#back with a 12k chapter babey!

[peninkwrites]

Lines Drawn in Sand & Concrete - Ch 6 of ?

Niki feels like she's in a tea kettle. Wilbur is alive out of reluctant obligation.

[CW: description of injuries, dead bodies, discussion of suicidal thoughts.]

crossposted to ao3

Ch 1

Ch 5

Ch 7

Mafia AU

~ Niki & Wilbur ~

Niki doesn’t like the way things are heading.  She would have thought after Schlatt’s death there would be some peace, instead, she has new reasons to worry.  It’s like she can measure the health of the city by the attendance at the Secret City. She rarely sees any of the Badlanders, Puffy only on rare occasion, and always busy and absentminded.  Even more worrying to her, Tommy and Tubbo don’t come to the Secret City very much anymore, and never together.  Ranboo, already quiet, has gotten quieter.

Niki’s business worries have at least declined.  In Schlatt’s absence, her profits have nearly doubled, or rather, she’s kept the other half of her income she’d been making before.  She doesn’t have to reorder alcohol from Puffy as often, which is another good thing considering Puffy seems to be dealing with her own troubles at present.  In theory, Niki should be doing better than ever.  She’s not.

The bloodiest parts of this mess are probably what should scare her the most, but she isn’t sure.  Bodies are turning up in the streets, and since Tubbo has apparently taken on the mantle of controlling the streets, she’d expected the violence to die down, but it hasn’t.  The Badlanders are more aggressive, territorial and secretive, and Tubbo’s lot––she doesn’t really know what to call them, they’re certainly not Schlatt’s dogs anymore––are too bold, bold in the way a cat puffs up to scare away a bigger animal.  Attendance at the speakeasy has died down in part due to that.  People are nervous to go out at night, because if it’s not the gangs getting into petty scuffles around the block, it’s other dead.  Someone is attacking people deemed undesirable.  Niki’s speakeasy caters to no one but the undesirable.  She doesn’t know what worries her more, the dead bodies, often times faces she recognizes as local common criminals, and those she doesn’t recognize, she can guess also share similar records, or the ones who aren’t murdered. 

It seems there is one person behind this threat, or maybe a group sharing the same mask.  People will ask to spend the night at the Secret City, skittish and bruised.  They’re not hardened criminals––largely because it seems this person doesn’t like to let hardened criminals live––the people that come to her for help, injured but alive, they’re the homeless, they’re fences who work on the street, people like Karl doing something harmless like selling stolen watches, and whoever is out there, lurking like a ghost, thinks that warrants bloody retribution?  This is wrong.  All of it, whatever is happening out there, she feels like she’s trapped in the bottom of a kettle, waiting for the pressure to build and finally boil over.  She’s considered on more than one occasion moving the bakery, finding property deep in Puffy’s territory, Puffy had offered her help more than once, but she can’t bring herself to do it.  This is where she’s always been, it’s where people know to go, and changing that now, it feels unfair.  She won’t abandon any of them.  Tubbo still keeps her bakery safe, actually safe, not in any manner like Schlatt’s so-called protection, and he does so perhaps viciously, but at least for now, there’s no reason for her to move.  Not really.

Trouble does not keep itself neatly contained in the streets away from her and her family, nor is it always something so blunt as violence.  Her little brother doesn’t talk to her.  He doesn’t go out with Tommy and Tubbo.  He just works.  Niki will tell him he doesn’t have to, that she’s fine on her own and he can go see friends, but Ranboo just shrugs and says “they’re busy.  I’d rather just hang out with you right now.”  Niki isn’t used to Ranboo not telling her things, nor Tubbo and Tommy.  She prefers when they had stumbled home after getting into trouble and immediately babbled a confession at her, like her knowing was important somehow, like she could always make things right.  It doesn’t feel that long ago.  Where Tubbo had learned he could tell her when something had gone wrong and there wouldn’t be harsh consequences, where Tommy trusted her enough to not act like a guarded, hunted dog, all bark and no bite, and instead had talked to her like her help wasn’t a threat.  And Ranboo, who did things for himself and not for her for once in his life; he’d run around with his friends and had come home late sometimes and had finally had something to actually apologize to her for. 

Niki doesn’t know why that has slipped away.  Tubbo had acted oddly, cutting off Quackity and arguing in her speakeasy––Niki cannot remember Tubbo ever raising his voice like that, let alone in front of an audience––and he never looks open to conversation when he does still turn up, he just sits quietly in the corner with Jack, the two of them talking in hushed tones and Niki knows they stop talking whenever she walks too close.  It hurts, and worse than hurt, it’s wrong.  Her boys don’t sneak around her unless it’s for shoplifting from a sweet shop or trying to smuggle an injured squirrel into Ranboo’s bedroom.

The nights Tommy still turns up––rarely on the nights Tubbo is there, and never together, and if someone is there, whoever was there first will find some excuse to leave, which is profoundly wrong––if Tommy is there it’s usually to heckle Wilbur.  Tommy seems unchanged, he’s still loud and a bit rude and always ready for a good joke, but Niki knows him better.  There’s the more surface-level changes, he’s a bit scruffier than usual, and there’s this strange duality of him being more quick to refuse her offers of help and more inclined to ask for it.  She’ll ask if he wants to spend the night and he jumps to say no, but that same day he’ll ask her if she has anything leftover from the bakery that she needs to toss.  Always with a joking tone, like he’s just a teenager with a sweet tooth, but Niki knows it’s different now.  She buries the urge to ask him, “are you not eating enough?” because she knows doing so will make Tommy not accept anything. 

There are deeper changes too, ones she has to look more carefully for.  Tommy comes to the Secret City alone.  He will still talk with Ranboo, he’ll talk with her, and oddly enough he’d talk quite a bit with Wilbur, but in the pauses in between his usual rough banter, when he’s stopped taunting Wilbur, he looks tense.  He looks tense like he did before he realized the speakeasy was for people like him.  Tommy views strangers as threats or targets or often both.  He moves through the world like a prey animal and a scavenger, but Niki hasn’t seen that tension cross her doorstep in a long time.  He looks tired too.  Maybe as tired as Tubbo does.

She can’t read Ranboo anymore.  She thinks he might know more about what’s going on than she does, but she’s not sure.  She’s never not sure.  When she asks, Ranboo is always neutral and avoidant in reply, and it’s hard to decide if he looks more worried when she asks about them or if that’s just the persisting, quiet anxiety he’s worn for weeks now.

Niki is good at not prying, to a point.  She’s been perhaps too lenient with Wilbur, who had turned up so mysteriously.  She’d done the basics, told him he should look for a job, that he can’t live on their couch forever, but that doesn’t tell her much.  Wilbur had once been her best friend.  That was a long time ago.  Still, between the two of them, Niki finds it easier to dig a little more at a man she hasn’t seen in years than at her little brother about his friends who might be her little brothers too.

“Morning, Wil,” Niki says.  It’s Monday.  The Bakery closes on Mondays, it gives them time to rest from the weekend rush.  Hence, this is one of the few times she’s still in the apartment when Wilbur stirs.

Wilbur sits up blearily from the couch, curls askew.  “Morning…” He rubs his eyes.

“How are you so tired?” Niki asks.  “You don’t have a job, what is it you stay up late to do?”

Wilbur smiles halfheartedly.  “Find trouble.”  He adds more insistently, “and play for your speakeasy sometimes.”

“Could you work on finding a job before you find trouble?” She teases.  “And play at my speakeasy.  I need you there to keep me company, but maybe a proper job too.”

Wilbur wakes up a bit more in his embarrassment, sheepish.  “Er, yeah.  Probably should do that.”

“Yeah,” Niki says pointedly.

Wilbur gets up, pulling on the same wrinkled white button up he wore yesterday over his undershirt.  “You… didn’t happen to make enough coffee I could have some, perchance?”

She rolls her eyes at him and nods to the pot.

“Ah, you’re a saint,” he mumbles.

There is a brief calm, Wilbur getting himself a cup, and Niki content to lean against the counter and drink hers, thinking.  Wilbur is freshly awake.  He is not a morning person.  Niki knows he is weak and however much he’ll loathe it, it’s the perfect time to push.

“So, we haven’t had much time to talk, Wil.  Feels like you’re always running around doing something, or I’m running around doing something.”

“Oh?” Wilbur says mildly.  “Yeah, yeah guess so,” he sips coffee.

“How’s home?”

Wilbur seems to almost choke, quickly lowering his mug.  “Home?”

“You know, where you came from?  Where you’ve been living?  For the past eight years?” Niki raises her eyebrows at him.

Wilbur almost winces.  “That, uh.  That didn’t really feel like home.”

Niki laughs.  “Okay, you’re very dramatic, do you know that?”  She’s unfazed, continuing on.  She knows some, she knows quite a bit, actually.  Niki can be quiet, but she listens.  There’s something wrong with Phil and Wilbur, and while that’s not new, maybe she’d imagined he’d have grown out of it when he grew up into a proper adult.  “How’s Phil?  How’s…”  She tries to remember other things she’s learned from their brief conversations over the last months and her even briefer amount of contact with Phil over the last eight years.  “How’s your… step-mom?  Do you get along okay?”

“Kristin?” Wilbur seems surprised, as if he hadn’t imagined she was an option for a subject of conversation.  “She’s great. Like, professionally she sort of scares me, but she’s really fun and she makes my dad happy, so.”  He shrugs.  “Can’t hold her choice in business against her, really.”

Niki notes he had skipped over her question about Phil.  “She’s great, but she sort of scares you?  Professionally?”

“She’s, you know,” Wilbur sets down his mug and waves his hands mysteriously, “the Lady Death of Salt Lake City.”

“Oh.”  Niki had not heard that name before, but then again, she already knows more than she wants to about the criminals that can touch her life, let alone keeping up with the ones that don’t.  “So. When you said Phil is more working in the background..?”

“Working for her,” Wilbur nods.  “He’s got a new––well, not really new now––reputation. Angel of Death,” Wilbur says mildly like his father has done something as simple as getting a promotion at the bank.

Niki nods, processing this.  That reputation truly isn’t new to her.  She can’t imagine Wilbur hadn’t heard it before, but Wilbur seems to be under the impression the title came from Kristin.  Phil had chosen the Crowfather as his title, but the City comes up with their own names for their Gods.  It was here that label started.  Phil was a complex man.  He could be, and often had been, ruthless.  He had rules, though.  If he kills someone who still has family to leave behind, he pays for the funeral.  The payments are anonymous, but connections were made regardless.  Phil would murder someone and then lay them to rest, sometimes to the horror of and other times to the relief of their families.  Phil was an Angel of Death long before he found a Death to follow.  Niki continues carefully, nudging the subject.  “Bit of a change from the Crowfather.”

“Not really,” Wilbur says gloomily, and Niki thinks perhaps he did know that title.  “Same business.”  That blasé addition makes her reconsider.  It seems Wilbur is just as unsettled by his father’s work as before.  Niki doesn’t blame him for it.  Of course, she has a bit of a soft spot for Phil.  He’d been good to her and Ranboo.  She’s not so picky as to scorn that even if he’s done things she cannot consider as anything but awful.

Niki continues quickly, before her own line of thinking strays any more grim.  “And is Techno still around?”

“Yeah, as long as Phil is.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” she smiles.  “How is he, then?  Well, how do you think he is?”

Wilbur shrugs.  “They’re the same, Niki.  Alright?  I don’t have anything to tell you, because they’re the same as they always were,” he says coldly.  “You don’t need to bother asking anymore.”

“Wil, I’m asking because I care about them.  You’re really going to be weird about it?” Niki says almost gently, because she knows that way will get Wilbur to actually care.

He wilts.  “Sorry, I’m sorry, Niki,” he presses against his forehead, eyes closed as if warding off a headache.  “You’re right, that was… that was a bit dick-ish of me.”

“Yep.  It was a bit dick-ish,” she laughs.  “I know I’ve said it before, but I’ve missed you, Wil.”

Wilbur, as always, looks surprised.  “Yeah?  What’d you do that for?” He teases.

That gets another laugh out of her and Wilbur looks so proud of himself.  Niki doesn’t know what help this will bring, but knowing a shred more about what’s going on with Wilbur at least feels like progress of some sort.  It doesn’t touch the bigger issues haunting her life or her business, but she wants to know her best friend again, she wants him to be her best friend again.  One day.

“I do have a request for you today, Wilbur.”

Wilbur shifts, sitting up straighter.  “Oh?”

“When you’re out… finding trouble, could you also find a few job applications?  For me?”

Wilbur nods, slouching in his shame.  “I will.  I can for sure do that, Niki.”

“Okay.  I’m going to hold you to that, Wil,” she says warningly, because she knows him, and even with the best of intentions, she knows he’s just as likely to turn up with zero job applications and some grand story about what happened that day instead.

“It was… it was good talking, Niki.  Really,” Wilbur is eager to get out of this conversation.  “Um, I’m gonna… I’m gonna get a start on my day, yeah?”  He smiles awkwardly and side steps past her out of the kitchen.

She smiles.  It’s a little fun to make Wilbur nervous, and quite warranted considering his slacking on his side of their friendship.  “Bye, Wil.”

“Bye!”  The front door shuts, and Niki is once more alone.  She’d let Ranboo sleep in.  She doesn’t have especially high hopes for Wilbur, but somehow he still seems like the problem she has the best understanding of and therefore the best chance of fixing.  Niki sighs, regretting her own line of thought.  She shouldn’t have to fix any of them.

~

Wilbur had told Niki while wandering today he’d grab a few job applications.  Thus far he had not done so.  Wilbur had never had an actual job in his fucking life, and he wasn’t enthused by the thought of starting now.  He hadn’t planned on sticking around long enough to have to pay rent, but here he’s remained.  Thus far he’s just wandered the streets as per usual.  He’d deny it if asked, but right now he’s waiting for Tommy to come barreling into him.  That kid always manages to find him in this city, it’s almost impressive, if not also a bit concerning.  Thus far, the kid hasn’t showed.  Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes him nervous.  Last he saw him, Tommy had complained about the new management at the hotel giving him grief, bad enough his hands were all bloody.  It doesn’t bode well.

Wilbur also wants to go back down into the subway tunnels.  It’s not a logical draw, more it feels like a morbid compulsion, l’appel du vide and all that.  He knows there’s nothing down there for him, except maybe rats and tetanus, but nonetheless.  He’s not scared, but also he sort of doesn’t want to go without Tommy, for no reason in particular.

It’s like Wilbur summons him into being.

“Hello, you stupid swiss cheese of a man!” Tommy appears beside him, making him jump.  “Thrown yourself at any more local mob patrols lately?”

Wilbur has one hand over his racing heart.  “No.  Haven’t found the time,” he says irritably.  “The fuck d’you mean swiss cheese?”

“Oh, ‘cause you were almost full of bullet holes.”  Tommy makes finger guns.

“Right, of course,” Wilbur scoffs. “Where did you even come from?”

“The shadows,” Tommy says with a dramatic whisper.  “Actually, if you don’t mind I’d like it if you joined me in the shadows,” he’s staring at something over Wilbur’s shoulder.

“What?  Why?”

“‘Cause that man––the one across the street obviously looking for me––I currently have his wallet,” Tommy nods at an irritable man wandering in a suit and ducks back into an alley, Wilbur finding himself quick to follow.

“So, still hard at work, I see?” Wilbur says dryly.

“More so than you, I see,” Tommy says mockingly.  “Not an especially productive day, though.  I’m… I’m not tired, but I’m a bit bored of the daily grind, so!” Tommy nods like that settles the matter, excusing some weariness that Wilbur hadn’t even noticed.  Wilbur had noticed that Tommy clearly has some hangups about being seen as weak, so he doesn’t question it.

“Yeah, yeah fair enough.  I told Niki I’d pick up some job applications,” Wilbur says gloomily.

“Ha!  Have fun with that!  Chaining yourself to the Machine, huh?”  Tommy tuts him.  “Poor thing.”

Wilbur glances at Tommy’s hands, which are currently perusing his stolen wallet.  He can see cloth stained a rusted red.  “How’re your… battle wounds, then?”  He nods to them.

Tommy snaps the wallet shut, burying his hands in his pockets.  “Fine, thank you very much.  I heal like, super fast.”

“Really?  Looks like you could use some actual bandages.”

“These are basically the same thing,” Tommy pouts.  “But…” he glances at his hands in his pockets.  “If you’re buying?”

Wilbur is not as broke as he was previously, as he’s gotten at least some tips playing at the Secret City.  He gives some of it to Niki, a feeble approximation of rent, but it’s still something.  It’s definitely not much.  Not enough he should be blowing it on getting some gauze and anti-infectant for some random kid.  Wilbur sighs.

“Come on.  There’s a drugstore around the corner.”

“I know there is.  This is my city.”

“It’s mine too!  I’ve lived here longer than you have.”

“Yeah, but it’s changed since you were here, old man,” Tommy nods wisely.  He stops outside the drugstore.  “I’ll wait here.  I’ve definitely nicked shit from here before and they won’t want to see me.”

“Haven’t you nicked shit from everywhere?”

“Yeah, but here I got caught.”

“Touché,” Wilbur smiles, amused before entering the shop.  He grabs gauze and neomycin before heading up to the counter.  “A pack of Marlboros too.”

The man behind the counter nods, grabbing a pack.  Wilbur glances at the register and what it rings up to.  He stares doubtfully at his own wallet, hesitating over his lineup.  He grabs the neomycin, intending on putting it back, but as he turns he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over to see Tommy pressing against the glass and making faces at him.  Wilbur buries a laugh.

“Actually, scrap the Marlboros.  This is it for me,” he puts the antibiotic back on the counter, only processing his own choice after the fact.  It unsettles him. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nonetheless, he returns to the street.  “Here,” he shoves the gauze and neosporin into his hands.

“Thanks, man!” Tommy sits down right there on the window ledge and begins peeling the scraps of sheets off his cut up hands.

“Wait, you’re not gonna wash them first?” Wilbur reaches out to stop him.

Tommy looks amused, glancing around the street.  “You see a bath anywhere?  Trust me, the river will do way more harm than good.”

“No, that’s not what I–” Wilbur sighs.  “Come on,” he nods toward the store.

Tommy shakes his head.  “No, it’s like I said, they won’t want me in there–”

“Who gives a shit?  I’ll go with you, we’ll go to the bathroom, and I’ll help you dress them,” Wilbur says more insistently.  He’s more surprised when Tommy doesn’t continue to protest, just stands to follow.  Tommy looks surprised as well.

Tommy very deliberately stays behind Wilbur, whistling and scanning the shelves in the most conspicuous way possible, until Wilbur drags him into a vaguely horrifying bathroom.

“Honestly, this feels worse than the street,” Tommy crinkles his nose.

Wilbur gives him a look.  “Wash your hands.”

Tommy rolls his eyes but obliges, wincing all the while.  Wilbur stares disapprovingly at the crusted blood and cracked scabbing of the cut across either hand.  Tommy’s hands are also filthy.  Wilbur is also trying to bottle every screaming warning about infection; he knows Tommy isn’t exactly in a place to take good care of himself.

“This fuckin’ sucks,” Tommy mutters.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to pick pockets in these conditions?”

“It’s not like I did that, why’re you complaining to me?”

“Because you’re here.”

Wilbur rolls his eyes.  “Fine.”  He shoves a wad of paper towels at him.  “Dry them.”

“I know how to dress a wound, dickhead!  Just ‘cause I’m not rich enough to buy all this fancy shit doesn’t mean I don’t know how to dress a wound,” Tommy snaps.  “And I don’t need your help!” He says when Wilbur reaches toward him.

“Your hands are hurt!  You need hands to dress a wound!  Come on, man, stop being a little bitch and just let me,” Wilbur snaps back.

“Fine!  Fine, go for it!  If you want to play doctor, fine!” Tommy rolls his eyes, muttering, half under his breath, “call me a little bitch… from the king of little bitches…”

Wilbur ruefully does so, pasting antibiotic cream onto the cuts, Tommy flinching and pulling away as it burns.

“Ow!  Careful!” Tommy whines.

“It’s so it doesn’t get infected!” Wilbur snaps.

Tommy grumbles wordlessly before trailing off grumpily.

It’s quiet for a time, for once Tommy without anything snarky to say.  Wilbur gets nervous when the silence continues by the time he starts wrapping one hand in gauze.  He glances up, but Tommy is just watching him work with a solemn frown, wary and unsure, like he’s expecting Wilbur to do some harm.  Wilbur deigns not to think on that too hard, instead he refocuses, finishing wrapping Tommy’s other hand.

“Oooh, look at me, I’m Wilbur I can wrap cuts like an expert, I’m so smart,” Tommy says in a high voice, staring at his wrapped hands with clear satisfaction.

“Is that supposed to be a thank you?” Wilbur says dryly.  “Take this, okay?  Just… Don’t let your hands get so grubby,” Wilbur shoves the rest of the roll of gauze and antibiotics into his hands.

“Right, I got a choice in that, do I?” Tommy scoffs.

“Come on.  This place is fucking rank,” Wilbur heads back out the door.

“My hands still hurt.”

“Tough luck.”  They return outside, Wilbur rummaging in his pockets.  “Actually, I’ve got something else for you.  You still got that torch on you?”

“What?  Yeah, why?” Tommy asks suspiciously.

Wilbur offers Tommy two batteries.  He’d been holding onto them for a few days now, having scrounged them from Niki and Ranboo’s junk drawer.  “Fancy another trip into the tunnels?”

“Oh, I knew there was a catch!  What, you think ‘cause you buy a guy a bandage that he has to follow you around and obey your every whim?!” Tommy scowls, genuinely reproachful.

“What?  No!  No, that’s not why I got you a fucking bandage, are you joking?  If you don’t wanna go, I don’t care, I just thought…” Wilbur doesn’t know what he just thought.  “I dunno.  Might be another adventure.”

“I don’t need more adventure.  I’m fuckin’ made of adventure.  I’ve got oodles of adventure.”

“Okay, then don’t come,” Wilbur shrugs, still walking in the general direction of the maintenance entrance they had fled through before.

Tommy keeps pace.  “Wait, wait but that doesn’t mean I want you to go alone!  You’ll get eaten by rats, remember?”

Wilbur laughs.  “I knew you’d want to come.”

“You knew I’d what?  You knew I’d fucking want to what?”

“Shut up!” Wilbur cackles.  “You’re the most annoying fucking child!”

“And you want me to follow you into some fuckin’ dark-ass tunnels?  Hm?  You’re fucking bonkers.  I’m not about to get serialed by a man talking about come–”

“Get what?  Get cerealed?”

“Yeah!  Yeah, serialed!  As in serial fuckin’ murdered!” Tommy snaps.  He does stop in the alleyway, staring at the old maintenance door they had fled through last time.

“Wait, wait go back, you would get serial murdered?  Doesn’t that imply plural?  How the fuck would you get murdered multiple times?” Wilbur scoffs.

“You don’t know me.  You don’t know my murder history,” Tommy says aloofly.  Tommy puts the batteries in his torch, glancing up at the door on occasion like it might bite him.  “No, no but really, why the fuck do you want to go down there again?”

“Aren’t you curious?  That banging noise, look, it was probably just like… pipes settling or old machinery, but I bet we could… we could find other sneaky entrances over the city or something!” Wilbur says.

Tommy looks unenthused, but nonetheless, he’s put batteries in his torch and looks grimly prepared.  “Fine, fine I will go with you, but after this you’re buying me food, got it?”

“That… that sounds like worse bribery than me just getting you some gauze, what the fuck?” Wilbur gives him look.  “What, am I like, dangling cheese on a string down there for you?”

“Now you’ve just made it weird,” Tommy glowers at him before opening the door.  “Surprised no one else has gone down here if it’s that easy.”

“Um, that lock looks like it’s not busted and normal people obey big danger signs,” Wilbur points out as he enters the stairwell.

“Ah, psh.  Cowards!” Tommy scoffs, striding into the dark behind him before flicking on his torch.  “Oh, this is loads better!  I can actually see shit.”

“Don’t shine it in my eyes!” Wilbur hisses, batting his torch away.

“Don’t put your eyes by my torch!”

Wilbur gives him a look.

“Fine, fine, sorry,” Tommy says reluctantly.  “So, mole-man, what are we doing in the tunnels today?”

“I am…” Wilbur hesitates.  “I’m looking for this one platform.  It’s… for nostalgia reasons.”

“You’re nostalgic for a grubby ass train platform?” Tommy raises an eyebrow, striding ahead along the tracks.  They’ve been out of operation for years, but both of them keep off the actual rails.

“Yeah,” Wilbur tries to think of a reason he can give.  “Just…”

He’s saved from replying by Tommy shouting into the dark.  “HELLO?!”

Echoing back, “HELLO?!”

“HI, TOMMY!” Tommy shouts.

“HI, TOMMY!”

Tommy looks over at Wilbur, grinning.  “This tunnel is very polite.”

“Is it?  Are you and the tunnel making friends?” Wilbur says sarcastically, but he can’t resist a smile.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!” Tommy shouts.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!”

“See, we’re in agreement.”

“I’m not the one shouting, why do I need to shut up?”

“You were giving me sass, mister.  Tunnel and I don’t like that disrespect,” Tommy tuts him haughtily.

“And stop going ahead!  You don’t know where we’re going,” Wilbur quickens his pace to catch up.

“Oh, like you do?  Last I checked, you didn’t wander from platform to platform this way back in the olden days,” Tommy points out.

“Yeah, but I still know the direction–” Wilbur goes quiet.  There’s another noise, and it is not an echo.  It’s that same sound of metal banging together they had heard the last time.  It sounds about as close as it had the last time, that is, concerningly close.  Wilbur looks over at Tommy, to find him already staring back with wide, nervous eyes.  They listen.  There is silence for a time, the echo of the banging noise fading off, but then it resumes rapidly, three sharp bangs that echo off.  It stops for a moment, then three more, slow, measured.  Wilbur is quickly starting to doubt is “old machinery” theory from last time.

“It’s down that way, right?” Tommy whispers in the next pause, pointing down the tunnel.  He jumps when there are once more three sharp bangs.

“M-Maybe?” Wilbur says.  “The echo– I’m not sure which way.”

“I think it’s that one,” Tommy nods ahead.

Neither of them move.  The banging has yet to resume.  Knowing the direction doesn’t dictate what they do now.  Neither of them really want to see what it is, or more probable, who it is.  Tommy looks forward, shining his torch straight ahead.  The tunnel goes straight longer than the light reaches, so it shows only more blackness.

“What kind of nutcase goes banging around tunnels?” Tommy mutters.

“I mean, us kinds of nutcases,” Wilbur points out, but still he doesn’t move down the tunnel.  It’s Wilbur’s turn to jump when the banging returns without warning, three sharp clangs of metal, and a pause.

“I wanna check it out,” Tommy says, but he already looks like he regret the thought.

Wilbur waits for the next three slow bangs to fade out to reply.  “Okay.  Okay, fine, but the moment we see anything weird, we bail, alright?”

Three sharp bangs.

“Yeah, alright,” Tommy nods and seems to muster some bravery.  He starts off down the tunnel first, stopping often to look back and make sure Wilbur is close behind him, even as he can see Wilbur’s torch shining ahead alongside his.

The banging continues on like clockwork.  Three sharp knocks, whoever is responsible seems to take a break, and then continues slowly, before trying rapid knocks again.  Always in sets of three.  Wilbur feels like he’s missing something; he’s already deeply uneasy, and then his torch glances off of a shape splayed out across the tracks.  Wilbur fumbles forward, reaching out to stop Tommy, his torch refocusing on it.  It’s definitely a body.  He has a feeling they’re not merely unconscious.  Wilbur can’t see their face, they’re laid out on their stomach, head turned the other way, so all he can see is what looks like a red cloth tied around a head of short, dark hair.  There’s definitely blood, covering the arm visible to them.

Tommy spots what his torch is shining on, and to Wilbur’s shock, starts running forward.

“Oh fuck, no, nononononono, hold on a fucking second, it can’t– no, oh my fucking god, no fucking way, it can’t be, it can’t be– f-fuck–” Tommy babbles frantically, voice high and hoarse, words almost overlapping.  Wilbur lunges forward to stop him when he runs toward the strange corpse in the dark, but Tommy is too quick.  Tommy falls to his knees by the body, and before Wilbur can warn him of the hundred reasons why it’s a bad idea, Tommy touches it, rolling it over onto its side.  Tommy falls back, face buried in his hands, and it takes a moment for Wilbur to process that he’s relieved.

“Fuck… fuck, it’s not him… it’s not him…” Tommy’s knees are tucked up into his chest, rocking slightly, sounding breathless.

“Tommy?” Wilbur says cautiously.  “Are you… are you okay?”  He asks a rather stupid question, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Tommy sniffs loudly, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and Wilbur pretends he can’t see Tommy’s cheeks are shiny and damp in the torchlight.  Tommy stares at the corpse again, without any apparent squeamishness at the sight, he still pores over it, like he’s trying to make sure.  “It’s not him,” Tommy croaks, reassuring himself more than informing Wilbur of anything.  Wilbur dares to stare at the body’s face.  The corpse it seems had been blindfolded by a strip of red cloth, but Wilbur can still see the lower half of his face, it’s a man with a patchy beard, a narrow, crooked nose, he seems to be just a few years older than Wilbur.

“Not who?” Wilbur asks gently.

Tommy blinks, and seems to come back to himself in some way, clambering to his feet.  “Nothing,” he’s still staring at the corpse.  “Thought it was… no one.  Just, one of my mates.  An old friend.  I don’t… I don’t see him as much anymore, and he’s… he gets dragged into some shit.  Doesn’t stay out of it like I do, and I always warned him, I always told him…” Tommy trails off, moving on.  “And wears a fuckin’ red headband, and from behind, it…” Tommy nods to the blindfold, trailing off again, his thoughts disconnected.  “A-And the blood on his arm, thought maybe it was… Just from behind and a ways back, not… not the face at all, just…” Tommy shakes his head.  “It’s… it’s not him,” he repeats.

Wilbur still feels almost sick with nerves.  This exchange had happened over the course of a lull in the banging, Wilbur isn’t sure if this pause has lasted longer than the last, but he’s not sure he wants to wait around for it to continue.  “We should go, Tommy.”

“What-?” Tommy glances up at him.  “Yeah,” Tommy takes one step back the direction they had come before pausing.  “What about the… the noise?” Tommy looks both ways, as if inviting it to continue.

“Tommy, that man, he didn’t die from natural causes,” Wilbur says softly.  “And if whoever did that to him is prowling around down here…” Wilbur hesitates.  He doesn’t want to scare the kid.  “I mean, the noise hasn’t gotten any closer.  We’ve gotten closer to it.  Like…” Wilbur looks back toward the stairwell he knows is somewhere in the dark behind them.  “Like they’re trying to draw us deeper in.”  Wilbur looks back at Tommy and sees he’s certainly failed to not scare the kid.

“We… we can’t tell anyone.  We can’t tell anyone about this, about the…” Tommy doesn’t even look at the corpse now, but Wilbur understands.  “Can’t go to the cops, least I can’t.  We… we can’t explain how we were down here a-and–”

“I know, Tommy.  We should go.”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he does it, he doesn’t think, he just does, but he offers Tommy his hand.  Wilbur almost doesn’t realize he’s done it until Tommy accepts.

Tommy’s expression doesn’t indicate confusion on his side of things, but he still seems sort of hazy, so Wilbur just starts walking, guiding them back to the street.  They emerge just as the surviving streetlights kick on, but it’s still far preferable to the dark underground.

“Right, I think… I think we should get out of here,” Wilbur starts walking.  “Don’t… don’t get all defensive if I offer, but d’you want me to walk you back to the hotel?”

“Nah, I’m… I’m good,” Tommy shrugs.

“Don’t do that, man, just… let me do it, alright?  It’ll make me feel better–”

“Not everything is about you, ay?” Tommy scoffs.  “I’m not going to the hotel no more.”

“Are you still having a hard time getting inside?  I thought you figured out a way around the… the stuff,” Wilbur stops when he realizes Tommy isn’t following, instead scuffing his feet and leaning against the wall of the alley.

“No, not just that…” Tommy trails off gloomily.  “The nutter that replaced Jack, y’know the one that put razors on the windows?  Now he’s checking the empty rooms with a fucking golf club.  Thought he was gonna crack my fuckin’ ‘ead open…”

Wilbur steps closer to Tommy, immediately finding himself bottling rage and horror in equal measure.  “He came at you with a golf club?!”

Tommy steps back on impulse, scowling.  “No, he asked if I wanted to go a round and I told him I only did crazy golf- yes he swung at me, dumbass…”

“Holy shit, Tommy, you– Don’t tell me you’re going back there!  I mean, where are you gonna go?”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he feels panicked.

“Obviously not!  That’s what I just said.   I’ll…” Tommy’s feeble excuse of saying he’ll find somewhere else to crash dies with a shiver.  After the night they’ve had, he’s a little more vulnerable.  “Can I… Can I walk to Niki’s with you?  And… And I’ll figure something out on the way there.”

“Yeah, something like sleeping there.”

Tommy frowns, but he doesn’t say no this time.

~

Niki wants to talk to Ranboo.  She doesn’t know what to do with herself on her days off anymore.  Puffy doesn’t have time to go boxing with her anymore, and Eret is busy with the museum and some fancy new investments she’s made so she rarely has time to come over for their usual chats, and if Eret is busy HBomb is busy too, Karl even seems to be busy nowadays.  Ranboo is in the same boat, not that Niki really understands why.  Even if Tubbo has something going on, Tommy is always available.  Niki also has a feeling that Ranboo knows she wants to talk to him, because he’s been finding excuses to go back to his room, before realizing there’s nothing to do in there, coming back out, realizing his sister clearly having some sort of emotion towards him, and finds an excuse again.

“Aren’t you going to help me with dinner?” Niki asks as Ranboo is halfway down the hall back to his room.  He turns on his heels, looking a shred less anxious than someone walking to the gallows and nods.

“Yep!”

“Okay,” Niki can’t help but be amused.  Even if she were actually mad at Ranboo, which isn’t the word she would use for whatever she’s feeling at present, Ranboo is well past the age where she could attempt to ground him, at this point what he’s dreading is her saying she’s disappointed in him.  Which, to be fair, tends to be viewed as a death sentence by all three of them, Ranboo and Tommy and Tubbo.

Ranboo hums to fill the quiet, glancing at her often, and to her surprise, he speaks up first, methodically chopping vegetables so he doesn’t have to look over at her.  “You doin’ okay?”

“What?” She looks over at him, thrown off.  “Yeah.  I think so.  Are you?”

Ranboo doesn’t seem to believe her.  “Yeah!”

Niki doesn’t really believe him either.  Quiet for a bit, neither quite sure of how to proceed.

“How’s Tubbo?  And Tommy?”

“Huh?  Oh, I think…” He falters, "I think okay.”

“Have you not seen them much?”  She already knows the answer.  She asks anyway.

“No,” he sounds amused.  “I mean, I’ve been with you.  When would I have seen them?  I mean, you haven’t seen your friends much.”

“Well, they’re busy with criminal things,” Niki says teasingly.

“Yeah, well, mine too.” Ranboo says, his humor sharper, bitter.

“But even before, you all made time for each other, didn’t you?  Do you know why Tubbo hasn’t come to the Secret City with Tommy at all?  It doesn’t seem like them.”

“I don’t know everything they do, Niki,” Ranboo snaps.

“Ranboo,” Niki can’t help the hint of hurt in her voice.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s… it’s fine,” she sighs.  “You don’t talk to me anymore, Ranboo.  I just… I just want to know what’s happening.”

“Maybe I just don’t have much to say,” Ranboo shrugs.

“Are you… are you guys not friends anymore?”

“No,” Ranboo says quickly.  His face scrunches up, and he doesn’t even look upset really, more so worried.  “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“When else are we going to?!” Niki snaps.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry, Ranboo, I’m just… I don’t want you to lose them.”

“You say that like I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice!” Niki grows emphatic.

“Really?” Ranboo is defensive.  “Did you have a choice when you lost Wilbur?”

Icy silence.  Niki is taken aback, a lump in her throat, because it wasn’t just harsh or startling, coming from Ranboo, saying that to her, it’s almost cruel.  Worse when he continues.

“He left you, Niki, and now you’re… you’re letting him live here…”

“You agreed!”

“I thought it was gonna be for a couple days!  Not a couple months!”

“He left everyone, Ranboo. He didn’t just leave me.”

“I don’t care about everyone!  I care about you.  And he hurt you!  And– And it’s like you’re not even mad at him!” Ranboo’s voice breaks slightly, choked up rage that isn’t just meant for Wilbur.

“It sounds like you are.”

“Because you should be,” he says accusingly.  “A-And it’s not fair that he stopped talking to you, he just… he just moved on.  He didn’t… he didn’t think about it.  Like he didn’t even care.”

“Ranboo…” Niki reaches out to him, he pulls away.  “You know it’s okay if you’re hurting right now, right?”

“This isn’t about me. Not right now, okay?  I know I– I know–” Ranboo cuts himself off, frustrated by his own emotions.  “Let’s– Let’s just pick one, and right now I… I wanna talk about Wilbur, and–”

The front door of their apartment opens.  Wilbur and Tommy enter, and immediately read the tension of whatever they have just interrupted.

“Uh.  Ayup?” Tommy gives the two of them a nod.  “Well, I’ve got you home safe, Wilbur, I ought to be going–” he turns back to the door and Wilbur grabs his sleeve.

“Tommy needs somewhere to stay.”

“Do not–”

“The new hotel manager came at him with a golf club.”

“He what?!” Ranboo is snapped out of his own brooding.

“And I kicked his ass and left!  It’s not a problem,” Tommy whines.

“Yeah, but you can’t go back, and you shouldn’t be just sleeping outside, Tommy,” Wilbur says pointedly.

“I’ve done it before!”

“No,” Niki says sharply.  Tommy stares at her, startled.  “Tommy that is in no way safe.  Not right now, okay?  You’re staying here.”

Tommy quickly realizes he no longer has a choice.  “Right… fine, but just for tonight, alright?”

Niki turns to Wilbur, just as piercing.  “Did you get any job applications?”

If Wilbur could sink into the floor, he would.  “W-Well, I… I meant to, it’s just… some things came up…”

“What?  What things?”

“Sorry, sorry, nothing, it was… it was stupid of me.  Never mind,” Wilbur winces, knowing how useless his excuses are.

Ranboo gives Niki a weighted glance that Wilbur is at a loss to understand, and Niki is resolutely ignoring it.

“Tommy, I’m sorry, but if you’re staying here, you’ve got to take a shower,” Niki nods Tommy down the hall.

“Okay, rude, not my fault that I haven’t been able to use the hotel showers in a… in a little while…” he grumbles, following her.

For a dangerous, brief amount of time, Wilbur and Ranboo are alone.

“What came up?” Ranboo asks.

Wilbur notes the hint of ice in his tone and hesitates.  “It was… it was a cheap excuse, I… I got distracted with Tommy.  That’s all.  No good reason.”

“So… so why’d you say you did?” Ranboo says quietly.

“I don’t… I don’t know.  Felt bad about it, really,” Wilbur shrugs.

“Right,” Ranboo is cool and unfeeling.  “Niki and I were making dinner.  Do you think you could help?”

Wilbur knows it’s not a request.

“Right, right, let me… let me wash my hands,” Wilbur nods, going to the sink.  “What’re you making?”

“Um, baked rutabaga and parmesan chicken?”

“Rutabaga…” Wilbur laughs fondly.  “Right.”

Silence until Niki returns.

“Thanks, Wil,” Niki says, reentering the kitchen.

“Sure!  Sure, it’s the… it’s the least I can do.”

“Yep,” Ranboo agrees quietly.

Niki gives him a warning look, before proceeding as if she hadn’t heard him.  “Ranboo, Tommy is going to borrow some of your clothes.”

“Fine with me,” Ranboo says.

Wilbur looks between the two of them, eyes wide.  He focuses on his assigned task.  A terse half hour passes before Tommy returns, hair still dripping wet, dampening the collar of one of Ranboo’s shirts.  Tommy’s had to roll up the pant legs of his jeans substantially.

Wilbur laughs.  “You look like a wet dog.”

“Do I?” Tommy strides over to him and shakes his head so water flies everywhere, largely into Wilbur’s face.

“Tommy!  Come on, man, not… not in the kitchen,” Ranboo says helplessly.

“Sorry,” Tommy rolls his eyes, before catching sight of Niki and offering with more sincerity, “sorry!”

“Ranboo, can you get your desk chair?  We need one more.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Their tiny dining table is typically only used for two, a third chair is there for a guest, but it’s rare for them to have more than that company in the apartment.  It’s far easier to host in the speakeasy.  Niki has dragged the table out from the wall so a chair can be put on the fourth side.  Wilbur helps set the table and Tommy gathers drinks and despite the lingering tension, it feels almost cozy.  The four of them have settled in, Tommy eating with a disconcerting amount of enthusiasm, but no one at the table has the heart to scold him for it.  Once Tommy has cleared a plate and gone back for seconds, he begins to peer around the table.

“Brrr. Bit chilly in here, eh?  What’s got you all up in a huff?”  Tommy is quite good and prodding the one issue everyone else is still avoiding.

Wilbur doesn’t feel like he knows what’s going on, so he doesn’t speak, Ranboo loathes the thought of being the one to speak up first, especially about confrontation, and Niki neither wants to lie to Tommy nor get into things.  Tommy waits.

“Well I think whatever has gotten you lot in a mood, you should do some soul searching, reevaluate your pri-or-i-tees,” he enunciates every syllable around a mouthful of rutabaga.  “Like, Ranboo, handsome lad like you, what on earth could be troubling that brain of yours?  You’re a baker, you’re a looker, you’re all… like, sensitive and shit, you’re a catch!  Niki, if you’ve got problems, you should just… y’know, kick their asses like you always do.  In what fuckin’ world does Niki Nihachu feel troubled by something she can’t wreck shop over?  You’ve got a badass speakeasy and everything!  You don’t fear no pigs, the state should fear you!”  Tommy nods once like that settles the matter, before refocusing on his plate.  The tension doesn’t break, but it does crack a little.

“No grand input for me?” Wilbur says dryly.

“Nah, I know why you’ve got troubles, and it’s your own fault,” Tommy shrugs.

Ranboo laughs.

“Hey!” Wilbur says, indignant.

“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?  Hm?” Tommy gives him a look.

“Yeah, are you, Wil?” Niki smiles.  “I mean, you couldn’t pick up one job application?”

Wilbur is flushing red.  “Look, maybe I… I’m not thrilled at the thought of scrounging together some shitty nine-to-five with a dickhead boss…”

“How do you know what job shit is like?  You’ve never worked a day in your fuckin’ life,” Tommy jeers.

“Have you had a job before, Tommy?” Wilbur says pointedly.

“More than you.”

“I’d say both of you don’t know anything about having a real job,” Ranboo points out.

“And I’d say you don’t know much about having shitty nine-to-five and a dickhead boss,” Niki adds.  “You got lucky too, Ranboo.”

“I mean, maybe I do–”

Niki gasps, dramatically acting offended, throwing her napkin at him.

“Hey!  Hey, I’m kidding,” Ranboo hunches down which does very little to make himself a smaller target.

“I dunno, Ranbus, she’s a tough egg to crack, y’know?  She runs a tight ship.  She hasn’t put up with any nonsense as long as I’ve known her.  She’s been immovable since she was twelve, probably longer,” Wilbur teases.  Niki rolls her eyes at him, poorly masking a laugh.  Wilbur glances back over at Ranboo, startled to find Ranboo staring at him, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth open slightly like he’s unsure of how to say something, to describe whatever unreadable expression he’s currently stabbing into Wilbur’s chest.  “What?” Wilbur shifts uncomfortably.

“You haven’t called me that since I was little.”

“Well, I– I haven’t been here a lot, have I?” Wilbur stammers.

“Yeah.  Guess not.”

Tommy snorts.  “Ranbus?  That’s fucking adorable, aw, little Ranbus!”

“No, nuh uh, you’re not starting with that,” Ranboo breaks his gaze, turning sharply to Tommy.  “Not allowed!  Not for you!”  He says it like he’s trying to get a dog to drop a sock.  “I’d prefer when you call me Ranboob to you calling me that.”

Tommy grins, “aw, good to hear it, Ranboob!  I shall only respect your proper title.”

Ranboo sighs head in his hands as realizes what he’s done.  “Oh no…”

Tommy continues his teasing, and Wilbur plays along, but he’s wrapped up in deeper thoughts right now, so many old aches and pains mingling with new ones, and he doesn’t know where to put it all down.

Dinner finishes in better spirits than it had started, Tommy offering to help clean up after with the same heroics of a soldier offering to dive on a grenade, but nonetheless, he does it.

“Right, then, good night, lads– and Niki,” Tommy settles in on the floor with ease, stealing a pillow from the couch.

“Tommy, you take the couch, man. I’ve had it for ages, I should shake things up and sleep on the floor for a change,” Wilbur offers.

“What’ve you got against floors?  I got nothin’ against ‘em!  Me and floors are old friends!” Is Tommy’s attempt at a defense.

“Mhm, Tommy, where did you sleep last night?” Niki asks pointedly before she goes to her own room.

“On a bench over on 30th until one of the pigs woke me up, why?”

Niki and Wilbur exchange a look.  “Take the couch, Tommy.”

“Tommy can stay with me in my room for the night!” Ranboo says perhaps too excitedly.

Tommy raises an eyebrow at him.  “Look, Ranboob, I did admit, you’re a handsome lad, but me?  I’m shy, I’m not ready for this step in our relationship–”

“Tommy,” Ranboo cuts him off exasperatedly.  “Come on, it’ll be like when we’d have sleepovers and stuff!  It’ll be fun,” Ranboo claps and points to his bedroom door.  “Come on!  Let’s go!”

“What, are we gonna braid each other’s hair and talk about girls?” Tommy rolls his eyes but clambers off the ground to follow.

“I mean, you can talk about girls.  I don’t think I will.”

Niki smiles, fond and relieved.  Ranboo had missed having company.  None of them are acknowledging the hole, the absence once occupied for so many years by Tubbo.  He should be here.  

Even as Tommy is grateful to have a bed, as he’s missed Ranboo’s company just as Ranboo had missed his, he’s trying really hard not to get weak right now.  He refuses to cry over something as ridiculous as the idea of his best friend––his former best friend?––not being in the place he is meant to.  Tubbo has changed.  Tommy knows this, Tommy knows he should be able to let go, because that’s not his best friend anymore, in more ways than one.  At the same time, Tommy knows if Tubbo showed up right now, no matter the state, no matter the blood on his hands, Tommy would only be able to hug him, to bring him back into the fold and say “Where have you been, Bee Boy?  You’re late.  And you missed dinner.”

Instead, he just follows Ranboo, and even as neither of them say it, he can read Ranboo’s silence for the same thought.  They miss him.

~

Wilbur has a difficult time falling asleep.  He’s perturbed by troubling thoughts, thoughts he hadn’t been prepared for.  It’s a peculiar list that’s been growing.  Only looking at today, not even the past months, and it’s enough to make his head spin.  He’d forgone cigarettes to get that scrappy kid some medicine he probably won’t even use.  And when Tommy had run to the body, he hadn’t felt scared like that in a long time.  Probably in as long a time since he called Ranboo Ranbus.

“Fuck…” Wilbur mutters into the dark.  He rolls over and almost screams.  Niki is currently making her way silently across the living room, he sits up sharply.  “Niki?”

“Sh!” She presses a finger to his lips.  She motions for him to follow.  “Come on the roof with me,” she whispers.  In her other hand, she has a bottle.

“The roof-? Right, fine,” Wilbur clambers to his feet.

“Take that blanket too.”

He does so, following her to door in the back of the kitchen, within it is a pantry, and on the opposite wall, a ladder.  He does not ask questions.

Niki unlocks a trapdoor, wincing when it creaks loudly, but as far as they can tell the boys haven’t been woken.

The roof isn’t quiet.  It’s well past midnight, but there’s the wind through the buildings and cars still making their way across the city.  Niki shuts the hatch behind him, gesturing to the roof.

“Put the blanket down.  Over here so we can look out,” she nods to the front of the building.  At this angle to the street, Wilbur can see all the way to the river, to the distant lights of the bridge.  They can’t see a single star in the sky here, but there’s something beautiful about it anyway.

Niki sits on the blanket, patting the spot beside her.  She rips the cork out of the bottle with her teeth, spitting it over the edge of the roof.  She spots Wilbur’s expression out of the corner of her eye and giggles.

“I run a speakeasy, Wilbur,” she says by way of explanation.

“I don’t think most bartenders are comfortable ripping a cork out with their teeth.”

Niki shrugs.  “How would I know?  I can’t exactly meet up with other bartenders in a prohibition state.”  She takes a swig, wincing.

“Touché,” Wilbur sits beside her.  “What’re we drinking tonight?”

“Um,” she takes another swig.  “Gin.”

“Gin?”

She nods.  “It’s popular.  I thought we might as well,” she offers him the bottle.

“Might as well…” Wilbur mutters.  He takes a drink, shuddering.  “That’s… that’s some strong gin, shit.”

“Feels…” Niki mulls it over, “appropriate?”

“What’s the occasion?” Wilbur smiles, still puzzled, but also oddly delighted.  He’s missed this.

“Um, not really an occasion, more like… a goal,” she takes back the bottle, takes a swig, and passes it back, nodding at him.  He obliges and takes another drink.

“Goal?”

“To get you, Wilbur Soot, drunk enough to… to spill your guts to me.”

Wilbur had been halfway through another swig when he chokes.  “Pardon?”

Niki smiles, all mischief.  “To be fair, I am drinking too.”

“Feels like I’ve been brought here under false pretenses.”

“What pretenses?” She laughs.

“Fine.  I dunno,” Wilbur smiles, offering her the bottle.  “Okay, if we’re… if we’re spilling guts, lets do it tit-for-tat, quid pro quo.”

She nods, “wie du mir, so ich dir.”

“Wie du mir, so ich dir,” Wilbur attempts to copy her pronunciation and he can’t tell from her smile if he succeeded or failed.  “So,” Wilbur asks the first thing that comes into his head.  “Is Ranboo… is he mad at me?  He seems… well, about as pissed off as Ranboo can be, if I’m honest.”

Niki nods, like it’s an easy truth.

“He is?”

“Yeah, it’s ‘cause he knows you leaving hurt me.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels like a weight has just pressed down harder on his shoulders.

Niki nods amicably.  “And now you’re back.  And he thinks you have a lot to prove.”

“Yeah.  I… I think I do,” Wilbur takes another swig.

“Do you have anything to do with the…” Niki gestures vaguely to the streets below.

“The what?” He’s puzzled out of his melancholy.

“The changes.  A lot of little things.  I don’t know,” she shrugs.  “It all sort of started when you turned up, and, sorry, Wil, you…” she almost looks pitying.  “You break things.  Sometimes.”

Wilbur nods, staring out at the patchy trail of streetlights, some lit, some not.  “I break things,” he agrees softly.

“Sometimes,” Niki reminds him pointedly.

He laughs, half under his breath, “sometimes.”

“There’s something wrong, Wil.  Schlatt is dead, and I thought…” Niki frowns.  “I don’t know what I thought.  When I first found out, I was mostly worried about Tubbo, but then I… I thought it was gonna fix things.”

Wilbur once more thinks of his father, and it’s hard to resist the bitterness curdling in his stomach.  “It was bad, then?”  Quiet.  He glances over at Niki, who is looking with the same thoughtfulness out at the city.  Wilbur continues, “Schlatt, I mean.”

She glances at him, clearly measuring up how little he knows.  “It’s like I said, Wil.  You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I have,” Wilbur says like it’s an apology.  It isn’t an apology.

“Drink more.  You’re bigger than me, you need to catch up,” she presses the bottle into his hands.  He obliges.

“I didn’t want to, you know.  To leave you, to leave the city,” Wilbur knows it’s a feeble defense, but it’s all he can think to say.

She still look like she knows something, something she isn’t saying, not directly at least.  “Didn’t you?”

“I…” Wilbur feels very vulnerable.  He can’t imagine Niki knowing, knowing the whole of it, but it’s clear she understands him in a lot of ways.  Which makes sense.  Niki had once been his best friend.  “I don’t know,” is what he settles on.  It’s a safe answer, maybe too safe.

Niki sighs, sitting up, legs folded beneath her.  Wilbur offers her the bottle once more and she pushes it back.  “You first, then me.”

He takes a drink.  She follows.

“You all left, you and Phil and Techno, and… and Phil leaving was hard.  He… he sent money until I asked him to stop.  He called until I… I got too busy to pick up,” she shrugs.  “I don’t know,” she echoes his sentiment, staring down at the roof.  “Techno said goodbye.  A… a pretty good goodbye, I think.  And I was… I was mostly okay for a while.  Schlatt… Schlatt didn’t get involved until I was eighteen.  That’s when I opened the Secret City, ‘cause before I was worried if I got caught while underage it would fall back on Eret’s family, so…”

Wilbur knows it’s far from important, but on impulse he asks her, almost defensive, like a childish teen rivalry has resurfaced.  “Eret?”

“Yeah.  Her family helped look after us.  You… you can’t own a business at sixteen, Wil,” Niki says wryly.  “I mean, we were on our own, really.  Me and Ranboo.  They didn’t really interfere, it just made sure no one was like, trying to take Ranboo away from me or anything like that.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels almost embarrassed now.  “I… I understand.  Got it.”  He takes another drink.

“You said you were coming back, Wil,” Niki says softly.

“I meant to,” he says hoarsely.  He means it.

“Okay, but when you weren’t anymore, when you didn’t,” she looks over at him, eyes too shiny.  “Why didn’t you call?  Why didn’t you… why didn’t you write?  Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Wilbur feels like that look in her eyes, grief and broken trust and wounds still unhealed, like it might burn him up from the inside.  He can’t bring himself to look away.

“I don’t have any good answers for you.”

“Give me a bad one, then.”

"Fuck, I'm just a mess," Wilbur wipes his eyes.

"Yeah, you are," she says teasingly.  "Give me an answer."

Wilbur swallows thickly, a lump forming in his throat, finally tearing his gaze from hers to stare at the way the bottle in his hand gleams in the streetlight.  “It was supposed to be a clean break.”  He gives the wrong excuse, but it’s the only one he has.

Niki feels an ache in her chest grow sharp.  She had expected a bad answer, but that one stings, especially when she knows what festers underneath.  “Clean…” she scoffs.  A pause, Wilbur with nothing to say in his own defense, and Niki thinking.  “I was... I was okay on my own.  Really.  Schlatt wasn't a problem until I opened the Secret City and... and when he first started showing up and taking money and... and then alcohol, I didn't... I didn't know what he was gonna do to us.  I'd never... Phil kept us away from that stuff, you know?  I... I made sure they didn't know about Ranboo," Niki nods once, as if reassuring herself, proud and certain she did right by him.  "They wouldn't fucking touch him, I made sure.  I couldn't stop them from knowing he worked there, but... they didn't know he was my family.  So, that was... a bit safer?  I think?  And... I hate this," she says vehemently.  "I hate that this is the truth, but when I stopped fighting, it got easier.  I gave them the money, my supplies, whatever they asked for.  I only fought back when... when I thought it would actually sink us, and before I got brave enough to do that I had to ask Eret for help sometimes and I hated doing that, because I knew I shouldn't have had to.  Once I gave up, his men stopped coming and threatening to break things, and instead it was just Tubbo.  It felt... it felt easier that way.  I gave up so much of what we earned, and that just became normal," she says that word like it's something vulgar.  "But I did it.  I did it.  I kept everyone safe, everyone.  I looked after them all.  Homeless kids, and Schlatt's kid, and Schlatt's boyfriend, and Schlatt's boyfriend's boyfriend, and Schlatt's doctor, and... and Badlanders and ex-Badlanders, and ex-Empire kids, because... because they were gone.  You were gone.  The Empire left us, and I wasn't gonna let that hurt us.  No way.  Maybe I didn't have Phil's authority or Techno's reputation or... or anything like that.  But I kept them all safe.  All of them," she looks at Wilbur, and he is almost in awe of the fire burning behind her eyes.  Wilbur feels so sure that if Niki wanted to burn this city down, she could and she'd probably have the right to.  The fire drains out of her, and once more she looks so tired.  "The earlier years were the hardest.  The ones where I missed you the most, Wil."  Niki takes a shaky breath.  She looks away.  "When I say Schlatt was bad, I don’t say it because I think you could’ve fixed things.  Maybe if Phil had stuck around, he could’ve made it better, but that’s different.  That’s not you.”  A pause.  Wilbur almost feels like he can’t breathe.  Niki continues, “even with the bad parts of it, really I just wanted you to be there, Wil.  You were– you were supposed to be there,” Niki says it with the certainty of a girl who had been eighteen, and alone, and scared, and trying to defend herself from threats so much bigger than her, and waiting for her brother to get taken away, and all the while wishing she could cry on her best friend’s shoulder.

“I am… I am so sorry, Niki.  I don’t expect forgiveness, I don’t, I just need you to know how sorry I am.”  A strange apology for someone utterly certain his father had dragged him out of this city kicking and screaming, but maybe he’s not talking about that kind of leaving.  Maybe Niki knows that.

Niki does not forgive him.  “I believe you, Wil.”  That counts for something too.

Wilbur has felt something building in his chest for weeks, discontent forever rising as his plans never turn out quite right and he has been unable to do the one thing he came to this city for.  A lot has changed in the past months.  His discontent finally spills over.

“I came here, I came back to the city two months ago,” Wilbur stops, taking a deep breath to stop his lip from trembling.  He quickly wipes his cheek.  He doesn’t look at her.  “I came back here to kill myself.”

Niki doesn’t say a word.  She doesn’t know what she could say, but she isn't really surprised.  She takes his hand.

“N-Not here, here.  I wasn’t… I wasn’t gonna do it in your house,” Wilbur continues to spill over, a rambling defense for something he knows cannot be defended.  “I was… I had a plan, it was… it wasn’t supposed to take this long, but I had to– It had to be– Someone else has to do it,” he says forcefully.  “I wanted it to be Schlatt.  Or Schlatt’s dogs, whatever.  If not him, any gunfire would do.  I tried prodding the Badlands, I tried going down the wrong streets and… and spraying stupid graffiti on claimed territory, and none of it worked.  Closest I got was that stupid fucking car bomb, and all it did was almost kill Tommy…”

Now Niki can think of a reply, not to the matter on the whole, but to this piece of it.  “Why?”  Wilbur glances at her, burden evident at the thought of answering that sort of question, Niki corrects.  “Why… why did it have to be someone else, I mean.”

Wilbur laughs bitterly.  “It was supposed to be for Phil?  I thought… I thought it might be nice for it to mean something, so, I thought if I got myself killed in the crossfire of some petty street violence, maybe…” Wilbur trails off, as if by voicing it aloud he’d realized the childishness of his plots.  “Maybe it would make him want to change.  To do better.  Something like that,” he sighs.

“For Phil,” Niki repeats, processing.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says wearily.

“Don’t… don’t take this the wrong way, Wilbur, but… but once all that didn’t work, why didn’t you… you know, try something else?” Niki asks carefully.

Wilbur had forgotten how direct Niki could be.  “Um, well, lots of… of little reasons, I guess.”

“Little reasons?”

Wilbur huffs, almost annoyed with the idea.  “It was… it was that stupid fucking kid, alright?  It was Tommy.”

Niki smiles, almost amused.  “Tommy?”

“Not… not for lovely sentimental reasons, not at first at least, but he just… he kept showing up.  Every day, I’d be wandering around, debating between the river and a highrise, and there he’d fucking be!  Calling me a layabout and following me and hounding me until I’d decide it was worth trying a few more schemes to see if I could get myself killed that way, and even then!  Even then, he’d find a way to get in the way.  Like, I tried to get out in front of a Badlands patrol, when they were first starting to get all nervous, and this kid latches onto me like a furious fucking koala, and he won’t let me out of the alleyway without him, so I gave up that time.  And shit like that just kept happening,” Wilbur sighs, shaking his head, almost amazed.  “He just… by accident, he just kept me out of it.”

“That sounds like Tommy.”

Wilbur laughs dryly.  “Does it?”  Wilbur broods, once more returning to the thoughts that had been circling his sleepless brain earlier.  “And he’s… he needs help, right?  He obviously needs help, and needs it worse than any of us first thought, apparently, and I…” Wilbur sighs.  “And I can’t.  Okay?”

“You… you don’t think you can help him?  Wil, no one would expect that of you.”

“No, not that, and it’s not a matter of expectation, it’s–” Wilbur runs a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls as he feels like Niki and all her love for him is digging a confession out of his chest, but he wants this, he wants to tell her, because he loves her too.  “I can’t kill myself.  Not until… not until he’s better.  ‘Cause I… I almost forgot about Ranbus.”

“You… what do you mean you almost forgot Ranboo?” Now Niki is properly confused.

“Not Ranboo– Ranbus.  I… I said it so effortlessly, I didn’t even think about it, but before tonight, I almost forgot what I called that kid, that I… I was something to him,” Wilbur sighs.

“You still are something to him.”

Wilbur smiles weakly, grateful for her kindness even if he doesn’t think he deserves it.  “Maybe.  I… you’re good to him, Niki.  You were still a kid yourself, and you took care of him.  He’s lucky, and I think he knows how lucky he is, to have you for a big sister, and…” Wilbur trails off, words coming together slowly.  “And Tommy’s not lucky.  In more than one way, because he had no one, and instead of someone like you, Niki, he gets stuck with me instead,” Wilbur laughs.  “So, I can’t kill myself.  Because he needs… he needs someone.  That’s all.”

Niki scoots closer, resting her head on his shoulder.  “I’m sorry, Wilbur.  For… for a lot of things you’ve had to go through, but I’m really glad you’re here now.  And I’m really glad you’re not going anywhere.”

Wilbur takes a shaky breath, no longer trying to ward off tears or the tremor in his voice.  “Thanks, Niki.”

“Maybe Tommy isn’t as lucky as Ranboo, but he’s still lucky to have you.”

Wilbur nods.  “Thank you.  For a lot of things, but Niki,” Wilbur looks over at her, looking her in the eye for once without fear or guilt or shame.  “Thank you for being my best friend.”

Niki smiles, reaching out to mess up his hair.  “You’re welcome.  Thank you for… for trying to bring my best friend back.”

Wilbur understands.  “I’ll be him again.  I promise.”

Niki gets to her feet, unsteady and offering him a hand off the ground.  “I’ll hold you to that, Wilbur Soot.  Don’t think I won’t.”

Niki doesn’t like the way things are heading.  She would have thought after Schlatt’s death there would be some peace, instead, she has new reasons to worry.  It’s like she can measure the health of the city by the attendance at the Secret City. She rarely sees any of the Badlanders, Puffy only on rare occasion, and always busy and absentminded.  Even more worrying to her, Tommy and Tubbo don’t come to the Secret City very much anymore, and never together.  Ranboo, already quiet, has gotten quieter.

Niki’s business worries have at least declined.  In Schlatt’s absence, her profits have nearly doubled, or rather, she’s kept the other half of her income she’d been making before.  She doesn’t have to reorder alcohol from Puffy as often, which is another good thing considering Puffy seems to be dealing with her own troubles at present.  In theory, Niki should be doing better than ever.  She’s not.

The bloodiest parts of this mess are probably what should scare her the most, but she isn’t sure.  Bodies are turning up in the streets, and since Tubbo has apparently taken on the mantle of controlling the streets, she’d expected the violence to die down, but it hasn’t.  The Badlanders are more aggressive, territorial and secretive, and Tubbo’s lot––she doesn’t really know what to call them, they’re certainly not Schlatt’s dogs anymore––are too bold, bold in the way a cat puffs up to scare away a bigger animal.  Attendance at the speakeasy has died down in part due to that.  People are nervous to go out at night, because if it’s not the gangs getting into petty scuffles around the block, it’s other dead.  Someone is attacking people deemed undesirable.  Niki’s speakeasy caters to no one but the undesirable.  She doesn’t know what worries her more, the dead bodies, often times faces she recognizes as local common criminals, and those she doesn’t recognize, she can guess also share similar records, or the ones who aren’t murdered.  It seems there is one person behind this threat, or maybe a group sharing the same mask.  People will ask to spend the night at the Secret City, skittish and bruised.  They’re not hardened criminals––largely because it seems this person doesn’t like to let hardened criminals live––the people that come to her for help, injured but alive, they’re the homeless, they’re fences who work on the street, people like Karl doing something harmless like selling stolen watches, and whoever is out there, lurking like a ghost, thinks that warrants bloody retribution?  This is wrong.  All of it, whatever is happening out there, she feels like she’s trapped in the bottom of a kettle, waiting for the pressure to build and finally boil over.  She’s considered on more than one occasion moving the bakery, finding property deep in Puffy’s territory, Puffy had offered her help more than once, but she can’t bring herself to do it.  This is where she’s always been, it’s where people know to go, and changing that now, it feels unfair.  She won’t abandon any of them.  Tubbo still keeps her bakery safe, actually safe, not in any manner like Schlatt’s so-called protection, and he does so perhaps viciously, but at least for now, there’s no reason for her to move.  Not really.

Trouble does not keep itself neatly contained in the streets away from her and her family, nor is it always something so blunt as violence.  Her little brother doesn’t talk to her.  He doesn’t go out with Tommy and Tubbo.  He just works.  Niki will tell him he doesn’t have to, that she’s fine on her own and he can go see friends, but Ranboo just shrugs and says “they’re busy.  I’d rather just hang out with you right now.”  Niki isn’t used to Ranboo not telling her things, nor Tubbo and Tommy.  She prefers when they had stumbled home after getting into trouble and immediately babbled a confession at her, like her knowing was important somehow, like she could always make things right.  It doesn’t feel that long ago.  Where Tubbo had learned he could tell her when something had gone wrong and there wouldn’t be harsh consequences, where Tommy trusted her enough to not act like a guarded, hunted dog, all bark and no bite, and instead had talked to her like her help wasn’t a threat.  And Ranboo, who did things for himself and not for her for once in his life; he’d run around with his friends and had come home late sometimes and had finally had something to actually apologize to her for.  Niki doesn’t know why that has slipped away.  Tubbo had acted oddly, cutting off Quackity and arguing in her speakeasy––Niki cannot remember Tubbo ever raising his voice like that, let alone in front of an audience––and he never looks open to conversation when he does still turn up, he just sits quietly in the corner with Jack, the two of them talking in hushed tones and Niki knows they stop talking whenever she walks too close.  It hurts, and worse than hurt, it’s wrong.  Her boys don’t sneak around her unless it’s for shoplifting from a sweet shop or trying to smuggle an injured squirrel into Ranboo’s bedroom.

The nights Tommy still turns up––rarely on the nights Tubbo is there, and never together, and if someone is there, whoever was there first will find some excuse to leave, which is profoundly wrong––if Tommy is there it’s usually to heckle Wilbur.  Tommy seems unchanged, he’s still loud and a bit rude and always ready for a good joke, but Niki knows him better.  There’s the more surface-level changes, he’s a bit scruffier than usual, and there’s this strange duality of him being more quick to refuse her offers of help and more inclined to ask for it.  She’ll ask if he wants to spend the night and he jumps to say no, but that same day he’ll ask her if she has anything leftover from the bakery that she needs to toss.  Always with a joking tone, like he’s just a teenager with a sweet tooth, but Niki knows it’s different now.  She buries the urge to ask him, “are you not eating enough?” because she knows doing so will make Tommy not accept anything.  There are deeper changes too, ones she has to look more carefully for.  Tommy comes to the Secret City alone.  He will still talk with Ranboo, he’ll talk with her, and oddly enough he’d talk quite a bit with Wilbur, but in the pauses in between his usual rough banter, when he’s stopped taunting Wilbur, he looks tense.  He looks tense like he did before he realized the speakeasy was for people like him.  Tommy views strangers as threats or targets or often both.  He moves through the world like a prey animal and a scavenger, but Niki hasn’t seen that tension cross her doorstep in a long time.  He looks tired too.  Maybe as tired as Tubbo does.

She can’t read Ranboo anymore.  She thinks he might know more about what’s going on than she does, but she’s not sure.  She’s never not sure.  When she asks, Ranboo is always neutral and avoidant in reply, and it’s hard to decide if he looks more worried when she asks about them or if that’s just the persisting, quiet anxiety he’s worn for weeks now.

Niki is good at not prying, to a point.  She’s been perhaps too lenient with Wilbur, who had turned up so mysteriously.  She’d done the basics, told him he should look for a job, that he can’t live on their couch forever, but that doesn’t tell her much.  Wilbur had once been her best friend.  That was a long time ago.  Still, between the two of them, Niki finds it easier to dig a little more at a man she hasn’t seen in years than at her little brother about his friends who might be her little brothers too.

“Morning, Wil,” Niki says.  It’s Monday.  The Bakery closes on Mondays, it gives them time to rest from the weekend rush.  Hence, this is one of the few times she’s still in the apartment when Wilbur stirs.

Wilbur sits up blearily from the couch, curls askew.  “Morning…” He rubs his eyes.

“How are you so tired?” Niki asks.  “You don’t have a job, what is it you stay up late to do?”

Wilbur smiles halfheartedly.  “Find trouble.”  He adds more insistently, “and play for your speakeasy sometimes.”

“Could you work on finding a job before you find trouble?” She teases.  “And play at my speakeasy.  I need you there to keep me company, but maybe a proper job too.”

Wilbur wakes up a bit more in his embarrassment, sheepish.  “Er, yeah.  Probably should do that.”

“Yeah,” Niki says pointedly.

Wilbur gets up, pulling on the same wrinkled white button up he wore yesterday over his undershirt.  “You… didn’t happen to make enough coffee I could have some, perchance?”

She rolls her eyes at him and nods to the pot.

“Ah, you’re a saint,” he mumbles.

There is a brief calm, Wilbur getting himself a cup, and Niki content to lean against the counter and drink hers, thinking.  Wilbur is freshly awake.  He is not a morning person.  Niki knows he is weak and however much he’ll loathe it, it’s the perfect time to push.

“So, we haven’t had much time to talk, Wil.  Feels like you’re always running around doing something, or I’m running around doing something.”

“Oh?” Wilbur says mildly.  “Yeah, yeah guess so,” he sips coffee.

“How’s home?”

Wilbur seems to almost choke, quickly lowering his mug.  “Home?”

“You know, where you came from?  Where you’ve been living?  For the past eight years?” Niki raises her eyebrows at him.

Wilbur almost winces.  “That, uh.  That didn’t really feel like home.”

Niki laughs.  “Okay, you’re very dramatic, do you know that?”  She’s unfazed, continuing on.  She knows some, she knows quite a bit, actually.  Niki can be quiet, but she listens.  There’s something wrong with Phil and Wilbur, and while that’s not new, maybe she’d imagined he’d have grown out of it when he grew up into a proper adult.  “How’s Phil?  How’s…”  She tries to remember other things she’s learned from their brief conversations over the last months and her even briefer amount of contact with Phil over the last eight years.  “How’s your… step-mom?  Do you get along okay?”

“Kristin?” Wilbur seems surprised, as if he hadn’t imagined she was an option for a subject of conversation.  “She’s great. Like, professionally she sort of scares me, but she’s really fun and she makes my dad happy, so.”  He shrugs.  “Can’t hold her choice in business against her, really.”

Niki notes he had skipped over her question about Phil.  “She’s great, but she sort of scares you?  Professionally?”

“She’s, you know,” Wilbur sets down his mug and waves his hands mysteriously, “the Lady Death of Salt Lake City.”

“Oh.”  Niki had not heard that name before, but then again, she already knows more than she wants to about the criminals that can touch her life, let alone keeping up with the ones that don’t.  “So. When you said Phil is more working in the background..?”

“Working for her,” Wilbur nods.  “He’s got a new––well, not really new now––reputation. Angel of Death,” Wilbur says mildly like his father has done something as simple as getting a promotion at the bank.

Niki nods, processing this.  That reputation truly isn’t new to her.  She can’t imagine Wilbur hadn’t heard it before, but Wilbur seems to be under the impression the title came from Kristin.  Phil had chosen the Crowfather as his title, but the City comes up with their own names for their Gods.  It was here that label started.  Phil was a complex man.  He could be, and often had been, ruthless.  He had rules, though.  If he kills someone who still has family to leave behind, he pays for the funeral.  The payments are anonymous, but connections were made regardless.  Phil would murder someone and then lay them to rest, sometimes to the horror of and other times to the relief of their families.  Phil was an Angel of Death long before he found a Death to follow.  Niki continues carefully, nudging the subject.  “Bit of a change from the Crowfather.”

“Not really,” Wilbur says gloomily, and Niki thinks perhaps he did know that title.  “Same business.”  That blasé addition makes her reconsider.  It seems Wilbur is just as unsettled by his father’s work as before.  Niki doesn’t blame him for it.  Of course, she has a bit of a soft spot for Phil.  He’d been good to her and Ranboo.  She’s not so picky as to scorn that even if he’s done things she cannot consider as anything but awful.

Niki continues quickly, before her own line of thinking strays any more grim.  “And is Techno still around?”

“Yeah, as long as Phil is.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” she smiles.  “How is he, then?  Well, how do you think he is?”

Wilbur shrugs.  “They’re the same, Niki.  Alright?  I don’t have anything to tell you, because they’re the same as they always were,” he says coldly.  “You don’t need to bother asking anymore.”

“Wil, I’m asking because I care about them.  You’re really going to be weird about it?” Niki says almost gently, because she knows that way will get Wilbur to actually care.

He wilts.  “Sorry, I’m sorry, Niki,” he presses against his forehead, eyes closed as if warding off a headache.  “You’re right, that was… that was a bit dick-ish of me.”

“Yep.  It was a bit dick-ish,” she laughs.  “I know I’ve said it before, but I’ve missed you, Wil.”

Wilbur, as always, looks surprised.  “Yeah?  What’d you do that for?” He teases.

That gets another laugh out of her and Wilbur looks so proud of himself.  Niki doesn’t know what help this will bring, but knowing a shred more about what’s going on with Wilbur at least feels like progress of some sort.  It doesn’t touch the bigger issues haunting her life or her business, but she wants to know her best friend again, she wants him to be her best friend again.  One day.

“I do have a request for you today, Wilbur.”

Wilbur shifts, sitting up straighter.  “Oh?”

“When you’re out… finding trouble, could you also find a few job applications?  For me?”

Wilbur nods, slouching in his shame.  “I will.  I can for sure do that, Niki.”

“Okay.  I’m going to hold you to that, Wil,” she says warningly, because she knows him, and even with the best of intentions, she knows he’s just as likely to turn up with zero job applications and some grand story about what happened that day instead.

“It was… it was good talking, Niki.  Really,” Wilbur is eager to get out of this conversation.  “Um, I’m gonna… I’m gonna get a start on my day, yeah?”  He smiles awkwardly and side steps past her out of the kitchen.

She smiles.  It’s a little fun to make Wilbur nervous, and quite warranted considering his slacking on his side of their friendship.  “Bye, Wil.”

“Bye!”  The front door shuts, and Niki is once more alone.  She’d let Ranboo sleep in.  She doesn’t have especially high hopes for Wilbur, but somehow he still seems like the problem she has the best understanding of and therefore the best chance of fixing.  Niki sighs, regretting her own line of thought.  She shouldn’t have to fix any of them.

~

Wilbur had told Niki while wandering today he’d grab a few job applications.  Thus far he had not done so.  Wilbur had never had an actual job in his fucking life, and he wasn’t enthused by the thought of starting now.  He hadn’t planned on sticking around long enough to have to pay rent, but here he’s remained.  Thus far he’s just wandered the streets as per usual.  He’d deny it if asked, but right now he’s waiting for Tommy to come barreling into him.  That kid always manages to find him in this city, it’s almost impressive, if not also a bit concerning.  Thus far, the kid hasn’t showed.  Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes him nervous.  Last he saw him, Tommy had complained about the new management at the hotel giving him grief, bad enough his hands were all bloody.  It doesn’t bode well.

Wilbur also wants to go back down into the subway tunnels.  It’s not a logical draw, more it feels like a morbid compulsion, l’appel du vide and all that.  He knows there’s nothing down there for him, except maybe rats and tetanus, but nonetheless.  He’s not scared, but also he sort of doesn’t want to go without Tommy, for no reason in particular.

It’s like Wilbur summons him into being.

“Hello, you stupid swiss cheese of a man!” Tommy appears beside him, making him jump.  “Thrown yourself at any more local mob patrols lately?”

Wilbur has one hand over his racing heart.  “No.  Haven’t found the time,” he says irritably.  “The fuck d’you mean swiss cheese?”

“Oh, ‘cause you were almost full of bullet holes.”  Tommy makes finger guns.

“Right, of course,” Wilbur scoffs. “Where did you even come from?”

“The shadows,” Tommy says with a dramatic whisper.  “Actually, if you don’t mind I’d like it if you joined me in the shadows,” he’s staring at something over Wilbur’s shoulder.

“What?  Why?”

“‘Cause that man––the one across the street obviously looking for me––I currently have his wallet,” Tommy nods at an irritable man wandering in a suit and ducks back into an alley, Wilbur finding himself quick to follow.

“So, still hard at work, I see?” Wilbur says dryly.

“More so than you, I see,” Tommy says mockingly.  “Not an especially productive day, though.  I’m… I’m not tired, but I’m a bit bored of the daily grind, so!” Tommy nods like that settles the matter, excusing some weariness that Wilbur hadn’t even noticed.  Wilbur had noticed that Tommy clearly has some hangups about being seen as weak, so he doesn’t question it.

“Yeah, yeah fair enough.  I told Niki I’d pick up some job applications,” Wilbur says gloomily.

“Ha!  Have fun with that!  Chaining yourself to the Machine, huh?”  Tommy tuts him.  “Poor thing.”

Wilbur glances at Tommy’s hands, which are currently perusing his stolen wallet.  He can see cloth stained a rusted red.  “How’re your… battle wounds, then?”  He nods to them.

Tommy snaps the wallet shut, burying his hands in his pockets.  “Fine, thank you very much.  I heal like, super fast.”

“Really?  Looks like you could use some actual bandages.”

“These are basically the same thing,” Tommy pouts.  “But…” he glances at his hands in his pockets.  “If you’re buying?”

Wilbur is not as broke as he was previously, as he’s gotten at least some tips playing at the Secret City.  He gives some of it to Niki, a feeble approximation of rent, but it’s still something.  It’s definitely not much.  Not enough he should be blowing it on getting some gauze and anti-infectant for some random kid.  Wilbur sighs.

“Come on.  There’s a drugstore around the corner.”

“I know there is.  This is my city.”

“It’s mine too!  I’ve lived here longer than you have.”

“Yeah, but it’s changed since you were here, old man,” Tommy nods wisely.  He stops outside the drugstore.  “I’ll wait here.  I’ve definitely nicked shit from here before and they won’t want to see me.”

“Haven’t you nicked shit from everywhere?”

“Yeah, but here I got caught.”

“Touché,” Wilbur smiles, amused before entering the shop.  He grabs gauze and neomycin before heading up to the counter.  “A pack of Marlboros too.”

The man behind the counter nods, grabbing a pack.  Wilbur glances at the register and what it rings up to.  He stares doubtfully at his own wallet, hesitating over his lineup.  He grabs the neomycin, intending on putting it back, but as he turns he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over to see Tommy pressing against the glass and making faces at him.  Wilbur buries a laugh.

“Actually, scrap the Marlboros.  This is it for me,” he puts the antibiotic back on the counter, only processing his own choice after the fact.  It unsettles him. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nonetheless, he returns to the street.  “Here,” he shoves the gauze and neosporin into his hands.

“Thanks, man!” Tommy sits down right there on the window ledge and begins peeling the scraps of sheets off his cut up hands.

“Wait, you’re not gonna wash them first?” Wilbur reaches out to stop him.

Tommy looks amused, glancing around the street.  “You see a bath anywhere?  Trust me, the river will do way more harm than good.”

“No, that’s not what I–” Wilbur sighs.  “Come on,” he nods toward the store.

Tommy shakes his head.  “No, it’s like I said, they won’t want me in there–”

“Who gives a shit?  I’ll go with you, we’ll go to the bathroom, and I’ll help you dress them,” Wilbur says more insistently.  He’s more surprised when Tommy doesn’t continue to protest, just stands to follow.  Tommy looks surprised as well.

Tommy very deliberately stays behind Wilbur, whistling and scanning the shelves in the most conspicuous way possible, until Wilbur drags him into a vaguely horrifying bathroom.

“Honestly, this feels worse than the street,” Tommy crinkles his nose.

Wilbur gives him a look.  “Wash your hands.”

Tommy rolls his eyes but obliges, wincing all the while.  Wilbur stares disapprovingly at the crusted blood and cracked scabbing of the cut across either hand.  Tommy’s hands are also filthy.  Wilbur is also trying to bottle every screaming warning about infection; he knows Tommy isn’t exactly in a place to take good care of himself.

“This fuckin’ sucks,” Tommy mutters.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to pick pockets in these conditions?”

“It’s not like I did that, why’re you complaining to me?”

“Because you’re here.”

Wilbur rolls his eyes.  “Fine.”  He shoves a wad of paper towels at him.  “Dry them.”

“I know how to dress a wound, dickhead!  Just ‘cause I’m not rich enough to buy all this fancy shit doesn’t mean I don’t know how to dress a wound,” Tommy snaps.  “And I don’t need your help!” He says when Wilbur reaches toward him.

“Your hands are hurt!  You need hands to dress a wound!  Come on, man, stop being a little bitch and just let me,” Wilbur snaps back.

“Fine!  Fine, go for it!  If you want to play doctor, fine!” Tommy rolls his eyes, muttering, half under his breath, “call me a little bitch… from the king of little bitches…”

Wilbur ruefully does so, pasting antibiotic cream onto the cuts, Tommy flinching and pulling away as it burns.

“Ow!  Careful!” Tommy whines.

“It’s so it doesn’t get infected!” Wilbur snaps.

Tommy grumbles wordlessly before trailing off grumpily.

It’s quiet for a time, for once Tommy without anything snarky to say.  Wilbur gets nervous when the silence continues by the time he starts wrapping one hand in gauze.  He glances up, but Tommy is just watching him work with a solemn frown, wary and unsure, like he’s expecting Wilbur to do some harm.  Wilbur deigns not to think on that too hard, instead he refocuses, finishing wrapping Tommy’s other hand.

“Oooh, look at me, I’m Wilbur I can wrap cuts like an expert, I’m so smart,” Tommy says in a high voice, staring at his wrapped hands with clear satisfaction.

“Is that supposed to be a thank you?” Wilbur says dryly.  “Take this, okay?  Just… Don’t let your hands get so grubby,” Wilbur shoves the rest of the roll of gauze and antibiotics into his hands.

“Right, I got a choice in that, do I?” Tommy scoffs.

“Come on.  This place is fucking rank,” Wilbur heads back out the door.

“My hands still hurt.”

“Tough luck.”  They return outside, Wilbur rummaging in his pockets.  “Actually, I’ve got something else for you.  You still got that torch on you?”

“What?  Yeah, why?” Tommy asks suspiciously.

Wilbur offers Tommy two batteries.  He’d been holding onto them for a few days now, having scrounged them from Niki and Ranboo’s junk drawer.  “Fancy another trip into the tunnels?”

“Oh, I knew there was a catch!  What, you think ‘cause you buy a guy a bandage that he has to follow you around and obey your every whim?!” Tommy scowls, genuinely reproachful.

“What?  No!  No, that’s not why I got you a fucking bandage, are you joking?  If you don’t wanna go, I don’t care, I just thought…” Wilbur doesn’t know what he just thought.  “I dunno.  Might be another adventure.”

“I don’t need more adventure.  I’m fuckin’ made of adventure.  I’ve got oodles of adventure.”

“Okay, then don’t come,” Wilbur shrugs, still walking in the general direction of the maintenance entrance they had fled through before.

Tommy keeps pace.  “Wait, wait but that doesn’t mean I want you to go alone!  You’ll get eaten by rats, remember?”

Wilbur laughs.  “I knew you’d want to come.”

“You knew I’d what?  You knew I’d fucking want to what?”

“Shut up!” Wilbur cackles.  “You’re the most annoying fucking child!”

“And you want me to follow you into some fuckin’ dark-ass tunnels?  Hm?  You’re fucking bonkers.  I’m not about to get serialed by a man talking about come–”

“Get what?  Get cerealed?”

“Yeah!  Yeah, serialed!  As in serial fuckin’ murdered!” Tommy snaps.  He does stop in the alleyway, staring at the old maintenance door they had fled through last time.

“Wait, wait go back, you would get serial murdered?  Doesn’t that imply plural?  How the fuck would you get murdered multiple times?” Wilbur scoffs.

“You don’t know me.  You don’t know my murder history,” Tommy says aloofly.  Tommy puts the batteries in his torch, glancing up at the door on occasion like it might bite him.  “No, no but really, why the fuck do you want to go down there again?”

“Aren’t you curious?  That banging noise, look, it was probably just like… pipes settling or old machinery, but I bet we could… we could find other sneaky entrances over the city or something!” Wilbur says.

Tommy looks unenthused, but nonetheless, he’s put batteries in his torch and looks grimly prepared.  “Fine, fine I will go with you, but after this you’re buying me food, got it?”

“That… that sounds like worse bribery than me just getting you some gauze, what the fuck?” Wilbur gives him look.  “What, am I like, dangling cheese on a string down there for you?”

“Now you’ve just made it weird,” Tommy glowers at him before opening the door.  “Surprised no one else has gone down here if it’s that easy.”

“Um, that lock looks like it’s not busted and normal people obey big danger signs,” Wilbur points out as he enters the stairwell.

“Ah, psh.  Cowards!” Tommy scoffs, striding into the dark behind him before flicking on his torch.  “Oh, this is loads better!  I can actually see shit.”

“Don’t shine it in my eyes!” Wilbur hisses, batting his torch away.

“Don’t put your eyes by my torch!”

Wilbur gives him a look.

“Fine, fine, sorry,” Tommy says reluctantly.  “So, mole-man, what are we doing in the tunnels today?”

“I am…” Wilbur hesitates.  “I’m looking for this one platform.  It’s… for nostalgia reasons.”

“You’re nostalgic for a grubby ass train platform?” Tommy raises an eyebrow, striding ahead along the tracks.  They’ve been out of operation for years, but both of them keep off the actual rails.

“Yeah,” Wilbur tries to think of a reason he can give.  “Just…”

He’s saved from replying by Tommy shouting into the dark.  “HELLO?!”

Echoing back, “HELLO?!”

“HI, TOMMY!” Tommy shouts.

“HI, TOMMY!”

Tommy looks over at Wilbur, grinning.  “This tunnel is very polite.”

“Is it?  Are you and the tunnel making friends?” Wilbur says sarcastically, but he can’t resist a smile.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!” Tommy shouts.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!”

“See, we’re in agreement.”

“I’m not the one shouting, why do I need to shut up?”

“You were giving me sass, mister.  Tunnel and I don’t like that disrespect,” Tommy tuts him haughtily.

“And stop going ahead!  You don’t know where we’re going,” Wilbur quickens his pace to catch up.

“Oh, like you do?  Last I checked, you didn’t wander from platform to platform this way back in the olden days,” Tommy points out.

“Yeah, but I still know the direction–” Wilbur goes quiet.  There’s another noise, and it is not an echo.  It’s that same sound of metal banging together they had heard the last time.  It sounds about as close as it had the last time, that is, concerningly close.  Wilbur looks over at Tommy, to find him already staring back with wide, nervous eyes.  They listen.  There is silence for a time, the echo of the banging noise fading off, but then it resumes rapidly, three sharp bangs that echo off.  It stops for a moment, then three more, slow, measured.  Wilbur is quickly starting to doubt is “old machinery” theory from last time.

“It’s down that way, right?” Tommy whispers in the next pause, pointing down the tunnel.  He jumps when there are once more three sharp bangs.

“M-Maybe?” Wilbur says.  “The echo– I’m not sure which way.”

“I think it’s that one,” Tommy nods ahead.

Neither of them move.  The banging has yet to resume.  Knowing the direction doesn’t dictate what they do now.  Neither of them really want to see what it is, or more probable, who it is.  Tommy looks forward, shining his torch straight ahead.  The tunnel goes straight longer than the light reaches, so it shows only more blackness.

“What kind of nutcase goes banging around tunnels?” Tommy mutters.

“I mean, us kinds of nutcases,” Wilbur points out, but still he doesn’t move down the tunnel.  It’s Wilbur’s turn to jump when the banging returns without warning, three sharp clangs of metal, and a pause.

“I wanna check it out,” Tommy says, but he already looks like he regret the thought.

Wilbur waits for the next three slow bangs to fade out to reply.  “Okay.  Okay, fine, but the moment we see anything weird, we bail, alright?”

Three sharp bangs.

“Yeah, alright,” Tommy nods and seems to muster some bravery.  He starts off down the tunnel first, stopping often to look back and make sure Wilbur is close behind him, even as he can see Wilbur’s torch shining ahead alongside his.

The banging continues on like clockwork.  Three sharp knocks, whoever is responsible seems to take a break, and then continues slowly, before trying rapid knocks again.  Always in sets of three.  Wilbur feels like he’s missing something; he’s already deeply uneasy, and then his torch glances off of a shape splayed out across the tracks.  Wilbur fumbles forward, reaching out to stop Tommy, his torch refocusing on it.  It’s definitely a body.  He has a feeling they’re not merely unconscious.  Wilbur can’t see their face, they’re laid out on their stomach, head turned the other way, so all he can see is what looks like a red cloth tied around a head of short, dark hair.  There’s definitely blood, covering the arm visible to them.

Tommy spots what his torch is shining on, and to Wilbur’s shock, starts running forward.

“Oh fuck, no, nononononono, hold on a fucking second, it can’t– no, oh my fucking god, no fucking way, it can’t be, it can’t be– f-fuck–” Tommy babbles frantically, voice high and hoarse, words almost overlapping.  Wilbur lunges forward to stop him when he runs toward the strange corpse in the dark, but Tommy is too quick.  Tommy falls to his knees by the body, and before Wilbur can warn him of the hundred reasons why it’s a bad idea, Tommy touches it, rolling it over onto its side.  Tommy falls back, face buried in his hands, and it takes a moment for Wilbur to process that he’s relieved.

“Fuck… fuck, it’s not him… it’s not him…” Tommy’s knees are tucked up into his chest, rocking slightly, sounding breathless.

“Tommy?” Wilbur says cautiously.  “Are you… are you okay?”  He asks a rather stupid question, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Tommy sniffs loudly, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and Wilbur pretends he can’t see Tommy’s cheeks are shiny and damp in the torchlight.  Tommy stares at the corpse again, without any apparent squeamishness at the sight, he still pores over it, like he’s trying to make sure.  “It’s not him,” Tommy croaks, reassuring himself more than informing Wilbur of anything.  Wilbur dares to stare at the body’s face.  The corpse it seems had been blindfolded by a strip of red cloth, but Wilbur can still see the lower half of his face, it’s a man with a patchy beard, a narrow, crooked nose, he seems to be just a few years older than Wilbur.

“Not who?” Wilbur asks gently.

Tommy blinks, and seems to come back to himself in some way, clambering to his feet.  “Nothing,” he’s still staring at the corpse.  “Thought it was… no one.  Just, one of my mates.  An old friend.  I don’t… I don’t see him as much anymore, and he’s… he gets dragged into some shit.  Doesn’t stay out of it like I do, and I always warned him, I always told him…” Tommy trails off, moving on.  “And wears a fuckin’ red headband, and from behind, it…” Tommy nods to the blindfold, trailing off again, his thoughts disconnected.  “A-And the blood on his arm, thought maybe it was… Just from behind and a ways back, not… not the face at all, just…” Tommy shakes his head.  “It’s… it’s not him,” he repeats.

Wilbur still feels almost sick with nerves.  This exchange had happened over the course of a lull in the banging, Wilbur isn’t sure if this pause has lasted longer than the last, but he’s not sure he wants to wait around for it to continue.  “We should go, Tommy.”

“What-?” Tommy glances up at him.  “Yeah,” Tommy takes one step back the direction they had come before pausing.  “What about the… the noise?” Tommy looks both ways, as if inviting it to continue.

“Tommy, that man, he didn’t die from natural causes,” Wilbur says softly.  “And if whoever did that to him is prowling around down here…” Wilbur hesitates.  He doesn’t want to scare the kid.  “I mean, the noise hasn’t gotten any closer.  We’ve gotten closer to it.  Like…” Wilbur looks back toward the stairwell he knows is somewhere in the dark behind them.  “Like they’re trying to draw us deeper in.”  Wilbur looks back at Tommy and sees he’s certainly failed to not scare the kid.

“We… we can’t tell anyone.  We can’t tell anyone about this, about the…” Tommy doesn’t even look at the corpse now, but Wilbur understands.  “Can’t go to the cops, least I can’t.  We… we can’t explain how we were down here a-and–”

“I know, Tommy.  We should go.”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he does it, he doesn’t think, he just does, but he offers Tommy his hand.  Wilbur almost doesn’t realize he’s done it until Tommy accepts.

Tommy’s expression doesn’t indicate confusion on his side of things, but he still seems sort of hazy, so Wilbur just starts walking, guiding them back to the street.  They emerge just as the surviving streetlights kick on, but it’s still far preferable to the dark underground.

“Right, I think… I think we should get out of here,” Wilbur starts walking.  “Don’t… don’t get all defensive if I offer, but d’you want me to walk you back to the hotel?”

“Nah, I’m… I’m good,” Tommy shrugs.

“Don’t do that, man, just… let me do it, alright?  It’ll make me feel better–”

“Not everything is about you, ay?” Tommy scoffs.  “I’m not going to the hotel no more.”

“Are you still having a hard time getting inside?  I thought you figured out a way around the… the stuff,” Wilbur stops when he realizes Tommy isn’t following, instead scuffing his feet and leaning against the wall of the alley.

“No, not just that…” Tommy trails off gloomily.  “The nutter that replaced Jack, y’know the one that put razors on the windows?  Now he’s checking the empty rooms with a fucking golf club.  Thought he was gonna crack my fuckin’ ‘ead open…”

Wilbur steps closer to Tommy, immediately finding himself bottling rage and horror in equal measure.  “He came at you with a golf club?!”

Tommy steps back on impulse, scowling.  “No, he asked if I wanted to go a round and I told him I only did crazy golf- yes he swung at me, dumbass…”

“Holy shit, Tommy, you– Don’t tell me you’re going back there!  I mean, where are you gonna go?”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he feels panicked.

“Obviously not!  That’s what I just said.   I’ll…” Tommy’s feeble excuse of saying he’ll find somewhere else to crash dies with a shiver.  After the night they’ve had, he’s a little more vulnerable.  “Can I… Can I walk to Niki’s with you?  And… And I’ll figure something out on the way there.”

“Yeah, something like sleeping there.”

Tommy frowns, but he doesn’t say no this time.

~

Niki wants to talk to Ranboo.  She doesn’t know what to do with herself on her days off anymore.  Puffy doesn’t have time to go boxing with her anymore, and Eret is busy with the museum and some fancy new investments she’s made so she rarely has time to come over for their usual chats, and if Eret is busy HBomb is busy too, Karl even seems to be busy nowadays.  Ranboo is in the same boat, not that Niki really understands why.  Even if Tubbo has something going on, Tommy is always available.  Niki also has a feeling that Ranboo knows she wants to talk to him, because he’s been finding excuses to go back to his room, before realizing there’s nothing to do in there, coming back out, realizing his sister clearly having some sort of emotion towards him, and finds an excuse again.

“Aren’t you going to help me with dinner?” Niki asks as Ranboo is halfway down the hall back to his room.  He turns on his heels, looking a shred less anxious than someone walking to the gallows and nods.

“Yep!”

“Okay,” Niki can’t help but be amused.  Even if she were actually mad at Ranboo, which isn’t the word she would use for whatever she’s feeling at present, Ranboo is well past the age where she could attempt to ground him, at this point what he’s dreading is her saying she’s disappointed in him.  Which, to be fair, tends to be viewed as a death sentence by all three of them, Ranboo and Tommy and Tubbo.

Ranboo hums to fill the quiet, glancing at her often, and to her surprise, he speaks up first, methodically chopping vegetables so he doesn’t have to look over at her.  “You doin’ okay?”

“What?” She looks over at him, thrown off.  “Yeah.  I think so.  Are you?”

Ranboo doesn’t seem to believe her.  “Yeah!”

Niki doesn’t really believe him either.  Quiet for a bit, neither quite sure of how to proceed.

“How’s Tubbo?  And Tommy?”

“Huh?  Oh, I think…” He falters, "I think okay.”

“Have you not seen them much?”  She already knows the answer.  She asks anyway.

“No,” he sounds amused.  “I mean, I’ve been with you.  When would I have seen them?  I mean, you haven’t seen your friends much.”

“Well, they’re busy with criminal things,” Niki says teasingly.

“Yeah, well, mine too.” Ranboo says, his humor sharper, bitter.

“But even before, you all made time for each other, didn’t you?  Do you know why Tubbo hasn’t come to the Secret City with Tommy at all?  It doesn’t seem like them.”

“I don’t know everything they do, Niki,” Ranboo snaps.

“Ranboo,” Niki can’t help the hint of hurt in her voice.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s… it’s fine,” she sighs.  “You don’t talk to me anymore, Ranboo.  I just… I just want to know what’s happening.”

“Maybe I just don’t have much to say,” Ranboo shrugs.

“Are you… are you guys not friends anymore?”

“No,” Ranboo says quickly.  His face scrunches up, and he doesn’t even look upset really, more so worried.  “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“When else are we going to?!” Niki snaps.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry, Ranboo, I’m just… I don’t want you to lose them.”

“You say that like I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice!” Niki grows emphatic.

“Really?” Ranboo is defensive.  “Did you have a choice when you lost Wilbur?”

Icy silence.  Niki is taken aback, a lump in her throat, because it wasn’t just harsh or startling, coming from Ranboo, saying that to her, it’s almost cruel.  Worse when he continues.

“He left you, Niki, and now you’re… you’re letting him live here…”

“You agreed!”

“I thought it was gonna be for a couple days!  Not a couple months!”

“He left everyone, Ranboo. He didn’t just leave me.”

“I don’t care about everyone!  I care about you.  And he hurt you!  And– And it’s like you’re not even mad at him!” Ranboo’s voice breaks slightly, choked up rage that isn’t just meant for Wilbur.

“It sounds like you are.”

“Because you should be,” he says accusingly.  “A-And it’s not fair that he stopped talking to you, he just… he just moved on.  He didn’t… he didn’t think about it.  Like he didn’t even care.”

“Ranboo…” Niki reaches out to him, he pulls away.  “You know it’s okay if you’re hurting right now, right?”

“This isn’t about me. Not right now, okay?  I know I– I know–” Ranboo cuts himself off, frustrated by his own emotions.  “Let’s– Let’s just pick one, and right now I… I wanna talk about Wilbur, and–”

The front door of their apartment opens.  Wilbur and Tommy enter, and immediately read the tension of whatever they have just interrupted.

“Uh.  Ayup?” Tommy gives the two of them a nod.  “Well, I’ve got you home safe, Wilbur, I ought to be going–” he turns back to the door and Wilbur grabs his sleeve.

“Tommy needs somewhere to stay.”

“Do not–”

“The new hotel manager came at him with a golf club.”

“He what?!” Ranboo is snapped out of his own brooding.

“And I kicked his ass and left!  It’s not a problem,” Tommy whines.

“Yeah, but you can’t go back, and you shouldn’t be just sleeping outside, Tommy,” Wilbur says pointedly.

“I’ve done it before!”

“No,” Niki says sharply.  Tommy stares at her, startled.  “Tommy that is in no way safe.  Not right now, okay?  You’re staying here.”

Tommy quickly realizes he no longer has a choice.  “Right… fine, but just for tonight, alright?”

Niki turns to Wilbur, just as piercing.  “Did you get any job applications?”

If Wilbur could sink into the floor, he would.  “W-Well, I… I meant to, it’s just… some things came up…”

“What?  What things?”

“Sorry, sorry, nothing, it was… it was stupid of me.  Never mind,” Wilbur winces, knowing how useless his excuses are.

Ranboo gives Niki a weighted glance that Wilbur is at a loss to understand, and Niki is resolutely ignoring it.

“Tommy, I’m sorry, but if you’re staying here, you’ve got to take a shower,” Niki nods Tommy down the hall.

“Okay, rude, not my fault that I haven’t been able to use the hotel showers in a… in a little while…” he grumbles, following her.

For a dangerous, brief amount of time, Wilbur and Ranboo are alone.

“What came up?” Ranboo asks.

Wilbur notes the hint of ice in his tone and hesitates.  “It was… it was a cheap excuse, I… I got distracted with Tommy.  That’s all.  No good reason.”

“So… so why’d you say you did?” Ranboo says quietly.

“I don’t… I don’t know.  Felt bad about it, really,” Wilbur shrugs.

“Right,” Ranboo is cool and unfeeling.  “Niki and I were making dinner.  Do you think you could help?”

Wilbur knows it’s not a request.

“Right, right, let me… let me wash my hands,” Wilbur nods, going to the sink.  “What’re you making?”

“Um, baked rutabaga and parmesan chicken?”

“Rutabaga…” Wilbur laughs fondly.  “Right.”

Silence until Niki returns.

“Thanks, Wil,” Niki says, reentering the kitchen.

“Sure!  Sure, it’s the… it’s the least I can do.”

“Yep,” Ranboo agrees quietly.

Niki gives him a warning look, before proceeding as if she hadn’t heard him.  “Ranboo, Tommy is going to borrow some of your clothes.”

“Fine with me,” Ranboo says.

Wilbur looks between the two of them, eyes wide.  He focuses on his assigned task.  A terse half hour passes before Tommy returns, hair still dripping wet, dampening the collar of one of Ranboo’s shirts.  Tommy’s had to roll up the pant legs of his jeans substantially.

Wilbur laughs.  “You look like a wet dog.”

“Do I?” Tommy strides over to him and shakes his head so water flies everywhere, largely into Wilbur’s face.

“Tommy!  Come on, man, not… not in the kitchen,” Ranboo says helplessly.

“Sorry,” Tommy rolls his eyes, before catching sight of Niki and offering with more sincerity, “sorry!”

“Ranboo, can you get your desk chair?  We need one more.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Their tiny dining table is typically only used for two, a third chair is there for a guest, but it’s rare for them to have more than that company in the apartment.  It’s far easier to host in the speakeasy.  Niki has dragged the table out from the wall so a chair can be put on the fourth side.  Wilbur helps set the table and Tommy gathers drinks and despite the lingering tension, it feels almost cozy.  The four of them have settled in, Tommy eating with a disconcerting amount of enthusiasm, but no one at the table has the heart to scold him for it.  Once Tommy has cleared a plate and gone back for seconds, he begins to peer around the table.

“Brrr. Bit chilly in here, eh?  What’s got you all up in a huff?”  Tommy is quite good and prodding the one issue everyone else is still avoiding.

Wilbur doesn’t feel like he knows what’s going on, so he doesn’t speak, Ranboo loathes the thought of being the one to speak up first, especially about confrontation, and Niki neither wants to lie to Tommy nor get into things.  Tommy waits.

“Well I think whatever has gotten you lot in a mood, you should do some soul searching, reevaluate your pri-or-i-tees,” he enunciates every syllable around a mouthful of rutabaga.  “Like, Ranboo, handsome lad like you, what on earth could be troubling that brain of yours?  You’re a baker, you’re a looker, you’re all… like, sensitive and shit, you’re a catch!  Niki, if you’ve got problems, you should just… y’know, kick their asses like you always do.  In what fuckin’ world does Niki Nihachu feel troubled by something she can’t wreck shop over?  You’ve got a badass speakeasy and everything!  You don’t fear no pigs, the state should fear you!”  Tommy nods once like that settles the matter, before refocusing on his plate.  The tension doesn’t break, but it does crack a little.

“No grand input for me?” Wilbur says dryly.

“Nah, I know why you’ve got troubles, and it’s your own fault,” Tommy shrugs.

Ranboo laughs.

“Hey!” Wilbur says, indignant.

“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?  Hm?” Tommy gives him a look.

“Yeah, are you, Wil?” Niki smiles.  “I mean, you couldn’t pick up one job application?”

Wilbur is flushing red.  “Look, maybe I… I’m not thrilled at the thought of scrounging together some shitty nine-to-five with a dickhead boss…”

“How do you know what job shit is like?  You’ve never worked a day in your fuckin’ life,” Tommy jeers.

“Have you had a job before, Tommy?” Wilbur says pointedly.

“More than you.”

“I’d say both of you don’t know anything about having a real job,” Ranboo points out.

“And I’d say you don’t know much about having shitty nine-to-five and a dickhead boss,” Niki adds.  “You got lucky too, Ranboo.”

“I mean, maybe I do–”

Niki gasps, dramatically acting offended, throwing her napkin at him.

“Hey!  Hey, I’m kidding,” Ranboo hunches down which does very little to make himself a smaller target.

“I dunno, Ranbus, she’s a tough egg to crack, y’know?  She runs a tight ship.  She hasn’t put up with any nonsense as long as I’ve known her.  She’s been immovable since she was twelve, probably longer,” Wilbur teases.  Niki rolls her eyes at him, poorly masking a laugh.  Wilbur glances back over at Ranboo, startled to find Ranboo staring at him, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth open slightly like he’s unsure of how to say something, to describe whatever unreadable expression he’s currently stabbing into Wilbur’s chest.  “What?” Wilbur shifts uncomfortably.

“You haven’t called me that since I was little.”

“Well, I– I haven’t been here a lot, have I?” Wilbur stammers.

“Yeah.  Guess not.”

Tommy snorts.  “Ranbus?  That’s fucking adorable, aw, little Ranbus!”

“No, nuh uh, you’re not starting with that,” Ranboo breaks his gaze, turning sharply to Tommy.  “Not allowed!  Not for you!”  He says it like he’s trying to get a dog to drop a sock.  “I’d prefer when you call me Ranboob to you calling me that.”

Tommy grins, “aw, good to hear it, Ranboob!  I shall only respect your proper title.”

Ranboo sighs head in his hands as realizes what he’s done.  “Oh no…”

Tommy continues his teasing, and Wilbur plays along, but he’s wrapped up in deeper thoughts right now, so many old aches and pains mingling with new ones, and he doesn’t know where to put it all down.

Dinner finishes in better spirits than it had started, Tommy offering to help clean up after with the same heroics of a soldier offering to dive on a grenade, but nonetheless, he does it.

“Right, then, good night, lads– and Niki,” Tommy settles in on the floor with ease, stealing a pillow from the couch.

“Tommy, you take the couch, man. I’ve had it for ages, I should shake things up and sleep on the floor for a change,” Wilbur offers.

“What’ve you got against floors?  I got nothin’ against ‘em!  Me and floors are old friends!” Is Tommy’s attempt at a defense.

“Mhm, Tommy, where did you sleep last night?” Niki asks pointedly before she goes to her own room.

“On a bench over on 30th until one of the pigs woke me up, why?”

Niki and Wilbur exchange a look.  “Take the couch, Tommy.”

“Tommy can stay with me in my room for the night!” Ranboo says perhaps too excitedly.

Tommy raises an eyebrow at him.  “Look, Ranboob, I did admit, you’re a handsome lad, but me?  I’m shy, I’m not ready for this step in our relationship–”

“Tommy,” Ranboo cuts him off exasperatedly.  “Come on, it’ll be like when we’d have sleepovers and stuff!  It’ll be fun,” Ranboo claps and points to his bedroom door.  “Come on!  Let’s go!”

“What, are we gonna braid each other’s hair and talk about girls?” Tommy rolls his eyes but clambers off the ground to follow.

“I mean, you can talk about girls.  I don’t think I will.”

Niki smiles, fond and relieved.  Ranboo had missed having company.  None of them are acknowledging the hole, the absence once occupied for so many years by Tubbo.  He should be here.  

Even as Tommy is grateful to have a bed, as he’s missed Ranboo’s company just as Ranboo had missed his, he’s trying really hard not to get weak right now.  He refuses to cry over something as ridiculous as the idea of his best friend––his former best friend?––not being in the place he is meant to.  Tubbo has changed.  Tommy knows this, Tommy knows he should be able to let go, because that’s not his best friend anymore, in more ways than one.  At the same time, Tommy knows if Tubbo showed up right now, no matter the state, no matter the blood on his hands, Tommy would only be able to hug him, to bring him back into the fold and say “Where have you been, Bee Boy?  You’re late.  And you missed dinner.”

Instead, he just follows Ranboo, and even as neither of them say it, he can read Ranboo’s silence for the same thought.  They miss him.

~

Wilbur has a difficult time falling asleep.  He’s perturbed by troubling thoughts, thoughts he hadn’t been prepared for.  It’s a peculiar list that’s been growing.  Only looking at today, not even the past months, and it’s enough to make his head spin.  He’d forgone cigarettes to get that scrappy kid some medicine he probably won’t even use.  And when Tommy had run to the body, he hadn’t felt scared like that in a long time.  Probably in as long a time since he called Ranboo Ranbus.

“Fuck…” Wilbur mutters into the dark.  He rolls over and almost screams.  Niki is currently making her way silently across the living room, he sits up sharply.  “Niki?”

“Sh!” She presses a finger to his lips.  She motions for him to follow.  “Come on the roof with me,” she whispers.  In her other hand, she has a bottle.

“The roof-? Right, fine,” Wilbur clambers to his feet.

“Take that blanket too.”

He does so, following her to door in the back of the kitchen, within it is a pantry, and on the opposite wall, a ladder.  He does not ask questions.

Niki unlocks a trapdoor, wincing when it creaks loudly, but as far as they can tell the boys haven’t been woken.

The roof isn’t quiet.  It’s well past midnight, but there’s the wind through the buildings and cars still making their way across the city.  Niki shuts the hatch behind him, gesturing to the roof.

“Put the blanket down.  Over here so we can look out,” she nods to the front of the building.  At this angle to the street, Wilbur can see all the way to the river, to the distant lights of the bridge.  They can’t see a single star in the sky here, but there’s something beautiful about it anyway.

Niki sits on the blanket, patting the spot beside her.  She rips the cork out of the bottle with her teeth, spitting it over the edge of the roof.  She spots Wilbur’s expression out of the corner of her eye and giggles.

“I run a speakeasy, Wilbur,” she says by way of explanation.

“I don’t think most bartenders are comfortable ripping a cork out with their teeth.”

Niki shrugs.  “How would I know?  I can’t exactly meet up with other bartenders in a prohibition state.”  She takes a swig, wincing.

“Touché,” Wilbur sits beside her.  “What’re we drinking tonight?”

“Um,” she takes another swig.  “Gin.”

“Gin?”

She nods.  “It’s popular.  I thought we might as well,” she offers him the bottle.

“Might as well…” Wilbur mutters.  He takes a drink, shuddering.  “That’s… that’s some strong gin, shit.”

“Feels…” Niki mulls it over, “appropriate?”

“What’s the occasion?” Wilbur smiles, still puzzled, but also oddly delighted.  He’s missed this.

“Um, not really an occasion, more like… a goal,” she takes back the bottle, takes a swig, and passes it back, nodding at him.  He obliges and takes another drink.

“Goal?”

“To get you, Wilbur Soot, drunk enough to… to spill your guts to me.”

Wilbur had been halfway through another swig when he chokes.  “Pardon?”

Niki smiles, all mischief.  “To be fair, I am drinking too.”

“Feels like I’ve been brought here under false pretenses.”

“What pretenses?” She laughs.

“Fine.  I dunno,” Wilbur smiles, offering her the bottle.  “Okay, if we’re… if we’re spilling guts, lets do it tit-for-tat, quid pro quo.”

She nods, “wie du mir, so ich dir.”

“Wie du mir, so ich dir,” Wilbur attempts to copy her pronunciation and he can’t tell from her smile if he succeeded or failed.  “So,” Wilbur asks the first thing that comes into his head.  “Is Ranboo… is he mad at me?  He seems… well, about as pissed off as Ranboo can be, if I’m honest.”

Niki nods, like it’s an easy truth.

“He is?”

“Yeah, it’s ‘cause he knows you leaving hurt me.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels like a weight has just pressed down harder on his shoulders.

Niki nods amicably.  “And now you’re back.  And he thinks you have a lot to prove.”

“Yeah.  I… I think I do,” Wilbur takes another swig.

“Do you have anything to do with the…” Niki gestures vaguely to the streets below.

“The what?” He’s puzzled out of his melancholy.

“The changes.  A lot of little things.  I don’t know,” she shrugs.  “It all sort of started when you turned up, and, sorry, Wil, you…” she almost looks pitying.  “You break things.  Sometimes.”

Wilbur nods, staring out at the patchy trail of streetlights, some lit, some not.  “I break things,” he agrees softly.

“Sometimes,” Niki reminds him pointedly.

He laughs, half under his breath, “sometimes.”

“There’s something wrong, Wil.  Schlatt is dead, and I thought…” Niki frowns.  “I don’t know what I thought.  When I first found out, I was mostly worried about Tubbo, but then I… I thought it was gonna fix things.”

Wilbur once more thinks of his father, and it’s hard to resist the bitterness curdling in his stomach.  “It was bad, then?”  Quiet.  He glances over at Niki, who is looking with the same thoughtfulness out at the city.  Wilbur continues, “Schlatt, I mean.”

She glances at him, clearly measuring up how little he knows.  “It’s like I said, Wil.  You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I have,” Wilbur says like it’s an apology.  It isn’t an apology.

“Drink more.  You’re bigger than me, you need to catch up,” she presses the bottle into his hands.  He obliges.

“I didn’t want to, you know.  To leave you, to leave the city,” Wilbur knows it’s a feeble defense, but it’s all he can think to say.

She still look like she knows something, something she isn’t saying, not directly at least.  “Didn’t you?”

“I…” Wilbur feels very vulnerable.  He can’t imagine Niki knowing, knowing the whole of it, but it’s clear she understands him in a lot of ways.  Which makes sense.  Niki had once been his best friend.  “I don’t know,” is what he settles on.  It’s a safe answer, maybe too safe.

Niki sighs, sitting up, legs folded beneath her.  Wilbur offers her the bottle once more and she pushes it back.  “You first, then me.”

He takes a drink.  She follows.

“You all left, you and Phil and Techno, and… and Phil leaving was hard.  He… he sent money until I asked him to stop.  He called until I… I got too busy to pick up,” she shrugs.  “I don’t know,” she echoes his sentiment, staring down at the roof.  “Techno said goodbye.  A… a pretty good goodbye, I think.  And I was… I was mostly okay for a while.  Schlatt… Schlatt didn’t get involved until I was eighteen.  That’s when I opened the Secret City, ‘cause before I was worried if I got caught while underage it would fall back on Eret’s family, so…”

Wilbur knows it’s far from important, but on impulse he asks her, almost defensive, like a childish teen rivalry has resurfaced.  “Eret?”

“Yeah.  Her family helped look after us.  You… you can’t own a business at sixteen, Wil,” Niki says wryly.  “I mean, we were on our own, really.  Me and Ranboo.  They didn’t really interfere, it just made sure no one was like, trying to take Ranboo away from me or anything like that.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels almost embarrassed now.  “I… I understand.  Got it.”  He takes another drink.

“You said you were coming back, Wil,” Niki says softly.

“I meant to,” he says hoarsely.  He means it.

“Okay, but when you weren’t anymore, when you didn’t,” she looks over at him, eyes too shiny.  “Why didn’t you call?  Why didn’t you… why didn’t you write?  Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Wilbur feels like that look in her eyes, grief and broken trust and wounds still unhealed, like it might burn him up from the inside.  He can’t bring himself to look away.

“I don’t have any good answers for you.”

“Give me a bad one, then.”

"Fuck, I'm just a mess," Wilbur wipes his eyes.

"Yeah, you are," she says teasingly.  "Give me an answer."

Wilbur swallows thickly, a lump forming in his throat, finally tearing his gaze from hers to stare at the way the bottle in his hand gleams in the streetlight.  “It was supposed to be a clean break.”  He gives the wrong excuse, but it’s the only one he has.

Niki feels an ache in her chest grow sharp.  She had expected a bad answer, but that one stings, especially when she knows what festers underneath.  “Clean…” she scoffs.  A pause, Wilbur with nothing to say in his own defense, and Niki thinking.  “I was... I was okay on my own.  Really.  Schlatt wasn't a problem until I opened the Secret City and... and when he first started showing up and taking money and... and then alcohol, I didn't... I didn't know what he was gonna do to us.  I'd never... Phil kept us away from that stuff, you know?  I... I made sure they didn't know about Ranboo," Niki nods once, as if reassuring herself, proud and certain she did right by him.  "They wouldn't fucking touch him, I made sure.  I couldn't stop them from knowing he worked there, but... they didn't know he was my family.  So, that was... a bit safer?  I think?  And... I hate this," she says vehemently.  "I hate that this is the truth, but when I stopped fighting, it got easier.  I gave them the money, my supplies, whatever they asked for.  I only fought back when... when I thought it would actually sink us, and before I got brave enough to do that I had to ask Eret for help sometimes and I hated doing that, because I knew I shouldn't have had to.  Once I gave up, his men stopped coming and threatening to break things, and instead it was just Tubbo.  It felt... it felt easier that way.  I gave up so much of what we earned, and that just became normal," she says that word like it's something vulgar.  "But I did it.  I did it.  I kept everyone safe, everyone.  I looked after them all.  Homeless kids, and Schlatt's kid, and Schlatt's boyfriend, and Schlatt's boyfriend's boyfriend, and Schlatt's doctor, and... and Badlanders and ex-Badlanders, and ex-Empire kids, because... because they were gone.  You were gone.  The Empire left us, and I wasn't gonna let that hurt us.  No way.  Maybe I didn't have Phil's authority or Techno's reputation or... or anything like that.  But I kept them all safe.  All of them," she looks at Wilbur, and he is almost in awe of the fire burning behind her eyes.  Wilbur feels so sure that if Niki wanted to burn this city down, she could and she'd probably have the right to.  The fire drains out of her, and once more she looks so tired.  "The earlier years were the hardest.  The ones where I missed you the most, Wil."  Niki takes a shaky breath.  She looks away.  "When I say Schlatt was bad, I don’t say it because I think you could’ve fixed things.  Maybe if Phil had stuck around, he could’ve made it better, but that’s different.  That’s not you.”  A pause.  Wilbur almost feels like he can’t breathe.  Niki continues, “even with the bad parts of it, really I just wanted you to be there, Wil.  You were– you were supposed to be there,” Niki says it with the certainty of a girl who had been eighteen, and alone, and scared, and trying to defend herself from threats so much bigger than her, and waiting for her brother to get taken away, and all the while wishing she could cry on her best friend’s shoulder.

“I am… I am so sorry, Niki.  I don’t expect forgiveness, I don’t, I just need you to know how sorry I am.”  A strange apology for someone utterly certain his father had dragged him out of this city kicking and screaming, but maybe he’s not talking about that kind of leaving.  Maybe Niki knows that.

Niki does not forgive him.  “I believe you, Wil.”  That counts for something too.

Wilbur has felt something building in his chest for weeks, discontent forever rising as his plans never turn out quite right and he has been unable to do the one thing he came to this city for.  A lot has changed in the past months.  His discontent finally spills over.

“I came here, I came back to the city two months ago,” Wilbur stops, taking a deep breath to stop his lip from trembling.  He quickly wipes his cheek.  He doesn’t look at her.  “I came back here to kill myself.”

Niki doesn’t say a word.  She doesn’t know what she could say, but she isn't really surprised.  She takes his hand.

“N-Not here, here.  I wasn’t… I wasn’t gonna do it in your house,” Wilbur continues to spill over, a rambling defense for something he knows cannot be defended.  “I was… I had a plan, it was… it wasn’t supposed to take this long, but I had to– It had to be– Someone else has to do it,” he says forcefully.  “I wanted it to be Schlatt.  Or Schlatt’s dogs, whatever.  If not him, any gunfire would do.  I tried prodding the Badlands, I tried going down the wrong streets and… and spraying stupid graffiti on claimed territory, and none of it worked.  Closest I got was that stupid fucking car bomb, and all it did was almost kill Tommy…”

Now Niki can think of a reply, not to the matter on the whole, but to this piece of it.  “Why?”  Wilbur glances at her, burden evident at the thought of answering that sort of question, Niki corrects.  “Why… why did it have to be someone else, I mean.”

Wilbur laughs bitterly.  “It was supposed to be for Phil?  I thought… I thought it might be nice for it to mean something, so, I thought if I got myself killed in the crossfire of some petty street violence, maybe…” Wilbur trails off, as if by voicing it aloud he’d realized the childishness of his plots.  “Maybe it would make him want to change.  To do better.  Something like that,” he sighs.

“For Phil,” Niki repeats, processing.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says wearily.

“Don’t… don’t take this the wrong way, Wilbur, but… but once all that didn’t work, why didn’t you… you know, try something else?” Niki asks carefully.

Wilbur had forgotten how direct Niki could be.  “Um, well, lots of… of little reasons, I guess.”

“Little reasons?”

Wilbur huffs, almost annoyed with the idea.  “It was… it was that stupid fucking kid, alright?  It was Tommy.”

Niki smiles, almost amused.  “Tommy?”

“Not… not for lovely sentimental reasons, not at first at least, but he just… he kept showing up.  Every day, I’d be wandering around, debating between the river and a highrise, and there he’d fucking be!  Calling me a layabout and following me and hounding me until I’d decide it was worth trying a few more schemes to see if I could get myself killed that way, and even then!  Even then, he’d find a way to get in the way.  Like, I tried to get out in front of a Badlands patrol, when they were first starting to get all nervous, and this kid latches onto me like a furious fucking koala, and he won’t let me out of the alleyway without him, so I gave up that time.  And shit like that just kept happening,” Wilbur sighs, shaking his head, almost amazed.  “He just… by accident, he just kept me out of it.”

“That sounds like Tommy.”

Wilbur laughs dryly.  “Does it?”  Wilbur broods, once more returning to the thoughts that had been circling his sleepless brain earlier.  “And he’s… he needs help, right?  He obviously needs help, and needs it worse than any of us first thought, apparently, and I…” Wilbur sighs.  “And I can’t.  Okay?”

“You… you don’t think you can help him?  Wil, no one would expect that of you.”

“No, not that, and it’s not a matter of expectation, it’s–” Wilbur runs a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls as he feels like Niki and all her love for him is digging a confession out of his chest, but he wants this, he wants to tell her, because he loves her too.  “I can’t kill myself.  Not until… not until he’s better.  ‘Cause I… I almost forgot about Ranbus.”

“You… what do you mean you almost forgot Ranboo?” Now Niki is properly confused.

“Not Ranboo– Ranbus.  I… I said it so effortlessly, I didn’t even think about it, but before tonight, I almost forgot what I called that kid, that I… I was something to him,” Wilbur sighs.

“You still are something to him.”

Wilbur smiles weakly, grateful for her kindness even if he doesn’t think he deserves it.  “Maybe.  I… you’re good to him, Niki.  You were still a kid yourself, and you took care of him.  He’s lucky, and I think he knows how lucky he is, to have you for a big sister, and…” Wilbur trails off, words coming together slowly.  “And Tommy’s not lucky.  In more than one way, because he had no one, and instead of someone like you, Niki, he gets stuck with me instead,” Wilbur laughs.  “So, I can’t kill myself.  Because he needs… he needs someone.  That’s all.”

Niki scoots closer, resting her head on his shoulder.  “I’m sorry, Wilbur.  For… for a lot of things you’ve had to go through, but I’m really glad you’re here now.  And I’m really glad you’re not going anywhere.”

Wilbur takes a shaky breath, no longer trying to ward off tears or the tremor in his voice.  “Thanks, Niki.”

“Maybe Tommy isn’t as lucky as Ranboo, but he’s still lucky to have you.”

Wilbur nods.  “Thank you.  For a lot of things, but Niki,” Wilbur looks over at her, looking her in the eye for once without fear or guilt or shame.  “Thank you for being my best friend.”

Niki smiles, reaching out to mess up his hair.  “You’re welcome.  Thank you for… for trying to bring my best friend back.”

Wilbur understands.  “I’ll be him again.  I promise.”

Niki gets to her feet, unsteady and offering him a hand off the ground.  “I’ll hold you to that, Wilbur Soot.  Don’t think I won’t.”

#ALSO: Song recs for this chapter include Kill All Your Friends by mcr for Niki #and Mess by noah kahan for Wilbur <3 #my writing #mafia au #aaaaa been waiting to get to this one!! #back with a 12k chapter babey! #c!wilbur #wilbur soot #c!Niki #Niki Nihachu #rainduo

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | monoma

Monoma’s route of soulmate trope.

“why did put your whole pussy into the chapter for the character no one wanted to read next???”

i want to make him pop in the microwave. next question

warnings: reader is a masochist but takes no shit. Monoma is explicitly a virgin, and it’s implied that reader is as well—but it isn’t definite. sexual material but not the actual act of penetration ("then what's the point?" delayed gratification, babey!!!). Fem reader.

~12k words

Monoma let out a scornful laugh so piercing and deliberate that it had no problem reaching your lunch table. “Fucking preposterous. Having a soulmate from Class 3-A would be so humiliating that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, let alone you, Kendo.” His laughter grew louder, sounding a bit forced, but it would have to be in order for the whole lunchroom to hear it. “Unfortunately for you. Sucks to suck!”

 Jirou clicked her tongue and turned back to her sandwich, tapping you on the shoulder with a dangly earbud. “His dick must be tiny.”

 You snorted into your noodles and covered your mouth. “I don’t even wanna think about his dick or anything else about him,” you said, taking the napkin that Shinsou offered you, “He’s insufferable.”

 “He told me he doesn’t have a soulmate,” said Shinsou, nodding towards Monoma, “Said the math was against him, but he didn’t care too much. Said it’s better than someone in 3-A.”

 “Jesus,” you said, frowning, “How much does he hate us for him to want to be without a soulmate? Worse, he’s in the same no-soulmate club as Mineta.”

 “I wouldn’t want anything in common with him.” Jirou glanced towards Mineta, eating alone against the caf wall. Good. Suffer, pervert.

 When Jirou got up to throw her trash away, you sighed and leant on Shinsou’s shoulder. “Shinsou, how’s your soulmate search going?”

 He swallowed thickly. “It’s not. How about yours?”

 “Well,” you said, scrunching up your face, “I have a soulmate, but I’ve got no fucking idea who.”

 Shinsou tilted his head, clonking onto yours. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 “I think we’d better go out to the courtyard for this,” you said, swinging your bag strap over your shoulder, “It requires a visual.”

 By the time Shinsou and you had planted yourselves outside behind a cherry tree towards the back of the courtyard (strategically chosen so that you would be hidden behind bushes and hedges, far away from the stone path, just in case someone saw you and Shinsou and got the wrong idea), you hadn’t briefed him yet, due to other students stopping you on the way for your notes.

 “But what do you mean you don’t know?” Shinsou let his backpack slide to the base of the tree trunk and, once you had sat on your knees, he joined you on the ground.

 “I have a mark,” you said, your fists resting on your knees, “but I can’t read it. I think it’s someone’s name—I don’t think it’s long enough to be first words—but whoever it is has extremely shitty handwriting.”

 “You want me to look at it?”

 “Yeah,” you said, reaching for the hem of your shirt but pausing, “It’s in a weird place, so that’s why we’re hidden. I don’t want anyone thinking you’re attacking me.”

 Shinsou’s eyebrows shot to his hairline, and he smirked. “Is it on your tit?”

 “No,” you said, frowning, “but it’s near one, and it’s all scrunched up and cramped on my ribcage; to get a good look, I’m gonna have to stretch.”

 “Whatever you’re comfortable with,” he said, and you lay down in the grass and pulled your shirt up to just below your bra, where the muddled words that barely spanned a centimetre vertically scrawled across the left half of your ribs.

 His brow furrowed, Shinsou hunched over your chest, leaning down and scanning the text.

 He squinted.

 “Give me a moment.” Shinsou shifted from your side to (“Sorry about this.”) straddle you, doing his best not to put his weight on you, his hips staying high with his hands planted on either side of you.

 (“Arch your back a little more?”)

 He tilted his head.

 “Yeah, I’ve got no fucking clue,” Shinsou said, sitting back and off of you, “It’s too small and chaotic. I think I can make out the last kanji in the second word, but it can be read as so many different things, so I can’t say anything for certain. We could go old-school: Tokoyami has a magnifying glass. I could go grab that.”

 “Sure,” you said, shrugging, “You might as well.”

 “I’ll be back,” said Shinsou, getting to his feet with a little jump and brushing off his knees, “Hang in there.”

 Nodding, you closed your eyes as Shinsou jogged off through the bushes, and you stretched your arms above your head, waiting for the soft crack. The first thing you’d say to your soulmate shouldn’t be a critique of his handwriting, so you were tossing your mind around for something relevant that wasn’t outright rude.

 At the sound of the bushes rustling, you turned to raise a brow at Shinsou for returning so soon, but as you held your hand up to shield your eyes from the sun, the silhouette staring down at you blurred not into Shinsou but Monoma.

 Smile slipping away, you yanked your shirt down your stomach again. “The hell do you want? Shinsou’s left, so you’ll have to wait to talk to him.”

 Monoma tossed his hair to the side. “I caught him on the way to your secret little hiding place. What were you talking about?”

 “It doesn’t matter to you, dickhead.” You pushed yourself up on your elbows and then fully sat up as he squatted next to you. “This soulmate shit is supposed to be personal, so get fucking lost, Monoma.”

 Inhaling sharply when you said his name, he held his index finger against his smirk. “Do you actually want me to leave?”

 Bitch-ass. “Of course—”

 And your mind went blank.

 Monoma let out a curt laugh as he watched your realization wash over your face. “That’s what I thought. Now, lie back down for me. That’s good; you’re so good when you want to be,” he said, hunching over you, teeming with rage and gritting your teeth.

 “Don’t talk to me like that.”

 He gave a dismissive wave. “You like it,” he said, moving to sit cross-legged, “C’mon, show me what you were showing him. Go on.”

 Fuming, you dragged your shirt hem upwards, but you did it so slowly that he snapped his fingers and told you to hurry up—and you had to. How many more minutes would Shinsou’s quirk last? Five? Ten? If you could be annoying for ten whole minutes, following the letter of the law if not the spirit, then you could walk away unscathed.

 (An aside: if your soulmate could have Monoma’s quirk to steal Shinsou’s quirk, that’d be hot. Tell me when to open my mouth, sir.)

 Clenching your jaw, you pointedly looked away when he drew closer to your chest to look at the mark.

 “Your soulmark’s on your chest, huh? Right under your—your breast,” Monoma said, propping his chin on his fist. “So, it’s visible if you went swimming. It could show.” He scoffed. “And you were crude enough to willingly show it to just some guy who’s not your soulmate.”

 Your knuckles tightened around the fabric. “Not like it’s a big deal, since neither of us can read it. Let me go, Mon—”

 But his brainwashing loosed you from its grip the same moment his hand dropped into his lap, and he sucked in through his teeth. “You can’t read it?”

 You’re not falling for that again. You kept your mouth shut and moved to gather your and Shinsou’s belongings.

 “What do you mean you can’t read it?” Monoma asked, dogging you while you shoved your stuff into your backpack.

 Shaking your head, you side-stepped him, slinging your backpack over your shoulder and lifting Shinsou’s to your front.

 Crowding you, he asked, his grin and tone growing to that usual obnoxious tone, “Oh, have you not learnt how to read yet? Is that why you’re showing Shinsou? Can anyone in 3-A read? Why don’t you—”

 You shot him a foul look and elbowed him in the stomach, hard, and Monoma doubled over, clutching the spot and muttering under his breath.

 ***

 The magnifying glass didn’t fucking help. The kanji were that deformed; the handwriting was that incomprehensible. Yes, it’s probably a name, since it’s two words that aren’t the same length as a standard greeting (being a first words soulmark situation). You took it to yourself to borrow notes, cycling through everyone’s handwriting in class. Yes, signatures could be way different than regular handwriting, but there are similarities.

 But not in your bitch of a soulmate’s handwriting.

 Going through your unmatched classmates’ notes made you hate your soulmate’s penmanship even more, because if Bakugou Katsuki can write neatly enough to read, anyone should be able to.

 Nobody’s matched your soulmark.

 You decided you could be a little rude when you met your soulmate, for all the trouble he’s causing you.

 ***

 “Oh, ho?”

 Oh, God, not now. You curled in more on yourself, trying to hide yourself in your hoodie and kept your eyes on Kaminari’s notes.

 “Alone on a Friday night? Do you not have any friends to study with?” Monoma pulled out the library chair next to you, the legs scraping the tile, but he didn’t sit down and instead leant his weight against it so that he could loom over you. “How embarrassing.”

 You ignored him. You flipped to the back of a page.

 “Come, now, I don’t have Shinsou’s quirk at the moment. You’re allowed to talk to me,” he said, nudging you with his hip while he tossed his book to himself, “and you should, if you want some shred of intelligent conversation. Bet there’s not a lot of it in 3-A.”

 Kaminari had really inconsistent handwriting. It was as if he had to draw each stroke completely different than he had last drawn it.

 “C’mon, look at me,” said Monoma, and he slid the edge of his book underneath your chin and lifted it to direct your gaze at him.

 The slow drag of the paperback against the tender skin of your neck had you swallowing excess saliva. Oh, God. Flinching away, you knocked his book out of his hand. “In case you haven’t noticed, Monoma, you’re a bit of an ass.”

 “It’s part of my charm,” he said, flashing you a cavalier grin as he stooped to pick up his book, which he immediately chucked onto the notes you were studying, “What’s all this, then? History notes? Our test isn’t for…” Monoma crossed his arms on the library table and hunched to survey the papers, and he frowned. “Good Lord, why would you borrow that idiot Kaminari’s notes? He’s at the bottom of your class, which is saying something.”

 You began to gather up the notes in a huff. “Soulmate stuff is supposed to be personal, Monoma.”

 “I don’t understand how that’s relevant.”

 “Get fucked, moron,” you said, shoving everything into your bag and pushing out your chair in a screech. “Jerk off onto those illustrations, for all I care—”

 He grabbed your wrist.

 Lightly.

 Just his thumb and middle finger. Space in between.

 You froze and stared down at it.

 “Did I say you could leave?”

 Lips parted, your eyes flicked to his.

 “Sit back down. I’ll sit, too.”

 Your throat ran dry as he pulled out your chair for you.

 When the two of you were seated, he was leaning on his elbow on the table, smug as hell, waiting for you to break first, but goddamn, you were frothing with a boiled-over fury; how the fuck dare he; oh, my God.

 Step one: cover your ass.

 You cleared your throat and spoke softly (library hours!). “First off, how fucking dare you talk to me like that; you shouldn’t fucking talk to anyone like that. You don’t own anyone; that showed an immense amount of disrespect towards—and I know you hate 3-A on principle; that’s fine. I get it, I guess. But you can’t fucking act like that in real life towards anyone—”

 “Pfft.” Monoma bit the inside of his index finger. “You like it.”

 How dare he say something so accurate. Step two: proceed to cover your ass. “What the fuck, man,” you said, slapping the table, “You can’t be an asshole to everyone and claim that everyone finds it hot. Everyone just finds you super fucking annoying. Not everyone is a masochist.”

 The fucker actually held out his hand to check his nails. “Like you?”

 You’ve dug your own grave.

 Monoma clicked his tongue before smirking. “That hesitation says everything I need to know.”

 Why aren’t you covering your ass?!

 “No, I,” you said. C’mon, think! Or at least look like you’re thinking! Brow furrowed, you opened your mouth and then closed it. “I was simply struck dumb by the weird direction the conversation was going. I thought we were talking about how much of an ass you are.”

 “It’s connected,” he said, and he held up a finger with each hand before tapping them together. “Even before, I’ve noticed that whenever I’ve ripped your class to shreds, you’re always glaring at me, otherwise with so carefully controlled an expression—especially when I’m verbally insulting someone. You’ve gotten very good at controlling your face so that the arousal doesn’t show—”

 “What the fuck is wrong with you,” you asked flatly.

 “Because you’re projecting,” he hissed, clamping his hand on the back of your chair to get closer to you (his breath hit your face with each harsh consonant), “You’re thinking that it could be you I’m degrading in front of everyone, you who’s got my complete attention, whether it be negative or not. You’re—”

 “Hold up,” you said, placing your hand on his chest and firmly pushing him away by your fingertips (before he says something that hits a bit too close to home), “Let’s back up. Say you’ll listen to me with an open mind.”

 Pouting, Monoma slumped back in his seat and blew out of the corner of his mouth to huff his hair out of his eyes. “Fine.”

 “First off—and I swear to you I am being honest here—when I look at you with a controlled, annoyed expression, it is because I am annoyed at you. Your running gag of making fun of 3-A is not cute. It’s a bit pathetic. It’s annoying.”

 Monoma frowned. It took him a moment, but he tilted his head, as if he were genuinely considering it. “It’s because it’s horrible being reminded of what greatness looks like, right?”

 You shook your head. “It’s usually at a bad time for competition, anyway, since our class tends to go through a lot of outside-influenced events that already have us pretty damn stressed. Regular school stuff feels like it holds less weight when, like, the League of Villains targeted us recently.”

 He blinked. Once, twice. Then his jaw dropped. “Are you saying I’m annoying?”

 You buried your face in your hands.

 “But you look so aroused when I taunt you.”

 Good God, you’re going to peel off your skin so that you can whack him with each and every one of your ribs. “Monoma,” you said, peeking through your fingers, “You would fucking know when I’m aroused.”

 “Well, I should hope so,” he said, tapping his fingers in a rhythm on the table, “I hope to learn.”

 “What the fuck is wrong with—”

 “Why are you studying Kaminari’s notes, anyway? If it’s not for school.”

 You sighed. Whatever. Anything’s better than talking about what turns you on. If you answer as straightforwardly as possible, maybe he’ll get bored and leave. “Kaminari has the shittiest handwriting in my class.”

 “It looked perfectly legible to me.”

 “Yeah,” you said, digging a page back out of your bag, “Take a gander. Take a goose. Look at this shit.” You smoothed the rumpled paper onto the table, scooting your chair noisily closer to it (he lifted his chair quietly). “It’s like the man didn’t go to kindergarten. Look at the way he forms his kanji. No consistent form. No style,” you said, gesturing with your pinkie towards a particularly egregious part, “He’s got some bulky words over here, but it gets small and tight towards the bottom, and—” You cut yourself off and scratched your forehead. “It’s still better than my soulmate’s handwriting.”

 Monoma’s eyes snapped up to yours. “Huh?”

 “My soulmate’s handwriting is shit. The shittiest I’ve ever seen. I can’t fucking read it. You saw.” You lowered your hand to graze the spot where it branded you. “Can’t even tell if it’s a name, or first words, or anything. I don’t know,” you said quietly. “Makes it feel like he’s so far away. Like I’ll never be able to find him, and this’ll chip away at my soul, like Tainted Love said. Never be able to—what the fuck is wrong with you?”

 Monoma had started unbuckling his belt.

 “Holy shit,” you said, sliding your chair away from him, “Just because I had a moment of vulnerability does not mean I’m down to fuck—”

 “Look at this.” Monoma tugged the waistband of his jeans down—

 “I’m not looking at your noodle dick.”

 “It’s not—what kind of noodles are you eating? No, fuck, I mean. It’s not my dick,” he said, brow furrowed, lips curled inside his mouth momentarily, “but you probably won’t believe me based on my word alone.”

 He’d pulled his jeans down about three centimetres—barely enough for the elastic of his boxers to show (high-waisted bitch)—and. And. And it’s your own goddamn signature, perfectly legible, you’d like to add, scrawled sideways on his hip, parallel to…to one half of that infuriating v that some guys have.

 “Do we both have all of the information now?” He yanked his jeans back up and fumbled for the ends of his belt.

 “Uh,” you said really intelligently.

 “With that out of the way, I’d like to propose—”

 “Already?”

 “—a guideline,” Monoma finished as he sat back down, narrowing his eyes, “since it appears we’re both inclined to miscommunication: that we be as honest as we can with each other and tell each other what we’re thinking, in general, to prevent confusion.”

 “How reasonable of you,” you said, “I hate it.”

 “No, you don’t.”

 “I don’t,” you admitted.

 “Onto other things I’m right about.” Shifting in his seat to face you, Monoma nudged your knee with his and reached for your hand—he made eye contact with you to see if it were all right, and after you nodded very slightly, he took it, your fingers curving into his palm as they both rested in your lap. “You like it when I’m a bit mean to you, yes?”

 You scowled. “Hey.”

 He smiled, glancing at your hands. “Yes?”

 Pointedly looking away, you said, “Yes.”

 “I don’t wanna do anything you don’t like,” he said, and he winced. “I thought you already knew and that you were playing into the teasing thing, so I’m sorry for how I was acting towards you.”

 God. You guessed you could be honest with your stupid idiot beautiful man of a soulmate. “No, no. I’m a bit fucked up to where I think the casual bullying thing is attractive.”

 Again, Monoma winced. “But I didn’t have your permission.”

 You scoffed. “You hardly have permission when you try to roast the whole of 3-A—”

 “Yeah, but that doesn’t have sexual undertones,” said Monoma, taking your other hand and edging his chair closer to you.

 “I should hope not.”

 “It doesn’t.” Closing his eyes, he sighed and rubbed his thumbs over your fingers, his skin soft where you touched him. “I—I have another guideline. More like a rule.”

 “Let’s hear it.”

 Monoma cracked one eye open, gauging your expression before opening them both. “I’d like to keep the fact that we’re soulmates a secret. I’m not ashamed of you, by any means, but—but if everyone finds out that I’ve got a soulmate in 3-A after all the shit I’ve talked—” He grimaced, his shoulders falling slack. “There’ll be hell to pay. I know this is a lot to ask, but—”

 “Sure,” you said, giving his (soft) hands a squeeze, “but I’ve got a rule—guideline—or two myself. We’re being honest with each other?”

 “Of course.”

 “One: lend me your moisturiser.”

 Monoma laughed, the first time you’ve knowingly made your soulmate laugh. You can already tell you’re going to collect so much of his laughter like prized marbles in your pocket. You looked forward to it.

 “Two: you should keep bullying Class 3-A.”

 Here Monoma frowned, but before he could open his mouth, you continued.

 “Three: you start bullying me—in private, though.”

 He opened his mouth, a smile tugging on the corners, and he closed it again before leaning back in his seat. “All right, then, masochist. Tell me what you’re into.”

 ***

 In the first joint training session between 3-A and 3-B since the soulmate incident, you faked an injury.

 “Fucking hell,” you said, with more volume and vehemence than you would have for a normal wound, and you crumpled to the ground to grasp delicately at your calf (catching the attention of those sparring nearby). While you were shielding it from view, you ripped part of the fabric of your P.E. uniform pants leg.

 Shoda Nirengeki, who’d been sparring you, rushed over towards where you crouched and gestured over his shoulder to Aizawa-sensei, who had started walking before he’d been summoned.

 “Jesus Christ, Shoda,” you said, blinking a lot to pretend like you’re trying not to cry, “Good—good work.” You sniffed. “Holy shit. Your—your Twin Impact stuff is really coming along.”

 Shoda’s perpetually grim expression grew grimmer. “Sorry about that,” he was saying as Aizawa stopped behind you, “Do you think you need to go see Recovery Girl?”

 “Uh,” you said, glancing in what you hoped was a nervous way at Aizawa-sensei and back at Shoda, “Uh, no. No, I can keep going. Just let me—” Visibly bracing yourself, you pushed yourself up to stand, refusing Aizawa’s help, and you wobbled.

 “Change out of your P.E. uniform and go see Recovery Girl,” he said, “You’re excused for the rest of the period. Shoda, let’s find you another pair to spar with.” Aizawa paused. “Can you get to her office by yourself?”

 You nodded, like a student who didn’t want to show weakness. Yeah. “Sure. I’ll just—just be slow going, y’know? I’ll…I’ll be fine.”

 Aizawa dismissed you, and while you felt like a bit of an ass faking a limp along the gym wall, it was a perfect balance of oh-I-don’t-want-to-bring-attention-to-myself-BUT.

 Once you closed to gym doors behind you, you heaved a sigh. Hopefully, that was enough for that idiot to notice. You walked towards the girls’ locker room.

 Where’s your locker, your locker—yeah, around the bend towards the back, near the showers, behind the weird island of lockers in the middle. Yours was the last one for 3-A before 3-B’s lockers started, and even then, unclaimed lockers stretched between classes—probably for privacy between shower stalls.

 When the door swung open with a slow squeak, you had to bite back a smile as you took your school blazer off its hanger.

 “Look who thinks she can ditch the only class we’ve had together in weeks,” Monoma said from the doorframe, judging by the sound, “but she’s not as slick as she thinks.”

 His sluggish footsteps echoed on the locker room tile, and you changed your mind: you put your blazer back in your locker to skip a step, instead unbuttoning the first button on your P.E. top, starting at the collar.

 “You were just begging for any shred of my attention.” Sounds like he’s rounded the island. You kept your back to him. “Well, you’ve got it. And you like it more than you care to admit.”

 Oh, good start. “What are you doing in the girls’ locker room, Monoma?” you asked flatly, hiding the fact that you were unbuttoning your shirt by hunching into your locker to tug at your duffel bag zipper. “You’re not supposed to be in here. You can’t cut class without anyone noticing.”

 “No more than anyone will notice you’ve miraculously been healed without going to Recovery Girl.” Judging by his shadow (flickering because of the spinning fan blades between the fluorescent lights), he placed a knee on the wooden bench behind you, and he stretched forward so that his breath brushed against the back of your neck. “But you can’t escape me.” He blew cool air into your ear, and at your shiver, he hummed. “And I believe I told you to call me Neito.”

 You were pleasantly surprised by how good he was at this—but you supposed you shouldn’t be, since he’s already told you about the improv class he took over the summer. Theatre kids will be freaks and be good at it on occasion.

 You tried to turn to face him, but Monoma seized the back of your head and pressed your cheek into the locker vents, not very hard but firmly enough to leave an imprint on your skin. “No, you don’t get to look at me unless I say you can. Got that?”

 “Let go of me; get fucked, Mo—”

 “I said—” He shoved you against the next closed locker with his other hand splayed widely across the small of your back, and the cool of the metal pricked goosebumps where it touched your bare skin. “—Got that? Can’t you hear me, babe? Or are you just that thoughtless?”

 Clearing your throat, you swallowed thickly. “I can hear you just fine.”

 “Oh?” Monoma clicked his tongue (a habit of his you’ve previously thought was rather vexing, but it’s since grown to be a perfect mark of condescension). “I can hear you just fine what?”

 You clenched your teeth. “I can hear you just fine, dipshit.”

 “You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Monoma gripped the hair at the base of your neck and yanked, and he hissed into your ear, his face barely out of your periphery. “You fucking get off on pissing me off, but it’s not gonna pay off in the long run. It’s not gonna be long until I have you in your rightful place: in my bed or under my fucking boot. And you’ll want it; you’ll want what I give you, and I want you writhing underneath me, so teary-eyed and pitiful and overstimulated that you’ll finally puncture your ego enough to beg me to stop, and I won’t.”

 “As if I’d ever beg you for anything,” you said, revelling in the way he used his harsh grip on your hair to guide your face away from the vents to prevent you from getting cut, “You’ve never had anything I’ve ever wanted.”

 “Yeah, well—” Monoma cut himself off, scoffing onto the back of your neck. “Good Lord. If that’s the truth, then you’ve got another thing comin’ to you—I’ve wanted you since before all the soulmate stuff, and now that goddamn fate has put a permanent mark in my shape over your heart, no one’s gonna take you away from me.”

 You jolted in place, even though his hands roamed down to pin you by your hips. “Neito, is that—?”

 “You’re goddamn right it is. You’ve—you’ve fucking distracted me when I’ve had to work harder than anyone else in this fucking school, studying not only my quirk but every quirk around me—and in you’d saunter. What the hell were you playing at? Seems like you don’t even try,” he said with a grunt, and his thumbs began to dig into the small of your back from his clutch on your hips—good pain, a delicate feeling that had your vision blurring for a second—and Monoma used his shoulder to keep you pressed against the locker, finally pressing his chest against your back (still sweaty from sparring, but his body heat was a comforting contrast to the increasingly lukewarm metal against your stomach).

 Tilting his head, he rested his cheek near your uniform collar so that he spoke against your neck. “All right, sweetheart? So, don’t push your soulmate away. Even now, I’m being so patient with you, and I could be even more, offer to wait for you to give yourself to me so that I can destroy you in every way you crave. Invite you to explore together how long it takes you to break. But y’know?” His lips grazed your neck with every word. “I’d rather make you regret keeping what’s mine from me for such a long time.”

 Wait, you’d been getting so into it you’d forgotten to pretend to struggle. So, you squirmed in his grasp and tried to kick him from behind. “Only in your pathetic little wet dreams are you and me—”

 “Hey,” Monoma said, lifting both the arrogant voice and his chin from your shoulder, “You’re not actually hurt, are you? Do you need to go to Recov—”

 “No! No, you’re doing great,” you said, and you finally got to look him in the eye, nodding encouragingly, “I’m fine; I faked an injury for this. This is good. You’re really good.”

 With a softness sweeping over his face, Monoma smiled. “Thanks; I wrote some of these lines this morning.”

 Fucking nerd.

 He stretched to give you a quick kiss on the cheek. “So, you won’t mind if I do this?” With the smug voice returning (you snapped back towards the inside of your locker), he rammed his thigh between your legs, the pressure initially on your ass before he jerked you back by the hips so that it was all against your clit—he pushed down on the swell of your ass to keep you still.

 “Regardless of your meagre little excuse to get my attention, I think you are sick, but it’s not something that can be cured, can it?” Monoma brought his other arm around to wrap around you, his palm flat against your bare collarbone (he thought you wouldn’t notice his quiet gasp when he realised your shirt was unbuttoned, but he’s not subtle), so he’s keeping your back arched as he pressed down on your ass. “You’re a sick little pervert—you stay up late fucking yourself while thinking of me, don’t you? Thinking of my hands on you just like this? That’s why—”

 “Wrong—”

 “Oh, yeah? But you’re turned on by this now, so I know you’re fucking soaked—”

 “Wrong again, asshole—”

 Monoma laughed loudly enough for it to reverberate throughout the locker room, and you made an effort to elbow him, which he evaded. “Is that so? You’re not wet? Open your legs, then.”

 His hand trailed from your collarbone down to just above your bra, stopping short of touching your boob in a way that matters, and you jerked away too hard and struck your shoulder against the locker. “Don’t you fucking dare—”

 When he finally moved his hand from your hip around to graze your bare stomach with his fingertips, Monoma fucking shuddered. He briefly buried his face in your scrunched-up collar before lifting it to speak. “Say you hate me all you want.” He thrust his thigh upwards, lifting you enough for your toes to graze the floor (has—has Monoma fucking Neito always been strong enough to manhandle you?). “But you can’t deny the way I make you clench,” he said, and with his hand flat against your pelvis, he forced you to grind on his thigh all the way back until your ass met his—his fucking erection—

 The locker room door slammed open with the handle clattering, and Monoma had clamped his hand over your mouth and yanked you into a shower stall before Asui and Hagakure could start their noisily mournful search for a piece of Hagakure’s equipment that they left behind.

 Monoma clutched you to his heaving chest against the mildewed shower wall, leaning on it so that you wouldn’t have to, the hand on your hip keeping you close and the one over your mouth shaking—as it should be, you thought, since he’s got his soulmate’s ass against his cock.

 The girls talked while they riffled through their lockers, each door squeaking with the movement. Once your breathing quieted on its own, Monoma cautiously lifted his hand from your mouth, and he took you by the chin to look at him, raising his eyebrows to ask if you’re okay.

 His shoulders slackened from the tension once you nodded, and he closed his eyes to kiss the side of your head. Keeping his mouth near, he stared over your shoulder and reached both his arms around to start buttoning up your shirt.

 ***

 Another day, at your scheduled meeting at a vending machine during fourth period, the two of you agreed that while the threat of being caught is hot, neither of you actually want to found in that sort of position. You both said you’d be more careful, but you’d both said it in a bit of a joking way—playing the bully and victim felt better fast and loose, you’d said, even though in retrospect, it took more than a little planning.

 “The illusion of spontaneity, then,” Monoma said, attempting to roll his can of peach soda down his upper arm to pop it in the air with his elbow—you caught it from hitting the ground.

 “Still,” you said, deliberately placing the soda back in his hands rather than risk his dropping it again, “I worry about how much of your time you spend planning for this stuff. All I’m doing is reacting, while you basically have to have a script.”

 Monoma shot you a toothy smile while he plugged a couple of 50-yen coins into the vending machine for you. “More like an outline. It’s not too bad.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and leant against the machine while you punched in your selection, and over the whirr, he said, “Makes me get better by trying over and over again. And I’ll keep doing it over and over again, so long as it makes you happy.”

 “Oh, it does,” you said, bending down at the kerchunk to reach into the flap, “It really does.” You stood back up and snapped your fingers. “Oh, yeah, I finished your stupid-ass Franco-Belgian comics, but they’re in my dorm; I’ll get them back to you after dinner.”

 Monoma’s soda hissed when he opened it. “And are they as stupid and ass as you thought?” he asked with an easy grin.

 “No, considering I figured all of them were going to be like The Adventures of TinTin. Not the best starting point, Neito.”

 He shrugged. “It’s the one with the most international fame.”

 “I’ve been meaning to read Persepolis for a while now; I didn’t know it fit into that genre. I liked that a lot. Chlorophylle is charming, but I’m not sure I get all of the dated satire. Yoko Tsuno is fun; that, uh—that Rahan one isn’t as good as you think it is.”

 “What are you talking about? It’s hilarious. You get to see the process of discovery.” He took a swig of his peach soda too quickly and choked a little, like an idiot.

 “Thirteen was interesting,” you said, unscrewing the cap for your strawberry soda and paused so that it wouldn’t bubble over, “Do you have the other volumes?”

 Monoma wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Baby, I’ve got them in the original French, if you like.”

 “I do not like. You’re a freak,” you said, smiling down at your soda bottle, “I barely speak this language, and you’re stupidly talented enough to read—”

 When Awase rounded the corner and walked down the hallway towards the two of you, Monoma visibly floundered for a split second before launching into his (clown) routine.

 “Every single day proves me more and more right that no one in Class 3-A has any taste,” he said too loudly, gesturing wildly at you and spilling his own soda in the process, “I mean, come, now. Strawberry? It’s not even a berry. It’s a pseudocarp.”

 Get the man a clown nose; now you’re having an argument over food.

 “Your mom’s a pseudocarp,” you said as Awase passed by, hesitated, and turned back.

 “Is this idiot bothering you?” asked Awase, stepping slightly between you and Monoma.

 “Always,” you said, tossing your hair the best you could and spinning on your heel to go to class.

 ***

 You put more strategy into organising a girls’ pool volleyball game than you did for most of your practical hero assignments. Once the sun had gone down, the girls of the hero course would have a no-boys-allowed volleyball game in the school swimming pool as a reprieve from the stress of schoolwork and internships, even getting permission from Aizawa, Vlad King, and Nezu to ensure it’d be okay. Conveniently, a certain mouthy bitch would find out about the competition between 3-A and 3-B, and he’d sneak into the pool area to support his class to defeat 3-A. And oh, no, he’s the only boy at this girls’ event, and so his punishment would be to pack up all of the volleyball equipment with you at the end of the night, therefore ensuring a carefully crafted “public” moment of a bully and his victim he’s secretly in love with in a situation that has the illusion of possibly being interrupted but in actuality is quite private, since everyone has worn themselves out from the game and is eager to get the fuck back to the dorms.

 Unfortunately.

 By the time you’ve finished tying the net across the water, several boys from both classes have trickled into the pool area. None of them arrived together, each of them clearly having the same idea of being the only boy surrounded by girls in swimsuits, and now they were bitterly glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Hell, Kirishima was even here with Mina’s support, since she convinced him to do the heavy lifting—which they showed up too late to do, so you’ve already done it.

 Now you regretted telling Shinsou to stay away even after his offer to help set up, because you’d like some sanity amidst, like, Mineta and Kaminari not even trying to be discreet.

 When Monoma walked in with his fruity little towel over his arm, he gasped way more dramatically than the situation called for, but at least he didn’t say anything to further embarrass himself. He pouted all the way to his pool chair (good boy; he’d recognised your towel and bag to set up next to your chair in the far corner), where, even from the table at which you were arranging carrot sticks and sour candy (a balanced diet), you scouted out his battered copy of The Return of the King and the next volume of Thirteen when he plopped them at the foot of his chair.

 You got Kendo to shout out the rules for the invading group: “First off, our snacks are off limits. Second, you don’t play our volleyball game, and if you say anything about it, it had better be only positive encouragement. Get in the pool, sure, but stay away from us.” That was a nice touch of hers, since the pseudo-volleyball court took up most of the pool; the guys would have to be scrunched up together near the far edges.

 During the volleyball game, outside of your vain attempt to channel Oikawa Tooru, you did a quick headcount: you’ve accidentally involved around 25 people in your plans to make out with Monoma later. It struck you that with all of the people out here, it might genuinely be less of a risk to just kiss him in the common area of one of the dorms at this point.

 “Oof, ouch, my bones,” you said to Mina, “My arms are starting to ache. Put me out, coach. I’m gonna go sit for a few minutes.”

 Mina sent a playful splash your way. “That’s fine! Try to enjoy your break the best you can—though you might wanna move your stuff! It looks like Monoma’s camping out next to you.”

 You could make her laugh harder if you let her know he’s your soulmate. “I was there first. I’ll make him want to leave.”

 She waved you off, and you climbed out of the pool, water sloshing down your body to the concrete as you approached your pool chair.

 Monoma—what a cute moron—had adjusted his chair so that he could lounge back while he read, and he was wearing sunglasses despite the sun having gone down long ago. As you wrapped your towel around yourself, he shut his book and rested it on his raised knee.

 “You gonna get me some sour gummies?”

 “Get them yourself,” you said, squeezing water out of your hair, “I’m exhausted.”

 His lower lip jutted out. “Kendo said boys have to starve themselves.”

 You laughed through your nose. “If the other guys hadn’t had the same idea to show up, you could have probably weaselled away the whole bag by now.”

 “With the other guys here—” Monoma made a noise as if to spit in their direction. “—I don’t like the way Kaminari looks at you.”

 You actually laughed this time. “Kaminari looks at everyone that way.”

 “Yes, but,” he said, scratching his cheek, “you’re the only one that matters.”

 You narrowed your eyes. How sweet. “You can’t mean that it doesn’t matter if he pervs on someone, so long as it’s not me—”

 “God, fuck—you know what I mean,” he said with a loose wave, “I was trying to be romantic and gallant, but if you’d rather talk potentially problematic subtext that I didn’t even mean—”

 “I don’t; I’m so fucking tired.” You brought your knees to your chest, your toes dangling off the edge of your seat. You brought your towel over your head so that it was more like a hood you could hide under. “There are way too many people.”

 Setting his book aside, Monoma sat fully upright and crossed his legs. “You need to get out of here?”

 “I can’t,” you said, groaning, “I’m in charge. It would be mean of me to slack off and make someone else clean everything up.”

 He shot a look towards the pool and back at you. “Why don’t you take a nap until it’s over, then? Here, take my towel. Use it as a blanket—” He tossed it to you. “—and I’ll make the excuses. Say you badgered me for it and that I’m not leaving without all my stuff. And then I can help you pack it all up once everyone’s leaving.”

 Unfolding his towel in your lap, you blinked blearily at him. “You won’t mind that we won’t get to…?”

 “Nah. I’ll be fine. Another time.”

 “Okay,” you said, curling up on your side away from the crowd and tucking both towels around yourself, “Thank you.”

 You heard him hum as he flicked a page of his book.

 When Monoma shook you awake, you rubbed sleep out of your eyes to reveal a silent, empty pool, the volleyball net already rolled up beside the water and the snack area already ferreted away.

 You covered your yawn but spoke through it. “What—who cleaned—”

 “Kirishima helped me take down the net, and he and Mina took care of the food—except for a bag of sour gummies I have successfully commandeered,” he said, “But you have the key to the room where the net goes, so they’ve all left once everything else was done. And lucky you—you missed when Ashido took the video to record the event on the third years’ twitter account, so you didn’t have to be humiliated for posterity.”

 Well, it appeared they volunteered to help and being caught on camera wasn’t always fun (especially with Mina’s unreliable camerawork), so you elected not to feel guilty. “You didn’t wake me up sooner?”

 Monoma raised a brow. “If you’re passed out on a poor chair during a fucking loud get-together, you need the sleep.”

 “Fair enough,” you said, sitting up and reaching for your bag.

 “Oh?” Monoma was saying as you wadded up both towels and shoved them inside. “You don’t plan on getting wet again?”

 “Not when I’m already dry—oh. I see.” Stifling another yawn, you pushed on your knees to stand. “Sure. Not as intense as we planned, please, since I may collapse any second. But I guess I could get caught in the pool after hours by my school bully; I don’t know.”

 Monoma yanked you back down to kiss you on the cheek before releasing your arm. “Brilliant. Go get in the pool.”

 It’s probably be hotter if there’s a layer of he-can-touch-the-bottom-of-the-pool-but-you-can’t, so you climbed in towards the deep end and swam towards the middle. From your spot where your clung to the edge, you cheered when he took off his shirt, and he still rolled his eyes and shook his head.

 “Hot boy! There’s a hot boy on the loose,” you said as he got closer and sat down on the ledge next to you, dipping his feet in the water, “Hot boy!”

 “You’re insane,” he said through a soft smile, and he tried to ruffle your hair, but you dodged it by ducking underneath the water

 “But that’s part of my charm,” you said once you’d surfaced.

 It was a good thing you were already in the pool, since your throat was already going dry at the sight of his stupid lean but toned chest, certain lines in muscle defined but not all of them (he’d told you he deliberately didn’t want to get super ripped like Bakugou or Kirishima, because a lot of his strategy in battle relies on agility and flexibility—and if he’s got less bulk to throw around, then it’s easier for him to recover when an opponent’s caught him off guard—something about the same thing male gymnasts did, from his perspective). Still, that just meant that he was a different kind of physically fit, and the category you’d decided he fit into was pretty.

 “You ready?”

 His voice broke your attention away from the cute little rolls on his stomach when he hunched over. “Yes.” You kicked off the side of the pool underwater, propelling yourself more towards the centre.

 Treading water, you tilted your head up towards the night sky and listened for movement in the water, but all you could hear was the tinny buzz of the overhead lights, occasionally interrupted in their drone when bugs flew into them.

 Two fingers grazed your spine before you knew it. “Wha—Neito,” you said, spinning around in the water and frantically searching for an escape route before he could crowd you, “What are you doing out this late?”

 “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, his voice taking on that icy, patronising tone, “It could be trouble if someone knew you were out after curfew, sweetheart, and I know you’re depending on Aizawa’s recommendation to get into that agency soon. So, let’s not make a scene while we’re here. We wouldn’t want anyone else to find you. You’re lucky it’s only me, who won’t share his playthings.” Monoma kept his face close to the water and swam to your side, getting behind you before you could even register movement.

 “You don’t—you don’t have to do this,” you said in what was hopefully a choked-up sounding way, your breath hitching as his hands drifted down your sides to grip your hips from behind, “We could just—we could both just walk away! Say we didn’t see—”

 “No.” He tapped his fingers on your hipbones while his thumbs dug into the small of your back again. “Why would I sacrifice a chance to—stop squirming—to discipline you for how you behaved—”

 Once you kicked out of his grasp and began to swim towards the shallow end, you figured he’d manhandle you back into his arms, but Monoma remained in his place and called your name with enough wrath to froth over.

 He spoke with a controlled, quiet fury. “Where do you think you’re going?”

 You hesitated just before the pool steps.

 “Turn around.”

 Looking over your shoulder, you met his scowl before turning fully.

 “Either you come back here on your own, or I make you.”

 Ohhohoho, hot. You took more time than you normally would have in returning to him, and you took his hand when he extended it to you, your own shaking.

 “So, she can be good when she wants to,” Monoma said under his breath, “Not that she’s been good at all today.” Dragging you closer to him, he gripped the back of your neck to make you look into his eyes. “You’re a fucking tease, you know that?”

 You sniffed and glanced away for effect. “I—I don’t know what—”

 “I—I don’t know,” he mocked, and he moved his hand to squeeze your cheeks, your chin in his palm, “Do you know how much those other guys were looking at you? No? Answer the fucking question, sweetheart.”

 While you struggled to shake your head, Monoma squeezed again, his thumb and middle finger forcing space between your upper and lower teeth.

 “Care to explain why you chose to wear such a tiny little swimsuit—”

 (It’s really not. It’s a two-piece that completely covers you, including your stomach, and even has a little skirt, but you can guess where he’s going with this.)

 “—that could be tragically lost at any time?” And yes, he’s going for the first tie at the back of your neck, and he tugged it loose, flipping the strands to the front so that the fabric fell enough for the top of your boobs to show. “You’d think that you want any sadistic voyeur imagining how you’d look out of your swimsuit to touch you—”

 “But—”

 “Hold still for me.” He reached for the second tie. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, hm? Because,” Monoma said, yanking your top off and chucking it off to the side, where it struck the concrete with a wet plop, “we can’t have…have you…”

 You caught a visible moment of genuine affection sweep across his face as you squished your boobs against his chest, hugging him tightly while checking the surroundings again in case someone else saw your nipples—even him, considering this is going to be his first time seeing them bare.

 He guided your chin up to face him, his lips so close you could feel their heat. “Well, aren’t you suddenly such a good girl?”

 And that got heat spreading across your face and ears; you made feeble efforts to jerk your chin away, but he held it steady.

 “You’re taking it so easily, even clinging to me. Bit suspicious, yeah?”

 “No,” you said, finally ducking your head, “I don’t want anyone else to see me, and I’m nervous, anyway.”

 As he guided you backwards towards a corner of the pool, his eyes lit the fuck up. “Anyone else? Is my prideful little baby admitting that it’s okay if she gets manhandled and shoved around and spat at, so long as it’s my hands doing it? You don’t want to be passed around like a common whore?”

 As he situated the two of you in the corner, he took a glance towards the doorway and adjusted himself so that he’d block the view of whoever may walk in. Monoma waited until you’d mumbled out no as an answer.

 “It’s only me? How embarrassing.” His grin stretched widely across his face, his teeth cutting into his lower lip. “You only have to focus on me, babe, because if anyone tried to take you from me, he’d see that mark, my name already branding you until the end of time. Hey,” he said, relaxing his grip on you a bit, “let me see?”

 You dropped your arms, backing into the corner as far as you could go, and his eyes fell half-lidded and down to your boobs.

 The fucker sighed dreamily.

 When he raised a tentative hand to rub his thumb over the soulmark, he fucking sighed again.

 Since your nipples had the time to harden due to the cool of the night, instead of, like, his touch, you asked, out of character, “Are you gonna do anything about it, screwboy?”

 “You don’t know what you do to me,” said Monoma, shaking his head, and he got back into it. “But they won’t even have to see the soulmark to know you’re mine; when I’m through with you, you’ll be so marked up with hickies and bruises—maybe a slap mark or two—that they’ll know you’re not theirs to touch.” He cupped one of your boobs and gently pinched the nipple of the other, rolling it between his fingers, and he took a moment to kiss you—open-mouthed and insistent, a soft sort of greediness as he took your lower lip into his mouth, and he couldn’t hold back his fully fledged ­­moan when you raised your leg to keep his hips pressed to yours to grind against him underwater.

 “I dare you to tell me to stop.” Monoma kissed down your throat, being wet on purpose, and he got all the way down to just above your nipple before he stared up at you with that idiotic grin. “Ooh, she can’t, can she?” He let out a laugh, the heat suffusing over your boob. “It’s okay, baby. I know you can’t help it.”

 Monoma took your nipple into his mouth and sucked, and you scrunched your eyes shut, squirming away on impulse as you pushed on his head—but you made yourself still, and you opened your eyes.

 “That’s right, pretty—just look at me.” He made a show of licking all around your nipple before flicking it with the tip of his tongue. “You give me that much, and I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll give you everything.”

 ***

 You were walking back to the dorms from a local corner shop, and Monoma was trying to have phone sex with you.

 You weren’t feeling particularly sexy, bundled up in a heavy winter coat and his houndstooth scarf with your nose running from the cold, but he didn’t need to know that. He wouldn’t, so long as he didn’t hear the rustling of the shop bags.

 “Wish you’d video call,” he said, panting, “You could see me, then—see me stroke myself to your voice.”

 “When you start the call with a demand to ‘put the girls on,’ you lose all rights and privileges.” You had to be vaguer and quieter now that you were on campus. “Tell me more about what’s happening on your side. You close?”

 “God, yes, I miss you. I need you. I swear you could slap my face right now, and I’d come all over my chest.”

 You started up the path to the dorms, quietly knocking on the mailboxes for luck. “Not on me? You’re so considerate.”

 “Tell me—tell me what you’d do to me, if—ah, fuck—if you were here.”

 “I don’t think you deserve that, Neito,” you said, trotting up the steps to 3-B’s dorm and peeking in the windows to gauge crowd control, “Well, I’ll allow you this: I wouldn’t do or say a damn thing. I’d stare you down while you mindlessly babble about what you want me to do until you get frustrated enough to take it into your own hands.” Doesn’t look like anyone’s hanging out in the commons, so you opened the front door.

 “You’d hah, have the nerve to treat me like that? You really thi—think I’d let you? Oh, sweet girl, you precious little thing, it’s a miracle you’re walkin’ around with that sort of confidence, when I co—could rip you apart at any moment.” He’s getting careless, letting the wet schlick grow louder over the phone. Must be embarrassing to share a wall with him. “I don’t always play this nicely.”

 Kendo waved to you from the kitchen, but you just smiled and pressed a finger over your lips, nodding towards your phone. She gestured towards her cooking, holding out a spoonful of soup, since your hands were full.

 You let her guide it to your mouth, and you took the opportunity to moan once you tasted it. You heard him inhale sharply over the phone.

 You gave Kendo a thumbs-up, and she smiled, leaving you to choose whether to take the lift or the stairs. With the stairs, you risk the sound of your footsteps echoing, but with the lift, you risk the ding when the doors open.

 “Fuck, fuck, sweetheart,” Monoma was saying as you shifted all your bags to one arm to start walking up the stairs, “You make another sound, and you won’t be able to sit down for days when I see you again. I’m gon—gonna fuck you the way you need, and you, you need to feel my cock spread you open, hm? It’ll be so good; you’re so good to me.”

 He’s on the third floor, right? Room…what, 302? You supposed you could just follow the sounds of Some Guy Jerkin’ Off, but that leaves a lot to be desired.

 “I’m—I know I’d fit you so well,” Monoma said with a grunt, the bed creaking in the background, “Someday, I’m gonna—”

 “Yeah, some day you’ll get that done, Neito,” you said, scanning the room numbers on the doors, “Until then, you’re just some bitch-ass virgin.”

 And that’s what pushed him over the edge. Grinning, you held the phone away from your ear, listening in the hallway for the same whiny, throaty moans (boys should moan all the time, you’ve decided. It’s just too darn pretty of a sound).

 You waited outside his room until he finished, and you pressed the phone to your ear again.

 “Baby, I love you; God, fuck, I’m so lucky to have you as my soulmate,” he was babbling mindlessly, just like you’d said he would, “You’re so, so good, and kind, and—”

 You knocked on his door.

 “Shit—” You heard fumbling both over the phone and through the door. “I’m so, so sorry, but I must’ve been too loud; someone’s at my door. I’ve got to go. God, where are my pants—”

 Hanging up first, you bounced on the balls of your feet and listened to the clatter going on in his room, and eventually, he, wearing mismatched clothes, swung open the door.

 After a beat, Monoma frowned and crossed his arms. “I suppose you think you’re awfully clever.”

 “I know I am,” you said, striding past him and setting your shopping bags on his desk, “and you were right: your scarf really does make it feel like you’re cosied up in a sleeping bag.” You took it off and laid it over the back of his desk chair. “Thanks.”

 Grimacing, Monoma was already back on his bed and opening his laptop. “Well, now that you’re here, you can’t leave until you tell me what you think of my next chapter.”

 “You finished it? That’s really fucking neat-o, Neito,” you said, adding the English word to piss him off. “Let me read.”

 While you read the word document on his laptop, Monoma riffled through the shopping bags (crinkling a lot, you might add) for the pack of Kororo white peach gummies, and then he curled around you on the bed to peel it open.

 “You’re weirdly quiet,” you said once you got towards the end, “Did I hurt your—you know I don’t really think virgin is an insult, right?”

 He gave a dismissive wave. “Not offended by something I am. You’ve got to realise I just had an orgasm, so I have good reason to be all languid.”

 You shut the laptop and set it on his bedside table. “Do you think—if our friends knew we were soulmates—if they knew we haven’t had sex yet, they’d be weirded out? I mean, at least in 3-A’s dorm, the school is actively providing condoms and other birth control, since the admin’s realised it’s inevitable people are gonna fuck now that they have a life partner.”

 “Well, our classmates don’t know we’re soulmates, and they won’t ever know, so I don’t see a problem.” Monoma held out his arms and made grabby hands, so you lay down for him to hold you. “And I personally am enjoying the delayed gratification of the chase.”

 “Me, too.” You ran your fingers through his hair (very soft from his bougie shampoo and conditioner), and he leaned into your touch. “The only person who saw me on the way up was Kendo.”

 “Oh, God, did she hear you talking to me?”

 “She did not hear me talking to you.”

 He narrowed his eyes. “I feel like you’re leaving out crucial information.”

 “Perhaps,” you said, “To the best of my knowledge, they’re buying my excuse that I like the view from 3-B’s rooftop better than mine, so I don’t think they suspect I’m seeing you.”

 “Good. Very good.”

 “If anything,” you said, lowering your hand to stroke his cheekbone, “they might think you’re leaving me alone in comparison to the rest of my classmates. You never even copy my quirk during training.”

 His eyelashes fluttered against his skin when he closed his eyes slowly. “Why would I? It’s yours. I’m not gonna take it from you.”

 “But you wouldn’t take it from me; I’d still have it—”

 “I respect you too much to try to use it. I don’t want to learn how to use it, because that would mean I wouldn’t need you by my side in a fight.” He pulled you closer, his body heat seeping through your clothes. “You don’t need me to share it with you. It’s yours.”

 At your silence, he rolled his eyes and clicked his stupid tongue. “I don’t really have a quirk that’s truly mine, and I think that extends to my lot in life. My power depends on those around me, so if I’m alone—well. I’m useless. Which is another fucked-up reason why I like the soulmate mark so much, since—” He sucked in through his teeth. “—since I’ve never had anything of my own.”

 You held your breath, and then you opened your mouth without a plan—

 Monoma laughed—another marble in your pocket. “And before you can say anything about how you can’t own anyone and how I shouldn’t talk to anyone like that, I was trying to be poetic.”

 “I wasn’t gonna say that, Neito,” you said, sitting up a bit so that you could cup his face with both hands, “Do you really think that little of yourself?”

 He flipped his hair out of his eyes for dramatic effect, unsuccessfully. “Isn’t it cool and fun and sexy of me to need therapy?”

 “Only if you actually go to it,” you said, “You don’t need to feel insecure, baby, because you’re everything I could want—even though your value doesn’t depend on my opinion of you. Let me backtrack. That wasn’t the best reason.” You lay facing the ceiling with your arms behind your head, shifting a bit so that he could get another peach gummy, and once he’d popped one in his mouth, he held another up to your lips, which you accepted.

 “You’re taking a concerning amount of time to think of my positive traits.”

 “It’s not that,” you said, chewing on one side of your mouth, “I’m trying to think of how to say it. I’m not as good with words as you are. Okay, listen. First off, you don’t have to do anything to be worthwhile. You’re worthwhile just existing. You’re good already. You don’t have to do anything more. You’re—fuck, I’m not good at this.” You cringed, scrunching your face up—but Monoma was quiet and didn’t interrupt. “I’m sure I’ll come up with something better later, but right now, I can’t think of anything that tells me how good of a man you are is that I wanna be around you more than anyone else. Hell, I’d rather be around you than be by myself, and I love spending time by myself. You—”

 You frantically glanced to see if he were handling this well, and the idiot was lying there with a peach gummy halfway out of his mouth, puckering his lips as if to offer it to you.

 You leaned forward to take it, but before you did, you said, “And I can’t get over how much Eri likes you, too, and that Aizawa-sensei trusts you to take care of her when he’s off campus. That kid is cautious around everybody, and she’s relaxed around you.” Feeling a bit foolish, you kissed him lightly in the process of taking the peach gummy from him.

 Monoma stared at you, blinking profusely, like he was going to cry, while you chewed and swallowed.

 “Are you okay?”

 “I think you do know what to say. You’re good. Thank you. I’ll work on things, I guess. I can try.” He stuck out his lower lip. “But I can’t betray my otherwise superior exterior towards 3-A—”

 “Oh, yeah? They’ll realise you’re a big ol’ softie if I tell them we’re soulmates.”

 “Hey,” Monoma said, frowning, and after a moment, he tilted his head, his hair splaying across his pillow. “I have a proposal—”

 “Again?”

 “The most romantic one I can fathom,” he said, taking your hands and fiddling with your fingers, “Do you wanna watch Lord of the Rings? Extended edition?”

 ***

 Out in the courtyard, the leaves were changing with the seasons.

 “Hey,” said Jirou, scrolling through her phone, “It looks like Tainted Love might get parole.”

 Yaoyorozu lifted her head from Jirou’s shoulder. “So soon?”

 “She already got moved to a lower-security prison two months ago,” said Uraraka, reaching across the picnic blanket to the plate of matcha mochi, “So they’ve already decided that she’s not much of a threat.”

 “You’re joking,” came Shinsou’s voice from your left, dropping his backpack next to you on the blanket, with Todoroki, Kaminari, and Monoma in tow. “After what she did to us? Some of us are fucking dying because of the eroding lifespan side effect.” Shinsou sat cross-legged next to you and propped up his backpack for you to lean on for back support, and the other guys integrated themselves with the rest of the picnicking group—stragglers from 3-A and 3-B after school ended for the day, a sort of tea-party-picnic mostly arranged by Yaoyorozu before exams next week.

 Daring to shoot you an apologetic look, Monoma sat at a distance from you, slightly subdued as he crouched next to Kendo and Shoda.

 “Yeah, my chest hurts at odd intervals,” said Kaminari, holding a hand over his heart, “I think I need to find my soulmate and get laid immediately.”

 “Soulmates aren’t all about sex,” said Shinsou with a scowl.

 Kaminari shrugged. “They could be.”

 “But Tainted Love is getting parole?” You held your teacup between your palms, letting the heat of your raspberry tea keep them warm. “What’s the source?”

 “Uh, looks like Midnight-sensei and Present Mic-sensei were in a press conference this morning about the group that she’s a part of,” said Jirou, “Midnight-sensei’s been working with the authorities on getting information out of Tainted Love, since their quirks are both reliant on inhalants—and Tainted Love seems to like her.”

 “I need to talk to Tainted Love,” said Kaminari between bites of some sort of biscuit that Bakugou had apparently baked last night, “I wanna ask if there’s any way that she could, like, speed up the soulmate identification process. I can’t find mine for the life of me.”

 Jirou shared a look with Yaoyorozu, and she said, “That’s because no one would claim you, even if you had a few more brain cells.”

 “You misunderstand me, Jirou! Being a himbo is the basis of my appeal!” Kaminari slapped the back of his hand to his forehead and screwed up his face. “If I got any smarter, then no one would want me for me, because I wouldn’t be true to myself. Big sigh,” he said, actually saying the words, “Maybe those of us who are unclaimed should just hook up and rotate around until we feel right.” Kaminari’s voice carried across the picnic area (his dramatics made Kendo snort).

 Shinsou flicked Kaminari’s forehead. “When you stop being a pig, maybe someone’ll want you. To be loved, you first have to be lovable.”

 “You know, I don’t think that’s quite true.”

 Everyone’s heads turned towards Monoma, looking oddly constipated and halfway into a scone, which was crumbling to dust in his tense grip. “I don’t think you have to do anything to be loved. I think—” He seemed to notice that he was destroying his scone, and he set it on his paper plate. “—I think that you’re worth loving just because you are.”

 Brow furrowed, Shinsou glanced between you and Monoma. “Dude,” he called towards him, “Are you okay?”

 “Sorry, Monoma. I love you, man, but you’re not my type,” said Kaminari, popping the collar on his blazer, “even though we’re both unclaimed so far. You know who else is unclaimed?” You watched in horror as Kaminari actually and literally rolled over from his spot on the picnic blanket closer to you. “Hi,” he said, staring up at you, “I believe you’re also dying due to heartache?”

 Shinsou tensed next to you—and you didn’t even look at Monoma; you knew he wouldn’t want you to give anything away.

 “Uh.” You glanced around for help from anyone, but everyone was also weirdly frozen and put out by this. “I mean, I am. That’s true, I guess, since I don’t have a soulmate. But—”

 “Would you like not to be?” Kaminari folded his arms behind his head to grin up at you.

 But a tight-fisted Monoma had already stood up and walked stiffly over to where you were on the blanket, and he knelt next to you, nudging Kaminari away with his knee. He started to unbuckle his belt.

 At the clink of his buckle and soft zip of his uniform pants, the stillness overtaking everyone shattered: essentially, a collective flinch passed over the onlookers, with more than a few choice swears coming from Jirou, and Kaminari scrambled away.

 “My dude, what the fuckingeth—”

 Monoma—you slapped your hand over your eyes, already embarrassed—pulled down his pants enough that everyone could see your name along his v-line. “She and I are soulmates,” said Monoma, looking calmly as he could at Kaminari, “Hope that clears things up.”

 His jaw slack, Kaminari glanced at the soulmark, at Monoma’s unwavering expression, and back at the soulmark. “You have your soulmark right on your cum gutters? You’re so lucky.”

 Yaoyorozu had to clutch her stomach she was laughing so hard; Shinsou pinched the bridge of his nose. Jirou could hardly talk for laughing, composing herself enough to stutter out, “You—you call them cum gutters?”

 “Like I would know that real term.”

 It was nice, since the shock and attention shifted to roasting Kaminari alive. But now Monoma was sitting next to you, staring nervously into the teacup you handed him, and when you gently bumped his shoulder, all he did was take a sip, his hand shaking so that the porcelain clattered when he returned the cup to the saucer.

 “That was very brave of you,” you said softly, “Thank you for doing it.”

 He hummed, still looking into his teacup.

 “I guess I should congratulate you,” said Shinsou, shifting his attention away from the Does-Kaminari-Even-Know-About-Anatomy-What-About-the-Clitoris conversation, “So, congratulations.”

 You squinted at him. “You don’t sound surprised.”

 “You were right about 3-B’s dormitory having a better view from the roof,” said Shinsou, jerking his head to the side, “but I never saw you there. I think you’ve shocked everyone else, though. Check out Midoriya over there.”

 He was frantically glancing between you and Monoma, steam almost visibly blasting out of his ears as he tried to process it.

 Monoma huffed, and he finally allowed himself the beginnings of a smug grin. “Well, of course it’d be surprising for such a power couple to come out of the soulmate incident. It’s too perfect.”

 And when Mina started filming the picnic to post on the third years’ twitter, he made a point of kissing you in front of everyone, as proof recorded until the end of time.

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz

#bnha #monoma neito #monoma x reader #monoma/reader #monoma imagine #monoma fic #mha #monoma headcanons #monoma fanfiction #monoma fanfic #monoma neito x reader #soulmates #soulmate #soulmate au #dash it all

[theinquisitxor]

Spoilery thoughts on Hell Bent:

Loved the opening prologue, spooky and fed right into the primordial fear of dark basements

Alex also says “fuck” like 6 times in that prologue, love it

Why does that guy need to give Alex 12k?? Also, impersonating Tom Brady is hilarious. Ah it's Eitan the bastard

Darlington is still so present in the story, through flashbacks and memories I love it

I’m sorry but the mental image of the reanimated corpse crab walking and scurrying around the floor was at both parts hilarious and terrifying

I like the little details about the rituals. A knot traps a demon better than a circle. Mix blood with salt. Bring an instrument

Glowstick cock. Did I really need to read they with my own two eyes Leigh Bardugo? Did I??

Diana Wynne Jones books are featured I’m :)

I thought Turner was an ass for most of book 1, and he’s still an ass, but I like him now. He’s just so unwilling with the magic it’s funny

(I lowkey ship Turner and Dawes)

Poor golden retriever baby Tripp

I’m enjoying the female friendship between Alex, Mercy, and Lauren even more in this book. In Book one they felt a lot like freshman year roommates. But in this one they feel like an established friend group

Linus Reiter give me Lestat vibes

hell heist Hell Heist Hell Heist

Leigh Bardugo back at it again with a heist

The Descent chapter was v cool. I loved seeing inside the other characters minds and what/who they killed

Of course getting Darlington back wouldn’t be that easy :(

Dawes is a witch!! does she know that about herself? I love Pamela Dawes so much

It was all a game! It was all a puzzle! Fuck!

I did not see the Anslem thing at all, jesus Leigh

Lmaoo I keep forgetting demon Darlington is naked in every scene. His ‘glowstick’ is just out there at all times

Darlington is so in love with Alex

Why no kiss, Leigh?! Why no kiss??!!

Very clever Alex, tricking Eitan and luring him into hell as the sacrifice, very clever

Poor Tripp, he’s babey

Good ending, not a cliffhanger but leaves things open for more.

Fantastic book, I forgive Leigh for taking 3 years to release this, it was worth the wait

#hell bent spoilers #hell bent leigh bardugo #hell bent #Alex stern #non-spoilers: it was fantastic #and just as good/if not better than the first

[purplepersnicketywrites]

HOO PROGRESS UPDATE on Blood of my Hand:

we’re at nearly 12k words, babey!

At the moment it’s just a series of mostly disjointed scenes so i don’t actually,, have any chapters ready yet.

BUT I’ve FINALLY figured out exactly where I’m taking this thing so I’m going through and like, drafting stuff left and right and it’s really fun but i think i burned out for today - this morning i was only at 9k sdfdsfsdg

BUT here have an extract!!

Bakugou moved. Bakugou moved fast, and suddenly Eijirou was on the ground again, the barbarian boy pinning him down. There was the cold, sharp feeling of a blade pressed against his throat. This did not strike Eijirou as particularly friendly behaviour, but maybe barbarians were just like that? Eijirou and Mina roughhoused all the time, so-

"I was told to bring back the head of a dragon."

Oh.

Well.

Fuck.

;P

#kiribaku #bakushima #kirishima #bakugou #fanfic talk #fic: blood of my hand #*lovingly engraves Slow Burn on this thing* #at least i'm hoping it will be #will i be able to control my impulsive hands.... nobody knows...