#anyways fizz hate club who's with me

[schrodingers-hoarding-problem]

fuck you fizz

[weebsinstash]

My Valentino thirst is killing me. I must quench!!!

Combining these two asks so I can babble about both of em at the same time lmao, this is kind of just different ideas all smashed around lol

ALSO CAN I JUST SAY THE ABSOLUTE NERVE OF SHOWING VAL IN THE NEWEST TRAILER BUT NOT HAVING HIM SPEAK 😩 but we can hear Vox so I guess that's something?

- first off, ok, let's just get this out right now: the newest episodes of helluva boss showed that Ozzie can shift his height, THEREFORE THIS MAN IS A SWITCH AND HE'D BE DELIGHTED IF YOU EVER TOPPED HIM SEND POST

Like seriously that's obviously how he can manage to have sex with Fizz despite their extreme height difference, meanwhile, do you guys ever think about the huge height discrepancy between Angel and Valentino in like...., ok. There's literally one specific thing that's been in my head for ages as a "how did that even work or was that just for visual effect". The Addict music video had that shot of Valentino like, you know, behind Angel, but. Like. Angel wouldn't be tall enough to just be bent over even if Val practically bent himself in half, right? Unless I'm remembering Val a lot larger than he actually is, I'm pretty sure angel is over 6ft and Val is like. 10-12 or something?

-Anyways So, saying all that, I think sex with Valentino in general involves him having you set you up onto things like counters or desks or stools or makeup vanities, you get the point. Your standing height is basically like. His waist. And yeah he'd probably be gross about that

-could you EVEN Fucking Imagine I mean it like seriously actually the grossness of it, standing near this nasty motherfucker and you can tell he's bricked up and maybe he's even like deliberately talking to you and shit knowing you're like, you know, in proximity to your boss' absolute rager that you're dying to not look at and he's just, SOAKING in your humiliation and secondhand embarrassment

-I just feel like 99% of interactions with yandere Valentino are him thinking it's cute/funny/sexy/entertaining to fuck with you. Make you embarrassed, make you drunk, make you cry, horny, whatever. He's either fucking with you, wanting TO fuck you, or wanting attention from you. But I've also been thinking about like, what are some more darker things he could do

-partially inspired by myself but do you guys hate people who turn off read receipts and stuff. Imagine the whole "Val gifts you a phone" scenario and then he starts setting the standards of what he actually wants you to do with it, like always having your read receipts on, always answer his texts within a REALLY short amount of time, don't ignore his calls (do you think he'd give you a phone that literally can't ignore his calls like Mammon did to Fizz because like I'm sure that was a throw away gag but, lowkey hot)

Imagine you're just getting to know Val, maybe even a sort of, situationship with him, and he sends you a text, just something super innocuous. I'm talking something like "don't forget you have a shift tonight" or "limos broken down, leaving for the club later than usual", like, something that doesn't outright require some sort of immediate reply, and you hop in the shower and you come back to like a text bomb and 12 missed calls, like obsessive drug addict alcoholic rage escalation from "you there?" "answer bitch" "pick up the goddamn phone" "you better be kidnapped, beaten, or dead right now"

Imagine hopping out of the shower and you had your phone open in the other room and you exit the bathroom in a towel and he's sitting there on your bed and your entire room's been trashed like shits BROKEN and he's, got a cigarette lit and his arms are crossed and he's got your phone in one of his hands , he can clearly see you were in the shower, and instead of apologizing for like going absolutely manic, he just, either, gets gross about how you're wearing a towel and how you got him so worked up and you need to make it up to him, or, he just basically whines that you should've just waited until he was done talking to you to shower

-Val's a yandere who will give you something, break it in a rage to punish you or when he's feeling hurt or betrayed by you, and then replace it with something nicer and more expensive. But then he'll also break things he didn't give you to try and replace everything you own with things he's provided and you'll hate those things, they aren't sentimental to you and maybe not even to your tastes. Oh what's that, you made a new friend? You guys want to Lu Lu Land and he got you a shitty little ring from a carnival game and it's sentimental and important to you? That's cool, don't mind Valentino ruining it or throwing it away the second you take it off and "consoling you" in your grief of "losing it" by getting you a ring from HIM

-genuinely I could see him being one of those guys where if he somehow did manage to pull off enough bullshit to convince you to date him and he's not a total freak, he'd pull some shit like that and then you realize what a huge mistake you've made. he's trying to backpedal and make it up to you but, you've seen his true colors now, and maybe he actually broke something that was really special to you and you really liked him for

-I just don't know how anyone would, realistically, be able to resist Asmodeus in a scenario where he offers you safe harbor from Valentino. A new place to stay rent free? He'd help get you food and clothes and whatever you need? Val would have you so terrorized that, unless you basically had, uh, an unhealthy attachment to him, or insecurity issues, you wouldn't even consider staying with Val over your new "friend". Ozzie is Mr Steal Yo Girl

- i was kinda thinking "how would a yandere Ozzie hypothetically get sex out of you in a scenario where he wants consent" and I feel like he'd just kinda, lovebomb you and maybe manipulate you a little bit and maybe have some blurred ethics on how drunk or high he thinks you're allowed to be while it's still in his definition of consensual. Yeah you said yes to sex with him but you'd taken molly and had some drinks!

Godddd would it be considered gaslighting if, afterwards when you're feeling like embarrassed and regretful, because maybe he's a good friend and you feel it's ruined now, he fakes how remorseful he feels with intentions to, in turn, emotionally manipulate you into thinking he's not as creepy as he actually is. Like, oh gosh, he just seems SO upset over this, can't you let him make it up to you 🥺

- also like. Uh. Having the ol "i liked you as a friend but I was vulnerable and I'm really embarrassed i slept with you even if I liked you so I can't talk to you right now or maybe ever again" reaction with Ozzie would uh. Not work??? It'd be bad??? Like imagine if nothing else you kind of ghost him because you're really embarrassed and insecure and he's like freaking out you were fucking kidnapped or something or WORSE, meanwhile he finds out, like. You're just really embarrassed he saw you naked and couldn't face him and he'd think that's SO CUTE YOU HAVE NO IDEA 🥺❤️

-Ozzie is obviously sex positive and I think you getting flustered and horny and embarrassed would be like his cookies and cream. Even if you have no experience he doesn't mind and he loves to teach you all kinda of things or even just talk about, naughty stuff with you. Imagine he's just like reading a book across the room and suddenly he looks over to you, "hey have you ever had anyone tie you up before? Just curious uwu"

- on the flip side I feel like Valentino needles in at all your insecurities amd with a chubby Readet he'd definitely flip flop between treating you nicely and then mocking you in front of other people. Like, a "good" yandere Val would get incredibly defensive of you as much as he would himself, but one on the meaner end of the spectrum would actively neg you and knock down your self esteem so that it feel really, REALLY good when he finally praises you and flirts with you

-I just picture you offhandedly telling Asmodeus some of the stuff that's happened between you and Val and Ozzies just sitting there, "baby can I be real with you? This guy wants to fuck you so bad he makes himself look stupid" and it's Ozzie's "feedback" that makes you kind of lose your temper with Val one day and, yeah you just deadass repeat some shit like "you wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid" and Val is just AGHAST like where did this ATTITUDE come from. And I picture you kinda get into it, like he kinda sputters a bit but is clearly pissed at you and he gives some like, threat that in full context makes you realize he really DOES have some kind of thing to you. Like it's weird that a THREAT could convey that, he just says some shit like "you better stop running your mouth before I take a paddle to that fat ass of yours" but it's also like, if you're taking potshots at his self esteem and getting personal digs, it's really kind of being let off that he just makes threats and doesn't, like, do something right then and there

You just take a shot of the rest of his drink, "yeah you would like to spank me wouldn't you 😘 you're always commenting on my ass all the time, you don't have to be embarrassed if you like to look" and maybe you like sneak some backhanded compliment in there, before being like, covering your tracks, or sarcastically being like, "ok Daddy love you too 🥰" and giving him a peck on the cheek like really being cheeky with it before you fuck off to another part of the club and then later on when you've sobered up and the Oh Shit What The Fuck Did I Do stage kicks in, you eventually have to give him a refill or something and he's like, oddly silent while you're like a shrinking violet, all bravado just GONE, and at the end of your shift he like, actually beckons you closer and you think you're being punished and he just. Smirks and crosses his legs, "don't get too cocky with me, k sweetie?" and just silently threatening you, but, also, shoving a larger than usual tip directly under the waistband of your pants.

I've also thought about that as well? Like Val shoving tips in your clothes, like in your bra or even in your panties/boxers/whatever as like, a double-sided threat/reward/threatening flirting. You mouth off and tease him about him being thirsty for you and later on he's practically got an entire hand in your bra to leave some 5s there and deliberately grazing your nipples the entire time (swear to God if he pinched I thought I'd go aggressive crazy on his ass)

-but Val saying some shit like you're too gross to be a hooker or a porn star and that's why you just wait tables and later on down the line you've ditched him and you're modeling or shooting like female oriented porn down on the Lust Ring. Lmaoooo Valentino trying to neg you and 6 months later he's being cucked and hating himself as he's cranking it to like softcore porn of a maintenance guy being super nice and respectful to you after making some repairs around your house before eating your pussy and then. Straight up leaving. Vals just over here "why am I even-- this isn't even hot" as he beats his shmeat because he wants to see someone "Break My Choker" you and you just, you didn't even suck the guy off he just rocked up with some tongue action and left like You're Living Your Best Life, Angel Dust is over here like "goddamn I wish I could get paid to just have someone go down on me and leave 😭"

-Ozzie's over here having like safe sex meetings before the porn shoots and making sure everyone is in the right headspace and feeling OK and meanwhile up in Pride you've got shit where like, one of Vals pornstars didn't show and when you briefly enter the set to bring him a lemonade he makes a split second decision to have you restrained and have a train ran on you because he'd rather psychologically scar you then come out of this failed filming session empty handed with wasted money

-I just have this visual of, you're not anything "with" Valentino or Ozzie and, maybe they've encouraged you to be more sexually free, but then you actually start being more adventurous and they're like "oh you know what? Thanks i Extremely Hate this Actually". You're sitting on the couch at the club next to one of them and your phone buzzes and you're answering it, getting kind of flirty sorh whomever is on the other line as your cohort gets more and more jealous, and then you're randomly dropping, "so hey not to be horny but what are you doing tonight? I could use me a deep dick pizza with an extra helping of cuddles afterward" and Val/Ozzie is just, SPITTING HIS DRINK

-like you go from sitting in Vals limo or sitting next to him and he's constantly shamelessly watching like nudes or porn or snaps on his phone right next to you and you're forced to endure that, and one day YOUR earbuds aren't connected properly and Val gets blasted with 5 seconds of something like a male or female or whomever, someone who isnt you, "ugh god I love the taste of you 😩❤️" and he's, the attention is ON, eyes on you IMMEDIATELY, just, "what the fuck was that???"

Imagine you're straight up looking up D/P pics on your phone and suddenly you sense a presence and he's like. You've got Valentino's massive form leaning practically from one end of the couch to the other to look at your phone from over your shoulder/above you. The notoriously narcissistic attention seeking loudmouth drunk just, having been silently whisper quiet watching you for who knows how long, you're not sure if he can even read or see what's going on bit he definitely sees the picture

Goddd can you even think of it, he finds out you're fucking around with someone because he snatches your phone out of your hand as like, a tease, because he saw you looking at dick pics and he's all "oooo, giiiiiirl what have you got HERE", but then he starts going through your entire gallery and all your messages and the smile is wiped off his face. Imagine the like. 30 second pipeline of "teasing you, snatching your phone as a joke, going through your phone, immediately chucking your phone directly at the floor"

Ozzie thinks you're fucking GHOSTING HIM and he's getting PANIC ATTACKS over here because, you know, you make his heart do the flippy thing, meanwhile it's like, nah, Valentino has just shifted into Ultra Possessive "Someone Touched My Shit" Mode and you literally aren't allowed to have a phone or so much as be alone anymore amd the next time Asmodeus is seeing you, it's on Sinstagram, being made to hang off Valentino as he had the picture captioned something about, "some of his bitches he just doesn't like to share"

[pinkandpurple360]

to be fair i don’t think ozzie kept his relationship with fizz on the dl bc he’s an imp (he doesn’t seem concerned that people know they up have sex), but because of the whole lust/love thing. which is stupid, but it’s also vivziepop writing so whatchu gonna do 🙃

ozzie does seem to be one of the “better” upper class members in terms of how he treats other species (imps are allowed in his clubs, he regularly interacts with succubi/imp hybrids, everyone at his workplaces seem pretty happy and unlike stella and andre, he doesn’t seem particularly discriminatory or callous), but he still calls moxxie “little imp” (granted he is literally little and an imp and its a performance) and his imp boyfriend “froggy” which with the fire toad slur kinda raises eyebrows? this could also just be vivziepop Not Thinking but. hmm.

even bee who is shown partying and dating hellhounds, said to be even lower than imps, still runs the abusive adoption pound and signs her name on every adoption paper. she can cover it up with honey and a smile all she wants but she’s 1000% complicit in their oppression. like how does tex feel about that??? it reminds me of corporations who do all this virtue signaling for social justice but give billions to horrible causes. but i don’t think vivziepop understands that because again. rich background. “bee was nice to loona so its ok!!! deeper implications? what’s that?”

speaking of which, every time viv likes a tweet about how striker deserves nothing and is a toxic masculinity homophobe makes my blood boil. i don’t particularly like striker and i lost any interest in him after western energy but he and crim are really evidence that viv thinks “STOP BEING POOR” is a valid argument. also wasnt he flirting with blitzo in his first ep???? so like? huh???

i will say one reason i ship blitzstriker is because they seem to have similar views in regards to class (at least pre oops…) and i can totally see them staking it out on the run together. i can’t see fizz doing that, he flaunts his wealth and even tho he says “it’s nice being out of the spotlight” i cannot see this man surviving without luxury items for over a day loo. even in the circus, he always had the best clothes and was the main breadwinner and while the circus is said to be struggling, he never seems to be. i think that’s another reason i personally never got fizz’s insecurities, because he’s been the ace his whole life???? like as someone who has struggled a lot for ANY recognition or love it just makes him seem spoiled to be like “ozzie no luv me bc im not perfect :(“ i think your manipulator idea would make more sense.

anyway this turned into a ted talk. you dont have to answer everything. im realizing i actually hate what helluva boss is but i love the fanworks and the potential it had. sigh.

Isn’t it so funny how we have to pick which flaws are on purpose and which are just…Viv being a bad writer. Like we have to accommodate her forgetting or not caring enough to put the work in and review it after.

Paragraph 1: I definitely agree 100%, I like the part where the imp and succubi are his patrons, equal, including the butler who stolas abuses. Which feels like a very purposeful decision to contrast him with Stolas specifically. But there’s still the fact that Ozzies is so overpriced and exclusive and yet, rich folk like stolas can just waltz in without any reservation for free, by threatening the bouncer with…something. Violence? Imprisonment? Ruining his life? Honestly I wish we could have seen Jesse tell Stolas to fuck off, before he notifies the big man of what he just tried to do.

Paragraph 2: He is one thousand percent better, and he respected his employees who in turn liked him and weren’t scared of him. However he’s a better monarch, but still a monarchby and at the end of the episode he betrays his employees trust and uses intimidation and the threat of violence to silence them. Also froggy??? Really? Really? And got every time he says it the cringe levels are intense, it feels deeply deeply ooc.

Back to paragraph 1 again: the secrecy…it’s about the inexplicable anti love thing, but I’m just saying I think fizz feels that way. Like in that article I keep referencing they say things like “heart hoarded by an imp?!” Which I suppose is equivalent to anti imp racism in hell. Stereotypes of them being untrustworthy selfish beings. Which is also the fuel for Stolas’ fetish. It just really pissed me off the way Asmodeus said “still getting your kink on with that feisty imp?” And stolas says “this imp has a business he runs” I was wayyyy to charitable to Asmodeus in the past and regret it so so much.

Paragraph 3: Many people point this out about Bee and I really hope her nice persona vanishes fast because it’s just ridiculous given her status and what she’s done. Why are your hellborn the most downtrodden of them all if you’re ohh so nice miss Beelzebub? And how the F could Loona not know who Beelzebub is??? Do her and Blitzø not realise who signed off on the adoption certificate? (Confirmed on Vivs patron that it was in fact Bee) why is Tex working as a bodyguard for verosika who calls him “my new hellhound” and yells at him, he also says he’s not paid enough to care about her issues. Sooo….why is he still in such a shitty position despite being with Bee. You’d think he’d at least be working because he wants to work but he doesn’t even seem

Paragraph 4: LITERALLY!!! Viv is such a privileged rich girl that her villains are poor. While she’s going on a world tour but raging at Twitter people criticising her pet character. She’s literally Stella and a Mammon: “Can you imagine not having money ahahhahh” — Viv describing why striker is so evil

Paragraph 5: another question is why would Blitzø being jealous of Fizz be such a bad thing? He didn’t want to cause the accident. But why would him hating how bad he is at making people laugh,,,make him bad? That’s why I love their arguments because neither is completely wrong or right. His father literally loves him more than his own son and as you said, he gets pampered the most and loved the most. He can’t stand someone not liking him for even five seconds which should be a character flaw, not endearing. But, Fizz doesn’t have a father at all, so he’s not completely wrong. And if his parents did abandon him and nobody would adopt him, that explains why he doesn’t feel good enough to be loved and why he needs audience approval. Viv just forgot to write that FUNDAMENTAL part into the f**king episode.

I love a good fish out of water story and seeing fizz slowly learn to fight beside his friend proving that their differences are compatible was great. By the end, Fizz seemed almost happier and freer by Blitzos side than by Ozzies side, but the goldfish is just put back in the bowl, which sucks.

Your last line made me almost laugh cry tbh because there’s enough lost potential to fill a fountain. The episode had such a strong start then around the breakdown things went south and it stopped being good. The status quo isn’t different at all and fizz just slightly shifted his destructive needs for affirmation onto a different royal.

[thatstonedwriter]

Anyways my own opinions on the episode, I didn't care for the sisters. Like at all, their designs were amazing but personality wise I hated them, maybe that's just me though lol I don't really care for people who are really competitive, it's annoying to me. (Plus fizz crying broke my heart) I loved the music and I agree that fizzs scene with the kid was amazing 😍. Makes me love him even more, however I am kinda still on edge with what Ozzie and him did to blitz and stolas. Like I understand at the time they (fizz and blitz) weren't talking and didn't know what actually happened with the whole hospital thing but it was still a really rude thing to do.

Hello again omg!! I saw ur other asks and just wanted to say it's good to see you again <3

And yeah, I think the sisters had potential to be a bit more than *just* competition, esp. Because Fizz tried being nice to them and exposed Mammon's bullshit.

Honestly, Fizz is such a sweetheart. Absolutely love. But you make a good point about him and Ozzie harassing Stolas and Blitzø at the club. T'was fucked up.

As much as I love seeing Fizz's development, I can't help but feel frustrated. I've been hoping for more insight into Loona and Millie's characters. Millie and Blitzø seem like good friends- I wanna know how she and Loona get along, if at all.

Other than that though, I mean. Upon rewatching, I've come to really appreciate all of the songs. I'm listening to them on repeat. I also love analyzing the new content.

[writteninsunshine]

Not A Day Goes By That I'm Not Imprisoned By Thoughts Of You - Fizzarolli/Asmodeus - SFWish

Title: Not A Day Goes By That I'm Not Imprisoned By Thoughts Of You

Author: Keith

Fandom: Helluva Boss

Setting: Ozzie’s House, Ozzie’s Limousine, Ozzie’s Club

Pairing: Fizzarolli/Asmodeus | Ozzie

Characters: Fizzarolli, Barbie Wire, Original Male Character(s), Asmodeus | Ozzie

Genre: Romance/Drama

Rating: M

Chapters: 1/1

Word Count: 1737

Type Of Work: One-Shot, Day 5 Of 30 Days Of Fizzarozzie

Status: Complete

Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, MLM, Alcohol, Alcoholic, Threats, Threats Of Violence, Pining, Nausea, Lucifer Mention, RoboFizz Mention

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything except for Brick.

Summary: With Ozzie being away, all Fizzarolli could do was wait for his return.

AN: Hey guys, it’s me again! Just thought I ought to say, if you want vague updates and to talk to me more, I have a Helluva Boss Tumblr, too! Twitter is Sunshinecackle, and Tumblr is Gimme-A-Thrust! I also have a writing Discord that is currently pretty dead. xD If you want it, please contact me on Tumblr/Twitter!

I’m not entirely sure what this fic even is, and I’m not sure if I really care. It was honestly a lot of fun to play with. I should probably make note that I write Fizz and Barbie being pretty close friends even with whatever happened between Blitzo and Fizz. That might be important. Anyway, here we go!

30 Days Of Fizzarozzie Fic Masterlist

Not A Day Goes By That I'm Not Imprisoned By Thoughts Of You

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A loud, drawn-out sigh sounded from Fizzarolli as he rested his head on his folded arms on the windowsill. He’d been sitting on the window seat sighing for the better part of an hour, now, and it was getting ridiculous. The RoboFizzes had taken to checking on him every now and then, but he kept shooing them off with pushes from his extended arms or legs. Wordlessly, he stared out the window like it might just provide him with what he wanted.

Ozzie had had to go to a huge conference between the Kings of Hell, and he’d be gone for three whole days. The house was so quiet without him around, lifeless and all Fizzarolli wanted to do was sleep. He still had work that night, but he didn’t really want to go. Pretending he was happy and excited about his job was definitely possible, but it felt hollow without Ozzie there to encourage him. Every time this happened, he was moody and impossible to please the entire time, going so far as to plead with him before he left to call it off. 

He’d only been gone for three hours, his trek to the hotel they were going to meet at in the Pride Ring was probably well over, by now, he’d be unpacking, probably. Fizzarolli imagined him sitting in the back of the Hellevator, stroking himself absently through the tight leggings he’d put on. The entire room would get a show, and Olli had to miss it.

This is very prestigious and unfortunately very exclusive. Nobody can bring a plus one, it isn’t just me. I hate these stupid conventions, they kill my sex life for three days, I’m going to come back and raw you.

Fizzarolli was ready for that to happen now. He had been tempted to stow away in his luggage, but he knew Ozzie would be disappointed with him at best, and very angry at worst. Still, it meant three days without him, three days where he felt useless, tiny, and depressed. Who knew that the fun little clown boy could be so damn sad? And, apparently, angry if his brooding was interrupted.

Brick didn’t know what had gotten into, or out of, Olli when he’d gone to pick him up before the show. There wasn’t a smile on the clown’s face nor a single joke out of him. No, he was scowling, he didn’t make eye contact, and he straight up ignored anyone talking to him. He was acting like they’d broken up or something, and the bodyguard didn’t know exactly what to say, so he didn’t speak. Brick wasn’t all that good with words, but he wasn’t being paid to hold a conversation. Thankfully.

“You know, I can’t go with him, either.” He finally stated when the silence in the car kept making his nose itch. Seeing Fizzarolli like this and being his personal attendant until Ozzie got back was spelling trouble for him. Brick already knew he’d be seeing a fatter paycheck this time around.

Fizzarolli’s head didn’t lift from where it rested against the window of the car, and he did little more than growl, initially. Somehow, he was going to have to put a smile on his face by the time they got to Ozzie’s (it would feel empty now that he had to perform without the namesake present), and Brick didn’t seem to want to let him do that. The incubus wouldn’t keep his mouth shut, stop looking at him, or give him five fucking minutes alone in the back seat of one of Ozzie’s insanely large limousines. Even riding in the gargantuan baby pink car wasn’t doing it for him.

“When we get there, I need some Beelzejuice.” 

Brick rose an eyebrow at the demand, though he didn’t comment. It always did strike him as funny how Ozzie and Fizzarolli had a habit of copying each other without knowing it. Ozzie drank when he got pissy, too. Good money could be placed on the bet that neither of them would admit to it, either, but he’d seen it with his own eyes.

Upon arrival, he had a bottle in hand, and Fizzarolli set to work making a phone call and drinking his bad mood away as much as he could in his dressing room. For several minutes, he stood in front of his vanity, poking the mirror as he spoke to himself. What nobody else saw was that he was back at the circus, staring into the dingy, half-cracked mirror precariously placed on the dresser he and the other clowns had used. He hadn’t had to be his own hype man in a while; Usually, Ozzie did that for him. Hell, Ozzie just being there hyped him up.

“You can do this, Fizz.” He managed, sighing heavily as he glanced away. Shaking his head, he growled again, “You’re going to do this.” Eyes back on himself, he opened them as wide as he could for a moment, drinking in his appearance. After a moment, he paused, then tried on a different tone, though his voice could never quite be the right kind of smooth, “You got this, Olli Baby.” It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but the nickname helped. One of these days he’d have to get a recording of Ozzie saying it for him, because it perked him up enough to lift his phone.

Having Barbie on the phone seemed to help some, once she was put through, and he had to pretend he wasn’t halfway to drunk for a few minutes. But Barbie had the keenest of noses when it came to alcohol, and even through the phone, he imagined her picking it up, scenting the air, and glaring at the receiver. Her lips parted with an audible wet sound, and he heard her teeth grind, and he knew he was caught.

“No the fuck you are not, dick!” She finally whined, bouncing in place on the uncomfortable plastic chair in the hallway near her room at the rehab center, “No way you’re drunk dialing me right now, tease.” 

“Barbs, it’s not like that…” He replied with a stunted laugh, grinning distantly at himself in the mirror, “Ozzie’s gone again an–”

“So you’re pissy that your not-boyfriend’s with someone else? So you’re being an asshole?” Barbie supplied with a knowing sigh, rolling her eyes. Of course, this had to do with Ozzie, didn’t it?

“Not… Not pissy, and he’s not with someone else, he’s just… Stuck at that conference thing. Nobody can go with him because it’s high royalty exclusive shit.” The bottle came back to his lips and she heard him gulp, immediately growling into the receiver.

“Don’t, Fizz, I’m gonna crawl through the phone and drink it out of your stomach my damn self.” That made him gag.

“Gross, Barbs, you’re gonna make me–” Retching again, he clamped his eyes shut, “Ugh… Fine, I’ll put it down.” Setting the bottle down with an audible clink, he straightened back up, turning to lean his hip against the counter instead of staring at himself more, “Better?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She replied in that nasally, lofty way she did when she was thinking. Either he’d said or didn’t say something that he should have, and he didn’t have the mental wherewithal to figure out which it was on his own.

“Barbs?” His friend had been quiet for a few minutes or so, and he didn’t know exactly where it was going to take him, but he didn’t think he liked it.

“What…?” Her attention seemed to slowly return to the conversation she was having, and she scratched absently at her cheek, “You turned on the news?”

“...No? Should I?” Immediately his heart fell and he scrambled for the remote to the little TV on the back wall of his dressing room, nearly dropping the phone. He was going to pretend he didn’t hear her giggle on the other end of the line.

“Channel thirteen,” Barbie snickered once she was sure he had the phone settled against his face again, and he only hoped he wasn’t going to see some fucking assassination attempt bullshit like last year. He vaguely wondered if that was why he was so worried, except that he wasn’t worried, and if Barbie heard the panicked quickening of his breathing, no she didn’t.

“What’s going–”

The sight he was met with was one that stopped his heart in the best way. Ozzie, for what it was worth, was mostly in a background shot of Lucifer talking before a grand banquet table. Fizzarolli knew that slow blink well, the way he rubbed his eyes one at a time and the yawns that broke each pair of lips in easy succession. Once one head seemed to have finished, the next picked it up until they had to avoid looking at one another. The King was ten seconds away from falling asleep, and it melted his little imp entirely. 

“...Thanks Barbs.” He finally managed, “How did you know?”

“They’ve been playing the thing about it all day in the main room,” Barbie explained, “He’s on screen so I figured I’d tell you. Is he really that tired?”

“He didn’t get any sleep before he had to go. Work doesn’t end until five some mornings, and we still don’t go to bed when we get home.” He didn’t seem to notice what he’d said until she hummed knowingly at him, and he could see the grin on her face through the phone, “Wh– Barbie, no. Don’t start that shit again.”

“Just sayin’, if you two weren’t a thing, I doubt he’d take you home all the time. You live there, and he’s not the roommate type, right?”

“Show’s starting, Barbs, gotta go.” He still had fifteen minutes, but he was too drunk to have those kinds of thoughts.

“Right, right, have fun being silly and charming.” She purred at him playfully, and he rolled his eyes as he hung up the phone. At least he’d found the thing that would help perk him up for his set that night. He was going to miss those glowing eyes not being on him, unfortunately, but at least he’d have enough Beelzejuice on him to be able to get through it. Maybe, if he was lucky, Ozzie would call him, too.

He didn’t want to think about what being unlucky would put his heart through. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

AN: I ended up getting hungover (I don’t think drunk is the right word for it) and so I didn’t finish this as quickly as I’d wanted to. Regardless, I’m happy with how it came out, and I hope y’all like it!

Prompt: 30 Days Of Fizzarozzie Day 5  - Hurt

[showtoonzfan]

Ever since episode 7 of Helluva Boss came out, it legit revealed that Robo Fizz was completely USELESS.

Seriously, what was the point of introducing him if we were just going to meet the REAL character 4 episodes later? It’s legit confusing, but let me elaborate because that ain’t the only problem. In episode 2, it’s revealed that Blitz had a more popular rival when he grew up in the circus, a robotic version of a character named “Fizzarolli”. It’s shown that the two have history, everyone loved Robo Fizz around the circus, and Blitz was just in his shadow. Fizz thinks that he’s better than Blitz, constantly ridiculing him which caused blitz to resent him. While their rivalry is childish and seems more of a petty “I’m better than you” mean girl middle school dynamic, it would have been interesting to deep dive into the relationship between these two, and how blitz grew up in the circus and constantly felt put down seeing how popular Robo Fizz had become, it also fitted since this is a cheap run down rip off version and would have added why Blitz was there since Imps are at the bottom, but.....nope, in the SAME episode, they kill him off, but at the time Viv said he would return. Before I talk about episode 7, can I just say real quick how much of an utter DISAPPOINTMENT Robo Fizz was? Viv built him up to be this big bad villain, even making Octavia scared of him and drawing the thumbnail to make it look like Fizz’s hands were reaching towards her, but in the actual episode, not only is he not on screen for that long and doesn’t even ENGAGE with Octavia, but he’s so UNDERWHELMING. The dynamic between him and Blitz is just childish and lame, Fizz comes off more as a BULLY than an actual villain, it’s just “haha I’m better than you you suck” and that’s it, even the “fight” scene is just unnecessary, and then he dies. I also don’t see the point of making Octavia scared of him when he didn’t even get to interact with her PRESENT self, or even act as an actual villain and try to scare her. Like...WOW Viv, THAT’S what you hyped up for so long? Two characters just throwing petty insults at one another and then one of them just dies and it’s not even treated like a big deal? Robo fizz wasn’t even PART of the A plot, it was about Stolas and Octavia yet he didn’t even come into the picture. Wow. 😑

But anyway, let’s get to episode 7. In that episode, we’re introduced to the ACTUAL Fizzarolli, who works at a club for the sin of Lust, Ozzie.

At time of course, I was just like....“Wait....what???” Why would we be introduced to the actual character when you already had a character who HAD A HISTORY WITH BLITZ and a rivalry set up for you? And today I’m STILL like that, it legit makes no sense. I know they established that the real Fizzarolli existed, but I never thought he’d be an ACTUAL character in the show, I thought it was just a joke, like maybe since the Robo version was in the rip off of Loo Loo Land, the REAL one worked at Loo Loo World. I know that sounds stupid but I wasn’t expecting something this POINTLESS to happen. So to deeper dive, Fizz works at this joint now, and has tons of robotic versions across hell to pleasure demons, so.......yeah he’s kinda famous. He’s also an imp......though he has robotic arms and legs and I’m just.....SO confused? If you kept going on about how there’s a REAL Fizz and robot ones, then why did you make the real one a robot as well? It doesn’t do anything, he’s clearly an imp with the tail, but giving him robotic arms and legs just confuses fans, at least the first time they see it. But anyway, judging by Blitz’s reaction when he saw Fizz on stage, he seemed to not have known that Fizz worked here, probably implying that the two haven’t seen each other in a long time. And....WOULDN’T ya know, their dynamic is EXACTLY the same as Blitz and robo fizz’s dynamic. It’s just “Lol BLiTzO yOU sUCK I’M bETTER tHAN yOU!”, with the two hating each other. It’s then revealed that the two have known each other since they were kids, and season 2 will dive into their relationship more. I........I....then WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE ROBOT??? We’re obviously not going to see him again so what was the point of hyping up his character and his rivalry with Blitz if you were just going to kill him off and introduce the real one with ANOTHER setup for a backstory?

And the thing is, it’s not even like episode 2 did anything for Blitz and Fizz. It didn’t expand on their relationship, it didn’t ADD anything, the fact that Fizz has a robotic version is LITERALLY established in the seventh episode AGAIN so if you took the robot out nothing would have changed, in fact, he’s so useless to the story and characters that they SHOULD have scrapped him. I mean what does Blitz having history with Fizz’s robotic version ADD?? It doesn’t add anything for the plot or characters at all. Everyone says that episode 2 should have ONLY focused on Stolas and his daughter and not those stupid A and B plots, so just take Blitz and his crew out, and the robot out as well and just focus on THEIR relationship. You could have replaced Fizz with some random animatronic and would have gotten the same thing. Then in episode 7, we finally meet Fizz, and establish their rivalry. It feels like Robo Fizz only existed just for a big sex joke, like the robots only exist to pleasure other demons because HAHA SEX FUNNY LAUGH, and it’s just bizarre how weird the direction for Fizz went. This is legit storytelling 101 and it feels like we went in a circle.

[unbridgeabledistances]

hi y’all<3 here’s a new section of the gallavich as seen from alternate POVs fic, this time featuring lip!!!! (i wanted to wait til after the ✨lickey drama✨ in the new ep before posting, but then i decided against it bc i didn’t want to re-write this lol)

i started to have way too many feelings while writing this so it’s a little lengthy and contemplative, but rest assured it features some domestic fluff/ian and mickey being disgustingly in love- i hope u enjoy<3

--

Lip shuffled into the kitchen of the Gallagher house, opening the fridge door and reaching past the clanging beer bottles to grab a metal soda can on the way back of the shelf, hearing a faint fizz escape as he popped the tab. It was late, the moonlight streaming in across the kitchen through the worn curtains and pooling on the kitchen floor— after Tami had crashed in their bed at the apartment after a long day at work and Freddie was sleeping soundly in his crib, Lip had come by the Gallagher house, without really knowing why. He just needed to clear his head, to get some distance from Tami and all her relentless nagging about moving and apartment hunting and his colossally obvious fuck-up with the bikes— he just needed some space, some less stifling air to breathe outside of their half-packed apartment crammed with boxes lining the walls.

It was funny; no matter how much energy Lip had poured into he and Tami’s first apartment, into painting the walls and agonizing over their kitchen backsplash like it was his first-born son, whenever Lip thought about home, whenever he felt that pit of uneasiness growing in his stomach and he just needed a place where he could lie back on a couch and loosen the knots in his shoulders and breathe in familiar air that would fill him up, instead of the too-clean smell of Tami’s flowery potpourri that she’d placed on the expensive coffee table in their living room— Lip always found his feet leading him across the slabs of sidewalk and past the chain link fences towards the Gallagher house, no matter the time of night. He had only been in the house for a few minutes before he felt the tight-knit something in his chest begin to unfurl— he didn’t even want to start to think about what was lodged there. This had been a crazy fucking couple of months, and he wasn’t going to start getting sappy about selling the house now, not when they were so close. He’d dug a hole too deep this time, and he needed the money. He couldn’t fuck up again— not with Freddie to take care of. No matter what it cost him.

So that’s how Lip ended up sitting at the Gallagher kitchen table at 2 a.m. on a Thursday night, sipping at an overly-sugary pop that was no substitute for what he really wanted to be drinking right now—he could imagine how it would warm the insides of his stomach, how it would cushion whatever weird fucking ache was in his chest right now. But— no. Fuck no. He wasn’t going to do that now. Everything about selling the house, about moving on, was about getting his shit straight— about leaving the bad parts of this sagging roof and these stained floorboards behind him.

Lip slouched in the wooden kitchen chair, scrolling on his phone and finally letting out a breath he didn’t really know he had been holding in all day, when he heard a creaking of footsteps padding at the top of the stairs— too heavy to be Liam or Debbie, too careful and unfumbling to be Frank dragging himself through the house. Lip flickered a glance up from where he was sitting and met Ian’s eyes as he turned the corner of the stairs, his skin looking translucent and overly pale in the moonlight like the ginger motherfucker he was.

Ian nodded his head towards Lip in acknowledgement, like he wasn’t surprised in the slightest that his older brother with a whole ass family and apartment of his own was decidedly squatting in the kitchen of his childhood home, drinking a pathetic-looking can of Dr. Pepper. Ian slid open the fridge door, grabbing a beer and swiftly popping the cap off by knocking the bottle on the side of the counter—and then in an instant it became one of those quiet, familiar nights when it was just Lip and Ian in the kitchen, sometimes letting easy conversations flow between them, but other times, just like this— just sinking into each other’s presence in the silence. Ian’s shadow mingling with the moonlight on the kitchen floor immediately snapped the atmosphere from lonely and self-pitying and stale to something lighter, something familiar—like the worn, buttery leather of a baseball glove that fits just right.

Instantly Lip was brought back to so many nights before this, of he and Ian orbiting each other in the kitchen at night— when they were kids and would creep down the stairs and eat fistfuls of junk food that Fiona had forbidden, or steal warm sips of the open beers Frank had left on the counter. This was where they’d processed Monica’s return, late at night while they passed a cigarette between them and Ian hadn’t tried to hide the tears that were freely rolling down his freckled cheeks, back when they were both just confused kids who clung to each other— this was where they’d processed Frank’s alcoholic meltdowns, too many to count, and all the love and loss and confusion that had passed between these walls, all the collateral damage of living in this fucking neighborhood. And Lip felt a sudden pang in his gut, sharp and present, when he realized that it might be one of the last nights that he and Ian got to spend in the kitchen like this.

Lip immediately shoved the thought down with all his might, a hydraulic press squeezing out any sentimentality. He had to do this— for Freddie, for Tami. He had to man up and move on, even if it meant physically wounding the crumbling walls to ease the pain of the parallel jagged wounds somewhere deep in his chest, or screaming and shouting until veins popped in his neck, so loud that he knew he was radiating his pain outwards like a fucking atomic bomb.

But tonight, Lip had no more fight left to give. He just wanted to let these four walls hold him one last time, without even realizing that was what he had needed until this moment. Ian slid a chair out from the kitchen table and sat beside him, leaning back and dragging out a slow, sleepy breath.

Lip cleared his throat, softly. “Where’s Mick?”

“Passed out upstairs.” Ian scrubbed a hand over his face. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Lip raised his eyebrow, almost involuntarily, and Ian immediately jutted his chin up in a half-nod, an affirmation, as he leaned back even farther and took the first sip of his beer. No, he wasn’t manic and yes, he was fine. After all the years that had passed since Ian was still figuring this shit out, Lip sometimes forgot that checking in on him wasn’t really his job, not anymore.

Lip took another sip from his soda can, a movement to fill the easy silence. “How was your guys’ night?”

Ian shrugged non-committally, his shoulders still slumped back in the chair, his lips puckered around the mouth of the bottle as he stared off into the distance at the peeling kitchen wallpaper. “Eh. It was fine. I dragged Mickey out to try and make more gay friends. Ended up being a mistake.”

Lip held back a laugh, taking a sip from his own drink to mask his smirk. He had ample auditory evidence that Mickey was plenty as gay as Ian, but it was still hard to imagine Mickey leaning into all of this shit— Ian used to wear golden underwear and frequent gay clubs and go to social justice brunches, but none of that really seemed like it was Mickey’s scene.

“Oh yeah? Mickey not the easiest person to befriend?” Lip said it with his eyebrows raised, like the joke was obvious.

Ian looked up at him, like he’d been snapped out of a sleepy train of thought, staring earnestly like Lip’s jab had flown right over his head. “Actually, it was kind of my fault. I was the one who made us leave this dinner party thing we got invited to. They were all talking shit about the Southside, about how they hated their families, and I couldn’t really… connect with them, I guess.”

Lip pondered that, taking a breath and stretching his arms above his head. God, he was sore— he hadn’t even been fucking working, aside from hauling those bikes from place to place to avoid the cops, but all the pent up stress and tension was starting to linger in his bones.

“Yeah, it was the same for me. In college, or whatever. Joaquin was the only person I really talked to, because he got all the shit I was always going through.”

Ian nodded contemplatively—but he was staring off into space again, almost like he was half asleep. Lip took another sip of his soda. He could bring up the house shit again right now—it was all that they’d been talking about for the past few weeks—but for some reason it felt too raw, too intense to bring up right now, like it would cut through this peaceful moment, this island in the vast sea of uncertainty Lip knew he was bringing down on all of their heads. So in this moment, he opted for smoother waters.

“Why’d you guys go looking for new friends, anyways?”

Ian finally broke out of whatever drowsy, pensive trance he’d been in, his lips sloping into a smile. “Mickey kept giving me shit for always doing what you do, after breakfast today. I figured… I don’t know, I just got all pissy and tried to prove him wrong.”

Lip felt the corner of his mouth tick upward at that. “Guess you’re stuck with me.”

Ian grinned, and held out his beer bottle, stretching his arm across the table. Lip tapped it with his soda can with a light “Cheers,” then took the final sip. He crushed the can to a disk on the table, pressing it down firmly with the heel of his palm and watching the sides compress. Ian’s eyes were cast downward at the table, watching his movements.

“How’s stuff with you and Tami going, all the packing and shit?”

Lip turned the flattened can on its side, contemplatively spinning it like a top on the table and fidgeting with it between his fingers.

“Honestly? I’m fucking exhausted.”

He could hear the breathiness as he said it, how deflated his own voice sounded. And Lip knew could make himself say more— he knew if anyone would get it, Ian would.

“It’s just… fuck, man.”

He looked up and Ian was staring directly at him now, his expression unguarded— listening. Listening like he always did in these moments. Lip let out a low chuckle, trying to shield his own vulnerability.

“How’d we get so fucking old? How is this… it, y’know? Finally leaving the fucking nest, or whatever.”

Ian smiled, placing his beer on the table. “I think you already left the nest when you had a baby and moved into an apartment with your girlfriend.”

Lip shrugged, fiddling with the crushed can again between his fingertips. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.”

“And you are the one making us do this, for the record.”

If Ian’s tone wasn’t as playful or as tentative as it was, Lip would have worried that he was upset— but judging by Ian’s still-comfortable slouch and his steady expression, Lip knew he was fine— he was weathering the storm, just like Lip was.

Ian leaned forward.

“Hey. Mickey was giving me shit—but it is true. You’re my best friend, even though you can be a fucking asshole sometimes.” Ian’s lips curved into a crooked smile. “Nothing’s gonna change that.”

Ian’s eyes flickered around the kitchen as he spoke, and Lip heard everything that was unsaid. Even though you’re kicking us out of the house. Even though you’re changing everything. Even though there isn’t a focal point to our lives anymore.

You’re my best friend.

And Lip felt that pang in his gut again, sharp like a dagger.

**

He’d said it before, and he’d had no problem saying it over and over again in Mickey’s absence, up until the months before the wedding— Ian did always go a little bit “loco” when Mickey was around.

Which, fuck him, I guess, for caring about his little brother with an undiagnosed mental illness who was off living in the Milkovich House of Horrors slash meth lab with Mickey fucking Milkovich, the bully with greasy hair who Lip wrote papers for in high school and who now was a literal, actual, godforsaken pimp. Lip had seen a teenage Ian bruised and drunk and curled into himself crying over Mickey too many times to ever think that this shit was a good idea— and years later, when Ian almost threw away everything, almost threw away stability and sanity and his fucking family to follow Mickey Milkovich across the Mexican border, Lip knew he had to say something, even though it was an unspoken rule that he and Ian didn’t really critique each other’s love lives since the Mandy-and-Karen fiascos of years past.

So he’d said it, that day in the kitchen, after Ian had returned on a Greyhound bus and they were still processing the dull pain of Monica’s loss— and Ian had taken the feedback with a closed-lip smile, like his head was somewhere else, as he picked at the corner of the beer bottle label with his thumb.

And then less than a year later Mickey was released anyways, and ended up standing in a tank top and boxers in the middle of the Gallagher living room, when the house was crawling with strangers and Freddie was barely two weeks old— and Lip had taken in a sharp breath, a bundle of hesitant nerves sprouting for whatever the fuck this situation was going to become; but not one that he could really give attention to, with all the other bullshit that was pulling at his focus, like the desperate screeching of his newborn kid and the mascara running down Tami’s face.

Later that night, when he’d had a spare moment to breathe and Tami was finally calmed down and sleeping in their cramped bedroom, he’d run into Ian in the moonlit hallway as he was stumbling his way out of the bathroom, drowsily rubbing his eyes with his hair sticking up. And Lip had stopped him with a whisper, placing a hand to tap Ian’s shoulder as Ian blinked the sleep from his eyes.

“Hey. So uh… I see Mickey’s out.”

He’d seen the defenses immediately raise in Ian’s eyes, like he knew what Lip was going to say next.

“Yeah.” Ian had said it soft, quietly, like he was afraid of someone waking.

You sure that’s a good idea? Lip could feel the words itching on the tip of his tongue, and he was aching to say them again, all these years later— and yes, maybe his head was so wrapped up in his own shit that he didn’t really have the authority to be doling out relationship advice to his little brother right now, but so much of this reminded him of things that had happened in the past, of Mickey Milkovich crashing on Ian’s bedroom floor until he inevitably couldn’t anymore, until the pressure cooker of his presence mingled with Ian’s inevitably exploded— or at least that was how Lip saw it. There were too many wounds, and they were bound to leave scars— Lip was honestly surprised as fuck that the Gallagher house was Mickey’s first stop out of prison, after everything that had gone down between the two of them.

But, for Ian’s sake, Lip tried to reign it in—despite the fact that they’d just been commiserating about “being in love with crazy people” as they crouched on the living room stairs the night before as Ian sipped on a beer, sputtering out a “fuck no” when Lip asked if he was going to marry Mickey (which was an equally as batshit question as if Lip was going to marry Tami). Despite all of this— now that Mickey was back, Lip could see that this was something Ian wanted, that this was something Ian was treading carefully into, one more time. He was definitely stronger now; even Lip could see that.

“He gonna be hanging around here a while?”

Ian had given a gentle, sleepy smile. “Yeah. Think so.”

And Lip had just reached out, and clapped Ian’s sleep-warmed body on the shoulder. “Sounds good, man.”

Ian had walked the remaining length of the hallway, opening the bedroom door— and in the shadows, Lip could see that Mickey was curled on the old, concave mattress of Ian’s single bed that he’d slept on since they were kids— and Ian had lifted the thin blanket and pressed up next to him, the mattress sinking beneath their collective weight, settling in and pressing a kiss to the top of a snoring Mickey’s head without a second thought. Huh.

That was the beginning of Lip starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, this time with Mickey would be different— and it was. As Mickey started to become a daily fixture in the Gallagher house, constantly pinned to Ian’s side, Lip had noticed how something solid had shifted—they weren’t reckless kids anymore, for starters. He hadn’t really seen Mick and Ian physically together since Ian was catapulting off the deep end, in the weeks after Ian had gotten dragged away by the P.I.s and Mickey had gotten locked up for some crazy fucking stunt trying to murder Sammy. Things were too intense then, too technicolor—for some reason, Lip thought Mickey being back meant that they’d return to being that way.

But now here was this guy, placing a gentle hand on Ian’s chest and saying “Woah, wait a minute” to protect Ian from the batshit P.O. that had just barged through the door—and Lip couldn’t help but realize that was something that he would have done to protect Ian, in a universe where Mickey was still behind bars.

After then, Lip just kept seeing it— the ways that Mickey showed up for Ian. Not even in the ways that he used to, like forcing Ian to take his meds back when everything was uncertain and Ian was slipping through their fingers like sand in a sieve; but in a more solid, adult way, in a way that made Ian buzz whenever he was around him, in a way that made Ian happier and lighter. And maybe it was just the sex—part of it had to be the fucking sex, considering how loud they always were— but Lip realized, after a couple of weeks of Mickey’s presence in the house before their whole eventual engagement fiasco, that Mickey was Ian’s friend, in addition to all the other things he was. After all the years of uncertainty, they’d finally grown the fuck up— Mickey was someone who brought out the best in Ian, and it was like Ian had been waiting for this moment, for Mickey by his side, before he could fully and totally bloom.

And it was weird how emotional that made Lip— after seeing Ian as a hollow shell in a jumpsuit pushing garbage cans around a college campus, or pretending to be someone he wasn’t who wore patterned button-up shirts and threw around fucking useless five-dollar words that Lip didn’t understand like “gender identity” and “intersectionality”— Ian had finally made it, beyond being the bruised, scrawny kid getting sexually abused by a creepy 30 year old man in the back room of a mini-mart, or getting high off his ass every night and starving himself to fit into a golden thong, or wearing a baggy janitor suit with dark circles under his eyes and pallid skin. Ian had done that shit on his own, and made himself into something in Mickey’s absence, sure— but so much of him being the full, happy person he was in this moment was because of Mickey, and Lip could see that now.

Ian was himself— he wasn’t a shadow anymore.

And that was why Lip had said he thought he should marry Mickey, in the end— because there was no doubt in his mind that Mickey Milkovich wasn’t going anywhere, not anytime soon.

Lip could still see it now, in the way that Ian was lounging comfortably in the living room, like he had his whole life— but now Mickey was resting just as comfortably beside him. It was a few weeks after that night in the kitchen, and Lip had just pitched the FOR SALE sign in the Gallagher front yard— now everyone was huddled in the living room, for what they now knew was one of their last lingering nights in this space. Liam was sitting next to Lip, pressed into his side, seeking the comfort that Lip knew he needed through all of these massive fucking changes— Franny was playing on the floor and Debbie was sitting beside her, and across the room Ian and Mickey were pressed side-by-side on the fraying loveseat, scrolling through the lease document for their new apartment on the battered laptop. They were murmuring things to each other that Lip couldn’t really make out— but Mickey was pressed against Ian, slouching into him slightly, and Ian’s eyes were light. In his flicker of a glance towards them, Lip noticed that Mickey was playing with Ian’s hand, swiping a finger over his wedding ring, as Ian scrolled through the paperwork and started to read all the contract information out loud— and Lip smiled to himself as he tried to tune out all the sappy bullshit that was going on in that corner of the room.

Ian was going to be just fine.

**

Hour later Lip strode out the door to the front porch, a cigarette he’d bummed off of Ian wrapped in his fist— he didn’t smoke anymore, especially not under the same roof as Tami, but there was something about the gravity of this night, of the flimsy red and white sign rooted in the front yard, that made Lip’s fingertips itch for a cigarette and made his brain buzz with the want of nicotine to dull the sharp edges of everything he was feeling—for smoke to float in front of his face while he sat on the front steps just one more time.  

He perched on the front steps as the sun was just starting to set, the fish-scale shadows of the chain link fence encroaching further and further into the yard as he flicked at his lighter.

He heard a light cough from somewhere in front of him— and saw that Mickey was outside too, blowing smoke out of his mouth and leaning against the fence in the front yard facing the house. Lip nodded at him in acknowledgement, then took the first drag. Fuck, he’d needed this.

“You gonna miss this place?”

 Mickey said it into the open air, like he isn’t really talking to Lip— his eyes were off in the distance, staring at the paint-chipped front façade of the house. Which was fucking bullshit—why would Mickey be staring absentmindedly, almost fucking wistfully, at the Gallagher house?

It’s not like he and Mickey didn’t talk— they definitely did, pragmatically flinging banter across the kitchen to each other at breakfast when coordinating rides for Liam or grocery list items when Debbie was off at work, existing in the same space every morning— and Mickey helped him haul literal tons of iron when he’d helped him steal the bikes, had haggled over his cut. But never like this—never with any weight, never in a way that was this casual, or this familial, about fucking feelings.

Part of that was probably because it was hard as fuck to worm your way into the Gallagher family—as wide open as their door always seemed to be, with people filtering in and out and crashing on hallway floors or the lumpy couch, this house only continued to function because of its nucleus— because of Lip and Ian and Carl and Debbie and Fiona and Liam and yes, even Frank. Everyone else was a passerby, an impermanent blip crossing through the way station; Jimmy-Steve, Sean, Carl’s slew of girls, Mandy and Karen.

Monica.

None of them were Gallaghers— none of them considered this place to be home, or got all the privileges that came with that. The Gallaghers, the real Gallaghers, had seen every one of these people come and go— and something slippery suddenly crept into Lip’s realization that despite all the odds, despite all of his doubts about him—Mickey had chosen to stay close to these four walls just as much as Lip had.

“Mickey’s family.” Ian had said it over a mouthful of bacon at breakfast a few weeks ago, and Lip had immediately shot him down; but maybe there was some truth to what Ian had said, some truth to the oddly unfailing consistency to Mickey’s ten years. Which meant that maybe…

Maybe it was time to make a fucking peace offering, or whatever.

Lip hummed in acknowledgement to Mickey’s question, pulling himself out of his train of thought.

“Hey. Mick.”

Mickey looked up at where Lip was leaning on the porch, his brows furrowing like he was bracing himself for a confrontation. “Yeah?”

“My head’s been too far up my ass the past couple of months to say it, but, uh. I’m glad you’re family, y’know?”

He’d been passively thinking it for months— but he’d never said it to Mickey, never this directly. He hoped Mickey got it, without brushing it off or shooting him down with some snarky fucking comment like he always did. Lip meant it— he was glad, he was grateful, he was ready to let Mickey Milkovich keep being a part of his fucked up familial life. And he hoped that Mickey saw that.

Mickey just rolled his eyes, taking another drag of his cigarette—but he didn’t say anything in reply, not for a moment. And then:

“You’re as sappy as your fucking brother, Phillip.”

[skinks]

I had a REALLY intense beatles phase in my late teens and i had the hots for paul mccartney and one time i found this story where this woman said she met paul at a party in 65 and he took her home and they talked until the sun came up and then he got a call telling him to come to the studio and he started to say he had to leave and she was like "not before you fuck me" and he laughed and then he DID and he left her alone in his house after and she stole his underwear (1/2)

(which she kept for decades until her husband threw them into their muddy front yard one day in a fit of jealousy) and a teapot and it always made me absolutely FERAL with jealous horny rage and like?? just this incredulous feeling of How On Earth Did That Really Happen and anyway bill hader’s dumpster mattress one night stand story is my new version of that (2/2)

The fucking journey this just took me on, holy shit. Did she at least get to keep the teapot?

I love that you had an intense teenage horny phase for a Beatle, I had one for Bob Dylan and I remember watching one of his electric era tour documentaries and being HORRIBLY jealous of the 60s girls hanging around outside his hotel... anyway that’s besides the point

I UNDERSTAND!!!!! THE MATTRESS STORY HAUNTS ME.... Bhader knows what he’s doing, he can try to couch it in as much self-deprecating oh-I’m-just-an-awkward-nerd fronting as he likes but he KNOWS what he’s doing and that woman knew it too. You ever notice how it’s the most competent ones who don’t feel the need to loudly prove themselves by being anything other than humble?? What did he SAY in that club! “It was going well,” he says, what does that MEAN, BILL, what did he fuckjfdkjcnnfkcning do that convinced this woman to leave the club, go to her place, lift a bed onto a car, go to HIS place and move furniture when she was literally moving to a new city the next day all so sHE COULD FUCK HIMMMM HOW IS HIS GAME THAT GOOD I FEEL LIKE A CHARACTER IN AN EDGAR ALLEN POE STORY BEING SLOWLY DRIVEN MAD BY THIS UNANSWERED MYSTERY

Ok sorry, I’m back. This is making me want to read a fic where (before they get together) Eddie watches an old interview of Richie telling the mattress story and he’s a seething ball of jealousy too. Then Richie comes out, he and Eddie sort their shit and get together, and one day Eddie laughingly comments that he had no reason to be jealous after all since Richie was obviously making the story up.

Richie looks at him weirdly. “I didn’t make up—that story did actually happen, Eds, I only changed it so people thought I went home with a chick.”

They are lying in bed. Eddie’s eye starts twitching. “Pardon?”

“Yeah?” Richie stretches, draping his right arm over his own head to scratch his left ear. Eddie will not be distracted by his chest right now, what the fuck. Richie squints at the ceiling. “I think his name was... Marco, or something. At least, that’s the name he gave to quote unquote Chris.”

“Marco, okay. Huh.”

“I wanted to be Lance or something cool, but my friend said I inhabited Chris better, I dunno. I didn’t even tell him why I needed a fake name, he was just like, big into method.”

“Yeah, mhmm.” Eddie sits up, nodding. He can’t stop nodding. His head feels like a champagne cork fizzing at the top of his spine. “So you, you uh—you were such a fucking player in your plaid and your baggy jeans that, that, that were the only things you even owned back then, Rich—don’t try to deny, it I’ve seen the pictures—that you convinced some guy who was moving town the next fucking day—”

Richie’s eyebrows shoot upwards. It makes his eyes look rounder, more delighted. “Convinced? Eddie—”

Eddie can’t stop, twisting the sheets in his hands til his knuckles go white. “Yes, convinced, you convinced him to go pick up some dirty mattress right off the street with a complete stranger even though you always make such a big deal about how awkward and nervous and repressed you were, you still, you still—”

“I was probably on molly or something at the time, man.” Richie’s beaming up at him. He pokes Eddie in the arm. Eddie feels how tense the muscle is, and fights to relax. “I’m kidding, at worst it was just a little tipsy driving. A little Wacky Races. Just call me Dick Bastardly.” Richie grins at his own dumbass joke, poking Eddie some more. “And it wasn’t just the mattress by the way, it was the whole bed. That’s a key detail. Headboard and everything.”

“The headboard?!” Eddie tries not to yell, but it comes out louder than he means to anyway. More of a shriek, embarrassingly. He lurches around in place to glare at their own flat bar of wood behind them. He holds onto that thing! It supports him, even when Richie’s fucking him into the wall!

Betrayal is neverending today, apparently. Eddie turns his glare onto Richie, who is laughing. “Stop laughing!”

“Your face,” Richie gasps. He covers his own face, then changes tack and yanks Eddie down over him to cackle into his flaming-hot throat. “What’s the problem! You’re acting like this is the same fucking bed, oh my god, you think I haven’t at least changed my mattress since I lived like a—like a Beavis and Butthead parody in Westwood, fifteen years ago?”

Eddie squirms miserably. Not even Richie’s broad nakedness against his can salvage this, he’s well and truly destroyed their sweet afterglow with his stupid overreaction. Feels like being fifteen again, ruining clubhouse hangouts with his snappy sulking as soon as Richie mentioned some girl at school. “No! No, obviously fucking not, just. I dunno.”

He doesn’t really deserve the gentle tease in Richie’s voice. “What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know!”

And that’s the part he hates most.

“Okay, okay. I think I do. Jesus, you’re actually jealous,” Richie breathes. He bites his lip, the way he does when he’s so happy about something he’s making a real effort not to talk over it. He’s still a little sweaty and pink from their Friday night activities, bedraggled hair and no glasses. The expression always scrunches his left eye into a full squint, something Eddie finds so helplessly appealing he can’t imagine what it’s like to watch that interview and not feel jealous.

Eddie grunts, shrugs as best he can under Richie’s heavy hug. Fucking Marco.

Richie’s hand is firm on the back of his neck. There’s pressure from his thumb at one point of Eddie’s jaw, the soft part between ear and bone that has him gulping open for Richie’s low murmur, “Eddie baby, don’t be jealous.” Their mouths meet and Eddie sighs into the slick warmth of it, feeling grateful and abashed and idiotic all at once.

They separate with a little snick of spit. Richie lids his eyes open just a touch, looking drowsy with affection. Eddie lowers his forehead to Richie’s shoulder and speaks to his collarbone. “I just—I hate it when you act like people are just doing you a favor for, for liking your shit or fucking going home with you when clearly it was—you’re fucking hot, Rich, and, and sexy when you’re not trying to be, and you were hot back then too, but you still act like it was a miracle anyone wanted to even touch you when I—I always would’ve picked the stupid dirty bed up off the street too. For you. And I wouldn’t’ve moved town the day after. So.”

Richie doesn’t speak for a moment. There is a cloud above their shared, clean bed, implicit with shared memory of all the times they dirtied each other’s sheets with grass stains and grubby feet, chip crumbs and even tears, just once, just before Eddie really did move town and forgot all the things he cared about so much more than he ever cared about getting sick.

He would never leave again though, is his point. Richie always seems to know what he means before Eddie does. He tries to think it loud enough, brings his hand up blindly to Richie’s face and strokes back his hair, not because Richie is a mind reader, but because he knows what it means that Eddie has never wanted to touch someone else like this.

Eddie’s spine then, curving under Richie’s knuckles like brushing a shiver along a set of wind chimes. His hand lands on Eddie’s tailbone, an X marks the spot that still throbs with loosened heat and pleasure from his orgasm. Lying on your front is bad for your posture.

I’m not lying on my front, Eddie thinks, with a little of the vicious defiance he doles out to that cloying voice sometimes, the one that tries to ruin quiet moments with its fretting. I’m lying on Richie’s. He’s good for my posture. He’s gonna snap my spine back into place and this time I’ll let him touch me.

Richie presses their temples together, small-voiced. “I guess... I find most of the flattery shit hard to believe. I didn’t like myself or the stuff I was making, so I’d automatically assume they were lying, y’know? If I agree it implies I believe them, which makes me feel like some giant, arrogant dick—don’t say it.” He pats Eddie on the ass. “But, on the other hand, if I think I’m somehow important enough for people to lie to, that’s kind of an arrogant dick move too.”

Eddie pushes up to eyeball him. “Even with sex? That’s so fucking dumb.”

This second ass-pat is harder, more of a stinging smack. Richie’s guarded look coils into a grin again at Eddie’s bared-teeth hiss. “I never said it wasn’t.”

“Well, I mean, what do you think it meant that fucking Marco—” Richie snorts at the projectile venom burning acidic holes through Eddie’s voice, “—was clearly willing to catch fleas or goddamn tetanus just to fuck you? What about me? You think I’m pretending it’s good just to encourage your weird, unnecessary inferiority thing? ”

“No, you’re right,” Richie laughs. His snorts have bubbled into full-blown giggles now as he squints down at the mess between their stomachs. “That’s pretty hard evidence you’re providing there, Eds.”

Getting harder too, rubbed up against the soft crease of Richie’s hip. Eddie can feel the lingering red throb of heat on his ass, like closing his eyes and still catching the gold-coin flash of the sun branded on the inside of his eyelids. Richie digs his blunt nails into the stung tenderness of his skin and gently pulls Eddie’s asscheeks open. He feels Richie’s quickened breathing against his wet mouth, and wonders how to ask for another spank in a way that isn’t gonna make him want to enter witness protection afterwards.

“I can’t believe you were jealous, you’re the last guy in the world who needs to be jealous,” Richie moans. Eddie feels the vibration of it on his tongue, now sucking on the knot of Richie’s adam’s apple. “Wait, can you really get tetanus from abandoned street beds?”

“Ugh!” Eddie bites him there and pulls off slowly, sucking so the stubbled skin of Richie’s strong throat is released from his mouth’s suction with a wet pop. Richie’s hips flex against him. “I almost wish this was the same fucking bed just so I had something to throw out into the yard!”

“O-ooh, how telenovela of you, I like it.”

Oh Christ, Eddie has to put some kinda stop to this before Richie starts speaking Spanish. He needs to last. He needs to beat Marco. “I’ll throw you out with it,” he says, too breathy and honest for anywhere else but here. “Trashmouth. Sweetheart.”

Richie’s face is flushed, eyes dark and desperate. He grips at Eddie’s ribs so hard Eddie feels them bending. “Dumpster diver.”

Eddie rolls his hips down, plants his palms on either side of Richie, shoves them under the pillows. He braces his elbows hard into Richie’s shoulders and grinds their sweaty foreheads together, but whatever aggression there is within him is softened by his catapulting heartbeat, harmonising with his own laughter. With Richie’s, always.

“Nah, ‘fraid the only thing left to remember that half-night stand with Marco is, well.” Richie looks down between them again, eyes almost crossed. “It’s me. My dick, more specifically.”

Eddie can feel as much. Another wave of possessiveness froths through him, crackling in the pockets of his joints, feels like cartoon steam whistling out his ears. “It better not be half-standing because it remembers anything about fucking Marco,” he snarls.

Richie raises his hands in a down boy gesture. It shifts his arms and shoulders in the way that sometimes makes Eddie wish he were a door, just so Richie could ram him open, and so he pins Richie’s wrists to the bed instead.

“Please don’t throw my dick out into the yard, babe,” Richie says.

“Gonna give you something to remember this fucking bed by,” Eddie says, and slides down Richie’s body to do just that.

[midnight-the-goth-artist]

Parenting Has The Word Renting In It.

"Look I know this is a bad idea but we need you to be on your best behavior okay?" His mom said fixing her glove. He never seen her so stressed out.

"We know you're always on your best behavior but Mommy and Daddy need you to times it by a hundred okay?" His dad asked bending down and quickly looking behind him.

"He's really doing us a favor and we need it okay?"

"Plus your making new friends! He has six nice children you could play with." His dad had tried to motive him to befriend them all the time. As to be on Father's good side he always stayed clearly he wanted to impress him.

"Okay." He moans hating the idea. He hated those dorks with everything he had.

"Dicksons let's go!" Father yelled holding his car keys."I don't pay or do favors for you to be flimsy!"

"Coming, sir!" They yelled kissing their son and running out the door. "Bye Honey!"

The blonde sighs rubbing the lipstick stain his mom left he hated her strong make up it was tough to wipe off.

"Hello, Chadwick." A chorus of voices sang. He knew who they belonged to he clenched his fist so he wouldn't react. "It's a beautiful day isn't it."

That's what they want. Be cool and nice and you'll make it out alive.

"It's just Chad actually." He smiles turning around to go stare them in their eye. "And sure it is."

Bruce smiled as he did with a darker look than his siblings. Chad felt his already puffed up hair flare up more from fear.

"Oh! Our deepest apologies we forget. Join us for some tea won't you?"

"Sure?" He laughs as Lenny takes his hand. He so desperately wanted to remove it.

They brought him to the living room where a plate of tea was served with a side of strawberry cake.

While it was his favorite flavor he didn't try to eat it. He took a cup of tea as Ashley poured it."Are you aware of the kids next door?" They ask quickly.

"Yes." The blonde wondered where this was going. If they knew he was in training. "What of it?"

"Well, we have the same understanding that our parents have a similar goal." they started fixing themselves some tea. "To be rid of the kids next door."

"We want to work together with you and defeat them." They sounded as if they told him the greatest news of his life.

"But why me exactly?" He cringed by tightening his hold on his cup knowing it sounded rude.

"Mr. Fizz's son is already a member of the baby club. And so is Mr.Boss's daughter."

"We have been talking to the Common Cold's niece who is happy to help."

"All that's left is you what do you say?"

Oh, Zero no!

"I'll talk about it later with my parents." He said looking out the window he wondered how long he could use that excuse before they caught on.

"Certainly, take all the time in the world!" They smiled thinking they won him over. They began talking about some of there plans their Father's work and all sorts of plans. Along with scattered trash talk of other villains kids. How Fanny was brash and a twit. About a hundred's insecurities and many others. 

If they say this about them what are they going to say about me when they realize?

A sound boomed in the air it was high pitched and annoying. It causes him to drop the tea on the table.

"Is that a baby?" He asks looking behind him as he cleaned the table. "Is that the sixth Wigglestien?"

"Ahh yes, our baby brother Nigel." They said sourly hatred dripping from their voices. "He's been throwing fits lately. And Father getting annoyed."

"He's either giving him up or hiring someone to take care of him." Chad was distributed on how cool it was said. Like giving up on a baby who didn't know any better was a normal thing. "But anyway don't worry about it he stops after a few minutes." They shrugged handing more tea.

But that's the thing about it. The poor thing kept crying for twenty more minutes. "Oh, God!" They yelled getting up. "I can't believe this!"

"Oh, all the days to leave a whimpering bailing baby!" They busted into the room a few minutes later they David came out holding a dark baby.

He screamed and screamed as they tried everything. Chad felt bad for the poor thing as he seemed skinny and unhealthy not to mention they were holding him wrong. He remembered his lessons a hundred's teachings.

"May I try something?" He asked them after five minutes of screaming he reaches over for him. "I think I might be able to help."

"Please he's been like this since his birth." They snapped handing him over. "He just hates everyone." Chad gently takes him holding him the proper way. He gently shushes him the way he has seen a hundred do with crying cadets. He cringe when Nigel wiped his face on his sweater snot all over where his face was.

"Where do you keep his bottles?" He asked them as Nigel didn't seem to be settled down and his diaper didn't seem full at all.

"In the fridge on the bottom." They said following him. They were surprised at Chad's ability to help Nigel. No matter what they did Nigel hated them and Father's help never helped. Chad was a complete stranger yet Chad was able to soothe him in a matter of moments.

"How are you doing that?" Chad looked up from the nursing babe. "Feeding him?"

"Getting him to like you." They came close in a way he didn't want them too as they looked into his arms. "He's never like this."

"Really? Do you take him to the doctor and ask why?" His dad once mentioned he was the same and a doctor's visit had fixed it.

"We stopped going after she said he was fine after his tenth visit last month.Put him down and let's get back to business." They said reaching for Nigel Chad reluctantly handed him back.

Ahh, yet it didn't work out. Nigel cried yet again when Chad was out of his sight his high pitches screams made him run back to him as he didn't trust the older siblings. The Delightful children didn't understand why their brother had become so clingy when they saw Chad tending to him again.

"Well, we had things to be doing anyway. Do whatever this is we'll be back within the hour when your parents pick you up."

"Wait I-" He was can't off by the slam of the door he sighs looking back at the babe his big eyes stared at him as he stood in his crib indicating he wanted to be held.

Babysitting can't be that hard can't it?

He thinks placing him on the ground and takes a book from the shelf he stays their reading to Nigel who stayed in his lap. He had to admit he was heavy for being a small baby. He was about to place him to sleep when someone came in.

He shushes them not getting a good look as he positions him on his chest to sleep. He springs out of the room as to not wake him up the moment he stops squirming. He sighs in relief as he saw his parents he jumped out of his skin seeing Father and the Dcfdtl.

"How did you do that?" He asks sternly towering over him. "Do what?" He asks his lip quivering.

"Get him to calm down. He never goes down without a fight." He said reminding himself of all the times Nigel screamed for hours. "You put him down easily."

"My friend taught me." He says thinking of 100's lessons. "It's easy once you get the hang of it." 

"Trust me parenting is hard." His parents smiled at each other knowingly. "And stupid at times."

"How would you like to take a crack at it?" He says bending down.

"Crack at what?" He backs up a bit away from him.

"Parenting. He seems to like you and hate us." He hears a similar tone of voice before from his kids he was going to talk him into something.

"Isn't he your baby." He looks back to said baby snoring away he was cute if he was his dad he wouldn't give him up.

"Rent is literally in the name of parent. Your smart like your mom you could handle it."

"I-"

"Great! I'll drop him off tomorrow. You'll get a check every week." He says leaving the room.

Chad gawked for a second at his back and looked back to his parents and delightful children.

"Oh, how wonders we have our own house again!" They said eyes bright. "We no longer have to deal with him?!"

"Father this is amazing! Thank you!"

Chad's eyes popped out if his head as everyone just agreed to it. He without his consent became a parent.

He looks back to his own shocked his mouth wide open.

"Oh, Chad don't worry we'll watch out for him for you." She said looking in the room."We raised you."

"And you were a piece of cake. So should he." His dad said ruffling his hair.

Chad went home with that thought that he just be a big brother instead of a dad. That's his parents were going to deal with it.

Parenting can't be that hard, can it?

The rude reality smacks him in the face when a piercing cry woke him up in the middle of the night. He opened his door to see Nigel screaming his head off with his mom trying her best.

Oh Christ did they have to deal with this? He thinks about how they said he hated everyone.

"Hey honey sorry we woke you. Nigel has been fussy." She says walking up and down the stairs. He watches her do this in the dark for five minutes until he came and took him.

They stood shocked as Nigel calmed down in minutes only for him to cry once his dad took him.

"Wow. He's got a good set of lungs doesn't he?" His father jokes around trying to lift the mood.

He senses the glares his way. "Sorry."

"Okay then want to try again?" She asks turning on the light and reaching for him.

"No." He snaps going to his room and going to sleep with Nigel in his arms. The baby refusing to leave felt at peace and he needed some of that.

Being a dad sucks.

I wonder will he do this when I go to school. Can they strive that?

~~~~

First: Father, you suck🖕

And Chad,

Take care of our boy🥺💖✨💕✨

[mosylufanfic]

5 Times They Ate Alone (and one time they didn't)

A giftfic for @thatkillervibe, because she turned in her thesis! Wooooooo!

5 Times They Ate Alone (and one time they didn't)

1. Friday Night

His phone pinged with a text and Cisco looked up, blinking, from his video game. He pulled it out of his pocket, went to open the text, and accidentally answered a call that started coming in that moment. Wincing, because nobody called except telemarketers, he said, "Yes?"

"Cisco Ramon?" said a brisk female voice.

Gearing himself up to turn down an extended car warranty or something, he said, "Yes, but - "

"Hi, this is the front desk of Star House," the female voice went on. "You have a food delivery."

"I - a what?"

"A food delivery," she said. "Please come get it."

"Uh, yeah, I'm on my way."

She hung up and left him blinking at the screen. He tapped the text and confirmed that his burrito was on the premises, which left him even more confused.

First of all, Kevin usually had the evening shift at the front desk, and second of all, he'd never called even once for a food delivery. Usually he lifted a lazy hand and said "'Sup," as Cisco came to meet the delivery people, if he looked away from his tablet at all. 

Shaking his head, Cisco headed down to the lobby to collect his food. 

"Cisco?" the delivery guy said, unzipping his insulated bag. "Carne asada burrito, chips and guac, and an orange Fanta?"

"Yep," he said, taking the fragrant paper bag and the sweating cup from him. "Thanks."

"Have a good day," the delivery guy said, and disappeared to his next quest to bring deliciousness to people who didn't want to leave their house. 

Cisco set his food on the desk and paused to look at the attendant. She was a cute white girl with a reddish-chestnut ponytail and a giant chemistry book spread out in front of her. She looked vaguely familiar.

She sensed his gaze and looked up. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"You're not Kevin," he said.

"No," she said. "He went home for the long weekend. I picked up his shifts. And some others."

His mood brightened. Everyone he knew had gone home until Monday or Tuesday. Definitely everyone on his floor. Somehow this was the holiday weekend every freshman went home for. "So you're staying on campus the whole weekend, too?" 

"Yes," she said. 

"Cisco," he said, offering his hand. 

"I know," she said, not taking it.

He cocked his head. "And your name is?"

She tapped her name tag. It read Caitlin.

"Cool," he said. "Nice to know I'm not going to be all alone in this mausoleum."

"You're not," she said. "There are at least five other people still here."

In a dorm with six floors, that actually wasn't that many. "Well, I haven't seen them," he said, peering at her book. "Hey, is that the Chem 201 book? Who do you have?"

"Professor McGee," she said, "and so do you. You're in my lecture."

"I am?" No wonder she looked familiar. Although it was a giant lecture, at least three hundred students. "Huh, no way. What are you working on?"

"Studying for the test."

He went rigid with alarm - test oh shit what test - but whipped out his phone and checked his calendar. "Geez," he said, wilting against the desk. "Don't freak me out like that. The test isn't until Friday."

"I know," she said. "I really need to study."

"Uh, that's a literal week away. Like, today is Friday, and the test is in seven whole entire days. You don't need to be studying on a holiday weekend."

"I do if I don't want to get a B," she said. 

From her tone, a B was apocalyptic. The end of the world. Dishonor on her, dishonor on her cow. 

"Um," he said. "Ever heard how C's get degrees?"

"They don't get me into med school."

Damn, this chick was hard-core. 

"Okay," he said. "I'm just saying maybe you could afford to relax a little, in the first semester of freshman year."

Very pointedly, she turned a page and started writing out an equation. 

"Right," he said. "Studying. Got it."

On his way back up, he wondered if she'd had any dinner. He ate a chip and shook his head. She was fine, probably.

2. Saturday Afternoon

But the solitude got to him again by lunchtime the next day. Even though he was happy not to have to battle anybody for the showers, the empty halls were more than a little eerie. In his short time at CCU, he'd gotten used to voices and laughter and yelling outside his door. Texting people and getting random, scattershot answers as they all replied in between whatever fun things they were doing at home really wasn't a substitute for human contact.

His roommate had predicted this when he'd announced his intention of staying, but Cisco had laughed and waved it off.

"Video games and takeout all day and night," he crowed. 

Yeah, that had seemed like fun at the time. 

When his phone rang, he grabbed it. “Hey!”

“This is the front - “

“Hi, Caitlin. My food here?”

“Yes, please come -“

“On my way.” He loped down the hall. Even though Caitlin seemed to hate him for no reason, she was at least another human face.

The pizza guy was trying to flirt with her, if the way he was leaning on the desk was any indication. She had her head bent over her textbook again, scowling. Cisco felt his mood lift. Clearly it wasn't personal, she just didn't like anybody.

He stood there for a good thirty seconds before pointedly clearing his throat. “Pepperoni and mushroom?” he said loudly.

"Oh," the pizza guy said, looking around. "Oh, yeah. And a two-liter of Cherry Coke." He handed it over, the credit card slip on top, and leaned on the desk again with a smooth smile. "Hey, you know, there's always free pies at work. I could go and get one and bring it back. What do you like?"

Dude, Cisco thought as he signed the slip, seriously? That was some lame-ass flirting.

"I'm really very busy," Caitlin said. 

"Oh, yeah, you look busy. You should take a break. Rest your brain." He grinned again. 

Caitlin stared at her textbook. Now that Cisco was really looking, he noticed her eyes weren't moving and her pen was still. She was just waiting for the guy to go away. 

If waiting was even the right word. More like enduring. Suffering.

The pizza guy didn't seem to want to move. When his eyes flickered over and a frown crossed his forehead, Cisco realized he was waiting, too - for him to leave. So he could continue with his awful, unwelcome flirting.

Well, all right then.

Cisco set his pizza box down on the counter and opened it all the way up. Then he opened the two-liter and waited for the fizz to die down before lifting it to his lips and swigging straight from the bottle, eyes directly on Pizza Creep.

Who turned away and said, "I get a lot of perks from this gig. It's pretty sweet. One time I delivered a bunch of pies and they paid me a hundred dollars to go pick up a keg. I'm twenty-one, so I can do that. You want me to pick you up something? Wine coolers?"

"There's no drinking in this dorm," Caitlin said. 

Cisco almost choked on his second swig of Coke. If she believed that, she either didn't live here or she never looked up from her chem book. 

Her eyes flicked over to him, with something almost like a smile in them. Then she glanced back at the pizza guy and looked fixedly down at her book.

"I'm off at six," Pizza Creep said. "We should go out."

Cisco picked up a slice of pizza, folded it in half, and stuck it in his mouth. "Mmmmmm," he said, loud and obnoxious through his mouthful. "Goo' pi'a."

Pizza Creep looked up. "Dude? Do you mind?"

"Not at all," Cisco said, and took another bite. "You go right ahead." He swigged again, carbonation buzzing in the back of his throat. He swallowed it down as hard as he could and took another swig.

Pizza Creep looked away. "Anyway, I could come back here, pick you up . . . We could go to a club. What do you think?" He reached over the desk to trail his finger over her wrist. She pulled her hand away. "Bet you look real cute in clubbing clothes."

Cisco let out a burp that rattled the window panes. Pizza Creep said, "Jesus, dude!"

Caitlin pressed her hand to her mouth, and her shoulders started shaking. For a bad moment Cisco thought she was crying, because some pizza creep was hitting on her and some mannerless freshman had just basically burped right in her face -

But then the giggles spilled out around her hand, and her face was squished up all cute and dimples were digging themselves into her cheeks.

Pizza Creep said, "God. Fine." He pushed himself away from the desk. "Didn't really even want to go out with you. Ice cold bitch." He grabbed his pizza sleeve and stormed out the front door as Caitlin wound down.

When she had stopped gasping for breath, Cisco said, "Sorry about the burping and the talking with my mouth full and you know. I was trying to drive him off."

"Thank you," she said. "I've, um, I've never been rescued in quite that way before."

"Eighteen years as a little brother," he said. "Annoying people is my superpower." He closed the Cherry Coke and started to pull the lid over the pizza. He paused. "Want a slice?"

She shook her head. "I had lunch already."

"Really? What?"

"A sandwich."

"Okay," he said. "Well, I might have a slice or two left so if you get hungry, you can call me." He glanced at her book. Chem again. "Or if you need someone to shuffle flashcards or something."

Her smile died away and she looked at him sternly.

"Whoa," he said. "I'm not trying to flirt like Pizza Creep there. I'm just - my roommate went home, and all my friends went home, and actually video games all by myself are kind of boring after the third or fourth hour in a row. Just saying, it'd be nice to hang out. You know. Break up the monotony."

Her stern expression softened. "I'm working until ten," she said. "But thanks." 

She bent over her book again, clearly very ready to get back to work, and he accepted the gentle brush-off. He stuck his soda under his armpit like a football, balanced the pizza box on the other arm, and headed back to his room.

Still, he reflected as he waited for the elevator, she was awfully cute when she laughed.

3. Saturday Night

Around five-thirty, he went past the front desk and found it empty. He stood blinking, feeling more than a little dismayed.

"Hello?" he called out.

From the communal kitchen, he heard a gasp before she came scrambling out. "Sorry!" she said. "Sorry. I just stepped away and - sorry. How can I help you?"

"Chill," he said. "It's fine. I just wanted to say hi."

"Oh," she said. "Hi."

"Hi," he said again. "So, what are you studying tonight? Still chem? My offer of flashcard wrangler stands."

"No, it's European History right now. An essay."

 "Let me guess, due in November?"

"Due on Thursday."

"I'm not in that class with you too, am I?"

She smiled. Oh, look at that, still cute. "No, you're not."

"Oh good, because I definitely would be failing, on account of not going even once. So what's your essay?"

"The role of trade routes between urban centers in the spread of the bubonic plague."

He blinked. "Oh, great. Light-hearted and fluffy, I see."

"There are actually a lot of parallels to current pandemic models," she said. "It's very interesting from a public health standpoint."

"Well, cool. Sounds like fun."

"It is." She tugged her shirt straight and brushed at a flyaway hair. "Are you waiting for another food delivery?"

"No, I was actually gonna go and get something."

"Everything on campus is closed," she said. 

"Not the Grille. Right?"

"Well, no, but they close in - " She glanced at the time. "About an hour."

"More than enough time." He gave her a little salute. "You want me to bring you anything?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine."

He squinted at her. "You eat, right?"

"Yes, but I have food here." Off in the kitchen, the microwave beeped.

"Oh no," he said. "Really? Some sad little cheapass microwave meal that you're going to eat over your bubonic plague research?"

"It's fine," she said. "It's Easy Mac."

He made a pained face. "Easy Mac is for two in the morning when everything's closed or 'I haven't eaten in eight hours and am legit going to pass out before I can  walk to the buffet.' Not for a meal. This is the whole reason they give us meal plans." He waved his student ID.

"I got it at the convenience store last week. With my meal plan dollars."

"You were ripped off," he said. "Okay, look, are you on some kind of weird ass diet? Paleo or whole thirty or whatever the latest excuse for not enjoying food is?"

"No," she said. "I am really, seriously fine with my Easy Mac and you should go before they start to close down all the food stations."

He glanced at the time and conceded her point. "Okay," he said, heading out the door. "Just saying. You have my number. Shoot me a text if you change your mind. I can bring back french fries or a tuna sandwich or you know, whatever."

"I won't," she called after him. "But thank you!"

4. Sunday Afternoon

Cisco took yesterday's pizza down to the kitchen. He could have stuck it in the microwave in his room, yeah, but this was a chance to get out of his room and stretch his legs.

Also maybe to hang out and talk to Caitlin again.

When he got there, she was riffling through her stacks of paper and textbooks, a frown digging between her brows.

"Hey," he said, setting his plate down. "Everything okay?"

"I thought I had it . . ." she mumbled. 

"What?"

"My sociology book. Ugh!" She kept looking.

He went to put his pizza in the microwave and came back. She'd moved everything from one side of the desk to the other and looked completely frazzled. 

"It's probably in your room," he said. 

"I know it is, I was working on the readings last night. I must not have put it in my bag. Ugh." She pushed her hair out of her eyes. "I wanted to finish that. Now my whole study schedule is going to be off."

"Run up and get it," he suggested. "You live here, right?"

"Of course I do, I just - I can't leave the desk for that long."

He looked around the empty lobby, shading his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I can see how you're super-busy."

She wrinkled her nose at him.

The microwave beeped and he went to retrieve his food. When he came back, she was grumpily rearranging all the books again, pouting at a color-coded piece of paper that was clearly her totaled study schedule.

"Look," he said, flapping his hand over the hot pizza to cool it down. "Why don't I watch the desk for you? Just for five minutes. Go get your text, get your homework done, and stop fretting."

"I'm not fretting," she said indignantly.

"You're fretting all over the place. I'm capable of holding down this fort. Go."

She bit her lip, looked at her schedule again, and got up. "Okay, just - if anyone comes in, ask them for their student ID, and if they don't live here, you have to ask them who they're visiting and call that person. Same for food delivery, except they're not allowed to just go wandering around the halls, the person has to come get it. The numbers are in this binder here, and if the mail comes - oh, wait, it's Sunday. No mail. Okay." She tucked her hair behind her ears. "Okay, I'll be right back."

"Okay," he said, plopping himself in her chair. "I'll be here."

She rushed off toward the elevators.

He chewed on his reheated pizza and surveyed the back of the desk. It was covered in all the little notes and shorthand of a desk that several people shared. Notes of people not to let in - apparently, 542 had a nasty ex. Hours and locations of things on campus. A schedule, Caitlin's name in every block from noon on Friday.

He opened the binder. The first page was clearly the workers, because it had another copy of the schedule and a list of phone numbers and room numbers. He noted Caitlin's - 401. Whoa. She'd been one floor up for two months. He could have just gone up the stairs. Why had they never met?

Well, they'd met now.

He considered the phone number, then shut the binder. Taking note of a girl's room, that was one thing. Taking their phone number without their knowledge was something else.

The crust of the pizza was all gross and tough from being reheated. He tried gnawing at it for a moment, then decided it was too nasty and threw it away. It landed on top of a paper plate with a few crumbs and a corner of dried-up bread crust. She must have had another sandwich for lunch.

The elevator dinged, and he dropped her study schedule on top of her stack of books. She came out with the wayward soc book tucked under her arm. "Thanks," she said. "How was it?" 

"So busy," he said, vacating the seat. "So, so busy. I'm dying. I don't know how you do it." 

She wrinkled her nose at him again and settled in, but didn't move to open the textbook. "I know you think I'm silly, but I really planned to get some work done this weekend. Maybe work ahead and buy myself some breathing room mid-semester."

"Is that why you stayed? To study?"

She looked away. "Not really."

He was quiet, leaving space open for her to talk.

"I didn't want to go home," she said. "I know most people did, to see their friends and - I just didn't."

"Not even your parents?"

"My mom works a lot."

She didn't mention her dad, he noticed.

"So there's nobody at home that I want to see," she finished up. 

He raised his brows. When she didn't go on, he said, "Nobody from high school? Nobody you want to reunite with? Nobody you want to tell all about your adventures at college?"

She played with her study schedule, folding the corner over. "I've never been a social kind of person," she said. "And after senior year - no, nobody."

He studied here. There was a story there, in that cut-off phrase. "What happened?" he said gently. "Senior year."

She folded her schedule again, and a third time. Just when he thought she wasn't going to answer, she said, "I had a boyfriend."

"Many people do."

"His name was Hunter," she went on. "He was popular and cute and smart and I couldn't believe it when we started dating. He made me feel so special. And his friends were so nice. I'd never had a group of friends before. He was sweet and kind and just, just perfect."

"Sounds like a prince," Cisco contributed, wondering how this story ended.

"He was," she said. "I thought. But the other thing about him was that he lied. He lied about everything. His ex and his car and where he was when I texted and even his grades."

"Ooo," Cisco said. "Not so princely."

"Nuh-uh. Sometimes I think he lied just because he could. And when I figured out he was lying, he would even lie about that! He would look me in the eyes and tell me that I must have lost my homework when I'd seen him take it off my desk before he left my house." She heaved a sigh. "And when I got tired of that and broke up with him, he - "

"Let me guess," Cisco said. "He started lying about you."

"It turned out that all my new friends weren't really my friends, they were his. And people who didn't care about me one way or the other, before, they were all happy to believe I was a crazy bitch who made up stories when I got dumped. So." She smoothed her schedule out. "I'm really not that excited about going home."

"I get that." He folded his arms on the top of the desk and rested his chin on them. "Hunter's a moron. You know that, right?"

"He cheated in every class," she said. "Every single one."

It made him smile a little. She sounded so indignant. "Well, yeah, there's that. But I mean, he was a moron to treat a girl like you that way. You didn't deserve that, not from him or his friends."

She smiled a little. "Thanks. I've made friends here, you know," she added. "My roommate and some others. They're just all gone for the weekend."

"Except me," he said.

She blinked up at him. "Right," she said. "Except you." 

He gave the desk a little knock. "Well, I won't disrupt your study schedule anymore, but you know where to find me if you need a break."

5. Sunday Night 

When Cisco put in the order, he didn't wait for it to arrive, but took himself downstairs almost right away. 

"Hey,” he called out, and Caitlin’s head popped up, a smile brightening her face. 

“Hi!”

He grinned. “Listen, is it okay with you if I hook up my console to the TV in the rec room? I could play in my room but it's, you know. Lonely."

"I'm fine with that," she said, getting up to hold the door. "What are you playing?"

"Not sure. I finished two big games so far this weekend, so maybe something quick and fun."

She leaned in the doorway, watching him set up. He glanced at her. “Wanna play? Study break.”

She played with the strings on her shirt. “I’m kind of studied out,” she admitted. 

He clutched his heart. “Quick, check the weather, I want to see where the pigs are flying.”

She made a face at him. 

“If you're too tired to study, you really need to play something.” His screen popped up and he handed her a controller. 

(Okay, yeah he might have been planning this offer. Sue him.)

“The desk,” she said, not very forcefully. 

“If you sit right there at the end of the couch, you can see it,” he said. “Ever played Mario Kart?”

She tilted her head, then reached for the second controller. 

"I'll take it easy on you," he said. "Promise."

"Thank you, I appreciate that," she said, and wiped the floor with him. 

“Oh my god!" he wailed as her car careened over the finish line a full lap ahead of him. "I’ve been hustled. You hustler.”

“I never said I hadn’t played before,” she said. “You assumed.”

“And I made an ass out of myself,” he said. "But seriously, you don't strike me as the gamer girl type."

"Video games have been shown to increase hand-eye coordination and hone problem-solving skills." She flexed her fingers. "My roommate has this game. It really is excellent stress relief."

He grinned. “Okay, enough chivalry. I get to reclaim my honor now.”

“You can try,” she said demurely, folding her legs under her. 

They'd done eight races - six of which Caitlin had won - before his stomach growled and he realized his food was really taking a long time. "Hang on, hang on," he said, setting his controller down and picking up his phone. What he saw made him groan. "Oh, shit!"

"What?"

He stared mournfully at the app. "I forgot to hit the submit button. I never sent the order in." He checked something and groaned. "And they're closed already."

"Can you order from somewhere else?"

"I guess, I'll just have to wait longer." His stomach growled again. "And I ate all the rest of my pizza earlier." He pouted.

"That's terrible," she said innocently. "If only you had a friend who had some microwaveable food in her room."

He clasped his hands under his chin and hit her with puppy eyes. "Pleeeeeease can I have some Easy Mac?"

"Mmmm, I don't know, you did make fun of it."

"No, no, no," he said. "Late at night? Everything closed? On the brink of starvation? This is exactly the situation that calls for Easy Mac."

She laughed. "Keep an eye on the desk for a minute?"

"You got it. You're the best." 

She was back down with the plastic bowl within a few minutes. He thought of hugging her or kissing her cheek, but they were barely friends. He didn't know how she'd react, and the last thing he wanted was to scare her off. So he just said, "Thank you so much, you're awesome,” he told her as they went over to the kitchen.

"It's Easy Mac," she said, blushing a little. "Three-fifty at the convenience store."

"Still a ripoff," he said, following the directions on the side and popping it in the microwave. "You didn't get one for you?"

"I ate before you came downstairs."

He got an orange soda from the vending machine while it cooked. The pasta was a little crunchy because he hadn't put enough water in, but it tasted like a feast. He settled back into his spot on the couch and chowed down.

She sat with him, idly flipping through the different characters on the screen. "Can I ask you something?" she said very tentatively.

"Sure, shoot."

"I told you why I stayed, this weekend. But why did you?"

He stirred the pasta a few times to break up a big lump of powder. She waited.

Finally,he said, "My brother had a concert."

"Oh," she said. "Um - you didn't want to see it?"

"I've seen so many of my brother's concerts," he said. "And this one was in San Fran. Some young prodigy series. Isn't there an upper limit on when somebody's considered a young prodigy? Like, if you're old enough to drink, doesn't that DQ you from prodigy-hood? Like, I'd think."

"So, you didn't want to go to San Francisco."

"Not if it meant hanging around a hotel room while he got photographed and went to practices and my mom was being all stage-mommy." He shrugged. "I’ve done that. Got the t-shirt. I’m over it.”

“You couldn’t just go home? See your friends?”

“My pop said I would throw a party and destroy the house, so no, I couldn’t. Which, heh, I may have done once or twice in high school, so he's not totally defaming my character there."

She didn’t laughed. "You didn't this weekend. Here."

"Everybody I know went home." He stirred his pasta again. "And I'm not . . . mad about it anymore."

She raised her eyebrows, reminding him that he'd opted to stay at school and play video games alone in his room for three days straight rather than go to San Francisco. 

"I'm not as mad," he corrected himself. "My brother and his music - it was such a thing at home, you know? Like it ate up all the air in my house. But here, it's just like . . . whatever. That's them. That's just the way things are. I don't have to like it." He shrugged again and set the macaroni bowl down, scraped clean. "Could be worse."

"Well," she said. "I'm glad you stayed."

"Me too," he said. "Who knows how long it would have taken us to meet if I hadn't."

She picked up her controller and gave him a sweet smile. "So what are we up to? Best out of thirteen?"

"Hooo-hoo, she's talking smack! Now you're asking for it." He grabbed for his own controller. "No more Mr. Nice Guy."

+1. Monday Afternoon

Cisco walked down to the lobby, practicing. "Hey," he said, casual, flirty, "so I was thinking - " He almost swallowed the next word at the sight of the person behind the desk.

Who was . . . not Caitlin.

"Sup," Kevin said, looking up from his tablet.

"Hey, man," Cisco said. "Uh, where's Caitlin?"

"Who?"

"Caitlin? The girl who was here all weekend? Where you're sitting right now?"

Kevin squinted into the middle distance. Cisco could practically smell the smoke as his brain tried to get into gear. "Oh," he said. "The chick. Yeah, she went back to her room, I think." He looked back at his TV show.

"Oh." Cisco considered that. He'd been intending to hang out with her here. But if she wasn't on duty, maybe that would be better.

Or maybe it would be worse. Maybe when she wasn't stuck at a desk, she wouldn't talk to him at all.

But they'd hung out and played video games and laughed and talked for hours last night, even after she closed up the desk and put out a little sign that said she'd return at eight in the morning.

Welp. Nothing to do but try. He gave Kevin a little salute. "See you later, man."

"Yup."

He rested against the rail in the elevator, watching the numbers tick up one floor more than usual. He glanced at his phone, where he'd been having a whole convo with his roommate.

It sounds like she likes you already

I know she does she practically said

But do you think she could LIKE me

more than friends like me

making out like me

It wasn't that he didn't like the idea of being friends. He thought she'd be a good one.  But the part of him  that had noticed how cute she was had already cast its vote for a making-out kind of relationship, and hopefully more. 

Dude I don't KNOW

Just like

invite her for a walk or something

if I ever get to talk to the Mysterious Goddess that's how I'll start

Cisco put his phone away with a grunt. Barry was full of ideas for what he'd do if he ever managed to find the beautiful girl he sometimes randomly saw in the halls or around campus. Cisco kept telling him that the first step was to walk up and fucking say hi.

The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor with a chirpy ding. The dorm was already starting to feel more normal, with room doors open and somebody laughing and girls walking up and down the hall. He waved and said hi to a couple of the girls that he knew already. How are you, how was your weekend, see you in class. 

He found 401, the door closed. He shook his shoulders out. Wooo. Go for it. Faint heart, et cetera. He knocked.

It opened after a moment, Caitlin saying, "Iris? Did you forget your - oh!"

"Hey," he said. 

"HI," she said. "I thought you were my roommate. She's supposed to get back soon."

"Nope. I'm me."

"Hi," she said, and blushed.

That was encouraging. He said, "Have you eaten?"

"Not yet."

"Me neither. So, the Riverside is open again."

The buffet cafeteria by the student union was where most people sat down to eat if they had more than ten minutes to grab something. Better yet, it had a row of two-person booths under the south windows, cozy and bright.  

"I know," she said. 

"And I figured I owe you a meal. So I wondered if you'd wanna come eat lunch." He grinned again. "Unless you already have some Easy Mac."

"No, but I was waiting for Iris to come back."

"Oh," he said, trying to parse that. A gentle brush-off? Or a sacred, unbreakable girl-pact? "Okay. Well, we can rain-check it."

"Actually," she said, and he stopped in the act of taking a  step back.

"Yeah?"

"Actually, I'd like that," she said. "Lunch with you. I can catch up with Iris later."

He felt his smile bloom. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said. She reached over and grabbed her keys and ID off her desk, and patted her pocket for her phone. "Okay. Let's go."

FINIS

[tagsecretsanta]

From Fallenfurther

to @lenle-g

Secret Santa does not own this work, full credit to the author above!

Mistletoe

Bodies jostled and moved about him. John was pushed and elbowed as he tried to keep an eye on his brothers. Scott and Virgil had both managed to get themselves into a circle of girls, and the smiles on both their and the girls' faces confirmed they were having fun. He was with Alan and Gordon, who had managed to get into the middle of the dancefloor where everyone was pressed in close. John tried to dance in the little space available, but it was near impossible. His brothers were laughing and joyful and he put a smile on his face, but they all knew it wasn't genuine. John hated clubbing, but his brothers always insisted on dragging him out anyway, empty promises that this time will be better or that he would meet someone. Neither ever happened. Thankfully they were normally too busy, or he was on Thunderbird 5, but every Christmas when he came down, they dragged him out for a 'Christmas Party'. Granted the 'party' always started with a meal together, which John did enjoy. It was good to be with his brothers and sit round a table with good food and laughing at the things that had happened over the year. He refused to miss out on it, which meant he had to endure the clubbing afterwards. 

Another elbow dug into John's back forcing him into the arm of a man. Fear filled John at the larger man turned to look at him. He gave John a dirty look before turning back to his friends. John sighed in relief but the anxiety from being crushed on dancefloor was starting to get to much. He looked towards Alan and Gordon. Alan's blue eyes met his and John made a quick drinking gesture with his hand. Alan nodded, before turning his attention back to dancing. Alan had been so excited this year now that he was old enough to join his brothers to the club. Normally left to keep Grandma company, the lad had practically run out the restaurant when it was time to leave. John has tried, as usual, to convince his brothers to let him stay with Grandma in the hotel, unfortunately Virgil and Scott were used to the routine and just forced him into the car. 

John twisted his body and started to squeeze his way to the bar. He apologized to people as he passed them, though he did wonder how many of them cared. John queued at the bar and finally got served a cola. He was already lightheaded from the drinks his brothers had brought him, so wiggled his way to the quieter side of the bar to sip his drink. He lent against the sticky wall and took in the room. The music was loud and muffled any words that were spoken. John almost called EOS to make the conversation clearer, only to remember he wasn't on a rescue, or on Thunderbird 5. He took in a deep breath and focused on how the air filled his lungs, before slowly letting it out. He repeated this, finding mild relief from the uncomfortable feelings the room filled him with. Another sip of cola and he looked at his watch. This club had a very exclusive VIP area, which is why they came here, so John could have somewhere quiet to go. Though his brothers insisted that he stay in the normal area for a set amount of time and he still had another thirty-five minutes left. John sighed. Maybe he could get away with going up early?

John scouted the room for his brothers. From his current position he couldn't see any of them, but that didn't mean they couldn't see him. John battled his way through the passage to the seating area and lent against a small standing table there. The music was still too loud, and it was still crowded but he felt better not watching the mob of dancing bodies. John surveyed the room and his eyes fell upon various groups of people around tables, all with glasses in their hand. What surprised him was the woman, not too far away, who was standing on her own and looked as uncomfortable as he felt. He watched her as she glanced at the group beside her, where two girls were talking to three guys. One of the girls in the group beckoned her over, but the girl shook her head and pointed at her drink. The friend just turned back to the three men and John watched as she slid closer to the nearest one. He turned away and continued to survey the room. 

Nothing else in the room interested him, so he looked back at the group and nervous girl. She has shoulder length brown hair, which was partially tied back, and a simple black dress with a silver sparkly belt. Unlike her friends, who were wearing heels, she wore a pair of black pumps. As he regarded her, the third guy from the group swaggered over to her, obviously drunk. John sipped his drink and monitored them over the edge of the glass. The man lent in close to the young woman's ear and spoke into it. The woman's eyes widened, and she lent away from the man. John observed an increase in her hands movements as she fiddled with her drink. Something about this situation made him uneasy. The exchange continued and the girl looked more and more uncomfortable by the minute, especially when the man started stroking her arm. The man finished his drink and left the glass on the table before gesturing at her almost full one. She shook her head, but John could tell he wasn't listening. It was at that moment when John saw the man's sleight of hand. The nervous girl momentarily distracted, John saw his hand flick and something small flew towards her drink. The man smiled before heading to the bar, giving his friend’s shoulder a tap as he passed by. John saw the girl lift the drink towards her mouth. Instinct propelled him across the room. 

"He put something in your drink."

The girl looked at him with shocked hazel eyes, the glass held before her lips.

"Pardon?"

"That man just put something in your drink."

The girl looked down into her glass, and John peered down too. Sure enough, there was a small white tablet fizzing at the bottom. Horror crossed her face and she put the glass down on the table like it was a bomb. 

"Thank you."

John gave her a weak smile then glanced at the bar, the man was still waiting in the crowd for a drink. 

"You should go home before he gets back."

"I can't. I'm staying with my friend," she nodded towards the girl who had beckoned her earlier, "I don't have keys and her housemate isn't going to be home until after their shift ends, which is like 2 am."

The girl shifted from foot to foot, and John checked his watch. It was fourteen minutes past midnight. 

"If you can't leave, how about we head up to the VIP area. I've got access."

John slipped the card from him pocket and showed her. Her mouth dropped and he watched her eyes debating what to do. A quick glance to the bar and she nodded. John downed his coke, leaving the cup next to hers and led her to the stairwell. He tapped his card to the reader and paid for the guest pass. The security guarded eyed them up but didn’t stop them from ascending the stairs. John stepped into the smaller, quieter area and his shoulders relaxed. Here the music was low, and people were generally calmer and quieter. The girl's eyes were wide as she looked around the space. 

"Wow! This is so different to downstairs!"

John grinned at her.

"I much prefer it up here, especially the balcony. On a clear night I can just sit back and enjoy the stars. I'm John, by the way."

"There's a balcony!? You have to show me! And I'm Helen."

John laughed, raising his arm to indicate which way to go and led her towards the outside seating. The black wooden door to the terrace showed no indication of the beauty behind it. They stepped out onto the roof terrace which was separated into sections by vine covered trellis. Small fairy lights were intertwined with the plants, lighting up the area. John led them to the left, toward a more secluded part where the seats had a great view of the sky. There were only a few wisps of clouds tonight so plenty of stars could be seen, despite the city’s light pollution. John flipped the lid on the bench and pulled out the cushions, which he placed on the seat before turning on the heat lamp. Helen settled down and he took his place beside her. John lent back and the tension started to fall from his body now the loud music had been replaced with the more palatable sounds of the city. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. 

"This is amazing! Thank you, John."

"You're very welcome. You looked as uncomfortable down there as I felt."

John stretched out his neck and arms before he twisted his body so he could see his new friend. 

"What are you doing here if it makes you uncomfortable?"

"My brothers dragged me out as a family Christmas party type thing. I enjoyed the meal before, but they never let me out of the clubbing. Apparently, I need to socialise more. Normally they insist I stay downstairs longer and only allow me upstairs after an allotted time."

"Are they really that strict?"

"Scott, the eldest, is, but mainly because he worries a lot. He'll probably check with the doorman that I am up here when he realises that I’m missing. He won't bother us though, when he finds out I brought guest with me."

"And seeing as they want you to socialise, he’ll put two and two together and leave you alone. Am I just a ploy to get your brother off your back?"

Helen's grin and the shine in her eyes told John she was joking with him. He smiled back as the realisation that he now had to socialise sank in. Helen rubbed her hands together.

"Are you cold? I can turn the heater up."

John knelt down and fiddled with the settings on the heater while he tried to ignore the shake in his hands. She's just a girl. Nothing scary about that. John turned around and sat beside her again. He tried to ignore the voices that told him he was sitting wrong, and too close and not close enough. He took another deep breath. 

"Fancy a hot chocolate?"

Helen's eyes and face seemed to light up. 

"Yes please."

John slipped out his phone, tapped on the club's VIP app and ordered the drinks to the chair. 

"Wait you can order from an app?"

"Up here you can. They'll deliver it to us, so we don't have to move."

"That's so cool! So, John, tell me about yourself, what do you do? Do you live locally?"

This John could handle, and he told Helen his cover story, which she ate up with wide eyes. He answered her questions and when the mugs of hot chocolate came, complete with cream and marshmallows, he managed to switch the topic onto her. John enjoyed hearing about her normal life, a teacher from New York, with a tiny New York flat to prove it. From the pictures she showed him he had more room on Thunderbird 5! Their conversation flowed naturally, with John pointing out the constellations they could see, and Helen told stories from some of her backpacking trips. 

Eventually a yawn from Helen prompted John to look at his watch. He was surprised it was twenty past two. 

"You could probably go home now."

"Yeah... Would you walk me home? I'd rather not waste money on a taxi when it's a 35-minute walk."

John wavered before saying yes. He couldn't let her walk home alone this late and it wasn't too cold. He messaged Scott to let him know he was walking a friend home and would head to the hotel afterwards, before standing up and leading Helen towards the exit. Thankfully there was a discrete exit from the VIP area, which they used to avoid bumping into the creep who tried to drug Helen. They continued to chat the entire way home and John barely remembered the route they took. John walked her up the steps of the apartment block, where Helen buzzed her friend’s flat. 

"Thank you for what you did tonight, and for the company."

The door clicked and she pushed it open. She slipped her shoe off and left it in the way, keeping it open. Helen looked nervously at John with a small smile on her face. 

"Can I have your number?"

John felt his jaw start to drop but managed to catch it. He fumbled as he reached into his pocket. 

"Sure."

He just managed to get the word out without tripping over it. He pulled down the settings bar, turned on the share icon and selected 'Share contact'. Helen held her phone above his and his phone vibrated when her contact details has successfully transferred. John glanced at it before looking up. Helen was grinning at him. She bent forward so her mouth was close to his ear. 

"You're standing under mistletoe."

Just as the realisation of what Helen had said set in, she gave him a peck on the check and was at the door slipping her shoe back on. John felt the heat spread across his cheeks and Helen chuckled. 

"Goodnight John."

With that she closed the door. John looked up at the mistletoe and touched the cheek where Helen had kissed him. Still in a daze, John walked away from the apartment block, mind running over the events of the night. He hoped his brothers were asleep, or still out, so he could avoid the inevitable interrogation.

[one-twisted-sister]

Music blasted along with the sound of booze bottles and cans, bodied ground into each other on the crowded dance floor windows shook to the beat, males and females in skimpy outfits danced on elevated platforms it also wasn’t rare to see a couple or a small group of trolls making out or just down right fucking in the booths, not like anyone really gave a damn. The club had one bouncer by the name of  Jabiri an indigoblood who was rumored to have been involved with several violent gangs in the past tattoo's littering his arms, chest and back, thick rings on each finger, he stood at the door asking for I.D's of each troll that entered not for safety reasons more along the lines of if anyone started shit he knew where top find them or if anyone laid a hand on his wife he could also find them and break ever bone in  their body, his wife was a rarity a skyblue blooded troll by the name of  Rakesh whom was one of the few male dancers ,

"I.D, good, I.D, good, No  I.D? get the fuck outta here before I rip your spine out through ya nook". "I.- well welcome back miss Shogah". Lifting a hand Canndi slid her shades down the bridge of her nose just a tad. "Hey gumdrop". She chuckled giving a wink. "We gonna play the old shake down game or you gonna let me head in?". "You know the rules I-". The words were caught in his throat as he watched her pull one of her skull shaped lollipops from her top just enough for him to see. "Was saving it for later but if your a good boy for me, plus if you don't want Rak finding out about our little meeting last month". Her voice held a soft purr to it, the purr that always made the indigo shiver.  He looked annoyed and angry for a moment before he stepped aside to allow her acess. "Good boy". She spoke sliding the drug into his pocket as she walked past, he had a weakness for purples and that weakness proved to strong when he met up with jer in the ally way after getting blasted one night, Rak didn't know and hope he would never find out. Once inside the shades were pulled from her face and hooked onto her top as she made her way over to one of the tables were a group sat drinking.  "Hey Candy girl!". One greeted as he stood up kissing one of her cheeks and then the other  her doing the same. "Hey Belial, Andras, Charon ya'll fucks look like ya doin' good, you know what I'm gonna ask, where's my money?". "A-About that look Canndi  things have been a little rough lately-". The purple bloods attention left the male whom stumbled over his words looking past them at the bar were another purple female sat, she looked far to young to be in a place like this she seemed like she was currently having an argument with someone on her palm  husk, Canndi squinted as she watched the large male that sat beside the little female reach over for some napkins though dropped two things into her drink making it fizz  for a few seconds. "So that being said I wont have the money for a few weeks and I know you hate when payment is late but please understand I-". "Yea cool no sweat". She spoke voice sounding spaced though the other looked like a weight was lifted from his shoulders as she walked away. "Apollo I am old enough to go out and have fun god damn it". Canndi heard as she approached the bar. "I can take care of myself!, I have since that good for nothing lusus left!". She gave a growl. "Oh go stuff your nook!". The purple flipped thye top of the device down ending the call, the thing being put on silent. Oh yea there was no way this girl was old enough for this place she seemed like she was going through that unruly phase in life, the one were most accidents and 'uh oh's ' happened and with what she had just seen a BIG uh oh would happen that day as the purple went to grab the drugged drink Canndi slipped into the seat beside the other the long back of her jacket being pulled out from under her.  "You're kind of young to be in here". That made the female stop. "Am not got my I.D right he-". The female paused as Canndi snatched it from her finger's. "Hey!, give that-". And was silenced as it was easily ripped in half. "Fake I.D's don't count sweetheart". With that the drink was also taken from the younger purple. "Don't cause a scene". Canndi spoke as she took hold of the others arm, well she was busted so what could she do?, hopping off the chair she walked with Canndi out of the club. "Leaving already miss Can-'. "You need to pay better close to who you let in". She handed the male the fake  I.D. "Also, third chair from the door, idiot with the buzz cut spiked her drink, you know what to do". Jabiri made a fist squeezing it shut making his knuckles crack, oh he knew what to do alright, Canndi pulled the female as she walked until she chose one of the alleyways to throw her into making her land onto the hard ground. "Hey what the fuck was that fo-". She was silenced as Canndi grabbed her by the collar pulling her up onto her feet slamming her against the brick wall knocking the wind out of her coughing to try and refill her lungs with air. "Giving you insight on what could have happened brat well one of the things that could have happened lucky for you I like them older, now tell me who you are kid and what your doin' on my streets". "Domini". Was wheezed out once a good amount of air had refilled her lungs. "How old are you?". "Like I'm gonna tell you that, let go of me bitch ".  Domini hissed baring her fangs, Canndi only laughed. "Please put those little kiddie fangs away". She only snickered as the younger purple tried to swing at her or land a kick at her, really it was down right pathetic Domini stopped her half assed attack blinking once before vomiting Canndi rolled her eyes setting the youth down. "Geeze kid". She sighed  pinching the bridge of her nose. "Fucking kids these days doing shit they shouldn't be doing you- hey, brat?". The youth had passed out against the wall. When she awoke the world was spinning, her head hurt like hell. "What- what the fuck happened last night". She mumbled hand being placed over her eyes. "You were somewhere you didn't belong". Domini jumped at the unfamiliar voice looking up to see the other female. "Oh sweet messiahs please tell me we didn't..". "Ick, no of course not , I've done some freaky shit in my day but hell no on that one". Canndi took a seat on the coffee table setting a couple cups down. "Now that your not shit faced how about telling me why the fuck you were in that place and who the fuck you are". Domini frowned adverting her eyes from the older female as she sat up allowing her long dyed locks to fall into her face blocking her view of the older troll. "I just.. wanted to have some fun and have a night on the town". "And you think drinking and watching half naked trolls dance is a night on the town?".  Domini frowned. "Messiahs stop you sound like Apollo". She sighed cupping her face. "Dat ya lusii?". "No my wrigglersitter". "Bitch you to old to-". "I know!, I know don't point it out okay she just.. looks after me like a lusii". Domini sighed. "And to answer your question name is Domini Mariee, five sweeps". Canndi sighed and rolled her eyes. "How the muthafuck did they serve a five sweep old fucking booze, well anyway some guy put shit in your drink". She watched as Domini's eyes grew in fright the spots were her paint had been smudged go pale.  "Nothing happened I dragged you out before hand". Pulling a back of smoked from her pocket Canndi tapped it against her wrist before flipping the top selecting one of the sticks with her lips the tip being lit. "You ain't from round here are ya?". Domini shook her head. "No I'm uh.. from the vallies". "Ain't that lowblood territory?". Canndi asked words muffled by the cigarettes' between her lips. "Tch no wonder, kid to be on these streets you godda be smart and keep them eye's open and not trust anyone cause everyone is looking for some way to eat you alive and fuck you over". Domini frowned rubbing the back of her neck she still felt like complete garbage . "I need to go it was nice that you helped me an d-". She looked at the female in question. "Why did you help me?". "Cause I see to many pretty young things get taken advantage of round here, plus we both be purplebloods godda watch  each others backs y'know?, come on squirt I'll give you a lift home".   "How did you even get to the city kid?". "The bus". Canndi snorted well what did she expect?, kid grew up in the valley.

[praisekinkchenanon]

Up In Flames.

Wow, I’m late I was supposed to post this <onday and now it’s basally Friday. I can’t thank @the-porcelain-doll-xo and @igot7bangtanbaes enough for helping me with this. Literally the best humans ever.

Now without further ado, this one is for you @kpopfanfictrash , I hope you’ve had the best birthday week. This is a 3 part fic and I hope it brings you as much pain reading it as it did me writing it. If things go as planned tomorrow (Later today) Ch 2 and then Saturday the final Chapter. You are amazing happy birthday love.

Pairing: OC X Baekhyun, OC X Jongin Genre: Angst (NSFW) Word Count: 2400 ish

Ch. 2

Credit for the Mood Board goes to @baebae-goodnight , another master piece.

The first sign that today is going to be a bad day is the feeling of the sun burning through your eyelids the moment you wake up. If the sun is streaming into your eyes, then you know you aren’t in your own bed. “Please don’t be Baekhyun. Please don’t be…” You open your eyes only for them to land on the all too familiar lamp and bedside table.

“Shit,” you mumble.

“Good morning to you too,” Baekhyun hums as he wraps his arms around you and pulls you into his chest. He starts kissing the back of your shoulder as he continues to speak. “Still tired? Or are you ready for another round?” You can’t help but shiver whenever his lips touch your skin. Every brush of his skin on yours leaves a wake of goosebumps.

“Baekhyun, we have to stop this. I can’t keep waking up here.” You sigh, trying not to get washed up in the whirlpool of his touch. “I’ve heard that before, and yet every time it has been you that seeks me out,” he counters. “I know, but this is the last time.” This time for sure, you think. “It’s wrong of me Baekhyun. I’m your TA.” “Why? It’s not like I’m doing this for the grade. I’m failing anyway, so no one will ever accuse you of sleeping with me in exchange for grades. Besides Miss Y/L/N,” he pauses to lightly bite your shoulder, eliciting a quiet gasp from your lips. “I do it for that sound. It’s my favorite. Any sound you make is beautiful,” he finishes and then goes back to kissing your shoulders and back.

Breaking free from his grasp you pull the sheets and stand, looking down on him still on the bed. “This isn’t some joke Baekhyun. We could get into so much trouble for this. It was my fault it’s gone on this long.” You try and sound authoritative, but it’s all lost by the image of you trying to cover your naked body with the thin sheet. “I don’t regret anything. How this started. Where we’ve ended up. You like to call me a ‘fuck boy’, and I’ll admit to being one most of the time, but not with you.” He stands up and walks towards you, and you back up with each step until your back hits the wall of his apartment. It’s there that he traps you between his arms. “I know at first I took advantage of the situation, but we both agreed. It was a purely physical thing. That was fine with me, another square off of the bingo board. TA, check,” his hands slowly moved from the wall to cup your face. “But then I fell in love with you, and I plan to make you mine. If that means having to wait for you every weekend to come find me in the club, bar or for you to show up here, I'm fine with that. At the end of the day you come to me, and for those fleeting hours you are mine, and I'm all yours." "You don't own me," is the only thing you can think to say.

"You're right," He chuckles. "And I wouldn't want to really. I just want you to call me yours in the sense that I'm the person you share everything with. Your bed, your dreams. Most importantly your heart. I'll do anything to make it happen-even sneaking around. Coming out in the dead of night to warm your bed. I'll drop that class right now if it means I can hold your hand in public. It's not like I need the folklore class. I have enough credits. I just did it to get a new pool of girls for the Bingo Game the boys have going." You can see and feel him closing in, you know he's going in for a kiss, only he stops just shy of touching your lips. "Now that I'm not playing bingo anymore, I've set my sights on a better prize: Winning your heart." Then you feel his lips press onto yours. It's soft and slow, and you can feel how much he wants you with it. When he breaks the kiss, he rests his forehead on yours. "So, what do you think?" "I think I need to leave," you say as you brush past him. The less you stare, the less chance you have to be drawn in by his naked form. You hurry around the room throwing on your discarded clothes that litter the floor.

You can feel him watching as you hurry and stuff yourself back into your skimpy dress, underwear, and shoes. You don't know where your bra ended up, but it would have to be abandoned. You hurry out of his bedroom and just as you are about to head out the front door you hear him call out, "I’ll see you in class tomorrow, Miss Y/L/N, and I'll just be thinking about how pretty you were riding my dick last night. " You felt your body flush red. You hated the control he had over you. What right did he have? You couldn't stand there in the doorway any longer. You rushed out slamming the door behind you and continued down the hall hoping to catch the elevator without being seen. Luck was not on your side. If you ignored the packed elevator and just pretend you weren’t in the middle of a "walk of shame" and could just make it to your apartment, you would be fine.

The one good thing about sleeping with Baekhyun was that he lived fairly close to your apartment. You wouldn’t have long to go to reach your place, then you could wash off the mistakes from last night. "Have fun with Baek last night?" a voice asks, breaking the silence of the elevator. You let it hang there, ignoring it you hope the doors open soon and you can escape. You know exactly who the voice belongs to, but you won't give him the opportunity to embarrass you. Finally, the door dings open, and you rush out. Only the man follows. "Oh come on, Y/N," he says as he easily catches up to you. "Fuck off, Jongin." You say as you wait at the crosswalk, tapping your foot in a futile attempt to make time go faster. "Oh come on, it's not like we all don't know. He's not subtle. He's not even playing Bingo with us, and he was winning. So come on Y/N, what is it about you that's so great that you’ve got Baekhyun wrapped up in between your legs." At this point, you grow tired of waiting for the crosswalk light and run once it’s clear enough. He, unfortunately, follows you across the road and down the street. Constantly calling you to give him an answer. Fed up, you stop and turn to face him.

"I don't know, asshole, and I want it to end. Baekhyun has this weird magnetism about him, and I can’t help but subconsciously look for him when I get drunk. I don't even know what it is, but it's wrong, and it needs to stop. So go, take your friend back and get him to leave me alone." You turn around and stomp away. Praying that he doesn't follow, you think you're fine until he grabs your arm and pulls you around to face him. "If you are done with Baek, care to take me for a test ride?" You couldn't believe your eyes when you see him wink. What kind of scumbag says that and winks. "You're disgusting, Jongin," You rip your arm out of his grasp "I'd rather have a root canal than sleep with you." "Well if you want to play dent-." "Again, disgusting,” you interrupt and yank your arm from his grasp. “And what's worse is you trying to pick up Baekhyun's leftovers. Some friend you are." You try and walk away again, only to find yourself being trapped for a second time that day against a wall. "What part of no don't you get," you say as you try and shove him.

"One last thing then I promise to let you go, for today at least,” he says as he leans in, his lips caressing your ear as he speaks. “Just think about that night you got stood up. Baekhyun wasn't the only one there comforting you. I was there too. I got up from the table to get you something to drink only to come back to an empty booth. You should have gone home with me. I would have treated you right." You don't respond as you duck under his arms and just walk away. You're tired and want this day to end, even if it's only 10:50. "Just think about it Y/N, at least you aren't my TA!" He yells at you. It stings, the truth of it all. If you were going to sleep with an undergrad at least you could try and go for someone who isn’t in the class you TA.

When you finally get home, you tear off your dress. It feels crusty. Is it from sweat, or did you do something you'd much rather not remember in it? You choose not to think too hard about it and instead head to run yourself a bath. Once it's filled enough you drop in a bath bomb, and as it fizzes you watch the colours dance while the scent fills the room. Lavender and sandalwood fill your nostrils as you slide your body into the bathtub. Sink further into the tub you think about the words Jongin said, and your mind wanders back two months to that night.

When you were supposed to meet up with someone your friend had set you up with, and while it was supposed to be a blind date you knew what he looked like. Your friend had shown you his photo, so there was no mistaking him walking into the restaurant, seeing you and then walking out. At first, you couldn't believe it. Maybe he forgot something and was coming back. You were right on time, but being 5 minutes late wouldn’t have been a big deal.

Or that’s what you told yourself until your friend texted you saying he was sick and wouldn’t make it. Obviously, he had seen you and didn’t like what he saw. This led to many drinks and then to you ending up at the club close to the school. Usually, you went to the one the younger students didn’t frequent, but tonight you wanted to just get plastered, and it was closer. That was your first mistake. Somehow throughout the night, you were sandwiched between Baekhyun and Jongin.The rest gets fuzzy. All you know is that you woke up at Baekhyun’s place, not remembering anything. Which he felt insulted by and proceeded to “show you what you missed” for the rest of the morning.

That morning still runs vividly in your memory. It’s part of what has propelled you back every weekend for the last 2 months. A shiver runs down your spine every time you think of how perfect he seems to fill you up. How he never fails to get you to orgasms at least twice in a night. He could have you begging on your knees to suck him off, but this all had to end. You were his TA. Not only could you get in trouble, but so could he.

“But what about the way he almost always makes you laugh when you are sad,” your brain counters. “Or the times he makes you breakfast when you don’t run away in the mornings. Or the day after you were stood up  he took you to paint ball because you were upset.”

You shake your head to rid yourself of these thoughts.

No more, you decided. This was it.

Y/N: I mean it this time, Baekhyun. No more. We’re done. I’m throwing the liquor away, and I’m deleting your number. You should do the same.

Baekhyun: Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to be home this weekend when your resolve fails. ;)

Y/N: I mean it this time and tell Jongin he can stay away too.

Baekhyun: Wait, what did Jongin do?

“Shit,” you mumbled. Now you’ve done it. So, he really didn’t know about Jongin. Well, it’s better he knows that he has such a scummy friend.

Baekhyun: I didn’t think he was serious when he said he would go after you, what did he do?

So maybe he did know. Either way, this wasn’t your problem anymore. You turned your phone to silent and decided you’d deal with this all later.

Finishing your bath, you got up and checked the time: 12:30. You’d spent way too long in the bath. Now you needed to eat and catch up on your work for tomorrow. You spent the rest of your Sunday in this manner: School and TA work, eventually managing to finish everything by 12:48. A perfectly respectable time to sleep. Feeling exhausted, you crawl under your sheets and hope tomorrow will be a better day. Grabbing your phone from off the bedside table, you noticed all the text you’d missed, but there was another number that you didn’t recognize in the mix. Ignoring the texts from Baekhyun, you open the unknown number.

Unknown: Y/N, it’s Jongin. It’s 12:01, a new day. See, I keep my promises. Don’t think that just because you told Baek on me that will deter me. I stole your number from his phone by the way. I’ll see you tomorrow ;)

“Fuck,” you whispered out loud. Why was this happening to you? The only silver lining was that at least one of them wasn’t in the class you were a TA for. With that thought, you drifted off to sleep, praying for a better day.

Ch.2

[lilacnestor-blog]

The Septic Case: Transcript #3

Starting transcript. I feel like it's an okay time to record because although Striker and Fire invited me out to go clubbing, I'm not really that kind of person. Plus I had a splitting headache earlier and the Advil's just started working. Now back to where Transcript #2 left off.

April 20th, 2015. Three days after my night of research. I'd given everything I'd found to Fire after he'd finally woken up. And now, finally, we were going out on the mission. Fire had briefed us on the final plan. We'd head in, and split into groups. Pewds, Iplier, and Peebles were group one, or as we affectionately called them "The Brawn." Fire and Kicker were group two, or "The Brains." And Striker and I were, sadly, "The Hot Stuff." I relate more to the Stuff part than the Hot part. We were supposed to scout out for people and explain what was going on. Well, what was our idea of what was going on. We were, "shooting an action movie" and Striker and I were the lead parts. We were basically the guards in this mission. I sighed. I wanted to voice my complaints, but I knew that Kicker had a point. We really didn't want the public knowing what was going on.

We arrived at Marvin Labs, a huge white building, with a logo that I'd seen on their website, a cat's face with red whiskers and green ears, and on its forehead, a red heart over a red diamond, and a black spade and club. The logo unsettled me for some reason, perhaps, because the eyes of the cat were completely blackened in, with no pupils. Kicker turned to me before heading in with Fire and told me how the place creeped him out. Guess I wasn't the only one. The five of them headed inside, while me and Striker stood outside, talking about everything from Fire to this mission. I told him how much I wished I could go in there, how I felt like I wasn't doing anything out here. He told me that he was used to feeling like he was just a pretty face, and how he hated it sometimes. We discussed not feeling like a real part of the team. Our walkie-talkies went off every so often, the first two teams talking about how the place had just been left behind, like everyone who'd worked there had just quit, leaving behind their things. It was dark out, probably nine pm, when I radioed back to "The Brains" and asked if we could come in and look around. Fire took a minute to think, but finally said that since this place was so big, and had so many branches, that it would be okay. Besides, the place was on a big hill on the outskirts of town, and who would just drive up and check it out, especially after dark.

Striker and I exchanged excited grins that we were going in and doing what we called "Secret Agent Stuff." We grabbed two flashlights from our van since Fire had told us that the power in the building had been cut. We were almost giddy as we headed inside, and were instructed to go down the left hallway, because the other two groups were down the middle and right halls, and they didn't need anyone. We were told that no one was in the building, and it was completely safe, that all we were looking for was incriminating paperwork and stuff like that. The secret lab from the transcript was probably just some teenager making up stuff for whatever reason teens do that. Maybe he was high or something, because according to both groups, the only rooms, locked or open, were just offices and normal labs, with microscopes instead of cages.

The first few rooms we passed through after the hallway ended were just unlocked offices. We looked through the paperwork left behind, and none of it seemed useful. The computers in the rooms wouldn't turn on, and we figured they were dead. We were smiling, even though it was a bit creepy, we were doing important spy stuff! We got to a room that had a numbered passcode, and we radioed over, before Kicker told us that all of the rooms had the same passcode: 1980. That was a pretty obvious passcode. We tried it, and the door swung open to reveal... a completely normal lab. All that was here was a few microscopes and some computers that wouldn't turn on. We went through a few more labs and offices that seemed identical, only finding data that was for various experiments, the closest thing we found to a mysterious experiment on a captive human was a few neurological experiments on lab rats.

We radioed in with the groups and shared our findings or lack thereof, and they agreed that this place seemed like it was just a normal place. But then why would they have known, and killed Triple 7, the spy from another team that the higher ups sent in a month ago, now? Why would they have abandoned everything if there was nothing to hide? We traveled through identical offices and labs, before ending up at a dead end, a lab that was larger than the rest but still only held more microscopes, and notebooks full of science stuff, logs on something that looked like lab rat growth.

Striker and I collectively sighed, and we leaned against the wall, to radio in that we'd reached a dead end until we heard gears creaking in the wall. We jumped back from it, and upon closer inspection, there was a small piece of the wall that Striker had been leaning on that was now moving back to reveal a panel with a number pad. Above the pad, on the wall, was a small, hard to see, white button that we would've missed if Striker hadn't been leaning on it. I gasped, "Striker, you're a genius!" He looked back at me with a confused smile, and said, "I had no idea that it would do that." We quickly radioed in, telling the other groups about our find. We input the passcode we'd been given, 1980, but it just beeped at us, telling us that we had two more passcode attempts before the alarm was set off.

There had to be a hint around here somewhere. We poured through the notebooks, as Kicker talked to us through the walkie-talkies giving us advice, and Fire spluttered that the group that wasn't supposed to go in, had accidentally found a secret room. We wondered aloud what it would go to, figuring that whatever was behind the door was what scared everyone off. After what seemed like forever, we found that in one of the notebooks, someone had written, "The code for the door is the date that the experiment started." THE experiment? There was one large experiment? We looked through other notebooks, until we found the earliest entry, on the earliest one. It dated February 7th, 2000. So the code was either 0207, 0702, or 2000. We tried to logic it through with the team. Kicker said that it would probably be 2000 because the other code was 1980. Fire disagreed, and said that since it was a date, it would probably be 0207 or 0702. And since we were in America, California specifically, it would most likely be 0702. We tried Kicker's idea first. BLEEP. One try remaining. We really hoped that Fire would be right. 0 7 0 2. Suddenly, we heard a hiss, and a piece of the wall, from floor to ceiling, near the panel, slid open to reveal a metal door.

The groups wished they were there with us, and Peebles even suggested we wait to open the door until groups one and two had joined us, but she was shot down by Pewds, saying, "Let them have some fun. It's not like there's going to be anyone they need to fight in there anyway." As we neared the door, our walkie-talkies started fizzing. "An electromagnetic pulse! It's a brilliant way to prevent anyone from sneaking in and taking pictures with any kind of device and reporting them. Something big must be beyond this door, but it looks like you two are going to have to leave us here for it."

Striker and I looked at each other with apprehension. If it had been Peebles, Iplier, and Pewds who'd found the door, they'd already be inside. If it had been Fire and Kicker who'd found it, they would've weighed all of the pros and cons to waiting for the rest of the team to come back, but ultimately go in. With us? We needed to do this together. I nodded at Striker. "Let's get ourselves in there." He smiled, and together we pushed the door open.

We were standing on a platform, with a few stairs down to the rest of the room. We scanned the room, and I spotted a control panel, and then, in the farthest corner of the room... no. It couldn't be. "Wh-what is that?" Striker obviously hadn't gotten the same briefings that I had. "It was all true. That's the cage from the briefing. Where they kept the subject." He looked at me with slight fear in his eyes. "C'mon. Let's investigate." I said, although part of me just wanted to turn tail and run out of the room. We shined our flashlights on the ground as we walked towards the shadowy structure, as to not trip on any of the cables snaking across the floor, from the control panel to a vent in the wall. I barely realized Striker had stopped moving and we were only a few inches away from the bars. I lifted my head from the ground, and my eyes were immediately fixed to where Striker had shined his flashlight.

Because inside the cage, was a body. It had to be dead. No one could survive... how long had it been since Fire had gotten the case? It must have been at least five days. Striker looked on, horrified. And then, "He's breathing." I turned to face the agent, whose face was pale, but resolute. "It's faint, but he's breathing. God, Wiishu, we need to get him out of here." I turned back to the body, no, person, in the cage. He looked a few years older than me, at twenty. Maybe twenty-four or twenty-five? I turned to Striker. We needed to focus on getting him out. I reached out and touched the bar. It was metal, Iron maybe? It sizzled slightly giving me a shock like I'd been walking across the carpet and touched a light switch. It must have been electrified when the power was on. But even if we had a weapon, it would be hard to saw through the bars. There had to have been a way to deliver food and water, or maybe drugs to the boy. Maybe I could wake him up. I turned to Striker and asked him if was a good idea, and he said it was as good as any. He walked over to the control panel, to see if he could get anything there to work.

I took a deep breath. "Hello?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. Nothing. I repeated it slightly louder. The boy, even though he was older than me, it seemed strange to call him a man, stirred slightly. "Are you awake?" He was now. He nearly jumped, sitting up quickly. His eyes were pure blue, and I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before, but his hair was light green. It suited him somehow. He looked terrified. "Hello there. It's nice to see you're awake." He didn't respond, just backed away from me so that his back was against the wall. "It's alright. I understand you're scared, but I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. I'm actually trying to get you out of here." He scooted a little closer now, his curiosity peaked. Striker walked over to me, sitting next to me, scaring the boy and causing him to back away again. I looked to Striker. "Guess you can finally say that you've actually intimidated someone," I said to lighten the mood. He glared at me, but I could tell he was amused.

"Nothing in the control panel is working. It all shut off when this place was abandoned. I see you've woken him up." He then turned to the boy in the cage. "Hello, my name is Striker. What is yours?" The boy shook his head. "It's okay, he won't hurt you either." He shook his head again. "It's not that? Can you talk?" The boy looked down at his lap at my words and shrugged his shoulders. "Will you please try? We'd really like to help you get out of here, but we need you to help us find out how." He raised his head and opened his mouth. "I-I don't have a na-na-name." He replied to Striker, his voice hoarse and shaky. "They call me Septic. But I don't like that name. It reminds me of him." His voice was stronger now that he'd started talking again. "What do you mean, him? Are you talking about one of the people who worked here?" The boy shook his head. "No. It reminds me of the person inside of me, well, at least one of them. They keep me here because there's more than one person inside of me. I'm usually the one in control, but they can make him be in control. I don't like him. When they make him come out, they say he changes me. I don't have control of my own body, and I don't like that. They call him Anti. It feels like he's a demon that wants to hurt me, but they say that he's just my imagination. I hate him. If he was a part of me, then I should be able to get rid of him, but I can't. But the others aren't so bad!"

He stopped after that. Striker was watching him in fascination, and so was I. "I want to tell you everything, but weren't you guys supposed to get me out of here? I know how they do it, but I've never been able to do it myself because I'm on this side of the bars." He tapped a bar near us. "There's a button on your side of the bar. You need to press it seven times, then pause, then twice. After that, some of the bars will open, and I can come out!" He smiled, and my heart fluttered a little. He had a really nice smile. Okay, that was an understatement. He had the prettiest smile I'd ever seen. While I was lost in space for a minute, Striker pressed the button and the bars started to lift. We stood up as the boy walked towards us. "Since you don't have a real name, what can I call you?" I asked, a smile playing on my face. "I don't know. Maybe you can give me a name?" The boy looked around the room, he must have been so happy to finally be out. I studied him for a minute, thinking. Then it hit me, the perfect name for a person like him. He fit it perfectly. "I'm going to call you Jack." He smiled again, and I felt like I was melting. "Okay, let's get out of here and get back to the others. I feel like we have a lot of explaining to do." Striker said with a smile, and we lead the weak, from not eating since who knows when, boy up the stairs and out of the room he'd been imprisoned in since he was a kid, to show him the real world.

I feel like that's a good place to stop this transcript. I feel like I've been recording for hours, and I should probably eat something. So until the next transcript, Wiishu's signing off. Over and out.