You're All Bloody Filthy! [Room 104 - OPEN]

[Arthur Kirkland]

After a long morning of wandering unaided through the large campus of Tout le Monde University, Arthur Kirkland had finally found his dorm room and, incredibly frustrated and laden with a tall pile of heavy boxes, was furiously trying to get the infernal door to open. He couldn’t believe how much he had forgotten about the place after having only been gone for a summer, but it was true that the grounds were incredibly expansive and very confusing, even to a second-year student. It would take at least a good month for Arthur to once again get used to manoeuvring across the land, between the buildings, and through the halls of the university quickly and efficiently. The thought was disconcerting, but something that he would have to get over as he certainly had more important things to think about at the moment.

“Oh, bloody fuck,” Arthur muttered under his breath, wrestling his key into the unwelcoming, stubborn lock that guarded the inhabitants of room 104. After a long minute of angry swearing and numerous instances of nearly dropping the load in his arms, the agitated student let out a satisfied grunt as the contraption finally clicked open. Steadying his breathing and the tilting pile of boxes onto which he still held, Arthur deposited the gleaming key into his pocket and tried the doorknob, which, unlike its companion lock, easily gave way to his efforts. Glad for that much at least, he got a better grip of his load, nudged the door open with his shoulder and stepped into the room, examining it with a critical frown.

He had obviously been the last to arrive, as there were various other boxes strewn about the place, disorganized kitchen utensils forgotten on the counter and a scattering of loose papers and books thrown about the tables, couch and floor. Grimacing, Arthur made his way to the back of the dorm, placing his boxes next to the coffee table as he went and making sure to gingerly step over the items that littered the floor. He first examined the bathroom, which was mostly satisfying save for the fact that the toilet seat had been left up following its last use. Arthur quickly remedied this with the aid of a fresh sheet of towel paper and made a mental note to bring it up when his roommates came back to the dorm; cleanliness was a virtue.

Following a quick hand-wash, the sophomore left the bathroom and continued his tour of the place, moving on to the bedroom. As soon as he stepped inside, however, he let out a loud groan and rubbed his temple, wishing more fervently than ever to be back in England. Two of the beds had been pushed together and messily done as one, and the only mattress left unclaimed was directly to its right. He had been placed with a couple. A very messy one as well, it seemed, as Arthur realized with great disgust that the bed had already been christened – wrinkled articles of clothing had been discarded about its base, forgotten even after the room had been abandoned. Unable to help it, the student whimpered desperately as he returned to the main room, heading toward the door. With an accusing finger, he jabbed at the list it displayed, reading each name carefully.

“Ivan Braginski, Alfred F. Jones, Arthur Kirkland, Lovino Vargas…” he read, squinting at the names. “Blast, who in hell put this together? I’ll have to sleep through a nightly shag and the mad senior from Russia is on my other side? Good lord.” He looked over the list again, rolling his eyes as he noticed that a small heart had been drawn and connected to the two names on either side of his, then sighed and turned to face the boxes that he had brought. He couldn’t help but look again at the mess around them, however, and took little hesitation before abandoning his own possessions in favour of first cleaning up those of his roommates.

[Alfred F. Jones]

It was obvious someone else was coming through the door soon. The footsteps in the hall, the noisy jangling of keys well before the American reached the door, and a voice loudly telling the world the lyrics of one of 3OH!3's more popular songs.. it would take a very dense person to not realize that they'd have to prepare. If there was really someone that oblivious in the world, they would be in for quite a surprise. "HEY I'M BACK!"

With that warning, the door to the dorm was promptly thrown open as a figure strode inside the living room, bags of junk food and McDonald's filling the blond's hands as he hurried over to the kitchen to set them down. "Okay, so, they didn't have that one thing you wanted so yeah I got McDonald's instead if that's okay?" The American's already-loud voice was further turned up as he yelled over his headphones and went through the bags. "And donuts!.. Girl I gotta go, I'm finished with the show~.. Oh, so yeah." Alfred continued to ignorantly talk as he deposited the foods onto the table and counter top, clearly thinking that someone else was in the dorm, and completely missing the Englishman that seemed to be tidying up. A content grin decorated the American's features as he hummed quietly and took to putting away whatever groceries he returned with. (Groceries meaning donuts, pop-tarts, potato chips, hamburger stuff, waffles, chocolate syrup, Hot Pockets, and tomatoes.)

Even though he wasn't on campus for even a day, Alfred already felt quite at home, and had no trouble making the place look more 'lived in'. It was slightly unnerving how neat everything was, and how just.. untouched the place seemed. Frankly, it was like he would feel like he broke a rule if he sat on one of the sofas or opened one of the kitchen cabinets, like those houses whose furniture was covered in plastic. With that being said, he quickly took it upon himself to fix everything up; all it took was moving some things to random places, leaving some of his stuff packed, moving the beds about, and strewing stuff about. 'Better to look messy and lived in than totally clean and kept like a hospital!' Fortunately, and strangely for anyone who already knew the American, he had arrived at the dorms rather early with all his stuff in tow (And there was a lot of it, mostly comic books and such.) and was pretty much settled.

"Haha! Done!" The triumphant shout was a signal that the blond had finished the task at hand. Alfred finally took off his headphones and turned back to face the kitchen, when he realized that he had been talking to air the times when he had spoken. "Oh.. Whoops?" The sophomore's grin turned into a confused huff, but before he could wonder just where the others were (Dammit he didn't like that Russian but he still acknowledged him), he heard the sound of shuffling about.

It didn't take him very long to find the source of the noise, and when he did, he quickly smiled again. "Oh hey! You must be the other guy!" he called cheerfully as he approached the figure, "I'm Alfred! Did you just get here? We were worried ya wouldn't show up, haha. Oh, why are you cleaning?" At this, the American frowned slightly, only for it to be quickly replaced with the usual grin. "It's cool, I already made everything home-ish if that's what you were trying to do! It was so, I dunno, clean in here.. Kinda unnerving.. You don't mind if I call you Artie, do ya?" Having been here earlier, Alfred had read the dorm list, and process of elimination suggested that the blond in front of him was the mysterious 'Arthur Kirkland' who had decided to come later. (This is because Lov wasn't Arthur, and the tall Russian senior just didn't seem to fit the name.)

He put his hands in his jacket pockets and cocked his head slightly to one side as he pondered a bit, realizing he wasn't even giving the man a chance to talk. "Hm, so what year are you anyways?"

[Arthur Kirkland]

Arthur completely ignored the fact that his roommates might have been opposed to his going through their possessions as he organized the things that had been strewn about the place. The dorm was a mess, even though it had only housed inhabitants for mere hours, and he was not going to stand for such conditions. If he had to live there, the place would be clean, no objections.

As he tidied, Arthur began to get a sense of his roommates’ personalities, picking up on which items belonged to whom over time and deciding that that was at least one good thing to emerge from the disaster. He came to realize, however, that he had honestly no clue as to how he would survive the year.

On the one hand, there was the intimidating Russian boy whom he’d known from a distance since he had started at Tout le Monde and never felt any need to forge a greater friendship with, a seemingly popular stance at the university. He was evidently rather fond of vodka, having brought along a bottle-filled cardboard box which had been left in the middle of the kitchen counter.

On the other hand, there was the Italian, whom Arthur assumed was a freshman, considering the fact that he hadn’t noticed him around before, and completely foreign to him in more ways than one. As he shelved a found cookbook that strictly dealt with tomatoes, the English student discovered that this particular roommate seemed to have a fondness for the fruit-vegetable hybrids.

Finally, there was the American student who completed the trio (couple, rather, considering the clues about the dorm that suggested that he and the Italian were incredibly close), whose comic book collection took no time at all to come into Arthur’s view and put a displeased grimace on his face. Moving said collection to a less conspicuous spot in the dorm, he realized that most of the things that he had cleaned up in the past hour belonged to said American. Fuming as he came to this conclusion and deciding that the young man was most certainly the least favourite of his roommates, Arthur shoved the box of comics toward the corner rather more violently than he had planned, noticing too late that such an action was not a good idea and letting out a loud moan as the box split in two, sending superheroes covered in plastic onto the floor in mounds.

“Fucking hell!” Arthur hissed, rushing to pull the sides of the box together before more books slipped out. Of course, he couldn’t care less about the state of the comics, but he knew how close an idiot could be to his collectibles and dearly prayed that Alfred Jones didn’t plan to come back to the dorm anytime soon. Therefore, when a loud greeting accompanied by the door slamming open signalled the arrival of a young man with an obviously American accent, Arthur’s heart fell to the pit of his stomach.

A plethora of additional profanities zooming through his head, the English student spun around to face his new companion, hiding the box behind him and trying not to look too guilty. Every ounce of remorse that had been all too present mere moments before completely slipped away, however, as Arthur found himself being completely ignored by the new arrival. His earlier feeling of annoyance toward the American immediately returned as he watched him put several pounds of junk food into the fridge and cupboards, loudly rambling to the air. With a loud huff, Arthur stood up, leaving the ripped box to continue its regurgitation of comic books as he moved on to a more worthy task. Deciding that returning to his own neatly-stacked boxes by the counter would be a suitable reward for his hard hour of cleaning, Arthur approached the end of the room that served as the kitchen, ignoring the presence of his roommate and opening the first box.

It was only when he had gotten back into the swing of sorting that the American decided to notice him, and he grumbled to himself before looking up to acknowledge the student’s words. As the loud young man in front of him went on about his purposeful lack of cleanliness, Arthur felt his eye twitch involuntarily and flat-out scowled as he was addressed by the horrid nickname that he had so desperately been trying to avoid as far back as he could remember.

His voice strained, Arthur tried his hardest to be civil with his reply. “I would greatly appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me Artie, thank you.” He couldn’t help the deepening of his frown as the nickname slid over his tongue. Before he could continue, however, a sudden, loud ‘rrrrip!’ echoed across the dorm, followed by a series of foreboding thumps that indicated the last of Alfred’s comic book collection escaping from their cardboard home. Arthur froze, staring at his roommate and waiting for a reaction.

[Alfred F. Jones]

Scowling? What was the guy scowling about now? Alfred of course, had no idea of the Britain's 'cleaner' habits, so the simply assumed that the look on his face was for another reason. "Uhm, sorry we didn't wait for ya before we got settled? Kinda couldn't wait, haha.. But we'll order you a pizza or something!" Of course, pizza made everything better. The Sophomore continued to grin happily, somewhat ignoring Arthur's request to drop the nickname he so obviously hated. "Sure sure. Anyways, what are-"

Then the sudden, unexpected noise filled the room as both students stood in silence for a moment. Luckily the last thing the blond thought the noise would be was his precious comics, 'Comics are made out of paper, right?', or anything of his for that matter. He merely raised and eyebrow and let out a low whistle, wondering who was unfortunate to have their belongings now strewn across the floor in the other room. "Ouch. Hope that wasn't your stuff? Lov's stuff is in the bedroom so.." Crap. Wait. Alfred paused, his javascript:add("","")grin fading into a more concerned expression. He fidgeted for a moment before leaning on the counter. "Hey, what if it was Braginski's stuff?" This having been his second year, the American was all too familiar with the senior, having heard rumors and stories like no one's business.

He quickly stood back up, contemplating for a moment before glancing toward the source of the noise. "Oh damn.. We should probably fix that before he gets back, huh? Hell has no fury like some creepy-ass Russian~" Not that he was afraid of course, just.. Well it would be the right thing to do, right? Yeah. Sure. That was it. Alfred nodded in the direction of the noise, his trademark grin returning once move before he left to go see the source of the disruption. "Coming, Artie?"

[Arthur Kirkland]

Arthur watched the young man in front of him as he went through the possibilities of what could have unfolded in the other room, trying not to fidget with his cuffs nervously. Unwilling to open his mouth, correct him and deal with the consequences just yet, Arthur merely shrugged pathetically in response. He went along with the other student's hypothesis - perhaps it had been the Russian's belongings that had spilled all over the floor - and hoped that he wouldn't feel the urge to investigate, but, ah, wouldn't that just be too lucky?

"Er, um, well no, no it doesn't but-" Arthur stuttered, embarrassingly flustered. "Perhaps it was just one of my boxes, I can go ch-" he stopped, suddenly faced with the other student's wide grin. Hesitating for some unknown reason, Arthur stared at his companion, lost for words as he was invited to go discover and fix whatever had happened. "I, um..." he muttered, snapping his head away to stare instead at the ground. "Perhaps it- it would be best left alone? Or, I mean, you still have things to put away and I can just go clean up. I was doing so anyway, after all!" he let out the smallest of nervous laughs, then added to himself, quietly, "Oh, blast."

Running a hand through his hair, Arthur looked back up at the other boy, hoping that he would abandon his rescue plan. In his panic, the English student hadn't even noticed that his intensely dreaded nickname had been thrown at him once more. He had heard that people got quite protective of collections such as the one that he had just completely disorganized and tainted; perhaps he could suddenly remember an errand that he had to run and slip out of the building? No, no, that would be far too impolite....