No Rest For The Wicked [Monroe}

[Dante Russo]

Dante was laying in the common area, taking up the entire couch, with his feet propped up on the arm. A mug of coffee rested on his belly, one hand gently balancing as it cooled to a drinkable temperature.

It was sort of late. Late for drinking coffee anyway. The sky was dark, and Dante was silently staring out the window. He thought it looked like it was trying to snow, but that could also be wind nocking settled snow off the roof. He sighed and let his eyes slip closed for a minute.

Tired, he was so tired. He never slept well, but the closer they came to Christmas the worse it got. He’d basically decided that he wasn’t going to try to sleep tonight. Hence the coffee. Tonight he would be doing homework. It was funny (not really) that the more sleep he lost, the more likely he was to finish his homework. Although, sometimes the lack of sleep made him distractible and he wound up working on something completely not school-related, but that was beside the point.

Dante opened his eyes again with a start, and sat up. He thought he heard something, and he looked around the dorm with alert eyes. It was just Monroe. Dante let out a short sigh. “Hey, I made coffee,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of Monroe’s coffee maker. He always made enough for both of them, since Monroe drank coffee like it was water.

[Thomas "Monroe" Montgomery]

Monroe meandered into the common room, sick of sitting in his bedroom, staring at the wall with his twisted ankle still attempting to heal. He wasn't as good as playing nurse as Adaryn was and without her around, he'd pretty much just thrown ice on it every once in a while and hoped for the best.

There was less of a limp in his step, but it was still there. He didn't care though because the journey for coffee was much more important. Upon walking into the common room, he saw his roommate sprawled across the couch and internally groaned. They weren't the best of friends, but at least they were civilized when it came to coffee. It was an improvement after what had happened between them before, which involved a lot of screaming and objects being thrown at Monroe's head.

"Thanks," he muttered, making his way over to his coffee maker and pouring himself a cup in one of the mugs he always left over there. "You can't sleep or what?" he asked, after debating on whether or not he should actually say something more besides the basic pleasantries. Truth be told, he couldn't either. The best few hours of sleep he'd gotten had been when Adaryn gave him that medicine, but nothing else good had come from it. Maybe that was a sign that he just shouldn't sleep.

He raised the coffee cup to his lips, looking over at Dante's sprawled figure.

[Dante Russo]

“Nah, it’s December.” Dante pulled himself onto his knees and hung his arms over the back of the couch, coffee mug held carefully in both hands. He looked at Monroe. He wasn’t sure how quickly the guy picked up on patterns, but they’d spent two winters together and Dante slept like shit in the month of December.

Fucking Christmas.

Dante gave Monroe a once over, then lifted his mug and sipped at his coffee. “You’re still limping,” he noted. He’d noticed Monroe limping before, but didn’t feel like saying anything about it. Dude could take care of himself, he assumed. “You don’t know how to wrap a sprain, do you?” Except that he was still limping around like a kicked puppy, so apparently he couldn’t take care of himself. Then Dante gave Monroe a sort of bored-sarcastic look and added, “tell me you got something to wrap it with.”

It wasn’t that Dante thought Monroe was stupid. It was that he thought everyone was stupid, and he found it a bit tedious sometimes. Dante tried not to be blatantly insulting to Monroe. They weren’t friends, by any stretch of the imagination, but Dante made an effort not to be confrontational with the guy he had to live with. Not that he was one hundred percent successful in this endeavor. Dante was grumpy a lot of the time, and Monroe was around so…

[Thomas "Monroe" Montgomery]

December. If Monroe hadn't been more out of it than usual, he would have realized why Dante was up without the hint. He remembered years passed and how his roommate practically never slept during the month. He didn't ask many questions about it, seeing as from Dante's view he probably knew way too much about him already, but it wasn't a big deal to Monroe anyway. He hardly slept either, so there was something interesting about rooming with another insomniac.

When he pointed out the obvious, Monroe resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Yes, he was still limping. "No, not really. But whatever. It's not like it's broken. It will heal." Monroe wasn't one to make to big of a deal out of things. He just rolled with the punches. "And I have some gauze in my room." Addie had left it there. He had it wrapped before, but the gauze had fallen off and he had to go to classes and okay, maybe he had a lot of down time to rest his ankle, but he just hadn't. He wasn't sure why. But his ankle wasn't going to heal this way.

[Dante Russo]

Dante rolled his eyes dramatically. His head even nodded in a small circle as he did it and he scoffed quietly. “Go get it,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of Monroe’s bedroom. He looked down at his coffee then and raised it to his lips. “Don’t give me that look,” he said, without glancing up to even see if Monroe was making a face at him or not, “just go get it.”

He was in sort of a helpful mood, which was not actually as rare for him as he would have people believe. He didn’t dislike Monroe, even though he regarded him coldly most of the time. It was just that he lived with the guy, so really, they were close enough. They were always in each other’s space, and Dante didn’t feel the need to get all personal with him. It was easier to regard his roommate as furniture most of the time, rather than as a living, breathing human. If Monroe was furniture, then his opinions didn’t matter.

Dante really didn’t want Monroe’s opinions to matter, because if they mattered, then Dante had to worry about that first night. Or they had to actually talk about it (and Dante shuddered at the very thought).

Lately, though, there were a small handful of people who seemed to accept Dante for exactly who he was right now. Dante had assumed that he was a giant, unloveable, ass, but this small handful of people were trying very hard to prove him wrong. It.. well, frankly it put Dante in sort of a good mood, even though he still couldn’t sleep in the month of December, and he was always fighting the urge to hurt himself. Wren and Koty were slowly making him a little less bitter toward humanity as a whole (even if he still thought the general population was dumber than a collective box of rocks).

[Thomas "Monroe" Montgomery]

Monroe blinked and then continued to stare at his roommate who had several times told him to go grab the gauze and stop looking at him, but Monroe was genuinely weirded out. "Wait, are you going to help me? Like actually wrap up my ankle? I don't mean to be rude or anything, but I thought you much more preferred to throw things at me." The words just poured out of his mouth. It was most likely due to the shitty mood he'd been in since everything with Adaryn.

He sighed and turned away before walking out of the common room, coffee in hand to retrieve the gauze from his nightstand before walking back to the common room. "Sorry," he muttered to Dante. "I didn't mean to say that you're an asshole or anything." He tossed the gauze to him.

[Dante Russo]

Dante tried not to smile. The corner of his mouth twitched at Monroe's words, and he very deliberately did not look up from his coffee. Monroe disappeared to his room, and Dante turned around, settling into the couch the right way and chuckling quietly into his coffee. His roommate's bewilderment amused him. Really it just made him unspeakably happy right now that Monroe was so confused about what Dante was doing.

He caught the gauze when Monroe tossed it to him, and he moved over on the couch with a nod for Monroe to have a seat. "Don't be sorry," he said, "I am an asshole, and I do like throwing things at you." He flashed Monroe a grin. "You're lucky I have shitty aim-- gimme your foot."

Dante unwrapped a short length of the gauze in his hands and looked at it for a moment. "Hey, what's the longest you've gone without sleep? Because.. things are getting a little weird for me." He glanced up at Monroe, and the corner of one eye twitched a little. "Nevermind-- what'd you do to your ankle anyway?"

[Thomas "Monroe" Montgomery]

Monroe plopped down on the sofa, weirded out that they were even having a civilized conversation beyond "We need more coffee filters" or "Have you seen this (insert item here)." "Well thanks for clarifying," he offered. "But you're right. You seriously have shitty aiming." Hesitantly, he gave Dante his foot, sighing.

And then Dante asked a random question and Monroe considered it for a moment. He was about to answer when Dante suddenly changed the subject. "Whoa, you can't just do that," he told him. He was going to answer his question anyway. He had asked it after all so he wanted to know. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I usually fall asleep for a quick few minutes or something when I'm so sleep deprived and time always blurs together. But I've been up for days on end, kind of like I have been now." The second question was again pointed at him, but not directed in Dante's direction in any way which is how the other boy probably liked it. "I sprained it. I tripped over something." It sounded awfully lame.

[Dante Russo]

Dante started took Monroe's foot when the guy started answering his first question anyway. He shifted on the couch, and positioned Monroe's foot in his lap so it was at an angle he could work with. Monroe's answer wasn't really that useful anyway. Basically a huge 'I dunno'. Dante scrunched his mouth to one side as he started wrapping his roommate's ankle.

Then Monrow answered his second question. Sort of.

"Really?" Dante said, voice dripping with sarcasm. He glanced up, giving Monroe a dubious smirk. "You sprained it? I never would have guessed that." He paused in his task. "Seriously, dude. What happened? I know you didn't trip over nuthin' in here--" Dante set his jaw and said the next part through his teeth. "Unless you been leaving shit out like I told you not to." He liked things tidy. He'd lived in a small apartment his whole life, and he knew how to make use of an uncomfortably crowded space. It really worked much better if everyone put their shit away. Dante used to shout at his own mother for leaving things out. "Anyway you're combat boots are designed to prevent you from rolling your ankle, so either you're wearing them wrong, or you found another dorm to hang out in where you're comfortable enough to take them off."

Dante fixed Monroe with a stern look. He was trying to take some kind of an interest here, and he could tell that Monroe was trying to shrug off the question. Either because he didn't really want to talk to Dante, or because there was an embarassing story here. Or both. It could definitely be both. Dante wasn't the first person you'd want to tell you're embarassing stories to. He'd probably laugh at you before he managed to say anything useful.

[Thomas "Monroe" Montgomery]

Monroe was getting annoyed with Dante's questions. Seriously, the dude couldn't have given a fuck about him when earlier, especially after he'd found out about his past through his dream. And now he had the nerve to question so much about his ankle. "Just so you know, I did just trip over something. I don't remember what it was and I doubt it's important, but it was near the doorway and I'd just had a really messed up day of spilling hot coffee on myself and falling out of my chairs and it was just one bad thing after another, so yes I tripped over something and sprained my ankle." He didn't remember the last time he'd said that much at one moment. "I did take them off, but that was after I sprained my ankle. I don't know how it happened, but it did." He let out a breath.

"My dorm is usually a mess. I know I don't sleep but I don't really stay up to clean either."

[Dante Russo]

Dante’s eyebrow twitched at Monroe’s tone and the corners of his mouth tightened. He was trying really hard not to be a dick. It was a lot harder than he’d anticipated. “Aight. Jesus,” he muttered, making a conscious effort not to wrap Monroe’s ankle too tight. If he weren’t trying to be nice right now he would have.

He paused with Monroe’s foot still in his lap, the job half-done. Dante looked up at him, shaking his head a little to get his hair out of his face. “Look. Dude. I’m tryin’ to be nice. I know I’m not very good at it, but at least I ain’t thrown shit at you today.” Dante took a breath and tried to neutralize the scowl that had settled onto his face. He looked down at Monroe’s ankle again. “In retrospect, I realize that mocking you isn’t nice either,” he said, in reference to the snarky, sarcastic way he’d asked Monroe about his sprained ankle. The words were almost under his breath but still loud enough that Monroe could hear him. Dante went around Monroe’s ankle a couple more times with the bandage before he inhaled and looked up again.

“So.. I’m sorry.” Dante’s features all tightened into a grimace as the words came out of his mouth. He hated apologizing for things, but he was in a weird place right now. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation. Maybe it was the influence of, well, friends actually. He had friends now, and he sort of cared about whether he was a dick to them or not. He cared about what they thought of him, and unlike the friends he’d had in New York, these people didn’t care how tough he was. He couldn’t earn their respect by beating them down. It was a different culture here, and that fact was finally starting to sink in.

Or maybe he just needed some fucking sleep.

[Thomas "Monroe" Montgomery]

"You present a very good point. You haven't thrown something at me today and I would like to keep it that way, but yeah, you're right. You suck at being nice, but I appreciate the effort." Monroe knew he was trying, but it wasn't exactly natural for Dante to treat someone with kindness. So all things considering, he was fairing pretty well.

He watched his roommate wrap up his ankle and smiled when he finished. "Well, it's better than I could have done. Thanks nurse." He cringed slightly after he made the joke as he realized it probably wasn't the best move. "And yeah, mocking is on the list of things that aren't nice." However, there were plenty of things to mock him about and honestly, his sprained ankle was the one he'd rather be mocked about.

He shrugged at Dante's apology. "Eh, whatever. Guess I deserve it. I kind of trespassed in your personal territory."