[Someday, someday— someday is nice, Octavian thinks, for both the promise of it and the lack of an immediate rush to the finish. Here they can be content to say someday and trust each other to mean it, where to other people someday may have actually been absolutely not, ever.

So. Someday is nice. The sunset is lovely, Viktor's skinny shoulder is surprisingly comfortable— it's all very nice, here. As is Viktor's story about his parents and his Academy, which makes Octavian laugh; never loud, but his shoulders shake with the small sound of it, and that much is readily noticeable.]

You walked right in? They should have given you the keys to the whole campus.

[And also not pigeonholed him as that strange professor's assistant, but that's a topic for another time, too. Viktor's intellect is wasted being assistant to anybody, Octavian thinks, and there's something about being impressed by the work of a "student" and shifting him over into a position with arguably less upward mobility than an actual student that feels... odd. Feels closer to "discarded immediately" than it perhaps should, but, well, hell if University darling and local wealthy prodigy Octavian can really speak to that.

But it feels odd.]

Your parents must have been proud. Did they know? Before you walked in?

[Or was the uniform just a nice gift, and Viktor had other plans—]