Routines

“Please tell me you went to bed.”

Durithyll walked into the living room, only to see Jacob; awake, with blood shot eyes, and leaning so far forward it was beyond her to know how he still sitting on the couch and not on the floor with his tail in the air.

Jacob didn't seem to respond, he just kept mumbling into the mouth piece and clicking away at the controller.

Jacob had been ranting about some “Halo Fest” on X-Box live the other day that was going to be held all through out the night. Jacob had of course invited the others if they wanted join in, but they had expectedly turned him down. It didn't stop him from logging on and playing to his heart's content, though.

“Jacob.” no answer. “Jacob!”

Durithyll huffed and tried something a little more physical. She stooped down and picked up the nearest object laying next to her on the floor-- the TV remote.

Without so much as aiming it, she wildly tossed it and nailed him right on the cheekbone. His head titled a bit due to the impact, but quickly righted itself without so much as a glance around to see what could have caused it.

Knowing better than to block his view or turn off the console, Durithyll simply walked behind the couch -- and nearly tripped over the sprawled form of Roake.

“Oi! Do any of y'all sleep!?”

Roake looked up from his sketch pad and sat up with his back leaning against the couch's, crossing his legs beneath him. “What? Of course we do. I just get up early. We've been living together how long and you still didn't notice this?”

Durithyll puffed her cheeks out like she often did when vexed. “Shut up! It's a Monday!”

Blinking, Roake didn't hesitate to correct her, “Actually, it's a Saturday.”

“What!? The dead lines tomorrow!?”

Durithyll quickly took off back into her own room, probably to start this week's requirement of twenty pages.

Roake sighed as he went back to his sketching. It was... interesting, to say the least, having to live with such.... unique people, but he never complained. And no matter how much Daiyori might complain about living here and about Durithyll in particular, Roake knew that Daiyori never regretted his choice to stay here.

It didn't take long for Durithyll to come back out, looking very non-worried, and with a blanket wrapped around her. “It can wait till after breakfast.”

Again, Roake sighed to himself. Durithyll was the biggest procrastinator he had ever met. She could put off any assignment. At least he thought she could.

After shaking her head in a “what a poor, pathetic soul” type of manner at Jacob, and stepping over Roake, she made it to the small kitchen and bent down to open the mini-fridge door.

“Hey Jacob, where's all the Fraps?

She poked her head up above the counter, expecting an answer, and was agitated, but not surprised, when all she got was silence. Durithyll slowly stood up and popped her back all the while.

“Hey Roake-- holy mess! Jacob! You drank all my coffee!”

There was a littering of frappuccino bottles and caps surrounding the couch and Jacob. Durithyll blamed the fact that she hadn't noticed at first on the morning. She never had been much of a morning person. Grumbling all the while, she got out the coffee mug and filled it up with water. After placing the beans and water into the coffee maker, she set it to work and flopped down on the floor next to Roake.

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, until it was abruptly ended by some of Jacob's more creative swearing.

Durithyll grabbed a random magazine from the top of the nearby pile and chucked it behind her -- hitting Jacob in the back of the head. “Don't cuss!”

Durithyll settled back down, wrapping the blanket more tightly around her, and grabbed a random issue of one of the nearby Shonen Jump. There was always a stack of magazines right behind the couch for times like this.

“So...” Durithyll started, not looking up from the magazine.

Roake glanced over, but didn't intend to start a conversation.

Durithyll, deciding that silence was getting boring, didn't take the hint. “Where's Daiyori?”

“Crashed in front of the door I think.” Roake flipped over unto the next page of his sketch book and started rooting around in the box near him for the pencil he wanted.

Durithyll never could figure out why Daiyori always liked to sleep right in front of the door, slightly cramped inside the small, maybe five foot long hallway. It wasn't even a hallway, really.

Her thoughts concerning the rather odd snake were cut short by the beep of the coffer maker. Excited, she heatedly stood up and grabbed the necessary ingredients from one of the over head cupboards. After diluting the coffee with cream and sugar to the point of no longer being coffee, Durithyll retook her spot next to Roake.

Now feeling much more awake than before, she leaned over Roake's shoulder, suddenly interested in his work.

“Watcha doing?”

“Nothing, just sketching out a wooded landscape.”

“Oh.” Durithyll leaned back, this silence slightly more awkward than the last. “I need to pee.”

Roake cocked an eyebrow at the blunt statement, but didn't react past that. He had gotten used to Durithyll's lack of mind-mouth filter a long time ago, and that the best way to deal with it was to ignore it.

Trying to balance the blanket, the coffee, and the Shonen Jump all at the same time, she slowly sat forward and tried to get her feet beneath her. Realizing that it was a lost cause, she lightly tossed the Shonen Jump to the floor and hesitantly stood up. She swayed a bit, but didn't drop anything. Shaking the head rush off, she shuffled off to the bathroom.

After standing in front of the door for a few minutes, she grimaced, and let the blanket fall from her shoulders and to the ground. She even put her coffee down on floor next to the door. “Awww... it's cold...”

Roake could hear her grumbling about dead-lines and “stupid coffee stealing weasels” even after she had stepped inside and closed the door behind.

He sighed to himself as he flipped the page over in his sketch book and started working on something different.

“Jacob! Why is there fur all up in the bathtub? I thought you slept on blankets or something!”

Jacob, finally out of his game-induced trance, angrily yelled in response. “Hey! I have to sleep in a bath tub! Cut me some slack here!” As an after thought, he quickly added, “And I do sleep on blankets!”

“Then why is there fur everywhere!?”

“Oh, I don't know, maybe because everyone who uses that shower has fur?”

Daiyori slowly slid out from his normal sleeping spot, the yelling match apparently waking him up.

Durithyll, surprised at Daiyori's sudden entrance, stepped out of the bathroom. “It's not even 12:00 yet! Do you have like, an internal insult-o-meter something? I can't get you to wake up early for Christmas, but you'll do it just to insult me?”

Daiyori slowly made his way across the small room and plopped down on the floor next to Roake. “Looks that way.”

Durithyll, for the third time that morning, puffed out her cheeks and huffed as she slammed the door shut and turned on the shower.

Daiyori noticed the coffee cup left stranded beside the door. “Doesn't she know that her coffee will get cold by the time she finally gets out? Can she get anything right in the mornings?”

“Shut up!”

Daiyori, slightly alarmed, turned his head to the bathroom. Durithyll hadn't bothered to poke her head out the door, but had just yelled it over the running door.

Yelling over his shoulder, Daiyori tossed back a final insult, “Of course you did! Those humongous ears of yours could pick up satellite radio if they wanted!”

“Shut up!”

No matter the insult, Durithyll always responded to it the same way. Which usually left her wide open to yet another one.

The Apartment was quiet for a while, save the running shower water and the occasional swear from Jacob as he continued to play on the x-box. Daiyori had almost fallen back to sleep when he heard the closet door slowly creek open. “What's going on?”

Komasu poked her head out the door and practically drawled the question. She had bags under her eyes from studying all night. “And did someone say coffee?”

Like any college student, Komasu was completely and utterly addicted to the stuff. Slowly stepping out of the closet, she stumbled past Roake and Daiyori and into the kitchen. Yawning ferociously, she realized she had forgotten to grab her glasses, and simply dragged her hands around the counter randomly, hopping to find the coffee. When that didn't work, she sighed, took a short breath, and quickly emitted a high-frequency click. The action seemed to wake her up a little bit, and she soon found the coffee maker resting on the corner of the counter.

Unlike Durithyll, who had to drink her coffee in her white Stargate: Atlantis mug, Komasu reached for a mug at random and poured her coffee.

After taking a long whiff of the coffee and simply holding the warm mug in her hands, Komasu almost looked like one of the living. Almost.

Now armed with coffee, she clasped the mug with both hands and shuffled back to the still-open closet.

Jacob, logging off of x-box live and opting to play the simple campaign, turned around in surprise as Komasu went back to the closet.

“Aren't ya gonna, like, eat something? Or something?”

Komasu grunted, and simply pointed to her coffee. “Mrrphf... i've got coffee... and a test today...”

Jacob turned back to his game as he heard the door click as Komasu closed the closet door.

“Sheesh... if that's what college does to you, i'm glad I never attended! It's like march of the zombie students or something!”

Roake smiled at Jacob's analogy. “You should have seen the med-students. The college where I went was very well known for it's medical facilities, so naturally, there were plenty of med-students enrolled. Those were brain dead zombies.”

Jacob laughed as he took out Halo 3, and replaced it with Zombie Terror 7.

“Yeah, but we have a snake that would sleep in till 3:00 if given the chance.”

Daiyori groaned at Jacob's comment, ad rolled over onto his opposite side – as if that would get Jacob to shut up. “Least I can do what I want... instead of being whipped by my spazztic girlfriend...”

Jacob semi-stood up on the couch, leaning on the back of it so he could see Daiyori. “She is not a spaz!” After seeing Daiyori's expression, he quickly added. “And I am not whipped!”

Roake smiled as Jacob and Daiyori continued to banter back and forth. He loved these mornings, when everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do. After living with these people, and going through so much with them, it was hard not set “standards” for everybody.

Durithyll would always stumbled out of bed, get her coffee, and through off work for just a little bit longer. Daiyori would would sleep well into the morning, and on some cases, even into the afternoon – much to Durithyll's dismay. Komasu was slowly shuffle out of her closet, grab some coffee, and slowly shuffle back. He and Jacob were usually already awake, but for Jacob, it was mostly in order to get an early start on some x-box live newb pwnage.

Like Durithyll, or maybe a bit worse, Roake had always been a creature of habit. He had also been very attentive to those he cared about. So when someone did something that wasn't like them or routine, he would notice.

But with these guys, he understood them, knew them. Some people would say that that would make them predictable, but Roake preferred dependable.