Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/7430953.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      Gen
  Fandom:
      Pundit_&_Broadcast_Journalist_RPF_(US), Pundit_RPF, Real_News_RPF, Real
      Person_Fiction, Original_Work
  Character:
      Original_Male_Character(s), Original_Female_Character(s), Anderson
      Cooper, Reader, You, male_or_female_reader
  Additional Tags:
      Relationships_to_be_added_-_Freeform, Character_tags_to_be_edited,
      Interns_&_Internships, live_broadcasting, Angst, Terror, Fluff, Pain,
      injuries, Death, Lots_of_other_stuff, Leadership, Hero_Complex,
      Terrorism, Panic_Attacks, unsteady_chapter_updates, College, nerds
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-07-08 Updated: 2016-08-08 Chapters: 4/? Words: 6068
****** Terror on the Airwaves ******
by UniversalTalent
Summary
     Anderson's intern has to be prepared for anything.
Notes
     There's not much character development in this chapter, just
     something of a short exposition and intro.
     Expect a lot of updates and edits.
See the end of the work for more notes
***** A brief introduction *****
Sometimes I really wish I didn’t care so much about my career. I mean, in
general. Seriously, who takes 18 credit hours their first semester?! And who
the fuck double majors in PoliSci and Astronautical engineering at Columbia
College, arguably the hardest school in the nation for each of the degrees
individually?!
 
You rub your eyes in Dr. Nom’s class and lean back in the hard light blue
chair. It’s a political philosophy class, the kind of stuff you did for fun in
your freshman year of highschool. It’s a required credit for poli sci and it
counts as an elective for aerospace engineering, so, it could be worse.
 
You bite your bottom lip as your eyes drift to the corners of the room in
concentration.
How much sleep had you gotten in the past week?
You start scribbling down numbers where you’re supposed to be taking notes.
Monday- 2 hours
Tuesday-3 hours
You didn’t sleep on wednesday
Thursd-
 
“(Y/n)?”
 
Your eyes shoot open and do a quick survey the room around you. The boy next to
you looks at you with expecting concern. You feel your neck crawling as the
people in the row behind you look down on you.  Everyone was watching you,
including Dr. Nom.  You feel your face heat up.
 
"Y/n, can you answer the question?"
You turn a shade of bright, almost orange red.  He sighs and rolls his eyes.  
 
“The question was, how does societal justice differ from true moral equity?”
Dr. Nom looks at you with an unwavering neutral expression.  It was like he was
challenging you.
 
And you gladly rose to the challenge.  To be quite frank, You could have
answered that in your sleep.  The heat in your face dissipates.  You keep your
expression just as neutral as your professor as the entirety of the class
watched.
 
“The goal of societal justice is to attain moral equity. By definition equity
is a question of whether or not something is just based upon ideals-”
 
Your expression stayed neutral but a small smile began to appear on your
teacher's face.  He folded his arms and leaned on his desk while watching you.
 All eyes were on you but you didn’t care.  All you were doing was answering a
question.
 
“-Society attempts to define and achieve equity through justice. When a
criminal is brought to trial before a judge and a jury, it’s society's way of
attempting to achieve it’s most righteous version of justice by deciding within
the parameters of the case, which actions where just, by deciding which ideals
are most prevalent.”
 
“And what of equality?”
 
“Equality doesn’t have to have anything to do with it, sir. Equality might be
an ideal to strive for as equity, but, true moral equity is about fairness and
is concerned with what is just.”
 
The professor sighed. He was in his late 30s, maybe ten or twenty years older
than some of the people in that room. He wore a grey sweater vest over a blue/
white shirt. His hair was black and unkempt, his eyes were blue and tired, as
though he slept almost as much as Y/n.
 
You watched him glance at the clock. 3:15 it read, class ended in two minutes.
 
 
“Alright, pages 61-83-” The professor cut off as a collective groan made its
way through the class.
“Don’t give me that or I’m extending it, now, if you want to-” He was cut off
again by the sound of a bell.
“Due next Tuesday at the beginning of class. Take notes!!” He shouted after
students as they left.
You packed up your things and lifted your backpack. Five textbooks, seven
notebooks, and miscellaneous hazardous waste made your backpack almost as heavy
as you. You started your way down the lecture hall and almost made your way out
the door.
 
“(Y/n), I want to talk to you.”
You turn around, your next class was in 20 minutes and all the way across
campus.
“Dr. Nom?”
Everybody else had left the classroom except you and your professor.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Your face skewed in what felt like confusion.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble.” He said it with a smile.
You weren’t worried anyways but whatever made him feel better.
He leaned back on his desk and folded his arms in a questioning manner his
mouth set in an unforgiving line. You were not intimidated.
 
“You seem bored in my class.”
You feel your face twist again and you open your mouth to say something.
Dr. Nom held up his hand stopping you.
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you never pay attention in class. You
never pay attention but you always know the answers whenever you’re called on.
You always do your work in group projects or when it’s required of you, but,
you never opt to take the extra study work. I’ve realized that I’ve never seen
you take notes nor seen your notes from studying, and yet, you always receive
the top marks on all of my tests that I design myself, that half of the class
fails.”
 
You watched him and waited for him to speak again.  Seeing that you had nothing
to interject, or an explanation to offer, he continued.
 
“I don’t know if this class is disinteresting to you in general, but what I
have deduced is that you are extremely intelligent and you seem to really know
what you're doing and have it down."
 
You cock your head for a second before shrugging your shoulders.  

“I like you, you have a lot of potential, and, as a teacher, I’ve come to
realize there’s nothing I can offer you. I don’t know why you didn’t test out
of this class and I don’t need to know. But I would like to offer you an
opportunity. A shot at an internship.”
Your brows unfurrow as you understand what he’s saying and immediately know you
don’t have time for it.
“Thank you sir, but I-”
He held up his hand again.
“An internship at CNN.”
Ah.
That made a difference.
***** Joshing me right? *****
Chapter Summary
     Some character development
     Expect edits to this chapter
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
You barely made it to calculus on time. You literally ran in the door, picked a
random seat in the front row of the lecture hall, dropped your 70 pound
backpack and sat down next to someone you didn’t know.
The bell rang 5 seconds after you sat down and you sighed with relief and
almost giggled. The teacher wasn’t there yet so you bent over and got your
notebook, you actually did take notes in calc, but only because you needed to
memorize equations.
“Hi.”
You straightened in your seat and turned towards where the sound came from to
see a small smile and uncertain tone from the boy next to you.
You gave a small smile in return and a significantly-more-confident-than-his
“hi.”
“I’m Josh, I just transferred from Yale.” He upped the ante on his confidence,
and gave you a full smile.
You sized him up. He wore blue jeans and a tight tee shirt that wasn’t quite
too small, but still managed to hug his torso. He was muscular, but not super
buff or definitively, like his muscles weren’t for show and he actually ate. He
was tall and had an oval shaped face that still hung onto the remnants of
teenage acne. He had brown eyes and thick black hair.
You were about to respond when your calculus teacher walked into the room. She
was a stout woman of asian descent who went by the name of Dr. Myin.
She wrote words on the chalkboard and spoke as she did.
“Does anybody know anything about the Schroder-Bernstein Theorem?” She hadn’t
assigned any reading last wednesday so it wasn’t meant to be a trick question.
You raised your hand, and were the only person in the class to do so.
“Y/n?”
You nodded as you spoke as though you were absolutely certain in your answer.
“It has to do with incorporating injective and bijective functions.”
“Very good Y/n.”
She turned back to the chalk board.
“At this level, you’re generally supposed to know what the terms injective and
bijective mean when applied to functions, but if you don’t, that’s perfectly
fine as long as you put in some extra work.”
She wrote down examples of each.
“Does anyone know how to combine these two functions, it’s alright if no one
does.”
You raised your hand.
Dr. Myin sighed and gestured for you to go up to the board. You did. Everyone
was watching you, but, that had never seemed to bother you. You picked up your
chalk and let the tip rest against the board.
“Wait, I want you to explain as you go.”
You stopped and considered for a minute before drawing two circles.
“So I guess I wasn’t going to bother with the surjective diagram, but I guess-”
You wrote an A above one circle and a B above the other.
“So an injective function only allows for specific solutions and causations
that can never be surjective.”
You drew lines from dots you made in A to B. You then mirrored the process of
drawing two circles and combining them through lines only you labeled these
surjective.
You talked as you drew.
“Both of these are a deviant of a general function, a general function only
moves straight from point A to point B. A surjective function and an injective
function-neither of them will ever be general functions.”
You moved your chalk to the area above the three function diagrams and repeated
the circle process one last time, this time, labeled bijective.
“This function is both surjective and injective and, therefore, a general
function. The way I do it, is I work off of the general function like so.” You
drew lines from the different functions to the general diagram.
“That’s basically how I lay down the path I’m going to take to solve this. I
then combine. . . “
You stopped talking as you drew out the combinations.
“After you combine, you draw out the final function.”
You finished and set your chalk down and turned to look at the teacher who
glanced at the students and nodded her head towards them. You smiled and turned
back to the class.
“Any questions?”
You saw that everybody was furiously scribbling down notes of what you’d just
drawn.
“Thank you Y/n.”
You nodded and went back to your seat.
“Now what I want you to do with this is-” You stopped paying attention not even
30 seconds in. It took you another 30 seconds entirely to realize that Josh was
staring at you. You glanced over and did a double take.
“What?” You whispered at him.
“How did you know how to do that?”
“It’s simple, all you have to know-”
“Y/n am I interrupting something?”
You spocked an eyebrow at your teacher. “Yes.” You replied.
“Since you already seem to know the material, how about you write me a little
report. Advanced transversal wave theorems, 12 pages on my desk next Monday.”
The look in her eyes just dared you to protest. Or, you guessed, not.
You rocked forward in your chair.
“Does that mean I can go to the library now?”
“Yes, and you.” She gesticulated towards Josh, her arms moving as if to usher
him out of his seat “You, you go with her. You’re helping her write that report
and will both be held accountable for the results.”
You didn’t even glance back. The teacher was right, you did know everything.
Everything you didn’t know you could figure out, that was how math worked after
all. You picked up your backpack and saw Josh doing the same as the teacher
continued with the lesson you didn’t care about. You walked out the door,
pulled out your phone and walked in the direction of the parking lot, which
happened to be opposite the library.
You walked at a steady pace towards your destination. Josh emerged about 2
seconds after you did, looked down the hall both ways, saw you, and quickly
caught up.
“I thought we were going to the library?”
You made that face that Obama did when he was asked about his plans for nuclear
war with Russia.
“So we aren’t going to the library?”
You shrugged your shoulders.
“I don’t know, I just figured that I would do it sometime this weekend.”
He kept looking at you.
“Well, aren’t we supposed to do it together?”
You stopped walking and cocked your head to the side and looked at him. You
couldn’t remember when the last time a group project had actually been a group
project. You usually did all the work yourself.
“Wait, do you actually want to help?”
His eyebrows furrowed.
“Well, yeah, it’s supposed to be our project.”
Your eyes widened a little and you nodded as a grin slowly formed on your face.
“Alright, let’s go to the library.”
***
You had been in the library for the last three hours. The essay had lasted
about 45 minutes, the rest was spent talking to Josh.
“Your turn.”
“Okay, why are you even here. Like, it doesn’t even seem like you need to learn
anything they teach.”
You had begun playing a game that Josh had suggested. You took turns answering
questions about your selves that the other asked.
You sighed, this was when people usually left. They got intimidated or
something and drifted away. It was usually fine with you, you didn’t really
like being in social situations anyway, but, you really liked Josh. You were
pretty sure this was the longest you’d sat in one place since last summer, and
he was interesting to talk to.
You kind of shifted uncomfortably as you answered.
“Higher education is really just a formality for me.” You crinkled your
eyebrows. “I basically have a guaranteed position wherever I want to go after I
graduate, I just needed to have the title to back my name. I’ve been the third
ranked mathematician in the United States since I turned 15.” You shifted even
more uncomfortably.
“That was when the government began testing me, to see what my limits were,
and, from then on I got attention from different organizations, offering to pay
for my education or, to guarantee me something in exchange, if I would work for
them.”
Josh just looked at you.
“So who’s paying for your school.”
You scratched the back of your head awkwardly.
“I didn’t take anyones contracts, I got a scholarship through the school, I’m
on a two year track, I’ll have two bachelor's degrees at the end of next year.”
He was still just looking at you gaping.
“Wait, how old are you?”
You blinked and sighed.
“17, I graduated at 16.”
He just kind of stared at you. Then he broke into. . . to a grin. Huh, that was
new.
“That’s amazing!”
You switched from nervousness to confusion. Even your own parents had been
scared of you.
“Your turn to ask me a question.”
You were silent and staring, almost in awe. How could this be? You thought a
second longer. This was the longest conversation you’d had with someone who
didn’t want something from you in forever.
“Y/n?”
“Yeah, um, uh, where are you from?” You wanted to punch yourself it was such a
lame question.
Air rushed out of his lips and he nodded.
“Well I’m from Indiana. I lived in Colorado until I turned 10, um my birth
parents were abusive and I had a spotty schooling record until my parents were
arrested, I was taken by social services and I was adopted about 6 months
later, then my new parents wanted me to go to an IB school, so they moved me to
Indiana-”
You felt a tear slip out the corner of your left eye. It surprised you, you
never cried. Your hand brushed your cheek and came back wet. You were supremely
confused.
“Why are you crying for me?”
His voice was soft, almost hoarse, almost laced with concern. You were startled
out of your reverie.
“Uh, um, no, it’s, ah-”
He kept looking at you.
“Uh, my birth parents, er, my Mom gave me up for adoption and I-I was adopted
by a family that didn’t uh, really want me after I, um, I turned 12.”
“Oh.”
There was a moment of silence before. You broke it while clearing your cheeks
of tears.
“I’m sorry, I don’t-I mean I’m not usually-uh.”
Josh was frowning at the table.
“It’s your turn.”
He looked back up at you. “Where are you from?”
You shook yourself of unwanted emotions with the shake of your head.
“I’m not positive, but, I’m pretty sure I was born in Nevada, I don’t know
where. I was adopted by a family that already had four other children.”
You looked down at the table without moving your head
“My adopted parents moved me to South Dakota and I went to public school when I
turned 12. I must have never played well enough with the other kids because as
soon as my parents could I started testing for admissions to private boarding
schools. I got scholarships and I rarely saw my adopted family after that. Last
year, my senior year, I didn’t even go back and I haven’t heard from them since
I graduated.”
You were biting your lip and looking off to the corners of the room in thought.
You lifted your head and quirked the right side of your lips.
“My turn.”
Josh had listened intently throughout the entire story and slowly nodded in
conciet.
“Alright, why did you transfer to Columbia? Yale is basically the same
difficulty and you would have been closer to your family.”
His face actually visibly lit up.
“I’m here to try for an internship.”
Huh, all the way to New York for an internship. CNN might not even be-
“Wait, an internship for CNN?”
His face got more intense.
“Yeah!”
Chapter End Notes
     So, this is kind of my learning work
     I'm trying to experiment, writing different ways before I post and
     stuff
     any suggestions or criticism I am definitely open to
     It's a work in progress, and thanks for reading
***** Sleep is over rated *****
Sleep was a precious commodity, when you could afford it. Sleeping on
weeknights was an almost ludicrous expectation. You usually planned on not
sleeping, even when you didn’t have to work on anything. So when someone
decides to disturb your sleep on a wednesday night-
The swift rapping on the door came again.
You groaned and flipped over to look at the clock.  Rubbing your eyes you
sighed, this was the closest thing to a decent night's sleep you’ve had in
weeks.  At 5:08am another round of knocking came.  There were no classes for
another hour and your first class didn’t even start until 8 who would even-?
“Y/n, it’s Josh!”
He sounded urgent and excited.
Why.
Just. . . Why?
“Coming.” You sighed and got out of bed making your zombie esque way over the
the door. You opened the door irritation obvious on your face.
“5 o’ fucking clock in the morning Jo-”
“Results are up.”
Your eyes widened.
“Shit, let’s go.”
***
Two weeks after you heard from Dr. Nom, you had submitted your application to
CNN. There were essays and projects and recommendations that you had to get
through, but, you did it. You and Josh worked together on everything that you
submitted. Proofreading and fact checking and making absolutely positively sure
that you each had the best shot you could at the internship.
CNN took four interns from across the United States. You had to be invited by
someone, like a professor, to even submit an application at all. Students from
non-New York colleges usually moved to one of the Ivy colleges within the
state. The internships cycled through every semester, so, they were applying
for the second semester internship. You usually had to schedule your classes
around the CNN schedule, which, was okay with you.
About a week after you first submitted your application, and three weeks before
the end of the first semester, you were called in, along with 12 other students
to interview. You met anchors and producers and all other manners of people,
you learned what your job might entail, what hours you’d probably work, and,
whose orders you’d be following. Josh was not called in to interview.
He didn’t talk to you much for about three days. It kind of hurt and you were
kind of lonely. Josh was the closest thing you’d had to a friend in a long
time. On the fourth day you got coffee. On the fifth day, you invited him over
for a movie. He accepted, you watched the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy. On
the sixth day you found out there was going to be another interview session.
They called in 8 people, none of which they had called the last time. Josh was
one of them.
You put together the most likely candidates out of the sessions each of you
went to.
“I think the asian Berkeley kid from mine really impressed Wolf.”
Josh nodded and moved the name up the list.
“What about that Turkish girl?”
You gave it some thought before nodding
“Yeah, she was pretty good. What about that CalTech kid?”
He looked up blankly.
“Which CalTech kid?”
You sighed.
“You know, the physics one, tall, skinny-”
You stopped talking as a smirk spread across Josh's face.
“What?”
“The one you had a crush on.” His smile was positively devious.
You rolled your eyes and looked down at the names.
“Gabe Spahn, was his name, I’d put him second.”
“Okay.” He said wiggling his eyebrows.
You looked down at the list.
“Who are our top four?”
He wrote something down last minute.
“Raj Sai is our top from Dartmouth. Second is Gabe Spahn from CalTech. Third
Alan Zhu from Berkeley. Fourth is Eda Uzunlar from MIT.”
You didn’t include yourselves in your list. But you talked about your
performances. Your main questioner had been Anderson Cooper. He seemed nice
enough and gave your responses fair notes. One of the producers had came up and
talked to Josh after his interview complimenting him. Other than that they had
almost nothing to go off of.
Even if they made it, they would only have two days to figure out their
schedules, signing up at the last possible times.
“If you don’t get the internship, are you moving back to Yale?”
Josh sighed looking out the car windshield as snow began to fall on their way
back from a late study session at an all night coffee house.
“Well, not this semester at least.”
You nodded and turned your gaze back to the road.
Monday’s, Tuesday’s and Friday’s you had calculus together. Wednesday’s and
Tuesday’s you had honors physics. You both had a special class offered on
Saturday nights, though, it wasn’t the same class, the rest of Saturday and
Sunday you both had off, as was required for first year students.
You sometimes hung out on weekends and often studied together. He was your
first friend in a long time. There were nights you would practically spend in
each other's dorms, though, Josh's dorm was across campus in open housing, so,
he had something of a room mate. You lived in Broadway honors hall, about ¾ of
the way across the campus from Josh’s dorm in an old but well kept brick
building. Your room was slightly bigger and was a corner room, so your only
close neighbor was a spanish girl to the left.
You had a car from when you worked in highschool, but, you avoided taking it
anywhere because you wouldn’t be able to work for gas money until summer. You
had about a thousand dollars saved up if you really needed it. If you were
really desperate, you could go to the government and that would be that.
That was a last resort. If you had a debt to pay back the government, there was
no getting out of it. You would probably would have ended up working for them
for a good 20 years if you had let them pay for your college.
So, when you went anywhere, Josh usually drove. He had a 1993 chevy pickup that
had a greenish type color, black, and silvery color scheme. He had money to pay
for gas and had his family to fall back on.
You nodded.
“From South Dakota, the first star you would usually see from the west was
jupiter or sometimes mars. I was up north-ish-kind of so you would always see
the big dipper.”
You were laying in josh’s truck bed talking about the stars you were looking
at. He looked at you for a while before speaking.
“I grew up mostly in the city so I never really saw stars or had a chance to go
stargazing.”
He turned on his side to look at you.
“Why did you choose to go into aerospace engineering?”
“I don’t know, I guess, I just feel like space is the next big step for
humanity. Not only that but I feel like it’s going to be a deciding factor in
what course of action we, as a species, choose to take. I guess, I really want
to be a part of that.”
He looked down and played with the blanket for a few moments.
“I’ve only known you for a few weeks, but-” He looked back up at you. “-I think
you’re the closest friend I’ve ever had.”
You didn’t move.
“Josh, I think you’re the only friend I’ve ever had.”
Almost a month after submitting your first applications, you were racing down
Broadway street at 5:10 am in the upper west end of a half-sleeping New York
city.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Why were the results posted at 5 am on a Wednesday morning? You had no idea.
How did Josh know that the results were being posted at 5 am on a Wednesday
morning. You had no idea.
Josh's truck screeched to a halt outside the Time Warner Company building at 5:
15 in the morning, 6 minutes after they had left, which was pretty impressive
considering it took 14 minutes to get there legally.
You jumped out of the truck as soon as Josh parked, with him following two
steps behind, and raced into the building before you had time to remember you
were both still in your pajamas. It didn’t matter, the only other people who
were in the immediate lobby, were the two janitors and the security guard
manning the security desk, the secretary wasn’t even there yet.
The guard saw you, yawned and smiled gesturing down the left hall to where a
small group of about 5 other college-age people were gathered, half of which
were dressed in pajamas. You shouldered your way to the front to get a look at
the names, you noticed, as you tried to pull him through, that you had taken
hold of Josh’s wrist. You tried your hardest to get a look at the list, but
there were two people in front of you and you were too short. Josh however was
6’2”.
And he was practically vibrating with excitement, jumping up and down.
“Y/n, y/n, the first four names are-”
***
“Gabriel Spahn, Joshua Morin-Baxter, Y/n, Alan Zhu. . .” The first morning show
producer surveyed you for a minute “Go get coffee.” He shoved a list into
Gabe’s hand with everybody’s orders. “Take one of the company vans.” He tossed
Alan some keys. He held up a plastic card. “This is a company card, if you’re
not stupid, you don’t get fired.” He handed it to you. You stared at it
blankly.
The producer walked away, leaving the four of you in a kind of nervous/
disappointed/confused stupor.
The newsroom was thriving with people. Rushing this way and that setting up
everything. People were actually running to set up lights and camera techs were
jostling their equipment, trying to get the best possible angles.
You all just kind of stared at each other. This isn’t what you’d been expecting
at all. None of you anticipated that you would be getting coffees, though, in
hindsight that’s kind of what interns do. Everyone seemed as though they had
their own task. No one was giving you direct instruction. No one seemed to
care.
“Um, I guess there’s a dunkin donuts across the street?” You broke the silence
as you glanced around at the people next to you. Alan opened his mouth to speak
but was cut off by a tech jogging to their camara.
“Chris and Alysin don’t like dunkin donuts.” You turned and cocked your head as
you stared at him. He looked middle-eastern, probably pakistinian or Arab. He
looked like he was in his early 20’s.
He had a prosthetic leg.
You quickly turned back ignoring looks from Josh. You bit your lip in thought.
It was a habit you had picked up.
“Alright, there’s a Starbucks down the street?” You suggested. You could feel
the nervous tension emanating from the three boys. None of them were saying
anything and you couldn’t figure out why.
“Jim doesn’t like Starbucks.” You heard the camera man call from behind you.
You rolled your eyes and sighed. Despite it being an anti climactic first task,
you still wanted to do as well as you could. You felt your brows furrow. How
many other coffee places could there actually be. You turned back around still
biting your lip.
“Where should we go for coffee then.” You asked the tech. He looked up from the
camera he was fiddling with and smiled.
“There’s an irish place two streets down. That’s where the last interns figured
out everyone liked. They’ll actually be really impressed. Coffee’s actually a
very big deal around here.”
He stopped what he was doing and walked over to your group, still smiling. He
stuck out his hand. You looked at it for a second, surprised and almost
suspicious. You took his hand and shook it, careful only to reciprocate the
force he applied to your hand.
“My name is Talha, I’m the main tech around here. I always like to meet the new
interns.”
He grinned and put his hands on his hips.
“If you ever need help and I’m not busy with a show yet, feel free to ask.”
You glanced down and unintentionally looked at his prosthetic leg. He wasn’t
bothered at all. And you turned to stare at a wall. Gabriel had started talking
and making introductions.
It wasn’t until Josh tapped your arm and you looked up that you realised you
were supposed to introduce yourself.
“Oh, sorry, my name’s Y/n.” You tried to smile but didn’t know how it looked on
you. It must have been fine because Talha smiled back.
“Well, New Day, that’s the first show, starts in an hour so, that gives you
enough time to make it to the coffee shop and back-”
His words blurred again. You were vaguely aware of the rest of the
conversation. You turned back to your group.
“Y/n?” This time it wasn’t just Josh expressing concern.
“It’s fine, I’m fine we need to go.”
Without another word you turned and walked away towards the stairs that led to
the parking garage. Josh caught up with you. He looked like he was about to ask
something before the other two caught up as well.
“That was really weird.” You said it to know one in particular about nothing in
particular.
Gabriel looked at you and then nodded.
“Yeah, who doesn’t like dunkin donuts?”
You stopped walking and looked at him for about two seconds before you burst
out laughing.
Everyone was smiling after that.
***
“Call me Gabe.”
You were on your way back, you decided to take the van after further inspection
of Gabe’s list, which had over 50 different orders on it.
You were sitting in the back of the van, steadily balancing about five trays of
coffee on your lap. You would have taken the front seat next to Josh but Gabe
called shotgun infinity when he was 12.
“So, you’re both moving to Columbia?”
Alan pushed his glasses up. He was a skinny attractive asia, a year younger
than you, 15, but already at Berkeley. He had gotten special government
permission, like you, to skip most of his high school education. His major was
computer science with minors in law and chemistry.
“Yeah, it’s the closest upper ranking school to the CNN broadcasting station.”
He had his laptop out almost perpetually, at least, he’d had it out for the
last 18.36 minutes, which of course didn’t include the time it took to load the
coffees. He was quiet. But, he wasn’t shy. From what you’d gathered he was more
calculating than anxious, though, the two go hand in hand. His humor thus far
had been filled with snark in its most charming form. He reminded you of you,
but you would never tell him because he obviously wasn’t an emotional or
sentimental person.
Gabe was a different story.
“How much coffee do we actually have? Did anyone actually count?” Josh was
driving the service van like it was a bus.
Gabe scrunched his face and moved his hands like he was counting the numerous
trays filled with the caffeinated sugar that comes from coffee shops across
America.
“Hella.”
He grinned like a snake.
Gabe was a tall, lanky, college sophomore with brown hair and pale skin. He was
the same age as Josh, 18, and had the same major, mathematics. He was witty,
charming and from Canada. He was taking a lot longer to figure out than anyone
else.
“Hey Josh how much time do we have left before the show starts.” You asked as
the service vehicle pulled into the parking garage.
“Uh. . . 35 minutes on the dot.”
“Kay, let’s go.”
***
Shows lasted from 30 minutes to three hours throughout the day. You worked from
5-11 then had a 6 hour ‘break’ to do the majority of your classes and some
homework then were back by 5. You stayed through Anderson Cooper live, did
clean up and then went back to campus. You took night classes as well, managing
to somehow max out your credit hours at 16, but taking less strenuous options.
You got at least 5 hours of sleep a night and designed your schedule so you’d
have enough time to nap in between classes and work.
The single room in open housing you had at the beginning of the year was a last
minute arrangement when a special needs student needed your spot in an all
female dorm. First semester freshmen generally don’t get the open housing
option unless they have a specific gender need. Since you were second semester
now you could apply normally. You could apply for a roommate or for a single
room.
“Y/n!”
You turned to see Josh jogging behind you. He, as you had found out earlier
that week, had been a tracklete in high school and, you already knew, went for
jogs in the evening. You had been on your way to apply for open housing and
consign yourself to whatever roommate you got.
“We should apply for a room together!” He said it as soon as he got close
enough to not have to shout.
It honestly hadn’t occurred to you that you could room with your best friend.
You slept in each other's dorms all the time so why not?
You broke into a wide grin.
***
For weeks everything went perfectly. You and Josh moved into a room in the
Broadway dorm on the fourth floor. Alan and Gabe moved in next to you. You had
overlapping classes with everyone. You had required freshman bio with Alan, you
guys spent most of that classes talking about calculus. You had your first
junior level math class with gabe and your last standard one with Josh. You had
chemistry with Gabe and Alan. Physics with Josh and Gabe and PE with all four.
It was kind of incredible. In a school with more than 30,000 people,
coordinating schedules almost never worked, but it had for the four of you.
You had movie nights every friday after work, you had time off on Saturdays and
Sundays, so the four of you would hang out, often going out into the city until
you went into work.
It was perfect.
You were happy
End Notes
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