Monophobia

by Aquaman

Chapter 13: All of It Now, Swallow It Down

Author's Note:

Al saunters off, and I watch him go without speaking, almost without blinking, just staring at the back of his head as my pulse roars in my ears and my hands clench and unclench at my side. I want to go after him. I want to grab him by the collar and drag him back here, make him tell everyone here exactly what he did, before — or maybe while — I beat the living shit out of him. Not that I’ve ever beaten up anybody or even thrown a punch before, but I really want to fucking figure it out as I go.

Next to me, Woody’s eyes flick back and forth between my face and Al’s back, narrowed at first and then suddenly as big as I’ve ever seen them be. Looks like I don’t have to explain this to him. Good. I don’t know that I could talk too well right now past the trembling in my jaw and the heat rising into my throat.

“Okay, so…” comes a voice from my other side. Crescent’s standing there, holding a red plastic cup, gawking at Woody and I. “I missed something.”

“Holy shit,” Woody whimpers. “It was him.”

“That… does not explain what I missed.”

“Alkaline,” I growl through my teeth. “It was fucking Alkaline. He’s who leaked those pictures of Sweetie Belle.”

Now Crescent’s eyes bug out too. “Wait, what?” he almost yells, before realizing where he is and whose brothers he’s surrounded by. “It was… how do you know?” he hisses next.

I barely keep myself from shouting back. “Because he all but fucking bragged about it, that’s how!”

“Shit. Holy fucking shit,” Crescent says, hunching over his cup and taking a giant gulp from it before he goes on. “What do we… what are you gonna do?”

I’m about to tell him exactly what I want to do to Alkaline right now, but Woody interrupts me. “Wait, where’d Sweetie Belle go?” he says — and it’s only then that I realize I’m clenching both my hands into fists, and Sweetie Belle’s fingers aren’t trapped inside one of them. I didn’t even see her leave.

“She’s here?” Crescent asks. “Fuck, she’s a badass…”

Yeah, she is — and that’s exactly what’s just started to scare me. Al’s already done one psychotic thing to her this week. If she goes after him here by herself, I can’t imagine what he might do next.

“I’m gonna find her,” I tell Woody, who blankly nods in response. “Stay here.”

Crescent starts to say something else, but whatever it is gets lost in the noise of the party as I start wading my way through the crowd. I make two full circuits around the house’s first floor, but I don’t find Sweetie Belle until I wander through the front door and out onto the porch.

Everyone who was out here when we arrived is gone. It’s just her here now, leaning against a column and staring up at the stars, fingers wrapped tight around the rough wooden railing in front of her, shivering inside her pink dress and the coat she never even had a chance to take off.

“There you are,” I say as I go over to her. “Are you –”

“I’m sorry. “ Sweetie Belle doesn’t look at me — heaves in shallow breaths that come back as shaky sighs. “I just… I’m sorry. I keep thinking I’m braver than I am, and I keep being wrong.”

“That’s not…” The anger I felt earlier is back like it never left, squeezing my throat and jumbling up my thoughts. “He’s not gonna get away with this. I’m not… he’s not gonna win.”

“Yes he is,” she mutters, swiping one thumb quickly under both eyes. “Just drop it, Button. Go back inside.”

“No!” The word comes out of my mouth loud and high-pitched, like a little kid being told to go to bed early. “You were drunk, and then he... I-I mean, we’ve gotta do something, right? Report him to the school, or call the cops, or…”

“Do you know who Alkaline is?” She turns to face me. The hollow look I saw earlier is back. “Not at school, or in the frat. I mean who he really is, in the real world. Who his dad is… his whole family?”

Alkaline’s a business major — that’s what Woody told me a few days ago. And his dad owns a big company. And it takes me a couple seconds to form the question I ask Sweetie Belle, because I’m starting to feel like I already know the answer. “What does it matter?”

“It matters because if I did something, said anything to anybody, no one would believe it,” Sweetie says. “And even if they did, there’d be investigations and hearings and a big fucking scandal, and he’d get the kind of lawyers you get when your family’s rich and you know you’re guilty, and he’d win. And in the meantime, he’d make my life hell, and if you get involved, he’ll make your life hell too, because we have nothing. It’s my story against his. And that’s not enough.”

She can’t be right. She can’t be. This isn’t fair. There has to be something I can do.

“You have me,” I say weakly. “I’ll… I mean…”

“You’re not gonna do anything, Button,” Sweetie Belle says softly. She steps forward — puts her hand over mine, wraps her fingers around my knuckles and squeezes. “Please don’t do anything. Don’t fuck yourself over just because of me.”

I squint back at her. “What do you… t-this isn’t about –”

“It is about you, Button,” she murmurs, eyes shining over a small, sad smile. “You love this frat. You’ve been so happy this week, like you were when we were kids. And Source and Case, what they’re trying to make here… they need you. Good people like you, who always put other people first.”

“But Alkaline…”

“Alkaline will be gone in six months. One semester, that’s it. Then this’ll be over, and everyone will forget about it, and all you have to do is let it go right now. Please.”

She stares at me — pleadingly, desperately — and squeezes my hand again. I have to fight the urge to yank my arm away. She’s asking me to act like she doesn’t matter — to suck up to a psychopath for my own sake and no one else’s. She’s telling me to lie, to be somebody I’m not, just so I can get something I shouldn’t want any part of.

“You knew he’d be here,” I mumble. “And you came out anyway. I-I thought you were… why?”

She shakes her head — lets out a sigh that might’ve been a tiny, self-deprecating laugh. “You needed a date,” she tells me. “And you’ve been there for me all week, and I wanted to be here for you, but I’m just making things worse. You don’t deserve that. You deserve better than a –”

“Don’t,” I interrupt. “Don’t say that. That’s bullshit. That’s…”

Our face are inches apart. Tears track down her face. Her hand is gripping my fingers like a vice, and I want to tear my hand free so I can hold it to her chin, dry her cheeks, tell her everything I’ve felt and known about her since the day I first met her a lifetime ago.

But I don’t know how to say it — how to put something that feels as big as the whole planet into words small enough to mean something. I still don’t know if it’s all just in my head, and not in her heart.

“Button, please, for once, put yourself first,” Sweetie Belle whispers. “Get what you deserve. Forget about me.”

I can’t. I don’t want to. I’m not going to. I just don’t know how. I just want someone — a friend, a teacher, my fucking mom — to tell me what I should do.

Sweetie Belle lets go of my hand, shuts her eyes, and steps away from me. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs again. And then she’s gone — down the front steps and across the yard and halfway down the street back to campus, while I just stand uselessly on the porch and watch her leave.

“... fuck me, man.”

Crescent’s standing in the house’s front doorway, Woody right next to him, both of them wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “You gotta go after her,” Crescent says as he steps out towards me.

“You heard all of that?” I mutter.

“I heard enough to know you can’t let her leave like that, man! Fuck rushing, I mean, this is… fuck!”

Crescent runs both his hands through his hair as he paces to the porch’s far side, staring helplessly out at the empty street. Woody’s still in the doorway, still staring down the block towards where Sweetie Belle just vanished from view.

“It’s what she wants,” I tell Crescent in a monotone. “She told me to get a bid. To forget about her.”

Crescent whirls around, wide-eyed again. “Well, obviously you’re not going to.”

“No, I’m not,” I agree.

“Okay. So what do we do?”

He’s looking at me expectantly, like he just knows I have a plan as good as the one I must have had to beat Al so badly two nights ago — and I don’t. My mind’s empty, and my chest hurts, and more than anything I’m sick of pretending I know what I’m doing and lying to people I care about.

But no one else is going to do anything for me — not Crescent, not Woody, for sure not Sweetie Belle. I have to think of something. I have to decide who I’m going to be.

I take a deep breath, open my mouth — and someone else’s words fill the air.

“Stay here.”

Woody’s voice comes out low and sturdy, unlike anything I’ve ever heard him say before. He doesn’t give Crescent or me a chance to ask him what he means. “Keep Al here,” he goes on. “I’ll be back.”

“You’ll –” is the only word Crescent can squeeze in.

“I’m coming back,” Woody insists, almost growling his response. Then, without a word of explanation, he edges around me and hops down off the porch, striding down the street and heading in the direction of campus.

“What is he doing?” I ask Crescent.

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Crescent replies. “What are we doing? How are we supposed to keep Al here?”

“I don’t know,” I tell Crescent. “Let’s find the motherfucker and find out.”

Crescent blinks again, shrugs, and doesn’t argue. I nudge past him and reenter the house, and he follows a step behind me.

===

Admittedly, I expected finding said motherfucker to be a lot easier than it turns out to be — which is annoying, because you’d really think a six-foot-whatever, cocksure and cock-first frat bro would be easy to spot at a frat party. Between Crescent and me both, though, all we get out of searching for him is sweaty from the humidity of the packed house and not even a little buzzed from the sour beer we manage to squeeze out of the keg in the main room.

“Do you think he already left?” Crescent asks to nobody in particular. “‘Cause that’s not our fault if he did, right? Like, if he’s gone already, that happened before Woody said anything. That’s not on us.”

I’m too busy with the keg hose, or whatever it’s called, to give Crescent a good answer. I’ve been at it for a bit now, and all I can get to come out of it is soapy-looking foam.

“You gotta pump the thing,” I hear Crescent say next. He seems like he’s talking to me now.

“What thing?” I ask.

“The… pump thing.” Crescent points at a knobby metal device on top of the keg that the hose seems to feed into the bottom of. “I don’t know, whatever it’s fucking called.”

I give the thing a few good pumps, and I’m rewarded with a fresh sheen of sweat on my forehead and half a cup of pisswater. Fuck me for wanting some liquid courage, I guess. I tip my cup back and chug the beer I managed to get, then wait for the carbonation to rise back up from my stomach and maybe kickstart the gears in my brain on its way out.

“He’s gotta still be here,” I insist, grimacing past a painful belch that burns in my nose and doesn’t light up a single neuron behind it. “It’s the last night of rush. We just gotta keep looking.”

“And then what?” Crescent wilts a little when I look over at him. “I-I mean, I’m with you no matter what. Like, I’m all in, but y’know… he’s fucking huge. And I’m…” He waves his fist — which is attached to a fairly stick-like arm — limply in front of him. “Not a fighter. Or a lover, really. I don’t know what I am. I don’t even know where the girl I brought out here is. I should’ve introduced her. Should I go find her? Am I talking too –”

“Okay, yep, got it,” I say. “No fighting. We’ll… try to avoid that.”

“Try to avoid what?”

Fuck me, I need to pay more attention to my surroundings. Maybe then I wouldn’t jump like a rabbit on Adderall every time someone new enters a conversation.

“Nothing!” I half-shout at Source — my good close fratty friend Source, whose frat brother is half a page of legal code away from being a rapist and yet somehow isn’t a total psychopath in his eyes. Of all the people I was not at all ready to talk to right now, he’s number two on the list. “It’s… never mind.”

“Okay, well, now I have to mind,” is Source’s cheeky response. “What’s up? Did the keg kick? Knew we should’ve gotten a half-barrel.”

I grit my teeth and grip my empty cup almost hard enough to crumple it. What do I tell him? What can I tell him? How “fratty” is he really — enough to stay on his frat brother’s side no matter what monstrous shit that brother did?

That thought lasts for half a second, and then gets replaced by a much more rational one: of course he wouldn’t do that. I met the one-hundred-percent real Source last night, and that Source writes poems, speaks from the heart, has actual honest-to-God principles — and truly thinks Al is just a run-of-the-mill jerk.

He doesn’t know what Al’s really capable of, or what he’s already done. And if I told him the truth right now, he’d believe me, and he wouldn’t let it go no matter what was best for him or for anybody else. Because he’s like me, and it’s what I want to do, and it wouldn’t work for him any better than it would for me. He’d just get dragged down into the mess with us.

“We’re just… getting ready to talk to Al,” I eventually say — and to be fair, that’s barely even a lie by omission. “To… butter him up, and stuff.”

“Gonna butter him like toast,” Crescent adds. He gives me an “Am I helping?” grin that I try to pretend I didn’t see.

“That’s hardly nothing,” Source assures us. “But don’t stress too much. You got this, man. How’s Sweetie Belle doing?”

“Um…” is all I can say to that.

“S-She’s good!” Crescent haltingly chimes in, cringing when Source looks his way. “Just, uh… getting some air. Lots of air, outside. Not in the house. She’s not here. She left.” Source stares, I glare, and an “I’m definitely not helping” grimace spreads across Crescent’s face. “I’m sorry. I talk when I’m nervous. I’m gonna go somewhere else now.”

And then he moves like he’s going to, but he stops dead before he takes a single step — and when I look past him over his stock-still shoulder, I can see exactly why.

Al’s less than a dozen feet away, sprawled on a ratty couch and surrounded by a group of uncomfortable-looking freshmen. I guess he’s forgotten all his complaining to Case about how much the KNZ rushes suck, or maybe he just likes anyone who gives him attention and makes him feel like the biggest motherfucker in the room.

He hasn’t seen me or Crescent yet, even though the latter’s gaping at him like he’s grown wings and a horn. But I don’t need him to be looking at me to hear what he’s saying. He’s loud enough that people can probably hear him all the way down the block.

“– shoulda been here a couple years ago. We got fucked by probation, bro. And I’m tryin’, for real, but it’s fucked.”

Somewhere a thousand miles away, Source edges closer to somebody that looks exactly like me and murmurs in his ear. “Hey, I meant what I said earlier. You can tell me if someone’s being sketchy. It’s not gonna get held against you.”

Except it will, won’t it? I know it will, and Sweetie Belle knows it will, and no matter how much he acts like he doesn’t, Source knows it will too. And even if he didn’t, Al’s voice would drown out anything I tried to tell anybody else. He’s deafening right now, rowdy and grating like a rodeo clown in sandpaper chaps.

“Nah, I mean, I get it. Like, you gotta change with the times, right? Even if the times suck.”

Crescent glances back at me. “What do we do?” he frantically hisses, right before he realizes Source is still next to me and — now that he’s heard that — furrowing his brow at both of us. It’s a good question, though, and another one I don’t really have an answer for. I still don’t know what to do, or even why I should want Al to stick around at all — except that Woody wants him to, and that in the admittedly short time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Woody be so unshakably sure about anything else.

“Do about what?” Source asks, right before Al gives him his answer.

“Like with that girl’s nudes, right?”

Even over the roar of the party, I can hear Source’s teeth clack together, right in time with mine. Even Crescent forgets to be nervous for a second in favor of sighing and glaring at the floor, muttering something under his breath that looks like it rhymes with “slick.”

“Like, not even two years ago, nobody gives a shit. Some girl’s a slut, people call her a slut, and we all move on with our lives, right? These days, though, everybody’s fuckin’ offended about it. Now it’s, what, slut-shaming if you call someone a slut? Like, bitch, you’re the one bein’ a fuckin’ slut! I thought you were proud of it!”

Source’s scowl deepens, and Crescent mutters something again, and my fingers flex and ache next to my sides — but nobody does anything to shut Alkaline up. We just have to stand here and let him talk, because that’s what he does. He talks, and he fucks up people’s lives, and he wins if we talk back because all we have is our word against his. He’s invincible, and he knows it, and he’s fucking acting like it.

“But if we say anything, if we fuckin’ exist as men, we’re evil sexist pigs and shit. Didn’t used to be like that, man. People used to be fuckin’ sane. Fuckin’ sad, man.”

Source takes a step forward. He’s going to get involved. He’s going to make Al stop talking, maybe make him leave — but only because he thinks he’s being a jerk. He doesn’t know who Al really is.

“And like, why is everybody so fuckin’ sure someone else put those photos up? Seems to me like she put ‘em up herself, and then once she didn’t get enough attention she just decided suddenly she was a victim.”

And then before Source can take a second step, I grab him by the arm and stop him, because something just hit me like a semi-truck: I do know who Al is, and he’s not invincible. He just acts like he is, because he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Because he’s a good liar and a terrible actor. Because he doesn’t know how to play from behind.

“She won’t even say who’s supposed to have victimized her, but we’re supposed to buy it anyway. It’s all bullshit, bro. All these people falling for the oldest slut move in the book.”

I’ve beaten him before. I bluffed him into folding a full house and took two hundred dollars off him, because he thought I had nothing and then couldn’t handle it once he thought I had him by the balls. And Woody saw me do it, knows I can do it again, and trusts me to figure it out with or without a plan. That’s why he told me to keep Al here: because that’s what I do. I don’t plan. I react. I decide to do things, and then I just do them.

“You know who I feel bad for? That dude she was fucking. Anybody ever think maybe he’s the victim? Maybe he took pictures on her phone, and now his dick’s all over the Internet and everybody’s acting like he did something to her. Pour one out for that poor motherfucker.”

I play the game, and the players playing it. I’ve been doing it this whole week. I just have to do it one more time. I just have to make him think he’s already lost — and then make sure he does for real.

“Whoever the fuck he is. Not like we’ll ever know. He’s sure as shit not gonna talk. And she’s probably –”

“You know digital photos have metadata, right?”

Several heads turn towards me, Source’s and Crescent’s the quickest of them all. Al, meanwhile, is the last person to look my way, which suits me just fine. I want him to be annoyed. I want him to think I’m just a dorky little kid butting in on his good time.

“Was I talking to you?” Al intones, silencing all the other conversations nearby by starting one with me.

“You’re talking to me now,” I shoot back. “Anyway, metadata! It’s like an electronic signature, hard-coded into everything that isn’t shot on film. Tells you the resolution, what kind of lens you used, what kind of camera. Fun stuff.”

“I bet,” Al sardonically replies. “Thanks for sharing.”

“Sure thing,” I say, steaming ahead even as Al rolls his eyes and looks away. “You know what else is fun about it? It tells you where a picture was taken too. Like, exact GPS coordinates. Plus the time it was taken, the date… even the camera’s owner. Or, y’know, the phone’s owner. ‘Cause everybody takes pictures on their phones now.”

Al doesn’t look up at me, but I can see his neck tense and his jaw tighten, because he’s trying really hard not to look up. Because he’s started to realize why I interrupted him, and because he doesn’t know that’s not exactly how metadata works and I’m sure as shit not going to correct him. Just a small lie by omission — a tiny little bluff that, if I play it just right, might get him to fold his winning hand and royally fuck himself over.

“I’m just saying, you’re acting like we don’t know who took those pictures of that girl,” I go on. “But actually, we do. Or somebody could know, if they wanted to. I just think that’s interesting. Seems relevant.”

Now Al stares me down, his eyes dark and his face twitching. “You wanna keep talking?” he growls.

I stare right back. I’m not backing down. I’m seeing this through no matter where it leads. “Do you want me to?” I ask. “‘Cause if I were you, I wouldn’t. But I’m not you, thankfully, so hey, I can talk all you want.”

I feel someone tugging on my arm. “Button, what are you doing?” Source mutters.

I flash him a cheeky grin. I couldn’t get enough out of the keg to get me drunk, but adrenaline’s making up for it in spades right now. “What d’you mean?” I murmur back. “I’m talking to Al. Taking your advice.”

“This isn’t what I –”

“And you know what, while I’m talking,” I go on, sidling closer to Al with every word, “lemme ask you something, ‘cause I’m kinda curious: why do you care so much? Like, it’s rush. We’ve kicked the keg, we’re all having a great time, and you’re over here going off about some random freshman who had her nudes leaked. Why’s it a big deal? She’s just a slut, right? Some whore who fucks every guy she meets? Isn’t that what you told me last night?”

Al doesn’t say anything. He settles back into the couch, still staring me down, waiting for me to keep talking — so I do.

“I believed you, by the way. I really did. ‘Cause why would you lie to me? It’s not like you’re dating her. It’s not like you fucked her. And me, I’m just a rush. Just the possible future of the frat you care so much about. What would you possibly get out of lying to me that a girl I went out with once, who I’ve known since elementary school, was a nymphomaniac who’d drop me like a used tissue as soon as my dick went soft?”

Al’s not glaring anymore. Instead, he looks bemused — exactly like he looked when I was winding him up across a poker table.

“Yeah, I know that look. Most of my life, that look is all I’ve gotten out of people. And you know what I finally realized just this week? The only reason people kept looking at me like that was because I let them. Because I just assumed they knew something about me I didn’t, that something was wrong with me that wasn’t wrong with them, and I never did anything about it.”

I’m not just talking to Al anymore. I’m talking to the whole room, every frat brother and rush here — to the little voice in my head that, in the only way that matters, sounds just like Alkaline’s.

“And this week, I did something about it. I found some balls, rushed a frat, got drunk and puked and made a complete ass of myself half the time, and I met a whole fraternity worth of the coolest fucking people I’ve ever known. Guys who went against every stereotype I’ve ever heard, who I wanna be friends for the rest of college and after it. And then there’s you, Al: the poster fucking man-child for everything I thought I’d hate about frats, and all the reasons I thought they’d hate me.”

The whole house is all but silent. My face is red and I’m running out of breath.

“You know what really pisses me off about you, Al? It’s not that you hate me. I’m used to jackasses like you hating me. What pisses me off is that’s not enough for you. You gotta fuck things up for everybody. For the rushes you think are losers, for your brothers trying to move past probation… and, of course, for girls you hooked up with once who you can’t get over. You just have to be in control, no matter what it takes or who it hurts.”

I suck in air, brace myself, and make the play I’ve been building towards.

“That’s why you leaked those photos. You know it, and I know it. And now everybody knows it.”

There’s no ripple of shock or disgust through the crowd — no reaction at all, actually, save for Source screwing his face up into a grimace and Crescent looking like he’s planning the speech he’ll give at my funeral. The silence drags out for several long seconds, then Al’s eyebrows twitch up as he leans forward a bit on the couch.

“You done?” he asks, his airy voice tinged with barely suppressed laughter. The rest of the room’s still eerily, unnervingly quiet.

“You tell me,” I say — and Al chuckles, and rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, you’re done,” he says as he heaves himself to his feet and lumbers casually towards me. “My turn. You know what pisses me off about you?” He comes to a stop in front of me, almost on top of me, forcing me back a step as he leans forward and towers over me. “You’re full of shit.”

His breath reeks of whiskey. His eyes are alight with sadistic glee. I set my jaw and try to meet his gaze, but I can’t stop my breath from hitching or my hands from starting to shake. I think I fucked up.

“You’ve been full of shit since day one,” Al says. “You crash a couple parties, drink our beer, find a couple other sadsack loners to latch onto, and you think that makes you fratty. One of the guys. And it wouldn’t even be that big a deal if you weren’t so fucking obnoxious about it, if you didn’t constantly have this kicked-puppy bullshit going on because you were so mistreated in high school for being a fucking freak.”

No one’s stopping him. No one’s going to stop him. I fucked up. I don’t know how, but I fucked this up.

“And then you talk about doing something like it’s such a big fucking deal you acted like a normal person for once. And you couldn’t even keep the act going, because then you’d have to admit to yourself that maybe you are a freak, and maybe it is your fault nobody likes the real you. So you just lie to everybody, and about other people so you can white-knight for your little high school crush who, oh no, isn’t anything like your anime fuck pillow back home.”

Al prods his finger into my chest, knocking me back another half-step. I catch a glimpse of Source’s face as I stumble: dismayed, disappointed, wanting to help and knowing I’ve fucked up way too bad for even him to bail me out.

“All you fucking do is lie,” Al snarls. “And if you think you have a chance in hell of getting a bid after this shit, or ever had a fucking chance, you’ve just been lying to yourself.”

I try to swallow, but my throat’s bone-dry. I try to look at Al, but I’m blinking too fast and my eyes are blurry. Source can’t help. Crescent’s still shellshocked. Sweetie Belle’s gone, and everything I spent this whole week working for is about to collapse on top of me. Why did I do this? Why was I so sure I could catch Al in a lie? Is he even lying? Did I read this whole situation wrong from the very start?

“I’ve been lying, huh?” I say, burning every last bit of misplaced courage I have to get just a few more words out without cowering. “So it wasn’t you in those pictures of Sweetie Belle?”

“For fuck’s…” Al’s face crumples as his growling tone rises into a bark. “I’ve never met that bitch in my fuckin’ life!”

Well, that’s it. Game over. I just lost. I shut my eyes, and wait for the credits to roll on my life as a social butterfly.

“Then why have you been texting her all week?”

The voice comes out of nowhere, cutting through the gathered crowd like a scythe, pushing brothers and rushes aside as they all look to see who just said that. Al and I both see him at once: Woody, spine straight and jaw set, standing a few feet away and radiating righteous fury.

“And I mean all week,” Woody goes on, his diamond-edged gaze locked onto Al and getting sharper with every word. “Day and night, during classes, during rush. I’ve seen you do it. Seen her get your messages and leave you on read. Twenty-three times in six days. All to someone you’ve apparently never met.”

It’s like a gun went off somewhere outside. Everyone’s shuffling in place, murmuring to each other, trying to figure out what just happened and if everyone else heard it too and whether that really was what it absolutely sounded like — and I am too, for a different reason. I’ve seen Al texting Sweetie Belle too. I’ve seen her glance at her phone and grimace and stuff it back in her bag, while she was apologizing for missing lunch with me and terrified of going up on stage.

“Woody, come on, man,” Al finally says through a plastic smile. “Don’t tell me you believe this shit. You’re better than that.”

Woody’s voice is so thick with disgust that even I cringe hearing it. “You have no idea who I am. You never even tried to find out. It’s always just been about you. And I’m sick of letting you get away with it.”

Al’s mouth opens and closes, and his eyes dart back and forth from brother to onlooking brother. Still, no one jumps in and interrupts, but the mood of the room has U-turned: instead of the rush, everyone’s silently thinking, now it’s Alkaline who better choose his next words extremely fucking carefully. His finger’s still poking into my chest — and through my shirt, I can feel it starting to twitch.

“Who even fuckin’ told you that?” Al barks. For the first time, I hear him spray the venom he usually reserves for me all over Woody. “Twenty-three texts in… you’re just makin’ shit up now! This little faggot ain’t worth –”

Woody doesn’t even flinch. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he snaps. “And who the fuck do you think told me?”

Al doesn’t get a chance to guess. He doesn’t have to. Woody moves to the side, and from behind him — parting the crowd without touching them, striding forward like a warrior arriving on a battlefield — Sweetie Belle appears, face dry and hard as stone, phone lit up in her manicured hand. She lifts it higher and shows off the screen, so everyone in the room can see the wall of text-message boxes without any replies between them.

“Of course,” Al mutters. “Fucking bitch.”

“Keep talking,” Sweetie Belle seethes. “Make this as bad for you as you fucking deserve.”

“Fuck you,” he seethes right back, spit spraying from his bared teeth. The game is over — and he’s folding. “You’ve got nothing. You can’t prove shit. And even if you could, I’d fucking bury you. I’ll own you, you fucking cunt! Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Sweetie Belle glances past him, then cocks her head and smiles. “I think I’m someone who looks good on camera,” she says. “Too bad you don’t.”

Al follows her glance back over his shoulder. Crescent’s holding his phone up sideways in front of his face, camera lens pointed right at Al’s nose.

“Aaaaaand… cut,” Crescent says, tapping his screen with a finger and then looking Al’s way with a shit-eating grin. “A/V Club, motherfucker. I’m about this shit.”

Al’s nostrils flare, and his eyes level back on me — dilated, twitching, boiling over with rage. He’s lost, and he knows it, and everyone else does too. I can see Mandarin’s face crumpled into a scowl, and Sloop’s, and behind them both Case’s as well, getting bigger as he maneuvers forward through the throng. Behind me, I catch a glimpse of Source too: face flushed and fists clenched, looking like he wants to pull me away from Al so he can have a go at him himself.

But he’ll have to wait his turn, because I’m not quite done yet. I can’t help myself. I’m an actor, right? And this is my big final victory scene. I even know exactly what to say, how to really rub this in in a way that Al can’t do anything about, except stand there and ball his fists and angle his body to the side in an odd way, like he wants to turn around and run but stopped himself at the last second. It’s not important. Victory speech time.

“You know what’s gonna happen next?” I say. “You lmao we're doing the spoiler-text-means-blackout thing again but this time I don't feel like looking up the Bee Movie script so I'm just gonna keysmash until the story starts again ;lihsadig;ubepf9iugbvhqpeiurcnwqcipo'wijvoushdpvbfnwac;efoiahbsdkfvanjhifvuschiugsbdvfkubsHCKNFZKDBSXFkljgf;kuhsdifluhwekfjhvabkdhsfkljashbklnSO:Idhlkasjdnvbkjznscf;jkzhsbbkjvznksxjfhk.SJNDf;kUSHDvfbd;ofncskdjghvb;ozvMODIfjoenirc3qp98tyvabushybepiuchnaiweuhrvkaufshg;balksbhd;uawyfbva;odiwjfv;oqiwjbefpoishdfoubhawwoavowrivonWWUEROUYWVOBEYISURYGBVVERa'lskdjgfoiqjwfuhwqeir7hvbiygfiauwherto;ih;e;foguheuhdfglkjhsdfghsodhfg;oiudhfgkjh okay that feels like long enough against the ground and my head’s spinning.

Wait, why is my head spinning and on the ground?

Why am I wet?

I lift my head up from the ground it’s on. It’s the floor of the KNZ house. There’s a plastic red cup on the floor next to me — a bit of beer dribbling out of it. The rest is on me, soaked into my shirt and splattered on my face. It’s cold. My head hurts. Mostly my face, actually.

Fuck, why does my face hurt so much?

It’s loud. Everyone’s yelling. Sweetie Belle is all over Al, screaming and shoving. Source is pulling her back. Case is between them all, pushing Al too, pointing behind him, past Al’s twisted, shouting face. It’s so goddamn loud. It’s making my head hurt more — making all the lights blurry and brighter.

Someone’s crouching next to me. Two people, I think, grab my shoulders and pull them up off the floor. I’m sitting up now. I don’t remember how I got down here.

I was standing up a second ago, and now I’m on the floor, and everyone’s yelling at Al, who I was just talking to a few seconds ago. I can’t see him anymore. I can still hear the yelling. It’s making my head throb, like someone’s pounding their fist into my brain — punching me.

Did I get punched?

I touch my fingers to my face. Pain blooms all across it — stabs into my eye. I can’t see out of the left one. I’m squinting at everything through the other. That’s probably not good. I should probably get up.

I move my arms, and the floor moves with me — shudders and tilts at an angle that makes my stomach churn. The hands on my shoulders push down on me. Their owners are talking. The voices sound far away, like I’m at the bottom of a lake and they’re yelling up on the surface.

I try to swim up — sit back down again. My head’s prickling and pulsing. Being sucker-punched sucks.

Wait. Wait a second. Alkaline punched me. I beat him, and then he sucker-punched me. He’s such a dick. I gotta tell him that.

But there are more hands on me now — someone else crouching in front of me. I look up and see Sweetie Belle’s face. I smile. It hurts. She’s so pretty. I should tell her that.

“... hear me? Button, can you…”

That’s her voice. I can hear her. I’m gonna tell her that.

“Y-Yep,” I say. My tongue feels swollen — like that’s where Al punched me instead of my face. Where is he, anyway? He was here a second ago. I wanna tell him he’s a dick. “I’m… hi.”

“Oh my God,” she mutters. “Are you dizzy? Do you remember what happened?”

I don’t, actually. I feel like I shouldn’t tell her that. She looks really worried.

“I remember everything and I’m perfectly fine, and also you’re extremely pretty,” I tell her. Except those words only happen in my brain, and what comes out of my mouth is, “I, uh… ow.” She doesn’t look like she understood what I meant.

“Help me,” she says — not to me. She’s talking over my shoulder, at whoever’s hands are on it “Help me get him up.”

The hands move into my armpits — tug me onto my feet. I’m really dizzy. I almost fall over, but Sweetie Belle catches me. She’s really soft — soft and pretty. I hugged her last night. She was soft and pretty then too.

“Should we –”

“I got him.” The second voice is Sweetie Belle’s. The first was Woody’s, or maybe Crescent’s. “Find Source, tell him I took Button home.”

“You sure?” Crescent again — no, definitely Woody. “We can –”

“I’ve got him.” She kind of growled that time. I can feel her voice vibrate against the top of my head, off-rhythm with the pounding inside it. And then my feet are moving, because she’s moving and taking me with her. She smells really nice too.

Not that I’m smelling her or anything. That’d be creepy. I’m not creepy. Just dizzy, and my face hurts, and cold air’s hitting my hot face so I guess we’re outside now.

It’s quiet on the street. All I can hear is our feet shuffling and Sweetie Belle’s heavy breathing. I’m heavy. I shouldn’t be leaning on her so hard. I lift my head and find my feet and put one of them in front of the other. I’m still leaning on her, but not as hard now.

“Can you walk?” she asks.

“Mm-hmm,” I hum, and then I actually say some words back to her. “I’m good. I gotta… rush. Go to rush.”

“No, you’re done,” she says, tugging hard on my shoulder. I keep walking with her, even though I’m pretty sure rush is the other way. “Rush is done. Fuck rush.”

I’m getting closer to the water’s surface — seeing memories refract in the world above it. “But… you told me to rush,” I mumble.

“I told you to –”

She stops talking — keeps walking. I guess rush is over, then. I hope I did good. I wonder where the “home” is she’s taking me to.

God, she’s so fucking pretty.

Comments

[creep]

I cannot express how much I love this story.

[FuzzyVeeVee]

A hell of a moment. Some additional reveals about the leak that continue to make it more agonising (the implication of what exactly it had in it has only gotten more horrific in each chapter since via the language used evolving and being more specific) but... Sweetie. Damn, Sweetie! A badass warrior striding in is a great simile, she might take time to build up to it, because thats only natural to feel that way, but when she goes to war, she just comes off as unrelenting. Even if she doesn't believe it.

The reminder of the texts was great, lovely touch, and solidifies this was never just Button's story. He and Sweetie have had concurrent stories this entire time, and it makes their friendship/relationship/chemistry all the more special. Neither is the 'hero' here (much as Button tried after they'd already won, silly boy) and both play important roles in supporting one another... even if it took them both time to realise.

And well, I wished Button to avoid the minefield in handling the aftermath two chapters ago. Then it happened. I wished Al to get called out in front of everyone and exposed last chapter. Then it happened.

So now I shall wish for something altogether more simple and needed for my heart. A good, long hug between those two, and hell, a wish that he gets one from Source too, he's earned it. Let's hope I'm right again.

Lovely stuff.

[Miller Minus]

That was so great. I am terrible at predictions, but I will hazard a guess that Alkaline just took KNZ down with him in one sucker punch.

[Swan Song]

i would kill for these two idiots