Me: Hello! I've been posting at (which isn't working right now… frowny face) for some time now I've decided to… expand my horizons a bit.
Tum: Read: Whore your stories out for reviews.
Me: . On that lovely note, I present to you… Roomies For Life
Disclaimer: Did you know? I don't own Bleach!
Chapter 1 – Love At First Sight… Pfft
Ah, roommates.
One of life's kicks in the face. A particularly painful kick at that.
You see, roommates, like minor STDs, are a very unfortunate but very real part of college life; most people will have to suffer through at least one.
Since graduating the local university, I've had to deal with four very painful ones.
Roommates, I mean. Not STDs.
As the fates would have it, even though I was no longer an undergraduate, I was still doomed to share my flat with whoever would help pay the rent. Until I reach the happy day when I will finally have achieved my doctorate, I'm stuck with a roommate.
My four previous roommates had been, well... interesting, to say the least.
The first, who, in retrospect, wasn't all that bad, was a rather large Croatian girl named Sonja. In fact apart from the permanent cold shoulder, the rather uncomfortable snores, and the constant scary-ass glares, we got along pretty darn well. Until, that is, early one morning when I accidentally walked in on her peeing.
She was standing up.
The next roommate, was an enthusiastic kid from New Zealand named Tommy. He was sweet and cheerful, but he always ate bacon. What's wrong with bacon, you ask? He's allergic to bacon.
Every weekday morning, Tommy would nearly shit himself, getting excited to eat bacon for breakfast. And while it was cooking, he would run around the small apartment screaming "BACON! BACON! B-A-C-O-N! BACOOOON!!!"
... every morning.
He would shovel disgusting amounts of pig fat into his mouth at an astound rate. When he finished, he would predictably turn a blotchy grey, then a pale green and run to the bathroom. Whereupon he would proceeded to hurl the entirety of his breakfast in my poor toilet.
... every morning
The third roommate didn't stay long enough for me to remember his name. He had only been living with me for a week when I kicked him out. It was bad enough that the American had to decorate the place with stuffed fish and animal heads and cleaned his rifle every night. But the final straw came when I returned home from grocery shopping to find him skinning a deer on my bed.
Needless to say, I flipped. Who the hell did he think he was? And why, of all places, was the deer on my bed? And where the hell did he get a deer anyways? I live in between a city and suburbs for Christ's sake!
It was so disgusting, I went vegetarian for three days.
... Then I got hungry.
Most recently was a tiny girl from Hong-Kong named Li. She sat on her bed 24/7, never saying a word. She would peer creepily through her long stringy black hair and break apart Styrofoam peanuts into tiny pieces.
She was like freaking Somara with OCD.
Did I mention I hate the sound of Styrofoam? Well, I do. That's why I killed her.
Just kidding.
I have no idea what happened to her. One day, just all of her stuff was gone and her with it. I'm assuming she's in a better place now. Or at least, a whiter place. With padded walls.
What draws all these psychopaths to me? Well, it's either because God hates me, or because I illegally painted my front door bright orange.
I think it's because God hates me.
So, you see, it's totally reasonable for me to answer the door to meet my new roommate with a meat cleaver in my left hand.
Opening my fluorescent door, I came face to face with my fifth roommie.
He was not, as I expected, an extremely flexible German sex therapist, intent on trying kinky things on the kitchen counter (perhaps I'd over thought things), but a tall hippie with strange tribal tattoos and an awkward haircut.
After a brief moment, in which I decided he was not enough of a threat to warrant attack, I turned and marched into the kitchen.
"Are you gonna come in, Green Peace?" I called, stuffing the cleaver into a drawer. I closed it with my hip and saw him walk into the kitchen. "Wanna drink?" I opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles cans of cheap beer.
"Sure. My name's Renji, by the way." he said somewhat awkwardly, catching the can and staring at it blankly.
"You pull the tab, Flowers." I said in my most demeaning voice, demonstrating. God, how high was he?
"Oh, thanks." He grinned at me like he'd not just done something retarded.
I downed half my can and, loosing interest, turned to do something else. "So listen, Jenny-"
"Renji."
"Whatever. If you wanna light up a bong and connect with mother earth, or whatever, don't do it here, okay?"
He gave a bewildered nod, like he didn't know what I was talking about, the idiot. "Oh, and no incense." I added eying him as he took a drink of beer.
... And spat it out.
"Whoa! What's your problem?" I asked, staring at him like he had just wasted a perfectly good mouthful of my favorite buy-in-bulk, super-watered-down beer. Oh, wait.
"What- what is that?"
"Buh-ee-ruh." I pronounced like I was talking to a mentally handicapped five year old. A really annoying mentally handicapped five year old. "You know BEER, the only stuff a poor graduate student can afford. I know it's not the best kind, but haven't you ever had beer?" Maybe I was over reacting.
Probably not.
"No."
I gaped at him. "First off, that was a rhetorical question. Second, what the hell?"
"I've never had... beer." he said it like a question.
"How old are you?" I asked, marching up and grabbing his chin. I inspected his face from a socially unacceptably short distance, as if hoping to see some proof of his true age. No such luck. I did however, notice for the fist time that he had sideburns. Heh, and I that my dad had the only pair in the country.
"Uh, older than you..." he hedged.
I released his face and stood back to give him my best skeptic look, hand-on-hip included. "And you've never had beer?"
"Well, no. When you asked if I wanted a drink, I thought you meant sake."
Cue raised eyebrow.
"Do I look like I can afford sake?"
"Where I come from, that's all they have."
A hippie that drinks sake? "Where the fu-- never mind, I don't care."
I drained the rest of my can, tossed it in the sink and strolled into the next room to plop on my pathetic excuse for a couch. I grabbed the remote and flipped around channels for a good ten minutes before I realized Moonbeam was standing in the kitchen doorway. Guess he really likes doorways.
"Haven't you wasted enough of my day today?" I sighed.
He opened his mouth, apparently thinking of a response. "That was also a rhetorical question. What do you want now, Freebird?"
"Can you show me my room?" he still looked confused.
"Ugh." I peeled myself off my couch and sauntered over to a door a few feet from the T.V. "Here is our room, PETA. And that's your bed." I pointed to the empty furniture on the left side of the room.
"We share a room?"
Lord, this guy is slow.
"Yes, Birkenstock. This is a one room flat." I explained.
"Your ad was to rent a room, not a bed!"
"It is in a room, duh." I scoffed before returning to my couch.
-o0o-
Renji sat in his "classroom" the next day lost in thought about the turn of events. He had thought staying with Urahara had been weird. Were all the people from the real world this strange?
He tried to tune out Matsumoto, who was excitedly jabbering away at the next desk about getting to go shopping for real world stuff.
"Hey, Renji." It was Ichigo's voice. He looked away from the now bouncing Matsumoto (didn't that hurt her boobs?) and turned his gaze to the human.
"What's up? Are you okay? You're kinda out of it."
Renji shrugged. "It's nothing. Just, is it customary in the real world to greet guests with a meat cleaver?"
Me: So... whaddya think? Let me know you like it, I'll let you know I like you(r reviews) and I'll put up the next chapter! Fair enough, right?