Chapter Text
Whitestone University felt like Keyleth was stepping into a dream she’d had when she was seventeen years old.
Oak trees across the campus. Old but pristinely maintained buildings with intricate arches above the doors and towering pillars, leather seated booths in the postgraduate floors of the library, an enormous floor dedicated to archival material, categorised by subjects. Winding corridors she could get lost in, posters documenting previous research and notable alumni lining the walls. An office - hers to share with two other PhD students - on the fourth floor of the vast Biology and Earth Sciences building. Keyleth already knew she was going to spend hours and hours having dragged the chair next to her desk over to the large, ornate framed windows, and foregoing any real work to look out at the city of Whitestone, stretching and sprawling out with humming life and proud grandeur.
In her dream, she wasn’t wandering the building alone. Her wonder at the seemingly-infinite library was shared; arms brushed hers as she made her way through the building’s foyer towards the student admin offices; she collected her ID card mid-laugh at somebody else’s joke; afterwards, as she made her way through the town centre and attempted to build a map of the cobbled streets in her mind, the blanks of the roads she hadn’t walked and the shops she hadn’t peered into were filled by other people’s mental cartography, a shared wealth of exploration and curiosity that made it all the more exciting. She was tugged into small bakeries and cafés, bustled into bookshops, the magnetic pull of true north being this new, precious freedom two friends in particular had so desperately been searching for, spilling over to her too as they all claimed it with hopeful, grasping hands.
It was still beautiful alone.
She’d given up her chance to attend university with friends - or rather, with those friends, specifically - when she made the agonising choice to complete her undergraduate and Master’s degrees a world away in Zephrah. They had all planned on leaving Emon, the city that had been home to them all over most (or all) of their lives, and some, of course, were leaving with more desperation than others. The plan - for all of them - had been Whitestone.
It had been Pike first. Whitestone University’s pre-med programme had caught her eye in their junior year of high school, thereby bringing it onto Keyleth and the others’ radar. Grog had only really thought about following whatever football scholarships came his way, and it had been a wonderful stroke of luck that when offers went out, Whitestone was one with an impressive bid to make. With Pike already having received early acceptance, nobody was surprised when Grog quickly made his choice to follow. That left Keyleth and the twins. The twins, whose only real plan was to run as fast and as far as they could from their father. Keyleth, who had no idea how to imagine life without them. So she had been the one to steadfastly research every detail about the Whitestone University School of Business for Vex, to then fall in love with the Biology and Earth Sciences courses on offer, the research opportunities and career trajectories all over the website that had Keyleth yearning to be there, only to turn around and tentatively show Vax all that bottled up passion in the hopes that those interests the two of them shared might tempt him too. Might persuade him to come with them, rather than run so far that he left the rest of them behind.
And it worked. They’d all been Whitestone bound.
Until they weren’t. Until Keyleth wasn’t.
(Family legacy, her dad had tried to explain. Her mom’s family had been going to Zephrah University for generations - it was tradition, and expectation, a privilege and opportunity to go to a hugely prestigious university that Keyleth’s name had apparently been down for basically since birth, unbeknownst to her. Her mother’s family were expecting it, Korrin had insisted. And Keyleth wouldn’t have cared less about that, if not for his quiet, imploring, “She really would have wanted you to, Keyleth,” that burrowed somewhere within her chest, tugging at the familiar longing and heartache and grief and curiosity of hoping with every part of her that the person she was growing into wouldn’t let her mom down.)
She didn’t regret it now. Zephrah had given her so much that she’d needed; the chance to find the pieces of her mother she’d spent half her life searching for, to explore a place she barely remembered that was and would always be ingrained deep within her bones, and the chance to get to know her cousins properly, too. She’d make the same choice again if she found herself back at that fork in the road.
It had just demanded that she pack up those dreams of Whitestone and leave them in her childhood bedroom for safekeeping, tucked securely into a cardboard box beneath her bed.
It was years now since her high school friends had all moved here. Undoubtedly, they’d all have left this city long ago; they’d each had their own dreams to pursue that would long since have taken them elsewhere.
But this could still be a fresh start, and Keyleth was determined for it to be. She’d meet plenty of new friends through the Ecology department, and hopefully more through the Tal’dorei Ecological Association research project she’d been lucky enough to get a place on. Stubbornly resolute as she had always been, Keyleth’s internal mantra the last few weeks had repeatedly been this will be great! with such cheerful pep, it had made her internally wince. Necessary though, with setbacks like losing her dream PhD supervisor, Allura Vysoren, who had been unexpectedly pulled away for research in Marquet. But Keyleth had since been hastily given a replacement supervisor who she was sure would also be great, even if he wasn’t Allura, and she had the kind of scholarship and research funding that was once in a lifetime for PhD students. And above all else, she was here. At the university that had sparked her dreams for this kind of work, in the city that looked just like it had in the pictures she’d first seen all those years ago.
Excitement and anticipation had been humming lighty beneath her skin since the moment she’d stepped off the plane and collected the two large suitcases she’d packed the last six years of her life into from the baggage carousel in Whitestone Airport. It only intensified now, feeling a little more like bees buzzing in her veins with a thrumming, anxious impatience as she followed her new supervisor - a junior lecturer called Stephen Keriyk, who, if she was being completely honest, she was yet to make her mind up about - and her two office-mates down a second floor corridor, past one of the entrances to the library and a small computer lab. The plush red carpet that lined the hallway muffled their steps beneath their feet.
The place was almost deserted, besides them; term hadn’t officially started. The meeting they were headed to was off the books, holding no weight other than getting the ecology PhD students together before everybody began drowning in the stress of research proposals and literature reviews. It also gave Keyleth a chance to scope out the other students who’d been selected for the Tal’dorei Ecological project, which she was still a little nervous to be a part of.
Her anticipation mingled with apprehension as Stephen slowed, then turned to push open a heavy, dark oak door. Instantly, mid-afternoon sunlight poured out, catching on the door’s varnish and causing the wood to glow. The beam sliced up Keyleth’s hand, then her forearm, and she found her gaze inexplicably drawn to the warmth of it, momentarily distracted from what awaited a few steps in front of her. When she looked back up, she caught the eye of the student to her left, who exchanged a small smile with her, his teeth caught on his lower lip, a glint of anxious excitement in his eye. Keyleth couldn’t help but return his smile. There was a little girl somewhere deep inside of her, building houses for worms in the garden, who would never in a million years have believed she’d end up here.
Stephen stepped into the room, followed by the others, and Keyleth paused for a brief moment, her palm flat against the wood.
Her mother was waiting, when she closed her eyes. Knelt on the grass in their garden in Emon, her hair caught in the same sun, fire-bright and glowing. The sleeves of the old sweater she was wearing pushed up to her elbows, mud streaking her forearms, her hands on top of Keyleth’s much smaller ones as they pressed compost around plant stems, taking care not to jostle them. Vilya reached for a small watering can but laughed, softly, upon finding a rare, iridescent beetle crawling across the handle, and held out a hand so it could crawl on her finger.
PhD, Habitat Conservation, it said on Keyleth’s office door.
She exhaled carefully, and stepped forwards.
It was larger than she expected, inside. Like almost every university office she’d ever been in, the walls were lined with bookshelves which held beautifully bound books and academic texts, along with vast collections of journals and an abundance of trinkets. At a small table on the left hand side of the room, two students sat with an older woman Keyleth had been introduced to a few days prior, a lecturer who specialised in microbial ecology. They seemed deep in conversation, so Keyleth let her gaze to wander across the art on the walls and over to the window, noting the knick-knacks on the windowsill, the ‘neck deep in research for years’ clutter piled up alongside them, familiar from the organised chaos of her Master’s supervisor’s office in Zephrah. The girl leaning against the windowsill gave Keyleth a smile. The sun highlighted lighter streaks in her wavy brown hair, cut to just beneath her chin, and behind her thin-framed glasses, her eyes were warm, and excited.
To her left, a guy with short, curly hair gave Keyleth a nod of recognition - he’d been picking up his office key, the same day she’d come to collect hers.
And in front of the desk -
Keyleth stopped short, her scan of the room coming to a skidding halt. Her heart made a frantic leap up towards her throat.
She blinked, somewhat expecting the impossible sight in front of her to waver in the thick, summer heat of the office, but everything stayed as it was: a little sun-hazy, the noise of the chatter making her ears ring even as her heart hammered louder than anything against her ribs. A breeze from the open window brushed across her skin, too hot and too cold all at once, and the hairs on Keyleth’s forearms prickled.
His head was tilted away from her, and he was deep in conversation with the woman behind the desk. It could have been anyone. Should have been anyone. Years had passed since the last time Keyleth had found dark hair at the corner of her vision and snapped her head around, somewhere between hopeful and terrified, foolishly expecting something she’d known with a sinking feeling in her stomach that she wouldn’t find. But as the air of the office grew thicker, as she was jostled by another student brushing past her to duck into the corridor, as that long-forgotten lurch of exhilarated fear lanced through her fingertips and made her fingertips feel numb, she shifted her gaze from the braided half-up half-down hairstyle she could see and across the figure’s jawline, the curve of his ear, his olive skin, tanned darker by the summer sun, and she knew.
She knew. Before he looked up to survey the new people who’d walked in, before his eyes fell on her as though drawn to her by a magnetic pull, then widened with shock, before he turned -
But then he did , and -
Keyleth’s breath left her in a rush as she stared at a face she could have drawn with her eyes closed, etched into her memory with such crystal clarity. The crooked curve of his smile, the dark sparkle of his eyes, the tiny birthmark almost hidden in the shadow of his bottom lip. The creases of his eyes. The thrum of Keyleth’s pulse slowed as time reached a standstill, six years hanging in the air whilst she took in every detail of his face over and over, the familiar and the changed intricacies that tugged at her heart in equal measure, breath trapped in her chest and unsure where to go.
Vax stared at her.
She watched hazel eyes flood with disbelief that she was certain matched her own, and his head shook, slightly, as if she was a dream he could dislodge, rather than flesh and blood and a pounding, treacherous heart.
“What the fuck,” Keyleth said. Too loud, because despite the chatter and conversation, only a handful of people were in the office.
Silence fell in a domino-like hush across the room.
It was the snort of laughter from beside her that dragged her back to the present, time slamming back into itself, speeding up like a jam in the cassette tape now smoothed out, the world in a rush to catch her back up. Mortification swallowed her when she caught sight of Stephen’s disapprovingly raised eyebrow and the rest of the room’s stares. Heat began to flood to her cheeks, patchy and uncomfortable on the surface of her skin, but the corner of Vax’s lips quirked and the embarrassment mellowed a little at the sight of his fondness, his joy, his smile that seemed to creep wider when her flush spread to the tips of her ears.
“Sorry,” she said, the words coming out a little horse and scrambled, “I didn’t mean - it’s just -”
Her teeth sank into her lower lip, and she deliberately steadied herself, forcing her racing pulse to slow.
Breathe, Keyleth. (As it had for the past six years, that soft, steadying voice in her head was her mother’s. Kind but firm. Full of faith.) Take a breath.
Keyleth did. When she spoke again, it was softer and more measured, though she couldn’t hide the ever so slight edge of uneasy apprehension from the marked edges of his name. “Hi, Vax.”
His smile remained, the shock in his eyes melting, just a little. “Hi,” he said, even softer than her. The shape of the word, the curve of his accent in it, felt the whispered breeze of a memory.
“You two know each other?” The woman behind Vax - presumably his supervisor, Keyleth now realised - shifted, the amused expression on her face morphing into surprise as she looked between them. Vax cleared his throat slightly. His eyes didn’t leave hers, but they were difficult to read as they skimmed her expression, indecipherable to her perhaps for the first time in all the years she’d known him.
A hysterical, wildly out of place laugh bubbled up in her throat, but she swallowed it down before it could betray them both.
Knew each other. That was one way of putting it.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been sprawled out among tangled bedsheets, skin glowing in the early-morning sunlight that illuminated his teenage bedroom, marks she’d made on his skin the night before trailing down his neck, across his collarbone -
And then she’d left, with tears choked in her throat and brimming behind her eyes, while he was still soundly asleep. Creeping through the eerie quiet of the Vessar house without the goodbye she’d promised him and -
“We were friends in high school,” Vax answered quietly, the words far more casual as they left his mouth than Keyleth would’ve had any hope of making them.
Understatement of the century. But… it was the truth. That was all they had been, all the way until that last night before she left for Zephrah, when the what ifs and maybes had caught up with them in a rush and her lips had ended up on his, that vast, lonely house he and Vex had never truly called home empty that night aside from the two of them, just for that one last evening, with Vex and Syldor both away. Her tearful goodbyes to Vex, and Pike, and Grog had already been said. It was always planned that she would sleep over, so Vax could drive her to the airport early the next morning - but sleep over , not sleep with him . And certainly not slip away instead of waking him, as the sun crept over the horizon .
Keyleth’s stomach fluttered as nerves made another vicious reappearance, but while Vax’s expression was still guarded, his eyes, despite every reason to not be, were so wonderfully warm.
He smiled, and hesitantly, Keyleth returned it.
The moment melted away as other introductions overtook the conversation, but the weight of Vax’s gaze on her remained, even as she greeted other students, introduced the research her PhD would focus on, and tried as hard as she could to pay attention as others did the same. When the group migrated into a conference room across the hallway to discuss the Ecological Association project, Vax’s hand hovered just behind her back for a handful of seconds as he followed her out of the door. Her heart thumped traitorously in her chest, a little painful as though its muscle was remembering the action of being this close to him, that faint memory of loving him still in the twinge of her chest and the hum of the blood in her veins. She hung back in the hallway to let others pass them.
“It’s good to see you,” she whispered, and Vax’s exhale wouldn’t have been audible if he hadn’t been so close.
“You too, Keyleth,” he whispered back, his smile soft in every way she didn’t deserve. The words were nothing less than genuine, and despite the years that had passed, despite the questions and hurt and betrayal and loss she knew she’d left in her wake as she ran away from him in the way she’d always begged him not to do to her, despite everything , she allowed herself to believe him.
“ So ,” Vax said as they walked out of the front exit and across the courtyard, his eyes bright with a delight that was as infectious as it always had been, “tell me about Zephrah. Seriously, tell me everything. And how the hell you wound up here , after all this time - what did you end up doing your Master’s thesis on? You weren’t even sure you’d do well enough to do a Master’s when you left, now look at you! And your family, you have to tell me about them, what were they like -”
Away from the eyes and attention and respectability of their PhD cohort and the prestigious project they were both saddled with, it was like Vax had come alive in a whole new way. The warm end-of-summer sun illuminated the carved stone of the beautiful old building that Biology and Earth Sciences shared as they left it behind them, and questions bubbled out of him, rapid fire. He turned, a couple of paces in front of her, walking backwards to keep in step with her. It felt oddly like being fourteen. Needing a friend who understood the things going on in her life and Vax materialising at her side, insistent.
In the six years she’d been away, she thought she’d managed to smother the bone-deep ache that came from leaving the first and best friends she’d ever had behind, but with Vax standing in front of her again and the distance melting so easily away, it was quickly becoming evident that she’d been fooling herself. She couldn’t help her smile growing, spreading across her cheeks to match his. “Coffee?” she asked, and his intensity quickly softened, recognising her slight fumbling like it was as easy as breathing.
“Coffee,” he agreed, a reassurance and a slight apology for the barrage of questions rolled into the gentleness of it.
He led her out of the gates and over to one of the coffee shops across the road. In a few weeks, it would be unbearable, swamped with freshmen along with every other inch of the campus, but for now it was blissfully empty aside from a lone, dishevelled looking grad student. Keyleth eyed them with sympathy. She had no doubt that within the next six months, she’d find herself in the same position.
It didn’t surprise her when Vax gave the barista behind the counter a quick wave, then hesitated, turning back to her. The spark in his eyes was mischievous, a little teasing and Keyleth’s stomach flipped. “You’re not still pretending you like black coffee, are you?” he asked with a warm smirk.
She flushed, a patchy pink heat over her cheeks all the way up to the tips of her ears, similar to her mortification earlier, but this time, it felt sweet. Familiar. She couldn’t help but laugh as an unbidden memory floated to the forefront of her mind; she remembered with unexpected fondness the awed kid she’d once been, all freckles and frizzy hair, swallowing down scalding hot, bitter mouthfuls in the hope that Vax’s wonderful, beautiful, terrifying twin sister would think she was cool.
“Ha,” she said, trying for reproachful but only really managing sheepish and amused. “Yeah, uh … no. That was a short lived endeavour.”
Vax chuckled. “Oat flat white?” he guessed in lieu of further teasing.
“With vanilla,” Keyleth added, and Vax turned back to the counter and ordered for them both, then picked a table over by the window. He existed in this space with the ease of someone for whom the cracks in the floor tiles, the give of the booth seats, and knowledge of when the sun would pour through which windows, was all instinctive, woven into Vax’s tangled web of six years in this place that Keyleth had only ever imagined all this time. Imagined him in all this time. Even in these small minutes they’d spent alone, it was easy to see that the university buildings and the roads beyond them were as familiar to him as breathing, and that the winding streets of this city had become his home.
She remembered, back in Zephrah, when her Master’s supervisor had sent through all the best choices for where to apply for her PhD, the physical tug in her chest she’d felt seeing Whitestone University on the list. For the first time in so, so long, she’d indulged herself in that same, far away imagining, the longing, the traitorously hopeful part of her heart wishing and wondering and wanting that dream from long ago. But somewhere between wishing for it and wanting it came the realisation that if he was still here, that meant seeing him, and perhaps worse, facing up to the last time she’d seen him, so she’d quickly, determinedly pushed all that aside.
In 500 words, provide a preliminary abstract for your proposed PhD thesis - and Keyleth had answered while telling herself, over and over again, that there was no reason any of them would still be in Whitestone. Vex and Vax had wanted to finish their degrees and travel the world together. Pike could’ve gotten into any med school she put her mind to, and there were countless better than Whitestone. Grog was probably playing for the NFL by now.
In less than 300 words, please tell us why you have chosen to apply to the Whitestone University - and Keyleth didn’t write ‘because coming here was what I thought my life would look like when I was sixteen and in love with my best friend and maybe I don’t want to come here after all because I’m afraid that it won’t be anything like I’d imagined.’
But it was, in the end.
Because the dark, rich brown of the faded leather booth seats covered in dappled, mid morning sunlight made Vax’s eyes glow, intoxicatingly warm.
“I really didn’t think any of you would be here,” Keyleth confessed. “Maybe it’s stupid, but -” She blew a small strand of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“It’s not stupid,” Vax said. “I don’t think any of us would’ve thought back then that we’d still be here. But we met people here who became family, and the house we moved into - seriously, Keyleth, you’d love it.” Vax leaned forward, forearms resting on one of the sunny spots on the table. The light caught on the glass face of his watch, casting a flickering rainbow onto the ceiling up above them. “Pike got a place in med school when I started my Master’s.” He must’ve seen the surprise on her face because he added, “There were better programmes elsewhere but this was still the closest she’d be to Wilhand and Grog. She’d never admit it but I don’t think she wanted to leave Scanlan either.”
“Scanlan?” asked Keyleth, the name unfamiliar on her tongue. Her eyebrow arching of its own accord. “Get out. Does Pike have a boyfriend?”
A sharp, unexpected laugh escaped from the back of Vax’s throat, although the rough edges were softened by an undercurrent of warmth. When he pinched the bridge of his nose, it was with something akin to fond exasperation. “Now that’s the question. No, she doesn’t. She and Scanlan are … Well, it’s this whole thing - you’ll get it when you meet him, trust me.”
When you meet him. Keyleth tried not to flush again at the certainty of it, the promise. “And Grog’s not playing football?”
“Nah, he had a bad injury in senior year. Pretty much decided that he wouldn’t be going for a professional career.”
“Shit, really?” Keyleth’s eyes went wide.
Vax nodded with a grimace. “He was pretty cut up for a bit. But he’s okay now - coaches a team with this development programme for kids from rougher neighbourhoods, and works security jobs to cover costs.”
Keyleth nodded, slowly letting the information settle, readjust the image she had of all these people in her head. “If you’re here, then I guess Vex …?”
“Kicking ass,” said Vax as an answer, his voice drenched in a familiar kind of pride that made Keyleth’s chest ache. “She studied politics and economics in the end, the second of which is the dullest thing in the world to me, but you know Vex. She’s a genius with numbers. She’s working for a company whose clients are predominantly aid organisations and charities. She deals with a lot of the accounts when it comes to distributing funds for various causes and the like. It’s amazing, she’s gotten to go on some crazy trips for work to see the other end of it all, how the money is being used to rebuild countries after war and stuff.”
“Wow,” Keyleth breathed. She couldn’t help but laugh, nothing more really than a puff of air. Vax gave her an inquisitive look. “I mean, yeah - yeah , it’s amazing! But also, of course that’s what she’s doing. I can’t imagine her doing anything else.”
“I know,” said Vax. “Me neither. And yeah, she’s here. Whitestone has one of the company’s biggest branches.” And she wouldn’t have left while you were still here , Keyleth thought, although there was no need to voice the sentiment - it went without saying. “I’m the only one insane enough to chase a PhD though,” Vax continued, a wry but not at all insincere smile twisting his lips upward. Keyleth half-hummed, half-laughed, both sounds of agreed resignation while trying not to think about the fact that she didn’t count - she wasn’t one of them anymore. But Vax caught it - at least, caught her agreement - and tilted his head with a smile of acknowledgement. “Not the only one,” he corrected and fucking hell, Keyleth’s neck was hot again. “You’ll see what Whitestone was like for us in time, it barely changes. I’m more interested in what you’ve been up to Ki-” His mouth closed abruptly, his first real hesitance in this whole conversation. The heat on Keyleth’s cheeks sank through her skin, weighed down and down until it became a burning inferno in her chest. Kiki.
She let the fire rage in her chest, all consuming. She took a breath, which of course only stoked the flames, but she’d learned a lot about being angry - holding anger, whether at herself, the world - in the last six years. And Vax so, so rarely deserved her anger.
What he did deserve were answers.
So it all came spilling out in an effortless way that, if she’d been asked a few days ago, she never would have expected.
She should have. Because despite the years of distance between them, he was the same person who’d sat with his chin on his arm peering at her laptop screen as she scrolled through images of the University of Zephrah’s campus, the one who’d encouraged her to go chase the pieces of her mother she desperately wanted to find despite how much her flying off to study so far away would sting. The one who’d stayed late in their school library and flicked through course options with her, weighing up botany vs plant physiology vs pure biology.
Warmth spread through her chest as she tucked one knee up onto her chair and told him about the cousins she now knew well, about falling in love with the mountains and the way the wind floated across the cliffs, about studying beneath cherry trees and her botany degree gradually leaning more and more into environmental science and conservation, about finishing her Master’s and seeing a PhD position open here for habitat preservation research and jumping at the opportunity.
Something complicated crossed his expression for the briefest of moments, but disappeared before she could grasp hold of it.
“What about you?” she asked impulsively, searching for more than he’d already given her, despite how little she deserved it. Tell me everything, she wanted to beg. Every detail. She couldn’t, though - she didn’t know where the lines were, in this coffee shop that was his far more than it would ever be hers. How much could she ask someone whose childhood was woven into her bones alongside her own, but who she’d left without saying goodbye to?
“And - and Vex and the others?” she added hastily, as if it could cover up the yearning her previous question held. But her tongue betrayed her for a second time, unable to pause when she intended it to, instead curling carefully around a third question before her nerves could stop it; the one she wanted the answer to most of all. “Are you happy here?”
It was too sincere, too quiet, for a sunny café and a regular Monday afternoon. For the first time since she’d walked into his supervisor’s office, that six year distance felt cavernous.
Keyleth watched dust flicker in the sunlight as it drifted down towards the floor, her breath caught in her lungs, until Vax’s expression flickered and softened, eyes impossibly fond. His foot lightly nudged hers beneath the table, silently acknowledging the life he and Vex had been on the verge of leaving in their rearview mirror last time Keyleth had seen them, and the world that’d been at the tips of their fingers. “Yes,” he told her, steady and certain in every way she’d wanted for him back then.
He matched her sincerity, until the moment was broken by his crooked smile.
In exchange for her updates, he told her about the friends they had made in undergrad who now lived with them too: bright-eyed Percy who’d studied engineering, and Scanlan, a musician bursting with talent, still finding his way into the scene. More names followed - Gilmore, Kash, Zahra - a whole family he and Vex had clearly built from the ground up and adored with every inch of their being.
“You’ll meet them,” he told her, as if it was a given that her presence in Whitestone was enough to warrant an introduction to these new people he held dear. As if any of these people would even like her, given what they’d inevitably heard.
Vax didn’t seem to notice her hesitance - either that, or he simply did her the service of brushing past it. She was grateful for it, because he continued on with stories that gave her a shape of these new friends’ character, and of the life he, Vex, Grog and Pike had been leading. Prank wars between him and Grog that had escalated since their high school days, nights out where they’d lost half the group and then been kicked out of three bars in quick succession, the Sunday morning family pancake routine Pike had instigated when she, Grog, the twins, Percy, and Scanlan had all moved in together. Standing in the pouring rain watching Grog’s football matches in first year, just like they had in high school but under brighter lights, and this time, with their own cheers accompanied by the roar of a crowd. Vex getting her first paycheck from her full-time job and taking him out to dinner, to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where spices lingered in the air.
He handed six years worth of life over to her in his open palms.
Keyleth wasn’t naive enough to assume the stories she was offered were given thoughtlessly. Despite how easily they fell from Vax’s tongue, the occasional pauses gave him away, subtle moments where she could see him considering the depth to go into, or measuring up his words. It was to be expected. She didn’t know what hurt more - the thought that he could read her desperation for any scraps he was willing to give her, or the thought of him not being able to read her the way he used to, but offering these stories up anyway.
Even so, more than anything, it was a relief to hear the life that poured through every crack in Vax’s stories and pooled on the table between them, the warmth and the homeliness that the lives he and Vex left behind in Syngorn had lacked.
And underneath it all, despite the subtle hesitation, she could feel Vax’s ease - the trust that he extended to her as if she’d never broken it, the way he treated the lives of his friends as the lives of her friends even though she wasn’t certain herself whether she still had the right to consider them as such.
The flickers of fear she’d had to convince herself out of before moving here seemed unwarranted.
Vax finished telling a story about him and Vex carrying two bookcases across the city, trying valiantly to convince the bus driver to let them on, but failing miserably. “Vex was glaring daggers at him,” he told her, unable to hide his fond grin. “We could have just abandoned them, but we found them outside a house for free and they were such good quality - god knows we didn’t have the money to buy our own -”
“Don’t,” Keyleth grimaced, torn from her reverie by the harsh reminder that she was about to be in the same position, having to source furniture for a room on her small summer-job-savings-and-PhD-bursary budget. That was, if she could even find somewhere to rent.
Vax’s expression turned sympathetic. “You’ve just done the same?” he guessed, but Keyleth shook her head.
“Not yet. I’m in temporary postgrad accommodation. Just for a week or two, hopefully - I’m still looking for somewhere to stay. But when I do find somewhere, that’ll be me, trying my hardest to convince bus drivers to let me bring furniture on with me.”
“They’re not a fan of it.”
Keyleth hummed a vague acknowledgement.
The University of Zephrah offered accommodation to anyone who requested it, despite its small size. Unlike in Whitestone, each student received a room of their own, already furnished with a bed, desk, bedside table and wardrobe, for as long as they wished to keep it. She’d only had two rooms - one for her undergrad and a different one for her Master’s, because she’d moved to be on the same floor as a friend, and she’d loved both of them for their wide windows and beautiful views, their slightly-worn appearance that told of previous lives lived within those walls - and for their convenience, too. Which she told Vax, when he asked, because somehow he seemed to remember conversations they’d had about applying for university accommodation, over half a decade ago.
This time around though, she’d have to do things the hard way.
“Trying to take furniture on public transport in your twenties is a right of passage,” Vax told her, and when she ran her fingers through her hair, he shot her a familiar, boyish grin. “Plus, I’d help,” he added. Despite the house hunting misery she was embroiled in, there was that permanence that had her chest tightening; again, it assumed Vax would be in her life going forwards, not just for the afternoon.
Keyleth curled her hands around her now-cool coffee and took a slow sip, then swirled the dregs around, momentarily distracted by the wish that she was someone who could look at what remained at the bottom of the mug and let it tell her everything would be okay.
“Not that it looks like I’ll find anywhere,” she said dismally. “It’s too late - I couldn’t view anywhere while I was in Zephrah, but it seems like most postgrads sorted out where they were staying months ago. Rent’s too high to get a place by myself, but I don’t know anyone, and all the rooms I see advertised are either with complete weirdos, or have been taken by the time I enquire.”
Vax’s eyebrows curved down into a thoughtful frown.
“University accommodation wouldn’t be too bad,” Keyleth added, unconvincingly. The postgrad block she’d been put in was mostly Master’s students a few years younger than her, but it’d do if it was her only option.
Vax shook his head, the thoughtful expression still on his face, but nothing could have prepared her for his simple, but deliberate, “Come live with us.”
Her eyebrows shot up of their own accord, and Vax held her gaze boldly, unapologetically.
Keyleth set her coffee back down on the table. “Live with you,” she repeated, hoping it didn’t land too flat, or too incredulous, as Vax looked at her like it was the simplest solution in the world.
“What?” he said with a shrug
“ Vax .”
“We have a spare room,” he added, as though that was what had made her hesitate, rather than that fact that she’d left six years ago with the bittersweet taste of his lips on hers and hadn’t explained herself or seen him or any of the others since. As though she’d stayed in contact with them and been the wonderful friend they all expected her to be, rather than disappearing from their lives because it hurt far too much to see them move on without her.
The deep brown eyes that looked so carefully back to her were exactly as reassuring as she remembered every time she’d needed them to be years ago, somehow managing to settle the flutter of nerves in the pit of her stomach.
Maybe, if this wasn’t the first time they’d had a proper conversation since they were eighteen, she would have seen it coming, in the familiar shape of his mouth as it moved, or in the warmth of his expression, tinged with a knowing sadness that he seemed to have kept at bay until now.
“Kiki.”
It was as soft as a breath of air. Rolling off his tongue as easily as it ever had.
(Every day, casually, teasingly. Petulant and drawn out when she covered the answers of their bio homework from him at their lunch table, accompanied by pitiful pleading eyes until she gave in. Quietly when it was just the two of them and the world twisted around them, one or both of them reaching for the other. The night before she left - whispered against sun-kissed skin as fingers trailed across her freckles and lips followed, both of them seemingly unable to let each other go.)
Keyleth swallowed down memories of her fingers combing slowly through Vax’s hair as he slept the morning afterwards. Peaceful, in a way that was so hard to come by back then. Dark eyelashes stark against his pale cheekbones. Her thumb tracing the curve of his jaw as she stole a moment to say goodbye in - a luxury she didn’t extend to him.
Vax’s expression flickered again. “I’m not - it’s okay. I mean, if it is to you, it’s been six years and I… we’re good. We’re good, right?”
“We are?”
It was far too rushed to disguise the desperation trapped within, and Vax’s fingers shifted where they rested against the table, before curling into themselves.
“ I am,” he told her, quiet, but firm.
His gaze didn’t leave hers for a second, and it made him easy to believe. “Me too,” Keyleth told him. Heat crept across the back of her neck and she tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, tongue feeling thick and uncoordinated in her mouth. “Okay. Good. That’s good.”
Vax visibly fought back a smile, and Keyleth felt the tips of her ears flush too (for the third time today), but he didn’t comment on it, just nudged her ankle with his own again under the table and gave her an imploring look. “At the very least, come say hi. No one will forgive me if I go home and tell them you’re back in Whitestone and I didn’t give them chance to see you too.”
Uncertainty returned in full force, but Vax’s ankle bumped into hers for a second time under the table, warm and reassuring in the exact way he’d been to her all afternoon, since the moment his eyes had first landed on her in his supervisor’s office, hours and what already felt like lifetimes ago.
“C’mon,” he told her, twirling his keys easily around his finger. “We missed you.”
We . Not I, but we - and that was what did it. Warmth curled around Keyleth’s chest as she thought of Vex’s smile, the warmth that had always been imbued in Pike’s hugs, and the delight she could so easily imagine lighting up Grog’s face at the sight of her.
“Okay,” she agreed, causing Vax to grin brightly at her. He pushed himself up from the table and sunlight caught on the spark of delight in his eyes. His excitement was infectious, the way it always had been, and for what felt like the hundredth time today, Keyleth found herself returning his grin with unexpected ease and warmth. She took a breath, then exhaled. “Lead the way.”