All the Lonely People (closed)

[Malcom Black]

Kicked out of his apartment again. Why wasn’t he surprised? And he had thought he’d been really sneaky about it this time.

He hadn’t had the rent money. This was a pretty common occurrence. Half the time he didn’t, but he did always get it eventually This time, the landlord hadn’t liked the idea. So he’d offered to play a game of twenty-one for it. Of course he’d won. He had a knack for getting the right cards into his hand.

So he hadn’t been counting on his landlord having power detection for a knack. And he definitely hadn’t counted on his son having super strength. The military was one thing, but Malcom would swear until he was blue that living in Pilot Ridge was ten times worse. At least in the military you knew what you were in for. The constant surprise of meeting someone and learning they could kill you without any obvious weapon wasn’t something he’d gotten used to. But anyways, it had wound up with him and his stuff—all a bit battered and bruised now—sitting on the pavement outside the building.

Malcom had enough cash to get a hotel room, but he did need a place to live, and still didn’t have the cash needed to get a real place. So he’d sighed, pinched his nose as his imitation of “woe is me,” and put up an ad. It was handwritten and badly copied, but it read like this:

“WANTED:

Roommate for Thirty-Year-Old Man.

Army Sergeant. Very trustworthy, can supply references. Good with:

Kids
Dogs
Cats
Metas
Crises

ETC. Must not mind weird hours.”

And he’d put his phone number on the bottom. If he got anyone to respond, he thought, it would be a miracle.

[L.C. Milliner]

Leaving for New York City for a solid month was not a good plan. Coming back without any cash wasn’t smart either. Coming back without cash with a dog in hand, however, was just plain stupid. But L.C. had done all those things, and now she was paying for it- literally. She barely had enough cash saved up to put down another month’s rent- she ended up having to beg for the utilities to be turned back on. She used as little electricity and heat as possible, and she was searching for a job with vehemence.

The biggest problem was that the apartment had the potential for two bedrooms- but no one was around to inhabit the second one. Milly was in New York with her girlfriend (it was still so weird to think about her in that regard, especially since she and L.C. had slept in the same bed before) and the rent was high enough that splitting it two ways was almost required. All in all, L.C. needed a roommate. Fast.

So, when her mall excursion with Ginny was done, the ad for a roommate tacked onto a telephone pole in the parking lot caught her eye. She read it quickly and you could almost see the wheels turning in her head. It was probably stupid, letting a male room with her, but L.C. had her spikes, and he was good with both pets AND metas. Maybe he was meta too. Maybe he was even the kind of meta-human that could actually do something that constituted as useful. That would be nice. She could use someone with super speed to help with the cleaning, or X-Ray vision to look at the inside of the pipes. (Could X-ray Vision even do that?)

Either way, she wrote the number on her jeans and used her landlady’s phone to call up the guy as she did the old woman’s dishes for her. The phone yelled at her the first time for not putting a one before the actual number, at then she got connected to some weird woman with a strange accent- after she hung up, L.C. realized the smudged digit on the denim was a seven, not a one.

Finally, the phone rang- and L.C. waited in anticipation as her landlady shuffled through the kitchen, damn near tripping on the curly cord. L.C. face palmed once the blind old bat left. Honestly, who had corded phones anymore?

When the phone picked up, she snapped back to attention, stumbling over her first words. “Hello. Hey. Uhm, is this... the guy that placed the roommate ad?” Damn, she sounded like a kid. She was never going to get a roommate.

[Malcom Black]

Malcom hadn’t been expecting a call at all. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t have faith in his ability to attract a roommate—except that he didn’t—but that he doubted anyone would be interested in his advertisement. It had been really badly done. So Malcom had glumly concluded he’d be stuck in this gross motel for the rest of his days—or until he could get enough money to bribe a landlord into thinking that renting something to him alone was really a good idea—and had set to filling the tiny fridge he’d been given with as much food as he could manage.

Which wasn’t much, to his dismay. Just a lot of sandwich materials. He’d have to go to the gym twice as often in order not to get bread-fat. Great.

He’d been just about to make one of his mile-high when his phone rang. He absently fetched it out of his pocket and glanced at the number. Nope. Didn’t know it. So it was either a salesman, a prank call or a nice Indian woman his mother had given his number to (which had happened five times and which Malcom still didn’t know what to do about).

The possibility of it being a potential roommate didn’t even cross his mind. But he shrugged and answered it anyways.

He blinked at the girl who had called him and pulled away to stare at the phone. Damn. She sounded as old as his sister. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he was only a few points away from being a beggar at this point. So he sighed and placed it back to his ear.

“Hello, ki—um. Miss?” Smooth. He dismissed it and continued in chipper tones, “I’m Malcom Black. Nice to meet you. Did you have any questions you wanted to ask?”

He had some. Namely—“are you old enough for me to keep alcohol in the house?” He suspected the answer was no. But if she could pay the rent, he would live. Besides, he could always go out to bars and drink anyways.

[L.C. Milliner]

Nervous as a five year old on their first day of school, L.C. almost dropped the phone into the sink when someone picked up, and she fumbled with the phone before holding it with both hands. She missed him almost calling her ‘kid’ entirely, thank goodness for her and him. Otherwise, she might’ve had the urge to hang up. “Hello. I’m-” She cut off for a second, putting the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could do the dishes like she said she would. “I’m L.C. Milliner.” Yes, even over the phone for a business deal, it was still L.C. and nothing less. God forbid it got out to people she was letting herself get called ‘Lyra’.

‘Any questions?’, really? How about a hundred? She was worried his ad was too open. When it said he was okay with dogs, was he meaning the tiny, yapping kind, or could her sentient piece of old carpet somehow manage to count as an actual dog? When he said Metas were okay, did he mean the harmless kind? If he kept odd hours, would he be around at night to hear her scream from her now-freshened nightmares? Would he mind if the fridge was never stocked because her eating habits were nonexistent? Would he mind sharing a bathroom with a teenager?

“...When can you move in?”

Well, that answered all those pesky problems.

[Malcom Black]

Yeah, Malcom had thought it might be a bad idea to call her “kid.” He was bound to do it anyways at some point, but as far as first impressions went? Yeah, that was a bad one. L.C. Milliner? He dug through his brain for any negative articles, or word of mouth, or anything, found nothing, and sighed—away from the phone—in relief. Good. So he didn’t know her. That was a step. Not that he tried to make bad impressions on women; it was just that…eh, never mind.

He probably would have agreed with her that his ad was too open. That was the point. He wanted a roommate. Any roommate. He couldn’t afford to be picky, and he thought he’d basically covered the bases, right? And he really did like cats, even if it was only in trees. Meowing pathetically.

He blinked at the question, and his eyes scanned the room, taking in the boxes—depressingly few—stacked in the corner, the sandwich materials stuffed into the overly small fridge, and the bed he was pretty sure had bed bugs in it.

Was this a trick question?

“Uh. Now?”

Screw common courtesies. Malcom wanted a room where the people upstairs didn’t constantly sound like they were going at it like monkeys and where he could pretend he hadn’t hit rock bottom, even though he knew that he had. He just hoped he wouldn't freak the k--potential roommate out with his...eagerness.