James sandwiched the large cardboard box between himself and the door. In order to keep its balance, he lifted up his knee to provide some support so that he could free up a hand to open the door. As he reached out for the doorknob, though, apparently that was when the person inside decided to unlock the door and swing the door open. It swung inward and the box immediately tipped forward out of James' grasp. He scrambled to catch it, unsuccessfully, and instead had to watch as his belongings inside crashed to the floor. He cringed as the items inside loudly shifted, a couple of his trinkets most likely being broken in the process of falling.
James shut his eyes tightly and sighed, a loud and unamused sort of thing as he flexed his boney hands whilst trying to contain his irritation. After reopening his eyes, he momentarily stared down at the box laid at the feet of his new roommate, who only chuckled. James' eyes traveled up from the floor, tracing their way up the body of his new roomie all the way to his face. The face of the campus menace himself, Damien -- or as everyone called him, Blackbear.
"You dropped something." Damien taunts
James' RA hurried up behind him, holding a much smaller box.
"Damien, so good to see you again." The RA greets, clearly failing to hide his bitterness as he adjusted his grip on the box
Damien dramatically rolled his eyes at the sight of the RA.
"This is your new roommate, James. Try not to scare him off. Our single dorms are all full, thanks to you."
James also followed suit in rolling his eyes. Scare him off? As if that would never happen. He'd practically trained his last asshole roommate, Alex, into a model citizen within the span of a couple months. No more empty beer bottles and moldy dishes for James, no sir.
But now it seemed that he had to start the process all over again with this dickbag. Gross.
Damien simply scoffed, his gaze finally drifting back down to James, who still stood before him, looking equally as annoyed as he did. The smoldering flame in Damien's greyish blue eyes was poorly hidden and rather prominent within his energy. James could practically taste the disappointment and anger that rolled off of Damien in wild, unforgiving waves. However, James was already calculating just how he needed to tame the beast in order to make his situation more liveable since Damien's reputation clearly preceded him.
Damien casually gave him a top-to-bottom once-over, not bothering to hide the way that he hungrily sized James up as a predator would its prey. The scanning was over in seconds, though and the Blackbear didn't bother to hide the fact that he was deeply unimpressed. He crossed his arms over his broad, sweatshirt-covered chest and leaned over until he could stand comfortably against the doorframe. He almost had an amused expression painted sloppily across his face, but that would've been a miracle, since he clearly only had two or three expressions to cycle through. Damien's eyes flickered from the shorter boy in front of him over to the skinny, clearly annoyed RA standing diagonally behind James.
"James, huh?" Damien comments "Looks like he'll be gone within the week."
Damien's voice sounded exactly like what James imagined gravelly, poisonous buttercream sounding like. That is, if it existed and actually held the capacity to make human word-like noises just like the blackbear did. Come to think of it, it was such a bitter, harsh comment coming from someone that James hadn't even said a single word to just yet. How wonderful. This was gonna be just great for him. James was soooo glad that Randy thought this was such a good goddamn idea. He totally wanted to waste his time on this for extra credit. Though, he had no idea how Randy would get it to him, now that he thought about it.
Was this really worth it?
James frowed and loosely crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking his soon-to-be roomie. James caught eye contact, initiating their staring contest of dominance.
Sure, James had heard stories of this guy -- rumors, really -- and even then, they were mostly about little things. A bar fight here, a shady drug deal there, but honestly, now that he'd met the guy face-to-face, he couldn't help but feel extremely underwhelmed. Sure, Damien was tall and clearly well built compared to most guys on campus but in reality, almost everyone that James had ever met was either taller than him or exactly his height. This guy was no exception. In fact, it was very rare for James to find someone that happened to be shorter than he was since he was exactly five foot five, rather short for a guy but he lived with it just fine.
So in turn, even though Blackbear was relatively brawny, James couldn't get past the fact that this guy might've just broken one of his crystals or possibly even snapped a candle or two, let alone his sage. New roommate and local on-campus menace or not, James would fucking go to war if any of his stuff happened to be broken.
Something shifted behind him and James automatically turned to follow the movement. Though it was just Randy -- who James had forgotten about. The RA who happened to be gently setting down the small box that he'd originally had held in his skinny arms. He straightened up and dusted himself off.
"Look, Damien, dude. I'm gonna level with you." Randy states "This is your last roommate and your last chance. If you lay a finger on him or try to start anything, you will be removed from campus permanently and you're not gonna be allowed to come back for the rest of the year, maybe ever."
James turned his attention back to his roomie, who barely batted an eye at the blatant threat.
Well, actually, he did move but that was only to straighten up so that he could re-center himself on his feet. Most likely trying to appear as scary as possible, which worked against Randy, who clearly shrunk a bit. Damien frowned but he still radiated disinterest at the entire debacle presented to him.
"Sure, Randy." Damien hisses "I get what you mean. I'm just saying that he'll be gone within the week."
"Just stay out of trouble. For the love of God." Randy sighs, exasperated "It's not that hard, I promise you."
Randy finally turned and headed back down the hallway that he and James had come from. Damien lazily stuck up a middle finger at the oblivious RA and shook his head in a mocking manner whilst he made a funny face. James only huffed, even more unamused than he had been before.
'Who does this guy think he is, anyways? ' James grumbles in his head 'What a fucking toddler. Seriously. Grow up, asshat.'
James continued to stare director into his roommate's soul, sending poisonous daggers of agitation and as much negativity as he could muster. Clearly, James was hoping to shame the shameless with his eyes and he was gonna be fighting the losing battle for a while. He was beyond irritated and disappointed. Honestly, what did he do so wrong that karma had decided to tie this douchebag into his life?
