Skurdulka VS Bystander: A Queer Family Horror Story (Complete!)

Part 7: OurCity Standard

 Ash's dorm room door was open. A smile turned Chris's lip. Even after a long day—Introduction to Business Advertising was only the first in a long line of confusing, frustrating, mind-numbing classes—Chris always felt better walking into Ash's room.

"Hey," Chris knocked on the open door as they stepped through "what's up, weirdos?"

Taking his earbuds out, Ash spun around in his office chair. He smiled. "Hey!"

Sitting at the opposite desk by the door, a large, bespectacled, young man with long, dark hair and a thick, dark beard gave a glance and a nod. Chris patted him on the shoulder as they passed and pulled out the folding chair leaning against the wall. "Whatcha all doing?"

The dorm rooms were all painfully small, especially compared to Rennie's four-room suite. Peter and Ash were both at their desks, under their raised beds, working on their computers. The space was better organized than Chris ever remembered Ash's room being—the organization, he suspected, was an attempt to be a good roommate. With two beds, two desks, two closets, two dressers and two young men crammed into the shoebox space, casual messiness could quickly become a battleground. Chris got the feeling that Ash's roomate, Peter, managed stress with detailed organization; from his game consoles to his neatly arranged role-playing books to his closet of neatly folded black clothes, everything was in its place. Ash was the opposite; mess seemed to accumulate around him. But the reasonably well-managed pile of laundry, stacked books, and lack of empty cans or cups on Ash's side told Chris he was trying.

"Finishing International Studies," Ash answered.

"Sounds thrilling. How's that going?"

Ash scoffed. "Well, to be honest, I don't know what the hell the Assyrian empire is. So I'm not sure how to write an essay about it."

Chris chuckled. Extending a foot, Chris nudged Peter's chair. "Whatchu doing?"

Peter turned a bit, glancing. "Database stuff."

Chris raised their eyebrows. "Is that fun?"

Peter scrunched his lips, his mouth almost disappearing under his thick beard. "No."

Shaking their head, Chris exhaled. "Wow, we're all having fun, huh? Who wants to play Smash?"

Peter turned a bit more. "I'm in."

"Aaaash?" Chris nudged his chair.

"Yeah, I'm in. I just gotta finish this up," he answered.

Turning on the TV and grabbing the controller, Chris started the Nintendo Wii and looked for Super Smash Bros. He only had to shift the folding chair an inch to get a view of the TV, sitting on Ash's dresser. The angle wasn't ideal, but none of the angles in the room really were.

As Peter closed his laptop and swiveled the chair around, Chris handed him a controller. Peter brought an XBOX, PlayStation, and Wii into the dorm, and Chris remembered thinking it was a red flag at first. Lee had always liked gaming too, but Chris couldn't picture her bringing every game system into a small dorm room. But, while it was harder to get a read on the quiet young man in conversation, he seemed to open up when he played video games. When Chris thought about it, Lee was a bit that way too.

After hearing about and reading about perhaps three hundred stories of straight college guys being perverts and abusers, Chris couldn't help but wonder about Ash's roommate. Most straight college guys' expectations of a roommate didn't include a transguy. But Peter barely reacted when Ash told him he was transgender. At first, Ash wondered if Peter even knew what 'transgender' meant. As the weeks went on, Ash and Chris learned that Peter was a man of few words, but he wasn't stupid. He understood, it just didn't affect him.