The stupid rock thing just wouldn't die. This was the fourth time today he'd gone up against it - the last time he had died, he had managed to get the Rock Wraith's health bar down to maybe ten percent, but by then he had lost all of his other party members and assassins weren't very well suited to fighting possessed rocks.

Of course, he was playing on hard and refusing to drop the difficulty on principle.

While he was hiding behind a stand of rock, waiting for the boss's signature glowy light of doom attack to fade, Aiden pushed his chair back from the little desk provided with his new room and stretched his arms over his head, trying to get his shoulder to crack back into place. He hadn't been able to find the energy or motivation to do much of anything over the last few weeks, so running through all of Dragon Age II was rather harder on his shoulders and neck than usual. Plus this chair was absolutely horrible for gaming in. No support or padding whatsoever.

The glow on his computer monitor faded, and Aiden directed his character, currently named Ri Hawke (since this particular game had a fixed surname for the main character, though it was hardly the worst option they could have gone with), back into the fray, hacking and slashing and stabbing stony enemies left, right, and centre.  He had cleared the central area of rock spawn in a few moments, tossed a pot of poison at the boss, and used its momentary hesitation to race around behind it and get in a few safe backstabs.

Persi scowled at the door. He'd been attacked (by Isabel! Who ever survived being attacked by Isabel? He was vaguely proud of himself, even though all he'd done was hide in a tree and throw pinecones, or would be once the shock wore off), minorly stabbed, brought to some sort of safe house for mutants, healed, allowed to leave, convinced to stay (and he still wasn't sure how that had happened, other than he couldn't say no to cute little... er... lizards, apparently), interviewed, and assigned a room. Which he was now staring at, and all over again feeling self conscious about just how many days it had been since he'd had a shower. (And the blood. There wasn't that much, considering the circumstances, but his shirt was still covered with dried patches of it, and it didn't feel nice at all.)

The hope of getting clean won out over the fear of being seen as dirty as he was, faster since he had been seen by quite a few people already after all, and he knocked. Then, since the first knock was extremely quiet, knocked harder, which turned out more like an abrupt bang on the door.

Persi might still be a little freaked out by the last few days.

There was an answer, though, so Persi opened the door, and then hesitated in the doorway. "Um... I think... I'm supposed to be your roommate?" That really couldn't have gotten more awkward if he'd tried, but then, seeing as he had tried, it clearly couldn't have gotten less awkward either.

He was just starting to think he might possibly take the boss out this time, despite having just lost Anders and his healing magic to wonderfully idiotic NPC-programming that had led the character to wander out of safety just in time to get blasted in the face, when a harsh rap at the door cracked through the muffling effects of his headphones and distracted him just enough to accidentally target his other characters instead of the boss with a friendly-fire area of attack technique. This had better be good.

Shoving his sunglasses back onto his face and wrenching the door open, Ai shot the kid on the other side a mild glare. Well, it would be a glare if he weren't wearing sunglasses. With them on, it probably just looked like a bland, not ecstatic face.

The hidden glare took on full force when the messy, stained, and generally dirty kid spoke. A roommate. Seriously.

Maybe that was what that envelope on his desk had been about. Ai had noticed it when he slunk back from classes earlier that day, but hadn't bothered to open it. He was rather more in the mood for killing virtual monsters. A mood he retained, mind. "My roommate?" he repeated flatly. Juuuuuuust great. Well, no. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. Atrocious. Yes. An atrocity that could not possibly be tolerated.

Until he found out more about the officialness of this atrocity, however, he could hardly be so rude as to turn the guy away. Even if he really wasn't fond of the idea of letting someone so filthy in near his stuff. With as slight a grimace as he could manage, Aiden reluctantly opened the door the rest of the way and moved back inside to tidy up the worst of his personal messes: a pile of laundry he'd kicked into the corner, a scattering of games and books on his desk from when he had been trying to figure out what would occupy him best earlier. He kept a sidelong eye on the kid as he moved. "The bathroom's just down the hall," he said after a few moments, trying not to be too pointed but hoping the kid would get out of his hair (and nose and eyes) sooner rather than later.

Um... that was not a welcoming expression. Persi managed to not actually step back, but he did cringe a little bit. So sue him; his self control was a tiny bit off today. "That's, um, what they said?" That was apparently not staying true for very long, though, going by not-Persi's-roommate's expression. "I can... go?" Lizard girls or not, leaving was looking like the better idea again. Persi was annoyed enough by having to accept help as it was; if he was going to be this much of a problem to them, then he definitely didn't want to stay.

"Oh." Okay, bathroom; he'd kind of hoped there would be one attached to the room, rather than in the hall. The place seemed rich enough for everything else, so why not? And while Persi had never used a dorm bathroom, nothing he'd heard about them was good. That seemed to be what it was, though, so Persi backed away in the direction not-roommate had pointed.

The bathroom was empty, fortunately, and while it didn't have shampoo or conditioner (or, it did have shampoo, but that looked like it might belong to someone so Persi didn't touch it), it did have soap, so Persi managed to get all the dirt and sweat and blood off of himself. And his clothes, which meant they were absolutely soaked and he spent several minutes attempting to wring them (and his hair) out after showering, and then arguing himself into putting them back on, and holding his shirt under the dryer. He was not standing anywhere without his pants on unless necessary, even if it was the bathroom.

An hour and a half later, Persi had planned to go find... someone. And tell them his roommate wanted him in a different room, or... something. Leaving was still warring in his head with the way his stomach was attempting to stab him. It probably would have ended up being determined by whether he found the door or an office (or a lizard girl) first, except that when he got back into the hallway, he had no idea where he was. He turned around a few times, then sighed, wiped off a few drops of water that were trying to sneak down his face from his hair, and headed for the open door. Not-roommate could only get so annoyed if he was trying to avoid him, anyway.

Persi ended up hovering in the doorway again until not-roommate noticed him, arms folded defensively across his chest. "I don't know where... whoever can change rooms. I don't know where they are."

As soon as he was sure that the new guy was gone, Aiden turned back to his desk and hurriedly shuffled through the general mess. There it was! He ripped the envelope open. Blah, blah, blah, yes, it was about getting a roommate!

And how, since life-threatening complications were believed to be of minimal probability, roommate change requests would not be considered for at least two weeks to give them a chance to get used to each other.

Distinctly less than impressed, Ai tossed the offensive letter over his shoulder, dropped himself back in his chair, hauled on his headphones, jacked up the sound as loud as he could handle it, and set his virtual swords into the virtual rock's flesh with a renewed vengeance.

He had beaten the rock wraith and progressed a considerable distance when his apparently stuck roommate returned; movement in his peripheral vision, the door having been forgotten open, caught his attention. He slowly turned his chair, setting his headphones back on the desk and pushing his ruffled hair out of the way again. The boy's words caught him a bit off guard, however, and he blinked for a moment before sighing and waving a hand dismissively. "It'd be no use anyway," he said. "Apparently we're stuck together for at least a while." He continued the wave into a gesture towards the letter still sprawled on the floor. "Aiden," he offered, at least trying for civility. Getting past that boss may have helped slightly. The kid being significantly cleaner probably helped more.

"Oh." That... was problematic. Persi really didn't like dealing with people who disliked him. Especially living with them. And even Ace hadn't been nearly as... forward about his dislike as maybe-roommate was being, he'd just been vaguely condescending and superior all the time. And Irri had been around, and they had only been in the same house as Ace and their parents, not the same room.

On the other hand, offending whoever was in change here seemed like a worse idea, and would probably accomplish nothing anyway. So Persi was either stuck with maybe-roommate who hated him, or leaving.

...Persi could leave. He had no reason to stay. There wasn't anyone he liked here, and no one who liked him (except the lizard girl, and he didn't know her; she could get over it if he left, and probably wouldn't even notice anyway), so he had no reason to stay. He had survived on his own. For... five days? Something like that. Anyway, it was decent. He'd have survived for longer, if it wasn't for Isabel, and what were the chances of running into her again? Not likely, or the whole city would be dead by now. So he could manage on his own. It might not be fun, but it wasn't fun here either, and he could do it. So why did he keep shying away from the idea of leaving? It wasn't supposed to scare him, and even if it did, then he ought to do it anyway so it wouldn't.

As strong as that logic was, though, it wasn't enough for him to convince himself to leave. Instead, he stepped into the room enough to pick up the letter, read it, scowl when his hair dripped on it, and glance around for somewhere to put it. He settled for the empty desk. That... was pretty blunt, yeah; they weren't getting out of this.

The comment earned apparently-roommate a confused look for a moment, as Persi's mind adjusted from what's a den? to who is Aiden? "Oh. Um... I'm Persi." Persi was pretty sure that Aiden-roommate wouldn't care, but there wasn't a better response to an introduction, even one as abrupt as that.

Nor was there a good solution to the fact that he was now in the room. He certainly wasn't going to touch anything seeing as his clothes were still periodically dripping on the carpet, and he couldn't make himself walk out the door, since the only logical steps after that took him out of the building entirely and never back. So instead, he kept standing where he was, as far from everything in the room as he could get, and hoped he didn't offend Aiden by existing.

The kid was just standing there. After a few moments of awkward silence following the kid's name, Aiden found himself fishing around for something to say. All that came to mind at first was that this Persi was dripping on the carpet. After a moment, that led to the thought that a towel would be useful. Did the guy not have a towel? Actually... given that he had evidently showered with his clothes on in order to clean them, rather than just changing into clean clothes, and the fact that he was just standing there with nothing else suggested that Persi had nothing, much less a towel.

"Er... would you like to borrow a towel?" Ai ventured when the awkwardness became too overpowering. He tried to gauge Persi's size from where he sat, but quickly had to divert his attention elsewhere. "And...... if you.... need some dry clothes.... I guess some of mine.... might fit..?" The offering was rather broken and awkward, but some less-battered part of Aiden kind of felt sorry for the lost-looking wet guy. Even if he was a mutant (hence being in this place in the first place), he couldn't really deserve to just mope around in a single set of clothes he couldn't even let dry properly. Plus, being his new roommate, Persi would probably catch a cold from sticking in wet clothes forever, and their near proximity would undoubtedly transfer the cultured disease to Aiden himself. Aiden did not want to get sick.

Persi jumped when Aiden spoke. He then immediately tried to pretend he hadn't. "Yeah. Thanks." He managed to bit off the um that tried to follow. And the 'why are you offering? Can you make towels strangle people?' It seemed like a slightly strange offer for someone who clearly didn't want him around at all.

...And that was definitely strange. Not that Persi wanted to stay in his clothes, certainly, but Aiden pretty clearly did not care. Or, didn't care in anything like a positive way, anyway. The awkwardness of the phrasing, at least, showed that Aiden also knew it was kind of an odd thing to say, which was slightly reassuring. He still wasn't sure he trusted the clothes not to try and kill him... but, well, dry clothes. Persi was fairly willing to risk attempted strangling for that at this point. And anyway, he had (technically) survived an attack by Isabel; Aiden didn't look nearly that intimidating, sunglasses or not.

Of course, Persi still wasn't going to try to provoke the clothes to strangle him. Nor did he feel at all comfortable actually answering. "Um. That... would be nice? If you don't mind?" If Aiden actually did want him to have dry clothes, he could get them; Persi wasn't moving. Except to brush more drips off his face, anyway, but that didn't really count. He liked being able to see.

Even as the sodden kid jumped and stammered - what, did he think that Aiden was going to do something to him? Seriously? - Aiden was rolling out of his chair and to the ugly dresser he'd managed to shove most of his clothing into. The top drawer he was so far managing to reserve for non-clothing fabric-type things, so that was where his towels were. He pulled the top one out, a bland creamy colour that kind of looked like it wanted to be white but really didn't have the energy or motivation to get any closer, and tossed it over to Persi.

He rummaged in his other drawers for a bit longer to find a shirt he could tolerate lending/giving to his unfortunate roommate (nope, still didn't sit right even in his head. fine, he could just be Persi), and eventually settled on an older long-sleeved shirt that would probably be warm enough for him. If anything, it was probably more likely to end up on the too-warm side of things, but Aiden didn't exactly have a huge amount of use for warmish clothing these days.

He stepped lightly over to the closet, and found an old pair of sweatpants, admittedly with a touch of ancient grass-staining across the knees and hem but nothing horrible, and tossed them over as well. He briefly rubbed the bridge of his nose, the slightly thicker flesh of the scar crossing it shifting beneath his fingers, as he turned back. So Persi was probably not going to get sick and pass on the disease to Aiden. Now what? Well... there was something he was wondering about, but he could hardly just up and ask if Persi was dangerous. He had, after all, come in covered in blood, so he was either homicidal like Isabel or a victim. The school said that the match wasn't considered dangerous, so Persi had probably been on the receiving end of something or someone nasty.

Oh, screw it. If he had to live with this guy, he really ought to know if his life was in particular danger. "Is there anything I need to watch out for with you?" he said bluntly, forcing himself to just spit the words out since he couldn't exactly just retreat into his own room and get away from this guy. "And you don't have to jump around me, at least. I'm hardly going to hurt you." Really, what could he do? Throw his keyboard at Persi? Yeah right. As if he had the money to replace it just because he broke it over some wet idiot's head.

Persi managed to catch the towel--being hit in the face with it helped--and immediately reburied his face in it. Being dry was nice. After a second of that he pushed it over his head and began trying to dry his hair off. That was a lot less effective than his face, but sort of more important to be done, and ended up with him peeking out from under the other side of the towel.

Catching the clothes was harder, largely because his hands were still tangled up in the towel and his hair. He managed to get the shirt, but had to duck and pick the pants back up off the floor as he muttered a "thanks" that was hopefully audible. They looked old, and faded, and not colors he really liked, but they were dry. Persi had no problem with unwanted colors at the moment as long as they were dry.

He glanced around for a moment, then gave up and moved to the bed that was probably not Aiden's to set the clothes and towel down and fight his shirt off. He could see if that bothered Aiden, and go from there to decide if he had to go back to the bathroom to change pants. He could, it wasn't that far, but he'd have to walk and the wet pants were clinging, and the discomfort had suddenly become completely unbearable with the prospect of having another option.

Instead, though, he got stuck in the shirt, and only had an eye peering out when he froze for a second in confusion at Aiden's question. "What?" He managed to get the shirt untwisted (how had it gotten twisted in the first place?) and on. "Like... allergies, or something?" That seemed weirdly caring for someone who seemed to hate him.

Persi was bad at denial, but tried it anyway. He mostly ended up looking away and pouting. "I didn't jump."

Clothing delivered, Aiden stood around awkwardly for a moment before noticing that he had left his game on pause, and leaped at the chance to do something. He took his time in checking that he had the save file (even though it was really obvious, because the rest were all previous run-throughs and listed the last save point and a rather higher level than he was at right now) and that the title for this particular save was appropriate and would allow him to pick it out of the (ordered) list without hesitation when he returned to the game.

He turned around to see how Persi was making out, but figured he made it back to facing the desk before his abruptly red face was noticeable. Bloody gym class all over again. Ai mechanically started neatening his desk, being as much of a perfectionist as he possibly could in order to take long enough that he could get the blood flow in his face back under control and Persi could get his full complement of clothing back on. Oh hey, that was where that volume had been hiding. He had been rereading Shiro no Ou to Kuro Kishi the other day, trying to find refuge in the dramatic and action-filled series, but then he'd put the third book down and hadn't been able to find it. Apparently that was because half a dozen other manga and game cases had fallen on top of it.

Aiden glanced back at Persi before he could catch himself, but he had the shirt mostly on, and then it was on properly. He relaxed slightly, and then realized that Persi hadn't understood him. First though, Ai gazed at him blandly. "You jumped," he confirmed. "And..." he trailed off for a moment before finding the guts to find out if his computer and books (and life) were in danger. "And I meant, do I have to worry about my stuff spontaneously bursting into flame or exploding or anything?" His tone came out rather drier than intended, but it worked well enough. At least he got the words out, and hopefully bluntly enough that Persi would get the picture. And then he went back to studiously organizing his desk, because Persi was still wearing the wet pants.

Well, that worked. Persi had no problem dealing with Aiden just not looking while he changed. Of course, then he had to turn back around. And speak.

"...Well shut up." Persi did not have the option, or at least the excuse, to turn around to hide his own blush. Fortunately, he was mostly unaware of it.

As for the second comment, though... suddenly that made a lot more sense. "Oh. I don't... no. I can't do anything like that." Since Aiden wasn't looking, however, he could try and get the dry pants on. That went much better than the shirt, though getting the wet ones off was a bit of a struggle, so it probably took about the same amount of time.

...And Persi really didn't want to clarify what he could do, but he probably had to prove he wasn't just lying about not blowing things up, so.... "I. Um. Can get stuff stuck in peoples' head, basically. Like, you know when you're not really thinking anything, and something random just kind of fills in? I can make something more likely to pop up then. For a few hours. If someone's already thinking it."

This time, Persi was definitely aware of how embarrassed he was. Hopefully Aiden would be slightly nice about it.

Aiden was used to being told to shut up. He wasn't used to taking it from random people he didn't know, but making a fuss over it wasn't going to help anything. After all, he didn't have to worry about accidental destruction.

He did pause over the last of his sorting, the few dozen manga and handful of game cases now neatly stacked in order, a scattering of writing implements and loose paper tucked into a drawer, and his headphone cord disentangled while his computer slowly shut off. Was the guy serious?

After a few long moments of disbelief, Ai risked a quick glance around his shoulder. Persi was dressed. Good. He dropped into his chair and spun it until he was facing him. "You can't be serious," he said, at a loss for other words. At least he wasn't dangerous. His mutation might be spectacularly useless, but at least he wasn't going to cause random havoc and disasters with every passing moment. "You get things stuck in people's heads?" Okay, fine. Aiden wasn't going to die by accident from his roommate. That improved the situation a great deal - so much so, that he found himself sticking his hand out in a sort of peace offering; even Ai could tell that Persi was kind of a wreck. "I can live with that," he said in what was (sadly) the most cheerful voice he'd found in the past.... three weeks? And it was only a little forced, because he had to live with the guy for at least a while and didn't want things getting too awkward.

Persi scowled and crossed his arms. More of a frustrated scowl than an angry one, but still a scowl. Because it was not a pout. So technically, there were plenty of much worse reactions Aiden could have had ("My children obey God!") but he still didn't like the reminder. Even if he'd also been disbelieving that such a useless mutation existed for some months. "Yes, I'm serious."

"Yes, do you want me to demonstrate?" Persi assumed not, but offering to do something that was doubted was normally enough to make people stop doubting. Or at least, realize how doubtful they were being.

...That was not the response Persi had expected, but oh well, he'd take it. Roommates, apparently, and all. He had to take a few steps to reach the hand that was held out, but that wasn't an issue.

Except for how the (very definitely borrowed) sweatpants started to fall as soon as he started walking. Persi did not squeak, or at least he'd never admit he did, but he did manage to grab the pants before they actually fell more than a few inches, carefully pull them back up, and complete the steps with his left hand firmly holding them in place. "Um. Thanks."

Now, can the awkward be removed, or is the room permanently soaked in it?

Aiden's humour fled very quickly at the suggestion that Persi demonstrate. "That's quite all right," he said weakly, barely managing to trade it for Oh please god no. Just because his aversion to mutants was being relentlessly ground down by constant overexposure didn't mean he wanted one to actually use their abilities on him. He wasn't that loony.

Persi moved to shake his hand without making some mutant-y move, though, so Ai could relax a bit.

And then - oh no.

No.

No.

No no no nononononononono.

Oh good he caught them. It still took Aiden several seconds to unfreeze, by which time Persi had reached him. An infuriatingly detached bit of his brain noted that things would have been even more awkward if he hadn't frozen, since he probably would have wrenched his arm away and bolted (and undoubtedly just run into his desk or the wall or something, given the nearby furniture arrangements). He could play off the freezing up as being chill. Not that Ai was anything remotely near chill. Not in the slightest.