Chapter Text
Marvin Blumenfeld considered himself to be a pretty good student, as long as you could forget the first quarter of freshman year. College had taken him by surprise then, especially with how prestigious the school was. Second quarter, though, he’d straightened himself out. Probably because he ended up with a girlfriend, Trina Bell.
She was sweet and supportive, even if their relationship wasn’t quite perfect. Really, they just used each other for help with studying and to keep each other on task. They broke up after winter break during sophomore year, shortly before Hanukkah began that year. Neither one of them were too upset by it. Neither one of them was truly in love with the other. It was junior year now, and they managed to be friends. Things worked out better this way, anyway.
Either way, Marvin was a good student. He studied daily, aced all of his classes, never really went to parties. His teachers loved him. He wasn’t in it to be loved by his teachers. He didn’t care one bit about the idea of being a teacher’s pet. He just wanted to get through these last few years of school so that he could graduate and get on with his life. So that he could go somewhere.
Marvin dreamed of moving out of the rainy city of Rochester after completing college. He didn’t necessarily know where he wanted to go, but he knew that it was somewhere quieter, somewhere with less rain. Somewhere probably not in New York. He’d had his fill of this place.
Word of the school was that they were getting a new student here soon. Marvin didn’t really listen to gossip, because he didn’t care - he didn’t have a reason to. He’d gathered, from overhearing the same information repeated over and over from person to person, that this new student would be a freshman, a male, and that he was gay. He didn’t even know how these people had acquired this information. He didn’t know how correct any of it was.
But he didn’t care. He wouldn’t be spending much time with this new kid, he told himself, so it didn’t matter. Marvin had friends, sure - Trina, her new boyfriend Mendel, and their lesbian friends, Charlotte and Cordelia. He hung out with them regularly. Well, more so Charlotte and Cordelia, nowadays, but he did see Trina and Mendel sometimes. That was just the thing, though - he already had friends, some good ones, and he didn’t need to make any new ones. Any new friends had the potential to steer him away from his work. And he was a good student, in a nice college, and he wasn’t going to allow his grades to slip over a silly person.
Oh, how wrong he was.
The whole thing was kind of cliché, really. It started with Marvin being told through email that the new student would be coming in a week, and that he would be rooming with Marvin because it was the only acceptable room with a spot open. When the lesbians found out about it, they were happy. “It’ll be good for you, Marvin,” Cordelia told him, “you spend too much time couped up in here anyway.” And, maybe, she was right. Marvin was more worried about his studying being disrupted by this kid, this freshman, who apparently decided that moving in the middle of the year was a good idea. (Which it wasn’t, Marvin thought, because it wouldn’t take too long to finish out the rest of the year.)
Marvin spent that week making sure that all of his stuff was on his own side of the room. Making sure that there was a clear divide between the two halves of the room. He didn’t know what kind of person this guy would be - he knew little to nothing about this guy other than the rumors that flew through the school, and he tried not to listen to or follow those - but he did know that he didn’t want this guy to be all up in his business. Just some precautionary measures.
“Jesus, Marvin,” Charlotte said, looking around the dorm. It was the day before the new student was supposed to arrive. “You may as well have just put up police tape.”
Marvin was sitting at his desk, a textbook open in front of him. “I don’t want him getting into my stuff.”
The girl rolled her eyes, sitting down on the edge of Marvin’s bed. “I haven’t seen your room this clean since sophomore year. Don’t give this kid a false sense of hope.”
Marvin didn’t give a response to that. He was a good, straight-As student, but he wasn’t the best at keeping his room clean. Hopefully, this kid wouldn’t really care about that. And if he did, Marvin figured, he could talk to the teachers or office staff and get himself moved from the room. Or, with this kid’s logic, he could just move to a whole new college. That would be fine with Marvin.
The day came way quicker than Marvin had wanted it to. That could be said no matter how long it took, though, because he hadn’t wanted it to happen at all. Either way, it seemed to take less time than an actual week, and then the day was here.
Marvin didn’t have classes that morning. The new student didn’t arrive. He was starting to feel kind of ansty, honestly, waiting for this kid to arrive. He left for his afternoon classes, and when he came back there was still no evidence of someone’s arrival. It was after midnight, while Marvin sat on his bed, reviewing his notes, that the door opened. There was a split second where Marvin forgot he was waiting for his new roommate to show up, a split second that Marvin thought his dorm was being broken into, but then it was fine. He was fine again.
He turned to look at the door, taking in the features of the student.
The guy was tall. Lean. Muscular, but not too much so - just enough that it looked good on him, just enough to show that he cared about the way he looked. This, though, was also evident in the way he wore his hair, carefully styled, looking perfect, and in his outfit choice. He wore a short sleeved light pink button up and a pair of form fitting dark jeans. He looked good, except for -
“Jesus Christ,” Marvin murmured, looking over the man as he stepped into the room. “What happened to you?”
He was covered in marks. Bruises, they looked like. Some of them could be hickeys and Marvin would not be surprised, but the majority of them were dark and swollen the way bruises from injuries would be. Whatever happened had to have hurt.
The guy grinned at him and waved it off as he dropped a bag onto the empty bed on the opposite side of the room. “Ah, don’t worry about it. They’re just party tattoos.”
Marvin didn’t know what to say to that, or what to think. He wanted to press on. Marks like the ones this guy wore had to be from some kind of fight or beating. There was no way he could have just fallen. Marvin kind of wanted to know if he was a fighter, so that he could avoid pissing the guy off. “Alright,” he found himself saying, though, instead. “I’m Marvin.”
“Whizzer.” He said, sitting down on his own bed as he started unpacking things. “Whizzer Brown. Great to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Marvin stated, just because he knew that it was the correct, polite thing to say. God, he sincerely hoped that this Whizzer kid wouldn’t cause too much trouble. He sincerely hoped that his ‘likewise’ response wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass here soon.