Okay, so... I wanted to write a Thing for Trojan Appreciation Week but due to personal reasons I didn’t get much done. Here's the beginning that I did write! It doesn‘t make much sense, so I apologize in advance.
Jean looked up from his phone and felt the urge to kick Alvarez under the table. “Why are you always staring at Laila?”
Laila looked up from her notebook and smirked. “She’s gay for me.”
“I’m your girlfriend,” Alvarez said in a duh kinda tone, but the way she was still looking at Laila said that she was really, undoubtedly, forever in love with her.
“Ughhhhhh,” Jean drawled. “Please don’t have eye sex with each other, I am too single to be exposed to this.”
“Who’s single?” A new voice piped in, and a guy with brown hair pulled a chair up next to Jean and Laila.
“Me, Michael,” Jean answered. He pulled a dose of Pringles out of his backpack and opened it. “You’re supposed to make a ‘single-pringle’ joke,“ he added when nobody said anything, shoving a few in his mouth and chewing.
“You’re eating more than one pringle, though,” Michael thought out loud.
Jean ughhhhhhhhed again, longer and louder. “Life is exhausting, at least don’t judge me for the amount of unhealthy, overpriced, fake potatoes I’m eating.”
Michael shrugged. “All right, bro.” His face lit up, and he excitedly poked Alvarez out of her staring-at-Laila and Laila out of her I’m-an-intellectual-looking-and-typing-on-my-notebook. “Jeremy is throwing a pre-pride party this weekend! I assume you’re coming?”
“Absolutely, I love Jeremy’s parties,” Alvarez said dead pan.
“We’ll come, of course, the decoration is always the best,” Laila continued in the same tone, face blank.
Jean raised his eyebrows. “Am I missing something?”
Michael looked at him confusedly for a moment. “Oh right! We literally met two days ago! You only recently moved to Vienna?”
Jean just looked at him.
“Right, yeah, the party,” Michael explained. “Jeremy is this super cool dude, and really excited about equality, and even more excited about pride, you know? So like the party will be rainbow themed, with way too much glitter, and -”
“The most important thing,” Alvarez intervened, “is that Jeremy is this huge Harry Potter fan. All his parties are Hogwarts themed, usually red and gold for Gryffindor.”
Michael chuckled. “Um, yeah. But it’ll be fun? You know, getting to know the culture through a party is always good, even though Jeremy definitely is not the average Austrian bro throwing a party, it’s always fun.”
“I mean, I did move countries to get away from a homophobic family, so why not go to a weird Gryffindor themed rainbow party?” Jean said. When he met Michaels eyes he was surprised at his dumbfounded face. “What?”
“And you chose Austria of all places?” Even Alvarez and Laila were paying attention now. “I mean, I guess that’s a compliment.”
Jean couldn’t help but smile. “I miss the sea, but it’s it’s not that bad. The language is the worst thing, if I’m honest. I suck at German.”
“And we’re glad to practise English with you, mon chou.” Alvarez said affectionately. Then she furrowed her brows. “I took French in school but forgot everything, I actually know that from tumblr.”
Jean chose to ignore her terrible pronunciation.
Michael beamed. “So you’ll come? It’s gonna be so awesome!” He looked at his phone, and his mouth turned into a perfect O. Leonardo da Vinci couldn’t have drawn a better circle. “I gotta go, bYE!” And he was gone as quickly as he appeared.
Jean watched him walk-run away from the sunny tables they sat at, the cafe having both inside and outside tables. It was may, and it was sunny, above twenty degrees celsius, so even when the wind was sometimes a bit chilly, everybody wore short sleeved shirts. Jean was the only person dressed in a black hoodie and he kind of regretted the decision because he could feel the sweat on his back, but even if he did own t-shirts, he wouldn’t want to wear them.
The cafe they were at was in Museumsquartier, a place where too many art exhibitions happened to keep track of, along with the box like, white-ish Leopold Museum and it’s grey-ish black mirror, the Mumok. According to Alvarez and Laila, most people came here for the food though, and maybe the cool purple benches. (AN: Benches; In lack of a better word. Maybe I’ll link a pic.)
“If you wanna talk about family stuff,” Alvarez said, “You can talk to us. We know some people who have assholes for parents, if you want people to directly relate to.”
“Jeremy runs this youth group for queer kids,” Laila provided. “I’m sure he’s good to talk to.” She wrinkled her face. “Well, in retrospect, maybe having your first impression of him at a weird party is not a good idea.”
“I’ll be fine,” Alvarez said. A barista walked past them and Alvarez ordered another hot chocolate with soy milk.
What happens next is that I make up a few chill other people who are the Trojans we all love even if we don’t know them, Jean meets this rather nerdy but so cute!!!! quidditch fanboy and they have a severe case of mutual pining. They end up together, thanks to Alvarez and Laila, the only sane people on our boat that we call Jerejean.
