Chapter Text
Day one of college, and Ray’s already having a clusterfuck of an experience.
Mama hadn’t been able to get the day off from work, and Grandma’s terrified of planes, so no one flew halfway across the country with him to help him move in. Which is fine.
It should be fine.
Having anyone fly out with him would have just made him bawl harder when they had to leave for the last time for the next indefinite amount of time. Especially after the all-nighter he pulled because only three hours of sleep is worse than zero somehow. The only part that isn’t fine is having to carry two VERY overpacked suitcases, a duffle bag, and a giant backpack up five million and twelve flights of stairs. Because, naturally, the elevator in his residence hall was broken, and his room is on the fourth floor.
Which would have been fine, if he’d gotten in at the original time he was supposed to.
But then the airline made the connection in Charlotte an hour longer so people would stop missing their flights, and so he got in at 1:30 instead of 12:15 like he was supposed to.
Which would’ve been annoying, but still fine.
Except for the fact that the volunteers helping new students bring their bags to their rooms left at 2:00, and the college is a 45-minute car ride away. So there was no shot he was ever getting there in time, not when his Uber came 30 minutes late.
And maybe he could’ve called his roommates for some help, but his phone died just after he grabbed his ID card from the little table all the way across campus.
All of those individual little mishaps would have been fine, but together they mean that now Ray is sweating pit stains into his black hoodie, dragging his suitcases up stairs on the verge of tears, and cursing himself with every step for not working on his arm strength like he told himself he was going to over the Summer. Turns out building arm strength is hard when the nearest gym is two hours away.
“Fucking…” Step. Groan. “Piece of…” Step. Groan. “Shit.” Step. Pant. Pant. Pant. Mini sob.
Maybe, he realizes, it’s a good thing that Grandma isn’t here right now. She’d have smacked her granddaughter upside the head for using language like that, especially in front of strangers.
…
Room 402 is, to make matters worse, a very unfortunately placed dorm room. Smack dab behind a staircase just irritatingly low enough to bump you in the forehead if you don’t duck on the way in. Ray learned that lesson and had earned himself a nasty headache in learning it, one of those ones where it feels like a cartoonish bump is about to grow out of your skull.
He presses his keycard against the scanner, only for nothing to happen. He flips it over and presses it extra hard into the plastic doohickey, narrowing his eyes at it and hoping that’ll be enough of a threat to make it behave.
It doesn’t, flashing a red light at him and making a mechanical hissing sound.
He fishes a small yellow Post-It Note out of his hoodie pocket. He wrote his dorm number and move-in information on it so he would remember it just in case his phone died. But, he used it like a makeshift fidget toy on the plane ride to Charlotte, so now most of the pencil is rubbed off and smudged into oblivion. The 402 is still legible, though.
So, with nothing else coming to him as a possible solution, he presses the card into the scanner again.
No cigar. Another red light and another hiss.
Ray sighs and puts the keycard into his pocket. Maybe he’ll need to get it reprogrammed at the front office, but he doesn’t have the will to live to do that right now. So he knocks on the door instead.
“Um, guys? Hello? It’s Ray!” he calls out, practically pressing his mouth against the wooden door. He winces at the sound of his own voice, hating how high it tends to get when he’s nervous or uncomfortable. When he opens his mouth to speak again, his voice is much lower, just how he’s been trying to train it to sound. “Helloooooooo?”
The door opens with a click, and Ray glances down ever so slightly to make eye contact with a very confused-looking Mikey McMillin. And Ray immediately feels self-conscious, because she looks even prettier in person than she did in the shitty photo she sent when they’d found out they were going to be sharing a dorm.
Her real name is Mikayla, but she’d introduced herself in their email groupchat as Mikey, so Ray’s stuck to calling her that ever since. It feels weird not to call someone by their preferred name, even if it’s just a nickname.
Ray’s never seen a girl that looks like Mikey before. She’s Victoria’s Secret model skinny, pale like she doesn’t spend any time outside, and she’s movie star pretty in the kind of way Anne Hathaway is; princessy. But she also looks a little greasy. Where Ray’s from, pretty much everyone looks like him; on the tanner side, less makeup skills, and definitely far less skinny. Mikey dresses like Pinterest is a close personal friend of hers. Everyone back home’s best outfit is their church dress, or in Ray’s case, a sweater and some nice dress pants.
“You’re…Ray, right?”
Her speech has this slight little lisp to it that makes the words slur. It sounds like she’s got a retainer in, or like she cried and she’s still got a little too much mucus in her system to speak super clearly. And she speaks slowly, like everything she says has to be quickly evaluated after she says it before she can say her next word or two.
“I thought you were supposed to be more Southern. Like, you don’t have that much of an accent?”
She talks like she’s on the verge of giggling and/or crying. Ray thinks it’s a little endearing already.
“Some people just don’t get one that’s super severe,” Ray replies, because in all honesty, he’s not sure either. No one in the Toro family has one. It’s never occurred to him that it could be weird that he doesn’t have one until right now.
“Oh. Okay then! Come on in, I guess. Illi and I are sharing a room, so you’ll be rooming with Frankie. Hope that’s okay!”
She steps out of the doorway and strides back over through the corridor of their quartet dorm room and into the farthest back bedroom, no offer extended to help Ray with his bags of any kind.
Which was mildly annoying, but it was fine.
“Frankie?” Ray asks out loud in the hopes that Mikey will hear him, eyebrows knitting together with curiosity.
He manages to drag his bags through the door and into the first living area of the dorm, taking the opportunity to finally set them down on the couch.
Mikey peeps her head back out of the doorway to her bedroom to reply, hair dangling away from her neck because of the angle she’s leaning at. Her bangs shift to reveal some of her shaved-down eyebrows.
“Yeah…It’s a nickname? Frank and I have been friends since middle school. Do you not give your friends nicknames?”
“Oh. You guys know each other?” Ray’s not really asking, just kind of parroting what Mikey said back at her. He’d figured that Illi and Mikey had to know each other because they were siblings, and he knew that Frank was from the same town in New Jersey as the two of them because of his description on the housing lottery website. But somehow, he’d never put together that the three of them choosing to room together before the housing lottery even opened after coming from the same town probably meant that they probably definitely knew each other.
Mikey hums and sticks her head back into her bedroom, filling the dorm with an uncomfortable silence other than the rustling of bags and the whirring of zippers. It’s the first time today that Ray’s really been able to get in his head about whether or not his new roommates will like him. Before, he always had something to be doing to keep himself busy, and anxiety has no place in moving in for college. But now, he’s wishing he had something else to do.
So, he decides unpacking and actually meeting Frank in person is probably the best way to not feel awkward, and starts rolling his suitcase full of clothes and bedding over to the bedroom closest to the door.
The closed door is decorated with stickers that spell out “Frank” in red, little acrylic rhinestone hearts and diamonds all around it like Ray imagines a moody teen girl in a coming of age movie would decorate the cover of her diary. Next to it is a Green Post-It Note stuck to the door with “Ray” scrawled on it in pencil.
Ray knocks three times and waits for a response. When he gets none, he opens the door and steps in.
Frank is sitting with his legs crossed on the floor, but Ray can already tell he’s really short. His black hair hangs in his face, stringy strands looking like they’re still wet from a recent shower. From the side profile Ray’s getting, he notices he has a lip ring. He watches him stick his tongue out in concentration, fiddling with the blacking of an adhesive strip, and wonders to himself if he has any other piercings.
He debates talking to him, but he seems to be in the middle of something, so Ray ultimately decides that that will have to wait. He rolls his suitcase over to his bed and plops down onto his knees on the floor, opening the zipper up to start unpacking his things.
He starts with his bedding. He’s got a mattress topper, sheets, a navy throw blanket, and his memory foam pillow with a silk pillowcase that he brought from home. He’s planning to buy another pillow, and perhaps another blanket once the Northeastern Winter starts rolling in, but for now this is all he’s going to have.
“So, how was flying in from buttfuck nowhere, Oklahoma?” Frank asks. Ray decides it’s because he wants to fill the silence.
Frank’s voice is decidedly masculine, but it sounds…trained. Not entirely natural, but so close to natural you’d only really notice it if it was something you knew he was doing. He assumes Frank is lowering his voice in the same way Ray tries to make his voice sound lower and more manly. Frank seems, as much as it feels wrong for Ray to think, like a walking tboy stereotype. So it would make sense.
“Rough. I had to get up at 2 AM because the airport is so far away.”
“Jesus Christ. Where are you from again? Quarterpaw? Quackaw?”
Frank definitely has more of a New Jersey accent than Mikey does.
“Yeah, pretty much. It’s a tiny town right near the border of Oklahoma and Missouri.”
Frank hums, and Ray hears his joints pop and crack as he gets up from the floor. It sounds like he’s made of Rice Krispies Treats.
“Should I be calling you Rayne or Ray? I know you mentioned that either was fine in the group chat, but if you’ve got a preference, let me know.”
Ray pauses his battling with his fitted sheet and turns to look at Frank. The shorter man is standing on his bed, the springs creaking under his weight, and sticking a Green Day poster on the wall with the adhesive he’d been messing with earlier.
He ponders the question for a few moments. He’d tried to launch the nickname with his friends back in Quapaw, but it never stuck. Everyone called him Rayne because that was what made the most sense to them. Ray had always been Rayne, and Ray was a boy’s name, but they’d always known him as a girl. That didn’t make sense to them. So it didn’t make any sense to change things.
And that was fine. They didn’t have to call him by a nickname.
But now, here, in a new place, he gets to choose how people refer to him. Somewhat, at least.
“Ray. I’d prefer Ray,” he replies with a nod, getting a feel for it himself. It feels natural.
And then he turns back around to return to making his bed.
“Well then, Ray,” Frank starts again, sounding slightly more confident with the confirmation of which name to use, “Let’s get to know each other. What kinda music do you like?”
“Jimmy Eat World, Radiohead, Fall Out Boy, Weezer, Oasis….And, y’know, Iron Maiden and Metallica, stuff like that.”
Frank snorts. “So you’re a virgin. Chill.”
Ray feels his face heat up with minor embarrassment. He’s always felt like his music taste was by no means lame or losery, but now that Frank is poking fun at it, he suddenly feels like it might be.
Frank doesn’t seem to be lingering on the light jab to Ray’s ego, though. “I like Joan Jett, Heart, Haunted Mound, Avenged Sevenfold, Mannequin Pussy, Five Finger Death Punch, Black Sabbath, Chat Pile, Rage Against The Machine…” He gestures at the poster he just stuck on the wall, “...And then obviously I like Green Day.”
Ray perks up at the mention of bands he knows, suddenly feeling a strange urge to impress his new roommate and prove that his music taste isn’t lame at all.
“I love Green Day too! I just don’t have any CDs, so I listen to them a little less.”
“You still need CDs to listen to music?” He’s not looking at Frank, but he can tell he’s raising an eyebrow at him based on the confusion in his tone.
“In my truck, yeah. It’s old as balls and doesn’t have Bluetooth.”
“Holy hick,” Frank snickers, sounding kind of rodent-like in a way. “No wonder your music taste is like somebody’s divorced dad. You and Gee are gonna get along great.”
Ray smooths out his throw blanket and sits down on top of the mattress, legs dangling off the edge like they do when he goes to the doctor and sits on the examination table.
“I’m assuming Gee is Illi’s nickname?”
Frank, still standing on top of his bed, turns around and flops down to sit cross-legged. The springs creak and pop so loud that, for a moment, Ray’s worried he’s broken it by falling on it like that.
“Gee has a lot of different nicknames. Gillian, Gee, Illi, G Whiz, except nobody actually calls her that...”
Ray can feel that he’s smiling before he consciously registers why he’s doing it.
He really likes the name Illi.
“Ah, neat. I had a bunch of names when I was genderfluid for a couple years, before I realized I was trans. I wanted to have one for each gender and stuff.”
Frank nods like he’d somehow already gathered that from Ray’s appearance. Which, to be fair, is not very hard. Ray still looks like a girl 100% of the time, but he has a masculine-ish nickname and his pronouns on all of his college accounts say he/him. If you’re looking for any amount of time, really, you’d know.
“Nice. That makes two fags and three genderqueers. Our dorm might as well be the GSA headquarters.”
Ray winces a little bit at Frank’s phrasing, but eventually he relaxes into a chuckle, now reaching into his suitcase to grab clothes to fold and sort into the appropriate drawers of his dresser.
“Mikey didn’t strike me as a lesbian. I guess my gaydar’s off,” he hums, carrying his underwear over to the dresser as discreetly as possible. He’d always been partial to boxers over other underwear because it was more comfortable and he felt more at ease when wearing them, but he’d always felt the need to hide them from his mom. Apparently old habits die fighting, even if Mama isn’t here.
“To tell you the truth, she doesn’t strike herself as a lesbian,” Frank replies, sprawling out on his bed and fishing his phone out of his pocket. “She thinks she’s bi with a preference for men. But she’s hated every guy she’s dated because they’ve all been assholes. And last time she hooked up with a chick, she almost moved to Seattle to marry her. She swears she’s mostly straight, but I’ve got her figured out.”
Ray feels a smile somewhere between awkward and genuinely amused spring back up on his face. “You seem to be more of an authority on Mikey’s sexuality than she is.”
“Because she’s in denial.” Frank turns his head to face Ray. He notices the boy sitting across from him has a nose ring. He was right about Frank having more piercings. “I’m like Sue Sylvester. There’s only one person that can tell Mikey who she is, and it’s me.”
He breathes a laugh through his nose at that, carrying his last stack of T-shirts over to the dresser and gingerly laying them in the drawer. Once he returns, he zips up his suitcase and slides it under the bed.
Unpacking initially seemed like it was going to be this gargantuan task that Ray could never hope to actually finish, especially not with no one to help him out. Cleaning out his room, deciding what had to go to Goodwill and what had to stay, and packing what was left had taken weeks. He was certain it would take that long to fully unpack and have things arranged how he wanted.
But, with Frank’s light banter, he quickly found the time was passing faster than he’d expected. He was fully expecting to sit in awkward silence the entire time with a roommate who was either too shy to talk or very clearly didn’t like his vibe. He was expecting dry small talk at most. But Frank talks like he’s in his element and isn’t affected in the slightest by typical new-roommate-awkwardness.
…
Before long, the afternoon sun has begun to turn golden, blue skies leaning slightly more green as dusk approaches, and Ray’s suitcases are all emptied and slid neatly under his bed. Everything is decorated and in its right place, and for the first time since landing at the jetport, it’s sinking in that he’s going to be living here for the next four years. And that thought isn’t as scary now that the room isn’t just agreeable gray and beige.
Frank is still sprawled out in his bed, and as Ray glances at him over his shoulder, he sees the boy’s eyes are half-lidded like he’s three-quarters of the way asleep, but not entirely yet. He mumbles something unintelligible, as if acknowledging that his roommate’s looking at him.
There’s a pause before he speaks, more clearly this time.
“We sh’ prob grab dinner w’ Mikey n’ Gee,” he slurs, rolling over to face away from Ray.
“Yeah, probably. I’m starting to get hungry. You want me to round them up while you get a little more shut-eye?”
Frank doesn’t answer, so he takes that as a yes.
Leaving the easy environment he’s created inside his shared room makes him feel a little uneasy. The corridor to Mikey and Illi’s room is quiet, and just by being in the space, Ray feels like he’s disturbing the carefully crafted peace.
Illi and Mikey’s door is decorated just like Frank had decorated theirs, “Mikey” plastered on in green and “Illi” in blue, all surrounded by acrylic rhinestones of all kinds of shapes and sizes. It’s cute.
He gives the door a gentle knock, not wanting to disturb the quiet any more than he already is. For all he knows, Illi and Mikey are both also napping and are in no mood to be woken up to their door being knocked on like they owe Ray money.
He waits. And waits some more. And then reaches up to knock again.
But the door opens before he can.
Illi looks a little more like the kind of people Ray’s used to meeting, albeit with greasier hair and less recently showered. She’s chubby, she has freckles dotting the area across their nose and cheeks, and she’s dressed like she fished out the most comfortable hoodie and sweatpants she could find in her drawers.
Ray realizes Illi’s staring at him when the two of them make eye contact that goes on for a long while longer than Ray wants it to. It’s like she’s not even blinking. Her eyes are beautiful, warm streaks of browns with tints of olive green framed by long, spiky eyelashes and worn-in black eyeliner, but it still freaks him the fuck out.
He glances away, waiting for her to say something or step out of the way of the door.
He notes that her hair is very obviously dyed black, and it falls down to her shoulders in gentle swoops. It’s also really greasy, and Ray’s pretty sure he can spot a couple pieces of gray lint hidden in the messy strands.
He notes that she’s much paler than Mikey is, almost vampiric.
He notes that her eyes are fucking huge and- God, does she ever blink? Please blink.
He notes that her awkward grin is made up of the world's smallest teeth. He worries that if he tries to count them there’ll be more than any human is supposed to have.
She’s like if a cryptid made a wish to be a scary teenage girl.
He notes that Mikey’s twin sibling scares the living shit out of him.
He notes that he really wants this silence to be over.
“Um. Frank was asking if you guys all wanna go grab dinner as a group. Because. You know. Roommates and stuff.”
Illi’s mouth slowly drops its smile, and she glances away from Ray’s eyes as if pondering for a moment before she speaks.
“Yeah, that sounds nice. I’ll see if Mikey feels up for a bite.”
Her voice is mousy. That’s the only way Ray can think of describing it. Like a really weird New Jersey mouse.
Illi shuts the door before he can get another word in, re-opening it about a minute later with Mikey standing behind her. Ray doesn’t give them the chance to prolong the silence again, walking back to his room and peeking in to talk to Frank.
“Hey, Illi’s ready to go get food if you are. You ready?”
Frank, still half asleep, rolls around on his bed until his legs hang off the side, only getting up after dramatically falling down to the floor in slow motion. And even then, he lets the silence fill the room before he gets up, groaning and mumbling about how he still wants to be napping.
“You can stay behind if you really want,” Ray says with a shrug, watching as his roommate approaches him with half-lidded eyes and his head hanging low. If he hadn’t been actively watching the man, he’d have figured he was sleepwalking. He still might be.
Frank shakes his head, lifting his head and pushing his bangs out of his face. “No, no, it’s fine. I’m hungry, I should go eat.” He blinks harshly a few times when the overhead fluorescents hit his eyes before eventually settling on keeping them closed for now.
Ray hears footsteps next to him and turns to see Mikey leaning against the corridor wall. Illi’s standing behind her, staring at him again like she did when she’d opened the door just a few moments prior. Her eyes really are huge when she stares like that. He decides to make sure it doesn’t linger this time, turning and heading out the door before things can get awkward.
…
It turns out that what prissy rich kids would consider mediocre dorm food is better than pretty much any food Ray could get his hands on back in Oklahoma. He’d had lobster bisque maybe once in his entire 18 years of life, and yet here they serve it every other day. And it's good, good. Except for the piece of shell that he’d gotten in his bowl that almost chipped his front teeth. But hey, at least that meant it was real.
The table’s been kind of quiet, though.
Ray’s nearly certain it’s because he’s there. Mikey, Illi, and Frank all knew each other for years, presumably. They should have plenty to talk about, or at the very least, the silence should be comfortable. But now that he’s here, it’s like this is the first time any of them are meeting.
Ray looks up from his plate and glances at his roommates.
Frank is stuffing his face so full of sandwich that he looks like a chipmunk. Mikey is picking at her salad and glancing down at the table like she’s looking for something to pass the time. Illi is hugging her knees up to her chest and glancing between her plateful of french fries, Mikey, and Ray.
Ray’s guessing everyone’s as uncomfortable with the silence as he is.
“I chatted with Frank a little already, but I don’t really know anything about the two of you,” he starts, shifting in his chair to get more comfortable. He doesn’t know why he thinks the same logic he uses with cats and dogs will work in this situation, but he’s hoping that, by making himself seem more relaxed, everyone else will start to ease up themselves. “Like, are you guys twins?”
Mikey nods, “Yeah. Illi’s the older one. She’s older by five minutes.”
Illi smiles, flashing tiny chiclet teeth that twinkle under the dining hall lights, “Most people think having twins is this super cute Hallmark movie feel-good bullshit. It’s not. Mikey and I tore shit up. And we used to fight with our parents all the time because we wanted to have our birthdays on separate days.”
Mikey giggles at the memories, her laugh goofy and stuffy and nasal, “Even though our friend groups were literally the same, too. We just wanted double the cake and double the fun. But that’s just how siblings are.”
Ray nods. He and his brother certainly liked each other less when they were kids than it seems like Illi and Mikey did, but they’d gotten much closer over the years. As he got older, he realized having siblings gave him someone to talk to even at his loneliest. He could appreciate that.
“What made you guys decide to go to the same college, though? I thought twins get sick of being lumped together all the time.”
Illi shrugs. “Not us. Maybe because our parents weren’t dead set on giving us colors or making us dress the same, I dunno. But we haven’t gotten sick of hanging out yet. Mikes is one of my best friends.”
Mikey nods in agreement, and then silence falls over them again.
Mikey starts up again not long after it starts to get uncomfortable. “Do you wanna talk about where you’re from? Oklahoma, right?”
“I mean, there’s not much to say about it. Oklahoma’s pretty lame.” Ray stares down his glass of ginger ale as if the carbonation will give him an inkling of what to talk about
“I’m from Quapaw. It’s a little town North of Miami, right by the border with Missouri.”
“Miamuh?” Frank asks, confusion scrawled all over his face. “I thought Miami was in Florida. By the beach. Isn’t Oklahoma landlocked?”
“Miami’s in Florida. Miami, Oklahoma is in Oklahoma. Down there they call it ‘Miamuh’. The town’s named after the Miami tribe, and so we say it the way they say it in their language.”
“Do they spell their name that stupidly too?”
Mikey shoots him a glare and elbows him in the side. “Dude, that’s rude. You can’t just say that about other people’s cultures!”
Frank looks apologetic, which seems to satisfy Mikey for now.
“It’s not how they actually spell the name, if I remember right. The white guys who found them just decided Miami was an appropriate way to spell their tribe name.”
Mikey doesn’t seem as satisfied anymore. And now Frank’s got this shit-eating grin that Ray can only describe as distinctly younger-brother-esque.
The girl pushes her chair back and gets up, gathering her plate and silverware. “Whatever. Let’s clean up and head back to the dorm or something. Hand me your plates.”
Illi hands her plate to Mikey and stacks her cup on top of her sister’s. Frank does the same, “We’re not gonna go exploring? What are we, hermits?”
“We have a week before classes start,” Mikey sighs, sharply turning her head to the side to get her bangs out of her face, “We can go tomorrow or something. I’m tired.”
Ray slides his dishes over to Mikey, who picks them up without even seeming to have registered it. His eyes dart back between the two of them as they bicker. It’s like watching a tennis match, he imagines.
“All you did today was sit with us on a train ride and then unpack some suitcases. You didn’t even have to bring them to the elevator.”
By the time Frank finishes his sentence, Mikey’s already turned away to go put their plates away. Frank’s clearly bothered by that, but he says nothing.
“You sure you guys are friends?” Ray asks. He’s only half joking.
“Oh, yeah!” Frank laughs, seeming surprised Ray would even ask, “We fight like that all the time. As soon as she’s comfortable with you, I’m sure you’ll be getting the exact same treatment from her that I do.”
Frank gets up from his chair once he notices Mikey walking back toward their table. She’s clearly not annoyed like she’d been feigning just before she left.
Ray, oddly enough, finds himself endeared by the fact that they can banter back and forth without any bad blood. Back home, you had to be nice to everyone all the time, or else you were unapproachable and rude and then no one would want to do as much as look at you. Clearly, their dynamic was different. More laid back, definitely.
Ray really hoped he could eventually be so lucky as to actually be a part of the friend group his new roommates already seemed to have going for them. Maybe then, he could get in on the fun back-and-forth if he wanted to. Which he didn’t expect to want. He really thought that he’d move in, they’d all be awkward, and that they’d never become close.
Now, Ray’s really hoping he gets to be as close to them as they are with each other.