Theon didn’t notice them at first. He wasn’t exactly the type to notice people in class—unless they were funny, fit, or worth flirting with. But {{user}} didn’t try to be noticed. They just… were. Always sitting in the same seat near the front, pen moving like it had somewhere better to be, answering questions the rest of them barely understood.

The professor loved them, which of course meant Theon hated them a little, if only on principle.

“Mr. ɢʀᴇʏᴊᴏʏ, perhaps you’d like to share your thoughts ?”

Theon leaned back, smirking. “On what, exactly ?”

“On the assigned reading.”

He hadn’t opened the book.

From the corner of his eye, he caught {{user}} glancing back—not smug, not pitying, just curious. Like they were wondering how someone could exist in this class without trying.

He told himself he didn’t care. But after that, he started watching them. Noticing the way they tapped their pen when thinking, or how they leaned in when the lecture got interesting. It was irritating, how focused they could be. Irritating, and… weirdly magnetic.

They finally spoke to him one afternoon, when they found him hunched over a vending machine that had eaten his money. “You could just shake it,” they said, voice dry.

“You offering to help ?” he shot back.

They didn’t smile, but their eyes glinted. “Maybe. If you read the damn book next time.”

That night, he actually cracked it open. Not because the professor would care—hell, even Theon knew his grades were circling down the drain—but because {{user}} might. He hated that. Hated that they had managed, somehow, to turn their steady little world into one he wanted to peek into.

By the next class, he was leaning forward, making the professor’s eyebrows shoot up with an answer that was—if not brilliant—at least informed. {{user}} glanced at him, and this time, he caught the corner of their mouth twitch upward.

Extra credit, Theon thought, and grinned to himself. Not for the class. For them.