Academia - Part 4
Academia - Part 4
Copyright 2008 Zelphair/YaminoFoxie
Author's Note: First, a little clarification. Part 4 has actually been done since I made the decision to post on Yiffstar, but I kept forgetting I hadn't put it up here. I apologize for that, though for future reference, everything always goes up in Word format on my FA page (YaminoFoxie) first. Also, fair warning, we likely won't get back to the adult stuff for another couple chapters. To everyone who sticks around knowing that, thanks in advance, and to those who don't, I understand, and am certainly not naive as to Yiffstar's main usage. Anyway, happy reading, and hope to see everyone stick around.
I wonder what he's so cheery about, Kaze thought, as his roommate finally emerged from the shower, a towel wrapped around his slim waist, the end of his thick tail still visible just below the bottom. The otter had seemed to be practically dead to the world upon waking. I guess a shower really invigorates him. It must be an otter thing...or maybe a Water thing.
Dylan was giving him such a big grin, in fact, that the fox couldn't help feeling yet another highly noticeable blush rise to his cheeks, considering his morning activities. His arousal was finally no longer visible, but he was sure his own scent hung in the air for any to smell. At a loss for what to say, he could only stammer "H-hey...uh...leave any hot water for me?"
He was sure it had sounded like the most pathetic excuse for conversation ever to escape his muzzle, but Dylan's gentle smile seemed understanding. Maybe there was something to the way rooms were assigned at the Academy, after all. He could easily imagine the thick tension that would be likely in his current situation, and yet the otter seemed to be able to diffuse all of that with a simple facial expression.
"Oh, running out of hot water is one thing you'll never have to worry about," Dylan remarked. "I may not be too fond of them, but Fire users have their uses."
"What do you mean?" Kaze asked curiously, glad for the opportunity to actually form a conversation from his weak start.
"Well, much as I may have joked about conserving water, that's really not much of an issue, either," the otter explained. "See, all of our water comes from the ocean. A few Water and Earth users working together are way more effective than a desalination plant. And the Fire users may not be able to heat the water directly, but they can keep a huge boiler running fine, and without any of the constant risks a boiler that size would usually bring...you know, blowing up, destroying half the school, et cetera."
"Wow," was all the fox could seem to say. He'd known, in theory, that abilities like his could be put to good use, but to hear real examples was more heartening than he'd expected it to be. "If that's the case, I guess I shouldn't let it go to waste, huh?"
With that, Kaze quickly rushed out from beneath his sheets and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He breathed a sigh of relief once he was in, leaning back a bit against the door. He was by no means an exhibitionist, and the thought that he had just been forced to streak by his roommate nearly made him ready to hide away for the rest of his life in embarrassment. He just hoped Dylan hadn't seen the dried seed matting his fur in places.
He took a moment to look around the bathroom as he let his breathing relax, and his heart stop trying to escape his chest. The floor was tiled in white, and kept quite clean, especially considering it was, after all, still a college dormitory. The walls were papered in a simple but elegant checkerboard design in light and dark blue. He was fairly certain the sink was imitation white marble, and the handles and faucet only coated in silver, but it still looked quite nice, and the mirror above it had a pattern of clouds and waves carved into the top and bottom portions of the frame.
Wandering over to the mirror, he checked behind it to find there was indeed a medicine cabinet. The contents were sparse and ordinary, and didn't tell him much about his roommate. The shelf almost seemed a bit lonely, with only a bottle of Excedrin, some Q-tips, and a pair of claw-clippers keeping each other company. The sink didn't provide much insight into Dylan, either; just a toothbrush, and some extra whitening toothpaste, which certainly seemed to be working, from what Kaze had seen every time the otter smiled.
The short-lived search for more clues about his roommate now finished, he realized it was high time he actually got cleaned up. Making his way over to the nicely sized tub with shower, he turned the water on, fiddled with it a bit as he found the right temperature, then pulled up the knob to turn on the shower. He braced himself a bit before stepping in, but he'd managed to find quite an agreeable temperature, and thus the shock of the initial immersion in the spray was minimal.
The fox let out a sigh of relief as he let the water run over him, spending a few moments, as he always did, simply luxuriating in the feel of the warm water soaking into his fur and down through it to his skin. In this case, it was just warm enough to keep him fairly toasty and force him to relax a bit, without being so hot it was uncomfortable. He gradually felt a bit more weighted down as more and more of his fur became soaked, but it was a small price to pay for the warmth and, soon, the refreshingly clean feeling.
As he reached for the bottle of shampoo against the wall, he hoped Dylan wouldn't mind too much that he was using it. He hadn't had time to unpack yet, after all, and besides, in all the rush and...circumstances surrounding his packing, he wouldn't have been surprised if he'd forgotten shampoo altogether. As he opened the bottle, he was greeted with a pleasant but faint floral scent, faint enough that the thought of just how close he'd likely have to be to smell it on the otter sent his mind in directions it usually didn't travel this soon after release.
While working the cleanser into his fur, Kaze couldn't help but remember his fantasy of Dylan doing the same. It was just as well that for once, the otter wasn't around to see him blush. Of all of the possible roommates, the fox was sure he could have done much, much worse. He certainly liked Dylan, but the twin issues of how much he liked the otter, and what manner of feeling, if any, was returned, presented him with few answers.
He could at least speak for his own feelings, in theory, with some heavy analysis, and given that his only distraction at the moment was a routine physical task that required absolutely none of his higher brain functions, it was difficult not to do just that. He found himself going over his every reaction to his new roommate, and much more importantly, debating the reasons behind those reactions.
Apart from the initial surprise of waking up nude, in bed, with a stranger, his first reaction had been a strong physical attraction. That one was understandable, of course. Dylan was a prime physical specimen, and Kaze was neither blind nor celibate. Or at least, he hadn't been the latter by choice or by inclination. Circumstances had more or less forced him into a life of temporary chastity, but he wouldn't be at all loath to change that, given the opportunity.
More than that, though, Dylan had been nice to him, more so than anyone had been since...well, since before he could remember. While it was true that most any roommate would at least be civil for the sake of their own continued comfort, the otter had continually gone above and beyond in his efforts to help Kaze fit in here in this new environment. It could simply be that Dylan was a really nice guy, that he would've done the same for anyone, and given his impressions of the otter's personality, it was certainly hard to imagine him being mean to anyone. Still, there was a certain measure of genuine personal warmth, an amount of care that went beyond even the considerable amount the young otter seemed to show to just about everyone.
More exciting, and more disturbing, than anything else, though, was the flirting. His first reaction, before any thought at all entered into the equation, had been elation, of course. There was no helping the instinctive joy taken at the face value of words that validated and encouraged his initial attraction. Rational thought quickly tempered this, however, being quite ready to remember that if the otter's words were anything less than serious, things could only go drastically wrong from believing them.
The core of the problem seemed to be that the fox was lacking any real, relevant experience for comparison. Since the early debacle with his friend, Kaze had gone lacking for male friends. Thus, there was no way of knowing from first-hand experience if guys who weren't actually interested, but were playful and secure in their own sexuality, would sometimes flirt with their male friends. Certainly, if there were two words that could ever describe Dylan, playful and secure would probably be contenders for those spots.
In the end, it seemed his analysis wasn't terribly conclusive. The only thing he could firmly resolve to do about the situation was to wait, observe how things progressed, and try to form a tentative friendship with his new roommate. As it was, by the time, he got that far, he had come to the more immediate realization that his fur had long since lost any trace of shampoo, and the warm water was starting to get a bit uncomfortable.
With a slight sigh, he turned the water off, opened the curtain, and stepped out onto the rug, dripping and shivering a bit at the initial chill. Taking a towel from the rack on the wall, he vigorously gave himself an initial rubdown, while searching for something more substantial. Dylan may have been able to simply pull the water right out of his body, but even if Kaze's abilities had been of that element, he still wouldn't have the first clue about how to use them. His eyes eventually came to rest on a blow dryer currently plugged into a wall-mounted charging unit. It was a bit bulkier than the one in his parents' house, probably an economy model as opposed to a salon model, but it would likely get the job done just as well.
As he switched the dryer on and began to pass it all over his body, letting its lovely warmth work its own brand of practical magic, the comparison of such a small and seemingly insignificant item had the unintended effect of underscoring just what an enormous his change his life had undergone in the past 24 hours. Up until that point, he had been running on sheer momentum, in a dazed sort of shock that simply accepted whatever came along because contemplating it just wasn't an option. Now of all times was when it finally hit him that his family had disowned him, that he was in a strange place filled with people he'd never met, with no home to which he could return.
Logically, the loss of his family certainly wasn't a crippling emotional blow. They had never really been a family in the sense that he'd heard tales of on TV and from other people. If he were truly honest with himself, he could say with some confidence that he had always known how they viewed him. To them, he was important as an extension of their bloodline, not as a person to be loved.
Their disinheritance definitely meant a financial loss, but, truth be told, that was also relatively low on the list of priorities. Perhaps it was simply out of spite for his father, but the young fox had long held a disdain for unearned wealth. He had already planned to cut himself off from his parents' support after college, and while this hadn't exactly been the way he would have planned things, the result was more or less the same. There was the matter of paying for school there at the Academy, of course, but Kaze had gotten the impression that the headmaster was quite familiar with his situation. There would be no rational reason to bring him here if there wasn't some form of payment that could be settled upon. Dylan had mentioned scholarships earlier, and if that didn't work, maybe there would be some kind of job he could do to pay his bills. If nothing else, he could surely offer the parting cash his father had given him as a down payment in good faith.
It wasn't even necessarily the change of scenery that bothered him. After all, he had been incredibly unhappy where he was, and had been positively dying to get away. On top of that, at an ordinary college, there would have been no guarantee that he could have kept his abilities from being discovered, and, as open-minded as college students had a reputation for being, he couldn't have realistically expected wholehearted acceptance. Here, assuming Dylan's descriptions were true, he had found a place he had never dared to dream existed, where abilities like his were not only accepted, but cherished and encouraged. If anything, it seemed like the change of scenery was a vast improvement.
All of those considerations were sound, logical arguments, yet as he finished drying himself and returned the dryer to its charger, he felt the inexplicable but unmistakable stinging moisture of tears rolling down his cheeks. The heart never did respond well to logic, and at that moment, his heart was still that of a scared little kit who had, in the span of a few hours, lost everything he had ever known. No stranger to keeping his grief a private matter, he took a few long minutes to simply stop where he was and let the tears silently flow.
As he put the finishing touches on his school uniform, Dylan found himself emitting an almost inaudible sigh of frustration, not directly at his new roommate, but rather at his own limitations where the fox was concerned. He may have only been a year ahead of Kaze, but his skills with his element had at least developed to the point where it was a simple matter to recognize the water flow patterns that meant someone was crying. He could certainly understand the reason behind it, and in all honesty, he was surprised it had taken this long for those emotions to make their way to the surface.
The problem, however, was that he very much longed to open the door and comfort the young fox. Unfortunately, as loudly as his emotions cried out for that response, the logical part of him knew that this would only make his roommate uncomfortable. The manner in which he had chosen to cry, silently and alone, spoke volumes for the way the fox was accustomed to handling his emotions. With time, Kaze could hopefully be brought out of his proverbial shell, but for now, the otter's feeling was that such an overt move would likely only drive the fox deeper into his emotional isolation.
It'll pass, Dylan assured himself. From what the headmaster had so carefully not told him, he could be reasonably sure that this was almost universally a positive change for the fox. It was definitely an overwhelming change to handle all at once, but after the initial shock passed, Kaze would surely find his place. Still, none of that did anything to diminish the otter's sincere desire to simply hold the fox in his arms, and assure him everything would be alright.