Chapter 281: 281 | Appropriate Lingerie is an Oxymoron
The universe has a sick sense of humor.
I stood in my doorway at nearly midnight with no shirt on, Camille Ortega behind me wearing approximately three square inches of clothing, and Petra Lang in front of me wearing a silk robe that did absolutely nothing to hide what was underneath it.
The emerald camisole peeked out from the gap in her robe. The same emerald as her Aspect. The same emerald as those eyes currently processing the scene with the kind of horrified fascination usually reserved for car accidents and reality television.
"This isn’t what it looks like," I said, which was technically true and also the least convincing sentence in the history of human communication.
Petra’s gaze moved past me to where Camille stood with her arms crossed over her chest. The motion pushed her breasts together in ways that her tank top was absolutely not designed to contain. Camille’s expression shifted from heated anticipation to aggressive territoriality in approximately zero point four seconds.
"What are you doing here?" Camille’s voice carried enough venom to kill a small elephant.
"I could ask you the same question." Petra’s composure had returned with frightening speed. The flustered girl from room 2C was gone, replaced by the ice queen who had looked at me like furniture on move-in day. "Though I suspect the answer is rather obvious given your current state of undress."
"My state of undress is none of your business, princess."
"Everything that happens in this cohort is my business when it affects team dynamics and institutional reputation."
I rubbed my temples. The headache from earlier had returned with reinforcements.
"Ladies. It’s almost midnight. I have class tomorrow. We all have class tomorrow. Whatever this is, can it wait until literally any other time?"
Neither of them looked at me.
Camille stepped forward until she stood at my shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off her skin. The warmth from our earlier almost-moment still lingered between us, but the presence of Petra had transformed that warmth into something sharper. More dangerous.
"I was here first," Camille said.
"I wasn’t aware there was a queue." Petra’s eyes traveled the length of Camille’s body with the kind of dismissive assessment that usually preceded someone getting punched. "Though given your attire, I imagine you’ve been practicing that particular argument for some time."
"At least I had the courage to show up looking like I meant it. What’s with the robe, Lang? Couldn’t commit to the bit?"
Petra’s cheeks flushed pink. The color spread down her neck and disappeared beneath the silk of her camisole in ways that my brain catalogued against my explicit instructions to stop noticing things like that.
"I came here to discuss a matter of institutional importance."
"At midnight. In lingerie."
"It’s sleepwear. There’s a difference."
"The difference is about two inches of fabric, and you’re on the wrong side of it."
I stepped back from the doorway and gestured into my room with the kind of resignation usually associated with people who have given up on understanding their own lives. The hallway light caught the edge of my doorframe and threw a long shadow across the floor that stretched toward my bed like a warning I was choosing not to read.
"Fine. Both of you. Inside. Before someone sees this and I have to explain to Radiant why three Combat Operations students are having a hallway confrontation in their underwear at midnight on a school night."
The absurdity of the sentence did not diminish its accuracy. Somewhere down the corridor a pipe ticked in the wall, rhythmic and indifferent, the building itself refusing to acknowledge the disaster unfolding in its residential wing.
Camille pushed past me immediately. She didn’t wait for the invitation to settle, didn’t pause to check whether the gesture was sincere.
She moved with the specific decisiveness of someone who had already decided this room was hers to occupy and the only question remaining was where she planned to stand in it. Her shoulder brushed my bare chest as she passed, warm skin against warm skin, and the contact sent a jolt through my nervous system that traveled from the point of impact straight down to somewhere I was not going to think about.
I actively chose to ignore it.
The choice required more effort than it should have, which I also chose to ignore. She smelled like something clean and faintly sweet, a scent I had been aware of during our earlier conversation and was now aware of again in a way that felt specifically calibrated to make my life worse.
She positioned herself near my desk with the territorial precision of someone claiming high ground.
Arms crossed beneath her chest in a way that did things to the already-stressed architecture of her crop top that I processed, catalogued, and immediately filed under Do Not Acknowledge.
Her eyes fixed on Petra with the kind of focus she usually reserved for target practice, her Precision Read probably already mapping the weak points in Lang’s composure the way it mapped stress fractures in physical structures.
Petra hesitated at the threshold.
It was a small hesitation. Half a second, maybe less. But I caught it because the Oracle Feed caught it, and what it registered was not uncertainty about entering the room.
It was uncertainty about what entering the room meant. The calculation running behind those emerald eyes was visible if you knew where to look. Stepping inside a male student’s room at midnight wearing silk and sheer fabric was one thing when it was a private negotiation between two people.
Stepping inside when Camille Ortega was already leaned against the desk with her arms crossed and her jaw set was something else entirely. It was a concession.
It was an admission that whatever Petra had come here to discuss was important enough to discuss in front of a witness she had not planned for and clearly did not want.
"I’m not certain this is appropriate."
"You showed up at my door at midnight wearing silk underwear and a see-through robe. The ship of appropriate sailed about fifteen minutes ago and it’s not coming back."
Her jaw tightened. The flush on her cheeks deepened. But she stepped inside, and I closed the door behind her with the quiet click of someone who has accepted that sleep is no longer an option.
My room felt smaller with three people in it. The single bed took up most of the floor space, and the desk and chair left barely enough room for everyone to stand without touching. Camille leaned against the desk. Petra positioned herself near the window, as far from Camille as the geometry of the space allowed. I stood between them like a referee who had forgotten to bring a whistle.
"So." I looked between them. "Anyone want to tell me what’s actually happening here, or should I just guess?"
Camille spoke first. "I came to talk about what happened today."
"And I came to establish appropriate boundaries regarding institutional documentation and the events of this afternoon’s training exercise." Petra’s voice had recovered its professional cadence, but the effect was somewhat undermined by the way her camisole clung to her chest and the visible outline of nipples that the thin silk did absolutely nothing to conceal.
I noticed.
She noticed me noticing.
Neither of us mentioned it.
"Boundaries," Camille repeated. "That’s what you’re calling it. You show up at his door dressed like that and you want to talk about boundaries."
"My sleepwear choices are irrelevant to the matter at hand."
"Your sleepwear choices are the matter at hand, princess. You picked that outfit deliberately. Same way I picked mine. The difference is I’m honest about it."
Petra’s composure cracked for exactly one second. I watched the mask slip and saw something underneath that looked almost human before the ice queen facade reconstructed itself.
"I have no idea what you’re implying."
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