(Warning: This story contains a homosexual relationship. That's just the way it rolls people.)
Thank Zeus.
The Beginning Bit.
It's raining a bit and yeah, it's becoming increasingly obvious that my car has been stolen. My shift was only three hours long, hardly worth me driving out here. I look over the car park again – nope, 'tis sans my car.
Fuckity. I'm not as OK with this as I might seem.
'I dance, I dance, I dance, around the Mexican hat…' My phone! My saviour! It rings!
"Hey Robin, its Chris," Chris! My roommate! My saviour! "Listen, I'm going out tonight but I left you pizza on the counter -"
"Chris! My most grandest, most excellent, most gorgeous, most best of all roommates." Come pick me up! "My-car-was-stolen-at-work-and-I'm-stuck-and-I-know-it's-a-really-long-drive-but-could-you-maybe-possibly-if-it's-not-too-much-trouble-please-come-and-kinda-pick-me-up-please-please-please?" I pause and whimper a little.
"I'm your only roommate." He sighs, "But yeah, give me about an hour, the roads must be wet." At Chris' words I think I see the clouds open up a little. He didn't even think about it. Chris rocks. "Bye." He says in the middle of my spluttering thank-yous and hangs up.
I do a little dance in the street, dedicated to Chris and my mobile. After I slip a little I look for witnesses of my incoordination.
None, excellent. I sit and huddle against the building.
I hope my car-thieves realise I hate them. The car isn't even nice, in fact it's a pretty gross car, in fact I'm pretty sure it is the ugliest car I've ever seen. It didn't really deserve the name of Betty but Chris laughed so much when I brought it home, caressing the dashboard I soothed it.
"Shhh Betty," I cooed, "Shhh, he just wishes he was as pretty as you." He wouldn't let me call it anything else afterwards.
Oh. My. God. What if they break her into little pieces? Selling them one-by-one. Bits of Betty? Oh jeeze, that's sad, I miss her little banana air-freshener already.
I sneeze but I'm not bored enough yet to watch for Chris' ute coming down the road.
Scratch that, I'm totally bored enough.
Nope.
Nope….wai-!
Nope, nope, not him.
I hope my car-thieves are joy-ridding in empty car parks, at least someone should be having fun tonight. Oh, now I feel bad about Chris, he said he was going out didn't he? I guess I shitted up that plan. Now I feel like a wanker; an hour here and an hour back, crap I'm going to have to buy him nachos for this. Lots of Nachos – Capital 'N' kind of Nachos.
I sneeze again, lucky it's only light rain. WHOA. PANIC – wet underwear. When did this happen? I check my ass discreetly and…Biiiiiiig wet patch. I've been sitting on wet steps so this shouldn't be a surprise, but still…it's…icky.
Pull yourself together Robin! You're 24 years old. How is it possible that you can still retain the word 'icky' in your vocabulary, let alone use it in a sentence? After I've given myself that stern, manly talking-to, I check the time. 52 minutes until Chris should get here…
My word…
Am
I
Ever
So
Bored…
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After the 10 billionth sneeze Chris shows up. Except it's more like this –
OH THANK THE HEAVENS! DEAR SWEET BABY EGYPTIANS!
A HUMAN!
A CAR!
SLOWING…STOPPING!
Jesus, is that you? –
CHRIS! MY FIRST BORN! TAKE IT! HE'S YOURS YOU SWEET MAN!...etc.
I'm jumping from foot to foot as he kicks open the side door for me. I climb in and offer an excited, teeth-chattering hug as thanks. He pushes my cold, wet, but-I-like-to-think-still-aesthetically-appealing body off him and pulls about a hundred towels out of nowhere.
"Don't drip on the Terminator." He says while slightly amused by my newfound love of towels. Betty and the Terminator. Sniff, just the Terminator now I guess. "Oh, for the sake of Hera." Sighs Chris as he reaches over, grabs a towel and starts drying my hair for me. "So," he broaches awkwardly. Still, even around me, Chris is a terrible conversationalist. "Betty huh? I'm sorry Robin, you can use the Terminator anytime you want OK?"
"Thanks, I'm alright though, I've been thinking about it in the rain." I throw my arm over my face dramatically and he stops rubbing my hair. "I just wish I had a chance to say goodbye, you know." He puts an arm 'round my shoulder and we sit with our faces bent down in remembrance.
I still have a towel on my head.
After a moment Chris slides away to start the car, changing the music to the disc he keeps in the Terminator for me.
"You don't have to do that," I say because I've already been a super pain today. "You can put your music back on, honestly, I don't mind." He just shakes his head.
"I can't listen to good music around you. Your face screws up in pain. Robin, you kill good music."
"I do not." I protest, he just laughs. His music is too wordy; he's always listening for jokes and he laughs at lyrics. Who laughs at lyrics? I like to chill to music, which is what I'm doing now. I'm chill, I'm so chill, I'm so super chill, I'm…really chilly, I mean I'm actually really cold..
Whoa my ears feel like eskimo-toes. My ears kind of stick out from my head more than most so I'm a little worried for them; what if they freeze? I like my ears, I like hearing through them.
"I like my ears." I mumble out loud. Chris glances over as I look lovingly at his beanie.
He sighs, and he's not joking, I can tell he really, sincerely does not want to give me his beanie.
"Take it."
But he does anyway. He leans over, his eyes still on the road, as I tug it off his head. His brown, curly-ish-but-still-straight hair is sticks up a bit so I pat it until he hits my hand away.
"Quit pawing me."
"Mucho gracias." I say as I pull on his warmth and turn the Terminator's heating up higher. He mumbled something that sounded like
'stupid-Robin', 'get his own beanie' and 'not even freaken' Spanish'.
We have a while to go until we arrive home and Chris has already said a lot today for him so he falls quiet. Chris is a great roommate. Georgie, my best friend, has a slag of a roommate but Chris is a massive introvert and his roommatablity rates with just the right amounts of company, distance, relative cleanliness and rent-paying.
It took a while to get used to each other but now we share food, that one mug we own and we have equal stakes in the sofa.
Like, for instance, two-ish years ago, soon after we had moved in together, I was seeing this guy pretty seriously (because he was seriously pretty but it ended because I became pretty certain that he was a serious cocksucker. Not the good kind of cocksucker either.) and Chris happened to come home to a display of sexy-naked-man-action on our –shared- breakfast table (here was an example of how Chad could, occasionally, be the good kind of cocksucker) Chris went red at my attempt to apologise and orgasm at the same time and fled into his room.
The next day I was handling the morning-after-horrific-embarrassment by hiding under my covers, pretending not to be alive. When I heard my bedroom door open I assumed it was the Ghost of Humiliation to haunt me, but when I felt something heavy landing on my bed and heard the door close again I looked to see about a gallon of disinfectant (Pink, because I'm sure Chris thinks he's funny). Tied to it was a note bearing instructions – 'Apply entire content of bottle on table (breakfast), and scrub until chemicals have peeled the skin.' I didn't use the whole bottle, but,
well,
that was all,
no screaming, no hysterical plans to leave because of my inconsideration. Just some cleaning product that made me smell like mutant roses for a week.
We didn't even speak about it for at least a year until I was eating breakfast one morning and Chris informed me with a slight twitch of his lips that we were out of disinfectant. I snorted a bit of poptart up my nose and he howled with laugher. Now I just bring it up when I want to make him smile.
"Hey Chris, remember Chad?"
He snorts and bites his bottom lip before smiling. Success.
-
We're still in the Terminator.
"So where were you going tonight before the Betty-napping incident?" I ask when we're about half way home.
"Dancing." He answers. Well now I feel guilty again. Chris loves dancing; he goes to clubs with friends or by himself and just dances and dances. He smiles the entire time, everybody who knows him says they never see him happier and he'll dance with anyone. He's a particularly fantastic dancer – all ass and hips. He keeps incredible beat. I know he dances in his room alone too. I don't dance with him often, it's a bit weird.
"Sorry, I should have called a cab. When was the last time you got to go dancing?" I take off his beanie, because I'm warm now, and put it back on his head as an apology.
"Robin, it's fine. See?" He wiggles in his seat, his hands pumping the air, "I can dance wherever I want."
"Two hands on the wheel maniac."
"Your ass is wet."
"Fuck you."
He's laughing as I layer more towels over my body and I burrow into my fluffy-mound. We stay silent for a while and I'm pretty sleepy now, I start to doze a bit.
"Hey Robin," I look up at him, it's dark now, I can't wait to crawl into bed.
"Hmm?" I've decided to wear my flannel pyjamas. Oh god, I'll be so warm. Chris glances over, looks back at the road, I yawn.
"I'm in love with you."
AN: Watch this space for Robin becoming a real character rather than the giant non-sequitur machine he appears to be!