His Muse

Just a regular normal movie date totally ordinary

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"I don't understand Sav at all," Leo ranted as he paced the floor of their dorm. Both Olivia and Nic sat on the futon together while she mindlessly played Pokémon off of her pastel pink DS while simultaneously listening to Leo. Nic was so enthralled by the game that he nearly missed what started the Sav-topic in the first place.

Leo hesitated, pressing his hands to his hair and groaning. "I haven't talked to her in almost a week—she doesn't answer her door when I knock—hasn't even opened my messages—"

"Kinda sounds like you're in looove..." Olivia cooed, flopping to the side with a wide grin.

Leo scowled at her, his pink cheeks making it clear that he couldn't possibly take the joke. "Sav is my resident, first off, which means if anything happened between us I'd get fired. And second: We're just friends, but she's, like... she's awesome and all and she's incredibly smart and she's in one of my classes because our majors overlap in that regard and all the TAs love her but she hates me. She hates me! Why would she text me? I don't understand."

"Jesus, I was just kidding," Olivia murmured to Nic, laughing quietly to herself.

Nic shrugged and said, "He can't really take sarcasm sometimes."

"Why weren't the two of you at dinner yesterday anyway?" Leo demanded of Nic, who jumped to attention, eyes wide at being called out so quickly. He hoped no one would notice, considering how panicked Sav was about having to skip her regular mealtime to avoid sitting with the others.

"Uh..." he started, nervous. "I-I don't know. I was at the Co-Op."

"Then where was Sav?"

"Christ, Leo, why are you getting so worked up over her?" Olivia asked, eyes on her game as she fiddled around with the buttons. "I've sorta picked up on the fact that she doesn't care about you, so why should you care about her?"

Leo fell silent for a moment, and the longer he thought, the more his feet started to ache to move again. He started pacing all over again, and Olivia muttered something under her breath about how Leo just "needed to relax." Nic leant back against the futon cushion, his head tipped towards Olivia's shoulder as Leo continued to panicked. Sure, Nic knew that some part of Leo was obsessed with Sav, but he never suspected that Leo would act like this just from a few texts from Sav.

After a moment, Nic asked, "So what'd she say? Can I see?"

"No."

"Oh my God, Leo," Olivia complained. "Just show him the damn text. They aren't bad." She turned to Nic, and added, "I helped him reply 'cause he was having a meltdown or something."

"Was not," Leo snapped, and Olivia giggled to herself, biting her tongue cheekily. He jokingly glared at her as he opened his phone and held it out to Nic.

Sav: Hey Leo I feel bad about blowing up at you. How's your face?

Leo: Hi again. My face is fine, but I would like to know what I did to deserve it.

Sav: Ha, yeah, I'm sure you do. We should hang out some time.

Nic stared at the texts for a moment longer before blurted out, "Seriously? That's it? You didn't reply back? That was yesterday."

"I panicked," Leo confessed.

"He wouldn't let me help him," Olivia said pointedly. Nic rolled his eyes, and while Leo let out a distressed gasp and tried his best to defend himself, Nic smiled giddily to himself. They hadn't exactly planned for this to happen. Nic wasn't entirely sure how Leo would react, but now... this was way better than he anticipated.