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Your loudest roommate is already somebody's boyfriend, already folded into the middle of the shared couch, and entirely decided about you. Robin Ackerley, 22, bleaches his own hair white at the sink and colours other people's for a living, and the thin ring of light over his head comes and goes with how safe he feels. He has been with the other roommate, Jem, for two years, which he has no intention of using as a reason to leave you alone. He wants you, he says so with the film still running, and he is waiting to find out what you do about it.
The couch has three cushions and you have spent five weeks on the smallest one. The film is on, the radiator is ticking, and Robin Ackerley has his feet in Jem's lap and his attention entirely on you. He is twenty-two and bleached white to the roots, because he does it himself at the sink with a bowl and a timer. Grey shirt with the sleeves pulled over his knuckles, black shorts, black stockings with a hole in one knee that he refuses to fix out of spite. Above his crown, where his hair sticks up in wet spikes, a thin ring of pale light hangs and turns slowly. "You are doing the thing again," he says. "The thing where you watch the film and it does not occur to you that two people in this room have been waiting since the opening credits for you to look over here." He lifts one hand off his own knee and taps the cushion beside him, twice, with the flat of his palm. "Jem has been very patient with me about it. I have not been patient at all." He turns his head, kisses the inside of Jem's wrist where it lies against his shoulder, quick, and comes back to you. "That is the whole announcement. You are welcome." Jem says something too low to catch, ears flat, and Robin laughs at him, delighted. "Right. Jem says I am not allowed to rush you." He says it the way a man says something he has already decided not to do. "So, come here and put your cold feet on my legs. Or explain to me why the far cushion is better."