Fairly Odd Roomies

[Anonymous]

It had been a long day. Then again, every day at the ATC seemed long and enduring. It was a never ending cycle. Go to bed sore, wake up sore, do things that make you sore, go to bed sore, wake up sore. All for naught. Well, some people wanted to be there, some people even choose to join the military without ever having to deal with the fear of inevitably being drafted because genetics decided to roll a shit-out-of-luck die. Oliver, however, was not one of them and any psychic who meandered into his mind, just to check it out, would know that very well. It was a dead end alley in Aurora for him and TRIM was not a way out, it was simply another death sentence he was on the path to.

He didn't want it. The fear of that death kept him up at nights, including this one. It wasn't so much the idea of death itself, but the journey to it. His mind had been filled with the horror stories every candidate hears about TRIM. The probing, the needles, scientists in long white lab coats looking down at him as he lay stretched and tied down on a gurney, naked and raw. The fear of nothing familiar, that aching cold anchor of loneliness at the pit of his stomach. He wouldn't ever see his mother again, or his sister and hear their voices calling his name. At least in the ATC he was able to use the terminal to contact them through e-mail. He still had that connection. But it would be gone soon. He had, what, four-five months left until the end of Stage One?

He was running out of time. Not that he had much of a life, but it was still his. It was his. And no matter how hard he struggled, how many difficult hills he climbed, and beat back against his fate, it would still win in the end. Because those sort of things just happened to Oliver. He didn't stand a chance.

Yet for whatever reason, he found comfort in spending his nights, and ultimately making his day longer, scrubbing their dorm room bathroom until his hands were raw. At least, if he was going to disappear off the face of the earth he might as well try to be remembered for something. Even if it was making toilets shine so bright they blinded people. Better than nothing.

[Anonymous]

Sagittarius made it her business to generally only be in her shared dorm room for one thing: sleeping. She woke up in the morning, threw on clothes, and was out the door before hardly any of the other Gracies had even stirred, squeezing a couple extra hours of weight-lifting or other form of training into her schedule. She ran around all day. Worked. Flirted with cute girls. Sometimes had sex with cute girls when they invited her back to their own rooms — she never had sex in her own abode, out of courtesy for her roommate, since the poor kid seemed wounded enough from just being in the ATC. Then, at night, when she was tired of rustling feathers with the night owls, she returned to the dorm for a pleasurable if fitful sleep.

Thus, Sag couldn't say that she knew her roommate very well. He was a guy. Oliver or something. She didn't think he was gay — probably pansexual; practically everyone in Aedolis was pansexual — and didn't seem to be the type to be caught screwing some dude or dudette by a hapless Sagittarius. She was grateful for that. Aedolians were sex-fiends, and she'd been afraid of receiving a roommate who flaunted his or her genitals about. The one thing she did know of the boy was that he had a weird obsession with cleaning. Half the time when she made to hunker down for the night, he was cooped up in the bathroom, scrubbing away with strong-smelling soaps and miscellaneous cleaning fluids. Not that she minded cleanliness; his hygienic rampages just seemed a little excessive.

This night in particular, Sagittarius was feeling especially good — and especially neurotic, though that was nothing unusual — so when she kicked the door to their shared room shut behind her, dropping her knapsack onto the floor, she decided it'd be boring just to go to sleep and leave her strange little roommate working away with soap and cloth. She sauntered up to the open bathroom door and leaned against the frame, one eyebrow crooked in amusement. "Hey," she said simply.

[Anonymous]

It was quite clear that Oliver was lost in his own thoughts, not that he ever seemed to find a way out of that maze. The Gracie had been spending the past ten minutes scrubbing the same tile over and over. It wasn't even dirty to begin with. He liked the automatic feeling to his movements, the way he rinsed out the brush or cloth in the cleaning bucket beside him without so much as a sliver of hesitation. He didn't have to think, or worry if he was doing something wrong. It didn't make him nervous. And even if it was just a little bit, he felt he had some control over things even though they were falling apart around him.

Safe to say, he flinched and nearly knocked over the wash bucket when he heard his roommate's voice chime. He didn't even hear her come in and there she was, leaning on the doorframe. Looking at him. Well, this was awkward. He didn't know her, other than the fact that she preferred to be called by her last name and that she was far more sociable and outgoing than he would ever be. There was even a little pang of jealousy right there. Oliver shakily pushed up his glasses, forever dorky.

"Oh...Oh gods." He stuttered out, "am I-I bothering you? I'm sorry!"

[Anonymous]

Sagittarius cocked her head to the side, scrutinizing Oliver with apparent and undisguised interest. He wasn't bad looking - a little nerdy - but the glasses almost worked for him. She liked intelligent people, though one would never guess that from the females that Sag chose to hook up with. And what she loved even more than just intelligent was intelligent and awkward: the perfect combination. There was something platonically cute about it.

A smile quirked at her lips. "It's bothering me that you never have any fun," Sagittarius stated. "I'm pretty sure our bathroom is clean enough, babe. Come on out." She stepped away from the door and gestured for Oliver. She turned around and paced toward her bed, perching comfortably on the edge of it, before she looked back at Oliver and continued her observation of him.

"What do you do for fun, other than clean bathrooms?" she asked.

[Anonymous]

He felt his face go bright red under her gaze. Why was she looking at him like that? Was he that unfortunate looking? His heart was in his throat, metaphorically, not finding a whole lot of pleasure under the lens of a microscope. It was really warm there. He slid a finger around the collar of his shirt, the smell of cleaning materials were strong on his hands.

Oliver would have taken offence at the comment that he didn't have any fun if A, it wasn't true, and B, had the backbone to respond to that in a dignified manner and not blubbering like a fish out of water. Honestly, it was made much, much worse by the babe utterance. Babe. Well, he certainly looked like an apple now.

He didn't get up right away, he followed Sagittarius' gesture with his eyes and swallowed hard. What was this? Early morning meeting with your roommate to try and get him out of his shell? Right then. He stood up with a pang of guilt lacing his stomach. Oliver didn't want to leave the bathroom half-clean, but he didn't want to be a jerk to his roommate. One out weighed the other.

"I-I also stare at the ceiling for hours on end." He said, "it's r-riveting." With anxiety grasping at him like a vice-grip he sat down on his own bed, trying to clearly avoid Sagittarius' eyes with his own. "There's not a lot h-here that is fun."

[Anonymous]

Sagittarius felt bad for the poor boy. He looked like a grounded bird — not a hawk; nothing that regal, but a sparrow — and there was nothing sadder than a bird that couldn't use its wings other than, maybe, a bird with no wings. But Oliver wasn't a bird without wings. His were just, maybe, a little undergrown.

Staring at the ceiling? How fascinating. "You're certainly not the typical Aedolian," Sagittarius stated. "Most Aedolians — myself included — would make the best of this rather un-fun situation by having rampant sex and partaking in recreational drugs. Not cleaning and staring at ceilings." Sag flashed the boy a smile, not wanting Oliver to think that she was ragging on him. She wanted to be friendly, but that didn't exactly come naturally. Sagittarius was much better at being competitive and/or flirtatious.

"We're roommates," she continued. "We're stuck together until one of us graduates or one of us is sent off to Trim or, even better, one of us is killed. Therefore, I am—" Sagittarius paused here for a few moments, thinking to herself, before brightening up and continuing— "I'm going to groom you in the art of having fun."

Sagittarius was very satisfied with herself. She had no idea what she was going to do with the boy, but the poor boy would go crazy if he spent the next few years cleaning and ceiling-staring.

[Anonymous]

Not a typical Aedolian? He frowned at that accusation. While it was true that he didn't partake in casual sex, or drug use, it didn't mean he had anything against it. It just wasn't him, it wasn't what he did. He was Oliver. He was awkward and shy and anxious. The mainstream Aedolian activities would make it worse. He knew from experience, not just from theory. Well...Minus the sex part. But nobody had to know that. He shouldn't make assumptions about his roommate like she was doing to him, however that's where his mind was headed. Of course it was easy for her to be a 'typical Aedolian', that mere smile she flashed him could probably get her a lot of things.

"I-I-I don't actually stare at ceilings!" He blurted out whlist she was talking. It had been a joke and Oliver was now guessing he didn't have the tone of voice to tell jokes. Since everybody seemed to think he was being serious.

Sagittarius' mention of TRIM made him tense and wishing to go back to the safety of the wash bucket in the bathroom; where he could clean and clean until he was too tired to even care he was in the ATC. And that building anxiety nearly made him miss a gem.

Waitaminute. Groom him?

"Um...What do you m-mean, by groom?" He was dreading the answer.

[Anonymous]

Sagittarius couldn't read Oliver's mind, and that was probably a good thing because if she had heard the inner-ramblings of his psyche, she would have felt like shit and there would go her flaring confidence. Confidence was an ephemeral thing, though not so ephemeral that Sag often went without it, but she wasn't used to conversing with such an anxious character. She didn't want to freak the poor kid. Anxiety was a foreign emotion to her.

At Oliver's outburst, insisting that he didn't stare at ceilings, Sagittarius sighed heavily, flashed a doe smile, stood up, and crossed the space between their separate beds. She sat down next to him, not so close that their shoulders touched but close enough that if one of them fidgeted, the fabrics of their shirts rustled together. "I know you don't," she said. "I can understand a joke. I'm not a scary, literal monster. You're probably the studious type, right? You sit around and read or you train in private or, well, whatever the studious types do. Nothing wrong with that."

"And by groom," she continued, "I mean that I am going to make you my apprentice. I'm basically a master at having fun, and I have a feeling that you could take a few pointers from me." Sagittarius inclined her face toward him and flashed an easy grin. "Just relax. Tell me about yourself or something."

[Anonymous]

She sure liked to whip out that smile. Not that Oliver minded, it was a nice smile, and it had a friendly spark to it. Perhaps a little too friendly, though he doubted that was his roommate’s intention. Well, at least he hoped. He didn’t want his mind wandering too far down that road, either. Though, Oliver wished he could manage the same easy expression. He generally operated on the theory that if he smiled, his face would crack. And the memory of his sister pulling on his cheeks came unfettered to his mind.

His eyes went as wide as they could possibly go as Sagittarius decided to close the space in-between them. Thankfully, it was dark enough in their dorm room that the red of his face wasn't entirely apparent. Nevertheless, Oliver's heart was pounding hard, she might even be able to hear it. This was why he sat on his own bed when he had been beckoned out of the safety of the bathroom.

But at least she did get his joke! It was just him unable to catch that she wasn't being literal. Well, that didn't make anything better. Oh boy. Oliver stared at her when she spoke, his glasses slowly slipping down his nose and he resisted the urge to push them up in case he and his roommate happened to touch with his movement. Studious type? Did he really give off that vibe? She sure was making a lot of assumptions of him.

"I-I guess I'm not really getting a choice?" He said meekly, not surprising. Oliver didn't fight back either, what was the point? If she wanted to drag him around, make him do things, in a chance that he'd come out of his shell somehow, she was welcome to. He knew for a fact that nothing would come of it. But people liked to try for some reason he could never name. Must be his sparkly personality!

"I'm not v-very interesting." He said, now avoiding her eyes completely. Oliver didn't like to talk about himself. It ended up awkward. "What about you? I-I-I mean, what was your l-life before...Before all this?"