Timeline note: Set right after Mike "declares war" on Sulley.

Dedication: This one goes to Cytisinth, who lovingly dubbed my first description of this concept "The Great Dorm Room Break-In of 1987."

Who did that guy think he was?!

Mike was silently fuming to himself on his way back to his dorm building. That Sullivan character really was something else! Deciding for himself who could make it in the program and who could not! Mike did not have to take that kind of condescension from someone who thought he could even begin to comprehend a field of study as vast and complex as Scaring without even bothering to learn it!

People were staring at him when he passed them, but he ignored them - as long as they did not stand in his damned way! Everyone kept shoving him - okay, or maybe he was shoving them. With one particular collision, his hat was almost knocked off, but he clutched onto it with both hands, unwilling to lose it yet again.

He knew he should probably pay more attention to where he was going and whom he was inconveniencing by doing it, but he really could not care less right now. He only became truly conscious of his surroundings when he thought he heard his name being called.

"Mike, Mike! There you are!"

He could not be sure in the relative darkness, but he thought he spotted Randy in the middle of a crowd of people. And sure enough, his friend now pushed past a few monsters in order to come over. "Mike, oh my goodness, where've you been? Something terrible's happened!"

Randy always sounded a little whiny, but this was closer to panicking, and Mike was on edge instantly. "What's wrong?" he asked, unable to keep the alarm out of his voice.

"Someone broke into our dorm room!" Randy wailed.

Mike stared at him. "What?!" Heavens, was that his fault? Had he forgotten to close the door behind himself in his haste to get his hat back from the pig? "What do you mean, broke into our room?" Technically, that idiot had broken into their room, too.

"It's awful!" Randy exclaimed and, taking his hand to yank him along, started running over to the entrance. Mike would not really have needed to be dragged - he knew the way, and he was actually a little faster than Randy was - but he dared not reject the contact. It felt ridiculously good to know that Randy was already comfortable enough with him for that sort of thing.

Of course, the gesture was a bit suicidal once they were on the stairs, but they did make it to their floor and into their room without injury. Once inside, Randy let go of his hand to wildly gesticulate with all of his own that were not currently in use as feet. "See? I think they were looking for something on your side!"

Mike did see, but the chaos was exactly as he had left it. His slightly misplaced bed, the carpet Sullivan had slipped on, the shelf he had knocked over, Mike's things all over the floor… he was not quite sure where the problem was. "Uh… was something stolen?"

"I don't think so, but the mess!" Randy was throwing up his topmost arms in frustration, while the set below them was twiddling nervously. Mike could not help but to stare. The duplicity never ceased to amaze him, so he almost missed Randy's words.

The mess? Oh, right. He had not been there. "Ah, don't worry about that, Randy," Mike chuckled, "that was just the pig." Actually, he was not entirely sure if he was talking about Fear Tech's mascot or Sullivan there.

"The pig?" Randy repeated, and then his eyes widened. "Wait, you mean you knew about this?"

Mike rubbed the back of his head a little sheepishly. "Yeah, sorry. I hadn't considered that you'd be worried." He was not sure why that had slipped his mind. Not that he could have told Randy about it before this moment, of course, but at least he should have thought about his friend's reaction.

Randy hesitated a bit, then frowned. "What happened?"

Mike sighed. He had not liked these events the first time around, so recounting them was probably not going to be much fun, either. Still, he supposed Randy deserved to know what had happened to their room. "Sullivan came in here, chasing Fear Tech's mascot," he explained while going over to at least right the rug. "You know, the big, idiot showoff from Scaring 101?" There, that looked a little better, and with a small push, the bed was also back in its place right at the wall. "He was the one who made this mess, and I would've cleaned it up immediately, but I had to chase after the pig, too; it stole my hat."

Randy's frown deepened. "Mike, that can't be true! He caught their mascot, yeah, but over at the party that was going on in the ROR house! People were talking about it!"

Mike felt a bit of irritation flaring up inside of him. He had caught that pig, not Sullivan! "Yeah, well, he was in here first!" he snapped. "He either lost it or he had absolutely no sense of direction!" Or both.

Randy scowled at him. "I'm just saying it as I heard it," he pointed out.

Mike tried to calm down. It was not Randy's fault that Sullivan got the credit for what he had accomplished. "Anyway, if you'll just lend me a hand to get the shelf back up, I'll take care of my stuff."

"Ah, but I can help!" Randy argued, and it sounded a little as if that had only just occurred to him.

Together, they managed to right the shelf. Little Mikey had gotten squashed under one of the boards, but he seemed to be okay. A few of Mike's books had gotten dogears, though, and he swore under his breath each time he found one. He had always taken the utmost care of his textbooks, and then Sullivan just had to waltz in here and…

"Well, it could have been worse!" Randy observed while he put a few books back into place and almost squashed Little Mikey with them. "At least nothing's broken!"

Mike threw a dirty look at him - had Randy not seen the state his books were in?! But his friend had already turned to sit down on his own bed.

"Anything out of order on your side?" Mike asked while he picked up more books and folders, because it felt like the polite thing to do.

"No," Randy answered, and the immediacy of his reply made it clear that he had previously checked on that. Why that irritated Mike, he was not sure.

It took him a while, but eventually, all of his possessions were neatly in order again. "And now we're locking the window!" he declared tiredly.

"We can't!" Randy argued at once. "We need to be able to open it if it gets too hot in here, or I'll…"

"Randy," Mike cut him off. "I was joking." After all, Randy had made it all too clear that regulating the temperature in their room was of immense importance to his health. Personally, Mike thought his friend could not have gotten a better roommate in that context; after all, he loved going by instructions and keeping things in order.

"Oh, right," Randy replied half-heartedly. He was about to say more, but then he frowned again. "What is it?"

Mike was staring at him. He thought he had seen something odd. "Randy, there's some sort of stain on your face. Something, er, creamy!"

Randy gasped, and immediately started rubbing his face as if his life depended on it. "I thought I'd gotten it all off!"

"Woah, easy!" Mike exclaimed. "You're gonna get it in your eye!" He rushed over to grab those two hands, but the set below that immediately pushed him away. "Randy, I'm just trying to help!"

All of a sudden, Randy seemed agitated. "I looked like this on the entire way back from the Frat Row!" he wailed.

Mike thought that was a bit of an overreaction, but his friend seemed truly bothered, so he tried taking Randy's mind off whatever had him so upset. "Oh, yeah, how was the party?"

"Don't ask!" Randy snapped, averting his gaze and crossing his topmost arms, but the hands below were twiddling their fingers again, so Mike dared conclude that the aggression was fake.

"That bad, huh?" he deadpanned before taking a step back to sit on his own bed and carefully place his hat on his nightstand. And then it came to him. "Oh, wait, you got something on your face at the party?"

"I'm not telling you that!" Randy insisted, refusing to even look at him.

Mike rolled his eye. "You do realize that I'll hear about it eventually, right?" It was always like that when those things happened. People could be pretty cruel about stuff like that.

Now Randy did look at him, his gaze full of apprehension. He did not answer the question, but he did not need to; even Mike had understood what that had sounded like to him.

"Oh, c'mon, Randy!" he prodded. "You can tell me!" It was not as if he had any intention of using that knowledge against the guy. Then he had an idea. "Look, we'll just declare this a 'fun free zone' for now, okay?"

Randy frowned. "Sounds lovely."

"Idiot!" Mike chuckled. "I mean as long as we have the fun free zone, you can say whatever you want and I will never use it to make fun of you. Never ever." Especially because he knew what it was like to fear that.

Randy perked up at the suggestion, but the pause immediately afterward still spoke of caution. "Promise?" he finally asked.

Now it was Mike's turn to frown. If he did not mean it, why would he have offered it? "Yeah. But it's vice versa, you can't make fun of me either."

Randy was still hesitating, but then, he gave a long and drawn-out sigh. "Someone, well, ruined my cupcakes," he mumbled.

"Oh, no!" Mike exclaimed before he could stop himself. "But you put so much effort into them!"

Randy blinked at him for a moment, but then, for some reason, smiled a little. "Well, yeah, but…" The smile vanished. "I was at the back entrance of the JOX house, talking to a few sorority sisters, and then, someone shoved me, and I lost my grip on the tray, and then they all flew up - the cupcakes, not the girls - and, and, well… they landed right on my face." He closed his eyes. "Go ahead. Laugh."

But Mike did not feel like laughing. Something about the way Randy had described this had triggered his memory. The back entrance of the JOX house - he had been there, too, riding that blasted pig! What if he had… "Oh, my gosh," he whispered.

Randy seemed confused. "Okay, it was bad, but not that bad."

"No!" Mike exclaimed, suddenly so upset that he jumped to his feet to pace up and down between their beds. "Randy, that… I think that…"

He could not say this, could he? He had finally found a true friend! Randy would hate him for this! But if he did not say anything and then Randy found out, it would be even worse! No, it was better to just fess up right away. So he raised his gaze to meet his friend's still deeply bewildered one. "I think… I think I was the one who shoved you," he said, and then closed his eye, wary of what was to follow.

There were a few seconds of silence in which he was sure Randy was about to end their friendship right here and now. But when his friend finally did speak, it sounded a bit too lighthearted for that. "Mike, what are you saying? You couldn't have, you weren't even at that party!"

Mike opened his eye again, and he wished he had not. While Randy did not seem exactly angry, the sudden suspicion almost felt worse.

"Not at first," Mike agreed. "But I told you, I needed to go after the pig, it had my hat, and when I got a hold of it, it ran off, and it was all I could do to hold on for dear life…"

Now the suspicion gave way to confusion again. "You're saying you rammed me - riding a pig?"

"Well… yeah," Mike agreed, even though it sounded a bit stupid, phrased like that. "I couldn't control where it was going. Randy, I, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to ruin your cupcakes!"

Randy scowled, and Mike wondered whether or not he was debating with himself about his answer. No, he had to be. It was probably more reasonable to wonder which side he was leaning to.

"It's okay, I suppose," he finally muttered. "You didn't mean to." But the words were in stark contrast to his still negative expression.

"I'm serious, Randy!" Mike insisted, a little more forcefully this time. If Randy was willing to forgive him, then maybe all was not lost. Not yet, anyway. "I had no idea you were there, and I…"

"It's okay," Randy repeated.

"I crashed into so many people!" Mike babbled on, and he could actually hear his voice starting to shake. "I had no idea one of them was you, and I couldn't…"

"Would you just shut up!" Randy bellowed, startling him into silence. "I said it was okay, so would you just drop it?"

Had he ruined it now? "I… yeah. Sorry. I, I mean, not about… I mean about rambling. Sorry."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Randy scoffed, waving one of his hands in dismissal.

At a loss for what to do, Mike sat down on his bed again and averted his gaze, now twiddling his fingers himself. He must have picked that up from Randy.

There was silence now, and judging by the words alone, it should have been companionable. But Mike could feel that Randy was still angry about something. It must be something else, right? He had said he was not angry about the cupcakes. Was it that they had landed on his face? That must have been humiliating!

Finally, Randy spoke up again. "So you did go to the party."

Mike looked back up at him, blinking. "No, I didn't."

Randy rolled his eyes. "Did you chase the mascot there or not?"

Mike could not help but to frown at the implied accusation. "Yeah, but I didn't 'go to the party.' I wanted my hat back!"

There was a small pause before Randy snorted. "Oh, I see," he said, and it sounded disapproving.

Mike raised his hands in some sort of defensive gesture. "Wait, wait, Randy, you can't have it both ways! You can't be angry with me for going and for not going!" Even though he was not entirely sure why Randy would be angry with him for going. Was he not the one who had asked him to?

At least Sullivan had had the decency to explain himself. He was not sure where the thought had come from, but it felt just too difficult trying to keep up with Randy's moods when he was, well, moody.

Randy did not answer. Instead, he let himself fall back onto his bed, on top of the blanket, which looked a bit difficult because his tail was in the way. But Mike had seen him do it before, and Randy had perfected the act into one motion which looked so completely fluid that it almost seemed as if the tail was not there at all. "I'm tired!" he declared.

"You haven't looked at your books at all today," Mike pointed out. If Randy put off learning, he might fail the exam, and Mike really did not think he could bear the disappointment on his friend's face, should he…

"I'm tired!" Randy repeated waspishly. "If you wanna learn all through the night, though, be my guest, as long as you don't mess with the heating!"

Mike rolled his eye. Why did Randy always misunderstand what he said?

Still, it was not as if he had gotten anything done today, either; Sullivan and that stupid pig had made sure of that. "We can go over it together tomorrow," he offered timidly. This was not at all going like he wanted it to. It was so difficult to say the right thing to not get his friend mad at him.

"Whatever," Randy muttered, rolling over to face the wall. He did not bother to actually get under the blanket, but by now, Mike knew that it was actually snugger for him that way, even though it looked incredibly uncomfortable.

Feeling, for some reason, completely worn out, Mike went to turn out the light, then got under his own blanket and told himself to just fall asleep. Maybe things would look a little brighter tomorrow.

He wished he knew what he had actually done wrong. Or maybe it was not about him at all? Maybe Randy was just sad because of what had happened at the party. But for some reason, he got the feeling that Randy had been angrier about the apology itself than about what he had actually been apologizing for. Did that even make sense?

"'night, Mike," he suddenly heard Randy's grumpy voice float over.

At once, he felt himself tear up a little, but it was okay in the darkness, when no one could see. Oh, but wait, they were still in their fun free zone, so maybe it would even have been okay if Randy had seen.

"Goodnight, Randy," he replied, blinking away the tears, and then drew the blanket around himself for warmth.

What had he been worried about? Sure, they were not always in complete agreement, but it had to be that way in all friendships, right? You could not agree with someone all the time!

So this was proof that Randy did care about him, right? That much was obvious.