Tags: Eleanor x Trevor, Slow Build, Implied Sexual Content, Spoiler-Free for S1
A/N: I realize that the tags sound contradictory, but I swear there's a genuine relationship eventually one day in the mix. Hence, a slow build kickstarted by some under-informed screwing around.
Also, I had originally intended for this to not be a real multi-chapter fic and instead be a series of oneshots, but that's just not how it wanted to be written. The AU really works best as its own story rather than a series of interrelated oneshots. So this is your early warning that chapters will be long and infrequent.
Everything Isn't Okay; Why Would You Think It Was
Eleanor Shellstrop opened her eyes, blinking from the brightness of the room around her. Green letters stared back at her.
Welcome!
Everything is Okay!
The exclamation points seemed like they were trying too hard especially with how they were starting to peel away from the wall they were stuck to, but Eleanor shrugged rather than question the message. Everything did feel fine. She wasn't hungover. No bills loomed over her head. Her skin was clear. A little oily, she noted as she idly brushed her hair back into place, but overall not too bad. She couldn't complain.
The door to her left opened and a white-haired man stood in the entryway. He smiled at her and waved for her to stand. "Eleanor? I'm Michael. Come on in," he greeted her cheerfully. A smile of her own slid onto her face from how comfortable this all felt, and Eleanor walked toward the office.
A second voice barked out from inside. "Yeah, blondie. We don't have all day. Chop chop," they said. "I want to get out of here before another century finishes up."
Eleanor snorted when she spotted the other speaker. Compared with Michael's bowtie and suit combination, the other man's bleached jean jacket and pink shutter shades scorched even Eleanor's lack luster fashion sense. He had his feet up on a fastidiously clean desk and was thumbing through a manilla file folder. Eleanor allowed herself to be ushered into a chair opposing the desk, thanking Michael when he pulled the chair out for her.
"I told you we could have done this in your space if it was going to bother you so much," Michael grumbled. He hovered between both sides of the desk, unwilling to commit to either position. He didn't seem inclined to ask the other man to leave his chair despite wanting to.
"And deal with you bringing your good person vibes there? No thanks, Jabroni," the man sneered. He rolled his eyes at Eleanor as though she were in on the joke.
Michael folded his fingers and finally settled on leaning against the wall behind him. "Fine, Trevor, fine," he relented. "Can we just get through this as quickly as possible then?"
Eleanor glanced from one man to the other, feeling less and less okay than the wall had promised. "Let's do that," she suggested. "Let's move on and maybe explain to those now joining us what exactly is going on. Why am I back in the principal's office looking at positive affirmations stuck to the walls that are trying to make me a better person?"
"Too bad you didn't pay more attention to those back then. Well, not really. Then you might have skipped this whole part of the afterlife, and I would have been out another soul to torment until eternity runs out," Trevor said, sighing wistfully.
Eleanor blinked twice. "What's this now about the afterlife?" she squeaked. Her focus locked onto Michael, the more sane one. Surely he would explain away the crap coming from his counterpart.
The dapper man winced. "There are better ways to put it, but we might as well rip the bandage off now that it's just dangling there," he said.
"You died, dummy," Trevor interjected. "Get over the stunned doe-eye thing; it's not cute. I've seen it three-e-e-thousand times already." Eleanor fought to control her reaction, guilted by just how callous Trevor had been and unable to stomach the discomfort radiating from Michael. She settled on furrowing her brow and trying to remember if she'd been sick, dying, or otherwise ready to kick the bucket back on Earth. Suicide wasn't her bag. She didn't smoke three packs a day to pick up lung cancer. A blank nothingness sat in her recent memory.
A heavy hand on her shoulder broke through her thoughts. Michael was smiling apologetically down at her. "Do you need a minute to adjust?" he asked. His pitying tone and the sounds of Trevor fake retching had Eleanor shaking her head.
"No, I'm fine," she insisted. She wasn't fine or okay or any other better-than-bad adjective that her public school education had taught her. But she was not going to roll over and show that to these two strangers.
"Wanna know what did you in?" Trevor asked. He kicked his feet off the desk and leaned forward to leer at her. The movement sent his cologne - if it could be called that - cascading in her direction in a plume of bitter faux leather smell. He was baiting her and dammit if she wasn't falling right for it.
Eleanor crossed her arms and leveled her own sickly twisted grin in his direction. "Let me guess, from being so awesome the universe literally exploded," she snapped.
Trevor's laugh was bitter and devoid of actual, genuine joy. "Dream on, dirt bag. The world didn't even notice when you died," he said.
"Alright, alright. We are radically off plan now," Michael tittered near Eleanor's shoulder. "Later once you've calmed down I can have Janet show you your death if you'd like, Eleanor. But for now can we please just cover the basics?"
Trevor glared at Michael over the frames of his shutter shades. "You're such a buzzkill," he glowered. "You won't let me play with my new toy for even a minute." He slunk back against the chair which suited Eleanor just fine. She mirrored his posture, sticking out her tongue for good measure.
"Eleanor and the others aren't your toys," Michael insisted. He turned back to Eleanor and clapped his hands together.
"So, what I've been meaning to get to is that you're dead. Which is normally not a big deal - every human dies eventually and the system is used to that - but right now we're in sort of an administrative crisis."
Trevor cupped one hand around his mouth and mock whispered, "He means that the goodie-two-shoes royally screwed the pooch."
"Thank you, Trevor," Michael snarled. He tugged the bottom of his suit jacket into line and regained his composure. "Basically, well normally there are two paths that a recently departed soul like yourself will follow. Option A, you were a good person and will go to a good place as a reward for your actions. Option B, you were a bad person and will go to, well, a bad place for punishment."
Eleanor's stomach flipped. Eternal torment had been Trevor's threat. She'd screwed up. She landed herself in the bad place. Slumping in her chair, Eleanor covered her face with one hand. From behind her fingers, she said in a muffled voice, "That's it then, isn't it? I got option B, for 'boned.'"
"That's later," Trevor promised. If it was possible, Eleanor felt even worse as he leered at her behind his ridiculous sunglasses. "But no," he admitted finally. "You're not in the Bad Place. Or the Good Place. You're in Limbo. A place where we can't give you the torment you've been asking for all your life or the good things you might have earned."
Hope clawed at the despair in Eleanor's gut. Twenty-plus years of pragmatism kept her from listening to it. She hadn't moved from her slouched position nor had she uncovered her face. "And how long will I be here before moving on to… option A or B?" she asked.
Michael exhaled and lifted his hands. "That's the funny part. We just don't know. Until things are cleared up, you're just… in Limbo."
"Am I going to be by myself?" Eleanor peered cautiously through her fingers. It would be easy to be alone, even for a portion of eternity. No more shitty roommates or obnoxious phone calls from relatives who only wanted another ass in a chair - and present in the pile - at their baby shower.
"Oh goodness, no," Michael chuckled. "We've got quite a few people backlogged. No one murderous or criminal, oh ho! But anyone on the edge of paradise or punishment is being gathered here in Limbo."
Eleanor allowed herself to feel cautiously optimistic. She sat up straight and leveled her best wry smile at both men. "Then show me to wherever I can hang my hat, and I'll take it from there," she said. "I'm assuming there's free wifi?" If she had internet, she could survive anything. Even purgatory.
She had assumed for some reason that Limbo would be filled with a lot of grey, boring places. In reality though, it sure looked like Anytown, USA. Things were run down, but functional. Michael's office was in a stubby office park with an elevator that wheezed from one floor to another. It was adjacent to a shopping plaza packed with about a hundred mini-vans.
Eleanor bobber her head as they walked by. "Let me guess," she grumbled. "Heaven's got all the Maseratis and we're stuck with the soccer-mom-mobiles."
Her skin crawled as Trevor slapped her shoulder with his palm. "It's not heaven. And you're forgetting about all the scumbags in the Bad Place with me. What better torture than seeing someone else driving their favorite overcompensator around?" he crowed.
Eleanor rolled her eyes when he winked at her and promised to take her for a spin when she inevitably ended up down there with him. "Michael's going to lose you to me eventually. Get prepared for that."
They continued down the road into the residential section of town. Brick apartment buildings dwarfed smaller duplexes. Every few blocks there was a stretch of green grass and the occasional street food truck. Patting her pockets, Eleanor mourned the loss of her favorite wallet. And the cash she'd taken from the envelope that went around with the March Madness betting pool at work.
"There's no money here in Limbo," Michael explained when he noticed Eleanor's longing stare at the taco stand. "But nothing's all that great. Like I mentioned, you're not going to be tortured or rewarded here. Everything's just so-so."
That unfortunately made sense. It all had made sense in a twisted, messed up sort of way from the moment she'd first stepped into Michael's office. Eleanor stuck her hands into her pockets and continued after the two men. She'd come back later for the so-so tacos. "I'm sorry, I guess I still don't understand what the point of this is ultimately? Like, I'm here… just lingering until there's space available where I get to go?" she asked.
They made a sharp left turn, passing the nicer of the duplexes to approach the entryway of a towering, glassy skyscraper that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Eleanor's eyebrows jumped. Now this was a place she could get used to.
Michael held the door for her as Trevor trod on the heel of her sneaker. She hopped on one foot to fix the shoe that was now falling off. Neither man seemed to notice. Michael continued on to the bank of elevators, pushing the button. "Eleanor, try to keep up," he said cheerfully.
"You're pretty much right, though no final decision has been made on whether you or your fellow neighbors will be going-" he pointed upwards "-or-" downwards. The elevator dinged. "When there's space, the system will take into account your patience or impatience on top of your previous actions in life to determine where you end up. Making decisions like letting someone else go ahead of you in the queue for example can help your score."
"But delaying the inevitable because you're scared of the result is gonna hurt you," Trevor added. He popped a fresh piece of gum into his mouth, making full eye contact with both Eleanor and Michael as he refused to offer them one. Eleanor's mouth spontaneously dried out as the elevator began to carry them.
"Trevor," Michael said in a low tone. A threat. Or maybe it was a warning.
Trevor snarled and crossed his arms tightly. "You're not giving me an inch, are you?" he grumbled. Immediately the dry feeling vanished.
"Every inch matters when you don't have many, eh?" Eleanor remarked lightly. It was easier to make jokes rather than consider the vague rules of Limbo that they'd mentioned. An uncomfortable silence reigned over the tiny space until the doors slid open to reveal a long hallway. Michael pulled a key from his jacket pocket. His lips moved when he read the number on it silently to himself. Then he resumed his tour guide position ahead of the other two.
"Here's where you're going to be living while you wait," he said finally, stopping in front of number 08.
Eleanor's heart fell when she pushed open the door. Flipping the light switch barely made a difference as energy saving bulbs slowly awoke. It was difficult to see in the apartment even as the hallway light floated in; there weren't any windows. At first Eleanor thought the shades were just drawn, but as she rushed into the living room it became apparent that the dull green curtains were drawn across a plain, white-washed wall just for the illusion.
"It's a skyscraper, but I live in the basement?" she said, stunned.
The dull orange of the barely-glowing lights made it difficult to discern either man's expression. Eleanor threw her hands in the air rather than wait to listen to what either had to say. "You know what, it's fine. I'm over it. Like I said, just leave me here to wait."
That was Trevor's cue to leave. He kicked the front door as he exited with a final farewell of "later, douchebags." Michael hovered for a few moments longer to wring his hands a while more, but soon he too was gone.
Eleanor crashed onto the couch - at least the place was furnished - and stared at the ceiling. All the light fixtures were plain white coverings, giving the room a cheapskate feeling. A quick bounce on the couch cushions revealed a similar diagnosis there: also bargain bin.
Investigating the rest of her space revealed much of the same. Everything was the same light brown wood composite from the bedframe to her dressers to the cabinets. Her closet contained exactly two outfits that were variations on the blouse-and-pants combination she'd awoken in. "That's gonna change real quick," she muttered to herself. "I'm not spending eternity all dressed up when there are perfectly good sweatpants in the universe."
The fridge was just as scarcely stocked with eggs listed as literally "two days before expiration," some unmarked lunch meat, and the smallest cans of diet cola she'd ever seen. And no, it wasn't either name brand - just generic cola.
The phantom of Trevor's thirst trick lingered in the back of Eleanor's throat, and she cracked open a can before returning to the living room. Now the lights were almost at full charge and she noticed a book squarely centered on the coffee table.
"Living in Limbo - A Guide," it was called. Her interest piqued, Eleanor raised her eyebrows and sat down to skim through the book. The table of contents entry about a personal assistant caught her immediate attention, and Eleanor bypassed the other boring topics on how to calibrate language input or where the community center was.
Your time here will be immeasurable, but anything that you desire to while away the hours is just a wish away! Call Janet - your link to the mainframe of the afterlife - and she will provide you with boundless information.
Eleanor looked around the living room for a phone. The empty surfaces mocked her, much like the fake drapes had. "You've got to be forking kidding me," she grumbled under her breath. The realization of what had - or rather what hadn't - come out of her mouth derailed her present frustration.
"Why can't I say fork? What is wrong with this place?" Eleanor yelled at her ceiling.
A muffled reply came from above. "There's a swear filter! And thin walls, so shut up!" her neighbor called.
Swell. This was just forking fantastic.
Eleanor had skimmed briefly through the rest of the how-to guide, mostly out of boredom rather than genuine curiosity. That led her to discovering the television screen that could be summoned from thin air. Sure, the channels were things like Your Most Mediocre Birthdays and That Rerun You Forgot You'd Already Seen, but it was something to do. It was only the resurgence of hunger that caused Eleanor to venture out from her cave to rejoin the world around her.
The sun had gone down while she whiled away the hours on classic Scooby-Doo, the epitome of a show that she'd forgotten more about than remembered. Having lost track of time had also killed her chances of visiting any of the street vendors, something that only further annoyed her rumbling stomach.
If she wanted anything other than eggs, she would have to find her way back to the shopping center or whatever passed for a restaurant in Limbo. Her memory took her down what appeared to be the main road around the neighborhood, but after a solid ten minutes of walking, Eleanor was no longer convinced she'd taken the right turn. The apartments and condos had run out, but the shops here were all weird clothing boutiques for tall and slim women instead of anything edible.
"Shut up," she hissed to her stomach as it once again voiced its frustration at being filled with just diet soda.
"I beg your pardon? I didn't say anything to you!"
Eleanor tensed. Her head slowly turned and tipped up at the haughty woman leering down at her. She'd unintentionally stopped in front of the doorway of one of the shops and now stood in the way of someone leaving. "Wasn't talking to you either," Eleanor barked back.
The woman's lips parted in a perfect o. "Just because you're dead doesn't mean that you have to be rude," she sputtered before turning on her heel and marching off.
"Doesn't mean I have to be polite, you human flagpole!" Eleanor cried. A smirk danced on her lips as she watched the woman stumble at a dip in the sidewalk. One of her bags slipped from her hand, spilling her tissue-paper wrapped purchases. A punch of guilt gnawed at Eleanor's gut, joining the hunger there. Even worse, as she hovered uncomfortably the shop owner darted past her to help out the tall woman, shooting Eleanor an irritated look.
Well, that settled it. Someone was already helping so Eleanor was now off the hook. Before she changed her mind, she started off again down the road.
Walking two more blocks brought her to a coffee shop which seemed about as good as Eleanor was going to get. There was a line of course and they were out of french vanilla, but Limbo at least permitted paninis to still exist. The bit of char on the edge of her bread was well worth suffering through to finally shut her stomach up.
The coffeeshop did allow Eleanor to check out the people around her to see if she was the only one taking a while to adjust to the city. A few clusters of two or three people sat at the tables, talking about what they used to do in their old lives. However the loners still outweighed those social butterflies, filling up the remaining couches and wobbly tables.
"I know it wasn't the most ethically sourced on Earth, but is there still the chance to get almond milk here?"
Eleanor snorted coffee through her nostrils, a painful experience but not an unfamiliar one. At least five heads swiveled to stare at her until she glared them into submission. She didn't even have to give them a good "fork off." Ugh, she was even censored in her thoughts.
Her misfortune continued as Mr. Almond Milk meandered his way around the coffeeshop and zeroed in on her high top table. He waved at her with just his fingertips. "Excuse me, hi. There aren't any more seats left. Would you mind terribly if I joined you?" he asked. "My name's Chidi."
Looking into her mug, Eleanor regretted not getting a to-go cup. Her coffee - what hadn't gone up her nose - was mostly full. She sighed. "Well typically I'd tell you where to stuff it, Chewie, but you might cry. And I don't want to break the 'don't steal the mug' rules here on the first day. So sure, sit away," she drawled.
"It's Chidi," he muttered under his breath. The man did end up sitting though, surprising Eleanor. She was certain the blow off should have worked.
Picking at the crumbs and fallen bits of lettuce from her panini, Eleanor avoided making eye contact with the man. Just a few more sips and she could go back to ignoring everyone else in Limbo in limited comfort of her apartment. "So, what'd you do?" Chidi asked. Eleanor blinked at him.
"Excuse me?" she said.
He gestured with his mug. "In the real world. While you were alive. What did you do?"
Alright, Michael had promised that Limbo didn't have axe murderers, but clearly there were still psychos. Eleanor shifted to fold her hands on the table in front of her. "I sold fake medicine to senior citizens," she said simply.
It was Chidi's turn to blink in surprise. 1-to-1, tie game. Eleanor tilted her head and plastered on the widest smile that she could muster. "What did you do? Maybe we can be best friends, Cheeto." She misspoke his name on purpose this time, just to reach that higher level of jack-ass she knew she was capable of.
"I taught ethics and moral philosophy," he replied. It was automatic, reflexive. What had been his domain of uncomfortable small talk was now Eleanor's sandbox of manipulation.
She nodded. "That's cute. Yeah, no so I'm gonna actually make the choice for you and say hard pass on the whole Limbo BFF dealio. Enjoy your coffee, don't worry about leaving, but it might be best for your pearly white eternal soul to just buzz off next time," Eleanor said. It was readily apparent to her that while her life might be in question for where it would end up after Limbo, dorkasaurus here had never wronged another person in his life. Other than sitting at strangers' tables at coffee shops.
Her coffee went down in a final, too-large gulp that hurt her throat as it went down. The pained expression on her face mixed with her fake smile until Eleanor exited the shop. Her mug and plate had still been on the table with Chidi, but the goody two-shoes would probably bus it for her.
Eleanor stormed her way back to her apartment, shoving past anyone who didn't move quick enough out of her way. It wasn't very patient of her and would probably take a few more points off of her score - if that was even how the confusing system even worked - but in the end it made her feel good to cruise along on autopilot without thinking.
Once inside, Eleanor slumped against the fridge. By never finding the market, she'd missed out on getting something decent to drink. Like alcohol.
"You're really good at making friends," Trevor teased. His voice came out of nowhere, and Eleanor shot up into the air.
"Forking heck, where did you come from you little weasel?" she hissed. Peering out through the gap in the wall for the breakfast bar, Eleanor squinted into the slowly brightening room. Sure enough, she could just spy the glint of his teeth as he leaned against the back of her couch.
He refused to step any closer to the better lit kitchen area. "Weasel? Ouch. You wound me. Maybe this is why you don't have any friends," he continued to taunt. Something else glinted and Eleanor heard the sound of liquid sloshing.
"I don't have any friends because everyone that I knew is still alive," Eleanor snapped. "I had plenty of friends before." She walked around the half wall to join him in her own living room. Once she was closer Eleanor recognized what he was holding.
"Where did you get beer?" she breathed.
"Uh, the store? Geeze, dipshit, get a grip. You're dead, not lobotomized," Trevor laughed. Still, he extended the bottle towards her in a genuinely friendly gesture. Eleanor took it cautiously, scouring the label for anything that might indicate it wasn't what it appeared to be. "Rules say I can't hurt you. Drink up."
Eleanor eyed both Trevor and the beer one final time before knocking back a long draught. It was cheap, warm, and all that Eleanor wanted in that moment. "Sweet baby Jesus, how can I already have missed beer that much?" she whined. Comfort came from Trevor not seizing the bottle back immediately, and Eleanor took another, smaller sip.
"So what are you doing here? I thought you'd be long gone now that I'm all oriented to this place. Found a coffee shop and everything. Plus you don't seem like the check in and see how you're doing kind of guy," she said. Leaning against the breakfast bar, Eleanor didn't quite relax. Michael was a good guy who earnestly had wanted her to acclimate easily to Limbo. Trevor just wanted her to get sent to the Bad Place as quickly as possible. She'd trust him alone about as far as she could throw him.
Trevor made a face rather than answering her question directly. "Technically orientation isn't over yet. There's one more big town hall bullshit meeting that Michael wanted to throw to answer any lingering questions," he said.
Gesturing to the coffee table, Eleanor said, "There's a perfectly good guide book here. And if they'd bothered to put a phone in place, I'd be able to call that Jeanie lady to give me all the knowledge of the universe."
That slick smile returned to Trevor's face, unsettling Eleanor. It gave the man a shark-like expression: hungry and soulless. Or toothy at least. Soulless seemed a harsh descriptor, even for the usual jerks that Eleanor associated with. Either way, it wasn't appreciated, not when Eleanor suspected that Trevor was more than just the unassuming douchebag he appeared to be visually. "If you don't want to go, we can just stay in and watch something. We can steal your neighbor's HBO and watch the end of that dragon and titties show," he said, eyebrows raising a little too eagerly.
Eleanor voiced her disgust but still wound her way past Trevor to sit on the couch. "First off, I don't watch softcore porn until the fourth date," she said only half-joking. There had been one girl who had been really desperate to get her into the mood any time they ended up at her place.
"Secondly, why are you latching on to me? There're like a thousand other apartments here which means a thousand other miserable SOBs to subject to your dumb face. And third, you're telling me other people get HBO and I'm stuck with Boomerang?" Eleanor complained.
Trevor stepped over the back of the couch, getting dirt into Eleanor's couch cushions in the process. "No I meant neighbor-neighbors," he explained unhelpfully. He gestured around him vaguely. "One of the other neighborhoods. Here, I'll just do it." The screen for the tv rose up and flickered to a settings menu. Under parental controls, he tapped in a passcode too quickly for Eleanor to dream of copying. Either way, she was certain she saw some weird-ass characters flying on the screen that weren't in the standard alphabet she knew.
"Shh, you don't have this," he said with a wink. Flipping back to the channel selection, Eleanor surged forward in her seat as she saw the promised HBO along with Cancelled Childhood Cartoons and Unaired SNL Shorts as options.
Gratitude spilled out before Eleanor could think about who she was thanking. Trevor nudged her with his elbow before navigating to the show he'd suggested. "It pays to be bad, you know," he said smugly.
The way he said it along with the not-so-subtle creep of his arm along the back of the couch should have been a massive, red flag to Eleanor. Except she was tired of overthinking the motivations of the man next to her or of any person besides herself. Especially herself. She was dead, that was it. All she had now was a questionable length of time in Limbo before she either got true happiness - which seemed pretty unlikely - or absolute misery for the rest of her existence.
She finished off the beer while the recap from the previous season played out. Trevor pulled a six pack from somewhere next to him and held out another bottle for her to take. So Eleanor leaned into the easy road that was laid out for her. Just for this evening, she told herself. The possessive grip of Trevor's warm hand on her shoulder was easy to ignore, as was the tiny voice in the back of her mind that thought maybe skipping out on orientation was just as dumb as it had been in college.
The tiny voice was annoying. Trevor had hilarious commentary during the boring political segments of the show. And his breath was hot on her neck when whispering disgusting, selfish promises to her when the vodka they'd switched to finally convinced her that it was fine to haul herself onto his lap to attack that jawline and paw open his jeans.
After all, Eleanor was dead. Might as well get some.
Hangovers still existed in Limbo. As did nausea. And ridiculously cold bathroom linoleum even in what appeared to be late summer. Eleanor spent a chunk of her morning venerating the porcelain gods until she wrangled her stomach into line. Someone in the universe had taken pity on her and the medicine cabinet had a barebones collection of bandages and ibuprofen. Two pills, a few eggs, and a diet cola later and Eleanor was as good as new.
She noticed the envelope under her door as she was dumping dishes into the sink to deal with later. It contained an invitation with perfumed paper and an honest to god RSVP card. Eleanor was tempted to chuck it in the trash with the eggshells, but the location gave her pause. It was being held in the penthouse of the building.
Her hand hovered over the garbage can, contemplating again whether it was worth it to attempt to socialize with the other maybe-damned. It would be better than sitting around waiting for Trevor to booty call again, Eleanor decided. The warm light of still-no-forking-daylight made her decision the previous night feel desperate and pointless.
"Just like any good Shellstop one night stand," she grumbled under her breath to herself. The invitation went on top of the fridge, though Eleanor still threw out the RSVP card. The event was "This Evening" so it didn't really make sense to RSVP at all.
She had to flip the bathroom light on a few minutes before she wanted to actually take her shower. If anything, the apartment lights looked like they had actually gotten darker since the previous day. The shower was barely tolerable and Eleanor was in and out.
Checking her watch after getting dressed in the red version of yesterday's outfit, Eleanor groaned. It was already quarter to noon. She would need a good chunk of time to set aside for finding the elusive shopping center on top of her growing list of errands to run for the day. Groceries, toiletries that smelled better than boring cotton, and now an outfit for a snobby, formal event.
She had her work cut out for her.
"Human flagpole!"
"Rude… person?" Eleanor darted through the throng of people to the single familiar face that had literally stood out among the crowd. She'd been at the penthouse party for twenty minutes now, barely clinging to a decent mood only by the grace of the wine she'd managed to snag from a passing drinks tray.
She stopped before the woman she'd run into before, her fake smile replaced by an uncomfortable grimace. "Yeah, that was a joke. Ha! So funny," Eleanor lied. "Hey, so how did you hear about this lame party? Do you live in the building, too? I'm in the forking basement."
The woman went through a series of rapid-fire emotions before settling on a placid expression. "This is my party. And my apartment," she explained. "I'm Tahani Al Jamil. It said so on the invitation and the front door."
Eleanor's eyes widened as she took refuge at the bottom of her wine glass. Strike two with the human flagpole. "Let me try that again," she said once she'd finished her wine. "This party was lame because I just can't get into anything until I've met the host. And now I have! How about that. Now I can go and mingle with all the great people here: our fellow neighbors. Who all have windows."
"If that's a joke, I'm afraid I just am not following," Tahani said with a frown. "You haven't told me your name yet either, neighbor." Eleanor couldn't believe this. First coffee shop nerd and now this Amazonian princess. No one knew how to take a blow off.
She stuck out her hand and grimaced her way through the handshake and introduction. "I guess I really missed out in the whole apartment lottery," Eleanor commented idly once they were again standing in silence. Tahani laughed at that.
"Weren't you paying attention last night?" she asked. When Eleanor could only shake her head in confusion, Tahani's face dropped once again to surprise. "Oh you're serious. You don't know then."
Eleanor looked around them both for a moment to see if someone else could let her in on the big mystery. "I don't know what I don't know, so if you could just come out with it, that'd be fan-forking-tastic," she said impatiently.
Tahani gathered Eleanor's hands into her own, which was made even more uncomfortable by the wine glass she was hoping to get refilled. "Michael spoke to the entire neighborhood. The queue is going to start moving soon," she explained.
"Queue being the fancy British version of line, got it. Isn't that a good thing? We want to get out of Limbo," Eleanor said.
"Well of course we do, but… well you don't want it to be moving if you're down in the basement units."
"Why not? It's just an apartment," Eleanor insisted. "If it wasn't just a space to sit in, they would have said something." Panic fluttered in her stomach.
Tahani's face held so much pity in it, Eleanor could vomit right then and there. And it had nothing to do with the worry forming knots with her intestines. Nothing at all. "They did say something. At Orientation. And in the manual. Eleanor, your apartment represents your relative point values," Tahani explained.
"I devoted my life to charity work, so, well it's only a matter of time before I get to move on to the Good Place," she gushed. "But if you're down in the basement and you don't even have a window… well I can't imagine that's very good news for you."
The room was spinning. Eleanor muttered some kind of apology to Tahani and forced her way to the door-slash-elevator that led from the penthouse down to the rest of the apartments. The sensation of falling only made Eleanor feel worse. Regardless of it not actually being the afterlife from all the stories, it only drove her all the more anxious descend from the heavenly penthouse down to her personal hell.
Leaning on her apartment door, a fresh six pack in hand and a grin more twisted than her bedspings, was Eleanor's own personal demon. "You look terrible," he said by way of hello.
"You," she hissed. Having something to focus her confusion and frustration on actually helped to center herself, and the hallway stopped spinning in Eleanor's peripheral vision. She stormed down the hall to jab Trevor in the chest.
"You thought you could keep me from finding out that the line's moving? That I'm just a few days away from spending an eternity suffering while you swagger around like the dirtbag you are?" Eleanor snarled.
Trevor didn't even bother to pretend to not understand what she was talking about. "What, I'm supposed to be sorry for that? Fuck no," he scoffed.
Eleanor shoved him out of the way and tried to leave him in the hall. She couldn't keep his foot out of the doorway and that was all that he needed to worm his way in.
"You're mad now, but listen, listen," he insisted. The earnesty in his voice made Eleanor turn to listen. Trevor held up his palms in surrender. "If it had worked, you wouldn't have even known about the chance to score up and out of here. Then you wouldn't have gotten caught up in all this false hope bullshit."
"Score up and out of here? What the fork are you talking about? And why can you say fork but I can only say fork?" she roared.
Trevor raked a hand through his hair and swore once more, potentially just to twist the knife all the more. "Relative dampening. You can hear everyone else swearing but because you really want to swear, you can't. And why didn't I just keep my mouth shut! Ugh, moron," he growled. Turning, Trevor held up a finger.
"Right, here's what we're going to do. The rules say that you can ask and I have to answer about the stupid bullshit because you don't know. I thought keeping you from the Q&A would have worked but that wasn't enough. Here's the fast and dirty version - I know you like it that way." Even while angry at things Eleanor didn't understand, Trevor was still disgusting.
"Limbo. Halfway between the Places. Not just for waiting, you can earn points or lose points. The better a person you are, the more you get rewarded, yadda yadda, that's why your pretty minx upstairs has such nice digs. You were a dirtbag and did some more dirtbag shit even while here - present company included - so your place is fairly terrible," he explained. "It's a weird system. I didn't vote for it, but here we are. I much prefer concrete numbers."
A golden stopwatch materialized out of thin air in his hand. Eleanor stepped away until her back hit the hallway closet behind her. She'd refused to acknowledge the weird way that Trevor just happened to pull another drink from next to him last night. Seeing it in front of her forced Eleanor to recognize that the man in front of her was more than just a human being and that they weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto.
He dogged her footsteps, slipping once more into her personal space with little regard for her comfort. "Another present for you, though I think this is more fun for me than the tv channels were for both of us. This has your place in the list and your point total. Red is bad. Green is good. I think that about covers it," Trevor said.
Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief as she pried open the golden watch. Her place in line was in the thousands and, as of right now, her point total was a light green 167. Trevor slapped himself on the forehead. "I'm so sorry, one last dealio," he said. "I forgot to activate that thing. It's still on pre-Limbo points." He snapped his fingers dramatically.
The counter for the line didn't change, but Eleanor's breath caught as the green numbers ticked down, down, down. It ended in red now reading -68. Trevor cupped her chin, trying and failing to drag her attention back to him. "Sorry it's not sixty-nine," he cooed. "We'll just have to try harder next time."
Then he left her to stand alone in the hallway, slipping through her door with a final cruel comment. "You're not in the mood tonight, so I'll come back some other night. Bring back wasted Eleanor. She was a hell of a lot more fun than moody Eleanor," he called.