A Vancouver Crowd Halloween
Just a little piece about the VC spending the early part of Halloween together.
“Stop eating all the candy, Koh,” Ryang chastises. He grabs the bowl and holds it out of Koh’s reach. “It’s for trick-or-treaters.”
Koh makes a protesting sound. The effect is somewhat diminished by a mouth full of chocolate. They all know Litchfield House doesn’t get nearly as many trick or treaters as it has candy. Mrs. Woo is very strict about the one piece per child rule and they have enough candy to feel all the children in Henrietta.
Earlier, Koh tried the argument that, technically, he was also a child in Henrietta and therefore liable to have a piece. It fell apart on his fifth fun-size Snickers bar.
Making a face at Ryang, Koh wanders over to the kitchen table where Rutherford and Cheng2 are playing doctor. Rutherford’s even got a lab coat and a mask. It’s not even dark yet. Rutherford just likes to party in style.
“Blade, Cheng2.” Cheng2 obliges, handing Rutherford a serrated kitchen knife.
The table’s covered in newspaper, a bevy of cutting instruments arranged on one side. On the other is Ryang’s drawing to Cheng2’s specifications. This surgery was planned out to the minutest detail.
Rutherford sizes up his patient. He begins his incision.
He cuts deft, sharp strokes, cutting a circle into the persimmon-colored crown. Once the edges align, his and Cheng2’s eyes meet. Rutherford levers the knife and with a crack, the contents are revealed. He hands Cheng2 the skullcap. Cheng2 places it carefully on the table.
“What’s the diagnosis, doc?”
“It's…” Rutherford pauses dramatically. He wipes his brow.
“A pumpkin,” Koh supplies. Cheng2 swats at him.
SickSteve snorts and pushed the bowl of gummy worms closer to Lee-Squared’s reach. Nobody’s said anything about Lee-Squared eating all the candy. Racism. There is no other explanation. Certainly not that Lee-Squared is much sneakier than Koh and less apt to shove three candy bars in his mouth at the same time.
“A flesh-eating amoeba,” Rutherford declares.
Koh peers inside the pumpkin. It looks perfectly normal to him. Just pumpkin guts and seeds. Rutherford must be an excellent doctor to tell the difference.
“Is it treatable, doc?” Cheng2’s face is very earnest. Koh applauds his staying in character.
“Not at this stage.” Rutherford shakes his head. “The poor sod. He’s already dead. Well,” here his voice brightens, “we might as well remove his brain.”
What happens next involves two spoons and sprays of orange-white goop. It gets on the floor. It gets on the ceiling. It gets in Cheng2’s hair.
Ryang wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”
Cheng2 flicks pumpkin guts at him.
Ryang shrieks.
The grandfather clock in the living room bing-bongs its way to four o’clock. Normally, Koh ignores it but today-
“Monster movie!” he announces. He grabs Cheng as he’s trying to sneak out the side door. Cheng is very bad at being sneaky. It’s the hair. Very hard to be sneaky with great hair drawing all the attention. Koh has the same problem. “Nope. Monster movie is for everyone. Halloween is all night.”
Cheng’s cries of “no, please, I hate monster movies” go unheeded. They’re lies anyway. Everyone likes monster movies. Especially terrible, cheesy, American ones. Koh is going to make them watch Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood. Who could resist?
Koh presses on Cheng’s shoulders until he sits on the carpet in the TV room.
He sets the TV up while keeping a stern eye on Cheng. There’s no party starting yet. Cheng can wait until six to go meet Gansey and their secret girlfriend.
“It’s starting!” Koh yells, though, of course, everyone who’s going to watch is already here. Rutherford and Cheng2 are finishing up their pumpkin since they’re losers who couldn’t get theirs done last week like everyone else. They can listen to the cinematic masterpiece from the kitchen.
Koh looks around for a place to sit. Cheng’s on the floor where Koh put him. Ryang’s got the armchair. SickSteve and Lee-Squared are sitting on the couch with a chaste one foot of space between them. Aha.
Koh steals a handful of orange and brown M&M’s from the bag on Lee-Squared’s lap. He ducks his head to avoid SickSteve’s hand and uses that distraction to plop down next to Lee-Squared.
“Hi, L2,” he says.
“Hello, Koh,” Lee-Squared says back.
Crossing his legs so that his knees are solidly in everyone’s personal spaces, Koh sticks his tongue out at SickSteve. If looks were daggers, Koh would be murdered right now. Good thing they’re not.
Lee-Squared just smiles and continues chewing his M&M’s.
Twenty minutes into the movie, Rutherford and Cheng2 join them. They sit at the foot of the sofa, which is really not that smart of them because Koh is very agile and not at all against leaning down during the scary parts and digging his fingers into Cheng2’s ribs.
Lee-Squared grabs him when he’s about to. Koh pouts. Lee-Squared shakes his head.
“Let’s have a nice night, okay?”
Because it’s Lee-Squared and Lee-Squared is the nicest person Koh knows, he says yes. He sits back, only the slightest of pouts on his face and watches Warwick Davis stalk about in a leprechaun costume. He even leans into Lee-Squared’s side a bit and puts his head on his shoulder, not to make SickSteve mad or anything but because Lee-Squared is really soft and really nice and this is nice, all of them together, even Cheng.
In a couple hours, Koh will be going to one of the public school parties. He might see one of the guys there. He might not. He’ll probably get drunk and call Ryang to drive him home or maybe SickSteve, whoever’s up and semi-responsible. But right now, right here, he gets to have Halloween with his friends and that is very cool, no matter what Cheng thinks.
As the movie’s winding down, there’s a knock on the door. Cheng2 jumps up, yelling, “Trick-or-treaters!” and Halloween really begins.
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trans girl swan hcs
because i can’t focus on anythin else rn:
im thinking either fernanda ly or imaan hammam for fc (regarding the latter, this is a skovswan vibe)
got wrestled into aglionby against her will. she regularly lets everyone know this and god knows her parents are shitty about it, but gets along pretty well with most of the aglionby girls (read: adele czerny) who sympathise with her having to literally live with all their shitty brothers
wears a full face of makeup, when she can. aglionby’s sister school has pretty rigid rules surrounding makeup and presentation that aglionby never thought to enforce, so she gets away with it more often than not
she’s out to most of the student body, who more or less put it down to miscellaneous european weirdness, with the exceptions of students like tad fucking carruthers who assume shes a really committed drag queen. they think they’re humouring some joke she’s got going on, and it’s not great, but hey, it gets them to gender her correctly, so she doesn’t really... care.
(14 yr old prokopenko voice) “so if i haze u now does it count as inappropriate touching?? or can i just normally haze u.” “if u haze me i will literally break your hand”
swan’s roomed with prokopenko since eighth grade, while skov and sicksteve + jiang and ryang had the room next to her. they had an inside joke where he occasionally suggested her some weird-ass name for when she could legally change it, (“greta?” “i swear to christ can you shut the fuck up swan is fi ne”) until the whole business with kavinsky and chengtwo came about and the faculty decided it was best to keep the pack and the vancouverites on opposite sides of the dorm, so now she rooms with skov, and jiang with proko. jiang complains relentlessly about how skov gets to room with his gf. he’s made a habit of knocking on their side of the wall whenever they try to get it on.
previously, though, prokopenko sort of occasionally alluded to rooming with a girl and kavinsky takes the piss out of him for getting himself a girlfriend until he meets swan and hes like “.......fucking christ youre tall lmao you arent his type”
jiang is a trans boy and he and swan bond over how shitty the faculty is about it
proko sort of proposes they swap old clothes n shit and conveniently forgets swan is literally like a head and a half taller than jiang until she gets stuck in one of his sweaters
(k voice) im kavinsky and these are the boys. proko, jiang, skov and his fucking amazon girlfriend,
aside from the pack the only aglionby boys who only really manage to refer to her correctly and consistently are the vancouver boys. swan deals rutherford xanax at the beginning of the year and hes super pointedly careful about it (“ryang came out this year too and i know everyone’s really shitty about it so--) until shes like “can you take your fucking drugs and leave thanks”
she has a convo with ryang that’s pretty much just “okay i respect you but realistically you cant hospitalise every single person here who misgenders you” “try me”
nowhere near as dysphoric as jiang, or as aglionby expects her to be, so she pretty much just wears what youd expect her to?? plain wifebeaters, baseball tees, jeans and trackpants, sweaters with offensive slogans, snapbacks. (tad carruthers voice) if youre a chick why dont you wear, like, dresses n shit?? swan punches him. let this girl live. she just wants to be comfy.
after gansey pulls out skov takes the position of crew captain and the old team sort of has some fun with (read: are dicks regarding) his relationship with swan (”haha you really wanna be straight huh”) until he puts them all on spartan workouts for the next six months and swan kicks their teeth in behind the cafeteria.
skov’s a pretty big guy but swan is a massive beanpole and skov angsts pretty frequently about how shes like, his FAVOURITE girlfriend, and he cant even use her as an armrest :(
calls kavinsky out on his misogynistic bullshit with greater frequency as she gets closer to him. “dont call that sargent chick anything you wouldnt call me” “......lmao what???” bc lbr swan is tall enough to destroy anyone who catcalls her and kavinsky, well, kavinsky is..... fairly tiny
skov calls her his goth gf and thinks hes really fucking funny for doing so
she grows out her hair for the express purpose of tying it up with a really heavy bobble so she can break someones nose if they try to sneak up behind her
realistically should be leading the pack
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