Rust's Digs
#3 of Pizza on the Brain
Since this was a longerish episode, it was capable of being submitted on its own here simultaneously with FA. Isn't it great to be kept posted?
Tagged adult just in case frank discussions of sexuality are classified mature.
               Home isn't a place defined by GPS coordinates. Home is a place defined by the people in it.
               Occasionally furniture plays a lesser role. I -was- quite fond of my beanbag chair.
               For me, for at least the time I'd be at college, home was a house I shared with three other guys. It was sprawling and pretty nice, since one of our guys had rich parents who helped subsidize payments on the place--they intended for the equity on it to be, like, his college graduation gift or something.
               I ducked as I walked through the front door, not wanting to wear the grooves in the top of the frame any deeper today.
               Rand, the easy-going foxhound, was on the couch in the front room, catching the game. "'sup, Rusty?"
               He always called me that. It made me sound like a runt, compared to "Rust" as I usually liked it. "Not much. Got the evening off, apparently." I sloughed my backpack next to the couch and eased myself into it; I knew from experience that I could bottom the thing out if I dropped onto it all at once. "Who's playing?"
               "It's the Cougs up against the Gators." Our college's team, the Cougars, was one of the few things Rand cared about almost as much as hot co-eds.
               "Are we getting spanked?"
               "Yeah...but they're gonna turn it around in the third quarter, for sure!"
               The Cougars were famed for third-quarter comebacks, but the problem was that these were unpredictable. Sort of a "45% of the time, it works every time" kinda thing. "But we're getting spanked in the meantime."
               "Never stop believin', man."
               I watched for a few minutes, mostly for Rand's sake, then got up and went into the kitchen.
               As if on cue, the food processor whirled noisily to life as I walked in, barraging my ears with grating sound. I clapped my hands over them as I approached the fridge, waiting for my second roommate to relent. He was an erect-crested penguin--a species name which had no doubt sharpened his wit, but thankfully hadn't made him too bitter--and he was determined to become a culinary success if it killed him. With the rate of food-prep injuries he sustained, it just might.
               Mercifully, our food processor was efficient, if god-awfully noisy, so it was over quickly. "Oh, Rust!" said Gen. "You're home early, and there's no starry-eyed freshman draped over your shoulder?" he remarked, scraping some kind of pureed vegetable out of the plastic vessel, "What's the occasion?"
               "Thom was feeling fickle, I guess," I said, citing my boss as I reached in the fridge for the tub of protein shake I kept in the lower shelf. Given my body's metabolism, it was all I could do to keep enough amino acids coming in to make up for how much it chewed up every day. I tapped a tall glass of it using the bung on the end of it. "So I'll be around to hear the screams of your victims of plant ritual sacrifice."
               "Gotta keep the gods appeased," he said, not missing a beat. Gen was a sharp one, and at one time I'd considered dating him--but that was before I accidentally came across some of his fetish gear. Suffice to say it went a bit far, even for me...and I'm pretty open-minded. So he makes a cool friend, but I'm not about to let it go past that. At least his parents kept us in a nice house, and him in a good set of appliances.
               "Just as long as the red's tomato sauce and not blood, I think we can be okay with that." I made my way upstairs to my room, scooping up my backpack along the way.
                Unsurprisingly, the door next to mine had the little Alliance hanger on it. Our fourth housemate, Aren, was an introvert of the highest degree one can achieve without being autistic--kinda weird, for the normally-social meerkat species. That hanger in particular meant he was either playing an MMO, or jacking off, or possibly both (so rumor had it), and in whichever case he was not to be disturbed. He had a Horde door hanger he used for the rare occasions in which someone was over, most commonly for mini LAN parties (or again, so it was said), but on rare occasions, for more intimate activities. Considering that he only ever left the house for supplies and the classes he couldn't pass without going to lecture, I still had no idea how he was getting any action. On the rare occasions we could get him out of his room, or if approached via IM, he had a darkly acerbic wit and seemed to know just about anything about everything--or else he was just that fast with search engines; we might never know.
               I could always tell which was which when the Horde hanger was up, incidentally. He always wore headphones, so his room was normally silent as a crypt, save for the faint ticky-tacking of keys. But if it was a special friend of some kind, suddenly, there would be noises. And I won't lie--I'm a little bit of a voyeur, so it was hot to be the only one in the house who shared a wall with such moments. It was my little secret delight.
               I'd just dumped off my pack in my room when my phone vibrated. I flicked it open and discovered a text message from Corbin, the athletic alligator I'd been sorta-dating for a few weeks. "ur not at the shop. day off 4 us?"
               A grin tickled my face. Perhaps I'd have something fun to do with the afternoon, after all. I looked for my eagle-feather charm; I'd be needing it for my own doorknob, if I was right...