𝐁𝐋𝐔𝐄 𝐉𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘

sweat dripping down his face, his hands fell to his hips as he stared at his own reflection in the dance studio mirror. he’d lost track of how long he’d been there, but with the way his legs had started to feel like jelly, he had a feeling it had been a while. but the dance auditions were the only thing holding him back from a leading role, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. he rolled his shoulders back and started the music again, taking his place in the center of the studio. the movements flowed through him like the blood in his veins, so ingrained in his body that they became as natural as breathing. the three years of curriculum and late night solo rehearsals showed, and it was hard to believe he’d barely been able to do a jazz square before starting at yates.

his head snapped to the side when he realized someone was watching him, and he hastily shut off the music as though he were hiding something. a sheepish smile slid onto his face, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. “sorry, did you need the studio? i can head out.” @yatesstarters·

                    He decided very quickly that she was a kind of girl that knew no boundaries. What carried her to and fro and allowed her to be such a way was still up to debate, but could narrow it down two things, though charm simply comprised the both of them. She had to be utterly charming. Her tease was saccharine, his still bewildered face slowly losing its skepticism the longer the stood there. He heard the tap of her fingers against his paper, though that was not enough to pull him from the warm glow of her brown eyes. Her smile was though, as it became radiant, and that was when he noticed the subtle difference in dialect. He made mental note to ask her about it, and perhaps that was half the captivation: a pretty girl, foreign but not too foreign. It was clear he was still deciding on her as she sat and exuding clear that she had made some sort of definite decision on him. 

                    The male pretended not to notice the bumping of the knees— a reminder that sometimes social etiquette meant to simply not do anything at all. She seemed fine with it, if not unaware and he did not know how to describe it just yet, but she spoke and moved and looked with an inherently fond intent. If she told him she was not born but instead walked out of the ocean he might just consider it. The male found himself smiling, small, slipping into a nature interest as she spoke. He glanced at the bottle and then found his way back to her umber hues. So, she was admittedly noncommittal and could name Star Wars characters. unsure of whether or not to find amusement, a wide grin had taken his expression, “That’s a tall order,” A sliver of a laugh, more breath than anything left him, “–but I can try,” The male added, nodding down to the glass bottle, now extending a hand to tap his finger against it, “Congratulatory, I take it?” He wondered what she meant about her grandfather, and though she seemed like an open book he wouldn’t press, “So you’re new.” He spoke, an observation, “And far from home.” And another, but this one had obvious implications as he brought it to light, a slight smirk on his expression, “What’s your name?” 

-

        it was slowly then all at once. watching the way a ghost of a smile twitched onto his lips, beginning to thread it’s way into his eyes, and then like a wave crashing against the shore, a grin broke through, flooding the boy’s features tenfold - and in that moment, she decided she’d like to make him smile like that again. it also prompted her to grow curious to hear him laugh - a real, unguarded one - those were the ones she had deemed as the best kind. mocha hues dart down, watching a long finger tap against the bottle, her lips press together in thought as a freckled nose wrinkles slightly, “i wouldn’t say congratulatory... house-warming wouldn’t be quite right either, somethin’ between a welcomin’ for myself and a thank you to call-” she mutes herself with a playful roll of her eyes, “-them for letting me in. -- might also be a pinch of brown nosin’ from him.” it’s her turn to let out a soft laugh as she shakes her head lightly, tucking a stray blonde tress behind her ear before she’s meeting his gaze again, nodding her head, “i am,” she answers and it’s hardly vague - more-so confirming what he already seems to know. “just transferred to my new home.” her brows lift, “think i made the right decision here?” she bites down on her bottom lip, sucking in gently leaving a beat between them before answering his question. “-- rory leblanc,” she holds out her hand, wiggling her fingers at him, he seemed like the type to shake hands, “and yours?”

ellie’s last class of the day—music theory for actors—had her walking out of the theatre department with a particular grace to her step. while the beginning of a new semester brought most students to groan in contempt, fall classes had taken a different effect on her. personally, they couldn’t have come at a better time, the girl more than willing to shift her focus onto her craft. the buzz from class carried out into the courtyard, where her little white dress clad frame followed behind a couple classmates, the three of them mid-conversation. ellie was engrossed in the ever-shifting topic that’d somehow gone from blankenbuehler to belligerence when a new voice met her ear. as she turned to meet their eyes, a gust of wind carried some dark strands over her face. still, her inherently kind smile could be seen as she reached to sweep them away. it dropped into more of a blank stare, however, at the mention of calloway. “hey, i’ll catch up with you guys tomorrow,” she spoke, briefly turning to give a nod to her classmates. once they’d resumed walking, she turned back to the unfamiliar blonde. confusion masked her strong features, forest green eyes flickering down at the bottle in her hands. ah, the ridiculous bring a bottle ‘rule.’ a crease formed between ellie’s eyes once they’d landed back on the other’s. “calloway…?” she repeated, as if tasting the word in her mouth for the first time and trying to decide if it were familiar. then, in a beat, the false ignorance washed away, unveiling a much more relaxed smile. “perhaps,” she added in a whispery tone equally as playful as the blonde’s had been. “i was just headed back, actually.” ellie then offered a nod and, with it, an offer to lead the way. “new this year?”

         white canines find her bottom lip, biting down gently in a grin that’s all consuming; she makes a dramatic show of relaxing her shoulders and letting her neck fall forward as a short sigh escapes her, “thank god -” she murmurs with a soft shake of her head, blonde locks moving along with the gesture, “barely here a week and think i might be voted most likely to spill the secret.” she muses with a soft laugh as she falls into step with the girl. “--that obvious?” it’s a rhetorical question at best, “so you live at the house? what’s that like? my brother lived there before he graduated but... he recommended i don’t live there, at least for the first year.” recommended was putting it lightly, declan had actually made it very clear he didn’t want rory living in the house - thinking it would be too easy, too attainable to fall back into her old habits. “thanks, by the way.” she says, tone genuine as she turns to look at the girl with a smile that isn’t for show; though she can hear her mother reprimanding her for not issuing out the thank you sooner. “i’m rory, by the way.” 

                    His fingertips skimmed the wall of the Calloway building hall as he walked down it. Characteristically he was missing something important— a freshman orientation that he deemed unnecessary after sitting in for five minutes, just after getting past the trite ice breaker game that seemed to happen at the start of every one of his classes. Elias, Anthropology, New York, a ‘fun’ fact about me is that I rescue strays— okay so he didn’t rescue strays, but the way the women seemed to not only look at him but lock down on him after he said that very sentence was enough to convince him to write out a whole anthology about dogs and cats that never existed. Past the games they began to go over, yet again, more rules and that was when Elias had turned to the girl behind him and, nearly in harmony, they decided to slip out and skip the lecture. 

                    The blonde looked over at her, up her frame, down her dyed hair, to her small, curved nose and then to her lips. He smirked, recollecting her own answers. He remembered hers, without a doubt one of the finest girls in that room, and it helped that she was wearing a pair of ripped denim shorts so tight that if you put a nickel in her back pocket you’d be able to make out Jefferson clear as day. He almost wanted to walk behind her, but that seemed a little too rude and she was not the kind of woman he wanted to get off on the wrong foot with. The boy’s smile softened as he found sweet-sounding words, “I’ve never met a Carolina girl before,” He told her, looking away briefly, now reaching a caper as his lips found a sharper curve, “Are you guys really as sweet as they say you are? Or does that only apply to those Georgia peaches.”

        she’d switched her position at least a dozen times; arms crossed around her chest, hands stuffed into the back pockets of her denim shorts, leaning all her weight on her left leg, then her right. it was all so tedious - learning about the history that was probably exaggerated, hearing the word secret after every other word, followed by tradition - rory didn’t need to hang on to every single syllable to understand the world around her, or to hear the introductions about everyone else in the house. while outside of this house she may not have been able to know which way the world spun, but between the confinements of the calloway mansion and the people that surrounded her - she knew very well how the world in her worked and how the people ticked. she recognized a certain fire brimming in the boy’s eyes, but even before he turned to look at her she saw the confidence he exuded when it was his turn to speak and the easy-going smile that was littered with just enough mischief that gave a peak into the kind of boy he really was; it was enough to have rory mirroring his steps as they retreated behind the group, deciding to explore calloway through their own eyes. 

And with a snap, a fleeting summer had ended and Vermont’s brilliant autumn foliage was already beginning to emerge, rusting once lush green leaves into shades of vermillion and gold, mahogany and cardinal. It was dusk, golden hour, and a soft breeze was mussing students’ perfectly styled hair, the leaves dancing with it in a way that suggested the trees had waited years to perform their own sort of ballet, long twigs and branches swaying slightly with the wind as the sun served as a spotlight, peeking through the leaflets, highlighting their limited-edition shades. Leo was heading back to Calloway, vintage Chanel sunglasses perched on the bridge of her nose as she headed back through the commons, riding boots tapping the pavement she walked on with satisfying, crisp clicks. She had just been returning from The Thinking Cup, her usual Earl Grey balanced on a stack of books held in her arms as she looked at her phone. It wasn’t until she heard a familiar lilt that Leo whipped her head around, curls flying with the motion, that thick brows bumped together and her chin tilted forward in a mix of surprise and disbelief. Placing her phone atop the stack in her arms next to the cardboard cup also balancing there, she used her free hand to move her glasses atop her head, grinning when she really saw the blonde, an old friend of hers. “Yeah, only a little,” Leo quipped, smirking with a false nonchalance before shaking her head. “Jesus, Rory, what are you doing here? I mean, not that I’m upset; I’m definitely not. You transferred from Princeton? Like, really?”

-

         she’s just about to get a reply to her question when a familiar voice interrupts the pair; a grin already flooding rory’s features before she turns to see the face that matches. she ushers off a quick apology and a thank you before she's spinning away from the male and rushing up to leo. “--- and here  i thought he was the poster boy for calloway -  clearly, your face will become a bust in the house.” she teases before letting an infectious laugh fly out into the world. she nods her head, holding up the bottle of champagne in her hands, “fully transferred over. got the bottle, the plane ticket and even serge’s own parking spot to prove it.” the baby blue vintage benz had gotten its name after she’d bought it, an old cassette of jane birkin and serge gainsbourg had been left in the audio console and refused to come out. “princeton was beginning to bore me - don’t know what hilary duff and chad michael murray were thinking. i’m trying out yates this year - maybe i’ll end up at yale for junior year.” the lie spun out far too easily, the words tilting out of her on a whim and unrehearsed. her tone teasing, impassive and the sylables drenched in honey made it hard to look deeper than surface level.  “now, before i drop this bottle and smash it into a million pieces -- take me to your leader and tell me how you’ve been.” she moves to stand beside leo, eyeing the books and everything that precariously balances on top, “need any help?”

RORY LEBLANC + INSTAGRAM

On her way back home, Darby’s outfit was covered up by a large furry jacket that you could have pictured slung around the shoulders of Penny Lane in Almost Famous, probably a bit too warm for the early fall weather. She was running late for the Calloway party, something she was sure would give her a few dirty looks shot her way when she finally made it inside her home. Her head of light brown waves whipped around as she spotted Rory, arms hurriedly reaching out to fling her finger’s over the girl’s mouth. “Dude… A little louder, huh? They’re going to Marie Antoinette you if you let it slip. Off with her head and all that,” Darby joked dramatically, letting out a laugh as she removed her hand. “Your brother didn’t give you the directions? A shame. I’m going to have to yell at him for that. Go full Meryl Streep letting out that guttural scream in Big Little lies. Come on, down the yellow brick road,” she instructed, looping her arm through the girl’s and steering her in the direction of Calloway. “Is the champagne for me? You shouldn’t have!”

                    He sat leaned over his own lap, elbows propping him himself up, a hand mindlessly brushing against his forehead tenderly, as if his focus was primarily absorbed by the paper he had in front of him. His Nabokov professor, an eccentric man that wore blue jeans and insisted they call him by his first name had woven a riddle in the syllabus. The more Harry looked at it though the more he became convinced he was just trying to mess with the class. Perhaps the riddle was that there was no riddle. Nevertheless, he was having a fun enough time with it, as it served as a nice distraction, but his studious look broke when he saw someone approach from the corner of his eye. She was close enough to where he had to draw his expression up. ‘Hey’. His eyes moved past her hands and her slender waist and finally to her face. The boy blinked, and he felt like he was missing something, like the odd one out— the one who wasn’t in on the inside joke, “Hi,” The boy found himself tempted to match her smile and he would’ve looked away by now, as if to try and determine if he were about to be a part of a simple campus prank; to spot the phone cameras from behind the nearby trees. But his gaze remained on her brown, brown eyes. Did he know her? Probably not. The better question lied in the vice versa: did she know him? His train of thought faltered with her peculiar question and her exaggerated wink. A peculiar smile bloomed upon his lips, once parted in confusion now taking note of her oozing pleasure. Contagious. The male leaned forward a little, deciding to wane to a blunter nature, although his tone was steadily matching hers, “… Is this a test?” He mildly capered, softly, eyes slightly narrowing a little, “Exams aren’t for another few weeks, you know.”

-       

          the closer she gets to him, the more out of touch his face becomes; back-lit from the sun, the brightness casting a glow that makes it impossible for her eyes to adjust and see him properly. “maybe something closer to a trick question,” she muses, flecks of tawny hair that the sun bounces off of is all she can make out and in one swift motion she’s practically twirling herself into the spot next to him. she pushes a blonde strand that frames her face out of her eyes as she looks over at him, taking him in fully. eyes dance from his chiselled jawline, naturally full lips that holds a light tint that even the best cosmetics company wouldn’t be able to replicate - not even a pantone color existing for it. her eyes move until they meet his eyes, holding them for a beat before she’s looking down at the paper on his lap as a digit moves to tap on it, “-- and good thing we have weeks to go, you’re still on the syllabus.” she’s nothing short of teasing, tone riddled in mirth as she smiles something holy - it’s infectious and bright and could launch a thousand ships in her honor as she turns her body towards him, knees knocking lightly against his as she offers him up every ounce of her attention.  “i might be breaking code  -- like rule number one in fight club, or somethin’. -- but i’m completely lost and my grandpa made me pack this -” she holds up the large bottle, “ - to bring over to calloway house and i really am on the thinnest of ice with him right now, plus i’m trying this new thing where i don’t give up on something after only doing a half-attempt at it. -- so, consider you the obi-wan kenobi to my princess leia... you’re my only hope.”   

(ISABELLA JONES, CISFEMALE) - Have you seen AURORA LEBLANC? RORY is in HER SOPHOMORE year. The DANCE AND SOCIOLOGY MAJOR is 19 years old & is a LIBRA. People say SHE is LIVELY, MAGNETIC, IMPULSIVE and UNRELIABLE. Rumors say they’re a member of CALLOWAY. I heard from the gossip blog that HER PARENTS ARE COVERING UP THAT SHE WAS KICKED OUT OF YALE FOR PLAGIARISM AND NO OTHER IVY WOULD ACCEPT HER, SO THEY BOUGHT HER WAY INTO YATES