School had now been officially in session for three days. In that time, he and Lisa had worked out their classes and had begun navigating the college social scene. Lisa was, of course, a natural at socializing, and made sure Bath was always with her whenever she did anything.
“I need to make sure you have a real college experience,” she told him daily, like it was a personal mantra.
Bath didn’t really understand why Lisa thought there was a singular college experience, since from his own observations students spent their time in vastly different ways, but his voicing of this opinion was always met with Lisa’s adamant repetition of the mantra.
Bath remembered very clearly move-in day five days ago. That was when he had met his new suitemates, Jake, Dean, and Matt. Lisa still hadn’t met them: he had tried to keep these three boys away from her.
Bath felt a bit slighted by the residential college board for matching him with the three based on their personality and living surveys. Jake, Dean, and Matt were all athletes that seemed to embrace the “partying” lifestyle. He certainly didn’t want Lisa to find out about it or she'd never let him live down the fact that he'd been placed with a pack of fuckbois in the Ellis party suite. Of course, he knew she would find out eventually once the trio started hosting parties, but all the same...
Bath recalled the first day that they met.
“Hey, I'm Matt,” the sandy-haired boy with green eyes had introduced himself.
“Dean,” had said the other, his skin dark like chocolate.
“Jake,” the last one said. His skin sallow and his hair was as black as his eyes. He had smirked.
“Bath,” he had said, smiling plainly as he appraised his new cohabitors. He enhanced his senses to get a better idea of who he was dealing with.
He knew what he had gotten himself into almost immediately, as soon as he elevated his sense of smell. He smelled sex and lust. Not something that Bath judged in itself, but knew from stories that Lisa told him that such individuals were often trouble.
He rather agreed with Lisa’s judgment, knowing first-hand the effects lust wrought on docile creatures. Sex in the animal world was almost always rape, even amongst the most innocuous-looking species.
Before he had become human, Bath recognized he probably wouldn’t have cared that humans raped each other, would have considered it normal. Regardless, he became instantly wary of this trio of boys he would be sharing a suite with. He was rooming with the one called Jake, the one who had smirked at him. Bath very much welcomed the challenge, intent on claiming dominance over the suite in short order.
Things hadn’t quite worked out that way.
The boys had quickly set to work decorating the suite’s common space, a small room that just barely fit a couch, two chairs, a table, and a TV. Bath watched, mystified, as the boys continued to bring up furniture and objects from the cars down below, where their parents conversed. Bath wondered offhandedly what his parents’ impression was of the boys’ parents.
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Matt later brought up a large wooden chest, sweat falling down his face in rivulets. Bath had walked over to help, curious as to why he smelled an inordinate amount of alcohol coming from the chest’s interior.
“Here,” Bath had said as he reached for the underside of the chest. “Where are we bringing it?”
“My room,” the boy had grunted.
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“Why do you have a chest full of alcohol?” Bath had inquired, arching an eyebrow. “Planning some fun parties?”
Matt had laughed. “Wow, you're quick to pick up on things.’
“What else would you be bringing up a heavy chest for?” Bath had grinned. In actuality, he really did not want to be having ridiculously crazy parties in this suite. “But isn’t our suite too small? If we hosted a party, all the furniture would be trashed.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it! It’s not your furniture, anyways, so no risk to you.”
Bath had been rather dismayed by Matt’s cavalier attitude. “I don’t want parties in this suite,” he then asserted.
Matt had given him a look. Confusion? “Well, we can all vote on it,” he said finally.
Bath had felt like he had fallen into a trap.
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As soon as the furniture had all been transported up into the suite and the parents had all left, the boys broke into reveling and took shots from Matt’s chest of hard liquor. Bath disliked alcohol because he had to dull his sense of taste and smell to enjoy it.
But, for the sake of getting along with the suite, he dulled the two senses and imbibed a shot. As soon as the boys had finished and were a bit drunk, he finally broached the subject of suite rules.
Lisa had told him establishing suite rules would be of paramount importance. He hadn’t put much thought into it, assuming the people he would be paired up with would be logical, scholarly students, but he now realized why Lisa thought them such a necessity.
“Guys,” Bath had begun, “Why don’t we establish some basic suite rules.”
“Sure,” Jake said soberly, though he was anything but. “Like what?”
Bath grabbed a sheet of paper from their newly-installed printer and a marker from his near-barren desk. He wrote SUITE RULES in all caps at the top.
“I think we should start with how we're planning to keep the suite clean.” The boys looked at him like he was crazy, but Bath plowed on. “This suite has four guys living in it.” He had almost said boys, but didn’t care to debase himself to that level. “Accordingly, it will certainly accumulate waste. We need to keep a set of rules stipulating how we will all work to clean the suite.”
The looks of incredulity continued, but Bath didn’t really care, so long as by the end of this he had their names signed at the end of the rules.
“For part one of the suite rules, CLEANLINESS,” he wrote the word on the rules sheet as a bullet point, “I propose we have a rotation system, by which each of us takes turns doing tasks such as vacuuming.”
Blank stares. Then, Jake: “But what if we don’t know how to vacuum?”
“Yeah, I always had my maid do it,” Matt said, almost with a kind of pride in his not-knowing how to do a basic chore.
Bath glanced at Dean, who shrugged. “I know how to vacuum, but if it’s just you and me, well, that seems unfair.”
Bath contained his budding anger and pinched the bridge of his nose. Who were these worms?
“Fine, then, change of plans. You aren’t allowed to host a party unless you first draft a plan before, to be presented to the suite and signed by all members, detailing how you will clean the suite up after the party elapses. I don’t care how you get the suite clean.”
Matt looked outraged. “Why do I need to hire someone to clean the suite just if I want to have a party?”
“Matt, I could always just teach you and Jake how to vacuum, and then you won’t have to hire anyone,” Bath pointed out.
“What the hell, man,” Jake spat.
When had everything gone so wrong?
“We don’t need to do the pre-party clean-up plan,” Bath conceded, “but I want everyone to contribute to cleaning this suite.”
“What if we just, y’know, like it messy?” said Matt.
“There’s a difference between ‘messy’ and attracting pests,” Bath grated. “Do you want our suite to crawl with mice? Cockroaches?” It honestly didn’t matter much to him, but if he ever wanted Lisa to come over, he didn’t want the suite to be a total pig sty.
“We're on the fourth floor,” Jake pointed out. “No way a mouse is coming up here. And cockroaches are just big bugs, big deal.”
Bath groaned internally. Just big bugs?
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In the end, the suite rules read as follows:
SUITE RULES:
1. Don’t leave food out to rot.
2. No parties during finals week.
That was it. Bath was reminded why he bitterly hated democracy.