Chapter Text
The end of the spring semester had been steadily approaching, and the slow roll of the upcoming summer heat did little to bolster Reno’s determination to finish the semester to begin with.
Having to worry about an ever growing pile of final review packets and meetings with his academic advisor were already bad enough.
But the sun beating down on him felt like an evident kick below the belt.
His walk back to the dorm –if you could even call it a walk – only further magnified this distaste for not only the heat, but the entirety of his college experience thus far. If he’d known that, as he slowly advanced from first year to third year, the distance between the student dorms and main campus would grow exponentially he would have just doubled down and been a commuter.
Unfortunately he gave into his parents demands of getting the full college experience .
Well, the full college experience now was vastly different from what they remembered and what the movies showed. He made too little money at his on campus job to join a fraternity, his fellow peers also only wanted to do the bare minimum work to pass the class; And, to top it all off, he was just… awkward.
No one had warned him that making friends in college was so difficult...
As he continued his expedition back to his dorm, sweat trickled down from his forehead and the back of his neck, leaving a salty taste on his tongue, a stinging sensation in his eyes, and an uncomfortable feeling of dampness all along his back and under arms.
Whatever small patches of shade he could find beneath tree branches , whose leaves had all withered off, granted him little to no respite from the sun. Part of him didn’t even know why he bothered trying to seek refuge to begin with, but another part of him told himself it was better to find some shade than seek none at all.
“God… this sucks…”
~~~
Reno took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then released it all in a mini, short lived scream, letting the weight of his dorm room door close itself for him. He twisted the lock until the audible *click!* signaled that it had been locked behind him.
He threw his backpack on his bed, walking over to his nightstand and turning on the portable fan he normally kept blowing in his face as he slept toward him.
The cool air felt euphoric on his skin. Reno closed his eyes and just basked in the moment of it all. His appreciation for modern day AC re-solidifying itself by the second.
He would have enjoyed the moment a bit more had the sudden sound of a flushing toilet and opening door not remind him of one crucial detail of his living situation: He had a roommate. Sure, big surprise, right? You’re living on a college campus of course you’re going to have roommates.
“What up big dog.” Josh said nonchalantly, drying his hands on his shirt. He looked exactly the same as he did when Reno left for his classes in the morning: Parts of hid blonde hair sticking upwards in numerous cowlicks, bandaids wrapped around his slender fingers, and an old, tattered shirt depicting what looked to be cybernetic sharks with lasers attached to their heads; Or what looked to be that particular visual. It was so worn down and faded it was almost impossible to tell what was even supposed to be on it in the first place.
It was a miracle it hadn’t fallen apart at the seams yet.
It was an even bigger miracle it hadn’t been reduced to a pile of thread and string after being brought out of the dryer.
“You been to the cafe yet?”
“Nah, I just got out of my micro economics class. Wanted to make some progress on the final review we got, fate said otherwise. Cafe was too packed. Library was too packed. Student Center was too packed. Figured I’d just get as much done here as I can and then head out at 7pm. It should be cooler by then. I hope.”
“Bummer. Me and some boys are gonna head out here in 15 minutes, if you want to join us.”
“Thanks for the offer. I’ll pass. I wanna get as much of this done as I can.”
“Can’t stay cooped up in here forever, man. But you do you.” Josh shrugged, plopping himself down on his own bed, stretching his socks over his feet and up toward his ankles, just squeezing his shoes on without even undoing the laces.
Ugh… There it was… those small digs that Josh always gave him whenever he wanted to guilt trip Reno into doing something other than school work. He saw where he was coming from, and he appreciated the thought of it too, it was just that whenever Josh wanted to hang out, Reno didn’t want to hang out.
Their social schedules were never aligned; if they could be at all. Even with some of the chatter he’d hear from Josh’s friends about how he was always “such a shut in” and how he was “kinda silent in a creepy way.”
He’d heard worse growing up so those didn’t bother him as much. There was still that evident discomfort, and in the wee hours of the night he occasionally found himself thinking about those words over and over again, each phrase replaying in his mind like a broken jukebox or one of those “classic rock” radios that only ever played Imagine Dragons’ Radioactive.
Thankfully Josh never said those things; If the did he was really good at hiding it or said it when he wasn’t in the same room as his roommate. Reno didn’t mind him. Despite their differences they managed to, at the bare minimum, coexist in their shared space for the semester. Maybe once in a blue moon Reno would muster up enough social battery to watch a movie with him.
Overall their relationship was fair. They didn’t hate each other, but they didn’t exactly like each other either. Reno was certain that, if he wasn’t living with him in the first place, Josh wouldn’t have even spared him a passing glance; He was way more sociable than him.
Honestly Josh was the only person –outside of his family– he’d talk to on a regular basis. If Reno had a dorm room to himself he’d never leave unless it was for classes or food.
“I know, I know, it’s just… it’s just economics man. My brain is NOT built for this shit. Pretty sure I have that DNA strand that makes you bad at math.”
“No way that’s a thing.”
“That’s what I’ve heard so I’m choosing to lean into it.” Reno blew air through his nostrils, digging through his backpack and taking out his homework folder and pencil pouch, getting himself situated on the desk on his side of the room. He grimaced when his fingers wrapped around the 25 page review packet. Somehow, it felt heavier in his backpack than in his hands.
His Econ Professor had to be a fucking sadist to create and assign a review of such… girth to students who were already dead on the inside. This damn review wouldn’t even yield any extra credit either. “Wanna know why I chose a humanities major? To avoid having to do stuff like this in the first place.”
~~~
Reno had hoped that with Josh’s absence, tackling the more difficult parts of the review would be easier. Working when he knew someone else was in the room with him always put him in a weird type of headspace. It made him feel nervous. It made him feel like he was being watched. It made him feel subconscious. Even if he knew those were silly thoughts to think, he couldn’t keep his brain from thinking them.
All those generations of human evolution and for what? To get freaked out when people were in the same room as you?
The brain was a damn joke.
This review packet was a damn joke.
So many numbers, words, and graphs blanketed each page that they all blended together into one big, homogenous economic soup. If he tried to skip a certain question or page in favor of another one all he’d find would be an even harder question in its place.
One hand tapped his fingers against his desk. The other tapped the eraser end of his pencil against his cheek. His toes tapped against the tips of his slides.
The wall-mounted clock above the dormroom door appeared to tick even louder in his ears with each passing second. Why did the college even furnish the room with one in this digital age?
What a nuisance.
His fan buzzed like a giant bug flying through his room. Was it always this loud? His eyes went to the flaws in the paint, the off balance chair he kept rocking in, the scent of the hot pocket he made that morning still permeating the walls, Reno's thoughts simply couldn't settle.
He hated this. He hated every second of this. He hated the thought of stepping away from it even more. Not just from a grade standpoint –the review was worth a quarter of his final grade– but from a social standpoint too. How awful would it be if, after turning down Josh’s offer to hang out and grab food with his friends, he came back and saw that Reno hadn’t even made a dent in the thing to begin with.
Not only would he look like a hypocrite, but he’d look like an asshole too.
Right now he was considering looking like both of those things.
“I’m so going to fail this fucking class holy shit.” Reno dropped his pencil onto his desk, running both hands through his hair as a sickening, warm feeling began to work its way up from the pit of his stomach to his chest. He actually wanted to scream right now. He actually wanted to flip his desk over right now.
He wanted to do a lot of things to try and disperse all of his frustrations, and none of those things were particularly constructive.
Destruction of campus property cost money, however.
And money was one of the many things he didn’t have.
Deciding to concede to defeat, Reno leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the desk, not even caring if he got the review dirty or ripped or whatever a pair of slides could do to pieces of paper.
He threw his head back and groaned, “Ugh. I’d rather be doing anything else than study for this stupid econ final right now…”
“Thou’s wishes have been answered. Seek out all pokémon, and thou shall be rewarded. Seek out all pokémon, and thou shall see me again.”
Then, without warning, he fell.
The floor had given out from under him.