//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15: Justice in the End 
// Story: Monophobia 
// by Aquaman 
//------------------------------//

Fun fact: being mildly concussed makes you have really weird dreams. And I don’t mind “weird” in the movie way where everything has a deeper meaning and you snap awake afterwards with your head full of foreshadowing. I mean I was on a boat trying to play volleyball with a deflated football, and then for a while I was the boat, and then suddenly I was realizing I’d forgotten to do any homework for all of fifth grade, which I’d been re-enrolled in as an eighteen-year-old for some reason. Good luck figuring out what the metaphor is inside that.

On the other hand, I guess there’s something to the theory that dreams are your brain cleaning out all your scrambled thoughts, because when I blink my way out of my elementary school principal’s office, my head only twinges a bit instead of hurting like it did last night. The sunlight streaming through the window is still really bright, though. And my face is still sore.

And I’m not alone. 

Sweetie Belle is on her side facing the wall, hair strewn all over her pillow and streaming down her bare upper back, shoulder gently rising and falling with each soft unconscious breath. I can feel her body heat layered over my own, and it sends memories of last night flash-flooding through me, spawning butterflies in my gut and tingles through my fingers and toes and most other parts of me. 

That really happened. I can still almost feel it happening — feel every sensation pressed into my skin and pulsing inside my chest. It’s exhilarating, and terrifying, and… actually, kind of stuffy too. The heat’s kicked on in the dorm building, and Sweetie’s body is like a furnace next to mine. 

Slowly, carefully, I try to lift the comforter off of me and cool myself off a bit, but I’m not careful enough. Sweetie groans, and rolls over, and throws her wonderfully warm arm over my chest as her hair brushes against my neck and her head tucks up under my chin.

Never mind. This is great, actually. I’d like to be hot and crowded and uncomfortable like this forever, please.

“Morning,” I murmur down to her, wiggling a bit so I can wedge my arm under and around her. She politely wiggles with me, trying to help things along. Once my hand’s finally settled onto her shoulder, she lets out a satisfied sigh and presses herself closer to me. I can finally say this with first-hand knowledge: hearing that sound from her is just about better than sex.

“Mmm-ing,” she mumbles. 

“You sleep okay?” I ask her.

“Mm-hmm,” she hums into my chest.

And then we just lie together for a bit, two furnaces combined into an inferno in a stiflingly hot dorm room, until the urge growing in my chest evolves into a compulsion. I tilt my head, find her messy bangs with my lips, and kiss her once on the forehead. With another happy noise, she scooches up my body and kisses me back, lips warm and silk-soft against mine, nothing else between us but a bit of silvery fabric somewhere around my hip. 

On second thought, maybe this isn’t better than sex. I should double-check at some point. Hopefully some point really soon.

I shift onto my side and face her, sliding my free arm into the little dip between her ribs and hip. Behind her hair, her eyes dart towards one of my eyes in particular. 

“How do I look?” I ask.

“Like you got in a bar fight,” she replies, smirking.

I wink my bad eye a couple times, and cringe as it twinges again. “I think the bar won,” I grunt, and the way her smirk blossoms into a giggle makes the pain go away as if it was never there to begin with. Then her eyes fall shut, her lips touch mine again, and I can feel every inch of her — the heat pulsating out of her. A few more seconds of this, and “really soon” is gonna become “right the fuck now.”

But right at the line between what we were doing and what it feels like we both want, she pulls away again, settling into her pillow and brushing her fingers gently through the hair above my ear. It feels really nice — like I said, almost better. So I settle down too and let her keep doing it, hopefully encouraging her with a smile I couldn’t bend off my face even if I wanted to.

“Woody was right, wasn’t he?” she murmurs after a few moments.

She seems pensive now, looking right at me but also a little bit through me — back at a memory from last night. A hunch I had a few hours ago flutters back to the front of my mind again.

“He said something else to you,” I guess. “Last night. To get you to come back.”

Sweetie Belle nods. Her eyes flick down to my chest, and stay there as her hand slides down my side and comes to rest above my hip. Woody did say something else. She’s trying to decide whether she’s up for repeating it out loud.

“He told me to stop fucking things up for both of us,” she finally says. “Stop acting like I was a burden on you, and not… not the real reason for everything. Why you were rushing, being so brave… why you were so happy this week. And if I made you choose between me and the frat, you’d choose me, and I was being stupid if I thought you wouldn’t.”

That sounds like Woody, all right: heartfelt, earnest, and really not phrased as well as it could’ve been. “He’s not the best with words sometimes,” I admit.

“No,” Sweetie Belle chuckles. “But…”

“He was right,” I tell her, and I make sure she knows I mean it by sealing it with a kiss she happily accepts. “I would have. And it was you.”

And it was me for her too. I can see it in the way her eyes soften — feel it in how she spreads her fingers across my side and then squeezes with all of them at once. Another hunch I was right about: I absolutely could’ve kissed her two days ago, and we probably could’ve done all this two days earlier. At least I made up for it in the end.

“I was being stupid, though,” she says. “Yesterday, when you said you wanted to be friends, I thought…”

I wanted to be friends again, I told her yesterday — when I thought that was all she wanted from me was a convenient acquaintance. If she was being stupid, I don’t even want to think about what I was being. 

“I’m not the best with words sometimes either,” I say. She smiles, and sighs, and leans in closer.

“You’re better than you think,” she whispers, right before her lips land on mine again. Her grip on my hips is insistent, not squeezing anymore so much as pulling, and the moment my lips part enough to let her do it, she pokes her tongue between them, drawing me deeper and closer and almost over the edge before we even really begin.

This time, though, I’m the one who pulls away right before we go too far to turn back. Not I really want to turn back — actually, part of me is pissed that I did. But there’s something I need to say first, a question I’ve needed an answer to for days and probably years.

“Hey, um…” is what I say first. Just awesome with words, seriously. But Sweetie Belle doesn’t interrupt me. She lets me keep searching for the right way to phrase this. “I was wondering, uh… y’know, with everything that’s happened, if we could… if you’d be okay with, or interested, I guess, in…”

I sigh, and shift a bit in place, and see her eyes twinkling as she tries not to laugh. Fuck finding the right words. I’m just gonna say it.

“Do you wanna go out with me?” I ask her. “Like… formally?”

Her eyebrows twitch up, matching the corners of her mouth. “I don’t feel very formal right now,” she muses, brushing her fingernails across my chest.

“You know what I mean,” I say. “I just… I’d like it if this wasn’t a one-time thing.”

Her hand settles on my chin. She glances down under the covers, eyes sweeping along both our bodies. “This part of this?” she jokes.

I smile, but I’m not joking. “All of it,” I murmur, leaning into her hand, angling my head so my lips press into her palm. “All of you.”

She’s still smirking, but it looks more like a regular smile now — one she couldn’t bend off her face even if she wanted to. “Would it help if I said it out loud?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” I whisper back. “It would.”

She strokes her fingers along my cheek, then latches them around my neck. “Then yes,” she says, kissing me softly, sweetly, longingly between sentences. “I’d like that a lot.”

I kiss her back — gently at first, then deeper, harder, until she’s on her back again and I’m propped up overtop of her with her comforter sliding off my back into a pile under one of my hands. I lift the other hand up so I can run my fingers through her hair, then trail them down her neck, then across her collarbone and up the slope of her chest so I can wrap them around her – 

Someone’s phone buzzes on the bedside table. I glance over and see that it’s mine — and that the notification on the screen is from a number I recognize.

“Who is it?” Sweetie Belle asks – face and neck flushed, nails digging into impatiently my back. All I can see right now is the first few words of the message preview: Hey Button, this is Case…

“It’s Case,” I tell her. “Probably some frat stuff.”

Her eyes flick over towards her dorm room’s door, then settle back on me — sparkling, sultry, searingly hot. “You can go if you have somewhere else to be,” she says, implication dripping from every languid word.

I claw my fingers, squeeze, and murmur back, “I absolutely fucking don’t.” She grins up at me and tugs me down onto her.

After that, we don’t talk much. We’ve said everything we need to — and actions speak louder than words anyway.


===


Sometime around noon-ish, we both realize we’re starving, and also that we’re running low on some fairly crucial supplies that the Student Health Center next to the dining hall likely has more of. We don’t leave right away, though — Sweetie Belle wants to freshen up first, I agree that I could use a shower too, and then the parting kiss I coax out of her in her doorway turns pretty quickly into us running out of supplies entirely. I don’t think she minded too much, though. And technically, she was the one who dragged me back into her room. 

Eventually, though, I make it upstairs to my room, where the bug-eyed look on Bit’s face gives me my first clue about how I really look right now. My second clue is what I see in the hall bathroom’s mirror on my way into a shower stall: a plum-sized, grape-colored bruise around my left eye, paired with rumpled hair and a punch-drunk glow in my cheeks. I do look like I got in a bar fight — and then had sex with half the bar afterwards. Which I guess is sort of what actually happened. Wouldn’t be as good of a story, though.

Sweetie Belle’s still not ready by the time I’m cleaned up, but the morning sun’s bright and warm enough that I decide to wait for her outside. As I push through the dorm’s front doors, the chill of the wintery air clears my mind enough that I remember the text I got earlier from Case. Once I find a bench in the courtyard to sit on, I pull it the message up on my phone and start reading:

Hey Button, this is Case. First and foremost, I want to apologize to you on behalf of the entire chapter for what happened last night. What Alkaline did to both Sweetie and you is completely unacceptable and completely against what we stand for as an organization, and based on that and on previous offenses he’s already been warned about, the other executive officers and I have decided to begin the process of expelling Alkaline from the fraternity. It won’t happen overnight since there are some procedural hoops to jump through, but for all effective purposes, yesterday was his last day as a KNZ brother. If either of you want to take any further action beyond that, we’ll support you as much as we’re able to as well.

I scan the first paragraph twice without figuring out either time how to feel about it. I would’ve thought I’d feel triumphant, and it sounds like Alkaline really did have this coming, but it also doesn’t feel like something worth celebrating. It just sucks that it came to this, that Al let his own bullshit ruin something that — for better or worse — he seemed to really care about.

I swipe up with my thumb and keep reading:

On a personal note, I wanted to tell you that I’ve really enjoyed having you as a rush this semester, and you’ve got a really bright future ahead of you no matter what happens with the bidding vote later this morning. The courage and character you’ve shown this week should be more than enough for a bid under normal circumstances, but trust me when I say that there are a LOT of politics playing into this process, and that’s not something you could have done or should have had to do anything to change. Regardless of today’s outcome, you’re welcome at KNZ events any time while I’m president.

Man, he really is a PoliSci major. And that really was a lot of big political words he just used to avoid saying one thing in particular, which he also doesn’t say in the last and shortest paragraph:

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to discuss any more of this in person. I’m sure Source will check in with you at some point too, if he hasn’t already.

I already know Source hasn’t, but I double-check my text messages just to be sure. I suppose he’s busy with the vote too — which, now that I think about it, is probably over by now. And if it’s over, and I haven’t heard anything from Case or Source or even Woody and Crescent, I can’t think of many things that could mean other than what I can already feel is the truth.

I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised. And it’s not like I regret anything I did last night, or pretty much anything I did this past week. But knowing that doesn’t quite fill the hole that opens in my chest as the weight of what Case didn’t say — the bid I’m not going to get — sinks down into my gut.

I hear the creak of the dorm’s front door swing open behind me, and as Sweetie Belle walks over to me with her freshly blow-dried hair fluttering against the hood of her puffy purple coat, I stuff my phone in my pocket and force a smile onto my face. It’s not that hard to do, but it’s not as easy as it should be either.

“Sorry I took so long,” she says, her eyes flicking down towards the pocket my phone just disappeared into. “What’d Case say?”

“Just an apology,” I tell her. “About last night. They’re kicking Al out of the frat. Said they’ll support us if we want to get the cops involved.”

“Good,” Sweetie Belle says, firmly enough to make it clear that’s all she wants to say about this to me now or to anybody else later. “They decided on bids yet?”

I shrug, and try to smile again. I almost pull it off too, but I’m not sure anybody’s that good of an actor. She sits down on the bench next to me and grabs hold of my hand, leaning hard into me in the same motion.

“I mean, I don’t actually know,” I say — sort of to her, mostly to myself. “They might still be voting. But reading between the lines, y’know, it’s…”

She squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “That really sucks.”

“Yeah, well,” I reply through another shrug, “I don’t regret anything.”

“You shouldn’t.” She tugs on my hand a bit so I turn to face her — so she can kiss me better, her breath flitting over my jaw and her fingers lacing between mine. 

And it works. I forget about the frat entirely. I just think about Sweetie Belle, and about everything I did this week that I never thought I could do, and how there’s still plenty I can do with all of that, especially so early in the semester. Maybe I can even get into that Computer Music class with — holy shit — my girlfriend, maybe help her with her homework and learn some tricks for my own trade.

“Hey, I should…” Sweetie starts to say next, before pausing for a moment so she can get her thoughts organized. “About earlier, what you said. I don’t know why I was being so weird about it. I really do want this. It’s just been a psychotic week, and I’ve been in such a weird place…”

“I haven’t been that much better,” I add.

“Okay, we’ve both been weird,” she agrees. “But I’d rather be weird with you than normal with anyone else. I want this… us to last, no matter what. Bid or no bid. Okay?”

I’m not acting now — this smile’s as honest as I’ve ever been. “I want this to last too,” I murmur. “Weirdness and all.” And when I kiss her, she kisses me back, and the world behind and in front of and all around us feels like it’s a million miles away.

For about five seconds.

“Well, that answers that question.”

I don’t jump this time, but Sweetie Belle does, letting out a startled squeak as her hand goes rigid in my grip. I guess I’m finally getting used to this particular trait of Source’s.

“Why do people always sneak up on me?” I growl up at him. He gives me a cheeky look back, hands flexing in a half-shrug from inside the pockets of his dark gray bomber jacket.

“‘Cause you think too much,” he shoots back. “Gotta learn how to not think. It’s the best part of college. Morning, Sweetie Belle.”

Out of breath and scarlet-faced, Sweetie Belle greets Source with a tight-lipped smile and nod. “That was my question, by the way,” Source goes on. “Whether you two were gonna… y’know.”

“It wasn’t that obvious,” I mutter.

“Yeaaaah, a nuke going off in the quad would’ve been less obvious. But if it helps, you make a disgustingly cute couple.” As my face flushes the same color as Sweetie’s, Source chucks me on the shoulder as he fills the free spot next to me on the bench. “Seriously, you look good together. I’m happy for you guys.”

“Then thanks, I guess,” I reply — and then a sigh blows out of me before I can stop it. This must be Source checking in with me. And even though I can’t quite read the expression on his face, I doubt I’m about to be surprised by what he says next.

“Man, Al got you good,” is how he begins, extracting a hand from his jacket so he can gesture at my face. “You hear from Case yet?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I heard.”

“How you feelin’ about it?”

I look at the ground instead of Source. Out of Source’s view, Sweetie Belle squeezes my hand. “I don’t know. Wish it hadn’t ended like this, but it is what it is.”

“Well, actions have consequences. Especially during rush. But for what it’s worth, you two are the ballsiest freshmen I’ve ever met. And I’m rush chair, y’know? I’ve met a lot of freshmen.”

“Thanks, man,” I say. This time, I use some of those balls I apparently have to look him in the eye. “I’m glad I came out. Even with how it ended.”

Before replying, Source squints at me for a second. “I think we’re all glad you came out, man,” he says. “Speaking of which, what exactly did Case say to you?”

I shrug. “Not much. Stuff about politics in the bidding vote, things I shouldn’t have to deal with. He didn’t really say anything, just kinda… hinted.”

Source’s lips pull tight across his teeth — then split into a grin as he laughs quietly to himself. Now it’s my turn to squint at him.

“Sorry,” he says once he composes himself. “Never mind. I’ll tell you later.”

Even though I know better, a little glimmer of hope flares to life in my chest. “So, uh… I’ll see you around, then?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can.

Source bites his lip for a second before answering, like he’s trying not to laugh again. “Yeah, I think we’ll see each other around,” he says as he stands up. “I better go now. Got some bids to hand out.”

And there goes that little glimmer — but Source doesn’t go with it. Actually, he just ambles a couple steps away from the bench, glancing at his phone as he does, seemingly in no rush to go anywhere at all. I guess I can fill the awkward silence if no one else is going to.

“How does that actually work?” I ask. “Handing out bids, I mean. Like, what actually happens?”

Source straightens up, slips his phone into his jacket, and slowly turns to face me. He’s wearing the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on his face.

“Button Mash,” he says, dragging out his words with deliberate, barely restrained glee. “I am so, so glad you’ve asked me that.”

I open my mouth to ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean, and then I realize both my hands are empty. Sweetie Belle’s gotten up too, edging away from the bench, smiling almost as wide as Source. Am I being pranked? Is this –

In an instant, I’m soaked, ice-cold water flooding over me from behind like someone opened a spigot right overtop of my head. Pure instinct sends me scrambling off the bench, screaming and swearing and squelching in my waterlogged socks — and then the sugary-sweet smell hits me, and the noise overwhelms me. 

It’s not water — it’s Arctic Blue Alligade. And it came from a big orange five-gallon cooler that six KNZ brothers toss aside as they swarm around me and grab hold of my arms and legs. I’m airborne a second later, dangling helplessly from a dozen upraised arms whose owners are yelling and chanting like they just won the Super Bowl. 

Teeth chattering and mind blank, I loll my head up — or really, have it lolled back for me — until Source’s upside-down face fills my blurry vision.

“Wha…” I mumble. “Whathefu…”

“Hey, you asked,” Source casually replies. “There’s your answer.”

The answer to what? What did I even ask, except…

Oh.

Oh shit.

“Oh shit,” I say.

“No shit,” Source corrects me. He slaps his hand down on my soggy shoulder and squeezes. “Welcome to KNZ, Wizard.”

I should be happy. I should be ecstatic — and I am. But also, holy shit I’m confused. “But… but Case…”

“Oh, did Case say some vague, terrifying shit that you had no idea how to interpret?” Source asks. He’s laughing again. “Trust me, you’re not the first person to be baffled by a Case text, and God help all of us, you will not be the last.”

“So… I got in?”

Source gives me a look that would make my face flush even if my head wasn’t upside-down. “Come on, man, you think anyone was siding with Al after the shit he pulled? It was unanimous. Even Woody didn’t manage that.”

“W-Wait,” I interrupt, trying to twist my head around so it’s sort of right-side-up. It doesn’t help that I’m shivering hard enough to almost slip out of everybody’s grip, because I’m soaked to the bone and it’s the middle of winter. “W-Woody’s in too?”

Source cocks his head back over his shoulder. “See for yourself.”

Once he steps to the side, I can see a van idling on the side of the road leading past my dorm. I catch a glimpse of Mandarin in the driver’s seat, and then of Sloop sliding the van’s side door open with a dramatic flourish. Woody’s face pops into view from inside, flanked by Crescent and a few other familiar faces from rush. They’re all soaked too, hunched under towels and looking a bit blue — or even bluer, in Crescent’s case — around the lips.

“Yeah, we’re here, Button, hooray,” Woody groans across the courtyard.

“Please put him in the van already, it’s so fucking cold,” Crescent pleads after him.

Source flashes them a thumbs-up, but the grin it’s paired with is really more of a grimace. “Yeah, this does work a lot better for fall rush,” he mutters before turning back around. “So how about it, Wizard? You gonna keep your brothers waiting?”

Every face turns to look at me, but there’s only one I want to see looking back right now — and I do. Sweetie Belle comes up to me, smiling the whole way, and stands on her toes so she can plant an upside-down kiss on my lips, warming me up from the inside out.

“Go,” she tells me, talking over exaggerated awws and one, “Ew, girls are gay!” from the guys holding me up. “Tell me how it goes later.”

I smile back, and keep smiling until the second thing she said actually sinks in. “What, how what goes?” I ask her — but Source is the one who answers.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he says, dismissively waving his hand. “Just some pledging stuff. Real basic. Most people survive it.”

“What do you mean, survive it?”

“Source…” Sweetie Belle says, ignoring me in favor of leveling a severe stare at my new frat brother. “Don’t be mean to him.”

“Awww.” Source puts on an exaggerated pout. “Can I be a little mean to him?”

“Can you not?” I try to interject. “Is that an option?”

Sweetie Belle ignores me again, but only for a second while she’s pretending to think Source’s request over. Then she shrugs, glances my way, and gives me a positively devilish grin.

“Okay, you can be a little mean to him,” she tells Source.

“Oh, come on!” I shout — but it’s too late. Source pumps his fists and leads the crowd of KNZ brothers as they carry me off to the van, while my girlfriend just waves and watches them do it. It’s a good thing she’s cute. And funny. And still my favorite person in the world that I can’t wait to see again.

Assuming, of course, that I survive pledging. Which apparently only most people do.

In retrospect, I think as I’m bundled into the van and given a bottle of something that looks like sewer water and smells like rum, this all may have been a really, really bad idea.