Work Text:
As it neared her lunch hour, Tdor surreptitiously checked her phone. She was allowed to use her phone at work but somehow the atmosphere of professionalism made her feel like a kid back in high school, pretending to look for a pencil while she checked her phone. There were two texts awaiting her. She thumbed over to the first one, which was from her girlfriend.
Shen: My dickbag of a supervisor is making us work through lunch so I can’t join you today my love :(
Tdor sighed--not at Shen, but at her supervisor. The man was constantly looking for ways to assert his authority over his employees. She checked the second message.
Inda: Tdor!! Do u want to have lunch?? Im off today
She chuckled to herself and texted him back an affirmative answer and when her break was. Inda had been her best friend through childhood and, at one point, the boy she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with. Circumstances and college got in the way of that little dream but they remained incredibly close. This also solved her problem of having to eat lunch alone.
When the hour rolled by, she was immensely surprised to see Inda on time, standing outside the law office where she worked holding two bags of Subway. He was dressed in his usual, scruffy way and today’s sweater featured a garishly hideous pattern in primary colors that looked more at home on the side of the Partridge Family bus than on a human.
“I didn’t know if you brought lunch but they were doing a half-off two foot-longs sale so...”
He handed her one of the bags and Tdor gratefully accepted it.
“Come inside the building,” she said. “We can eat at my desk.”
Inda didn’t have to be told twice since winter was still in full swing outside. It wasn’t snowing yet but one look up at the sky confirmed that the clouds were threatening to rupture. Like they did when they were children and were messing around in Inda’s father’s office, they both squeezed into her swivel chair and attempted to shove the other off.
“How’ve you been?” she asked as she unwrapped her sandwich.
He was already partway through chewing and, naturally, spoke through a full mouth.
“Sponge and I did the whole sex,” he replied.
Tdor stared at him in surprise. That was not the answer she was expecting. “What?”
He swallowed.
“We had sex--Tuesday night after Daggers. And a buncha times after that.”
“Really?” She felt her protective, best friend hackles rising. Inda was always the baby of the group. She herself was nearly two years older than him. “And?”
A dreamy smile crossed his face.
“It feels...so right.” Inda bit down into his sandwich again.
“Evred or sex with Evred?”
“Both.”
Tdor regarded him as he chewed. Inda did indeed look happier than he had in some time. Since his mysterious dropping out of college and the fall out of his relationship with a professor at said college (she was fairly certain the two events had nothing to do with each other since Inda was never in any of Signi’s classes), he had been in sort of a funk perceptible only to her keen eye. Since he and Evred started dating, he’d looked...better. He smiled more and his face shone with that natural brightness that hadn’t been there in a long time. She hit her mental pause button as two, seemingly unconnected thoughts collided.
“Inda, does Evred have work today?”
He swallowed and cocked his head to the side in confusion. “Yeah. The semester just started up. Why?”
“What does Evred do?”
“He’s a TA at the university...”
Tdor waited for him to get it but Inda just blinked his huge brown eyes at her like he had no clue.
“And who is he the TA to?”
His eyebrows shot up with realization.
“Oh, crap.”
--
Evred meandered in the Student Union, eating his lunch in slow, calculated bites. His first day back as Signi’s TA at the start of the winter semester hadn’t been terribly awkward. She knew that he and Inda were dating but that was before he and Inda were having sex, which put a whole new spin on their relationship. He didn’t tell her that--of course he didn’t--but it was on his mind. The whole time he was passing out hand-outs to the kids in her morning classes and grading essays, he kept wanting to just say, “So we’ve both slept with Inda. What’s all that about?”
He didn’t have lunch with her since he never did--actually, he wasn’t sure if he had ever seen Signi eat--and instead found Flash and Dogpiss to dine with.
“You two are disgustingly adorable,” Dogpiss said through a full mouth.
“We are?”
Flash nodded his agreement.
“Like, Hallmark levels of cute. Plus, I won the bet.”
“What bet?”
Evred didn’t like the sound of that. Flash flipped some curling brown hair over his shoulder and grinned.
“The bet for how long it’d take you two to get together. We made it back in high school. I said seven years.”
“How much did you win?”
“Sixty bucks. Twenty from Dogpiss, Cama, and Cherry-Stripe. And I’ve got twenty more in my paypal account because Noddy had to transfer it from England.”
“...Can I get some of that?”
He shook his head and replied, “I already spent it on weed.”
Evred rolled his eyes because of course he did. Dogpiss scratched the shaved side of his head and grinned his wide grin. He was one of the very few among them that kept his hair short and the only one with an undercut.
“Nah, but we’re totes happy for you, Sponge. No one deserves happiness more than you and Inda.”
“Really?”
“Well, no. Almost everyone deserves happiness. But we are happy for you.” Dogpiss cracked up and Evred rolled his eyes.
Flash spotted something over Evred’s shoulder and pulled a face.
“Speaking of people who don’t deserve happiness...proof that high school never ends for some people.”
Evred sighed and didn’t bother to turn around.
“Mardric?”
“Good guess, Professor X.”
He couldn’t help but roll his eyes again. Skandar Mardric had been pestering he and his friends since high school. It was usually to no avail but his advances were always bothersome. Evred chanced a glance from the corner of his eye and saw that, as usual, Mardric was flanked by Dallo and Rajnir. Dallo was Evred’s Bad Decision in tenth grade and was Mardric’s best friend but he wasn’t exactly sure what Rajnir was doing there. He was relatively harmless even though he used to date Wafri, the crown king of the assholes who had dropped out of college around the same time Inda had. Since then, Evred figured that Rajnir was probably just desperate for friends. He rarely, if ever, joined in on Mardric’s teasing.
“Heyyyy,” Mardric drawled.
He eased down next to Evred and pinched a crisp from the bag he bought from the vending machine outside Signi’s office.
“How’s it going?” Dallo plopped in the chair on the other side of Flash.
“Hi, guys.” Rajnir apparently didn’t get the memo about being semi-threatening middle school bullies from a cartoon.
He smiled sunnily and sat down next to Mardric, looking around like a lost puppy. Evred honestly felt a little bad for him. Not bad enough, however, to put up with Mardric’s inanities.
“Well, as much as I’d like to stick around and get my lunch money taken, Professor Sofar has an afternoon class and needs her TA...so...later. Flash, you can have my crisps.”
Flash gave a laconic salute and Dogpiss grinned widely, flapping his hand back and forth on his wrist in a way that looked painful.
“Later,” Dallo purred. He looked at Evred through his eyelashes and waved coyly.
Part of Evred wanted to get in his face and taunt him about his new boyfriend but the part of him that still clung to some dignity just swallowed thickly and exited the Union. He made it to the language arts building--since history didn’t have its own building--just before class. Signi smiled at him as she put away a Tupperware container.
“So you do eat,” Evred blurted.
“What?”
“What?”
Signi shook her head and laughed softly. He made his way over to the podium at the front of the room and extracted the syllabi he had copied before joining his friends for lunch from his messenger bag. She had run out in her previous classes.
“So, uh...” he began. His eyes skirted to the clock and it showed that he still had ten minutes before class. No one had arrived yet. “You know Inda and I are dating, right?”
Signi pursed her lips and then nodded. “Yes. I am aware.”
“Oh, good. Well...uh...we’re having sex now. That’s a thing. That’s happening.”
She looked at him for a long moment and Evred wished he was much better with saying things.
“Well, I assumed but...thank you for telling me?” Signi laughed at long last and he realized that he had never heard her really laugh before.
He laughed back awkwardly.
“Right. Okay. So. Class...that’s about to start. I’ll...go sit down now...”
--
“Inda, I hate to ask this. Truly, I do, but. Why are you standing on your head?”
Tau bent at the middle and cocked his head to get closer to his roommate’s bright red face. He had had work today--and he still wore his deeply hideous IKEA uniform to prove it--and had come home to find Inda leaning against the wall, balancing himself with his hands and the top of his head.
“I wanted...to see if I could. And now I think I’m stuck.”
Tau sighed and grabbed Inda around the middle to help right him.
“Ow, ow, head-rush!”
“You think?”
Inda staggered over to the couch and rubbed his temples. His eyes were squeezed shut and he kept making pitiful, whimpering noises.
“So what did you do on your day off?” Tau asked and then gestured to the wall. “Other than that.”
He stepped by the couch and began unbuttoning his uniform shirt.
“Oh, I had lunch with Tdor. Told her that Evred and I are Doing the Sex.”
Tau laughed. “I know you spoke it but somehow I just know that you capitalized ‘doing the sex.’”
He peeled his uniform shirt off and noticed, with distaste, that his skin had reddened over the shoulders from the material it was made of. Tau sighed and tossed it towards the closet where the washer and dryer were.
“Have you told Hadand yet?”
“Uh...well. She knows we’re dating...I’m pretty sure.” He slapped a wide smile on his face. “But I don’t think she’s really keen on finding out that her best friend is having sex with her little brother.”
Inda made a good point, Tau allowed, but it wasn’t the right point. Sure, her protective older sister instincts could kick in and she’d flatten Evred against the table while hissing threats into his ear about harming one curly hair on Inda’s head, but he figured that she would be more upset because she was completely and utterly in love with Evred. He didn’t bring that up, though. Inda--and Evred--had no idea and it wasn’t his business to say anything.
“So are we doing anything tonight?” Tau asked instead.
He stepped into his room to change but kept the door open.
“We? I dunno. Is Jeje working?”
“Yeah. Cama wants to know if we’re up for a few rounds of the Les Mis fighting game tonight.”
“Uh...”
Tau poked his head out to let Inda see his devious grin.
“So you’re hanging out with Evred?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“There are few things he hates and one of them, for some inexorable reason, is the Les Mis fighting game.”
Inda laughed and nodded.
“Well, I figure we can hang out as a group and then me and Sponge can...get alone time, maybe?”
He smiled sheepishly and Tau had to laugh. He heard the buzz of a phone vibrating and Inda reached into his pocket to fish out his cell phone.
“Oh, speaking of Sponge!” he said gleefully, and thumbed open the message. There was a brief moment of silence as Inda read the text. “He’s wondering if he can come over. Apparently Fox and Barend broke up again and he needs to get out of the apartment.”
Tau flapped a hand in derision at mention of Fox’s name and went back into his room to find clothes. When he emerged, he saw that Evred had arrived while he was deciding between black skinny jeans or charcoal ones.
“So Barend and that asshole broke up again?” he asked instead of giving a greeting.
Evred nodded. Inda was behind him, stroking his shoulders in comfort.
“What was the reason this time?”
“Fox hates Billy Joel.”
“What? Seriously?”
Evred looked at him for a moment, brow furrowed.
“Do you mean that as in that’s why they broke up or that Fox hates Billy Joel?”
Tau considered the words for a moment before saying, “Both.”
Evred and Inda both nodded their agreement.
“It’s awful because, to get back at him, Barend is blaring Billy Joel on repeat and it’s an old cassette tape that only has ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ on it. I’ve been hearing that for the past three hours on repeat. I now know all the words.” Evred sighed and let his head fall to cradle it in his hands.
Inda leaned over and draped an arm over his shoulders. Tau couldn’t help but notice how perfect they looked, sitting like that. It was something out of an advert for true love, almost. He noticed then that Evred was mouthing words under his breath and wincing.
“Are you casting a spell?”
He looked up in confusion, mouth still moving. Soon, words were coming out.
“...South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio...oh, God.” Evred let out a pained cry. “It’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’!”
Inda stroked his shoulders again, lifting his head to nuzzle into the crook of Evred’s neck.
“So...are we going to Daggers?” Tau asked a bit more peevishly than he intended.
Inda looked up and bit his lip. He shifted his gaze to Evred who still looked morose.
“Uh...you can go. I think we might just stay here,” he said.
Of all the times for Inda to be observant, Tau groused to himself.
The two of them then seemed to forget that Tau was even in the room. Inda lifted Evred up into his arms, which was always somewhat comical since Inda was a good half a foot shorter than Evred. Still, Inda was strong for his size and easily carried his frazzled boyfriend into his room. Tau let out a frustrated sigh.
“Well, I’ll be seeing you!”
--
Rajnir sat alone in Daggers, swirling his straw in his drink. Dallo and Mardric were at the snooker table, wiggling their rears in the air and waiting for attention. He supposed that he should be over with them but he didn’t see the point. He didn’t even really like either of them but they wanted to hang out with him so he took it.
More and more often, he found himself missing Wafri even though he was beginning to realize how toxic their relationship was and how downright abusive he was to him. Still, he was the first person to notice him after Vatta...
Rajnir closed his eyes and took a long pull on his drink. Vatta, his sweet Vatta. It had been more than five years since he died and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about him. The way he laughed and smiled, always at him. How he’d gasp at scary parts in movies and then try to disguise it as a cough. That beautiful smile on his face, even as he walked onto the crosswalk and...
He squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly.
“Hey, you alright?”
The voice that asked him was sweet and earnest. Rajnir opened his eyes and looked at the newcomer.
“Oh. Uh. Hi, Kavna.”
Kavna grinned at him, white teeth luminous even in the dim lighting of the bar.
“You didn’t answer the question. Are you alright?”
He considered lying but not to Kavna, the man he was secretly pining after. He had only told Mardric, who’d sniffed in his superior way and said, “Kavna? But he’s so fat!” He hadn’t meant to gain a crush on Kavna--they hardly even interacted!--but it was the first time that he had felt attraction towards anyone since Wafri and the first time since Vatta that he thought himself maybe willing to love someone else.
“Not really.” He frowned and added, “I kind of hate my friends.”
“I kind of hate your friends, too.”
He knew that he was making a movie reference but didn’t mind it. In fact, it made him smile. Made him feel a bit brave.
“Uh...you wanna come outside with me to get some air?”
Kavna smiled again. “I think I’d like that.”
Rajnir hopped off his stool and led the way outside. As he opened the door, he stepped aside for Taumad Dei to enter. He gave him a polite wave, which seemed to surprise the other man.
“Finally breaking free of your asshole friends?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
He jerked his chin up. “Good. Oh, hey, Kavna.”
He and Tau exchanged some sort of fist bump handshake. At the end of it, Tau grabbed his hand and pulled him close. He whispered in his ear loud enough for Rajnir to hear.
“Do everything I would do.”
--
“...JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?” Evred asked the still, hot air of Inda’s room.
The entire time they’d been fooling around, his mind had decided that the standard for dirty talk was now going to be lyrics from “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He sat up miserably and cradled his head in his hands. His hair thankfully flopped with him and shielded his face.
“It’s okay, Sponge,” Inda said. “Remember that time I kept singing lyrics from ‘Ice Ice Baby’ during sex?”
He lifted his head up and furrowed his brow. “No?”
Inda’s eyes went wide in surprise.
“Oh, right...I think that was with Tdor.” He bit his lip and added, “So you see, I’ve done weird things during sex, too!”
Evred laughed softly, his embarrassment slightly dampened by Inda’s demeanor. He did always know how to cheer him up--always had.
“And Sponge...?”
He turned and tucked some hair behind his ear so he could see Inda more clearly.
“What?”
Inda grinned widely and slid his hand beneath the covers.
“If you can stop yourself from singing Billy Joel, I will make you feel a lot better.”
Evred found himself mirroring his grin.
--
Hadand used her key to get into Inda’s apartment. Their mother had convinced him to make her a copy so she could watch out for him in case he started going through whatever it was that made him drop out of college came back. The key came in handy because, other than Tau, none of them seemed to care if there was food in the fridge or if the apartment was clean. And Tau only cared if it started to smell or looked ugly. She stepped into the apartment with an armful of groceries in tote bags.
“Inda?” she called. “Are you here?”
The lights were on in the living room so Hadand hoped that someone was here. She set the groceries on the small, square kitchen table that Tau had gotten from IKEA and tried again.
“Inda? Tau...Jeje?”
No answer. She pulled her phone out and checked for messages. She wasn’t awaiting any from her little brother. She had texted Evred nearly an hour ago about if he wanted to go to Daggers but he hadn’t responded. Part of her knew that continuing to pine over him was a useless endeavor that would leave her wanting and sad. There was a larger, more juvenile and more desperate part of her that hoped for that impossible day where Evred decided that he also liked women.
She fired off another text even though her mind railed against it and almost immediately, heard the sound of a phone vibrating. Hadand frowned. It could have just been coincidence--Tau could have left his phone and got a text message just as she sent hers--but she didn’t think so. She made her way over to the couch and, sure enough, she saw Evred’s phone sandwiched between the cushions. Hadand felt the color drain from her face.
A memory surfaced. Two months ago and Evred grinning. Happily telling her that it “finally happened.” She hadn’t been paying attention at the time and then she’d had to go back to Wisconsin for the holidays. Inda had had to work all those days at his retail job so he hadn’t accompanied her back home.
She cursed her impossible and asinine crush on Evred for making her blind to what he had meant by “finally happened.” It meant that he and Inda were finally dating. Nothing else would have made him that happy unless he found out that his uncle was hit by a bus.
It was then that she was suddenly aware of noises coming from Inda’s room. The giggle-hiccup pleasure noises of sex. Her chest tightened. Of course. They were dating so they would probably have sex. She started backwards to get out of the apartment. The groceries could wait--she hadn’t gotten anything frozen, anyway. Her calf hit the back of the table (IKEA again, of course) and she let out an “oof” before falling on the sofa. The sounds from the bedroom quieted.
The door opened and she saw Inda poke his head out. His sun-streaked hair was out of its braid and curls stuck out wildly around his head. He looked around before his gaze settled on her.
“Hadand! Ah...what are...you doing here?” he asked, cringing.
Inda spoke with embarrassment but, like Evred, he was completely unaware of her feelings. He just thought it was a moment of big sister realizing that her little brother was having sex.
“I was just...dropping off groceries.” She gestured to the table.
“Oh, uh, thanks! Yeah, um...okay.”
She gestured to the door over her shoulder with both hands.
“And, uh, I’m gonna go. You get back to...uh...whatever. Yes.”
Inda grinned but it looked a bit more like a cringe and she saw a red tinge of embarrassment on his cheeks.
“Right, okay. Thanks for the groceries. Um, bye!”
“Bye!” Hadand said back far too peppily.
She stumbled around the table and burst out into the hallway. Her face was burning but she didn’t know if it was from embarrassment or forthcoming tears.
--
Rajnir relaxed in Kavna’s arms. He knew he was rushing things, taking him home and sleeping with him so soon, but it felt right. Most of all, he felt safe. He didn’t realize until they were lying together that he hadn’t felt safe in bed with someone since Vatta. With Wafri, there was always a niggling sense of worry that he couldn’t place. He couldn’t remember that feeling--the Vatta feeling--until now.
“Mmm,” he mumbled sleepily. “You feel nice.”
Kavna laughed and stroked a hand down the back of his head.
“You alright?”
He nodded and cuddled in closer, savoring this feeling.
“Then is this an awkward time to tell you that your phone’s been vibrating for the past ten minutes?”
Rajnir sat up a little and frowned. “It is?”
Sure enough, he saw his phone sticking out of the back pocket of his discarded jeans on the floor vibrating as if someone wound it up. He didn’t want to see who was texting him since he had the feeling that it was Mardric but it could also be Uncle Fulla and he didn’t want him worrying about him. With a sigh, he disentangled himself from Kavna’s arms and went over to his phone. Mardric’s name flashed in his inbox and he sighed. There were about fifteen or so messages, all variations of asking where he was. He thumbed back that he went home with Kavna. The response was instantaneous.
Mardric: that whale?? u can do better
Rajnir scowled. Why did he put up with Mardric’s shit? Because he needed friends? Because he never spoke to anyone else? Angrily he texted back that he could go fuck himself and flung the phone back at his pants. He got back into bed and snuggled back up against Kavna.
“Mardric?” he asked.
“Yeah. Fuck that guy.”
Kavna laughed and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.
--
Tau was wasted. No, Tau was beyond wasted. His eyes sloshed in his head and he had to keep closing them to stop them from swimming. He stumbled through Daggers, attempting to find the restroom. It was in the back--he was pretty sure it was in the back. He shouldn’t have come here alone. He needed Jeje here to smack him on the back of the neck and tell him when he was drinking too much.
Dull pain spread through the side of his thigh as he bounced off of the corner of a table and careened to the side. His fall was stopped by a warm, solid body. Tau jerked and turned around to find himself staring at a faded Pantera t-shirt. He looked up and saw about five Foxes swimming in his vision. He was suddenly seized with the desire to hurl.
“What are you doing here?” The words were long, drawn out and nearly unintelligible. Even if he couldn’t smell it on his breath, Tau could tell that Fox was about as wasted as he was.
“I didn’t know you owned the place.”
It was far from being his best comeback but his faculties were compromised.
“Maybe I do.”
Fox wasn’t firing on all witticism cylinders either. Tau got up in his face and grinned.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t sure what happened to lead up to it but before Tau could fully register what they both were doing, he and Fox were in a bathroom stall and Tau’s face was buried in his lap as he sloppily sucked him off. Somehow, after that, he stumbled back to the apartment where Inda and Evred were watching one of those laughably bad action movies Inda loved with all his heart.
“I’m telling you that’s the kid from Teen Wolf,” Evred was saying.
Inda’s head was on his lap as Evred’s fingers lightly tangled in his curls and, somehow, the sight of such domestic bliss nearly made him vomit. He staggered into the living room and fell facedown on the floor.
“What happened?” Inda asked. The sound of explosions stopped so Tau figured he paused the movie.
He lifted his head and pulled a face.
“I mouth-fucked Fox.”
Then he really did throw up.
--
Evred looked up from the stack of papers he was grading and sighed. Fox and Barend were fighting again. What was worse that, in addition to them fighting again, they were also blocking his only exit. Not that he really had any place to go since Inda was working and Hadand wasn’t answering his texts. He ducked his head down and continued grading.
“Why do you even live here, Fox? Like, you just sit around stewing in your anger like a fucking--”
“Shut up! Don’t tell me what to do!”
Fox’s anger, of course, made sense since Fox was almost always a four on a one to ten anger scale. Barend’s was fairly vividly out of character since his cousin was pretty laidback.
Evred’s hand clenched around the pen he was using and began singing under his breath to drown them out. He figured that having “We Didn’t Start the Fire” stuck in his head for the past few days could finally come in handy.
“Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again...”
“And you fucked Tau! Like, real nice! We were broken up for two days and you fucked Tau in a bathroom! Tau--who you hate!”
Evred counted his breaths as he desperately tried to ignore them.
“...Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock...”
“I didn’t fuck him! Oral sex isn’t sex!”
“Yes it is! Don’t pull that on me, asshole!”
“...Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline...Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan...”
“Okay, fine, I got wasted and somehow Tau sucked me off in a bathroom. Like, whatever, we were broken up. It’s not cheating!”
“That isn’t the point, Fox. That is so not the point!”
“...Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide...foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz...”
Evred felt the plastic of his red pen begin cracking under his hold. He couldn’t take much more of this. He could barely even concentrate on the song.
“Well, fine, what? Do you want to break up for good? Do you want me to move out? Do you want to get back together? Because make up your goddamn mind, Barend!”
“Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law...” Evred clenched his teeth as he tried to sing.
“If you want to move out then just do it, Fox. The least is almost up anyway. Not like you ever wanted to be in this relationship, anyway!”
“That is bullshit and you know it!”
“Rock and roll, cola wars--I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!”
Evred sprang up from the couch, dumping the papers he had been grading to the floor.
“Either get back together or don’t! Just. Stop. Arguing. About it!”
He hastily ducked down and grabbed the papers. He then turned on his heel and slammed into his bedroom.
“What’s his deal?” Fox asked irritably.
“No clue.”