Fair warning to readers new to this series: I don't bother with much in the way of recaps usually, and this story is no exception. You can certainly enjoy it on its own, but it will make a lot more sense (I think), if you were to start with Chapter 1. Regardless, as always, do not hold your breath for realism in my work. I aim to be plausibly ridiculous.
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A REPUTATION 3: STUDY BREAK
Monday was a much calmer day... at least at the start. Part of the culture of the School of Engineering is early classes. I was carrying a five-course load, and three covered engineering of various stripes. Those all met and were done before eleven on the days they were held. Russian and English Literature, my non-tech efforts, both met around lunch time, Monday-Wednesday-Friday and Tuesday-Thursday respectively. That meant my afternoons were always free. I saw it as a small(ish) price to pay, getting up at seven every morning in college, to have my afternoons completely free... mostly to work.
I was grabbing an early lunch, just before I had to run to Russian. I sat by myself with my reliable soup and salad. Even school meal programs can't screw up soup, right? (Spoiler Alert: They can.) I looked up to find our third floor RA, Shawn Maccan, and the RA from my own floor, Jimmy Banks, moving toward me, their food and books left a few tables away.
I looked up, curious. I was pretty sure that they weren't gong to hassle me about the shower incident, but I didn't know why else they would want to talk to me. I didn't make trouble, Mitch and I got along, and I wasn't the type to go to the RAs with emotional troubles. Besides, my only emotional trouble had been not getting laid, and rain had most definitely fallen in that desert. It would be a while before I'd whine about sex again!
"Will, can we talk to you?" Shawn asked as they reached me. Indicating that they should take a seat, I nodded happily. I was suddenly doing most things happily...
"Listen, Green," Jimmy started. He had gone to Exeter and has that preppie habit of calling all males by their last name, as if assuming that your Family is more important than you as an individual. "We both like Shawn's idea of doing a dorm thing to watch your vehicle competition. How about it?"
"Well, it is open to spectators," I smirked.
"Yeah," Jimmy said brusquely. "But are you yourself going to be competitive?"
I hesitated.
"Like I said before," Shawn added hastily, "I doubt that you want us bringing a whole bunch of house-mates to watch, if your vehicle is going to break on the first challenge."
"Yeah, that would be awkward," I said slowly. "But I'm still not sure that you are going to get a big turnout to watch paper and wood cars drive up a hill."
"Come on, Will. This is a pretty elite college," Shawn encouraged, understatedly. "Everybody's smart and recognizes a challenge. We'd get a decent crowd, since they would have someone to cheer for."
"
If
you are going to be competitive," Jimmy iterated. "Are you?"
I pursed my lips. "There are a lot of factors still fluid. It is mostly a matter of weight-to-structural integrity. Dale and I have sound designs for each functional component, and need only to make them sturdy enough, while still keeping the total mass low so as to be able to move. With what we accomplished this weekend, I know we are ahead of most of the field in all but that last bit. Each year, the mean number of vehicles that complete all the tasks without either breaking or needing modifications between the tests is three out of twenty-plus teams. There is still almost a month until the demonstration. I could tell you in about two weeks whether I'm going to be among that top three or not, okay?"
Shawn looked at me, easily comprehending the moving parts of what I was saying, like a Math major. Jimmy looked at me like a Sociology major. He heard 'two weeks', and was satisfied for now, discarding whatever the hell else I had said. Exeter or no, I always kind of felt that he was one of those members of our student body, the most 'elite' facet of whom was their Family. Nice guy. Smart. Not brilliant.
"Great," the red-headed Canadian smiled. "We don't have to do much beyond rounding up snacks to bring. There would be no other logistics, so we can decide to do it or not with two weeks out. Thanks, Will," she smiled and they turned away. Jimmy waved with a smile of his own, adding, "Thanks, Green. Now bear down. I'll be honest, we are behind our participation goals for dorm activities."
I watched them go. More accurately, I watched Shawn's lissome legs and graceful round butt, showcased un-self-consciously as always, in perfect pale blue jeans.
I snorted to myself. I had not wanted to be over-cocky, but there was zero chance that Dale and I were not going to be contenders. I was already sure that we could perform all tasks, and probably not break. After the weekend, I was proud to the point of smug about that little vehicle, even if it was Dale's new truss that was the key to holding it together. It just didn't pay to promise too much, too early.
*
I dashed through the rest of my lunch, and headed off to suffer through another boring, difficult Russian class. You would think that getting laid twice over the weekend, with two different women no less, might have calmed down my libido and let me concentrate on how krasniyeh my karandash was, but no.
At first, the usual distractions were worse. To be honest, I found myself speculating about how much fun my tall, hot (if admittedly boring in the classroom) professor would be, were we in a shower, instead of Room 310-2. I pondered rubbing soap all over her pale white skin, making sure her boobs were good and clean before getting all dirty... Her height would be a very good thing for sex standing up, I considered. We might not even need the bench.
A couple of times, early in the class, I tore my mind off Svetlana to try to learn something... only to imagine Elaine, currently sitting two seats to me right, barging into my shower instead...
Unusually, despite my even more over-active than usual imagination, I managed to learn a thing or two by the end of class. Ms. Godinova suddenly somehow remembered that there was such a thing as classroom participation and started springing questions on us instead of just droning on and on. Unfortunately for me, I was her first victim. My mind had been full of Elaine's tits, and I totally missed the question. When she repeated it, I made a hash of the answer. Fear of embarrassing myself like that again kept my eye on the ball for the rest of class. I doubt that I spent more than five minutes the rest of the way thinking about what kind of nipples Svetlana possessed, and how I'd like to choke on shower water running over them.
*
I liked to keep my academic life fairly regimented, and Mondays and Thursdays were my regular Study in the Sun days. La Floridita dorm was made up of four three-story 'houses' in a quadrangle, with facilities like the dining hall, dingy little laundry room, communal student kitchen, etc., filling in the spaces between. A cool feature of the complex was the wide catwalks connecting the houses on the third floor. Those catwalks were nice places to lie out in the sun and study... or lie out in the sun and take a nap with a book or laptop propped open as if studying. I almost always actually studied. If I am honest, most of my fellow students seemed to believe that they could absorb the material through an open book on their lap... if they just napped hard enough.
I went up to the catwalk between Houses 2 and 3, as was my habit, around four o'clock. The sun was not quite so harsh by that point, and I could lie in it, and get a little color in my skin without worrying too much about burning. It also meant that the area would be much less crowded than it usually was earlier in the day.
