Derek was enjoying life at college. Yeah, every once in a while it was hell but that was just college in general. He’d gotten one of his favorite spots on the Magira team, melee fronter, and was a semi-active member of the LGBT+ community. He somehow still managed to have some free time and was also still able to work on his music. He honestly expected to have to stop making music but at least once a week he would start working on a song. Like right now. He had an hour until the LGBT+ meeting started and he wanted to get a new idea done. Or so he hoped.

“Please for the love of god, TURN THAT NOISE OFF!” His neighbor. The bane of his existence. His arch-nemesis. Wyatt. This bitch for the last 2 months has made his life a living hell. Everytime they interacted it’d end up with arguments that bordered on screaming matches and glares that mostly conveyed their urges to kill rising.

Derek slammed his fist against the wall. “How about you just don’t listen to it?!” after about five seconds of silence. Derek assumed that Wyatt got fed up and left. HAH I win this time bitch- OH MY GODS why is it so cold?!

“I’ll turn your heat back up if you turn that down!” Wyatt had turned his heat down with magic. That was just unfair, but he wasn’t giving up.

“You’re a bitch!” He started putting on more layers and crawled under his blankets along with turning his music up.

“It’s my defining trait!”

Another chance to work on his music came a week later, as expected. He was outside this time, under a tree way out on the hiking trail, and was writing up the notes for the guitar part of a new song. Every once in a while he strums the notes and winces when he hears the wrong note. He was good at drumming and singing, not guitar.

“Oh god. Why are you here?” He hears and looks up to see Wyatt, carrying a large box.

“Enjoying the weather, like a sane person.” He says putting his music away. He didn’t want to go but if he had to he would. “What’s with the box?”

Wyatt looks down at the box, slightly alarmed before putting it under one of his arms. “None of your business. What’s with the guitar?”

Derek puts the guitar away and stands up, folder in one hand guitar case over his shoulder. “None of your business. What’s with the emo look?”

“Aesthetic. Now I have magic to practice so please remove your country static from, you know, a 20 mile radius of here.”

Derek narrows his eyes. He’s pretty sure the way Wyatt spits out country static is meant as an insult but country honestly isn’t even that bad. “You’re a bitch.”

“We’ve been over this a couple dozen times. It’s my defining trait.”

The last time they argued was when Derek had been minding his own business going back to the forest like he did last week. He was hoping to figure out some more notes while enjoying the warm weather before fall fully set in. He didn’t expect to hear a very small and very faint explosion. He knew no one else really came out this far so he just ran in that direction hoping no one was hurt. He eventually came across Wyatt lying on the ground just looking straight up as a faint trail of cyan smoke came out of an ornate bowl, just in front of him. There were papers thrown everywhere, all with handwritten notes and symbols on them. He must’ve tried to make his own spell.

Derek saw that Wyatt was probably okay, and was about to just leave, not wanting to sour his good day, when Wyatt’s familiar, a skeletal cat, saw him and let out a loud meow. It wasn’t aggressive. Infact, it honestly sounded friendly, but what wasn’t friendly was Wyatt snapping his head towards Derek. Derek noticed he looked sad for a moment before his eyes filled with a new level of fury he hadn’t seen before. Which was impressive because Derek thought his normal fury was already excessive.

“What are you doing here!?” He screamed as he quickly got up and marched towards Derek. The familiar immediately grabbed ahold of Wyatt’s pant leg and tried to slow him down, but he ended up just getting dragged along.

“Uh look man, I heard an explosion and came to see what happened,” Derek backed up slightly, letting his usually efficient confidence break. Here was a man who had the capability and quite possibly the intent of hurting someone and that someone was probably going to be Derek if he didn’t try to calm Wyatt down. “Uh glad to see no one was hurt. I’m going to go-”

“Why are you afraid?” Wyatt asks, his face not changing in the slightest.

“Because… um… well…” Derek wasn’t sure how to answer so might as well answer honestly right? “You look like you’re about to legitimately murder me?”

Wyatt’s expression saddens horribly, “No.. I wasn’t…” It picks back up in it’s former fury. “No! I’m just pissed off! No one is supposed to see this!”

“Well, I did. I can just forget it though. I’m not even sure what you’re doing to be honest-” Derek’s letting his mouth ramble. He’s shaking as Wyatt begins getting closer and eventually stands right up in front of him. He may be almost a foot shorter, but it feels as though Wyatt is managing to tower over Derek.

Wyatt doesn’t seem nearly as infuriated as before. “Why do you hate me so much?!”

“What?” Derek wasn’t expecting that to be honest. He figured he was about to be murdered and never found. Not given an actually question from his nemesis for once

“Is it because of how I look!? Is it because I am necrotic?!” Wyatt looks like he is on the verge of tears. Derek needs to take advantage of this and make a quick getaway.

“No! It’s because you’ve just been a bitch!” Goddammit.

Wyatt’s eye blew up wide real quick before narrowing suspiciously, the tears still threatening to well up and break through. “Wait… Seriously? It has nothing to do with the… necromancy?” He asks as if it was the most ridiculous concept that Derek didn’t hate him because of something so shallow.

Derek’s regained most of his confidence and capitalizes on the situation “No, there’s nothing wrong with the black arts. It’s magic that has just as much potential as the others.” He quickly flips his hand in a circle before pointing it at Wyatt. “You on the other hand have without failure pissed me off every time we’ve interacted. You’ve told me I am an idiot, have commanded me, not asked, to turn my music down, have insulted the music I’ve made, have used your magic on me countless times and when we first met, you yelled at me for no reason! It’s lucky for you I haven’t told an RA yet!” This was going so much more different than how he had practiced it in the shower but it was somehow going better.

Wyatt looked at him as if a light bulb just went off in his head, what tears had welled up fell but it didn’t look as if anymore were going to fall. “Ok so most of those are… fair and were just me being a petty bitch,” He paused for a moment before a look of mild anger came across his face. “but I did have a reason to yell at you! Your friends cornered me! I thought you just came over to... insult me...” He finishes before looking down. “You weren’t going to do that... were you?” He seemed to have already figured that answer out.

“No. I was going to say sorry about them. It was really messed up and no one deserves that… I haven’t talked to them since then if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I’m… I’m sorry…” Wyatt looks down and Derek can guess he’s trying to stop his tears. The familiar, who had been waiting calmly at Wyatt’s feet, rubbed up against his legs. “Come here Mew.” He says, barely audible before putting the cat into his hood.

“I mean I still don’t like you, but the apology is nice.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“Well now that we got that little heart to heart finished, I could still not play my music out here?”

“Uh… No you’re good. I don’t need silence to focus. I was just being mean.”

Derek looked incredulously at Wyatt “... You’re a bitch.” It didn’t have the same heat that he usually gave it.

He chuckled lightly, he seemed happy to hear their usual argument finisher. “It’s one of my defining traits.”