dram untucked

Zac had been spending more time in Adam's room than his own. Study sessions and hangouts that Zac proposed and Adam failed to decline. The taller man didn’t respond as Zac came in; Adam was lying on his bed, nose-deep in a sketchbook, working on diagrams. Zac didn't bother to announce his entrance either, walking in to start wordlessly nosing through the papers on Adam’s dresser. 

Zac was still in his uniform, teal-colored sweater and short pants. Adam had long since abandoned his, the various pieces of his uniform strewn throughout his half of the room. He was instead in his worn white undershirt and a black pair of boxers; Zac knew Adam rarely could tolerate the uniform if he wasn't actively in class. 

“This was due last week. You didn't pass it in?” 

No response. Not because Adam was too immersed in his designs but because he had picked up the habit of tuning out Zac’s chatter. It didn't stop Zac from continuing to nitpick around the dorm room. 

“Whose cricket bat is this? You hate cricket.” Continued silence. “You shouldn't wear your shoes on the bed. You're the one who has to clean the sheets, after all..-”

It was finally enough to get a response from Adam. “What do you want.” He didn't raise his eyes from his drawing. He knew these weren't actual concerns, just Zac’s attempts to pry open a channel of conversation. To respond at all was a concession to Zac’s demands, but there was only so much Adam could tolerate.

“I said I was coming over after my late class. We were gonna study for history…?” His voice always sounded whiny to Adam. The intonation of someone who always wanted something even when they weren't asking outright. Even when they didn't know what they wanted. It grated on his nerves. 

“Okay. Where's your textbook…your notes..” He finally put his sketches down to look flatly at Zac. An expectant head shake when Zac hesitated to answer. Zac hadn't wanted to study history at all; he probably hadn't even asked to come over, but Adam couldn't call him on that because he didn't remember being asked or not. He might have just ignored it.

“We can just use yours? You take better notes than me.” Zac said, climbing onto the bed without so much as glancing for where Adam's textbook might be. 

“You know I fucking don't.” Adam was quick to reply. Zac was all too happy to chide him for his academic sloppiness; the compliment couldn't have rung more hollow. Zac lay on his side at the foot of the bed, watching Adam expectantly, drumming fingers on the duvet. The taller man paid him little mind, leaning over the side of the bed, reaching beneath it and fumbling around until he grabbed something book-shaped. He hauled it up, making s it was the history textbook and not any of the other books he had abandoned down there, before slapping it down on the bed between them. He kept his eyes on the text, not once glancing up at Zac. “What are you doing for the essay section.” Speaking so flatly it almost didn't register as a question. 

Despite Zac's current disinterest in the history midterm, he did have an answer. “Uh…I was gonna do the one about wars between magic-rich nations.”

“Right.” Adam was a little impressed that Zac had an essay topic ready to go. Unless he had just pulled it out of his ass especially quickly.

“What about you?”

“Don't worry about it.” Adam said. He didn't figure Zac actually had any interest. “Do you know the dates and shit? For the Key wars.” 

“That's what I was hoping we could go over.” Zac continued to pretend to have a vested interest in studying. In fairness, he did study hard, just not with Adam. This was more for entertainment than education. When he needed to study for real, he'd just get his older sister's notes. She had taken most of these classes the year prior. 

Adam took the book into his lap and opened to the chapter on the Key Wars; a series of civil territorial disputes that occurred shortly after the founding of the nation. “Okay. Which founding member of the Navel Consortium declared Salamand Key as national territory, and in what year.” 

Zac's fingers began to peek over the edge of the book as he tried to wrest it from Adam's hold. “Comiskey in 1685. At least give me a hard one.” 

“Wh- stop that.” Adam, with his greater leverage, kept the book steady despite Zac's attempts to tug it away from him. “Which generals objected to the invasion at Death's Keep-” 

“You don't even know the answer to that one.” Zac was trying eagerly to get Adam's attention. The taller man still hadn't so much as looked at him since he came in. Rather than answer, Adam put his foot on Zac's shoulder and forcefully shoved him backwards. With no time to brace himself, Zac was thrown, his back hitting the wall at the foot of the bed. “Ouch!” 

Adam's eyes finally rose from the book now as he watched Zac respond. As expected; rubbing his neck, fixing his sweater, doing his big-eyed sad look at Adam. A long audible whine. “What the fuck?” Zac was waiting for Adam to realize the force he had exerted, to turn empathetic and apologize, but it didn't happen. He'd have to get a reaction somehow. 

Adam only briefly watched Zac do his injured deer routine before casting his eyes back down to the book. He wasn't interested in studying history either, just interested in pointedly ignoring Zac. It wasn't until he felt his shoe being snatched off his foot that he looked up again - just in time to see Zac throw it at his head. 

In a small dorm room, the flying sneaker hadn't had time to build up speed, but Zac hadn't held back either. The sole connected with Adam's brow, quickly turning his head to the side and forcing him to release a choked noise of surprise. No choice but to react. Zac watched as Adam gripped his face, registering what had actually happened before his eyes locked in on Zac. “Little fucker…!”

Zac didn't regret it, but his adrenaline did flare as he realized he had incurred Adam's attention at a cost. Shit, shit, shit. Despite being small and quick, Zac didn't have much of a chance to get off the bed before Adam tossed the textbook off the bed, diving towards Zac and managing to catch him under his weight. Zac raised his arms to shield his face, but the big brunette’s hands were already around Zac’s neck.

“Why do you keep coming around here? You keep pissing me off on purpose when you know I could fucking kill you.” Adam went from relaxed to disheveled fast, snarling and baring his teeth without even realizing. 

Zac gripped Adam’s wrists, trying to worm his thumbs into the space between Adam’s hands and his own neck. “Shut up. You wouldn’t…or you would have done it by now.” 

Adam envisioned bashing Zac’s head against the footboard. ”I would. I will.” He growled, face ruddy with anger. He hated how Zac challenged him on everything. “Just tell me what you want or get the fuck out of here.” Zac’s neck was enclosed in his big hands. Adam gave one tentative squeeze.

Zac didn’t respond right away, still squirming underneath Adam and trying to give himself some leverage against Adam’s tightening grip. “...Show me… what you were drawing.”

The hands around Zac’s neck didn’t loosen. Adam’s ego was susceptible to stroking, sure, but this sounded too much like the first thing Zac had thought of to get himself out of trouble. “What? Fuck you. You’re so full of shit.” He bore down on the smaller man, watching him closely with bruise-colored eyes, gauging Zac’s reaction as Adam’s chokehold tightened incrementally.

“Come on. You’re always doing…diagrams and stuff. Magic shit… but it’s not for class. Infernal shit.” 

Adam’s thumbs faltered over Zac’s larynx, his grip loosening but still ready to grab Zac again if needed. “Why do you care? You have better things to do than always being in my fucking hair.” 

From Adam’s perspective, it was weird that Zac came around him at all. Sure, they had occasionally hung out in a manner that didn’t descend into arguing or fighting, but Zac’s schedule was full of extracurriculars. He had his own friends, he played water polo and did spin class. He already had a job lined up for after graduation, teaching magic to centaur kids in another country. But time after time, he showed up to bother Adam.

“Just let me see.” Zac took advantage of the momentary weakening of Adam’s grip, prying the bigger man’s hands off his neck. “You’re always doing geometry and stuff.”

Adam shoved off of Zac for now, sitting upright on the bed again, leaning over to reach for the sketchbook he had previously discarded. “Whatever. I shouldn’t show you shit. Not like you’ll get it, anyway.” He pushed the book in Zac’s direction. Some of the drawings were the standard doodles of a deadbeat student - attempts at recreating band logos, drawing a really big eye - but as Zac flipped through, it quickly gave way to Adam’s more meticulous work. Some that resembled architectural blueprints, but more importantly, some that were clearly summoning sigils. The intersection of Infernal script and carefully improvised designs, the kind that formed 

“Summoning shit. I knew it.” It wasn’t offensive to Zac, just irrelevant; Calatrava Magic College did not teach any sort of summoning magic as it could not be easily standardized. Magic that relied on forming a contract or other working relationship with a summoned creature was inconsistent at best. It could not be packaged into a class curriculum, and it certainly couldn’t be the basis on which tuition fees were charged. Based on the Infernal script in Adam’s drawings, Zac could conclude these were sigils of a demonic nature. “You’re trying to summon a demon?”

Adam crossed his arms. “...Fucking obviously. You could have just asked me that.” Adam had been working on studying the infernal script since high school. After seeing his friend summon a giant trident out of the earth, he had become intent on evoking something similar. He watched Zac get engrossed in the practice sigils immediately, like he was trying to memorize the blocks of Infernal script Adam had carefully penciled in. “No way this is why you’ve been clinging to me all this time. You’ve never seen summoning materials before?”

“Not really…” Zac’s big blue eyes wavered between the drawings and Adam. A single sigil took a huge amount of Infernal writing, and the characters were drawn on an extremely small scale. There were eraser marks almost tearing through the paper where Adam had tried to perfect a single curve or angle dozens of times. It was, far and away, the most work he had seen Adam put into anything. “So, what’s it for? What are you summoning?”

“Which one? They’re all for different shit.”

Zac leafed through before pointing to a particular sigil. It was jagged and vertical, scoured with eraser marks as Adam had obsessed over angles and lateral symmetry. The end result was something like a tree with lightning bolts for branches.

The taller man shrugged. “That’s for a single spell. It just opens a gate long enough for the called demon to attack once, then dismisses it just as fast.” That was what he had seen his friend Achieng pull off, back in high school. She had scrawled the appropriate symbols in a chalk circle on the basketball court and pushed a dumpster on top of it. When she performed the appropriate incantation, the circle had burst into flame and a massive trident had thrust forwards from the ground below, toppling the dumpster and dazzling Adam and their other high school buddies. Adam’s version was a slight deviation from this; the idea was to summon a demon that could cast magic at a magnitude higher than his own, outsourcing his spellcasting. “It translates to Judgment Bolt. Basically. It’s like a lightning spell that iterates on itself, getting cast more times than I feasibly could do it myself..”

Zac was genuinely interested in Adam’s pursuits. The fact that getting him talking about his interests also made him less confrontational was an additional bonus. “This is cool. But you’d need to get the demon to like, agree to it? Is that how it works?”

“Depends on the demon.” Adam echoed what Achieng had told him back then, passing it off like it was his own knowledge. “Some are aggressive enough that you just need to open a gate and they’ll attack whatever they see. Some will do you favors like that if you have a good rapport or whatever. And some want shit in exchange.” He shrugged. “The demon’s called Furcifer. I think just opening a gate to him is enough, but that’s not always easy.”

The smaller man was listening, but never let himself get so enraptured in Adam’s words that he missed his chance to interrupt. “I bet I could do it.” 

Adam’s next words withered in his mouth. “I wh-.” He paused. “Why the fuck would you wanna do it.” Like his sister, Zac had taken to spellcasting naturally and been trained in magic from a young age. He was consistently near the top of the class, and only seemed to be at Calatrava as a formality. To acquire the piece of paper that would affirm the spellcaster he already was. To branch off into demon summoning would be an unnecessary diversion for anyone as career-oriented as Zac. Adam repeated himself. “Why the fuck would you wanna do it.”

“I don’t know. It’d be a good test of my skills. To see if I can apply them to other fields, right?”

Adam felt his disdain rising again as Zac effortlessly made the whole thing about himself. Adam couldn’t tolerate his special pursuit being co-opted by this little prick, this little star student, and absorbed into the mainstream. In the moment Adam took to pause and seethe, Zac had already pulled his phone from his pocket and snapped a picture of the Judgment Bolt sigil. 

“What the fuck? I said look at it, don’t take a picture of it.” Adam said, leaning forward to try and seize Zac’s wrist, using his other hand to bat the sketchbook out of Zac’s lap and onto the floor. 

“C’mon, it’s fair use. You think you invented summoning demons?” Zac said, already challenging Adam again. He leaned off the bed to grab the sketchbook again, only for Adam to grab the back of his sweater and pull him back up before slamming him down on the bed. 

“I don’t care who invented it. You only want it because I have it. You can’t let me be good at anything.” Adam said, looming over Zac, one hand on either side of the smaller man’s head. “I dunno why you’re so fucking pressed about me. Why you can’t leave me the hell alone…give me your fucking phone.” 

He grabbed Zac’s arm, the one holding the phone, and there was electricity in his grasp this time. A shock ran through Zac’s right side as Adam pinned his hand above his head. Not painful, yet, but jarring. “Adam-!” There came that whiny intonation again. He kept trying to evoke pity as if Adam had any to give. 

Adam adjusted his position, one knee on either side of Zac’s chest as he tried to wrest the phone from Zac’s hand. Despite the shock, Zac’s muscles didn’t lax, gripping his phone with tenacity. “Just delete the shit. Forget about the summoning and leave me alone.”

Zac grunted. The larger man straddling his chest created considerable pressure, and he had missed his chance to knee Adam in the balls when he had been lower down. His wounded animal routine only lasted a second before he sprung into action himself. Zac put his free hand down on Adam’s bare leg, letting his fingertips creep up into the leg of Adam’s boxers.

Adam’s singular focus on retrieving Zac’s phone wavered when he felt fingers graze his thigh. “What are you doing.” The tactic wasn’t enough to disrupt Adam’s rage, but it gave the larger man enough pause for Zac to engage a spell of his own. Not electricity, but cold wind and little shards of hail began to bluster forth from Zac’s right palm, angled so that most of the spray went up the leg of Adam’s boxers. It only took a moment for the spell to amp up, hailstones becoming larger clumps of snow.

“Shit!” The larger man leapt backwards, trying to get off of Zac as fast as possible. The cold blast had been so sudden that it registered as painful at first, making Adam lose his composure more than he normally liked to. (According to Adam, getting angry did not count as losing his composure.) He scuttled back on the bed, scrambling to get out of his boxers, kicking his other shoe off in the process. “I fucking hate you.” Adam started, but stopped when he heard his own teeth chattering. Fucking humiliating.

Zac took the opportunity to right himself, tucking his phone back into his pocket and adjusting the disheveled collar of his polo. “You started it! Zapping me unprovoked like that You’re lucky I didn’t shock you right back..” He patted his black hair back into place while Adam frantically pawed at himself to get the remaining snow out of the short brush of hair above his dick. 

“Get the hell out.” Adam said. He didn’t care about being naked in front of someone else, but his ego couldn’t tolerate Zac’s constant challenges. There was a moment of unbroken silence and motionlessness between them.

Zac had to try not to smile. He had pushed this as far as he could for now, and smiling would exacerbate things. Adam jerked forwards at him again, not to strike at him but simply to break the stalemate they were in. Zac jumped up off the bed, fleeing to his own dorm room as though he had been scorned by an authority figure. 

Adam heard the door shut in the adjacent dorm room. Zac had slammed it as if he was still expecting to be chased. He got off the bed, grumbling as he went to his wardrobe for a pair of underwear that hadn’t been snowed on. It wasn’t until he stood up that he realized how hard his dick was.