Chapter 6: Chapter 6
“Join us for the Prom Night.”
“Eh, what even is that?”
“Are you for real?” Denis felt himself raise both eyebrows as he gave Sam a narrowed look. “You really don’t know what it is?” How could she have missed it? There were posters everywhere on campus, hell, the society people had been walking around in toga all week. Hadn’t Sam found that just a tad bit strange?
“Look at that fella,” Denis pointed to a group of people sitting in the library just a few tables away from them. The group was mostly older students, the majority of them dressed normally, but there was one guy completely wrapped in a sheet (a sorry excuse for a toga in itself), accompanied by a fake olive branch crown and sandals.
Sam scratched her head, her hair tangling. “Yeah, huh,” she concluded. “He does look kind of strange, does he not?”
Denis groaned audibly. “He’s dressed like a Greek person.”
Sam just waved her hand, clearly not understanding why Denis was acting like this. “Greek people certainly don’t dress like that nowadays.”
“Sam,” Denis grabbed hold of the hands that had been busy shifting through some papers, his grip gentle yet firm. They’d been studying at the library for about an hour, gaining more understanding of the strange communication tool that was computer talking (TLDR it was all about zeroes and ones in the end). “You can’t study your life away.”
Sam had been stressed with uni, and Denis had seen it during the hour they’d sat in the library. Her smile had been strained, her papers in a disarray, and she’d kept muttering something that suspiciously sounded like “focus, you gotta focus” to herself. Her hair had been bushy in the lecture hall yesterday, but today it was more than that; today it was messy, today it was tangled. Still, Denis hadn’t expected her to take offence at his observation. But without hesitating, Sam had simply jerked her hands away from Denis’s loose hold, eyes flashing.
“Excuse me, everyone doesn't get things handed to them. I had to work my butt off to get a scholarship to even be able to dream of attending this school. I don't have parents taking me on trips to Spain every summer. Some people actually have to work for what they want.” The bushy-haired girl was poised as if ready to strike again, her eyebrows low and her nose wrinkled. Denis found himself quite speechless (something Arnold rarely was) as he allowed his hands to fall onto the table, grasping at air.
It only took another second for Sam’s eyes to stop flashing. Actually, her outburst seemed to have been quite the shock to herself as she threw a hand over her mouth as if to stop any more words from escaping.
Denis just blinked once, twice, and thrice. Where did those loaded words come from?
“I’m so sorry, that was so out of line.” Sam did indeed sound sorry. Her pale face was filling with colour, her cheeks turning red, and her eyes gleaming. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Things have just been so stressful, and I know that’s not an excuse- I-”
Denis immediately recognised the sight of someone balancing on the fine edge of a breakdown – he’d been there himself too many times to count. His heart squeezed at the memory of a young Denis sitting in a corner, his breath escaping him in painful huffs, eyes filled to the brim with tears threatening to spill. He then looked at Sam and saw his younger self. Denis didn’t usually allow people to reduce and ridicule him. But perhaps for this strange, stressed girl, he would make an exception. Denis carefully extended his hands as he once again reached for Sam.
Her eyes were overflowing as she sniffed softly. “Gosh, I’m so stupid.”
Denis touched her hands gently, taking great care to see if the touch was welcomed. Sam allowed it, cold hands shivering ever so slightly underneath his palms.
“Hey,” Denis could sound compassionate when he wanted to; Augustine just didn’t believe he could. “You’re good, no harm done. You just got one thing wrong, it’s not Spain, it’s France.”
He made her snort out some sort of laugh intertwined with snot, so that was something. For a second, Denis watched the girl lighten up, then said snot escaped her nose, dripping down towards her lips. Denis felt himself pale even as Sam withdrew her hands quickly to hold them over her nose, the girl panicking. “Oh my god, I’m so gross.”
Denis shook his head, forcing the slightly nauseating image to leave his mind as he shot her a quick smile. “You’re overworking yourself,” he insisted because he indeed believed she did. Her sweater was put on inside out, and her hair had definitely not been brushed in a day or two. “How many courses are you taking?”
Sam glanced at him, her hand still firmly attached to her nose, hiding the mess underneath. “Not that many. I’m doing the engineering degree, and then I’m just taking some extra law courses on the side.”
“Law?” Denis’s eyebrow climbed up his forehead. “What do you mean by law courses?”
Sam cast her eyes down, her bangs shielding her from outside judgment. “I’m doing a double degree,” she confessed, as if it were the greatest sin of all. Denis knew people who would brag about going for a double degree; nobody he knew would hide like her. They’d flaunt it, as they did with so much else in their wealthy lives.
But a law degree and an engineering degree at the same time? There were limits.
“You’re burning yourself out,” Denis hushed her, using his body to hide the state she was in from nosy onlookers. The library was buzzing, and despite them being nestled in a corner between two shelves, there were people everywhere. Sam probably didn’t even think about her poor state being something to hide; embarrassment didn’t register in her circles as it did in Denis’s. Where he came from, you’d better bleed to death before you showed emotion. And so Denis moved closer, putting his arms out and straightening his back as he concealed Sam in a nook consisting of dusty wooden shelves and Denis’s Dior shirt.