#mattveras

Morning runs with Ben Martos are no joke. Damian runs but he by no means runs at Ben’s level, which is why he enjoys the daily challenge of trying to improve himself and keep up with the Track captain. By the time he returns to the dorms after another 5:30 run out of the way, he’s aching for a scalding shower. With the current weather surrounding Broadripple, the feeling of hot water against his skin is more than welcome. The feeling of someone else’s body against his, however... not so much. 

It happens by accident. Obviously. Damian is bare with the exception of a towel around his waist. A teammate from Swim asks him a question about practice and like the ever-accommodating Captain he is, he walks while he talks, answering the query as he approaches a stall that to his knowledge is vacant. With his tired mind, he fails to check the stall he’s about to occupy and finds himself backing into somebody just as he finishes answering the question he was asked. “Whoa--!” He lets out as soon as his rear meets something solid that he’s certain isn’t a wall. His eyes widen when he whips around and finds another body in there. “Jeez--! I--! Sorry!”

@mattveras​ got a plotted starter!

“This was a lot more fun than I thought it’d be,” Nico said, tipping back the bottled water and taking a few large gulps. He grinned at the boy sitting next to him, who had provided ample entertainment. Nico had gone on the dumb Turtle Fucking Field Trip (his own name, not its official title) because it got him away from Broadripple, not because the statue was at all important to him. At first he figured he’d be bored out of his skull, but that he could skip rocks at turtles or at the very least steal all the finger sandwiches.

His normal gang of misfits wasn’t here. Raquel, Ben; both missing. So he’d been alone until he stumbled into Matt. Literally. He’d ran into him while trying to take a picture of something on his phone. Matt seemed equally fish out of water, and the two of them had started chatting...and it went well. Nico was pleasantly surprised, since Matt seemed like the type he’d typically avoid. Insecure, entirely too buttoned up; you know the type. But Matt had been...nice. They’d talked about silly, stuff. Movies, books, teachers they liked or didn’t like. Trouble they got into during church as kids. Religious parents in general. It was just...relaxing.

So here they were, a couple hours later. Nico fulfilled his wish of stealing way too many finger sandwiches, which were currently cradled in the edge of his jacket, which he’d pulled up into a scoop shape to hold them all because his hands just weren’t doing it. They were free after all, right? He kept offering different ones to Matt, since he’d taken a variety. “Oh! This reminds me! We should go see Happy Death Day 2U. It’s not scary. It’s probably not even good. Sequels rarely are. But it’s like Groundhog Day, only its a teenage girl solving her own murder in order to stop it. It comes out in like a week. Nobody else wants to see it and I hate going to movies alone. I feel like a creep.”