"Thomas, it's almost 1:30!" Benson called out to the goat.
Thomas set his rake against the tree. "Okay, thanks!" yelled back, quickly trotting off back towards the house and leaving Rigby in absolute shock. Mordecai simply ignored it. This hadn't been the first time the goat had gotten off work as an intern early for classes, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be the last either.
"Aw, man!" Rigby whined, "That's like the third time this week, dude!"
"What?" Mordecai frowned. He knew exactly what the mammal was getting at, but maybe if he pretended it wasn't so obvious, Rigby would let it go and leave him out of it.
"Thomas! He always gets off work WAY earlier than the rest of us." the raccoon pouted. Thomas hadn't even been working here at the park anywhere near as long as he or Mordecai had; so why he got a special privilege of sorts from Benson was completely unneeded and outrageous. If anything, Rigby should be the one getting a break. A nap sounded pretty damn good right about now.
"So? He has classes at the college, Rigby." Mordecai explained with a sigh, "What does it even matter? It's not like he gets paid to work here."
"Pff- so he can just get out of work because he has some nerdy class to go to?" Rigby pouted irately. Thomas must be screwing the boss or something.
"You're totally not listening to me." Mordecai muttered without the slightest trace of astonishment. It was in Rigby's nature not to listen as much as it was to whine about unimportant matters such as this very one.
"Yeah, well. I bet Benson wouldn't let me leave early, even if I had classes too."
"That's because you don't take school seriously and it would never happen." the bird laughed, watching his friend fume up. "What do you care? You don't even go to school, so I don't see what all the 'what if's are about."
"It could happen!" Rigby yelled back, still clearly only choosing to hear the select parts of what he wanted.
"Pff. Some people actually care about their education, and you are not one of those people." the bluejay taunted. "You don't even have a high school diploma. What kind of college would accept you?"
"Dude, it's not that hard." Rigby scoffed, "Thomas isn't even that smart, how hard could it be?!"
"You're certainly one to call other people out on not being smart."
"STOP TALKING!"
"Seriously though," Mordecai persisted, "You hardly know anything about him. He could be some sort of genius mathematician and you'd have no clue."
"What the hell does magic have to do with being smart?"
The avian let out a loud groan. Jeez, he always proved capable of being irritating. "You're such an idiot."
"Hey!" Rigby barked, "I'm pretty sure we argued over something like this before, and that it spiraled out of control. And I'm sure you also remember what it was that saved us." the raccoon grinned confidently.
Mordecai rolled his eyes. "Rigju-"
"RIGJUICE, THAT'S RIGHT! I'D SAY ONLY A GENIUS WOULD BE CAPABLE OF CREATING A CURE."
"It's not like that's what you intended." the blue jay argued.
"Hm. Hm. Whatever. I'm going to go ask Benson about it now." Rigby stated, scampering off back to the house as had Thomas to create what was bound to be just another problem.
Mordecai took a deep breath. He honestly didn't care what Rigby was getting himself into nowadays anyhow, and the bird really wanted nothing more than to lead a normal and decently successful life. And that sure as hell wasn't going to happen if he was goofing off and getting into trouble all the time. In short, he felt himself beginning to grow up. Less could be said for Rigby.
The raccoon was still just as much of a child as ever, and not that it was a bad thing, but Mordecai had just been finding it more and more uninteresting and harder to bide through lately. Not that he'd completely lost interest in his friend, but more so the crap that he became the cause of. Mordecai was just getting tired of all this supernatural crap that always seemed to come out of nowhere.
"Good luck." the avian chuckled to himself.
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Benson sputtered in disbelief at the raccoon's proposal. Was he mental? "THERE'S OBVIOUSLY SOME OTHER MOTIVE FROM THIS THAT YOU'RE GETTING AT!"
"Aw, come on, Benson!" the raccoon pleaded back. "I just want to better my education."
The gumball machine let out a loud laugh; one that lasted an awkwardly long period where everyone else could only spend quietly watching from the sidelines of Benson's fit of chuckles that led him to tears. Rigby's face remained unfazed and completely serious all the while.
"YOU?" Benson laughed, "You're getting worse at lying, Rigby."
The mammal fumed. "I'm not lying!"
"I don't see what's wrong with him wanting to further his learning." Skips stated blankly, stepping into one of Benson's arguments as fearlessly as ever.
"Pff." the machine scoffed, "I don't know what his ulterior motive to all this is, but it sure as hell isn't to 'better his education', he probably just wants to miss out on work." Benson explained, turning to give a wicked smile to Rigby. "I'm right, aren't I?"
The raccoon shook his head and Benson let out another loud laugh. "Whatever. There's not a college that would be willing to accept someone who couldn't even manage to get their high school diploma." the gumball machine furthered.
"I dunno, Benson." Skips began, "It's just a community college, so I'm sure they wouldn't mind letting Rigby attend so long as he pays his tuition."
"What's your defense for that?!" the machine blurted out, "There's no possible way he could afford the tuition. And since when the hell has it been a community college? They have on-campus dorms." Benson froze for a moment, turning back to Skips with a sudden face of absolute shock. "Wait, why are you DEFENDING HIM?"
Skips merely shrugged and Benson let out a sigh.
"I'll just get Don to pay for that tuition-thingy." Rigby threw out, having been all too forgotten during the yeti and gumball machine's minor dispute. "He's loaded, after all."
"Why would he help you financially with how horrible you are to him?" Benson asked flatly.
"Hm. Hm." the raccoon grinned, "'Cause he's too nice."
"Know what?" the gumball machine finally began, "If you can set everything up yourself and get in, I don't care what you do or what work you miss." Benson groaned in defeat. At least this meant Rigby wouldn't be around to annoy him as much. And perhaps with Rigby gone and nobody to goof off with, Mordecai would work just that much harder.
"Ha!" was all Rigby said in response, skipping gleefully away from the two and back to the work he'd been avoiding all this time.
"I hate him so much." Benson muttered.
"I don't blame you." Skips grunted, both men finally breaking their serious faces into chuckles.
"No way, dude." the blue jay frowned.
"Oh, come on! Why not?" Rigby whined, latching onto his friend and dragging along the ground like a deadweight. "If you tag along, you could take a class with Margaret. She goes to the college too!"
"It's not like we're going to have some romantic discovery during a college class." Mordecai muttered, "And she's really never on campus anyhow. If anything, she's at the coffee shop more than the college." the bird finished, trying to scrape the raccoon off his leg with his free foot. A couple of jabs to the face was all it took for the mammal to release himself, but Mordecai already knew that Rigby's whiny pleas were far from over.
The raccoon rolled off onto the grass, laying lazily on the ground and looking up at the clear, blue sky with an expression of utter boredom. Most likely simply because he hadn't gotten his way; what a crybaby.
"Silent treatment?" Mordecai asked, the raccoon remaining where he was without even the slightest of movements. "Jeez, you're such a kid." the blue jay groaned, "I'll think about it, okay?" A wide grin crept across Rigby's face, and the smaller male practically flipped up off the ground with the smuggest of looks. "I still think it's a stupid idea though."
"How so?"
"You're doing it to get out of like- an hour of work. Yet you've forgotten that college is a lot of work too." the bird said.
Rigby chuckled. "A lot of work? As if."
"Oh right, you never worked very hard in regular school either." the bird let out sarcastically.
"Whatever, man. Just help me get the paperwork filled out."
Thomas sat at his computer desk staring blankly at the bright screen and feeling his eyes grow heavier in exhaustion. Class had been a lot shittier today than he'd initially anticipated, and with finals approaching in the distance, there was still a ton of preparations that needed to get done. Added to the loads of homework he'd procrastinated into a huge pile of assignments. Not that he'd done it intentionally; he'd just been busy lately.
"I hate this so much." Thomas exhaled. Between interning, his legitimate job of working various shifts at the movie theater, and finally schoolwork itself, there was little relaxing to be done and only room for pent-up anxiety and stress.
Thomas let our a load groan of frustration, scrolling through his class assignments with countless other tabs open as resources to begin on one of the many papers he'd been saving up until now. While it may prove difficult for the goat to begin the work, he'd consider himself fully capable of executing a fantastic job on any assignment. In simpler terms, the difficulty or measure of the work wasn't the hard part. What was, was getting him to actually start doing it.
The door of the room flung open, thankfully slamming into the doorstop rather than the wall, but still scaring Thomas to no avail. A small raccoon struggled to drag his suitcase through the doorway, the case itself almost as big as the male in his entirety.
"Woah!- Hey! What are you doing?!" Thomas yelled out as Rigby nonchalantly waltzed into the goat's dorm and tossed his belongings on the vacant, yet somehow still messy, bottom bunk of the room's bunk bed.
"This is my room too now." Rigby frowned, tossing himself alongside his suitcase upon the soft bed, letting out a deep breath of satisfaction. He could tell Thomas wasn't very happy about this right off the bat, and perhaps that's what made things even more enjoyable than expected.
"You don't go here..." the goat trailed off.
"Wrong again." Rigby corrected, "I do now. Funniest part for everyone is probably how quickly they accepted me. Joke's on everyone else then, I guess." the raccoon grinned, "And I requested a room with my good friend Thomas. "
"What are you even talking about?.." Thomas paused, "But wait, I asked for my own dorm."
"Well, there's clearly a bunk bed in here for a reason." the mammal remarked, sitting up and beginning to dig through his things within his suitcase.
Screw guidance for having agreed to allowing the goat his own room if they were only just going to let Rigby in right away without even asking his consent on the matter. Freaking stupid.
Rigby could actually begin to see why Thomas had asked for a room to himself, the dorm being much more spectacular than the mammal had expected. The bunk bed sat towering up towards the ceiling against the wall dressed in blue sheets and white blankets, reminding Rigby a lot about his dorky friend back at the park.
A shelf on the opposite side of the room was crowded in what Rigby assumed to be Thomas' things; a large television accompanied by the latest gaming system that the raccoon could only ever hope to afford. Multiple little figurines were lined across the shelves as well, of which Rigby assumed to be action-figures of some sorts, alongside stacks of vintage-looking comic books.
Large aquarium sat promptly alongside the television with a faint humming sound and faint artificial lighting to present the array of colorful fish swimming within.
Dresser stuffed with Thomas' clothing next to a door which Rigby presumed led to a bathroom or hopefully kitchen of sorts. Air conditioning machine that sang a subtle buzzing tune in harmony with the fish tank hung up attached to the ceiling above a large set of screen doors with curtains pulled back that led to a railed balcony with a lovely view of the sunset and cityscape, if Rigby did say so himself.
A desk with a computer atop it sat in one of the corners of the room in front of the desk chair that Thomas was seated in. The floors were hardwood, but majority of it was covered by an expanse of blue rug which coordinated with the curtains and beds. The walls and ceiling were white much like the walls and ceiling of Rigby's room back at the park, but were undoubtedly cleaner.
"This place is awesome..." Rigby giggled in awe.
"Better be with how much I pay for it." Thomas muttered, "I still don't know why you're in it though."
"How many times do I have to say I go here now?" the raccoon groaned.
"I don't believe you." the goat explained.
Rigby sighed. "I wanted to get out of doing work early like you, so I told Benson I'd start taking classes here."
"And he let you?" Thomas practically gasped in disbelief.
"I know, right?" Rigby laughed.
"What classes are you taking?"
"None." the raccoon snorted, yet somehow Thomas wasn't at all shocked by this answer. Hell, it was probably what was expected of the little slacker. But what it didn't explain was why he was here.
The goat paused. "So you're in my room, why?"
"I said I'd start taking classes NEXT semester." Rigby answered, "That being said, I have nothing to do and nowhere to go for the time being. So instead of doing stupid homework and learning, I figured I'd just come and chill with you and Benson wont even know the difference."
"Yeah but I ACTUALLY have classes." Thomas spun slowly around on his desk chair as Rigby ignored his comment and continued to toss more and more of his belongings out on the floor beside the bed. Though to be honest, while the room's ceiling and walls were clean, less could be said about the floor that was infested with Thomas' own clothes and junk. Rigby couldn't help but chuckle quietly to himself upon noticing a pair of the goat's heart-covered boxers on the floor. What a loser.
"Why'd you bring your stuff?" Thomas asked, still not entirely sure on what the heck was going on here. One moment he's just continuing on with his regular, everyday life. Then there's this little brat from work running in here and saying he lives here too now. Jeez...
"Well, this place actually has a bed for me; so I figure it's better than sleeping on a trampoline back at the house."
"Oh, right." the goat mumbled.
Rigby faked a frown. "I'm so upset you're not very enthusiastic to see me."
"Fuck you." Thomas muttered to himself.
"Wow, where'd that come from?" Rigby laughed. Though in all seriousness he was slightly caught off-guard to here something like that from the assumed goody-two-shoes and momma's boy Thomas. The fact that he was living here at the college and not with his mother might as well be the real question of all questions here.
"What do you mean?"
Rigby finished taking the last of his things out, having now created a meaningless pile upon the floor and merely knocking his suitcase off the edge of the bed to set atom his pile of crap. "I wouldn't expect hearing you say that is all."
"I can't talk like that to a superior." Thomas said plainly, turning his attention back to his computer and trying his best to return to the way things were before the raccoon had burst right it.
"Superior, eh?" Rigby thought aloud, "Your superior wants you to get him a soda then."
"We're not at the park, dick." Thomas answered coldly.
The raccoon didn't really know what to do at this point seeing as how less friendly Thomas was coming off as originally expected. Sure, Rigby was used to annoying the hell out of people, even if he lived with them; an example being Mordecai. But it was different with someone he knew so little like Thomas. Though, he clearly knew the goat enough to the level of wanting to room with him. Hm...
That being said, Rigby wasn't really sure he wanted to start possible months of living with this guy on the wrong foot and acting like an ass from square one.
Rigby let out a breath. "I'm sorry." he muttered, earning a puzzled face from Thomas. "For being annoying." was all the raccoon could come up with.
"It's okay." Thomas chuckled, causing Rigby to perk up a bit.
"Wanna play some video games?" the raccoon questioned, "I mean- if you don't mind me using your system." Rigby corrected, trying to break back on his rude habits.
"Sure." Thomas smiled, Rigby smiling back.
Maybe this actually wouldn't be so bad... Then again, it could actually wind up becoming a maelstrom of hellish, angst-filled, chaotic shit. Anything's possible in this wonderful world of ours. And it really just all depends on the way you choose to look at things.