Chapter Text
Freshman orientation fucking sucks. You were expecting that, of course; you’d plotted out the different ways it could suck on the ride down with all the shit you cared about packed in the back of your dads’ car (computer shit, computer shit, computer shit, your games and your dvd collection, some basic clothes and a toothbrush, computer shit) and by the time you’d pulled into the long sweeping drive rounding the pond on Anningley’s campus you were pretty sure it would be suck model #4, Cheery Let’s Get To Know One Another.
Sometimes it would kind of be awesome not to be right all the fucking time. You’re on a hall in a coed dorm segregated by floor: girls get the top two, boys—big surprise—get the bottom two. There’s a smoking porch out back, thank fuck, but you bet it’s gonna be thronged with exactly the kind of assholes you want nothing to do with, and you wish again, for the millionth time, that your dads had let you apply for a single room based on your Issues.
Issues plural, but hey, the biggest one being you are fucked in the head so comprehensively you might as well be walking around on another planet about half the time. You can maybe find it in you to pity whatever poor asshole ends up with you as a roomie, and a little stone of satisfaction settles into your stomach at the thought. Sure, they can make you miserable, it’s what the world pretty much fucking does on a daily basis, world has that shit down, but you can give as good as you passive-aggressively get.
Your dads help you haul your machines down the stairs to the lair you’ve been assigned. Gresley Hall 020, all the way back on the left-hand side of the building. It’s shaped like an E without the central crossbar, the smoking-porch/balcony taking that wing’s place. You are deep underground on one side of the room and the only window on the other side looks out on the shitty excuse for a volleyball court that takes up much of the inside of the space between wings.
Great.
You get there first so you get to pick the bed and you get to put your shit wherever you want it. With your dads’ help—okay, directing the both of them to do it for you—you unbunk the beds and claim the one with the longer legs for your own, stacking your boxes of various cables and equipment underneath the bed and hauling one of the excuses for a desk over to rest against the footboard. You’ll have your main desktop with the monitors here, and your netbook can sit there just where you can reach it from bed because fuck getting up to check email first thing in the morning.
“You going to be okay, Sol?” Dad One asks. Dad Two is off moving the car out of the loading/unloading space in front of the building.
Goddamnit you had it together until he looks you straight in the eye and asks the question. You are suddenly very glad you have your shades on.
“Fine,” you say. “I can handle this.”
He nods. “We know you can. But you call us, okay? You let us know if there’s anything we can send you.”
You nod, and then you are wrapped up in his arms and you bury your face in his shoulder and just for a moment you are a little kid again—until a little noise from the doorway makes you stiffen all over.
“Ahem,” the guy says again. It’s not even a cough. He’s actually just saying “Ahem.” You can feel the furious flush in your cheeks as he raises an eyebrow that is almost certainly not naturally that dark. “Sorry, I wasn’t expectin’ to interrupt anything.”
“You’re not,” you say fiercely, pushing yourself back from your dad. Fuck. Is this guy your roommate?
“Family moments are important,” he says, and wow he looks like he needs a good punch up the bracket. He’s a textbook example of Insufferable Hipster. Glasses and all. He’s probably even wearing eyeliner, ironically. A streak of vibrant violet mars his ordinary brown hair just at the very front, where he’s obviously taken care to outline his widow’s peak with the dye, sparing no expense. He’s just missing the ironic star tattoos on his neck which he might actually have because you can’t see it under the horrible fucking scarf he has on over a purple silk shirt with…
No. Your potential roommate does not wear frilled silk shirts. You are going to die. You are going to kill him first and then you are going to die.
“—I’m Eridan Ampora,” this douche is declaring, and holding out a hand in implicit challenge; you wince, and you grip his hand—fuck, he’s wearing like eight rings on each hand what the hell why would you even do that—and you shake it firmly. There’s a tiny tiny reward in that his purple eyes widen ever so slightly behind his stupid hipster glasses, but then his mouth curls up at the corners as if to say oho, I know this game and I can play it too.
(what the hell purple eyes who even wears contacts and glasses together jesus fuck)
Your dad gathers up some of the unnecessary boxes, and you manage to cool it enough to say “Nice to meet you, Eridan. I’m gonna go check out the rest of the dorm. See you later.”
You don’t exactly understand the look on his patrician face that flickers for just a moment, only a moment, before it’s gone: a sort of…lost expression, as if he’s reading from a script somebody has just taken away.
Fuck. You hope he does not mind you staying up all night. Wait, no. You hope he does, so he applies for a transfer and you can get some wibbly little bio nerd in his place, someone who wouldn’t look at you like that, as if his stupid purple hair and his stupid purple contacts and his ironic hornrims made him objectively better than you are.
By the time orientation meeting rolls around that evening, everyone’s parents are gone, and among the smaller and twitchier freshmen the beginning of tears is heard in the land. You are so not up for this shit. Even if pizza is involved you are so not up for this shit.
It’s going to be a long goddamn year.