an: i unfortunately had to take down all my stories and move accounts for personal reasons so this a repost. so sorry to anyone who faved/followed/reviewed the original but it kinda had to be done
He doesn't like clubs. They're loud and crowded and reek of sweat and alcohol. People shove past him as he pushes through a mass of grinding bodies and blinding LED lights, keeping his elbows tucked to his sides for fear of knocking into someone's drink or worse, getting dragged into a pile of X-rated heavy petting, and there is a lot of that going on right now - more so than actual dancing anyway. Dense smoke hangs at neck level, vibrantly purple and engulfing as it swirls around flicking wrists and twirling hips. And when he accidentally inhales it, it tastes how the club smells - stale and doused in a noxious artificial stench. Pot and booze and ripe B.O. on a single cohesive breeze assault his nostrils and god, it's worse than that one time Wes exploded a cup of shrimp ramen in their microwave.
Honestly, Black Star could not have picked a seedier scene to waste their night away in. The bass line is pounding in his ear, warbled and pulsing, and there's no way to distinguish the irregular thump as any form of coherent music. A tipsily swaying gaggle of partiers eye him lewdly as he maneuvers his way across the floor, and his shoulder blades tense involuntarily, blood burning his cheekbones. He's on the brink of calling it quits and going home to his blessed, people-free, sound-absorbing environment, when he catches sight of an electric blue head hanging over the bar.
"SOUL! Ah, shit is lit now. Get your ass over here and witness me down this like a god !" Even over the earsplitting dubstep Black Star's grating timbre still manages to turn several heads. Half-drunk club goers cheer in tandem as he hoists a shot of vodka Lion King style before swigging it all in a single go, emerging from his glass to belt The Circle of Life in a key Soul isn't entirely sure exists. A trickle of alcohol drips off his chin and onto his unbuttoned collar, but he doesn't seem to notice or mind.
Adorned in a black shirt and tie ensemble, his friend almost looks like he put in actual effort for the evening, which is impressive given how most days he dresses like he just rolled out of bed. It's a stark contrast to Soul's pizza delivery getup, but he never does know the appropriate attire for places like this so maybe it's lucky he didn't have time to swing by the condo to change after his shift. Wes would have gone to town playing dress up.
Black Star wraps up his impromptu Disney sing-a-long and turns to clasp Soul's hand, following his lapse in affection with a none too gentle punch to the shoulder that he knows from prior experience will bruise purple come morning. Soul restrains the urge to wince only out of habit. The first time he'd been on the receiving end of what Black Star dubs as his "Affectionate Punch of Laceration", he'd mistakenly let out an unfortunate grunt and had to endure a week long tirade of varying insults ranging from slights as primitive as 'pansy' to ' ewage Guzzling Slim Dick the Third '. He'd learned to develop thick skin as a hazard of knowing Black Star, so at least some good was coming out of this very questionably forged friendship.
"Hey brotato-chip, what the fuck are you wearing?" Questionably forged indeed . Black Star is squinting at his outfit like it's some sort of omen of death.
"I just got off work. Didn't have time to change."
"No one's gonna want to tap a dude in khakis and a polo with a smiling pizza on the back. That's some action repellent, and I'm telling you as a friend. I'm nice like that."
"Thanks for the heads up," Soul replies dryly.
"No problem!" Black Star's smile is bright, all traces of sarcasm evidently lost on him. "Anyway the swill they have here is cheap and nasty, you want to take it from a shot glass so you don't have to taste it." The bartender scoffs, clearly slighted, and Black Star offers an unapologetic shrug in return. "What? I am paying for your shit, aren't I?"
"You're gonna get us kicked out," Soul says while sliding onto the adjacent stool, only half joking. He remembers the notorious St. Patrick's Day club crawl a few months back where Black Star had tackled a bouncer three times his size for posing a tentative question about his age. It had undoubtedly been the most enjoyable event of the evening, perhaps even Soul's entire life, and Black Star had nursed two black eyes for the better part of a month but swore wholeheartedly up and down that it was completely worth it.
"They can try! Anyone that thinks they can throw me out had better be used to the sweet taste of defeat. Probably tastes a fuck ton better than whatever I'm having now."
Soul shakes his head at the bluster and orders a whisky and Coke with a lime on the side. He ignores Black Star's ridicule that the fruit makes the drink too girly. While at times he struggles with self image, his masculinity isn't frail enough to be thrown by a lime with his alcohol. It tastes like ass, just as Black Star had forewarned, but it compliments the puncturing odor of the club nicely and soon enough his senses are too dulled to notice.
An hour later and they're deep in their cups, slack jawed and slumped over the bartop with similar looks of dazed satisfaction. He hadn't planned on getting wasted but it had been a long, slow week and he'd spent the majority of his day doing battle with his mother's passive aggressive text messages, vain efforts to get him over for dinner that evening. Adequately qualifying as one of the seven levels of social anxiety hell, he still prefers his current ambience to the pompous airs of the Evans dinner table. He swishes more alcohol around his teeth until he can't see straight.
They shoot the shit with mundane topics he won't remember the next morning, like Soul's top hat wearing boss straight from hell, and Black Star's latest MMO escapades, until slurred speech and unfiltered thoughts turn to the infamous Halloween party Black Star throws annually, his friend adamantly determined to have Soul go with one of the women who've been strategically pacing by their stretch of bar for the past ten minutes. "C'mon maaaaaaaan. They're so into you."
Soul takes a sip of his drink, and it burns his throat as it goes down. He shakes his head to alleviate the sensation as well as reiterate his point but his equilibrium is off so he nods instead.
"Nah, they're busy."
"You. Are. Pathetic. Peon." Black Star punctuates each word with a fist to the bartop, knocking over his glass in the process. Amber liquid drips off the counter and pools around their shoes but neither of them make an effort to notice. " Hookup hookup hookup hookup !"
"Nah," Soul repeats.
"Shit Soulllll ." He drags out the L unnecessarily and tries twice to slap a hand to Soul's back before giving up and resting it on the bartop. "I bet you...like one hundred. One hundred dollars you won't have a girl for my party."
A slap to what's left of his ego never goes over well when he's shitfaced and betting has been an age old tradition between them, going back to when their only currency was trading cards and crayons, so he counters the offer, stupidly so, with no hesitation. "Thas'nothing. I'll bet you five hundred I will."
"Seven hundred and f-fifty."
"One-fucking-thousand."
Black Star throws back his head and laughs, a loud barking hiccup that shakes the stool beneath him and turns the heads of several curious onlookers. "Oh you are SO on man."
A chorus of now you've fucked ups tug at his alcohol addled synapses, but he banishes them away with another sloppy chug of whisky. Something for future Soul to sort out.
"Hey man?" Black Star croons, ass half off the stool now as he leans to rest his head on the bartop, looking groggy and thoroughly inebriated. "You are like, the shit y'know. My bestest man. The best man to ever man, y'knoooow ?"
Soul nods his head clumsily, clinging to his glass as his only point of balance. "I know. I know I know I know. Like even if I had a lady you would still be my favoritest."
Black Star's voice cracks with emotion. "Awwwww really? That is...so nice man."
They're too far gone to notice the exasperated eyeroll of the bartender.
:::
After a prolonged battle between his keys and the door, Soul slips into the condo he shares with his brother either very late at night or very early in the morning. He knows it's still dark out, but he can't exactly discern the time, despite the digital clock that was quite literally blinking in his face on the taxi ride home. Kicking off his shoes turns into an elaborate war waged against the tightly wound laces, and at some point he ends up with his cheek pressed against the floor, sobbing in pathetic frustration against the cool tile.
That damn dog Wes is so insistent on raising as his own bares witness to his drunken breakdown, and he knows it's absolutely judging him from it's perch on his brother's coveted recliner. He scowls back passionately in retaliation.
Several minutes (or maybe even hours) later, Soul collapses onto the futon that has an imprint of his shape, in a heap of questionably smelling limbs and intercourse repellant clothing, descending to a state of unconsciousness for what feels like approximately an eternity.
An eternity being half a day, as the clock on the DVR player so helpfully informs him when he wakes up feeling gross, in a state of groggy mucus-addled confusion. He's wrapped in a blanket he recognizes from Wes's bed, and there's a sour iron taste in his mouth. It takes his brain several minutes to seep into some semblance of lucidity. His body is another story - aching with a permanent exhaustiveness he's not sure he'll ever recover from.
He can see Wes through his blurred vision, poised against the kitchen island like the stained granite counter is some sort of fucking lounge bar, a magazine in his hands and an expression that can only be described as shit-eating. Soul blinks in his direction as a form of greeting, and his brother's perfectly groomed eyebrows disappear beneath his equally perfect hairline.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Wes declares loftily, folding over a page corner to mark his place. "You haven't moved for fourteen hours; I was just about to check your pulse."
"My head ," is all Soul manages, voice croaky and muffled as he moans the words into the couch cushion. Eyes pressed against the upholstery, here the lights are dim and he can pretend he doesn't exist in this hell of an existence, where his physical vessel feels like it's been hit by a steamroller and pulverized blender-style for good measure.
"It's your own fault little bro." He barely registers Wes's cadence over the distraction his existential crisis provides. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone you cried over your shoe laces."
So he'd seen that. Or that fucking mutt had told on him, he's ninety percent convinced the two of them conspire with some kind of dog whisperer telepathy.
"Fuck off man," Soul tries to retort but what comes out of his mouth is nothing short of spittle-distorted nonsense.
"Don't talk with your mouth full."
He resorts to flashing Wes the universal hand motion of what he was trying to convey and gets a laugh in response, which does nothing to improve his rapidly deteriorating mood. Hangovers always make him slightly more agitated than his usual condition, which is saying something, given how 'passionately disgruntled' could be considered his constant state of being.
"I thought I'd come home to you zombieing out in front of the Crunchy Roll logo and a bag of Doritos, but this is much better. You actually partied, hard. I'm so proud of you." Wes wipes at a non-existent tear beneath his eye like he's an enthusiastic pageant mom, and Soul just landed Ultimate Grand Supreme.
His brother's voice and face, and cheery attitude in general are far too much for Soul to handle at the moment, so he rolls off his makeshift bed to grope his way along the wall. Wes's annoying optimism follows him dolefully into the tiny hall bathroom, where Soul tolerates a brief glance to the mirror; hair mussed, drool and alcohol staining the corners of his mouth. Said mouth is pulled into an open lipped grimace and his pointed teeth are discolored purple beneath the unflattering fluorescent lighting. What kind of radioactive shit had Black Star been talking him into?
Wes is adjusting his pristine collared shirt behind him, but the amusement that comes with the juxtaposition of their reflections is overtaken by a sudden wave of nausea.
"Wes, I love you, but go extrovert somewhere else. I'm gonna hurl."
"Do you need me to hold your hair back?"
Soul's lived twenty-two years with his brother to know that he's being completely serious.
"Get out ," he rasps, slamming the door satisfactorily in Wes's complacent face before resigning to kneel painfully over the toilet bowl for the next half hour.
Once the contents of his stomach are emptied and he can stand on two legs without any support from the wall, he reemerges to find Wes spatulating a dozen sizzling strips of bacon and tapping his foot to some synthesized shit blaring over the radio. It reminds him too much of the noise that made his ears bleed at the club last night, and he emits a whine similar to a toddler having a favorite toy ripped from their hands.
"For a professional dancer, you have one godawful taste in music," he gripes loudly over the bassline.
Wes ignores him and proceeds to sway his hips even more enthusiastically. Soul wants to vomit again all over the floor.
"Our forebearers were disappointed you couldn't make it to dinner last night," Wes says over his shoulder, stepping on his tiptoes and retrieving a plate from the cabinet to shovel the bacon onto.
Soul's head feels too heavy for his neck to support, so he rests it against the counter unceremoniously. "Well I'm disappointed they decided to bring me into existence, so I guess we're even."
"Christ you sound like some o'four emo band." Wes shoves a plateful of bacon in his direction and it knocks into Soul's head. He caws in aggravation but accepts the offering regardless because his empty stomach is gnawing, demanding any form of sustenance no matter how questionable Wes's cooking can be. "Eat. Greasy food is good for hangovers."
Soul devours the plate like a man starved. "Thanks Mom," he says between mouthfuls.
"Mom wouldn't have let you in the house. You'd be puking your guts up at some seedy motel." He raises a valid point; the Evans Matriarch has zero tolerance for alcohol abuse, late night partying, or general screwing off - all incentives that founded this little bachelor pad they'd forged on their independence and Wes's expensive dancer salary. They love their mother - she's just a prude.
"Kiss the cook?" Wes blinks petulantly as he dumps the greasy pan haphazardly into the sink before presenting his cheek with a coy smile.
"Hell no - mmrgh ," Soul mumbles inaudibly, mouth full of bacon, and it's then that his phone vibrates in the back pocket of his pants. He reaches for it blindly, lidded eyes registering Black Star's name before swiping to the shortly worded message.
get ready to pay up scrub
Six words that spell out his impending doom. The text is followed by a string of obnoxious sunglass emojis and Soul swallows hard before collapsing once again to the granite countertop, splaying his limbs across the surface in a position of defeat. He can't win today.
"That our lovely mothership trying to hail you?"
"Worse," he utters, lips pressed against the counter, too abashed to meet Wes's eyes for the next string of ass kissing words. "I need your help."
There's a clatter by the sink followed by a singular syllable of breathy laughter. Wes mimes a picture frame with his thumbs and forefingers. "Hold up a second, I need to pause this moment and absorb it into my bloodstream."
Soul groans and bangs his head against the granite repeatedly because he can't recall ever screwing up this badly in his entire life. "Just listen, jesus fuck. Any chance I could bum a thousand off of you? I'll love you forever and do the dishes for a wholeyeeeaar ," he sing-songs, voice uncharacteristically bright, though his words are shadowed with unbridled desperation.
Wes tsks, looking thoroughly unimpressed. "What's this about? I'm not going to support your dirty weeb habits so you can drool over overpriced anime dolls."
"First of all - that figure was Gordon Freeman who is a character from a videogame that has jack shit to do with anime, and secondly, I - don't get mad okay - I kind of made a bet that I'd show up with a date to Black Star's Halloween party."
There's a good ten seconds of silence where Wes's face morphs from squinty eyed annoyance to complete utter exasperation and he looks so much like their father in that moment that Soul instinctively cringes away. "And you have to pay him a whole grand if you don't? Oh my god, I'm never letting you drink again."
"What do I do ?"
"Either find a girl or get screwed over, you're on your own for this one little bro. You have to learn to live with your intoxicated decisions, it's part of being an adult."
Soul bleeds onto the tiled floor and curls into a semblance of the fetal position. Wes's fur-matted child takes advantage of his despair and licks at the bacon grease that stains his cheeks. "Fucking fuck me." There's no way he can grovel at Black Star's feet, begging for an outlet to this contract. He'd get a spittle-pervaded laugh straight to his face and a kick to his shins for good measure - bets were binding, sober minded or otherwise.
Wes is thumbing through that magazine again, like Soul isn't having a national crisis on the dirty kitchen floor. "Y'know if you're really desperate, there's people you can pay to hold your hand and stroke your ego and it wouldn't even cost you an entire month's worth of paychecks."
Soul aptly shakes his head, but then remembers Wes can't see him from his vantage point. "I'm not hiring a call girl."
"Nah man. Holiday SO's. Look it up on Craigslist, their primary function is to put a plug on overbearing parents, but I bet you could find one willing to follow you around a party for a few hours."
He's already thumbing the term into his phone's search engine, summoning a slew of results and of course there are, this is the fucking internet, a world where the effort of dating is spared at the simple expense of a monetary trip to the grocery store.
The prospect of potential salvation causes him to sit up, and he peeks at Wes over the edge of the island. "This is a legit thing? People do this?"
"Mmm hmm. A fake date, it's an answer to all your prayers if you ask me."
:::
This girl is cute in that nextdoor neighbor, best friend's sister kind of way, if the picture on her ad is anything to go by. Messy pigtails and an oversized hoodie and big green eyes. Local too, and her hourly fee of fifteen dollars isn't going to bankrupt him. His finger dances around the reply button for a day, internally debating whether or not to just screw it and come to terms with the fact that he's a desperate, pathetic loser.
It's a little before midnight when he finally gets the balls to shoot her an email - short and to the point. He's in the area and interested in her offer and he'll pay the money up front. Catfishing, of course, is always a viable risk, so he orchestrates a Skype session to rule out the very likely possibility of his potential date being a neckbearded forty-year-old man.
Her name is supposedly Maka, and she's cool with it. They exchange Skype names, internally cringing in self deprecation when he has to physically type out souleater and still refrain from seeming like some sort of a creep. She's makachop, the same as her email, which is only slightly less humiliating than his own user. Middle School aged Skype names are where one's dignity goes to die.
He spends the morning of their impending call smoothing down his ornery hair, and even goes so far as to borrow one of Wes's high end button downs that probably costs more than his car - much to his brother's smug satisfaction - but the nerves don't really kick in until he's sitting impatiently through the manic call chime, mouse hovering over the red hang up button and ready to click at the first sign of Mountain Dew or a body pillow. Wes is blessedly at a gig and and he's positioned at the kitchen island so her first impression isn't of all the punk rock band posters he's plastered his room with.
He can't help but breathe a sigh of relief when the girl from the picture comes into fruition. She gives him a chipped nail polish wave that calms his bouncing knee, soothing whatever spasm his muscles are having into some form of complacency.
"Hi-" he blurts.
"Hey there-"
The lag overlaps their greetings, and he chuckles awkwardly before probing her on with a hand gesture. Not cool.
"Sorry. You go first."
She clears her throat and tilts her head, left pigtail fanning across her cheek and making her look all of thirteen. Fuck, how old is this girl anyway? "So I'm Maka."
His sporadic anxiety-fueled knee picks back up again at full throttle - because her voice is nice, really nice despite the distortion of his speakers - and there's a wave of relief that his laptop's webcam cuts him off mid-chest. "Soul. Nice to meet you - or uh, see you at least. Sorry about all this but you know, I don't want to end up on Dateline."
Her laugh is even nicer, a contradiction to her high cheery voice, throaty and low, and it echoes residually around the kitchen walls. "Not all murderers give off creeper vibes. I could have charisma out my ass and still keep a small arsenal of polished weapons mounted on my wall." Hearing this tiny pigtailed girl cuss is like seeing a teacher out of school - impressive and altogether unthought of until you actually bare witness to it.
He takes in the pink wallpaper behind her and scoffs. "Next to all your Hello Kitty couture? How old are you anyway?"
Green eyes narrow and he gets the sense that he's probably treading on some thin ice here. "Twenty-two. And a half," she sniffs. Same as him.
"Going on six."
She hmphs indignantly, scrunching up her face, making her look, if all possible, even younger. "Whatever Soul Eater , I don't even want to know where that comes from." Alright maybe he was asking for that bit of demoralization, suddenly wanting to go back in time and uppercut his trademarked edgy fourteen year old counterpart. Maka picks at a nail before continuing. "So what's the occasion?"
"Halloween Party, next week." He scratches at his chin for something to do with his hands. "It's for a bet."
"Ouch." She shakes her head with pity he's not sure is feigned.
A gratuitous silence falls between him that he feels compelled to fill, however awkwardly. "So uh - what do you do? Besides posing as a pretend girlfriend for the desperate and needy."
"Full time student, getting my M.S.," she answers promptly. "I don't have time to be a serial killer."
"You're already on your masters? What the hell are you?"
She sits a little straighter at that. "A magnet school graduate who's studied her ass off her whole life. What about you?"
He stutters, hand moving from his chin to the back of his neck. He's got nothing on this child prodigy egghead. Admittedly pretty. He hates himself. "Distinguished pizza deliverer. Sometimes I play sudoku when the internet's out?"
"Unbelievable." Her grin is cheeky as she pauses to check her screen for what he assumes is the time. He takes advantage of her distraction to gauge a brief view of the room behind her - tidy, pastel, an army of plushies completely dominating the quilted bedspread. There are worse hobbies. "I have class in twenty-minutes but we can meet some place to discuss the details. I'll message you later?"
"What kind of details?"
"How we met. What we like about each other. You know-" She sticks her tongue out childishly. "Couple stuff."
His stomach flips, ridiculously so. "Gross."
"Thoroughly disgusting," she agrees with mock sincerity before hastily adding, "Also I get to do the breaking up." The corner of her mouth curves up to a smile he subconsciously mirrors, and if he stares at her miniature Skype portrait even after they've disbanded the call, no one but that stupid dog has to know.
