July 10th, 2014

ARTIST: carriecmoney

AUTHOR: carriecmoney

July 10th, 2014 - Shameless

Arthur sat cross-legged on his dorm bed at one thirty in the morning, dressed in his usual pajamas of vest and boxers and taking advantage of the darkness of his room and unconsciousness of his roommate to stare blatantly out his window at the dorm building across from his own. Below and straight across from his point of view was his new favorite view, a room where the inhabitant had raised his blinds to the roof the first day of classes and never bothered to lower them.

He watched as the shameless kid, facing away from the window at the moment and only half visible above his windowsill, stripped off his shirt to reveal a wonderfully muscled torso. Arthur hugged his pillow to his chest tightly and thanked every god of open windows and shitty dorm furnishings for this one thing to look forward to in this hell that passed as a university.

He'd told himself it was creepy, over and over again. He was spying, plain and simple, and he had no business watching someone else's private life. But, hey, it was the kid's fault for leaving his window wide open like that, and it wasn't like he spied all the time. He didn't even know his name, just that he had a nice back and blond hair and a stuffed whale that took up most of his bed.

Below, the unknown kid crawled onto his own bed, sprawling over the whale and focused on something out of Arthur's viewing screen of window rectangle. Arthur took in the planes of his back for a few more moments, sighed, and went back to studying calculus.

"""

Arthur didn't have many friends outside of his major. It was hard to, when you had the same classes with the same clump of people and no time for anything but projects, homework, and studying outside them. The few he did have were more acquaintances than anything, people he could ask for help with a topic the night before a test or have conversation with in the dining hall. It was one of the less desirable side effects of choosing to be an international student across an ocean from everything he had ever known. Of course, the major desirable side effect of his choice was being across an ocean from everything he had ever known. At least his parents were more than willing to pay the tuition. They wanted him just as far away from them as he did.

That being said, while he might recognise faces and a few names, he was far from popular in his new university, even after a full semester of classes and speaking with a heavy English accent in America. He was becoming more and more accustomed to sitting alone on his laptop in his classes, even comfortable. Life was easier this way.

It also made people-watching that much easier.

Currently he was sitting in a recitation, the last class of a very long day of them in the first week of the spring term, playing Tetris and waiting for the two TAs at the front of the room to get their act together and start teaching. A row or two in front of him, a few computer science majors were debating the pros and cons of the card game parts of Pokemon, Yugi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering in a far too thoroughly researched discussion that Arthur couldn't help but smile at. Nerds, all of them.

The blond one on the end stood, still chattering excitedly as he pulled off his sweatshirt, T-shirt riding up with it. Arthur's eyes grew wide. He didn't realise his fingers had stopped moving until the blond straightened out his shirt and sat back down, still chatting away, blissfully ignorant, and he looked down to find he was two steps away from losing.

He cursed fluently under his breath and scrambled to recover, but it was too late. He lost as the TAs finally got the projector to work and started their lecture, and even though Arthur closed his laptop to take notes, only one thought bounced around his brain for the rest of recitation.

I only recognise him when he's fucking shirtless.