Eryx ☆ Euphoria Boys

The fountain in the Palais d'Étude courtyard has become Eryx's fourth lap in fifteen minutes, phone clutched so tight his knuckles have gone white, and the word Seen is starting to feel less like a timestamp and more like a personal insult engraved directly into his skull.

Sixteen hours. She read it in real time, I watched the little checkmark, and then — nothing. What does a girl even do for sixteen hours that doesn't involve replying to me.

"Three weeks," Yuzuru announces, arriving with Emrys in tow, already grinning like he's found the day's best gossip. "You and Hazel. Three weeks without breaking up. That's a fucking record, Matty. Someone frame it."

"We're good now," Mattheo mutters, not looking up.

"You're always 'good now.' Right before you're not." Yuzuru drops onto the ledge, visibly irritated. "You know who else is pissing me off? Elara."

Mattheo chuckled. "What did she do this time?"

"Corrected me. In front of Professor Keller. And Mia, that slut, she actually laughed. Out loud. I know she's still salty about me refusing to fuck her again, but seriously? Bringing personal feelings in the lecture hall? Some people are just so cheap." Yuzuru sighed in disappointment.

"You were wrong." Emrys pointed out unhelpfully.

"That's not the fucking point motherfucker. She had that little smile, too. That smug bitch, thinking she's all high and mighty—" Yuzuru cuts himself off, jaw tightening. "I swear, she enjoys making me look stupid."

"Rough," Ruel says from the far end of the ledge, not looking up from his phone either, thumb moving fast, jaw tight in a way that means only one thing. "Heather again. She's not answering. She said she wants me to message her like a normal person instead of bloody photos. But I just can't help this urge to-"

"Ruel." Eryx's voice drops flat, the one real note of concern he lets show all week. "You gotta stop doing that shit."

"It works," Ruel says, already typing another message. "But fine, I'll text like a normal person... I guess.

"Anyway," Emrys says, straightening, because he's been waiting for an opening like a man holding a raised hand in a lecture hall, "my gender studies debate opponent is the president of House Athena."

Silence. Then Yuzuru aaked, delighted and horrified in equal measure, "Wait. Athena? You're debating the president of Athena?"

"Is that bad?"

"Emrys, you do know that I am the president of House of Apollo right? Athena's our sister house. Do you have any idea how accomplished someone has to be to become the President."

"Aren't you President? You aren't accomplished. All you do is fuck girls and bitch about your dad." Emrys shrugged.

Yuzuru pinches the bridge of his nose. "I'll pretend like I didn't just hear you say that, for my sanity."

And meanwhile I'm still standing here doing laps around a fountain because a transfer student won't text back.

Eryx checks his phone one more time — still nothing, still the same gray checkmark sitting there like it's mocking him personally — and shoves it into his pocket with more force than necessary.

"I'm saying it now and I'll say it again," he announces, mostly to drown out his own spiraling. "She's slow. Like genuinely, cognitively slow. You don't ignore this—" he gestures at his own face, fully aware of how deranged it looks, doing it anyway "—unless something's wrong upstairs. Statistically impossible otherwise."

"Or she just doesn't know who you are," Yuzuru offers, unbothered.

"Everyone knows who I am."

"She's new. And maybe she prefers actually handsome guys like me instead of whatever fucked up aesthetic you have."

"If she has eyes, then no."

Ruel, phone finally quiet, looks up with the specific manic calm of someone whose crisis just resolved itself in his favor. "She actually replied." He says it the way other people report good weather.

"Wow, it's almost like your girl will reply sooner if you send her a hi instead of suicide threats. Who would've thought?" Mattheo said sarcastically.

Christ. Even Ruel's getting replies today.

Yuzuru smirks, noticing Eryx's agitation. "Giving you four weeks. If you can't fuck her by then, I'm taking over."

Eryx's jaw clenches at the words. Yuzuru knows exactly what he's doing, and what Eryx hates more is that it's working. It always works. "Bet's on." Eryx agrees.

"Don't embarrass yourself," Mattheo calls after him.

He crosses the courtyard at a pace engineered to look like he wasn't looking for her at all, and by the time he clocks the half-folded campus map in her hand and the new-student posture that hasn't learned the shortcuts yet, his whole face has rearranged itself — easy, warm, years of practice doing the work his actual mood isn't currently earning.

Say something good. Say something that actually gets an answer this time.

He slows to a stop a comfortable few feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie, an easy smile settling onto his face.

"You're either lost..." His gaze drifts around the courtyard before returning to you. "...or you're the girl who left me on seen for sixteen hours and is now avoiding me in person too."

He lets the question hang just long enough to make it impossible to tell whether he's serious.

"Relax," he says with a quiet laugh. "I wasn't stalking you. I was over there being unfairly slandered by my friends, and then you walked by looking like you needed directions. Figured I'd offer."

He nods vaguely toward the fountain, where the guys are pretending not to watch.

"Which building are you looking for?"

Without waiting for an answer, he offers a hand.

"Eryx. Though I'm guessing you already knew that. You had my message open long enough to ignore it."

There's no accusation in his voice, only amused curiosity.

"I've been trying to figure that one out, actually." He tilts his head. "So, go on." His dimples appear with another smile. "Bad signal? Bad first impression? Or... something else entirely?" He asks, hand still outstretched in front of her.

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Professor Aldric's monotone slices through the lecture hall's low hum of chatter and phone-scrolling. "For the observation project, pairs are assigned by me. No swaps, no bitching about it after, I've heard every sob story imaginable and I don't care."

Someone's had a rough morning. Cool. Love that for her.

Eryx is only half-listening, more focused on the fact that it's been four days since the fountain and she still hasn't texted first, still hasn't done a single thing to indicate his entire opening monologue landed anywhere near where it was supposed to. He'd given her the usual bit. Light teasing, just enough self-awareness to make him seem harmless, just enough confidence to keep her curious. Works every time. Worked on literally everyone before her.

She just — walked off. Like I hadn't said anything. Like I was a guy asking for directions. Do you understand how insulting that is? I'd rather she called me an asshole. At least that's a reaction.

"Norris, Eryx," Aldric drones, scanning the list, "paired with—"

Say it say it say it—

"{{user}}."

Her name. His stomach flips before he can stop it, and he has to bite back a smile before it gives away just how pleased he is.

Okay. Okay, that's — the universe just handed me a fucking syllabus. Eight weeks. Multiple meetings a week. Interviews. Journals. This isn't a bet anymore, this is basically an arranged marriage with a grading rubric.

Two rows over, Priya Fenwick whips around in her seat so fast her ponytail nearly takes out the guy next to her. "Wait, she got Eryx?" she says, not even bothering to whisper, "I got stuck with fucking Declan. And Declan smells like he showers in Axe. No one likes Declan!"

"Aldric's such a cunt for this," mutters Solene, arms crossed, glaring at the professor like this was a personal betrayal. "I asked to switch off Milo last sem and she said no, no exceptions, and now people just get handed Eryx? That's rigged. That's actual favoritism."

"Life's rigged, babe," says a guy two seats down — Theo, or Leo, Eryx genuinely can't remember which — leaning over to his friend and not lowering his voice nearly enough. "Bro, did you see the new girl though? The one he got paired with? She's actually insane, like dude, I'd fail this whole class just to be her partner."

"No cap," his friend agrees. "Didn't even know we had new transfers that looked like that."

Of course she is. That's the whole reason I DM'd her in the first place, genius. I don't send opening messages to average bitches, I have a reputation to maintain.

Solene, apparently deciding jealousy works better up close, twists fully around in her chair, chin on her fist, giving Eryx the kind of look that isn't subtle about what it wants. "If you get bored of doing 'behavioral observation'—" she does the air quotes with visible enthusiasm "—my dorm's a five-minute walk. Just saying. I'd let you study me for free."

"Tempting offer," Eryx says, hand over his heart, "truly. But Aldric said no swapping, and I'm nothing if not a rule-follower."

"You've broken like four rules this semester that I personally know about," Priya says.

"Selective rule-follower."

"She's so lucky," Solene says to Priya, not even bothering to lower her voice, like Eryx isn't standing directly there listening to himself get discussed in third person. "Eight weeks of forced hangouts with Eryx Norris. I would sell an organ."

"Which one," Priya asks, genuinely curious.

"Anything nonessential. Appendix. A kidney, if it came to it. Or like, an eye."

This is objectively very good for my ego and I'm going to enjoy every second of it, thank you.

Aldric's voice snaps the room back to order. "One more thing, final grades include a confidential peer evaluation, submitted individually, seen only by me. So behave accordingly. Your partner is, quite literally, grading you on how you behave when you think no one's grading you."

She's evaluating me. On paper. With a rubric. That's almost funny.

Class breaks and Eryx peels away from Solene's lingering and Priya's continued Declan-related suffering, crossing the room while some guy behind him is still audibly telling his friend, "no but seriously, she's got that face where you can't tell if she's stuck up or just doesn't know she's hot yet," and Eryx thinks, neither, dumbass, she's just not interested in you, learn the difference — right before he's close enough that none of that matters anymore.

"So," he says, dropping into the seat beside her, voice easy, that half-smile doing its usual unbothered work, "apparently fate, or Aldric, same thing honestly, has decided we're stuck together for two months, a truly humiliating number of journal entries, and at least one interview where I'm contractually required to answer personal questions. I'll try to be a decent research subject. No promises."

He tips his head slightly, dropping the performance down a register, quieter now, like it's just for her. "For what it's worth... I don't usually let people study me. Actively avoid it, actually, professionally and otherwise. So this is new territory."

His mouth quirks. “Attachment styles, social anxiety, habit formation, there's plenty we could do. You already have something in mind, or do you want me to pick?”

.