Posting this separately just because. Don't ask why the collection got deleted.
Roommates were always nice to have.
For starters, when you're a college student, it's always great to have other people there to share the rent and bills. If they're doing the same degree, you can even study with them and get help with something when you need it.
Even if they're not doing the same classes as you, though, they're still there and they keep you company, even when you sometimes don't want it. And when things get hard, they can make you feel at home, even when 'home' is really a thousand miles away.
That was how Freed saw his roommates – Evergreen and Bickslow – and that was how they each saw each other. They were each their home. They helped each other get by with the rent and the bills. They helped each other study, even when they were useless in each other's fields. They were always there to keep each other company.
That was always how things had been, too. They'd all known each other since they were kids, having grown up on the same block, and they'd understood each other when no one else really had – childhood hadn't been easy for any of them, to say the least. But they'd done the best they could with what they'd been given; they'd found the home they'd never really had within each other and they'd held onto it for years without letting go.
All through the rest of primary school, then middle school and high school, and even when Bickslow had finished before them (not that he'd even finished high school in the first place), being older than Freed and Evergreen by a few years, they'd still stuck by each other. And when college had come around, they'd all gone together, because they were each other's home. They were each other's family, and a family stuck together.
And they were mostly nice to have as roommates. Because like any family, they had their moments where they just wanted to retreat to their corners of the old house they called home.
But it was one summer night during a break between classes that Freed and Evergreen decided to go through their eldest sibling's things – namely, his game collection. They didn't really have that many boundaries.
On more than one occasion, Evergreen had come home to find Bickslow and Freed sprawled on her bed and reading through her magazines – usually the ones she kept under her bed or on the top shelf of her wardrobe, just because they were either too trashy for her to admit liking, or they were the kinds of things she most definitely did not want her brothers to see. But no, on more than one occasion, she'd walked into her room after a long day of classes, found those two reading her slightly less-than-innocent magazines (sometimes), and had had to listen to them comment on which guy was the cutest.
But as weird as the two were, Bickslow was, undoubtedly, the weirdest. He took that in stride, though. And his game collection only reflected his weirdness. Usually whenever he wasn't taking classes or working at the bookstore, he was playing on his Xbox. As Freed and Evergreen went through it that night, they had to admit they were just a little disturbed, though they weren't surprised – he had a lot of fantasy games that they knew could get quite gory. But, there was one game he had that they'd heard a lot about, and they were just a little curious about.
From what they'd heard, you had to walk through a forest and find clues, and seemingly avoid some faceless figure. Honestly, they weren't sure, but it was summer break and they were bored.
So they grabbed one of the controllers from the T.V. stand, and settled themselves on the uncomfortable lounge and started the game. It only took them five minutes to be shaking and clutching at each other, having lost already, but they didn't let that stop them from trying again.
Except then Bickslow got home from his late night shift a little bit later. They didn't hear the door close, or him pulling off his shoes already as he walked down the hall in the house that had absolutely no lights on – they were too enraptured in their game to have heard him.
Bickslow saw it though as he came into the living room. He knew what they were playing – something that had admittedly had him too scared to sleep for a week the first time he'd played it, and walk through anything even resembling forest at night, which made it difficult since their college was close to a national park – and he was suddenly grinning as he stepped up behind them. "Oh! You guys are playing Slender Man?"
And then Freed and Evergreen screamed. Evergreen threw the controller into the air and it landed on the ground and broke, and Freed jumped so high that Bickslow wondered if there'd been a mini trampoline in the cushions. But Bickslow only jumped back in shock and looked between them in the dark room as his heart slowly began to return to normal rhythm after it had almost jumped out of his throat. "Why the hell are you two screaming?!" he shouted. "Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
"Give you a heart attack?!" Evergreen repeated. "What about me?!"
"Good heavens, Bickslow… You frightened us," Freed breathed. "Don't do that."
Bickslow had turned the light on in the room by then, thankfully. "What? I only asked if you if you were playing Slender Man…"
"But we didn't know you were home yet."
Evergreen only sat up and leant against the back of the lounge to start hitting the older man with one of the pillows. "I thought you were someone here to steal my soul or something, you asshole." Bickslow wasn't capable of stealing her soul, thankfully, but she'd been too engrossed in the game to hear his footsteps or the door, so as far as she had known at the time, her older brother really could have been some crazed lunatic out to either kill her or steal her soul.
Or both, but whatever.
"Wait, wait," Bickslow chuckled, catching the pillow as he walked around to sit down on the edge of the sofa. "You thought I was going to steal your soul? Do you even have a soul for me to steal?"
She flung another pillow at his face and he fell back onto the ground with a grunt. "Of course I have a soul for you to steal!"
"You sure? I'm pretty sure Medusa was soulless."
Freed rolled his eyes and smoothed down the front of the red shirt he had on as Evergreen joined Bickslow on the floor and they began to struggle with each other. "Bickslow, stop calling Ever Medusa and soulless."
"But she—." Bickslow only found the side of his face meeting the scratchy rug beneath the lounge as the brunette who was now straddling his back pushed his face into the ground to quieten him. "Okay, fine," he mumbled as he struggled to turn his head slightly. "Ever, baby, you're not Medusa. I'll stop calling you Medusa now. I promise."
Evergreen sat up slightly and let him lift his head. An apology from the mohawked man was rare at best, but she'd received a few of them over the years, and she knew what they sounded like. She could hear the sincerity in his voice then, and all traces of his playful nature were gone from his face for just a moment. "And? What else?" she asked.
"And… I'm sure if I had the ability to see souls, I'd see yours," he admitted reluctantly with a sigh.
Evergreen smiled before quickly leaning down to hug her brother, her arms wrapping around his neck as his shoulders and head rose up off the ground and he tugged at her arms so he could breathe. It was a good thing he was slightly flexible. "Thank you, Bicks."
"Yeah, yeah." He only rolled his eyes as he struggled to sit up, his sister still clinging to his back and hugging him as he finally managed to sit up on his knees. "But as for Freed, though…"
"Hm? What about me?" Freed asked. The looks on his siblings' faces made him shiver – the sheer wickedness behind their smirks and in their eyes was more frightening than the game itself.
"I'm not quite sure our Freed here would have a soul," Bickslow chuckled darkly. He might do, maybe, but if it was one thing Bickslow was certain of, it was that his green-haired sibling was as wicked as they came.