It was Monday morning, and the Arts Faculty Building yawned like an old cat who didn't quite believe in mornings.
Sam, who hadn't slept and had exactly three pieces of chewing gum for breakfast, stepped into the elevator carrying a portfolio the size of a baby elephant. It was balanced delicately in his arms like a sacred relic. Inside it? His final project: a mixed-media collage of "Dreams, Memory, and Expired Metro Tickets."
Meanwhile, Hayden was riding that same elevator downward, muttering lines from Twelfth Night and adjusting the velvet ribbon on a papier-mâché mask. He was dressed like someone who hadn't changed out of his rehearsal costume — because, well, he hadn't.
Ding.
The doors opened. Sam stepped out. Hayden stepped forward.
Crash.
Time paused for exactly 1.5 seconds.
Then everything happened at once: Sam's portfolio slipped sideways, sending a cascade of paper, string, buttons, and metro tickets flying like confetti at a very avant-garde wedding. Hayden's mask, dramatically painted and adorned with feathers, landed squarely on Sam's face.
A cup of lukewarm oat milk latte performed a tragic pirouette before painting the tiles a creamy beige.
"…Oh no," Hayden whispered, staring at the chaos.
Sam peeled off the mask and blinked. "Well. This is... interpretive."
They looked at each other, then the floor, then at each other again. The silence was thick enough to spread on toast.
"I'm sorry," they both said at once.
A pause. Then laughter bubbled up — hesitant at first, then louder. The kind that's contagious and slightly ridiculous, because what else can you do when your academic futures are dripping with oat milk?
Hayden reached for a soggy sketch. "This was yours?"
"Yeah," Sam sighed. "Due in seven days."
"Same. Mine was a one-man show, and I think your project just swallowed my script."
Sam eyed the glitter-covered monologue. "Want to… fix this together?"
Hayden smiled. "Seven days. Partners in accidental sabotage?"
Sam nodded. "Deal."
And just like that, in a mess of glue, feathers, and fate, a strange little alliance began.
One that neither of them knew would change everything.
Later that afternoon, Sam sat cross-legged on a sun-warmed patch of grass near the duck pond, surrounded by the usual audience: Emma, who majored in philosophy and minor existential crises, and Caleb, who was a computer science student but treated drama like a competitive sport.
"So let me get this straight," Caleb said, poking a plastic fork into his cold pad thai. "You crashed into this mystery boy, destroyed both your final projects, and now you're... teaming up like it's a buddy movie?"
"Rom-com," Emma corrected, flipping her sunglasses down like a judge declaring genre. "This has rom-com energy written all over it."
Sam groaned, lying back in the grass and covering his face with his arm. "It wasn't that dramatic."
"You said there was glitter in your mouth," Caleb pointed out.
"There was glitter in my mouth," Sam admitted, muffled.
Emma leaned over him. "And what's his name?"
"Hayden."
"Oooooh," they both said in eerie unison.
Sam peeked out from under his arm. "He's a theatre kid. Very... dramatic. Speaks in full monologues. I think he tried to apologize using a Shakespeare quote."
Caleb snorted. "Of course he did."
Emma grinned. "And is he cute?"
There was a pause. Sam looked up at the sky and gave a long, theatrical sigh that made Emma clutch her chest like she'd been gifted poetry.
"He has this sort of... tragic prince energy," Sam mumbled. "Like someone who drinks tea while brooding on velvet couches. But also? Total klutz. Dropped his mask twice before the elevator even opened."
"Perfect," Emma said.
"Amazing," Caleb said. "And you've agreed to spend the week together? Alone? Fixing your ruined lives?"
"I wouldn't say ruined—"
"—that's the dream," Caleb concluded.
Sam sat up and tossed a leaf at him.
They sat in the sunshine a while longer, the three of them leaning against backpacks, listening to ducks fight over half a sandwich. Sam was quiet, picking at a dandelion, until Emma asked gently, "You nervous?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah. But also... I don't know. It felt weirdly like the universe tripped me into something on purpose."
Emma smiled. "Maybe it did."
Caleb slurped the last of his noodles. "Well, make sure the universe knows you have a type."
Sam rolled his eyes. But as they gathered their things and headed off to their next classes, he realized his hands still smelled faintly of feathers, and he hadn't stopped smiling since the elevator.
Hayden sat on the worn armrest of a common room couch that had definitely seen at least three generations of theatre students cry into it. He was balancing a mug of peppermint tea in one hand and a badly crumpled copy of Twelfth Night in the other, but mostly he was trying not to smile like an idiot.
"Okay," said Noor, his stage manager and occasional life coach, as she folded origami out of the rehearsal schedule. "Spill. You're glowing."
"Am not," Hayden said, sipping his tea with all the defensive dignity of a Victorian widow.
"Oh no," added his best friend Dev, who had just walked in wearing socks and no shirt. "He's doing the thing. The bashful, fluttery eye thing."
"I don't do a fluttery eye thing."
"You absolutely do," said Noor. "Every time you get a crush or read Oscar Wilde."
Hayden placed his tea on the windowsill and paced in a small, contained circle. "Fine. I bumped into this guy in the Arts Building today. Literally. We crashed. My mask is probably still wearing his lip balm. His project absorbed my script like a paper monster. It was chaos."
"And?" Noor asked, peering over her schedule swan.
"And," Hayden said, "he laughed. Like... really laughed. Like the kind of laugh that sounds like it hasn't happened in a while."
"Oooh," Dev said, flopping onto the couch dramatically. "Tell me his name is something cool. Like Phoenix."
"Sam," Hayden replied. "He's an artist. Visual arts. He had metro tickets in his collage."
"Metro tickets?" Noor said. "That's aggressively sentimental. You're doomed."
Hayden grinned helplessly.
"He asked if we should fix our projects together. And I said yes. So we're meeting tomorrow to figure it out. Seven days. Just us. In the studio. Alone."
Dev let out a low whistle. "Well then."
Noor raised her mug like a toast. "To accidental meet-cutes and glitter-based bonding."
They clinked imaginary glasses.
Later, when the room was quiet and the others had drifted into their own tasks — Dev humming while folding laundry, Noor updating her planner with a scary number of tabs — Hayden leaned against the window and let himself replay the moment.
The surprised laugh. The shared mess. Sam looking at him like something unexpected had just walked off the page and said hello.
He whispered a line from Twelfth Night under his breath:
> "Journeys end in lovers meeting."
And for the first time in a while, Hayden wondered if maybe—just maybe—the week ahead was going to be more than just project salvage.
Maybe it was the beginning of something altogether unexpected.