Oh My God, They Were Roommates

9 | Anyway You Want It

Their roommate agreement was re-secured to the refrigerator after the entire situation that just blew through their apartment. Sora felt a headache coming on. He rubbed a hand through his hair as he inhaled the smell of someone's cologne. Huey May seemed like the type of guy to drench his clothes in cologne like that. And de Lucía...

Who was he kidding.

The kid was wearing basketball shorts like that was called 'fashion'. As if de Lucía would bother with cologne. He wasn't sure why, but it made his skin crawl.

But then he remembered standing on the other side of his closed bedroom door, listening to de Lucía and his friends talk about him. De Lucía said he was gay—well, at least I have pronouns for the guy now, Sora thought. He felt immensely awkward having to ask after they were coming on four days of living with each other. It was too late for that chat, and he wasn't about to act like he was interested to know more about Ray de Lucía.

But what did interest him went along the lines of: why the hell did de Lucía think basketball shorts were okay in San Francisco?

"Dude, do you always wear those?" Sora said, a hand on his hips. He leant against one of the kitchen chairs and watched de Lucía turn away from the posted rules.

De Lucía glanced down at himself. "I, um, I don't know? It's comfortable."

Sora rolled his eyes. "It's boring. That's how shitty high school boys dress."

"I-I'm not shitty!" de Lucía squeaked, voice cracking. "A-And I don't always wear these shirts. I wear sweatshirts a lot."

"Uh, yeah, and no wonder you wear baggy pants otherwise those sweatshirts would make regular shorts look nonexistent," Sora said.

Ray clamped his mouth shut. His ears felt like they were on fire. "S-Since when did you keep track of my wardrobe? You've barely seen a quarter of it!"

"Because I've seen a whole damn half of it! You had one goddamn box of clothes, dude, and most of the volume of it was taken up by your winter jacket!" Sora said with a laugh that shriveled up Ray's confidence and sent his eyes to the ground.

Sora watched it—the exact moment de Lucía curled in on himself—and sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and thought to himself, Why did I bother? It's not like I actually give a shit. That didn't change the fact that he could, quite literally, spend an entire day at Westfield. Not only that, but he had done so with Charlie on more than one occasion.

And now that he couldn't spend money, he could at least get his shopping fix sorted and taken care of through de Lucía. It was the least de Lucía could do to make up for ruining his life, right?

Right?

"It's just that—" de Lucía started, clearing his throat. He plucked at the front of his shirt and said, "—I don't like wearing tight clothes. And tshirts cover up my sports bra straps, so..."

"You can cover 'em up and still look halfway decent, you know," Sora said. De Lucía rose an eyebrow at him, and Sora looked away with a tsk. "And tucking your shirts in the right way lifts the shirt off your chest."

"I don't know," Ray sighed, picking at his nails. He looked down at the frayed hangnail on his thumb and sighed. "I've got some homework to do. Have fun at work," he said, and with that, he shuffled over to his room where Sora could see the edge of the brand new mattress on the floor. And then, Ray shut the door.

Sora folded his arms over his chest. It irritated him that people could just sit and let their image fester in shitty clothing. Not that... he cared about de Lucía image. Well, Ambrose knows I'm living with the idiot, Sora reasoned. The least Ambrose could do was acknowledge the fact that my roommate isn't a total bum.