In Faith, My Lord [Pieter]

[JULIAN SORENSEN]

It was funny how alone you could feel in a group of people.

Julian Sorenson had just gotten away from the crowds, the influx of new students and returning students at Barrie as they all clambered about for their dorms, getting their things out of their parents’ cars and dragging them up to their rooms. Well, fine. Winter break was over, and now everyone was back after having a pleasant holiday with their family, no doubt all of them enjoying their respective holidays that they celebrated.

Julian did not go home for Christmas.

He had stayed at Barrie, whiling away his time until classes kicked up again, reading, getting ahead on some of his work when the motivation struck him, wandering around, drinking far too much tea. It was the alone time that he liked and hated at the same time. There was always that conflict in him, between the desire for isolation and the loathing of it. On one hand, there was nothing good in the world, not a single thing, and he wanted to see no-one, to speak to no-one – but at the same time, something in him told him that that was wrong, that that was unhealthy, to avoid human contact when it was probably what he needed the most at this point in his life.

Someone to talk to. Someone to be with.

He needed not to be alone, though he would never have said it aloud.

Surely, Julian was the type of boy you would expect to be popular at college. He was handsome, he attended parties, and he could be exceedingly suave when he wanted to be. Yet, for all the involvement he had in the social scene, all the alcohol-laden festivals he went to late at night that he didn’t remember the next day, he did not have friends at Barrie. He didn’t even have fuckbuddies. He had one night stands and he had single-serving friends, and the next day, those same people were useless to him, empty in his eyes.

No-one could properly fill the void in him, so he had stopped looking for someone who could. Instead, he jammed the abyss full of other things, mostly alcohol, and tried to forget about it.

Julian did not go home for Christmas.

It hurt too much.

He unlocked his dorm room and trudged inside, dropping his bag on the floor by the door. The room was a wreck, at least on the side he had claimed for himself. He liked to pretend, sometimes, that he had a roommate, that there was someone else staying in the bed next to him; but there wasn’t, not right now. His courtesy was unnecessary and absurd, but he kept to it, because somehow, the idea of someone coming home to him was comforting.

Pulling off his jacket, he threw it over a chair and collapsed onto his bed, closing his eyes. Existence was exhausting.

[PIETER LINDHOLM]

OUTFIT

Pieter Lindholm went home for Christmas.

There had been a celebration. Laughter, a large dinner rounded out with his mother’s freshly made dessert, and presents. For Katrine there had been a necklace, the twine kind she was going through a phase of slight obsession with—he’d searched for weeks for a nice, thin one and a braided leather bracelet to match, each with a small green bead woven into their center. She’d beamed. He’d given her a tight hug and told her he loved her, and she said she liked him enough, too.

They’d laughed.

For Henrik, there had been a t-shirt of a band he claimed to like, but Pieter suspected only “followed” so as to have something to talk about with some girl in one of his classes. Still, he’d bought it and elbowed his brother knowingly after teasing him into wearing it for the rest of the day. It was purple. Henrik’s face, on the other hand, was scarlet.

His mother had been given nice hair pins, and new oven mitts she’d been insisting she didn’t really need for the past three months. For his father, he’d gotten two new travel encyclopedias, as the man was always insisting he’d venture to South American one day. Pieter honestly didn’t know how he planned on getting there or what he planned to do, but there couldn’t be any harm in helping him read up on the place. The Walker bookstore was sadly barren in the form of South American travel books, he’d heard his father sigh many times over the phone. There were only so many times Pieter could talk to him and picture him removing his glasses and rubbing his temples, as the old man was prone to do when he grew weary.

Pieter went home for Christmas.

When he returned to school, it was with a fresh black bag and a fresh new form telling him where his dormitory had been transferred to. He’d applied for a second semester transfer weeks earlier, having felt his previous roommate to be far too sloppy of a drunk on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights for his liking. There was a sort of thrill to the idea of gaining a new roommate halfway through the year—at the risk of being cliché and poetic, he might even have gone so far as to say it felt as though a new leaf ha been turned. For the better, certainly.

Having enlisted the help of a few acquaintances in moving his three bags of miscellaneous clothing, linens, and personal items down the stairs, around the corner and to the end of the hall from his old room, Pieter was currently standing outside his new dorm room approximately fifteen and a half minutes earlier than he would have been had he attempted to lug everything down here on his own. He knocked lightly before entering with his new key. Even if it was his new room, it had been someone else’s before, after all, and god only knew what they were doing in there, if anything at all.

Pushing the door open with his posterior, Pieter dragged the first of his three bags and suitcase into the room, stopping once he noticed the place was not, in fact, deserted. There, lying on a bed amidst what could only be described as a very serious health and safety hazard. He straightened up, allowing the door to swing slowly shut on the rest of his belongings as he cleared his throat.

“Hello…” there was a slight twinge of apprehension to his voice, although it wasn’t nervousness at meeting someone new so much as a desire not to wake his new roommate from his apparent nap. There was a slight Danish twinge to his voice, although not quite enough to be called an accent—just leftovers from being with his family all break, really. “Um. I’m Pieter. According to this, I live here now…” skeptically, he held the pristine slip of paper up for the other boy to see, although there was a good five feet between them. “So it’s…nice to meet you.” Whoever he was.

[JULIAN SORENSEN]

OUTFIT

Sometimes, he wanted friends.

It was a distant desire, one that took precedence only after Maslow's Hierarchy was successfully ascended, his baby cousin was safe, and his father's death was avenged. He had been social before Christer's passing -- he'd had friends, he had been popular, really popular. Yes, perhaps he had always been a little vindictive, but...

Well, he wasn't a sociopath, anyway, not really. Just because he was a cynic and kind of ignored other people for the sake of his own sanity didn't mean he had no desire for companionship. He did. On days like this, when he came home and flopped down on his bed by himself, he wanted someone to call or text or talk to. Not all the time, perhaps, not when he was in one of his more reflective moods, but just...on evenings like this. He didn't need consoling or anything. He just wanted to have a normal conversation with someone.

It was as he was thinking on this, with his face in his pillow, that he heard the voice behind him.

What--

He sat up abruptly, hand in his hair, ruffling it awkwardly and trying to smooth it at the same time. "Um." Well, that was...he wasn't expecting that. Roommate?

"Oh." He could hear just a bit of...was that Danish in his voice? Julian blinked, clearing his throat. "Ehm, right, hi. Wasn't informed about that." The Danish in Julian's voice was distinctive -- he had only been in the States for two years, and while his voice was perfectly comprehensible and eloquent, it was obvious where he was from.

He got up, hastily starting to clean, his cheeks burning just slightly with shame. He would have cleaned up if he'd known this Pieter kid was coming. His own descent into disrepair was suddenly embarrassing.

"I'm Julian Sorensen. Pleasure's mine."

[PIETER LINDHOLM]

Oh, dear. He’d definitely woken him, hadn’t he? That was wonderful. Just peachy, really. Now not only had he barged in apparently unannounced, but he’d rudely awakened the very person whose room he was going to have to share for the next few months. Depending on the type of person he proved to be, Pieter might have half his belongings reported missing by the end of term. Of course, he knew that was ridiculous. No doubt his roommate had trouble finding his own things in this mess, never mind taking what belonged to others.

Pieter stared quite blatantly, and perhaps quite rudely, as the miscellaneous blonde boy dragged himself up from his bed. He stuffed the slip of paper back into his pocket sharply, well aware that his hand would be riddled with invisible paper cuts by the time he pulled it back out again.

“Umm…” he searched briefly for an apology while wiping his hand on his trousers, but found nothing more than a very confused “Sorry…?” in sight. It wasn’t as though he’d been expecting this, either. He scratched the back of his head, acutely aware of just how red his ears were probably turning and just as knowledgeable in the fact that they wouldn’t stop any time soon. Pieter was, among other things, easily embarrassed at the most inconvenient of times. “They…probably should’ve told you about that…hmm…”

He was also, at the most inconvenient of times, exceedingly awkward.

“You don’t—Um—that’s okay, really—” Pieter spoke hastily as the other boy began to clean, chewing on the inside of his cheek a bit. He turned slowly, making a small circle in about the size of his suitcase before ending up right back where he started, unable to decide where it was he was supposed to put his things. As the boy said his name, he blinked. “Julian, nice to meet you. Well um…listen, it’s really okay, see, I don’t—” he stopped abruptly, deciding to hold off on any overwhelmingly awkward conversation so as to hoist his suitcase up onto the spare bed—a relatively difficult task, considering Pieter’s skin-and-bones physique.

When he’d finished with this work, Pieter turned around and plopped his unnaturally skinny rear down on the mattress and tilted his head at Julian curiously, fairly certain he already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask. “So where are you from, anyway?”

[JULIAN SORENSEN]

Damn, this was terrifically awkward. Julian had imagined the arrival of his roommate very differently -- he would be informed of gender and name and date of arrival ahead of time, he would be prepared, the dorm would be clean to give a good first impression, something like that.

Well, he supposed that's how he would have thought back when he cared about appearances past looking okay enough for people not to ask, "Something wrong?"

God, yes, something is always fucking wrong, stop asking.

Regardless, this was not at all what he had in mind.

He ignored the skinny boy's assurances that his cleaning up was not needed; instead, he formed a pile of dirty clothes and stuffed some of his shirts and pants back into his drawers before glancing over his shoulder at the dark-haired new arrival. Pieter, he'd said his name was? Alright. Good. Pieter. That was easy to remember.

He wasn't very good with names anymore.

"Don't apologize for things that aren't your fault, doesn't make sense," muttered Julian as he tossed some socks on the pile. "I'm sure they just forgot. It's fine. I don't mind. Not like I'm doing anything." He attempted a halfhearted smile, but his face didn't quite agree with his desire to use those particular muscles. The smile ended up as more of a half-grimace.

At least, judging by his ears, Pieter felt just about as awkward about all this as he did. It was endearing, in a sort of hapless-puppy way.

"No, no," he assured, sorting through some things. "Think nothing of it. I should have gotten this picked up already..." His own cheeks turned slightly pink as he rubbed his lips together uncertainly. "Um..."

God, it looked like he was going to break in half struggling with that suitcase. "Sure you don't nee--" Julian began to say, but then Pieter hefted the thing successfully on top of the other bed, and the blonde nodded and took a step back, giving him space. God, he really was a lanky one. Julian was a bit more toned, a bit more filled out even if he had been horrible about eating lately. The contrast between them was nearly comical.

When the room was adequately tidy and when Pieter had plopped down atop the bed that would now be his, Julian sat down across from him, then sprawled out across his comforter, on his back, hands behind his head. "Copenhagen," he said, glancing over at the dark-haired boy. "Denmark." He blinked. "What about you? You sound like you have a little Danish in your voice."

[PIETER LINDHOLM]

Awkward didn’t begin to describe this. This was…well, if Pieter had been in possession of knives, he might have stabbed them into his own eyes before entering this situation again or allowing it to continue. Or forks. Or pencils. Or, well, honestly, he felt he’d rather have been paper cut continuously from one end of his right hand all the way to the other end of his left, right along the insides of his fingers, than have to spend another fifteen minutes in this stiflingly awkward dormitory with his new roommate. Julian, he’d said his name was? Yes, that was it. Julian. Best to not forget that, as God only knew how much worse this whole situation could get, and Pieter didn’t particularly care to find out.

Tossing a slightly lopsided smile back in his new roommate’s direction, Pieter sincerely hoped this wouldn’t be the way of things from here on out. Awkward introductions he could deal it. Awkward public appearances her could also deal with—tripping over his own feet, catching his words, that sort of thing were all perfectly fine—but an awkward place to come home to? Well, he couldn’t stand it. He would, of course, as it would only be rude to up and ask for a room change, but it would certainly be near unbearable. But it wouldn’t be. And it wouldn’t do to think like that, anyway. He’d only make it worse for himself. All he had to do was make friends with Julian, and things would be alright from here on out. Surely, they’d laugh about this awkward meeting months from now.

Unable to help himself, Pieter blinked about the room in surprise as he plopped down on the bed, appalled by how quickly he’d managed to clean it. Or, make it look clean. Pieter had younger siblings, and he was fairly certain the strategy Julian had just implemented was about the same as theirs—if it fit in a drawer, that was good enough. Not that he minded. He liked neatness, sure, but there was a certain charm about disorder. And it would only be rude to complain, anyhow.

He watched the other boy sit, offered him another friendly smile as he played absently with the zipper on his suitcase. Pieter nodded, pleased he’d figured it out and even more so to find they had something in common. “Minnesota, actually,” his grin turned a bit lopsided for a moment, and he shrugged, not at all committed to the town. “But I mean, technically Denmark. Near Copenhagen, actually…” he gestured a bit in Julian’s direction before reaching his hand around to rub at the back of his neck, awkward but pleasantly so. “I moved here when I was a kid. My parents, when I see them, it usually—” he shrugged again. “That’s probably why you hear it.”