3:46 A.M.

"ANDREI!"

A jolt. The world shifts and suddenly it's real again-- too hot in the dorm and under the sheets, face wet and heart winning a marathon.

His roommate's sitting straight up in bed, his eyes wide, one hand on the wall as if to assure himself it's still there. Shadows dissolve around him, shattered by his yell. He'd woken Andrei up.

"The room was..." he starts, staring at Andrei. And then he shakes his head, as if shaking off the last tendrils of trouble sleep and starts on a different topic. The room couldn't have been moving. The shadows couldn't have been grouping.

"You were having a nightmare."

Andrei nods, face pale and pulled into a grimace, eyes avoiding the stare of his roomie.

"Yeah. Fuck, I need a smoke..."

A few minutes later...

The residence doors bang open, allowing Andrei to pass through. His hair is rumpled, the streak of white spread through with the normal colour. There are dark circles under his eyes, though those are there more and more often these days. His keys hang around his neck. He's still in his pyjamas-- faded blue and grey striped bottoms and a plain white tank top. He threw his grey winter jacket on overtop to protect him from the cold and slipped a pair of sneakers on over bare feet.

A cigarette is already between his fingers as he's out the door, but he waits until he's by the ashtray to light it.

He takes a deep drag from the cancer stick then pulls it away from his mouth. his shoulderblades slam into the brick wall behind him and he slides into a sitting position, eyes squeezed shut, hands in his hair.

Silently, he sits in the cold night air, denying his dreams and ignoring his addiction.

Freak.

Out for a stroll, clearing his head of various organic substances that had been inhaled or ingested over the course of the night, he caught the sweet smell of ordinary tobacco on the night air. And smiled.

Tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he wandered toward the source, slumped against the wall of the dorms. The expression of predatory interest was gone by the time he stopped a step or two away.

"Got one to spare?" Zachriel inquired loosely, seemingly ignoring the younger man's apparent state of distraught.

Andrei opens his eyes just a bit and stares over at the wanderer. Even half-closed, his white eye stands out in comparison to his brown one.

Some other fucker out late. probably wants to rape me.

"Yeah, I got an extra..." he pulls his hands from his hair and shoves his lit cigarette between his lips, trailing ash. One hand fumbles inside his jacket pocket and he pulls out a pack, which he opens and holds up, offering Zachriel a cigarette.

Leaning down to take one of the offered cigarettes, Zachriel noted the white eye, and became infinitely more intrigued than he had been just a moment ago.

He straightened up and moved over to lean against the very same wall, lifting the death stick to his lips.

"Bit late to be out smoking, isn't it? Got a test you're worried about tomorrow?" he asked while fishing in his pocket for a lighter. It wasn't really a mocking question, but the hint of subtle taunt was there.

Andrei closes his eyes again. Had that been interest on the guy's face? he'd been looking at his eye.

"Fuck that," he says in tired tones to the question of a test tomorrow.

"Couldn't sleep."

The cig waggles as his lips move.

The lighter was caught, and lifted to the end of the cigarette. Flame licked over paper and dried leaf, and was inhaled hungrily.

"Oh," Zachriel exhaled, dropping the lighter back into his pocket and letting his head fall back against the brick.

"Bad dreams? Too much caffeine?"

"Nightmares."

Jeez, I must be tired.

"Not that it's any of your business." He pulls his legs up against him and drapes his arms over his knees, eyes still shut.

"I know it's not. Call me curious," Zachriel replied with a loose shrug, taking the cylinder from his mouth and tapping it a few times to dislodge the ashes.

"What kind of nightmares?"

"Fucking Dorothy in Oz, I don't know." He pulls the cogarette from his mouth and gestures tersely, ash fluttering off the end.

"Just dreams, man. You don't remember them." Strange dreams. Someone else's nightmare.

Fucking Dorothy in Oz...now that would be fun...

Zachriel shook his head briefly, opening his eyes and taking another puff.

"Yeah, I know the sort. Shake you up, and you don't remember why."

"Nightmares don't make a whole lot of fucking sense," Andrei says, in what is pretty much an agreement. He glances over at Zachriel. White eye, brown eye.

"What're you doing out so late?"

A smile aimed at the ground passed over his expression.

"Walking home from a few stops at the clubs."

The kid snorts, and smoke curls out of his nose.

"Y'don't sound that drunk," he says, assuming that ' a few stops at the clubs' means 'going out to get hammered' for this stranger as it does for University students. Maybe he is a university student-- Andrei can't really tell.

Amused tilt of his head as he glanced down at the student with Death's eye.

"Alcohol consumption to the point of getting senselessly hammered is for weekends. Week nights are for...higher forms of enlightenment."

"If that's a euphemism for getting high, it's a really damn obvious one," the kid mentions casually, taking another long drag off of his cigarette.

"Yes. I agree. But why not be obvious, hm?" Zachriel mused, well manicured nail knocking lightly against the end of his cig again.

"Iunno, modesty?" Almost mocking. Maybe joking.

He glances at Zachriel again. Fuck. His eyes are acting up again. The left one is trying to tell him something different from the right.

"Ah, modesty. Now where, I ask, is the fun in that?" he wanted to know, perhaps asking it of the kid, or of the cosmos in general, as his eyes had drifted back to the surrounding night.

The kids takes his eyes off Zachriel and waits for his vision to go back to normal. it's back to normal as soon as he looks away from Zach, but he ignores that.

"How the fuck should I know?" if it had been said in any toher tone, it would ahve been a challenge. It's not.

"Oh, well. Think about it sometime. Or maybe don't. Those who think too much do less," Zachriel observed with a half-smile, thinking of a certain dove who buried himself with thoughts.

"I'll take it you're not an intellectual type, then," Andrei replies, knocking the ash off his cig and taking another drag.

"Intellectual, no. Intelligent...well, it has been said of me, through usually not in so polite a term." A fleeting smirk, blocked by his cigarette-holding fingers.

"Mmhmm." Cocky bastard.

"So, you got a name?"

Cig to lips. Inhale. Hold. Blow smoke. The modern dragon, breathing fire.

"Indeed I do. It's Luke, so glad you asked."

He dropped his cig, the mouth end too moist now for his liking. The embers are snuffed out by the toe of his shoe as his hands find their way back to his pockets.

"And you?"

"Andrei." Four in the morning's no time for last names.

He barely shifts position.

'Luke' sank down to a sitting position next to Andrei, clasping his hands loosely and letting them dangle between peaked knees.

"Andrei. That's different."

"It's Russian," he says, used to explaining. he'd rather expplain his name than his odd eye, anyways.

"On the plus side, I don't have to worry about having the same name as about twenty other people in every group of ten." Yes, it's mathematically incorrect. He's obliquely insulting Luke's name.

"Really, neither do I. The full name is Lucian. I do believe it's Roman," Luke said matter-of-factly, fully knowing that Andrei probably gave little to no damn.

"It's a nice name, though. Andrei."

"Mm," he says, twisting his lips for a moment.

"Lucian's pretty good. Kinda femmie."

"Why thank you." The tone was courteous, and completely sincere, and was dropped entirely with the next question.

"So, can you see out of that white eye of yours?" Something to be said for being blunt. But it's just not going to be said.

"That's a new one," says Andrei, amusement and pique warring with each other in his voice.

"Yeah, I can see out of it." Most of the time.

"Mm. Good to hear. I'd hate to think that a mark that unusual would double as a disability."

Perhaps odd, how he doesn't dismiss it as a contact lens.

Andrei's had it dismissed as a contact too often to worry about when it's not.

"It's practically a fucking disability anyways," he mutters. Bitter tones. Acrid cigarette smoke.

Yup, that's Andrei.

"Now why do you say that? I find it quite...exotic. Reminds me a bit of someone I know."

A smile. A thoroughly satisfied smile, actually, at the thought of that particular someone.

Andrei opens his eyes in time to catch the smile, and offers a sour expression in return. A smile like that's as good as boasting. Bastard.

"Yeah, well, they'd be a first. I ain't never met anyone with an eye like this." His grammar's slipping, but it's very early in the morning.

"Surely you must have gotten it from somewhere," Luke stated with disbelief.

"Inherited trait, I should think. Or birth defect?"

"Birth defect," he says, taking a drag from the cigarette.

Obviously his mom never really spoke about his father.

"Mm," came the reply, not challenging what was said, but not really agreeing with it, either.

"I suppose your," he pauses, unsure what to call the sort of relationship Lucian had implied, "Your friend had the same birth defect, did she?" of course he assumes it's a she.

He takes another hit off the cancer stick, obviously thinking this to be unlikely.

"Indeed he did, except I doubt that it was a defect in him, as it was both eyes that were white," Lucian replied, able to vividly picture the gaze in his mind's eye and getting a happy little shiver at the thought.