#fredo and jeremy are actually adorable!

[writerofshit]

Jeremy/Alfredo for the ship meme, gotta get that rarepair content

send me a ship and i’ll tell you:

  who reaches out to new neighbors

They're both pretty good about interacting with neighbors, but Alfredo is the one to notice that someone new moved in. Plus he can be a paranoid motherfucker, so he's gotta check them out and make sure they're not like... serial killers or something.

("Alfredo you're literally the sniper for the most notorious gang in the country, and I've taken more hit jobs than the average person has jobs."

"Ok but that's work, that's different."

    who remembers to buy healthy food

They both make a conscious effort to eat healthy, try to eat at home, etc. It's mostly Jeremy though, because he's usually the one shopping for groceries.

    who remembers to buy junk food

Alfredo, because a treat now and then is good for you, actually, it's motivation-

"You bought three boxes of Ring Dings!"

"Listen you asked me to come shopping, not my fault if some things jumped in the cart."

    who fixes the oven when it breaks

They work together to accidentally break it even more before they call Michael to come help.

    who waters the plants/feeds their pet(s)

Jeremy is the plants guy, because they tend to blend into the background for Alfredo.

Alfredo's got a whole system for the pet food though. It mostly involves keeping the dog from the cats because he'll eat all of their food if given the chance.

    who wakes up earlier

They usually get up at the same time, and often because of Trevor's incessant phone calls.

    who makes the bed

Alfredo. Once upon a time he didn't care, but Jeremy was the one to really introduce him to the wonderful feeling of climbing into a nicely made bed at the end of a long day. There's no going back now, even when Jeremy's not as worried about it anymore.

    who makes the coffee

Alfredo starts it. Jeremy is oddly hopeless when it comes to a coffee machine. He's either got way too many scoops of coffee, or not enough. He does make the individual cups though.

    who burns breakfast

Jeremy, although it doesn't happen often. He's a fairly good cook, even if his pancakes get a little over done sometimes.

Inserting this because I do what I want:

Their morning really boils down to routine, order of operations. They wake up to some crew notification, while Jeremy showers and gets dressed Alfredo makes the bed/starts the coffee/feeds the pets. They switch off, Alfredo goes to shower and get dressed while Jeremy makes breakfast, pours the coffee, tells Trevor they're totally on their way (they're not.)

    how do they let each other know they’re leaving the house

By yelling each other's names at the top of their lungs like idiots. They've gotten more than one noise complaint.

    how do they greet each other when one of them gets home

Also by yelling, but a little more subdued. It's no wonder they get new neighbors so often, actually.

    who brings home little gifts like flowers/chocolates more often

They both do pretty equally! Jeremy likes to bring home dumb souvenir type t-shirts as a 'i was thinking about you' type thing. Alfredo will bring back beanies to keep Jeremy's bald head warm.

    who picks the movie for movie night

They trade off! They don't really have a set night, so it's usually born out of "hey we should watch this tonight!"

    their favorite kind of movie to watch

Pretty much anything that's not horror or scary at all. There was one night they got about half an hour into the original It, and then Alfredo got too freaked out and they watched Disney movies the rest of the night.

    who first suggests a pillow fort

Alfredo, because "man I just want to be a kid again, forget about clowns and all that shit"

"Oh, like the kids in The Losers Club?"

"Jeremy why"

    who builds the pillow fort

Jeremy, as both an apology and because Alfredo refuses to turn his back on any dark shadows in the apartment.

"Fredo it's not even real, the closest we're gonna get to a murderous clown is Fiona in the Po costume."

"But what if we're wrong? I'm not taking chances dude."

    who tries to distract the other during the move

Alfredo, out of payback for making him watch even part of a scary movie. He makes numerous attempts to scare Jeremy, grabbing his shoulder or yelling suddenly. It backfires, because he somehow ends up scaring himself more.

Jeremy still throws popcorn at him to make him feel a little better about it.

    who falls asleep first

Jeremy, because by the time Fredo gives up on the jumpscare thing, he's fuckin exhausted. Turns out building a fort takes a lot of him. Plus like... He's had a few beers, he's nice and warm, and Alfredo is tucked into his side like he still needs protection from Hades on screen. He could not be more content and relaxed.

    who is big spoon/little spoon

Other than nights like these, when Alfredo is still picturing Tim Curry's face, they kind of alternate. One of them will roll over in bed, reaching out for the other. Just this little moment of 'hey we're here together, I love you, I want you close to me.'

[writerofshit]

Jeremy wakes up in Matt’s room one morning and as he’s getting up Matt makes some offhand comment about Jeremy being Rimmy Tim and he's immediately like "What?? How did you know? -I mean I'm not Rimmy Tim, but, why did you- how did-" and Matt cuts him off like "not that it wasn't blatantly obvious anyway, but you got blackout drunk last night and confessed it to me" and as Jeremy's reeling from that Matt adds "you also told me and a few others you were in love with us, but you seemed more concerned about the Rimmy Tim thing” (I just love the idea that drunk Jeremy gets brave with his crushes but also feels guilty about keeping his “secret identity” from them)

This is so adorable in so many ways and it really makes me want to write an Actual Thing based on it.

I just imagine Jeremy drunk with Matt and Fredo, when Fredo makes some joking accusation about Matt being an asshole. It's well deserved, of course.

But Jeremy gets super defensive, like throws himself across Matt's lap all "No, Matt is awesome, so shut up!"

"Wow, are you saying I'm not awesome?"

"No! You're both- you're the best. Just so good." And then Jeremy's reaching out to Fredo and pulling him close, and it never seemed like it could be this easy, and yet.

Matt and Alfredo just keep exchanging these glances because they know, of course. How could they not? There are so many conversations to have in the morning.

At some point Michael and Gav get home, join the drunk morons in the living room. They get similar confessions from Jeremy. Not quite saying love but these little smiles and wandering hands and-

And there are so many conversations to have in the morning.

Eventually it becomes hey, maybe lets talk about this when we're sober, when we're actually thinking past this moment. But Jeremy begs Matt to let him stay with him, wont try anything just wants to cuddle, he swears.

He's mostly telling the truth.

And when they're just laying there, holding each other in the early morning hours, Jeremy starts talking.

"Matt. Matt. I gotta- I have a secret."

"Oh yeah? Is it that you're in love with half of this crew?"

"I- no. Well yeah I am. But no, that's not the secret I need to tell you."

"Alright buddy, go for it."

"I'm Rimmy Tim." He says it a very I'm-batman esque voice, or the best he can manage anyway. "I'm just- I don't want to keep that from you. I don't want to lie to you. You deserve to know the truth because you've never been anything but honest with me, and I've just been keeping this huge secret and you don't deserve that, nobody in the crew does-"

And Matt just lets him talk. None of it is information he didn't already know. Jeremy talks about Rimmy Tim and the lies and the whole bit right up until he passes out.

The next morning Matt reminds him that he'd said he needed to pick up his Rimmy Tim costume from the cleaners.

"I- you mean on his behalf. Because I'm not- I'm not Rimmy Tim. Where the hell did you get that idea?"

"Jeremy. You loveable moron. You told me. I also already knew because goddamn are you obvious about it, but still."

Jeremy is completely flabbergasted "No way! I'm way more likely to tell you... Uh, other things... Than I am to talk about Rimmy Tim."

"You mean how you're pretty much in love with me and three other members of the crew?"

"What the fuck!"

Matt just shakes his head and smiles. "Come on, man. We've gotta catch you up on all the shit you said."

And then they do, and there's lovely heart-to-hearts and smooches and good times a plenty.

[writerofshit]

Secret Santa:X

(This is half headcanon, half fic, all fun times and emotions)

(Shoutout to the Penthouse discord server for help on some of the gifts, would have been lost without you)

The last Christmas they have in the penthouse, Ryan brings up Secret Santa again. It’s partly a joke, partly a nod to the nostalgia that’s been eating at all of them the last few months. He brings it up when they’re all gathered in the living room, watching Gavin try and prove his stealth abilities in Hitman.

(“Just because you can be stealthy in a video game doesn’t mean I’m letting you come with me.” Jack had said at the beginning of it all.

“If I get silent assassin you have to take me!”

“This is your fourth run through!”)

Anyhow, Ryan brings it up, all nonchalant. “Remember that year we did Secret Santa?”

“No?” Jeremy says honestly.

“Before your time.” Michael says with a smile, patting him on the head.

“It was fun. We should do it again.”

(”Goddamnit!” On screen, Gavin dies again.)

The next day they have a meeting of all the ‘movers and shakers’, as Geoff has taken to calling them. He announces that Secret Santa is yet again a thing, and no, Matt, you can’t get out of it. There’s no budget, because they all have access to more money than they know what to do with.

They throw eleven names in a hat and go from there. Geoff calls first pick because he’s an asshole like that, and his choice picks next, so on and so forth.

 “Just get your shit done by Christmas, and we’ll do it then.”

--

Geoff pulls Gavin, and only panics a little.

The kid has everything he could ever want, what’s he really supposed to do? He considers what he might need, ends up crossing ‘bulletproof vest and a helmet’ off the list because it feels a little impersonal. He could do liquor of some sort, but he suspects there will be enough of that floating around on Christmas day.

He considers a camera, knows Gavin is into that kind of shit, but he’s lost a lot of knowledge in that department over the years. The only person who knows enough is Gavin himself, and that kind of defeats the point.

He ends up going for a new pair of gold shades, because the old ones are pretty worn out after six-plus years, and he’s almost positive Gavin has lost them. (Probably in Ryan’s room, but that’s neither here nor there) He gets a pair that have diamonds along the arms, and even though they’re ridiculously expensive he thinks it’s worth it.

Gavin adores them, has them on within 30 seconds of unwrapping them. He pokes himself in the eye, and that feels like a bonus to Geoff.

--

Gavin pulls Trevor, and while he plays it off at first “Oh, this will be easy, I got this person for sure!” he absolutely has no idea what to do.

 There’s a weird bit of time where he tries to get to know Trevor better. He learns absolutely nothing new, despite following the guy for almost a week.

There’s a night he lays in bed with Ryan, bitching about this whole thing. “What the hell do I do? This was terrible for me last time, why would you suggest this?”

He ends up calling Barbara from the Roosters to try and figure out something, who promptly makes fun of him for not knowing anything about the guy he’s worked with for years. She does give one bit of new information, so he goes with it.

He gives Trevor tickets to the next Motocross event, because it’s apparently something he’s into. He throws in a NASA t-shirt as a joke, a nod to the world Trevor left behind.

Both items go over well, Trevor immediately pulling the shirt on over what he’s already wearing. He won’t shut up about Motocross for the rest of the day, either.

--

Trevor pulls Ryan, which he’s immediately terrified of.

 He knows Ryan well enough to know that there won’t be any serious repercussions if he fucks it up, he won’t get gutted over a poor gift choice. But he also knows he’ll get that weird stare Ryan does when he’s pretending to consider whether or not to hurt someone. Plus he won’t live it down from the rest of the crew.

At first he goes to Gavin for help, because apparently nobody is taking the ‘secret’ part seriously. Gavin absolutely refuses to help him, mostly for the laughs. He knows Gavin’s getting a kick out of watching him squirm over this, which is so unfair. Then he asks Jack for help, who just shrugs. 

“You’re a smart guy, Trevor, you’ll figure something out.”

He does, sort of. He gives Ryan a 24 pack of diet coke (because what else?) and an actually beautiful rainbow knife. It seems pretty heavy duty, and he knows its right up his alley. He also throws in some earplugs as a joke.

 “So you can tune out Gav’s idiocy whenever you need.”

“Come on, Trevor. I’ve had years of practice at that. The knife is gorgeous though.”

--

Ryan pulls Alfredo, and he’s not too worried about it.

Alfredo’s their go-to sniper these days, and a new sniper rifle seems pretty obvious. Maybe a gift card to Ammunation or something? It does feel a little lackluster, even to him, so he brings it up to Gavin one night, while Gav is still debating t-shirts from Amazon.

“That’s a bit boring, isn’t it?”

“You’re buying a NASA shirt for an ex-aerospace engineer. I’m gonna need you to rethink your stance on this one.”

“Nah. You gotta do something better for Fredo, he deserves it.”

Which. alright, then what the fuck is he supposed to do? He gets his answer the next week when he sees Alfredo on a motorcycle for the first time.

“I’m going to teach you how to actually ride that thing.” Which is good, a chance to catch up and hang out. Bad, because Ryan’s method of teaching is ‘learn by doing’ and does in fact result in shouting.

Ryan still gives him the sniper rifle, which he is far more excited about.

--

Alfredo pulls Fiona, and it’s the first time he marginally regrets joining the crew.

He’s got no fucking idea what she’d like, what gift she’d appreciate and not hit him over. He tries to be casual about asking around, hoping someone might have better insight. The rest of the crew catches on immediately, and they flood him with false information.

“She loves chocolate. Favorite Halloween candy, in fact!” Michael tells him, but the grin he has says otherwise.

“She mentioned something about wanting to learn a new language.” Jack says seriously.

“Get her an English to French dictionary, she’ll love it.” Gavin tacks on.

“French, yep. She definitely wants to learn that one.”

Lindsay is the only one who actually helps him. “She’s been known to enjoy a drink or two.”

By sheer luck he happens to walk into one of the thousand arguments Fiona has with Michael over the whole ‘Halloween candy’ debacle, and he knows immediately that's a bad route to go down.

He ends up making a gift basket full of liquor mini’s and various candies. He makes sure not to include any chocolates, and throws some extra blowpops in, just to be safe.

Thankfully, she does appreciate the thought he put in, and she says she’ll only share with Alfredo since everyone else is an asshole.

--

Fiona pulls Lindsay, and it’s not hard to figure out what she’ll like.

 She considers something chaotic, the two of them wreaking havoc on the city together. It makes sense. She also thinks about organizing a ‘girls day’, getting all the ladies of the crew together to go out and fuck some shit up. There’s a lot of logistics involved in that one, including convincing some of them to be out in the field like that.

It crosses her mind to bring Lindsay to a shelter to play with cats, because if there’s one thing Lindsay likes more than chaos, it’s cats. That’s also a bit of a logistical nightmare, not to mention the strength it would take to pry her away.

In the end she goes with cat merch. It’s a basket full of goodies, including a mug with a cat holding a bi-pride flag, a dress with various cartoon cats on it, and a cat necklace that has her birthstone as the body.

It’s beautiful, and Lindsay just about cries. She too, immediately changes into her new clothing, and she drinks everything out of the mug for at least a month.

--

Lindsay pulls Matt, and at first she panics.

She knows him fairly well, but like... He’s a real weirdo, what’s she supposed to do with that? She wonders what games he could use, if there’s anything he hasn’t bought himself.

Her confusion lasts until she mentions it to Michael. (Only after he let it slip who he’d picked.)

“Are you fucking kidding me? Matt’s the easiest goddamn one!”

“Bullshit! Name one thing you know about M.att B.ragg!”

“He eats like shit! Give him a box of donuts and he’ll lose his fuckin mind.”

Her response of  “Oh my god.” is barely heard.

She spends a week trying out different recipes, much to Ryan’s delight. He’s happy to play taste-tester while she finds the perfect flavor combination.

She winds up going with a double chocolate espresso concoction. Matt is, of course, super stoked about his cupcakes, and damn near has to fight Ryan off to protect them.

--

Matt pulls Jeremy, which is pretty much a slam dunk.

Whiskey is the obvious choice, one he’ll absolutely go with, thank you very much. Who said taking the easy way out never got you anywhere?

And it would have, if it weren’t for Geoff.

There’s a debate that happens about a week before Christmas, something about the necessity of going to the liquor store. Michael and Jeremy are firmly pro-trip, and Geoff just wants them to “stay home and do some goddamn work. Besides, it’s not like half of you guys aren’t buying each other liquor anyway. In a week I’m sure we’ll be fully stocked.”

Which, alright. Fuck Matt then, huh? He’d genuinely thought it was a good idea, a mix of thoughtful and practical.

He decides to pair the whiskey with- well, it’s kind of a joke gift, but at least he won’t be accused of only buying liquor.

He commissions a customized cowboy hat. Half purple half orange, split right down the middle. There’s a neon yellow buckle on it, and it’s the ugliest thing Matt has ever seen in his life.

Jeremy loves it though, thinks it’s goddamn perfect. He wears it for the rest of the day, and for the next heist.

(Michael is less enthused.)

--

Jeremy pulls Michael, and that-

That’s harder than it should be.

He and Michael have been doing this... Whatever the fuck it is for over six months now, and they haven’t goddamn talked about. Not really. They’ve had moments,sure, here and there when they’re both drunk and thinking far too much about it. Reminding each other that they’re happy, that this is a good time, wouldn’t change it for the world-

But there’s still nights they sleep alone and they don’t talk about why. They still don’t really mention it to anyone else, even if they all know. Jeremy still doesn’t know how to answer when someone asks what the deal is with him and Michael.

So it’s hard, right, to come up with a relationship- appropriate gift. Too jokey and he’ll feel bad. Too serious isn’t their style at all. Plus like… how’s he supposed to do that in front of everybody? Just because they know there’s something there doesn’t mean they need to put on a show.

He settles on the obvious, nice bottle of tequila and a couple of shot glasses. It’s not exactly personal, but it’s good enough to show the room.

Later, in a quiet moment they can steal away, Jeremy offers to take him out the next night.

“We’ll do the bar thing, just you and me. My treat.”

“Oh yeah? You’re buying my drinks all night?” Michael asks him with a sly grin.

“I uh- I’ll get your drinks for as long as you’ll have me.” and it doesn’t come out exactly right, but they both know what he means by it.

Earns him a smile and a sweet kiss, and that alone is worth it.

--

Michael pulls Jack, and he runs through a few options.

He considers buying her furniture, because he knows she'll need it when they all finally do move out. But Jack has a good head on her shoulders and probably already has that shit on lock.

He looks into custom shelving, for all the knick knacks she's collected over the years. He could get it designed in colors she'd like and shell out extra for lighting and all that shit. But she doesn't have a new place yet, as far as he knows, so that's kind of a bust.

He could give her what amounts to a gift certificate, an offer to pay for whatever she wants made, but that seems kind of… Empty?

There's the age old alcohol gift, but that's been done before, and is probably being done by almost everyone else.

He mentions to Lindsay how weirdly difficult it is to buy something for Jack, get’s zero advice but somehow helps her figure out the whole Matt mystery.

In the end he decides to help her out and piss her off, a little bit of a win-win kinda thing. He buys her a couple of new shirts, bold and flowery and almost as bad as Jeremy’s Rimmy Tim shtick. He hates them but he knows she loves them, so it’s worth it.

He tells her it’s because her old shirts gotta be falling out of fashion, an opinion she is not happy about.

But it’s fine, because he also gets her tickets to fucking Disney World, of all places. He even offers to go with her, which she absolutely takes him up on.

It’s more fun than he expects, and it’s a really good chance to actually spend some time with her. He hadn’t realized it had been so long.

--

Jack pulls Geoff, which.

It’s no secret that Geoff is a sentimental bastard when it comes to the crew. It’s exactly why he’d spent months talking to her about the possibility of selling the penthouse, trying to figure out exactly how everyone would react, trying to figure out how he would react to not having them all so close anymore. She spent countless nights listening to him wonder what it meant that he wanted his own space.

Objectively, he was probably a bad person but his love and fierce loyalty to the crew made up for that, in some ways, right? So how can he kick them out, how can he do this to them, he’s being selfish-

And she had just explained to him that he had to do what was right for him. That it was understandable. That he was right, they could all use the opportunity to be a little more independent. She was looking forward to having her own space, and in time the rest of them would too.

So when she pulls Geoff’s name, she knows she’s gotta lean into that a bit. She could get him some books, some puzzles maybe. He’d mentioned off-hand that he missed having the space for them, because the kitchen table was always covered in some sort of crew shenanigans.

She does get him those, because she knows they’ll get some use.

But the big thing is the collage.

She’s had pictures of the crew on her phone for years, dating all the way back to her and Geoff in a shitty apartment. She’s got some of Ray, curled up on the couch with a DS in his hand. Gavin and Michael wrestling one drunken night. Ryan, nodded off on the couch after a heist, face paint still on and a complete mess. Jeremy trying to teach Matt something resembling self-defense. Lindsay cuddling a stray cat she had taken in. Trevor and Alfredo in matching clothes, playing up the ‘twin’ joke that had been going around. Fiona in that bright yellow suit, modeling for her Instagram.

There’s one she gets at the last minute, gets somebody from the support team to take right before their latest heist. It’s all eleven of them, full heist get-up, masks and obnoxious fashion choices and guns tucked here and there. They’re in the boardroom, running through it one more time before they take off, and in retrospect, it’s probably the last time they’ll do that in that room.

She sets that one in the middle, surrounded by all of these moments from the last 12 years.

“For your new place, when you find it.” Jack says.

It’s beautiful, and it makes Geoff cry. It brings some sniffles from a lot of them, even if they all deny it.

Leaving the penthouse isn’t the easiest thing for any of them, but it’s the right move. After all, they’re still a family.