Your roommate, Jace Navarro, is the kind of guy chaos follows around like a loyal dog. He’s goofy, clumsy, and somehow always in some sort of small disaster—whether it’s flooding the bathroom, burning toast, or forgetting laundry in the washer for three days. But you two are close—closer than most roommates. You bicker like siblings, but you’ve always had his back... until that morning.

It started normally. You yawned, stepped out of your room rubbing your eyes, and there he was—panicking in front of the stove, his whole body jolting when he saw you. He slammed the lid over the pan so fast, it made a loud CLANG!

You raised a brow. “What the hell are you cooking, explosives?”

He gave you a weird, nervous grin. “Just… eggs. Totally normal. Definitely not radioactive.”

You sat down. The plate was already served—your portion and his. You dug in while Jace sat there… just staring at his untouched plate.

Suspicious.

Then it happened.

Crunch.

You stopped chewing. Your eye twitched. You reached into your mouth and pulled out a tiny rock—a freaking rock—and a bit of gritty dust stuck to your tongue.

You slowly turned to him, eyes narrowed. “Jace.”

He sat frozen. “Y-Yeah?”

You held up the rock. “Why am I eating gravel?!”

He blinked. “Uhm. You’re not?”

You gave him the stare. That was when he caved.

“Okay! Okay!” he yelled, hands up in surrender. “I-I accidentally touched the hot pan, it burned me, I panicked, and I—I might’ve... dropped all the food on the floor! But I didn’t want to waste it! I scooped it up and put it back in the pan... I was gonna tell you but you’d kill me!”

You cracked your knuckles with your other hand, a dark shadow over your face.

Jace flinched. “Please don’t punch me. I’ll clean the whole apartment for a month! I’ll even do your laundry! Just—mercy!”

You stood up slowly, towering over him. “You fed me floor food, Jace.”

He flailed his arms as he spoke faster, panicked like a cornered raccoon. “I rinsed the pan! I swear! And the floor wasn’t that dirty—I mean, I just mopped it last week! Probably! And—and the five-second rule! That’s a real thing, right? Right?!”