it now. You realize that your being awake does not mean anyone else in the dorm is. If you can be classified as awake at all.

The song changes and your mind makes a brief note. It's a song you stole from his playlist. You didn't know your tastes in music matched. You hum softly and try to ignore the bed next to your desk. It's hard because the dorm rooms are so small.

You have three lights on but it looks like one because you're so tired. The room is beyond dim and the only thing you see are your notes and the computer screen. Your blinds are still open because you haven't gone to bed yet. If you had time to look out and up, you would see wisps of clouds slowly move over the faint line of the new moon.

A small growl sounds and you realize it's your stomach. You tell it to shut up because you have no time and it tells you to stop working and make time. The rest of you agrees with your stomach. You want warm chicken noodle soup and a back rub. You want to give up but you can't, because the school has eaten your soul and apparently you signed a contract somewhere along the way allowing them to do so. You would rip it up if you could find it, but it's metaphorical so you can't. You wonder who said metaphorical paper can't be ripped up. You wonder who designed this education system.

You shiver. It's cold in your room, colder than the room next door. The room next door is warm. It's funny because the guy next door doesn't mind the cold and you don't mind the heat and you really should just switch rooms but you can't because someone said so. But the warmth allows him to wear his t-shirts and tank tops around so he probably wouldn't trade anyway. You spend a lot of your time next door because he keeps you focused, even though your mind tends to wander when you're around him. You tell yourself your mind wanders anyway, so it's no big deal. You tell yourself everyone's minds wander. You hope his wanders the same way yours does.

Sometimes you think it does, but you can't tell. He's quiet and hard to read, but you're used to it and even like it that way, that way that you never thought you would before your mind learned of wandering.

You realize your mind is wandering again, so you reprimand it and scroll through the last page you wrote.

You made a note to yourself sometime ago that you were interested in him. Sometimes when he looks at you - blue eyes, oh such a blue - that note pops up. His little smiles. You want to take it off your bulletin board but you know it's metaphorical and so is the board. You should make a note to stop being metaphorical. He's metaphorical too, another thing that matches. He's probably more metaphorical than you are, but probably in the good sense and not in the pieces-of-paper-laughing-at-you sense. The way that makes everything he says short and succinct but laden with meaning.

You're done the paper, except you're not. The stuff you wrote is incoherent at best and you need to edit it. You embedded citations but you need to finish your bibliography. You want to eat. You want to sleep. You can't because if you do you won't get up and you won't hand it in. You want to hand in the mess you just wrote as it is and live with the mark you get. You want your paper to be magically perfect. You want to know how boy-next-door-in-warm-room can finish everything in time with sleep to spare. You blame the chill in your room for slowing you down.

You fight to stay awake and your eyes fight back. Your head tilts down and picks up momentum, about to collide with the desk until you hear a rap on your door at the last second. The door is opened without waiting for your answer and before you know it your notes have turned into soup. Chicken noodle soup.

The exhaustion hits you full force and you fall forward again. An arm around your shoulders pulls you back. You hear the word "open," insistent, and your body obliges without conscious thought, but it's okay because your mouthstomachbody fills with soup as you reflexively swallow. You start to feel more solid, less pliable, less floppy.

He continues to feed you more soup, until the bowl is halfway empty. It's hot, just cool enough to not scald your tongue. Full of steamy goodness. He hands you the bowl when you're ready to accept it. Your eyes lock briefly - so much blue, the only thing in your focus - before you continue your short meal. You don't realize he's moved behind you until you feel your hair come undone as you finish the soup. Fingers snag on knots but it doesn't hurt as much as it should because he's careful. He doesn't comb it because that would take too much time, but he smoothes it out and rebraids it.

It's entirely relaxing and you feel the lull of sleep again. You feel the bowl removed gently from your hands and placed on your desk, away from your cluttered notes now pushed to one side. You feel your body move toward the bed by his guidance before you fully register what's happening. When you do, you protest. The references aren't typed out. Nothing's been edited. There's no title page. You don't know where to hand it in. It comes out in barely uttered mumbles but somehow he understands you.

You get a glimpse out the window as you sit on your bed and change into pajamas. It's no longer pitch black outside. He's sitting right in front of you, in front of your desk, reading the first page of your paper as you slide your jeans off, but it doesn't matter. No shy modesty between you two.

He turns the laptop and pulls it to the edge of your desk so he can reach it while sitting on your bed. You try to fling your dirty clothes a scant meter from your bed and collapse. Your meek murmurs are heard but ignored as he pulls the blanket around you when your face hits the pillow. You can still hear light typing as he goes through your paper. A hand lands on top of the covers and you feel pressure sliding up and down your back. Up and down, curving gently.

It feels good, oh so good, oh so enticing, just what you wanted. A second hand joins the first and they both slip under the covers towards your shoulders. He hits all the aches in just the right way. You turn your head and hear yourself moan. You feel warm and good and fuzzy and nothing else matters. There's a hint of light outside and it hits you that he shouldn't be up. You wonder why he is, apparently out loud, and he casually answers - short, calming words, low and soft - something about being worried and staying up for you as if it were totally normal for anyone to do.

The laptop stops humming when he's done. The creak of blinds being pulled. The rustle of your notes rearranged. A promise that your paper will be handed in. The flick of the light switch. He's given you everything you wanted tonight. Your assignment is done. Your stomach is full. You hair is tied. Your muscles are relaxed. You're in bed. It's perfect. Almost, your mind supplies, almost, because there's one more thing you want.

And when he leans in and gives that to you too, that low whisper of sweet dreams dancing in your ears and those roughened fingers tucking away your hair and yes! that brush of lips just skimming on your jawbone, you think as the door clicks shut that school and all-nighters might not be so bad after all.