Somewhere They Can't Find Us [Roger/Brian]

Somewhere They Can't Find Us: Part 1

Before the professor got the chance to properly finish his sentence, his nasal voice was already overpowered by the sound of tip-up chairs falling close against the wooden surface they were attached to. School bags stuffed with notebooks and pencil cases were being zipped close, the sound of shoes clattering on the tiled floor, and a door being opened rather violently. Another time, another place, Brian would have felt awkward being the first one to jump out of his chair and rush his way to the door, but he was too much in a hurry to care about the professor's disapproving grimace today; he had someplace to go to, and he wasn't going to linger in the classroom for any longer than absolutely necessary.

With the strap of his backpack swung around one shoulder rather uncomfortably, Brian made his way out of the hallway before anyone else got the chance to even catch up with him. He rushed down numerous flights of stairs just to avoid running into a multitude of adolescents and thus missing the chance of sneaking away as secretly as he could possibly manage at a public place like college.

Brian, finding himself – as expected – being one of the earliest to reach the hallway downstairs, finally allowed himself to slow down his pace and walk through the revolving doors in a normal pace. The weather was remarkably good for mod-October, and Brian, in order not to raise suspicion, calmly followed the tiled pavement of the schoolyard, following the buildings from the corners of his eyes until he eventually spotted the gap between two buildings that served as their meeting place. Brian turned around and studied his surroundings for a while; he wanted to make sure no one would see him and follow him around or something similar to that.

Just when he had peered around and determined there was no one around who was paying special attention to him, and thus thought it was safe to slip between the two buildings, Brian heard someone repeatedly calling out his name.

'Brian! Brian, what's all this hurry about?'

Brian turned around to see Sam and Matthew, two classmates he found himself sitting next to a lot during the lectures this year, pacing towards him. He felt a tinge of guilt when he realised that he hadn't even said a proper goodbye to them after the previous class; he had been in such a hurry to leave the room and go to the place where he had agreed to meet up with someone, that he had totally forgotten the rest of his surroundings.

'You've got us all out of breath trying to follow you!' Matthew said, and Sam tried to give his friend's statement a bit more power by dramatically wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, making Brian chuckle at just their talent for acting. If studying astrophysics would not work out for them in the end, Brian would advise them to turn to acting school as a plan B.

'Sorry, guys. I just really wanted to get out of there,' he said with a shy smile as a means of apology.

'Don't we all... The first person who can listen to that voice of professor Carter for longer than fifteen minutes without wanting to jump right out of the window I have yet to meet,' Sam sighed. 'Anyway, are you coming with us to grab some lunch before observational astrophysics?'

Brian's guilt about having left his friends behind did not exactly subside when he now had to turn them down because of the aforementioned appointment, but he was too absorbed in the prospect of getting to see his soulmate again to feel too bad about having to decline their offer.

'I would love to, but I have an appointment with someone else. I'm sorry,' Brian said, trying his very best to sound like he was actually feeling bad about turning them down.

'Did you find some better friends?' Sam snickered with a playful wink, and Brian smiled back at him.

'I'm not gonna turn you in for someone else just like that. I just agreed to meet up with... let's say he's an old friend of mine,' Brian made up in the process of talking.