Encounters

Merlin came from a little town, where everyone knew everyone, but he was always a little shy, brilliant in every subject except social norms. Everyone knew Merlin, but no one cared about what he had to say.

Arthur was star of the football team and the son of the largest law firm on the West Coast. Everyone knew his name, but only a select few got the chance to actually talk to him.

The two had absolutely nothing in common, other than that they both procrastinated mightily on getting into college and ended up being assigned roommates instead of getting a choice.

At Camelot U, there were six main dorm halls. Steven's and Jenkin's Halls were designated as female only, while Adam's and Paxton's were for males. The last two were both for honors students, which Arthur was not accepted into and Merlin chose not to join. Consequently, Merlin and Arthur both ended up in Adam's Hall on the fourth floor, the seventh door down on the right, room 412.

Dorm rooms are uncomfortably small, even if you are best friends with your roommate, but it can be hell if you don't get along with your dorm mate.

On the first day Arthur arrived he found his room and claimed all of the right side, and part of the left. He had been told that his roommate would arrive the next day. He took full advantage of his day by himself to settle in, his belongings taking up much more than his half of the room. By the time morning came Arthur had already filled up Merlin's entire closet.

Merlin stumbled his way through Adam's Hall, looking for the right room, which was either 142 or 412, according to the lady at the orientation table. He wandered the first floor of the hall, but there were no dorms, only a common room, laundry room, and a kitchen. So he set off to the fourth floor, dropping his bags on the second and third floors and running into a kid on the stairwell. He wasn't starting off on the best foot.

Arthur didn't wake up until past one in the afternoon and decided to grab a shower before his new roommate came. He grabbed a change of clothes and a towel and wandered out the door to look for the showers. He didn't even realize he forgot his key, he was always used to having the help to open doors for him, and so he didn't even have a key to his house before.

Merlin dragged his luggage across the fourth floor, his arms too weak to hold up all of the belongings he owned anymore. Just as he was passing room 408, some blonde idiot waked right into him. Merlin being of a lot smaller stature fell to the ground, while the athletically built blonde remained standing.

"Watch where you're going, idiot" the fair-haired male sneered.

"You're the one bounding down the hallways without looking, bastard. What, are you late for your class on how to be a prat?"

"Oh, you're a feisty little fairy, aren't you? Why don't you scurry off to Jenkin's Hall already?"

"Oh, bite me." Merlin muttered as he finished picking up the rest of his bags and trudged off to find his dorm, leaving the other guy behind before he got in a fight his first day. He knew that he would have been able to take the straw-colored haired man with his sorcery, but magic was still considered dangerous. No one trusted Merlin once they found out he was a wizard.

Arthur found the bathroom pretty quickly, though he did have a small run-in with some pathetic raven-haired kid in the hallway. Their encounter in the hallway was forgotten the moment he felt the hot water trickle down his back.

Merlin opened the door to his room after some panic about not being able to find his keys (which were still exactly where he had put them, in the front left pocket of his jeans, but with all his bags he had a hard time fishing them out). The door creaked open slowly as Merlin saw his room for the first time. It was a mess.

By the time Arthur got back to his room after a shower (which far exceeded his allotted time), Merlin had already put all of his stuff away and thrown a lot of his roommates stuff back to his side of the room. The left side of the room was pristine with everything put away while the right looked as though a tornado, a bomb, and a tsunami had passed through after a burglar had ransacked his room.

Merlin was reading when there was a knock at the door; he got up with a cat-like stretch to open the door. Arthur didn't look too happy to see his prized clothing thrown onto his bed and both were dismayed to see that their new roommate was the same one that they had just run into in the hallway half an hour ago.