Leon Knightley and the Roommate from Hell
For the first few months of university, Leon had been perfectly content.
He was doing well on his politics and medieval history course, and Elyan was a quiet and considerate roommate.
Elyan tidied up after himself. Elyan never came back drunk (well, there was that one time but it had been his birthday so Leon thought he might be allowed a little excess, just once a year). Elyan sat at his desk in the corner and studied. Elyan never played loud music.
Then Elyan's father was taken ill, and Elyan had to go home to help run the family business. If he came back at all it was going to be the following year.
At first it seemed Leon might get to keep the room all to himself. For a blissful few weeks he could line up all his limited edition hand-finished knight figurines on the window ledge, getting them to just the right angle. They looked perfect, framed by the steel grey curtains he'd replaced the grubby university ones with. He was even thinking of redecorating the room completely.
Then he arrived.
Gwaine Greene was the roommate from hell.
He was messy, he was loud, he walked around the room naked, he came in drunk and collapsed on his bed (once he didn't even make it to the bed) and snored loudly all night. His books sat in an untidy, disorganised pile on the floor. There was a half-eaten chocolate bar sitting on the top. Leon's were sorted into alphabetical order by author from left to right and dusted regularly.
Then there was the hair. Leon had never seen anyone fiddle around with their hair so much. Gwaine tended to sit in the chair... Leon's favourite chair... and read. Well, Leon assumed he was reading. He had a book open in front of him, though he never seemed to turn the pages. Perhaps he couldn't read? That wouldn't surprise Leon. While he read, or stared at the pages, Gwaine kept flicking his hair back, or combing his fingers through it, or just twiddling it around his finger.
Which wouldn't be so bad, but Gwaine moulted worse than a cat and Leon was starting to find long strands of dark hair everywhere. Mostly on the tapestry back of his favourite chair on the rare occasion he got to sit there. Leon had moved it over to what was unquestionably his side of the room but that made no difference.
Worst of all, there was the smoking. Gwaine claimed that if he leaned out of the window and did it, technically he was outside and (he'd said pointedly) nobody could stop him. By doing so he made the room both cold and smelly. And he always knocked over Leon's knights, and once accidently (he claimed) dropped one out of the window.
The final straw was when Leon came in one evening and found his knights all positioned in ways that could only be described as pornographic. That was the day he used duct tape to mark a line down the middle of the room. Gwaine was not to trespass over to Leon's side and the knights were moved to a shelf where they were safe. Gwaine just rolled his eyes at this development and sat on his bed eating a cheap and nasty-smelling pasty. Leon wondered if there was a way to block the air from that side of the room too. Preferably by making it a vacuum whilst Gwaine was in it.
And then Gwaine nearly burned the room down.
To be fair (not that Leon was feeling fair) it was an accident. And possibly if Leon hadn't come in at that moment and startled him he wouldn't have caught the fabric with his lighter. But then if Leon hadn't been there with his superior fire-fighting knowledge, half the dorm might have burned down.
At least then Gwaine would probably have been made to leave. And even if he wasn't, Leon probably wouldn't have had to room with him any more.
As it was, only the curtains were ruined. The expensive, hand-woven ones that Leon had purchased from his allowance (which you got if you were the son of a Lord. Gwaine was the son of goodness-knows-who. Leon fancied himself as a forward-thinking sort of noble and was going to use this rooming with a commoner experience as media proof of that in his later career).
Gwaine looked at them ruefully. "I suppose the university won't replace them?"
"I purchased them, so no," Leon told him, then mentally kicked himself for the missed opportunity because if Gwaine had done that then they'd know he'd been smoking in the room and there might be Gwaine-removing consequences.
"Really?"
Leon wasn't sure what to make of the surprise in Gwaine's voice.
"They're very... grey," Gwaine continued.
"They're hand-woven by Tibetan monks!"
Gwaine frowned. "Bit of a strange thing for monks to be doing. I thought they just sat around praying and gardening and stuff."
Gwaine clearly had no clue about the higher things in life. Leon had been considering a week's sabbatical in a monastery, again for the media thing in his later career. It would help with his inevitable knighthood. He gazed at his little figurines. At least they'd not been caught up in the fire.
"Think that big Asda sells curtains in the homeware section," Gwaine continued. "I'll get some when I go shopping."
Asda! Leon had never even set foot in Asda. Everything he purchased was done by mail order from the better shops. And yet, if he was to have to stare at curtains Gwaine had chosen for the rest of the year...
"I'll come with you."
He knew he was going to regret this.
---
Asda was vast. It was like a giant warehouse where all the poor people of the world had been stored. There were children running around, slamming trolleys into displays or other customers. Or screaming. There were people in jogging bottoms! There were people who looked as if they hadn't washed their hair for a week! There were... Actually, there were people who looked perfectly clean, tidy and normal too. Perhaps they had come in because they had to, like Leon.
The homeware section was, considering everything in it had to all be quite cheap and poorly made, fairly tidy. Gwaine had already shoved a hideous multi-coloured lamp into the trolley.
"This'll be great! I'll get some joints, you'll love it!"
Leon was sure he could hear Gwaine mutter something about needing to loosen up, but there was such awful tinned music coming out of the speakers that he couldn't be sure. He wasn't sure he wanted to eat any meat that had been purchased in here or cooked by Gwaine, but he'd find an excuse when the time came.
The curtains were, generally... surprisingly acceptable. At least until Gwaine pulled out a horrendously garish one with brightly-coloured splodges all over it.
"We have a winner!"
"Would that be the winner of most tasteless curtain competition?" Leon was quite pleased with that one.
"It's cheerful. Nothing wrong with cheerful." Gwaine pulled out one in zebra print. "What about this?"
"Never."
"This?"
"Vile."
"This one?"
"Horr... Hang on, those are okay."
In fact, they looked remarkably familiar.
"They're grim, but they're cheap. Look a bit like your old ones."
The curtains were £15. They claimed to be silver taffeta and machine washable!
"Actually, they look exactly like your old ones," Gwaine continued. "Those monks must be busy!"
Leon couldn't bring himself to say anything. Those curtains had cost him nearly £700. They'd been hand-woven. They were dry clean only. They weren't the same curtains. They couldn't be.
"They'll do," he managed.
Gwaine triumphantly tossed the packet into the trolley. "Bargain! Okay, where's the drinks aisle?"
Leon didn't know. He was never going to visit Asda again. And there would be an angry email to Exquisite Furnishings just as soon as he got back to the room.
---
"So," said Gwaine cheerfully as they stood in line at the checkout, the trolley heaving under a mountain of bottles and a bit of food too. He'd been even more cheerful than usual ever since they'd found the curtains. "Just how much did you pay for the old curtains?"
Leon really, really wanted a new roommate...