the only heaven i'll be sent to

12.0

The next day was Luis's first day back to school. He had two classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, and one class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It wasn't a rigorous schedule, but he knew it would probably be the roughest year yet; not to mention he was most likely going to die at the end of it anyway. He contemplated dropping out entirely since his degree wouldn't even matter in five months, but he thought of his parents and what they would think, and he still wanted to make them proud at the end of the day.

His classes were over by 2 p.m., which meant he'd have the rest of the afternoon to work on homework, which he was grateful for. He did just that that afternoon while Adrian hung around his room, popping in an out for a few minutes every now and again. Luis tried hard to not get irritated whenever he did that, but he was so focused on his work that it barely fazed him.

To hopefully keep him occupied and prevent him from getting bored and end up reverting back to his old annoying ways, Luis gave Adrian permission to play some games on his phone — a dangerous thing to do, he realized, after Adrian had posted a tweet on Luis's account. It was a harmless tweet, but it bothered Luis anyway. He scolded Adrian, and Adrian gave him a sincere apology. Luis figured that his old habits would be pretty difficult to shake.

Three hours later, Luis finally finished his homework, and he was starting to get hungry. He texted Kaiya and begged her sweetly to pick up something on her way home from work, and she agreed. Luis thought he should do something nice for her, like deep clean the entire apartment. He'd do that during one of their next breaks, he decided.

Kaiya soon came home with take-out from a local Thai restaurant. Living around Hell's Kitchen had it's perks. Luis thought it was kind of funny that he lived in an area called Hell's kitchen, and his life now seemed to revolve around actual Hell.

Adrian sat quietly in the kitchen with Kaiya and Luis as they ate. Luis asked Kaiya about how her first day of class went and things like that. She was studying to become a marine biologist. She loved orcas in particular, so much so that she even found a live-feed of orcas off the coast of Alaska on YouTube that she liked to have streaming constantly on the TV. She said it made her happy and helped relax her, and Luis wasn't going to argue with that.

Luis went to bed that night, exhausted, as per usual. Adrian had stayed relatively chill all day, and Luis was very grateful. It seemed like Adrian finally understood that, if he was going to have be around Luis for months, he needed to let him breathe every now and then.

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The rest of the week flew by. It went pretty much the same as his first day — he went to his classes and did his homework for a few hours afterwards, while Adrian played on his phone or went to the living room to watch TV. Kaiya would sometimes bring food home, or she and Luis would make something with the few groceries they had. Luis was more there for moral support than anything, but Kaiya appreciated him nonetheless.

It was Saturday, January 18th. Kaiya was away visiting one of her family friends for the weekend, so it was just Luis and Adrian. They mostly stayed in Luis's bedroom, Luis doing some random coding or watching dumb videos and Adrian watching him. They didn't speak much. They both thought it better if they didn't.

It was around 3 in the afternoon when Adrian finally spoke up.

"Do you have any Legos or something?" He blurted out while Luis was absentmindedly watching a video about genetic reconstruction of the pilgrims.

"Legos? Really?" Luis turned his head to look at Adrian. They were laying on his bed, side by side, but not touching.

"Yeah. I used to be really into building Lego sets and stuff," Adrian said unashamedly. Luis raised one of his eyebrows at him, amused.