Chapter Text
“You suck at this,” Alec observed, tapping a few buttons on his controller and watching as Brian’s character was gorily bisected. He turned to give Brian the best insufferable smirk he could manage–which was pretty damn insufferable, if he did say so himself.
Brian sighed, dropping his controller on his lap. “Man, only because I don’t play this all the damn time like you do.”
“Excuses,” Alec clucked his tongue. “Sucks to suck. You want to get your ass kicked again?”
“I–” Brian paused. There were footsteps coming up the stairs.
Alec turned around, peeking over the edge of the couch. Lisa.
“Hey, Lisa,” Brian greeted.
“Hey boys,” she replied, walking over and leaning on the back of the couch. “We’re going to need to have a little bit of a chat about the upcoming job schedule.”
Boring. Alec slumped back down onto the couch, flicking the joystick to scroll through the character selection screen so he could watch the animations play. “Bitch isn’t in,” he said.
“That’s alright,” she said. “I don’t think she’ll be so concerned with the nuances, so long as the money keeps coming.”
“What’s up?” Brian asked.
Lisa knocked on Alec’s head. He absentmindedly swatted the hand away.
“The cash is going to come out of your pocket, but the boss found you a surgeon. Now, the issue here is that this is going to put you solidly out of commission for five, six weeks. That’s a lot of time to be down a person.”
“Okay,” Alec said. “What’s the catch?”
“Well, it goes without saying that the boss doesn’t want to pay you for nothing. And, no offense, I don’t exactly want to give you part of my cut for nothing. So here’s the deal: I’ll get you situated here, you chill for a couple months. We do the jobs, we get the cash, and when you’re cleared for exercise, you join back in. And if I ask you to do some quick little sit-down tasks for me while you’re recovering, since you don’t have anything else to do, you don’t say no.”
Alec turned the idea around in his head. On one hand, that was a lot of fucking time to sit around doing nothing and making zero money. He wouldn’t say he hated much of anything–a couple things tops, really–but being bored? Definitely up there. In retrospect, he probably should have looked into what recovery would take before getting the idea to ask Lisa for the favor and getting stuck with paperwork, or whatever, in return.
Still, it did sound pretty nice. It wasn’t like he couldn’t weasel out of chores if he really tried. He could put up with it. A month or two of minor annoyances to get one big annoyance off his back forever.
Or off his chest forever. His lips curled up in a self-satisfied smile at his own joke.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. I’m down.”
“Alright,” Lisa flashed a smile. “I’ll confirm and let you know when you’re scheduled, then.”
“Sorry,” Brian interrupted. “Surgery? Months? Can I ask what’s going on?” He frowned, looking a little worried. “Some kind of health issue? Is this going to be a recurring problem?”
Alec shook his head, tapping his chest. “Just the one time. Getting rid ‘o these.”
Brian squinted. “Of…?”
Alec snickered. Poor, oblivious Brian. He wasn’t sure what was funnier: How easy it was to make him uncomfortable, or how terrible he was at covering it up despite how hard he tried.
He pulled his shirt tight enough against his chest to make his tits glaringly obvious. “These,” he repeated, flat-faced.
Brian blanched. He did a fantastically terrible job trying to subtly look at everything but Alec. “Ah,” he finally said. “I see.”
“What they do,” Alec began cheerfully, not letting go of his shirt, “is they knock you out and get a scalpel. One long cut here.” He gestured beneath his tits in helpful demonstration.
Brian had discovered something absolutely fucking fascinating on the ceiling.
“Now, the issue is all the fatty tissue,” he said. “Builds it up, makes it all lumpy, or whatever. So you have to take that out.”
“Right,” Brian said miserably.
He glanced at Lisa to make sure she wouldn’t be bailing Brian out. She had busied herself with one of her many phones, looking uninvested, although she was certainly listening.
Brian also looked at Lisa–albeit with distinct helplessness in his eyes–and she didn’t look back. No rescue mission for Brian. Great.
Alec grinned. “So they take a really big spoon...”
He paused. Wouldn’t be able to stretch that one very far. Better to segue it into something else.
“And they scoop some of it out, right, but it’s hard to reach all the way in there and really get every last bit out, you know? It would be uneven. Like trying to core a watermelon blindfolded, except the watermelon is bleeding friggin’ everywhere, and there’s two of them.”
Lisa was wandering away, now. If he wasn’t mistaken, he thought he saw the twitch of a badly-hidden smile.
“So they take this neat tool that’s sort of like a modified version of the air-suction thing they use at the dentist.” He’d never actually been to the dentist, but he’d seen it on TV, once. “It’s like that, but with blades on the end. They get it up in there and suck the fat out in nice little noodles, then put ‘em in a plastic baggie for you.”
“In a bag?” Brian asked. The words trailed off like he was already regretting asking.
“Yeah. So you can take them home later and fry them up. Eating them helps you gain the protein back. It all goes to your new muscles.”
“Oh. Ha ha. Very funny,” he said, sounding more or less the opposite of amused. Was there a word to describe the face of someone visibly considering their exit strategy? He looked fifteen seconds from ducking and rolling.
“Hey,” Alec said seriously. “I’m just giving you the cold, hard facts here, man. It’s like how sometimes after ladies have a baby they make her eat the placenta to get her strength back. You can’t take all that stuff out of your body and not put any of it back. It’d be bad for you. You just have to fry it real good first to let out all of the estrogen.”
“You’re making all that up,” Brian said. “They don’t do that, do they? The placenta? They don’t do that, that’s ridiculous. That would be cannibalism. Very funny. I get it, you like fucking with people. Ha ha.”
“No, no, hang on, look,” Alec waved a hand at him, digging in his pocket for his phone. He pulled it out and did a quick search for placenta-eating.
Several hundred articles about how it’s very bad for you and you’re not supposed to do it. He picked the one with the most graphic thumbnail, zoomed in until only the picture and the supposed benefits were visible, and held it out for Brian. “See? It’s a legit thing.”
“Oh,” Brian said weakly.
He crossed his arms, casually tilting his head away in his best attempt at looking offended. It also happened to be hiding a smirk he couldn’t keep off his face, but Brian didn’t need to know that. “Just because you’ve never heard of it before doesn’t mean you have to be a dick to me about it.”
“Oh,” Brian repeated, even more weakly. “Uh, I’m sorry. That’s good for you. The…removal, I mean. You can do that. Chill here for a while. I don’t need to know all the details.”
Alec briefly considered saying “Sike,” and then changed his mind. Way funnier if Brian was walking around trying to sort out how much of that was bullshit. Hint: All of it.
“Well…” Alec issued a protracted drawl, tapping his chin and doing his damnedest to sound like he was thinking hard.
He counted to five long seconds in his head. Common decency obligated Brian to sit there and squirm. One, two, three, four, five…
“It’s whatever,” Alec said, cheerfully clapping him on the back. “You didn’t know any better. All good.”
Brian visibly unwound, chuckling nervously. “Right. Anyway,” he stood abruptly. “I’ve got to go. Home. See you later, man.”
Alec smirked, kicking his legs out on the coffee table and folding his hands behind his head. “Yup. Seeya. Good talk.”
Brian made a very hasty exit. Alec leaned forward, waiting to hear when the door shut.
The moment it did, he doubled over and laughed so hard he choked.
“You’re really not a very nice person,” Lisa said. He could hear the smile in her voice.
“Says the one who let him buy it,” he wheezed out, and then tipped over into another fit of giggles.