Tilted Iron

Two

Monday morning was hell.

His alarm tore him from a perfectly good sleep.

Twice.

It was the third alarm that finally got him up and he hauled himself through his morning routine at a snail's pace.

The school had them wear their full uniform, blazer and all on the first day for a professional start but after that you were free to dress casually within reason.

It was going well until he got to his blazer. His blazer that he had forgotten was hastily shoved in the bottom of his travel bag.

He took a moment to silently mourn what he knew this day was going to be like as he dropped it in the laundry hamper. Going without it wasn't great. Wearing it when it was creased and covered in cat fur along with some sort of stain he was unsure of its origins, would be worse.

Not the smoothest start but it was the norm for him the past few years.

In fact he was relatively on time, leaving his room at a perfectly reasonable seven-fifty to get to breakfast. Unsurprisingly Violeta was already seated at their usual table.

Feliks clapped a hand on her shoulder as he walked up behind her, a slice of toast in hand. The girl let out an indignant squawk and immediately batted him away while hissing curses through her teeth.

He couldn't help the laughter that bubbled forth as he ungracefully dropped into the chair beside her.

"Feliks!" Her tone was equal parts indignant and ecstatic as she launched forward to swallow him in an all engulfing hug. "You asshole," her English made him pause for a second to recalibrate his mind. "You could have come down and said hello last night, Dolly would have loved to see you, Avalon was certainly happy to see me."

"Oh and the handful of sugar you feed her I am sure," he retorted as he gave her a tight squeeze back with one arm before retreating from the bearhug. "But you can't blame me for not coming down, it was nine thirty."

Violeta rolled her eyes but the slight tilt to her head confirmed she knew and was just heckling him for the hell of it. "So, ready for final year?" Her question was accompanied by a pointed look up and down.

"Ugh don't even ask," he started in reference to his incomplete uniform. "I actually haven't even looked at my time table yet, what days do we have eq?"

The Bulgarian girl sighed dramatically. "How do you survive every day?"

Feliks shrugged. "Fucked if I know but here I am," he responded as he fished out his phone to open the academy app and hunt down his timetable.

"Oh shit, we have eq this afternoon," he added as he skimmed over the day's classes.

Assembly at 8.30 then German first followed by calculus then after break he had physics and chem before lunch. After lunch he had a three hour block for equestrian. Ugh his ass was going to hurt after that.

Not too rough for his first day. Thankfully this course counted equestrian as a proper class and not just an extracurricular so they only had to take four other classes before their timetable was classified as full.

Soft laughter came from beside him and he glanced to see Violeta covering her mouth as she set down her empty fork. "So on top of it aren't you," she said through her breakfast of choice Feliks feigned disgust before shoving half the slice of toast in his mouth and scouring through what the rest of his week was going to look like.

"Monday evening, Wednesday morning and Friday morning. Got it," he announced. Those are the classes he would never be caught dead running late for. In fact he would likely show up half an hour early due to Avalons delightful habit of having a good roll right before a class.