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Mostly, while looking for off-campus housing for himself and Hallelujah, Allelujah sticks to answering ads on bulletin boards. Most of them end up being old, or looking for only one person, but there's one that pans out. The guy on the other end of the line sounds really familiar, but Al is complete shit with voice recognition so he just figures the guy sounds like someone he fucked. It's not, after all, unlikely.
When he finally meets Neil, after a week and a half of calls and texts, he bursts out laughing. Lyle mentioned a brother, but never did he mention that the brother was also a fucking twin. An identical twin.
Neil looks confused as long as it takes Al to mutter "what're the fucking odds". Then Al puts out his hand and offers a smile. "Allelujah Haptism." Lyle didn't mention a twin brother, he almost adds, but thinks it will be funnier if nobody but him knows.
Also, it's not often he gets the opportunity to blindside Halle. If this doesn't, nothing ever will.
***
Neil stares at the four boxes of stuff that are all that Allelujah and Halle own in the world. Al mentioned that they were minimalists and didn't have much stuff, but... this, Neil thinks, is kind of insane.
When Allelujah and Halle mov-- Wait.
Neil looks again. And knows why Allelujah laughed, now.
Twins.
Neil laughs, and forgets to care that Al and Halle's belongings (or lack thereof) are fucking weird.
By the time he remembers, he's realized that Halle is Lyle's mystery tormentor. Knowing that, there's very little that would make him kick Halle and Allelujah out.
***
Neil's kinda sad when Lichty moves out. He knows he shouldn't be, and that Lichty's been looking forward to studying abroad for ages, but he can't quite help it. Things aren't the same any more; Lichty's posters are no longer in the living room, his plates are no longer in the kitchen, and Neil realises that no-one else in the house, other than his brother, has anything close to his own sense of humour.
It takes two whole weeks of moping before Neil can't bear the sight of the now-spare room any more, and puts out an ad for a new housemate.
The response is good in the first couple of days. Neil owns the house, so the rent he offers is cheap, and the location is pretty good to boot. A number of people come to look around, and they all seem pretty nice, but Neil soon begins to despair because no one who looks around ends up wanting to take the room. That's probably got something to do with the habit Halle has of leering at people like they're his next meal. That and the bloodstains on the walls.
It doesn't take long for word to get around campus that Hallelujah Haptism is living at Neil Dylandy's house, and the enquiries about the spare room dry up completely. It's beginning to look like the spare room's never going to get filled, until a week later when Neil gets a text message.
I would like to view the room you have available, at 3pm tomorrow. Please send me your address.
Neil's not exactly enthused by the cold tone of the message, but beggars can't be choosers. He rings the number to try to chat to this mystery person, but nobody picks up. After three tries, he gives up and sends his address out by text instead.
The next day, at 3:01pm, there's a knock on the front door. Neil goes to answer it, and Lyle tags along behind in order to stand around and make unhelpful comments.
What greets Neil on the other side of the door, is a slim, young girl with shockingly purple hair and red eyes that stare up at him from behind large, wire-framed glasses. She would be rather pretty if it weren't for the fact that her outfit looks like it was made for someone twice her age. But Neil's not into girls anyway, no matter how attractive they are. If he flirts a little, it's entirely unintentional.
He holds out his hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm Neil."
The girl stares at his fingers as if they're a huge affront to her personal space. She folds her arms and looks up at him.
"Tieria Erde."
Neil's pretty sure that his mouth doesn't drop open, but it's a close cut thing. A deep voice was the last thing he expected to come out of her mouth. Wait... his mouth. Neil scrabbles to reassess the situation. He's not into pretty girls, but pretty boys are a whole different kettle of fish.
Somewhere behind Neil's shoulder, he hears Lyle snigger.
"So," Neil flounders for a second, but only briefly, "would you like to see the room?"
"Yes," replies Tieria, and follows him into the house.
It doesn't go well. As soon a Neil sees Tieria pulling out a clipboard and taking notes, he knows that it's not going to go well. Tieria stares at the place like he's judging Neil for everything, and from the frown that he wears, the verdict's not going to be a good one.
When Neil shows him the spare room, Tieria mutters something about it being "rather cramped". When Neil shows him the living room, Tieria makes a comment about it being "rather messy". When Neil shows him the kitchen and then the bathroom, Tieria doesn't mention anything, but the look of pure disgust on his face says it all.
"How often do you clean?" asks Tieria.
"Er..." Neil grins his most charming grin, but it doesn't help in any way, shape or form. "Well, we kinda take it in turns and just clean it when it gets dirty. We're pretty laid back about it."
Tieria doesn't reply, but he scribbles something on his clipboard. Neil's pretty sure that it's not a good something.
By the end of the tour, Neil's feeling down. Halle hasn't shown up once, and Neil has made sure to carefully steer Tieria away from any bloodstains, but it still doesn't seem to have helped any. Tieria looks about as enthusiastic about the place as a pallbearer at a funeral.
Well, it's probably for the best. Neil's pretty sure that living with a guy like Tieria would drive them all crazy within a week, pretty face or no.
Neil smiles as he opens the front door. "It was nice meeting you. We have other people looking around, so we'll get back to you."
Tieria returns Neil's smile with a frown. "Fine," he says, and walks away.
It takes five seconds for Lyle to burst out laughing. "Can you believe that guy?" he wheezes.
Neil laughs too, laughs so hard that he can't reply, and can only shake his head in agreement.
"Did you see his clipboard?" says Lyle, pausing to gulp in air halfway through the sentence. "I mean, can you even imagine him living here? With us? With Halle?"
Neil's doubled over, hands braced on his knees to keep his balance through the storm of snickers. "Oh God," he says, "it'd be a fucking disaster!"
The next morning at 9:03 am, there's a knock at the front door. Neil goes to open it blearily. He hates being the only one with a bedroom on the ground floor, because it means that he's always the one who has to wake up for the postman.
But it's not the postman at the door. It's Tieria, with a suitcase.
It's too early for Neil to process all this, and while he's busy trying to piece it all together, Tieria takes the opportunity to step inside.
"Wait," Neil says. "What are you...?"
"I'm moving in," Tieria answers smoothly, making his way to the stairs.
"But..." says Neil, "We were going to get back to you. You can't move in if we haven't... The room might be taken by someone else!"
Tieria puts the case down, stops and turns around. "Has the room been taken by anyone else?"
"Well, no. But..."
"Good," says Tieria, and promptly carries his things upstairs.
The next morning, a cleaning rota appears on the fridge. Everyone treats Neil as if this is all his fault, apart from Halle, who does nothing but laugh for ten minutes straight, then crosses out everybody's names and replaces them with the word 'cocks'.
***
Lyle eyes the moving truck. Then he eyes Halle. Then the truck again. Truck, Halle. Truck, Halle.
"Neil can drive," he offers on his brother's behalf. "You don't have to."
"Sure he can." Halle shrugs, grins, and opens the driver's side door. "But he's not gonna."
Well, that's the end of that argument. Lyle has the grace not to act surprised when he, Halle, and their truckload of assorted furniture all make it down the street in one piece. (The little bastards opt to walk.)
***
The room in the basement is theirs. Saji spends most of the first few days cleaning it. Setsuna spends most of the first few days lying on the bed watching Saji fuss over skirting boards and trying to guess, from the sounds from upstairs, which part of the house Halle and Lyle are christening now.
They don't come into Setsuna and Saji's room, which is good, because it's theirs and anyway Saji shouldn't have to clean up bloodstains.
In between unpacking and breaking in their new bed and playing guessing games, he logs into a real estate forum via an anonymous server (he never said Tieria Erde never taught him anything) and makes a single post:
Do bloodstains lower the resale value of a property?
He shows Halle when the number of replies gets to more than twenty pages. Lyle, looking over Halle's shoulder, argues that Halle spilled it, so Halle should clean it up. Although really, knowing Lyle, it's not so much of an argument as it is an excuse to break some of the furniture that was there when they moved in.
In the end, Setsuna thinks they probably take turns, because they get quite good at cleaning up after themselves. Saji asks if Setsuna lied and said Saji gets upset about blood. Technically he didn't; he just didn't explain that the reason Saji was upset that one time was not so much because of the blood. More that that particular couch is apparently made of something really hard to clean.
***
Three and a half months after Hallelujah and Lyle (and Setsuna and Saji) moved out, Lasse followed.
"It's not," he said to Al, "anything personal."
It was just that, with the rest of the occupants in the house being involved in relationships with each other he felt very left out. (And still somewhat jealous of anyone who got to touch Al when he didn't, but that was another story.)
Also, he felt very conspicuous, being the only one who even touched pills anymore; his resolution to not do drugs hadn't lasted after Saji moved out. (Neil had taken to smoking weed and was just now beginning to taper off, but Lasse couldn't blame him after seeing how it looked when Neil lost his temper.)
"Bullshit," said Al, of course, while Lasse just sighed and hung his head.
"I don't want to be in the way." Stupid excuse. He was barely ever here since he and Al broke up; it wasn't possible for him to be in the way.
"Of sex? We have the entire top floor, I don't--"
"Of anything," Lasse said, suddenly feeling like he and Al were back in their dysfunctional relationship and having one of their completely fucking pointless fights over the inevitable.
Al's expression was enough for Lasse to guess that he was feeling about the same. "Leave, then, fucking coward."
Lasse really, really wished he could deny that last word. Since he couldn't, he just went back upstairs to continue packing his things. His eyes prickled, blurring his vision with threatened tears, but he ignored the feeling. He had enough regret about all of this already, but there was no way he'd be able to change himself without first changing his environment. The past five years had shown that very clearly.
***
"Don't you want to find more people?" Al asked, brows furrowing at Neil. Neil's words.
"No," Neil said, calm even if his body language was tense and maybe bordering on being poised for flight. "I don't really need to, and it's such a pain anyway."
And, Al thought, you're afraid of who might answer your ad this time.
We'll figure out something, Tieria sent, as Neil turned back around to finish chopping veggies.
That, Al thought, was one of the brighter sides: now that Lasse was gone too, there really wasn't a lot of point in having any meat in the house. Al and Tieria were vegetarians, and Neil ate with them often enough that he might as well have been one too.
Al slid over behind Neil, touching him gently so Neil wouldn't be surprised and then pressing himself against Neil from behind. "There are other advantages to it being just us," he said, voice low and daring.
Neil turned around in his embrace, and Al smiled into the kiss. They'd figure out something. And in the meantime...
***
For Tieria's 20th birthday, Al and Neil helped him make the final furniture arrangements to the house.
It was their own fault, really, because they bought him a king-sized bed and no matter how big Tieria's room might be there was no way the bed and Tieria's huge desk would fit comfortably in the same room. So Lasse's room became Tieria's office (moving the huge, unwieldy desk down a flight of stairs was an experience Al swore he'd never repeat) and Tieria's room became their communal bedroom.
Lyle's room became the upstairs living room/bonus room (Neil's name for it) while Al's bedroom became Al's computer/game room-- the place he could go when he needed to be alone.
Halle's room drew the short straw and got stuck being the guest room, while Neil's just kind of was empty. They'd do something with it sooner or later, Tieria promised them.
Mostly, for his birthday, he got help hurrying along the facts that nobody had quite wanted to face.
He didn't mind, even if a six-bedroom house occupied by only three people felt somewhat empty.