i'm back. hello. this fic was co-written by silverxrose (she wrote rin's povs while i wrote len's). she's pretty great not gonna lie. anyways. there will be more than one chapter for this fic. it'll be updated fairly regularly. but enough of me rambling.
enjoy :).
L
His room was small, Len decided as he bumped his shoulder against the light switch. Too small to be considered a two-person room, really. He set the box under his arm onto the teeny bed smushed into the left corner, wincing at the thin layer of dust covering the nightstand besides it, and flinched when he heard a creak, the door opening to reveal a brightly-colored sweatshirt and a blonde braid resting atop it. A girl waddled into the room, her thin frame overwhelmed by the heavy load she carried, and she let it drop to the floor with a thud. She pulled her sweatshirt down onto her thighs, which were bare otherwise. Len caught himself staring and gulped, struggling to move his eyes upwards to meet hers. They were blue, a perfect contribution to her "white-girl" look-not that he could say much, though, really, seeing that he, too, rocked the signature blond-haired-blue-eyed combo.
He'd seen her before. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he noticed that her face was void of makeup-but even then, she managed to look appealing.
"I'm Rin," she said, extending her hand out, "and you're a boy."
"I know." He didn't shake her hand.
She made a face.
"Wait-what part do you know?"
"Uh, both," Len said, face reddening once he realized how strange that'd sounded. "But I'm not a stalker. Promise." He straightened his collar. "We went to school together? In elementary school?" For seven years, all the way from pre-kindergarten to the sixth grade.
Rin chuckled, a deep sound compared to her usually squeaky voice, and it was weird, because not once in his life had Len ever heard a girl chuckle.
"You're funny. What's your name again? Leonardo, right? I think I remember you now. Your hair used to be way shorter."
Len put a hand to the the small ponytail at the back of his head, and Rin's grin lessened when she looked up from the rag-like carpet to see his expression. "Woah. Sorry if I offended you, or something."
Did he look angry?
"What? No-no...it's fine. I just go by Len now. I...it sounds less dorky." Half-true. He didn't bother bringing up the real reason.
She chuckled again.
"Okay, Len. So you're a boy."
She started to rummage through the box on her bed, fluorescent clothing and nicknacks being thrown about. Len did the same, neatly placing his button-ups and books in piles on his bed.
"And?"
"Most of the time, roomies aren't, I dunno, supposed to be different genders."
Oh.
"Is that so?"
"Mm."
He stole a glance behind him at Rin and her side of the room. It looked as if a tornado had swept by-a rainbow-colored tornado. He looked at his own area, clean and filled with things that weren't neon-yellow, and then at the outfit he wore, pressed slacks and Chelsey boots, and then at Rin's again, dirty Converse and that bright blue hoodie, and recalled her outgoing aura, her bold way of speaking, compared to the polite and reserved nature he held.
They were different, Len concluded. Very, very different.
But then why was she so appealing to him?
He cleared his throat.
"So, would you like to arrange for a new dorm then? If you have an issue with having a male roommate?"
Rin was on her phone now, fingers flying across the screen so quickly that Len had to do a double-take.
"Naw," she responded, waving a hand at him without looking up, "it's good. You seem chill enough." She threw her cell phone, an iPhone wearing a chunky giraffe case, onto the bed and gave him a lopsided smile.
"Do you know anyone else over here yet?"
Nobody that he wanted to know.
"Yes. I do-well-I don't speak to them or anything, so it doesn't count."
He averted his eyes when Rin's whole midsection was exposed as she tugged her sweatshirt over her head,
"You?"
"Naw." She waved her hand at him again. "Except for you." She winked.
Len swallowed and peered at the green numbers on the nightstand, his glasses lost somewhere in the backpack he brought. Ten after eleven. They'd both arrived fairly late into the night, it seemed, but most students were probably to arrive the next day just in time for the freshmen's first assembly and all events that went with that, so in retrospect, they were early, a thing that Len sensed wasn't customary for his new "roomie". Rin yawned.
"Anyways. I'm gonna sleep now. Goodnight," she said, unlacing her Converse and flopping back onto her bed.
"Sleep tight," he mumbled back.
R
Rin woke at the crack of dawn. Literally, seeing as streaks of indigo and red were peeking out from under the neon-pink curtains she'd hastily hung up the night before but stars still dusted the sky. Her alarm read 5:13.
Slipping her feet into fat bunny slippers, Rin rubbed her eyes and padded over towards her desk, wrapping an oversized hoodie around the tank top and shorts that she'd slept in. Normally she wasn't such an early riser but she hadn't slept well that night, tossing and turning and tangling in her bright blue sheets until she woke up covered in a light sheen of sweat. Judging from the state of the bed across the room, Len hadn't had the best night's sleep either. She didn't blame him.
No matter how breezy of a facade she'd put on the night before, she couldn't help the fact that she unconsciously wondered what he thought of her, couldn't help but wonder if she snored, or sleeptalked and said something totally embarrassing that would prove that she hadn't changed one bit from elementary school. Rin winced, both from the chilly air that bit at her legs and at the thought of her younger self.
Oh well.
At least now that she was awake, she could get her vlogging done before Len woke up. Somehow, she didn't think he would be interested in knowing about her YouTube channel, and she didn't quite want him to either. Not yet.
Rin flipped open her laptop as she slumped into her fuzzy desk chair, suddenly ridiculously glad that she'd unpacked the night before. Blinking from the brightness of the laptop, she clicked on her video editing program and tugged her long hair into a knot at the top of her head, fastening it with the yellow scrunchie that she'd left on her desk the night before as it loaded. Her most recent video popped up on the screen and she grinned as she clicked on it, checking the clock to make sure she had at least half an hour to crop and add effects before sharing it on her channel with her millions of subscribers.
Yes, millions. What a shock—the nerdy, weird loser girl from elementary school with the lopsided grin and the gap between her front teeth had millions of subscribers.
"Hey, Rinsters! Today I'm going to college!" Her voice blared out of the speakers on her desk. "Obviously I have to unpack and stuff, and meet my roomie. I hope she's nice, duh, and maybe she'll be in my next vlog. We're gonna be the best of friends." Rin paused the video, adding a heart emoji sticker to the screen and speeding up her voice before letting it continue, a smile tugging on her lips. Some people hated hearing their own voice, but she found it therapeutic, somehow.
"So, as y'all can see I already put my clothes and stuff in my room, and now I just have my extra stuff. Tell me in the comments if you wanna see an unpacking vid!"
Rin smirked and paused the video again, adjusting the volume of her shrill squeal of excitement that emerged from the speakers, when suddenly a bleary voice interrupted her thoughts.
"What the..."
Shit.
She'd forgotten to wear headphones. And she'd woken Len up. A blush crawled up her cheeks and she fought the urge to slam her head into her desk.
"Sorry."
L
Len struggled to look at Rin's laptop-another Apple product, it looked like-and rubbed at his eyes, cursing himself for forgetting to find his glasses the night before.
"You're fine; it's fine. But…" He rubbed at his eyes again. "What is that?"
Rin worried her lower lip underneath her teeth, and he recalled when she had first gotten her braces when they were eight, the ones where she insisted on having rainbow-colored bands and wearing them confidently, not giving a care about anything else, a trait his younger-and current-self lacked and yearned for.
"This? Oh," she let out a nervous laugh, "it's a project I'm working on."
Len blinked twice, still tired despite having just woken up, and sat up a little higher under his comforter, and Rin snorted.
"Y'know what? Forget that. I was lying. It's-" She sighed and threw her hands up. "What am I saying? I have a Youtube channel."
Len raised his eyebrows at her.
"Do you really?"
"Yeah. It's called-it's called rinnyrainbows." Her eyes where anywhere but on him. He bit his lip to refrain from giggling at that.
"I know it's stupid. You can laugh."
So Len did. A little.
"I made the channel when I got my braces, and…"
"...you made them rainbow."
"Mm."
Rin sprang to her feet and snatched a small and rectangular camera from her mess of a desk.
"'Kay. So I vlog? And I need you to be in my vlog."
Len shifted.
"Me? Are you sure about that?" He tugged at the collar of his mock neck. "I mean…"
...I might ruin your reputation? Be too awkward?
She nodded her head firmly and clicked on a button.
"Yes. Yes. Now…" She turned the camera's lens to her face and started to ramble on and on and on, and Len turned his attention to his cellphone, which, unlike Rin's, was not engulfed in a mess of cheap silicone.
"Len! Say hello!"
He jumped and pushed hair out of his face and shook his hand stiffly.
"Hello."
"Introduce yourself?"
Hadn't she done that for him already?
"Okay...I'm Len. Rin's roommate."
"More, Len. They want more."
"Who is they?"
"The Rinsters."
Len looked at Rin, and she sighed.
"The viewers."
Rinnyrainbows's Rinsters, Len thought to himself as he let out a small giggle.
"Aw. Cute."
Len ignored that.
"I've known Rin for…" He counted on his fingers. "Seven years."
"Good, good. Now," she said, stepping back, but not before she tumbled into a half-open box smaller than the others she had hauled in the night before. It toppled over, spilling its contents-contents that a boy like Len, a boy with no exposure to female things at all, period, shouldn't be seeing.
Not that they were exactly sinfully terrible, but Len really had no exposure to female things at all, period. Really. He almost covered his eyes with his hands, but stopped as he felt Rin's vlogging device filming him again, and bent over to help pick up the scattered tampons and purple squares, along with-was that lingerie?
Rin started to film the mess at her feet, complete with Len (who, really, was a mess too, so it would be safe to group him in with the rest of the stuff) hunched over, and he tugged his shirt down his exposed back sheepishly before returning to his work, his face hotter than the one-hundred-degrees weather outside.
"Thanks, Lenny." She bent down to ruffle his hair as if he were a puppy.
Lenny?
"Not a problem," he mumbled. He put a hand to his cheek. It was still warm.
R
It was fun to embarrass Len.
Maybe too fun, now that Rin thought about it. She hadn't laughed the way she had when that tomato-red blush swallowed his face in what felt like forever, not since she was in fifth grade, pigtails high on her head and tied in hot pink ribbon, braces in bright colors to match her ratty sneakers, before she realized that it was weird to be different and weird was bad.
So she asked him to have breakfast with her, and it scared her how much she wanted him to say yes. How much she needed him to say yes.
But he hesitated. And all it took was that moment for her carefully-constructed cheerful smile to crumble, and she turned away.
"Sorry, I just—you probably have friends you wanna sit with or something, I dunno. Sorry. Forget it."
Had she embarrassed him beyond repair? Was he one of those people who hated being on camera? Oh damn, what if he was mad? What if he thought she hadn't changed one bit from the girl she used to be, all bubbles and bluster and bright colors?
Rin didn't know why she cared. And yet, she felt hot tears prick her eyes.
She blinked them back, sneaking a glance at Len, whose face was once again flushed crimson.
"No, no, sorry, that's not what I meant..."
Great. Now he felt bad for her? The only thing worse than rejection had to be pity. God, she was so stupid. Why had she even asked?
"I just... I don't know." Len's voice was rough, quiet. "Sorry. I don't usually, I dunno, talk to cute girls or something, and I never know what to say... Sorry."
Cute?
Suddenly, Len seemed to realize what had slipped out of his mouth and somehow his visage managed to turn even redder. "I mean, I don't know why you would wanna hang out with me, 'cause I just screwed up your vlog and your, um, feminine products, and—"
Rin couldn't help it anymore. Ignoring the aghast expression on Len's face, she burst out laughing. And she didn't stop until her stomach hurt.
"Relax, Len. God. You're adorable." Grinning, she offered him a hand. "Come on. Coffee?"
His palm was warm against hers.
.
i don't know what to say here im sorry. but.
thanks for reading.