Random fanfic (Monk)

Part 1

While I was an exchange student at the University of Berkeley in California, I had a friend and groupmate named Adrian Monk. I found his last name interesting (at first unpronounceable for a non-native English speaker like me) and found his personality and, later on, his brother and home more fascinating. We were working on a group project together and he invited me over to his house to do it, although our third member was sick and couldn't join that day.

I met Adrian at the grocery store near their house to buy some things for our project. When I found him in one of the aisles, he already had lots of things inside his grocery cart.

"I'm buying groceries for my family as well," he said after I had greeted him and glanced at the cart.

"That's nice of you," I remarked and grinned. He gave a small, shy smile, and pulled up a piece of paper from his front pocket; the list for our project. As we began to search the store to collect the items we needed, I couldn't help but notice how all the boxes, sachets, and cans in his cart were arranged so neatly by size. All the curves and lines were perfectly straight and proportional, mimicking the way the items on the shelf were placed.

I'd already seen how persnickety he was with his notebooks and pencils in the classroom, lining them up neatly with each other, and with his food in the cafeteria, but I was still shocked to see how much of a perfectionist he was outside of college, even for the most mundane of tasks.

After we'd gotten everything, we paid for our project items at the cashier, splitting the receipt. He asked me to wait for him as he paid for his family's groceries separately. I offered to help, and at first he refused, but after I asked again, he let me help him place the things on the cashier conveyor belt. The friendly bagger seemed to have been familiar with him, because he arranged everything as neatly as Adrian did.

Then, we started walking to his house. At first, we walked without talking to each other. This made me get lost in my own thoughts, and of course, I thought about my friend who was walking beside me. I was excited to visit his house because I was curious about who he was apart from him being my classmate.

I knew him as a nice guy and a hard worker like me, even if he was quite odd. We also shared an eye for detail. I appreciated that.

It was also nice to find a friend like him on campus because I still felt unused to the whole college thing - even if it was my junior year - because I used to be homeschooled all my life. And being in California as an exchange student for that semester was frightening to me.

The strange thing was, even though Adrian grew up there, he also seemed like he was terrified. Terrified about... everything. Terrified about the food we ate, the water - he'd watch me drink from the water fountains and warn me about the dangers of American water fountains... Terrified of people, too. I'd often find him alone in the hallways, student areas and the library. He didn't seem to have a lot of friends.

I was one of the only two people he seemed comfortable enough to be around in the class we shared. Though we didn't know each other enough to become close friends, I felt we could relate to each other on an unspoken level. There was also Trudy, who was part of our group project. He'd recently confided to me that he had asked her out. I was still waiting for him to tell me the story about how he did it. Presently, I thought of asking him about it, but we turned a corner from the main street and entered a neat, suburban neighborhood.

I heard the distant sound of children playing, and the noise from the cars on the main street lessened.

"This is my street," he explained.

"Nice!" I said, and decided to continue the conversation. "So, at home... do you have any siblings?"

He answered, "Yeah, one. An older brother. You'll meet him later."

"Oh," I said. "He still lives with you?"

"Yeah... he goes to an online college," he mumbled. "One thing you should know - he never goes out of the house."

"Oh... really?" I said, feeling alarmed. "But why?"

He shifted awkwardly. "He's scared."

"Why?" I asked again, sympathetically but puzzled.

"There was this flu that went around when he was twelve," he elaborated. "And he's never wanted to go out ever since."

"Aww..." I said. "That's a pity. But hey, at least he didn't have a hard time during the Coronavirus!"

"Yeah!" He laughed. "All his training paid off."

We were silent for a while and I shifted a cloth grocery bag from my shoulder to my arm.

"Oh, is that heavy? Let me take it," he said. But I looked at the amount of bags he was already carrying and I said, "No, no, it's fine, man, you're carrying way more stuff than me."

"Alright," he relented. I didn't like the silence so I changed the subject to something else until he stopped and pointed to a big, beautiful, battleship-gray house that had slanted white gables and wooden beams that propped up the second storey. He said, "That's my house."

We stepped on the porch, and I inched nervously in anticipation for a new social interaction with whoever was at that house. But I was very curious to find out what his older brother was like.

Adrian knocked on the heavy wooden door with an ornate thick glass window. He also rang the bell. Footsteps followed shortly, and the door was opened by a tall young man who didn't look much older than the both of us, and who also looked like a carbon copy of Adrian, only thinner and slightly taller. They had the same wiry, thick curls - a bit frizzy on the edges, at least, less frizzy than mine - brown skin, and gentle brown eyes. I wondered what their ethnicity was. To add to the mystery, their last name was Monk, which sounded... European? I wasn't sure.

I saw that they even wore similar clothes: flannel shirts and knitted vests (which Adrian wore sometimes, but not that day), in warm, homely tones. I had the impression that Adrian wore hand-me-downs, or if not, they either were bought the same thing or liked each other so much that they bought the same clothes. Who knows?

"Hello," the brother said quickly, then gave a start when he saw me.

"Uh, Sam, this is my brother Ambrose," said Adrian, gesturing with his arm that wasn't carrying a paper bag. "Ambrose, this is Samantha from college. We have a project together."

"Oh, hello!" Ambrose said. I smiled, thinking it was nice how both of their names started with an "A" and sounded... well, classic. I put down my bag so I could shake his hand, and half-expected him to take out a wipe for his hand as Adrian did with me the first time we met - but he didn't.

"It's nice to meet you, Samantha," he said.

"Nice to meet you too!" I couldn't stifle my laugh after I said this, because I was thinking of the wipe.

"What's funny?" he asked.

"Oh...uh..." I stammered. I didn't know whether it'd be wise to tell him why in front of Adrian. Anyways, he motioned to my grocery bags.

"Oh, let me carry that," he said, and took them.

"Adrian, where do I put these?" he asked.

"Put them in the kitchen," Adrian answered.

I noted that he was a helpful older brother. Neat.