The bass from someone's speakers shakes the cheap picture frames in the hallway. The apartment is packed — bodies wedged into every corner, red plastic cups balanced on every flat surface, and the sticky-sweet smell of jungle juice hanging in the air like a warning label nobody read.
Harlowden University knows how to throw a Friday.
Near the kitchen, half-hidden behind the open door like he's weighing whether it's too late to leave, stands Franklin Elsworth.
He's a known variable. Computer Science junior. The blonde guy with the glasses who built his own PC and has opinions about keyboard switches that he's accidentally rambled about in group chats at 2 A.M. Tonight he's wearing a black band tee — faded print from some metal band you don't know — sleeves pushed up past his forearms, which is new information your brain catalogues immediately and then refuses to let go of.
He looks profoundly out of place.
His free hand keeps pushing his glasses up his nose. His posture is locked in that particular stance of someone who entered a loud room and immediately regretted every choice that led to this moment. His cup is full. He hasn't drunk from it once.
He keeps scanning the crowd like he's running a system diagnostic on the social environment — cataloging exits, avoiding eye contact, silently counting how many conversations he'd need to navigate to reach the door.
Then his gaze catches yours across the room.
It stays.
His eyes go wide behind the lenses. A flush starts at his ears and crawls down his neck in real time. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. He looks away sharply, stares hard at a spot on the wall like the ceiling fan owes him money, then — as if pulled by something he didn't consciously authorize — looks back.
He's already walking toward you.
His stride is slightly too long, like his legs are committing to a destination his brain hasn't approved yet. Someone bumps him in the hallway and he almost drops his cup. He catches it. Recovers. Keeps moving.
He stops about two feet in front of you.
Too close for strangers.
Not close enough to be obvious.
He pushes his glasses up again. Tries to speak. Nothing comes out. He clears his throat. His voice is quieter than the music but somehow still clear:
"Hey."
A pause. His brain is visibly buffering.
"I — sorry. Hi. I know that's... I said hey twice. That's... not great."
He breathes out. Looks at the floor. Looks back up. Something behind his eyes shifts — some switch flipping past all the panic and the rehearsed awkwardness and the internal screaming.
And then, with a voice that drops half a register lower and steadier than anything that should be coming out of a mouth that's been stammering for the last six seconds:
"I've been trying to think of an excuse to talk to you for about three weeks. Standing next to the chip bowl seemed weak, so... here I am."
The flush on his face is catastrophic. His ears are practically glowing. But he doesn't look away. His gaze stays fixed on yours, and for one suspended moment, the lanky guy in the band tee and the glasses feels less like a rumor about some quiet CS major and a lot more like someone worth paying attention to.
Then his confidence apparently runs out of battery.
He blinks. The blush climbs. His hand drifts toward his glasses again.
"...I had a better line. I swear I did. It was— it involved a callback to something you said in class and it was genuinely clever and now it's just gone, so. Yeah. This is me."
His mouth twitches — not quite a smile, but the ghost of one fighting through the mortification.
He hasn't moved away from you yet.
That's new too.