Room 322, Monday Afternoon

[not_every_mage]

Anders was, of course, doing something highly important in his room after class. Something with charts and graphs and all kinds of spectacular magic.

... or he was lying on his bed, idly singing at his cat and half-watching a cooking show. (Dante had sold him on Food Truck wars, and now the taco truck was in the finale. It was of course vital Anders found out who won.)

Probably the latter thing, really. He wasn't much for highly important magic these days.

[OOC: Cracked door, open post.]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

Nah. You just happened to go to dinner at the same time.

"I wonder if there's good dessert places in Baltimore," Dante mused. "Or DC."

[not_every_mage]

"I can find out," Anders said, and turned to tap at the phone on the nightstand.

When he lifted his head, it was with new intensity in his eyes.

"... Dante, there's a cat cafe in DC."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante blinked. "...A what?"

[not_every_mage]

"A cat cafe," Anders repeated, shoving the phone at Dante. "Look, you make a reservation and then you go and eat and enjoy the cats."

This was paradise, clearly.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante snagged the phone and eyed it. "... Huh," he said.

He took a swig of his beer.

"So I guess that's a thing we're doing."

Look, he'd met his roommate. And Anders covered in cats would be adorable hilarious, if nothing else.

[not_every_mage]

"Just as soon as we can get away with it," Anders agreed serenely. "All the cats are up for adoption, too. Maybe Lachlan needs a brother."

Lachlan needed no such thing, and Anders liked to push his luck.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Hey now," said Dante, who was probably the worst person alive to turn to if you needed a whim shot down, "Maybe he wants a girlfriend."

Absolute. Worst.

[not_every_mage]

"We had to agree to have him neutered to adopt him," Anders said apologetically. "Having a girlfriend might just get frustrating."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged. "So get him a nice spayed girlfriend," he said. "Who wants kittens anyway?"

... Anders. Anders would've probably wanted kittens.

[not_every_mage]

"I do," Anders said, obviously enough. "But it's probably a bad idea in a room this size."

He sighed and sat up enough to sip at his beer. "Someday when I've got my own house, I'll have dozens of cats. Scads."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante laughed softly. "Anders, cat guy," he said. "I can see it. Bet you'd be happy too."

[not_every_mage]

"Probably," Anders admitted with a soft chuckle, and turned his head to study Dante. "What about you?" he asked. "What would you do, if you could do anything?"

[rebelseekspizza]

The short silence that followed probably said the same as Dante's actual, eventual answer. "I don't know," he said. "Never really thought about it."

[not_every_mage]

Anders' own brief silence spoke to his embarrassment.

"Right," he said, and cleared his throat. "It's a stupid question anyhow."

[rebelseekspizza]

"No, it's fine," Dante said, sounding absent. His gaze skittered across the room as he tried to put his suddenly-scrambled thoughts back into some kind of order; it finally settled on Anders.

"You know, if you'd told me at eight I'd have a real shot at hitting 18 some day, I'd have laughed," he said slowly. "Now I'm like, hey. Maybe I can actually finish learning how to play a song on guitar. Y'know?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders nodded. He didn't know the exact feeling, but he knew the feeling of no future -- or no future he wanted, anyhow -- well enough.

Both of them did, Dante worse than him.

"You can start planning for the little things," he said. "Get enough of those, and then you can worry about the big ones."

[rebelseekspizza]

Maybe he should've given Anders some bullshit line earlier about wanting to live at Party Central, or something, but the option had only occurred to Dante after he'd already been honest about it. But Anders wasn't giving him shit for being a downer.

"Maybe," he said. He shrugged vaguely, mouth curving into a slight smile. "Learn how to play the guitar, watch Anders get covered in cats while he's trying to drink coffee, order pizza and mainline the next three seasons of Food Truck Wars. Might not be a house full of cats, but they're not bad dreams, right?"

[not_every_mage]

"I like the one about cat hair in my coffee," Anders said, mostly relieved to have gotten past the worst awkwardness. "And I want to see you play guitar, too. I tried to learn lute at the Tower but I never got very good."

He'd been too impatient to practice, and didn't have much of an ear to start with.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante wasn't always great at sitting still, but the guitar kept him busy. And he liked music - a lot more than he was generally inclined to admit to anybody.

"Well, right now all I can play is like, ancient punk rock," he said, reaching out to touch Anders' hair again. (It was right there, and tempting.) "Definitely about up there with cat hair in your latte."

[not_every_mage]

Anders huffed softly in amusement and bent his neck so Dante could keep playing with his hair.

"You never know," he said. "It might turn out I like ancient punk rock."

[rebelseekspizza]

"I don't know if it's lute-player-friendly," Dante mused. "Also how pissed am I that you went lute and not flute? Could've made so many dirty jokes."

His fingers slid more solidly into Anders' hair, and on a whim, he bent his own neck to kiss him.

[not_every_mage]

"We could pretend it was flute, if you have to make the jokes," Anders suggested helpfully, and tilted his chin to return Dante's kiss.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante snickered softly against his mouth. "Nah, wouldn't be right," he said. He kissed Anders again. "Guess you just got a nice mouth the natural way," he joked. "Boring."

[not_every_mage]

Anders let himself melt into the kiss a little more this time, setting his beer and snack down beside the bed.

"I think you mean 'lucky,'" he corrected. "... plus I practiced."

Another kiss.

"A lot more than I practiced lute, anyhow."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante sighed, amusement tugging on the corners of his mouth. "Aw," he said, grinning down at Anders. "Eager school boy Anders? Works for me."

Going by how much he drew out the next kiss, he wasn't lying. (Okay, he was teasing. Appreciatively.)