Bradley impolitely ignores the voice in his head - he calls it ‘Greg’ - whispering about how them not wanting to go for dinner with him means that they hate him. What sort of voice do you think you are, anyways, Greg, don’t you have any better hobbies, or are you just a pathetic shadow on the wall, dripping malice and spite like a worm drips shit, waiting for some fairy godmother to drag you to a ball and give you a life - 

He puts on his underwear, and then his pants; he’d ripped off his shirt at some point, and he isn’t going to bother growing a new one right this minute. Witchy psuedo-nudity norms were the best.

“Sure! See you then, bitches.”

“See you then!” agrees Zeke, continuing to happily snuggle with Caden.

Both Trevor and Bradley leave.

Snuggles!

And then, after a few minutes -

“Well, that was an adventure.”

“I know,” beams Zeke. “I said that we would have awesome adventures and we’re totally having awesome adventures! I am psychic.“

“Oh, well, okay then, I wish you’d mentioned earlier, this is dreadfully important - oh, wise psion, I beseech you, what am I thinking of?”

“... ‘rutabaga’,” declares Zeke, seriously.

Caden lets out an overwrought gasp.

”Oh, no! However shall I cope in the absence of privacy. We may have to amputate, doctor - wait, um, no, that doesn’t make sense, sorry -“

“No, it works, you just gotta run with it - no, nurse! I don’t want to amputate my telepathy gland, it has sentimental and practical value!”

“But think of the ethical implications, Zeke. You’ll have to get a prosthetic telepathy gland, and the company that makes those discriminates against Lassian workers!”

“Drat! Ethical implications are my one weakness.”

”Poison? Disease? Fire, ice, acid, cold? Storms, arrows, swords, sparrows?”

“Those are weaknesses, yes, but not my one weakness! My one weakness gets, like, VIP parking. And free donuts. And a slightly larger Christmas bonus!”

“VIP parking? Zeke, I thought that what we had was special.”

“It is! You are my mate. That is much better than VIP parking. I can make you pancakes and carry you to dorm meetings!

“I do like pancakes... hmm. Do my mating privileges extend to kissing you?”

“Yes. Yes, they do.”

They’re already pretty thoroughly snuggled up. He just needs to lean forward and upward, like - so -

Kiss. 

!!!!!!

... this is actually their first kiss. 

It is the best kiss ever.

Love love love love love love -

They do, eventually, need to break away. After several minutes.

”... I love you.”

He takes a moment to process that.

And then - exclamation points cannot contain his excitement. He cannot contain his excitement. The words ‘beam’ cannot contain his excitement.

”Love you too love you too love you love you,” he says, hugging Caden tight enough to leave arm-shaped bruises and drawing them both up, so they’re sitting upright. “My heart my heart my heart my heart love you forever and ever and ever -“

Kiss. 

Kiss!

Kissing for the next hour, even, punctuated by occassionally pulling away and breathing and occasionally running their hands over each other, tracing out each other’s curvatures, and on one occasion punctuated by Zeke de-snuggling in order to do backflips and cartwheels and spontaneous calisthenics. 

At the end of the approximate hour:

”- um, we should probably be responsible and talk about the scheduling, now. What are you signed up for?”

“- oh, shit, right, you wanted to talk about that - uh, so you read the pamphlets, you know that even though they dress this place up like a college the way everything’s structured is really weird, you won’t look at me like I’m crazy if I mention that ‘networking’ is our only required class?”

“I managed to get my ‘everything here is bizarre’ moment over with when that woman handed us key limes instead of keys - and I did see that, it took me several moments to realize it wasn’t euphemistic and that they actually did want to stick everyone in each floor into a room together, for an hour, thrice a week -“

“I know, right? - and the thing where it mentioned that the average class to professor ratio is two, and that the maximum class size is three, except for ‘networking’ and stuff that’s inherently team-based - and the thing where nothing has any homework, you just straightforwardly spend three hours a week per credit hour in class -“

“It’s all really strange! - so, your classes?”