The lights were bright, the music loud, and the smell in the air made it clear that several things were happening here that could get students expelled from school, but it was obvious that no one cared.

The four of them stayed close together, although Zach was looking around with excitement, as if searching for something. Logan still wasn't entirely thrilled with crowded places, so he kept himself positioned between Tim and the villain, yet he didn't seem uneasy. Nevertheless, Rowan checked on him every few moments with a subtle, fleeting glance.

“We have to play,” the brown-haired man suddenly declared.

It took Rowan a few seconds to follow his gaze to the spot he was focused on before he realized what he was talking about.

“Not a chance.”

His roommate, however, wasn't about to be discouraged from the idea so easily. He spun around on his heel, forcing the others to stop in their tracks, and as he turned expectantly toward Rowan, it was clear who his challenge was aimed at.

“You don't have to drink, just throw,” Zach pushed further. “I'm sure I can hold my liquor better than you anyway.”

At that, the villain’s expression shifted, no longer just annoyed or outright critical. “I’m pretty sure I have more practice.”

“And an older liver,” Zach shot back immediately.

Even though it was a tactic, which the villain realized the moment his next words left his mouth, it was already too late, because it worked. “You’re on.” And just like that, they found themselves at a ping-pong table with red cups filled with beer arranged on top.

Opposite the pair of roommates stood two young men who were unmistakably from a fraternity. Rowan had crossed paths with them a few times before, though he hadn't bothered to remember their names, considering them insignificant. 

“You can start, freshmen.”

Just as they had agreed, Zach was the one throwing and Rowan was the one drinking. At least at first. When they started losing and the villain already had three cups of beer in him, he decided it was time to switch. The juniors from Sigma Rho Tau—as they learned during the game—had no problem with that, since they were in the lead. However, the smiles quickly faded from their faces when the tide turned and Rowan hit every single shot, evening out the score.

“Rowan! Zach! Rowan! Zach!” Tim started chanting, and people began to join him. Their chanting drew even more attention, and suddenly, a crowd of tipsy students surrounded their table.

The level of alcohol in the crowd's blood soon became apparent as their shouting morphed into “Ro- Zach!” and then, in some incomprehensible way, it turned into “Prozac!”

“Go, Team Prozac!” the villain heard from the crowd as he landed another shot in the other team’s cup, leaving them with only one red cup on their side.

It hardly needed to be said that after they won, the nickname stuck, and the next day Zach and Rowan found a piece of paper taped to their door with the colorful inscription #PROZAC. It was funny enough that they decided to leave it there, and so the villain, who had not expected to fit in among younger students, found that he was actually enjoying college life after all.

…

Zach and Tim eventually met Matteo as well. The blonde came to visit his husband one Thursday, and when Rowan asked his roommate if he’d mind if Matteo crashed in their room, Zach was surprisingly excited at the prospect of meeting him.

Matteo thus became part of their group whenever he happened to be in Krasport, and not only Zach, but Tim and Logan as well were always happy to see him. So much so that they kept him company whenever he arrived early while Rowan was still in a lecture or seminar.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case right now, and the hero and villain were lying together on Rowan’s bed. Even though it was a single, they managed to squeeze in, with the villain holding his husband by the waist to save space.

Zach was tapping away on his phone on his own bed, lying on his stomach, while Tim sat at the foot of it, tucked into the corner with his back against the wall and his side against the wardrobe. He, too, was immersed in his phone, and although notebooks lay between the two of them, neither was paying them any attention.

“Logan isn’t texting me back,” Zach complained in a monotone voice, still not looking away from his screen.

“I bet he’s on a date, even if he pretends he’s not,” Tim replied, and Rowan automatically frowned. Although he and Logan shared their locations just in case, and his best friend wore a bracelet he could use to summon Rowan in an emergency, he didn't like it when Logan went somewhere without his knowledge. He hadn't even realized when he’d started being so protective of him, but it had happened. 

His nap by his husband’s side was quickly forgotten as he sat up, and Matteo automatically did the same, now fully awake too.

“With who?” he asked automatically.

Tim immediately noticed his tone and looked up. “No clue.”

Rowan’s frown deepened, but before he could say anything more, there was suddenly one more person in the room. He didn’t have to look at Tim and Zach to know they were in shock, but their reaction wasn't the priority right now.

“Sorry, but I need to steal him,” Vanish announced to Rowan before turning his attention to Matteo.

The blonde pressed one last kiss to his husband’s lips and, with a promise to return as soon as possible, took the suited hero's hand. Both disappeared from the spot before any of Rowan’s classmates could utter a word.

“What the hell—” Tim started, and only now did the villain notice that his hands were still held as if he were holding his phone, which had long since fallen onto the bed beside him.

“Was that—” Zach tried to finish for him, but he couldn't manage it either.

“Long story?” the villain offered as an explanation. “I’ll explain more later, okay?” He had never talked about plans to tell his friends about his identity, or at least about who his family was, but Casey knew how comfortable Rowan felt with them. Besides, Rowan had no doubt this was an emergency; otherwise, Casey wouldn't have appeared in his dorm room.

“Sure,” Zach nodded, though he still looked shaken.

Rowan gave him a reassuring smile before standing up and suggesting, “I was going to go grab something to eat. Wanna join me?”

Fortunately, there was one thing college boys never refused: food. On top of that, after the shock Rowan had indirectly caused them, he decided to treat them, which they naturally appreciated, and with the promise of free hamburgers, they forgot all their questions for the time being.

Later, when they returned to the room, Logan still had not replied, and it did not seem like he would be joining them anytime soon. The villain was starting to get worried, wondering if he should send a quick text to make sure he was okay. He knew, however, that if the worst came to the worst, his friend wouldn't hesitate to use the emergency button on his bracelet.

Besides, Rowan had to remind himself that Logan was far from helpless now. It had been months since they started training together, and while they began hitting the gym at the start of the semester, they quickly moved on to a different kind of training. Although Rowan had not been trained by Legion, he was ready to pass on every skill Drew had taught him.

Speaking of the mobster, Drew also had no problem spending time training Logan, despite him being a regular human without powers. The younger man had opened up to him about what had happened and why he was afraid of being alone in public, and Drew immediately decided to help him take back his power and self-confidence. He had even offered him a gun, which Logan refused—not wanting something like that on school grounds—but the mobster taught him how to fire it in an emergency anyway.

Logan was more than ready for a date, no matter how it turned out, yet Rowan still worried. He had always been protective of his best friends, and while he had never fought because of Lynnie, in Lenny’s case, it had been different. 

He involuntarily frowned at the sudden memory of his best friend from high school and decided to distract himself before guilt could overwhelm him.

“Dude. No.” Zach’s voice pulled his attention back, and when Rowan turned toward him, he found his roommate struggling for space on his own bed, since Tim had taken advantage of getting there first and sprawled out on it.

“You can sit at the foot,” Tim replied, his voice dripping with indifference.

“You can go lie down in your own room,” the brown-haired man argued back.

“It’s too far.” Tim didn't budge; instead, he rolled onto his back, apparently realizing that lying on his stomach after a big meal wasn't the best idea.

They continued their bickering, but Rowan’s attention was diverted by his phone vibrating in his pocket. Pulling it out, he found an unread message from Matteo. It came from his work number, which meant he was still on a mission, but hopefully out of danger.

“I’ll be back with you in a bit. Can you get me some clothes ready?” the hero’s message read. It was decided then that Rowan’s college friends would learn about his secret today, and the villain could not help the amused smile that crossed his face as he realized it. After all, he himself had always been irresponsible when it came to his own secret, never making much of a fuss when someone learned about his secret identity, and it seemed that his carelessness had rubbed off on his husband as well.

Zach and Tim continued their squabbling, moving from words to action as the brown-haired man decided to physically lift his friend off the bed. Naturally, Tim didn't cooperate, doing everything he could to make it even harder.

Rowan ignored them and instead went to his wardrobe to pick out some clothes for Matteo. He still did not have much there, and although he also had some of his husband’s clothes, he decided he preferred seeing him in his and chose his usual comfortable black outfit.

He had just enough time to bring the clothes to the bed when the atmosphere in the room suddenly shifted again, and this time not only Vanish appeared, but Citadel stood right beside him.

The older hero gave his nephew a nod in greeting before vanishing again, and Rowan could not suppress the amused smile that was his reaction to the silence that followed the arrival of one of the most famous heroes of this generation.

“Everything alright?” the villain asked his husband, scanning him from head to toe to make sure there were no injuries.

“Not a scratch,” Citadel assured him before turning his head toward the two students, who had frozen in an awkward position on the bed in the middle of fighting over space, staring at him as if an alien had just landed in front of them.

“Did I forget to mention that my husband is Citadel?” Rowan said in an innocent tone. At his words, the expressions of everyone in the room changed. The blond hero was visibly amused, while the two students finally seemed to snap out of their shock.

“Should we even know about this?” Tim asked, gesturing between them and the hero in white.

“No,” Rowan assured him before picking up the clothes from the bed and placing them into his husband’s hands. “But you’ll keep quiet, so it won’t be a problem.” He turned his gaze back to his friends.

“Of course,” Tim assured him immediately.

“Wait,” Zach finally found his voice. “Does Logan know about this?”

Rowan rolled his eyes. “What do you think?”

“That’s not fair,” Zach reacted quickly, standing up and bracing his hands against Tim’s stomach, drawing a grunt of protest from him. “I’m your roommate.”

“And I just bought you a burger,” the villain reminded him.

“Fair point.”

And just like that, his friends found out he was married to the hero of Goldby City—the one known across the state, if not the continent, for his merit and talent—and they proved exactly why their friendship worked so well.