Ray was chewing on a leftover spring roll for breakfast, absently selected from the box in which he and Thor had combined the entirety of the previous night’s supper order. He brushed a couple slippery, cold noodles from the other end as he bit it in half, and wiped an unidentifiable sauce from his fingers onto the arm of the couch. He continued chewing lazily as the bathroom door opened and Thor came out, one towel around his waste and another across his shoulders. He swallowed the bite of roll and searched on the floor for a minute, fingers questing until they encountered the handle of a coffee cup. He curled himself into a slightly more upright sprawl and drank deeply, watching from half-closed eyes as his roommate sleepily towelled damp, fine blond hair dry.

Thor could be weird and jumpy about a lot of things, but being in a state of undress around Ray never seemed to be one of them, which had given Ray ample time over the last year to become familiar with his roommate’s lanky form. Clothed, he always thought Thor looked like a Viking someone had tied up and then, for inexplicable reasons, rolled out so he was a head taller than he should have been. He thought it was a much more favourable comparison than the one Thor’s coworker had used once – rejected Aryan poster boy – but Thor didn’t respond to being either in a favourable fashion.

Wearing only a towel, even malnourished Viking would have been giving Thor too much credit. He was boney. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him that Ray could see, but there wasn’t any real muscle definition either. Just a lot of skin over long bones. Sharp jaw, angular shoulders, pointed elbows, boney knees. Ray considered suggested that Thor could find a part-time job as an educational tool in a geometry class, but his tongue didn’t feel up to the task so early in the morning.

He put the remaining half of the spring roll into his mouth and washed it down with more coffee.

It wasn’t possible to count Thor’s ribs, at least.

Yet.

Ray lowered his eyelashes a bit more as his gaze swept from Thor’s pale hair, the dampness barely darkening it, to his feet. The big toe on Thor’s right foot was swollen and purple after a collision with the dresser after a late night, while a wet bandage wrapped a deep cut on his ankle which he had gotten by somehow managing to fall in such a way that he landed on a sharp of broken glass. In between was thin body hair, so pale and fine it was almost invisible. A droplet of water ran from beneath the towel and down over a scab on Thor’s knee from when he had tripped and fallen on the sidewalk, tearing his jeans. Above the towel was a barely visible scar – surgical, Ray guessed, probably from appendix removal, although he never bothered asking – along Thor’s flat stomach. A black-green bruise on what passed for Thor’s left bicep that Ray had given him in a wrestling match over the console controller that had gotten a bit too physical, still causing to move the arm a bit tenderly. A small, freely bleeding cut on his cheek, his justly deserved punishment for shaving when he wasn’t properly awake, especially when, as far as Ray could tell, it would take days for his roommate’s pale facial hair to be visible, let alone disreputable and scruffy.

Thor yawned, rubbing the heel of his hand into one blue eye squinted shut against the dim apartment lighting. “You make coffee, Ray?”

“Something not entirely unlike coffee,” Ray answered without opening his eyes properly, still eyeing Thor.

“Awesome,” Thor mumbled and staggered into the bedroom, dropping his shoulder towel on the floor as he went.

After a minute, Ray finished his coffee nd rolled off the couch. He darted in the bathroom to brush his teeth, splash his face with water, and grab a piece of toilet paper, before he followed Thor into the bedroom.

Thor was wearing a pair of boxer shorts, one sock, and was in the process of pulling a black T-shirt over his head. Ray waited until Thor’s pale head remerged before he leaned up and pressed a torn square of toilet paper onto the still-bleeding cut, the blood quickly adhering the thin paper to Thor’s damp face.

“Ray,” Thor muttered sleepily, and waved his hands irritably in Ray’s general direction.

“Your face was bleeding,” Ray shrugged and elbowed Thor aside, grabbing his own socks from the dresser and pulling them on while hopping on alternate feet.

“Oh,” Thor grunted, sounding only mildly less irritated as he tried to find a pair of pants.

“You’re welcome, Thor,” Ray said sweetly, and patted his roommate’s head while he was bent over, searching in the laundry basket. “The leftover Chinese stuff’s in the box on the couch. I’m going to class.”

“Right,” Thor said, voice muffled as he inspected a pair of worn blue jeans.

Boney, Ray thought. He shook his head and, in his usual attempt to build up energy for the day, grabbed his jacket and ran out of the apartment and down the stairs.