*A/N: I spent several hours thinking of what to write and coming up short, so this is me time skipping because I’ve got to write nonetheless*

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Henri opened his eyes slowly, still drowsy. He blinked up minutely at the ceiling for a few seconds while his brain slowly caught up to the rest of his body.

He turned to his side instinctively, expecting to find Claude there but the space was empty - That’s right, Claude had spent the night in his own dorm room instead which didn’t happen often seeing as he spent most of his nights in Henri’s dorm room.

It was already the third week of the third month, which meant one thing, that it was time for the Inter School Sports competition. This time, the students from Alpha Academy would be traveling to Omega Institute for the mock sports competition and the sports ball would take place at the academy in turn.

It was the start of a new week and although the sun was just rising, the dorms were already bustling with students who were getting ready for the Inter School Sports competition.

Henri was almost done dressing up when a knock rapped on his door, he already knew who it was without asking, especially as the door opened next without any confirmation from him. He turned around, expecting to see Claude only to find Louis hurrying in with an excited smile on his face.

"Louis?" He raised a brow, not expecting to see the other.

"Henri, you won’t believe what I just found out," Louis beamed, and the Omega was able to take him in for the first time.

It was odd to see Louis with wild hair and a haphazardly buttoned dress shirt, it was almost like Audie had been the one to dress him up. Clearly, whatever he had found was very important if it had him in such disarray.

"How to button up properly?" Henri teased, adjusting his cravat. He knew he wasn’t one to talk seeing as he still fought with his clothes every other week but he couldn’t let the perfect opportunity for a tease pass him by.

"No, Omega Institute has an outdoor kitchen." Louis barreled onwards, too excited to pay any attention to Henri’s words.

Henri frowned, trying to understand how and why that was good news.

"Which means that the cooking club will get to participate in the mock competitions this year!" Louis calmed down sufficiently after getting his news out, looking thoughtful. "I don’t know why Alpha Academy doesn’t have one as well, I’ll have to submit a request to have them consider putting an outdoor kitchen at the Field as well."

Henri could think of a few reasons why that was a bad idea, he could already see bothersome Alphas who couldn’t tell a pot from a pan cooking up trouble if an outdoor kitchen was installed but he didn’t try to dissuade Louis. Who knows, it might encourage more people to join the Cooking Club.

He found it adorable that Louis first thought was to come to tell him right away, "Let me guess, you’ll be participating?"

Louis’ excitement came back in a rush, "Naturally, it’s only right as the president that I should," Then he went right back to muttering to himself, "I wonder if Omega Institute’s Cooking Club will have recipe books that I haven’t seen before..." He trailed off, glancing around Henri’s dorm room. "Where’s Claude?"

Henri just went around Louis so he could manually push his friend to the exit, "He’s at his own dorm room..."

"What do you mean? Don’t you both share this dorm room?" Louis cut him off with a frown, letting himself be pushed.

Henri just went right on, "You should go finish dressing up, we’ll meet up at the dining room. Claude will be-" His words fell off when he opened the door to his door room to find the Alpha in question standing outside with a look of slight confusion on his face.

"... or never mind, Claude is already here, see you at breakfast." He concluded, booting Louis out of his dorm room.

Louis’ excitement didn’t dim as he practically skipped back to his own dorm room. He had been expecting to spend another sports festival just idling around like the last time. It didn’t help that Dio was in the archery club now, which meant that he would be even more idle this time.

He stepped into his dorm room to find Dio still curled up on the bed just like when he left him to go find Henri. He had woken his boyfriend up to tell him the spectacular news but he doubted that Dio heard a word of what he had said.

Louis closed the door behind him and took a deep breath, there was only one thing left to do now. He did a running start, jumped, and flopped right down on Dio, very pleased that his form had improved.

Dio woke up with a choked groan, catching the other and keeping a tight hold on him. "You might want to save your energy for your competition later."

Louis leaned back to get a proper look at Dio’s face at his words, a toothy grin on his face. "You heard me!"

"Of course, I did-"

"Now go clean up or we’ll be late for the Sports competition." He said importantly, prying Dio’s hands off him.

Dio did get out of bed - or more like Louis didn’t give him an option. It was endearing how excited he could get over the things he liked to do.

Breakfast was mostly excited conversation and a bit of eating, Louis more than eager to share his good news with anyone willing to listen.

"How come the Cooking club gets to participate in the mock competitions but not the Volleyball club?" Audie protested when Louis announced it to the table.

"There’s just six members, it’s hardly a club." Valentin chimed in.

*to arrive at this number, i just shot a mental dart at an imagined board because i can’t remember but it probably doesn’t matter because the readers probably can’t remember either.*

"Nothing wrong with having six members in a club," He grumbled.

Valentin shot him a look, "We barely make a single team, who are we going to play against?"

"Stop talking about your club and hogging all of the spotlight," Louis spoke up, jabbing a fork in their direction.

Nael and Jacques just quietly conversed with each other, the swimmer trying to convince the other Alpha to join his club.

"I don’t know," Jacques shrugged, "Swimming seems like a lot of work." He drawled, not falling for the bait.

He knew that Nael desperately didn’t want to be the swimming team captain and was looking for a scapegoat to foist the duty onto. Jacques himself wasn’t big on clubs, he had done enough extracurricular activities in the military to last him a lifetime.

He only joined the Volleyball club because of Audie and it helped that they never did anything but throw balls at each other and hang out at the club’s lounging area, he doubted the president of the club even knew how to play the game. It was such an unexpected surprise, considering how enthusiastic he had been at the start.

Henri had intended to sit the competitions out this year but Pierre was having none of it, he made sure to emphasize how much of an attraction his participation in the competitions would be.

Henri personally didn’t think they needed more new members but he would do it anyway, after all, Dodie would also be participating even if it was in a different category.

To Pierre’s relief, Alexander and Claude more or less left the club. Alexander left because Claude made him, and Claude himself only showed up to be by Henri’s side, no other reason.

He had no interest in joining any other club, although he would easily be one of the best in any club of his choice and Henri didn’t push. If he didn’t like riding horses so much, he would most likely be the same.

After breakfast, they were all arranged in carriages that would take them to their sister college, and much like how camping trips were arranged, they were free to sit however they liked in the carriages.

Henri chose his window seat like he always did but instead of Louis being the one to sit next to him, Claude took the spot, his tawny head friend taking the seat opposite him to that he could ramble nonstop about the upcoming cooking competitions, all the way to Omega Institute. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Errol had chosen to ride with them as well, the smiling Alpha surrounded by his brother’s friends who all wanted a bit of his attention. It would only get worse when they got to the Institute because Dodie always wanted Errol’s attention.

Henri couldn’t understand how he could pay attention to every single person seemingly at the same time. Sure he had a lot of friends but they were all friends with each other which meant that their attentions were always divided, except when it came to Errol of course.