komplicerad || conrad

With the dueling competition right around the theoretical corner, Jürgen struggled to keep up with his duties as tsar, his studies, and his dedication to athletics. Not in the typical way one might do so, in fact, from the outside the change was probably hardly noticeable but only because the Krov had perfected his ability to pretend everything was just fine.

His friends were none the wiser. Then again, they normally didn’t notice unless he brought attention to it. Ever since he had become Tsar last year, Jürgen had been more careful around his friends, not for the sake of catching them doing things they were not supposed to but better yet, to separate his life in charge with his life at school. He didn’t want to be too strict even though he had stuck to every possible rule in the book during his sixth year. As a seventh year, he felt even more pressure to keep his friendship connections stronger.

Even though he was falling behind just a little (about a page or two on the reading) at least he could say that his Swedish had gotten significantly better. The boy could actually communicate in the language at free will, and he was even thinking in it something he had only noticed earlier in the morning when he was mulling over whether he wanted for breakfast, porridge, or something along the lines of bacon and eggs. At least that was some progress worth being proud of. But it wasn’t really enough and before he knew it, he had sort of grown a little annoyed with everything that was out of place. It was the boy’s way, to crumble a little beneath the pressure of trying to be the model student that made that other side of him make an appearance.

After a particularly grueling Alchemy class in which Jürgen made himself look stupid when he had answered a question wrong (regardless of what the professor said, he should have known) he had just about had it. Returning to the Krov Common Room to find @Conrad Sturm  there specifically breaking a rule that really didn’t even mean anything was what set him off.  He should have just gone straight to his room but no, halfway through the Common Room he stopped and turned back around, pointing at the boy. "You want me to write you up for failure to comply with uniform regulation?" she frowned, "really, Sturm, how many rules you want to break before you graduate, if they let you," he added.

Conrad had done a lot of work during his free period today -- a rousing success, as free periods went -- and hadn’t made a fool of himself in any of his classes -- a rousing success, as any of his classes went. It was a good day, he thought -- not that he could really say he believed in days anymore, when the sun set before he was out of class. There was little he liked about Durmstrang, but he felt particular distaste for winter -- outside was too cold and inside was too stuffy; the days felt too short and his classes felt too long.

But this was his last winter at Durmstrang, which almost made him want to enjoy it.

He’d had a good day, so as the student tsar came into their common room Conrad sank lower in his chair, anxious not to attract any attention.  Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking -- Jürgen walked right by, but then turned around -- goddamn it.

Conrad didn’t like having his roommate as the tsar either -- in the past, he’d been able to avoid the tsar and tsaritza by walking the other direction when he saw them, but there was no escape from Jürgen Dörfler. They shared a room, multiple classes, and great-grandparents. Jürgen addressed him dutifully in Swedish like a good boy, but they weren’t required to use it outside of class -- thank you, Koldovstoretz, and thank you, Ingmar Svensson -- so Conrad said in Russian, only barely lifting his chin to meet his roommate’s eyes, “Calm down, I’ll wear a tie to dinner.”

Jürgen did not find this satisfactory. He seemed eager to find fault with something, probably because of his little goof in Alchemy earlier and not because Conrad had done anything really wrong. Now Conrad did stop slouching, unfolding his limbs so he could sit properly; he realised as he did so that this made it obvious he was in his sock feet, but he couldn’t hold his own in an argument if he was folded like a colt in this chair. It would do his mood no good to take this lying down (it would do his mood no good to be given detention, either, but he would get there when he got there.)

“I don’t know,” he said obstinately, “How many petty write-ups do you want to give out? Do you think it goes on your permanent record how many uniform violations you caught?”

When Jürgen had initially been selected for the Drakonya Krov house, he had believed it encompassed all of the qualities that represented who he was: straight-laced, diplomatic, and much more conservative than their Klyk counterparts. He had just as much ambition as anyone else at the school, but Jürgen did not feel the need to prove anything that his grades and his position as tsar could not do on his behalf. His father had always thought him that a man was regarded by his actions not his words, so he strived to be an exemplary student, making sure to maintain the rules that he so often enforced. It was hard work being a model student, but the seventh year knew that it would eventually pay off in his favor, it was simply a matter of time.

And yet, so much of his time as tsar had been spent putting out the little fires that were almost all of the boys in Krov, making him believe that maybe he had been mistakenly caught up in a world where everything was upside down and inside out. It almost seemed as if the boys in his dormitory looked for ways to disobey the rules more than ever follow them and wondered if that had anything to do with a desire to break out of their shelf or, more likely, the need to prove themselves because they couldn’t do so with the rest of who they were. But there were rules that had been set and were meant to be followed, once someone started bending the rules and allowing for personal interpretations, that was where the whole system started to fall apart. Case in point, Conrad Sturm.

Even the way in which the boy addressed him in Russian, upset him. It really wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things but things were starting to feel out of control for him and what better way to regain that than to punish someone else for it. “You haven’t forgotten your Russian, congratulations, I’ll have you know that we’ve moved to Sweden and therefore we speak Swedish, now,” he said pointedly, his brow furrowing slightly as the boy sat up, more properly than whatever messy heap he’d been found in, it was unsightly to sit in a chair like that, his father would have been displeased. Jürgen was well aware of the language rules but it was important for the good of the school’s community that everyone got on with the program of integration as soon as possible.

“No, but it will certainly go on yours, along with has a habit of challenging those in positions of authority,” he added, the tone of his voice changing slightly as if he were reading it off what he believed would be written on Sturm’s permanent record. “Unless, of course, your plan after graduation is to be a career criminal, perhaps?”

Conrad really did not like to hold arguments where he was sitting down and his opponent was not. He had always made a point of standing up to defend himself when his parents got into it with him. But Jürgen would probably take that the wrong way -- and even though Conrad knew himself to be smarter than to provoke a duel he wouldn’t win, nobody else would -- so he contented himself sitting with less of a sprawl and more of a defensive hunch, looking sullenly up at Jürgen, his hands starting to tense up in his lap.

“We’re not in class,” he countered, grateful that he’d actually read the rule changes for this year to check. (Seven years ago he’d never have imagined himself being happy to speak Russian.) “You might be lecturing but that doesn’t make you a teacher.” He had been trying for a dismissive tone -- he didn’t want to let on that he was annoyed by this -- but he let it slip into vindictiveness to add, “It doesn’t make you right, either.”

Of course, Jürgen was right in this regard -- Conrad was wearing his uniform incorrectly, and did deserve to be written up for it -- but in the long run, Conrad thought, nobody would give a damn if he’d worn his tie today. In the long run, hopefully, his Durmstrang record would mean nothing to him. Plenty of successful people had done poorly in school -- and Conrad didn’t even want to be successful, so he imagined he’d be fine.

Conrad didn’t think he had a habit of challenging those in positions of authority -- challenge was such an aggressive word; he was more of a disregarder, or an ignorer, or grudgingly obeyer -- but he didn’t want to argue that point when Jürgen was accusing him of criminal aspirations. “No,” he said; now he really was bothered, but he swallowed drily and bit back his snappy tone. “You know I’m too stupid for that line of work anyway. I’d put shrivelfig in my draughts of living death.”

“That’s beside the point,” Jürgen pushed but had he taken a step back to look at how insensible he was being at that very moment, due to a laundry list of personal grievances he did not want to take responsibility for as of yet, he would have realized that Conrad was right, no matter how much the very thought displeased him. Either way, if Conrad was so desperate to speak in a foreign language, did it not make more sense for him to speak his native German than it did to speak the language of the previous school?

“I don’t have to be a teacher to write you up, I’m tsar and no matter how much you hate me or my position,” he wasn’t really supposed to be personalizing this, but Jürgen had already abandoned the high road long ago, “if your tsar asks you to speak in Swedish you do it, not question it,” he insisted.

It was not particularly thrilling for someone like Jürgen to clash so tactlessly with everyone in his house, and he rarely did pull out the I’m tsar card out of his back pocket even if the badge was one, he wore with pride, but Conrad didn’t deserve his kindness. Not yet anyway. In his mind, he knew that he could come back from strictness by being kind when it mattered, if he gave into to Conrad now, he would never recover from it and that simply did not do.

“Well, it always helps to recognize our own weaknesses, seems like you’re making progress already,” he retorted, a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips as he considered how things were finally starting to look up for him in this exchange. Of course, he’d celebrated his victory too soon, only for that half-formed smirk to fall at his next statement.

He hadn’t expected him to remember that, anyone really but it hadn’t been a subtle mistake and it pained him considerably because the boy didn’t simply allow himself to make any mistakes at all. Instead, his jaw clenched as he struggled to keep his composure. But really, he couldn’t help but fall right into that trap. “It was a mistake he said without meaning to, this,” he gestured at him, not his type, but his entire aura. “Is just you acting out. What happened to you? Not enough positive reinforcement to keep you on the right side of the tracks?”

That’s beside the point meant that Conrad had scored one victory, at least, in this conversation: as Jürgen kept on lecturing, he seized his chance at another: “Tja, what language is ‘tsar’ again?” he asked, and raised his eyebrows -- if he’d tried harder he could have managed an innocent tone, but he was too riled up to keep from being confrontational. He pulled his posture up straighter; his heartbeat had quickened a little. He wasn’t cheeky very often -- usually, smart comments occurred to him hours too late, and all he could manage during the actual fight was to raise his voice -- so he felt sort of good whenever he did have something smart to say.

He hadn’t meant to make this into a real argument but absolutely nobody would believe him if he said that Jürgen had started it -- he had nowhere to go but deeper into this hole, and he already didn’t care about the consequences.

Conrad felt a jolt of sheer satisfaction, straight to his stomach, when Jürgen’s smug look dropped -- he was glad that, when it came to Jürgen, he could give as good as he got -- most of his other cousins would have hit him and had done with it by now, but Jürgen was just a wuss. He was only a bully by appointment -- if it’d gone to one of their other roommates he’d have spent this year being as irritating and bookish as he’d been before.

He realised his mistake a moment later -- Jürgen was only a bully by appointment but that didn’t make him incompetent; Conrad was already opening his mouth to snap back about the acting-out accusation when the second accusation hit. He scrambled up out of the chair -- he was shorter than Jürgen, shorter still without boots, but still tall enough to get in his face -- and said -- for lack of anything smart he could think of -- “Shut up!” Because it hadn’t been smart, he’d raised his voice to make up for it -- he saw somebody’s head whip around to look at him, and quickly backed up a step.

His brain was cranking twice as fast now but all it seemed to be doing was (uselessly) noticing the two inches of height he lacked, so he said, lowering his voice back to normal, “Shut up” again to buffer. A moment later he came up with, “At least I don’t have to play Hit Wizard for the Headmaster for that.” He realised too late that ‘that’ had been unclear, but he’d never felt like his arguments were stronger when he tried to clarify them, so he tacked, “du Arschlecker” onto the end instead, in case that helped.