Timeline note: Set during the night before the Scare Games final.
Note: I watched my DVD to death, but Sulley did not touch the controls during his own turn, so he must have done this beforehand.
Asleep, Sulley's experience had told him by now, seemed to be the only state in which Mike would ever shut up.
He was not sure why the little guy always had to talk at a rate of about eight words per second, as if he thought something bad was going to happen as soon as there was even a moment of silence. Whatever the reason, the habit had used to seriously get on Sulley's nerves. Back in the day, he had just wanted the guy to close that damn mouth already. Tonight, though…
Tonight, he desperately wished for Mike to hold him back.
Heaving a deep sigh, Sulley reached for the doorknob of their bedroom door, but lowered his hand and turned his head around to the bunk bed yet again. Mike was still fast asleep, though - it always took him a while to drift off, but once he had managed, there was almost no means of waking him before morning.
Closing his eyes in distress, Sulley rested his head against the door for a second. He was not ready to do this. He should not even be considering doing it. But he knew, as well as he knew his own name, that it was necessary.
They would lose. There was no denying the truth. Mike had been chattering away about how they would beat the RORs, had gotten the rest of the team all fired up as well, but in reality, there was no way they could do it. Hardscrabble was right - every member of the team would have to give a top performance, would have to prove that they were scary. And that, in fact, was the crux of it all.
Mike was not scary.
Sometimes, Sulley wondered how the guy even managed to teach them all that stuff, even while it was so glaringly obvious that he himself was so bad at the actual Scaring business. How could they learn from someone who was not good at what he was teaching? People kept pointing and laughing at Mike when they saw him struggling with the subject, and as much as Sulley hated himself for it, he could understand them. For crying out loud, Mike had a stuffed animal sitting on that shelf over there, and the thing made him even smaller and more childlike in Sulley's eyes than he was to others. How was that scary in any sense of the word?
Mike would fail. He would fail utterly and completely, and then he would have to leave the school and, worse, would blame himself for crushing the dreams of his teammates. None of them would be in the Scaring program, and this would all have been for nothing.
An involuntary shiver ran across Sulley's back. If he did not get back into that program, he could never show his face around his father again. He had been so happy to finally leave home, to get into a prestigious program and have the prospect of a well-respected job on the horizon. He had sworn to himself to never return, to finally free himself of his father's influence, to get his own place and never have to look back even once.
And then he had blown it.
He did not delude himself - as much as Mike had been involved in that incident as well, none of it would have happened if it had not been for Sulley's deliberate provocation. And even without it, he would still have known next to nothing about the subject and would have failed miserably in the end-of-semester exam, also resulting in him being kicked out of the program.
No, he himself was to blame, so he himself would have to fix the problem.
In a sudden bout of determination, Sulley grabbed the doorknob and turned it. He did not look back - he was too afraid that the sight of Mike would glue him to the spot yet again.
The door creaked when he opened it, and he cursed himself for forgetting that it always did that when opened slowly. He froze, listening in on the silence of the dark house, trying to determine if anyone was awake. There was no sound, though, except for a soft snore from behind him. Then again, it was half past two in the morning, so even if someone had woken up, it was unlikely that they would come to investigate the sudden sound.
Falling into Stealth mode, he snuck out into the hallway and closed the door behind himself - carefully, but more quickly this time.
Warned by his first slip-up, he minded the stairs; he thought he had heard in some gangster movie that they were more likely to make noise if you stepped onto them in the middle, so he kept to the wall as much as possible until he was downstairs. Another moment of concentration - maybe someone was down here, being so nervous they could not sleep?
But the house was still eerily quiet, so he resolved to not waste any more time. Swiftly, he opened the front door and even remembered to not hit his head on the OK sign on the porch roof this time.
And off he was.
Getting onto the campus without being seen was easier than he would have anticipated. There were security guards, sure, but he was way ahead of them in terms of sneaking. They did not have the slightest chance of catching him. With all senses on high alert, he made his way over to the river by going near the main road.
It was freezing. Monstropolis' nights were a lot colder than those at the Sludge Falls. Or at least he thought it was freezing - being a furry monster did have its advantages. But Mike would probably have complained about the cold in a long and drawn-out tirade. No, wait, he would not have, he would have kept the discomfort to himself and still have shivered violently, and would have cheered up the other Oozmas if they had happened to mention it.
Did he know that he was no match for the RORs? Was his confidence just an act? Or did he truly have no idea what would inevitably happen tomorrow? And if that was the case, if he truly was unaware, was that not even worse? He would be completely crushed once this all fell apart.
Sulley knew the RORs, knew them better than his current fraternity brothers probably consciously realized. They were not just all talk - they knew what they were doing. Their arrogance was deeply irritating, but it was born out of skill, not wishful thinking. In fact, Sulley was the only one who knew the abilities of all the members on both teams - save Boggs - so he was the only one who could be sure what would happen tomorrow.
There would not even be that much of a difference in their total scores, to be honest. He knew the rest of the Oozmas had gotten incredible at Scaring, and he was reasonably reassured that they would be able to hold their ground, as long as they did not get too nervous. No, it was just Mike who was the problem. Judging by how Boggs must at least be good enough to meet Johnny's standards, the RORs would have exactly one scary member more than the Oozmas, and that, Sulley knew, would be his fraternity's downfall.
There was the river, but he figured crossing the Troll Bridge was too risky. If he followed the watercourse a little to the south-east, there would be another one, he knew, near a building the function of which he had never learned. Yes, there was the bridge. With another quick look around, he was momentarily satisfied that he could not see anyone, and soundlessly made his way to the other shore.
This path would take him past the Frat Row, so he had to be careful about being spotted by members of the fraternities and sororities. If even one of them saw him anywhere near the simulators the very night before the final took place, then it would all be over. He could hear the taunts in his head all too clearly.
"Look at that guy!" they would say, pointing fingers and claws at him, laughing in his face.
"He's so bad at this that he has to resort to cheating to win a competition!" Dammit, this was cheating!
"What a disgrace to the Sullivan name!" Yes, his lineage would just make them loath him for this all the more.
He had had to realize that no matter what he did, the family name would always hover over him like some sort of ominous shadow, would decide all his actions, define his very being. That well-respected job he wanted? It was what his father wanted. Choice of university? His father's. He had deluded himself into thinking that there was a way out of that, but there was not. He would always be a Sullivan, and if he did not manage to get back into the program, by whatever means necessary, he would be nothing.
Still, betraying Mike for his own gain…
But he froze in mid-thought, even stopped running for a second. It was not betrayal, was it? Mike would benefit from this as much as he himself would. They would all benefit from this. If anything, he was doing them a favor. All their hopes and dreams were resting on this. He felt nauseous at the mere thought of Squishy's face in the event that the final score would not be in their favor. And if this went well now, then maybe, by some streak of luck, Mike would never have to find out just how far below his brothers' level he was.
He forced himself back into movement. Now that he had started this, it was a little easier. Now that he was not paralyzed into guilt trips by Mike's very presence, he felt he could do this.
He could see the EKO house in the distance now, knew the ROR house was right behind it. He had almost forgotten what it had been like living there - feeling elite, being respected, being admired, even… hating Mike…
The Oozmas were so very different from the RORs. Theirs was a brotherhood that did not rely on elitism and discrimination; instead, it was based on acceptance, mutual support, and love.
But was love enough? Because his father supposedly "loved" him, he constantly pushed him to be a worthy representative of the Sullivan name. Because Sulley loved his fraternity brothers, he was out here, saving them from certain failure by illegal means. Because Mike loved them all, him included, he trusted them enough to be completely oblivious to what was happening tonight.
And why had he stopped running yet again? With a bitter smile, he looked over at the ROR house again, could even see it this time. It had been his decision to throw away his place among the RORs. Maybe not a conscious one, but Johnny had made it absolutely clear that his admittance into the fraternity had been based on future good grades, and Sulley had neglected to learn during the entirety of the winter semester, so he had had it coming to him.
With a sigh, he resumed his course, going past the ROR house, the HSS house… the OH house…
He had reached the intersection now, and apart from the occasional, easily avoided security guard, there had been no encounters yet. So far, so good.
There was the amphitheater, right in front of him, and he could effortlessly make out the two simulators as well. He had been a little apprehensive about how to tell them apart, but that, at least, would be easy, as they had the two fraternity logos emblazoned onto the walls facing the stands. The scoreboard also had the logos, and while the two large monitors next to it were not equally marked, they were hanging right above the simulators.
Heaving another sigh, he made his way around the top-most stands - going straight through the middle of the place was just asking to be spotted by someone. And when he had finally reached the back wall of the simulator he had been aiming for, he allowed himself a small second of relief. Feeling a little dizzy, he sat down on the ground and leaned his head against the wood. He was half the way there. Now he just needed to adjust Mike's settings and get back into bed without getting caught. Simple, right?
The sudden sound of voices made him jump. He tried to control his suddenly quickening breath, tried to stop the blood rushing in his ears, and forced himself to listen. At least he was hidden from those people by the simulator, so he just had to wait it out.
"And you're sure you shouldn't be sleeping right now?" That was Carrie's voice. What was she doing out here at this ungodly hour? But all thoughts of her were forgotten when he heard the chuckle of her conversation partner, deep and vibrating enough to carry over even from the other side of the otherwise empty amphitheater.
"I think you need your beauty sleep a lot more than I do, lady."
Suddenly, the night felt a lot colder to Sulley. Dammit, how could he have forgotten how little sleep Johnny's species needed? In the worst case, the guy would be out here until morning, and then there was no way Sulley would get back home without being spotted.
"Are you saying I'm ugly?" Carrie teased, but it sounded good-natured. And sure enough, Johnny ignored the quip.
"What, you think I'll have trouble beating those children?" he boasted.
"I think you're taking this a little too lightly," Carrie insisted. "Wazowski put those guys through some insane training. The entire school is talking about it."
"No training that guy could dish out is gonna make them in any way dangerous to us," Johnny assured her.
Sulley could not help but smirk to himself. Johnny had no idea. Scary or not, at least Mike's training had made them all better Scarers. But he was jolted back to the present when he heard his name.
"What about Sullivan?" Carrie asked. "He must be good, right? I mean, you accepted him into your fraternity!"
"Sulley?" Johnny exclaimed, and then laughed. "Sulley has the physique of a true Scarer, but he failed to put that gift to some good use."
Sulley felt a pang in his chest. He knew Johnny was right about that, of course, but hearing him say it so casually, as if it did not matter to him in the slightest, still hurt a great deal. He was very glad those two could not see him. Their voices sounded sort of stationary, so he guessed they must have sat down on the upper stands. Heavens, were they going to be here all night?
"Hmm." Carrie seemed unconvinced. "And the rest of them? There must be someone who's gonna be a challenge?"
"You just gotta have the looks, you know," Johnny insisted. "Judging by that, the purple fur ball is the only one I think we should mind a little, but I hear he's too much of a featherbrain to be any good at Scaring."
Sulley felt his hands balling into fists. How dare Johnny talk about Art that way! Oh, how he wished he could just go over there and slap that arrogant smirk off his face, the one he could clearly hear in his voice.
"And the rest of them…" Johnny continued. "Well, you were there at the party. I think the picture was pretty accurate, actually."
Carrie laughed. Apparently, she remembered.
After that, there was a long stretch of silence, and Sulley strained to hear anything. Had they left or were they just not talking? There was no way he could risk coming out of his hiding place as long as they were still there. Maybe they had fallen asleep or something? Or… had they spotted him?
"You're right," he suddenly heard Carrie again. "I think I need my beauty sleep now."
"In that case, allow me to escort you back home," Johnny offered, his voice dripping with unconcealed amusement.
Carrie laughed again. "It's not like I'm gonna get lost." It sounded as if she was farther away already, and sure enough, Sulley could hear them being cheeky with each other on their way back to the Frat Row until there was silence again.
Chancing a glance around the side of the simulator, he found the amphitheater deserted once more, so he rushed over to open the door and get inside. He needed to hurry. Anyone could show up, at any minute!
With the soft glow coming through the window, he could at least distinguish shapes, and when his eyes adjusted to the new light level, it was actually not that bad. He could see toys scattered across the floor, and the simulated child sleeping a deep, simulated sleep in the bed across the room.
Warily, he took a look around. The RORs had told him about previous years' Scare Games, so he knew there was supposed to be a camera in here, one that filmed both the bed and the doorway and showed them to the audience. And sure enough, there it was, but as there had been no image on the monitor outside, he knew it was not activated. It did make him feel a little watched, but he told himself he was being silly. Besides, this only meant that everything was already set up and there would be no one in here before the final, so with a little luck, he could actually pull this off.
Remembering his actual purpose, he made his way over to the bed by carefully avoiding the toys. If this simulator was anything like the one he had seen in the end-of-semester exam…
There they were. He had been looking for the controls for the difficulty settings, and sure enough, there was the control panel, right there on the left side of the bed, underneath the blanket. Pushing that away, he saw that the thing was locked, though, or rather screwed shut, and he cursed himself for not having thought to bring a screwdriver. But he had to get to those controls, so he supposed he just needed to be careful.
Applying a precise amount of force, he pulled at the lid for a few moments until, finally, it gave way and almost threw him off balance with the suddenly inexistent resistance. Underneath, he found six neatly labeled sliders, all at the highest level, complete with six screwed on pieces of plastic holding them in place.
The highest level. Would the others be able to handle this? But they could not all get top scores, even the dumbest idiot would realize that something was wrong. He had to concentrate on their weakest link.
With a sudden shock, he double-checked the settings to make sure the simulator was not activated - he could not have the screaming child drawing someone's attention! But there was no light on the control panel, no power to the equipment. This thing would not be activated before it had to be.
When he read the numbers, he found that it was the left-most slider he had to adjust. Mike had already told them the order they would go in, had planned on going first, probably in the belief that he would do great and give the others a burst of confidence. If only he knew…
Shaking his head at Mike's cluelessness, he grabbed the slider and was about to pull it free from its hold, but halted. If he lowered the setting now, then Mike would fill the entire simulated canister. But that did not make sense! With the psychology involved, there was no way anyone would start off with a full score!
What to do? He should have thought about this before coming here, dammit! What to do, what to do?
With a start, he realized he would have to change their order, would have to tell Mike to go last. That way, no one would be surprised if he found some sort of, well, hidden burst of energy inside of him or something. Still, if he went last, he would be paired up with Johnny, because there was no way the ROR leader would let any of his brothers take that kind of glory away from him.
Mike, besting Johnny? The mere thought was ridiculous.
But, damn, Sulley had been looking forward to this. He would have gone last, as they were all convinced he would get the highest score in the entire group. He had been fantasizing about everyone coming over to celebrate him, and, he had to admit to himself with no small amount of guilt, about Mike acknowledging how much better than him he was. But if Mike took that place now, then Sulley would have to explain to his father how it could be possible that he was not considered his fraternity's top performer, or that he had to take second place to a little guy like that.
Still, he decided, nothing else would make sense, so he would have to convince Mike in some way. But he could still think about that later. For now, the settings were important. Leaving the first slider alone, he grabbed the sixth one and forcefully pulled it free of the plastic, and then, finally, pushed it all the way down to its lowest level.
For a second, he sat there, staring at the slider. He was already regretting this, but what was done was done. And even if he pushed it back up now, his manipulation had left clear marks of destruction on the equipment, so if anyone spotted this, he and his brothers would not even have gained anything from this, and yet he would still have to face the consequences. No, he could not chicken out now.
Getting to his feet, he pushed the lid closed again and arranged the blanket the way he had found it. On his way back to the door, he was careful to leave the toys alone again - he was not sure if he could remember their position well enough in case he accidentally moved anything. But a few moments later, he was across the room and out the door.
Belatedly, he realized he should have listened for voices and other sounds first, but no one was nearby, so he went around the simulator the way he had come and then debated with himself about how to get home. But at least he was calmer now. Now that it was certain Mike would not ruin their chances, he did not even feel half as nervous as he had been on his way here.
Now that he knew Johnny was awake, going past the Frat Row again was way too risky, but he could not just casually stroll across the main square either. Being seen was not a problem per se, not anymore, but if anyone spotted him and then his manipulation was found, people would put two and two together.
It was probably best to go around the Scaring School from behind, past the clock tower. He knew there was a third bridge near the Sci-Tech Parkway, so if he used that and then got past the Aviation Boulevard somehow, his chances of staying unnoticed would probably be best.
When he started running again, he noticed his fatigue catching up with him. Maybe once he got back, he could actually get a few hours of sleep this time; he had been lying awake ever since he had witnessed Mike's abysmal Scaring attempts in their last training session. How could the guy honestly not realize how bad he was at this? Anyone could see it, why was that so hard for him?
And why did the others not tell him? Surely they could see the truth, right?
But that was unfair, he realized - it was not as if he had said a single word about this, so he could not go blaming the others. He had tried to speak up, honestly tried, but he just had not found it in him to tell Mike what he truly thought. And how could he? Mike was so completely absorbed in Scaring, so ridiculously delighted whenever someone even mentioned the topic - Sulley really did not want to be the one to tell him it was not for him.
A beam of light right in front of him made him freeze in his tracks. It was another security guard, he could tell. The guy had not caught on yet, but he was getting closer, would inevitably come across him in a few moments. Sulley had let his guard slip in his exhaustion, had gotten too close to the road. There was no means of escape, nothing to hide behind, nothing to blend into… what to do?
In a flash of boldness, he rushed over to a statue next to the road. Drawing a deep breath, he stood right next to it, faced the same direction, raised his arms as if preparing for a Scare, and willed himself to become as immobile as possible.
And sure enough, a minute or so later, the guard strolled past him with a huge yawn and a look at his watch. Wearily scratching the back of his head, he continued on his way without ever taking notice of Sulley.
Once that person was out of sight, Sulley, seeing stars by now, released the breath he had been holding and tried not to faint from the lack of oxygen. Once the dizzy spell had passed, he marveled at his own daring, and at how effortlessly he had executed the technique. Open Obfuscation. He was damned good at this by now.
Mike had taught him how to do this. He would never have learned any of this if it had not been for Mike.
He owed Mike so much! There was no way he could tell him the truth!
But it was that sort of thinking which had gotten him into trouble just now, so with a slight shake of his head, he banished these thoughts to the back of his mind for later contemplation. Right now, he needed to concentrate on getting home.
He had hit his head on the sign this time. It was sheer sloppiness, he knew, but he had not been able to pay the thing any mind; he had never been so relieved to set foot into this house before.
The living room was still deserted, and he silently made his way upstairs. Maybe no one had noticed his absence.
The damned door creaked again when he opened it. He halted and regarded the narrow hallway, listening intently if there was any indication that he had woken someone. But there was no sound from the adjacent rooms. It seemed as if everyone was still asleep, even Squishy's mom who was usually the first to react when someone was wandering her house at night.
As he had to discover when he closed his bedroom door behind himself, the people from the other rooms were not the problem.
"Where've y'been?"
He froze. Slowly, apprehensively, he turned his head to regard his roommate. Mike did not look awake, with his eye closed and his left arm hanging limply over the side of the bed, but then, who else could have spoken?
"…emergency trip," Sulley lied. "Go back to sleep." He hoped that Mike had only just woken up and had not realized that he had actually come from downstairs.
Mike cracked his eye open, just barely. "You, too, Sul," he mumbled, a little more coherent this time. "You're our best bet; we need you at the top of your game."
The sheer trust in his voice hurt so much. Mike had no idea what had just happened. He had no idea what Sulley had just done to him.
But in a way, he was so innocent, so helpless. Whatever moral ambiguity was involved in this, it was still better than to have him discover the truth, have him realize that he just did not have what it took. He could never know. With a little luck, he would get so much better at Scaring over the course of the next semester that he could actually pass that final exam and never had to learn that he would have dragged the entire team down with him.
Suddenly, he realized that Mike was probably still waiting for an answer, but when he took another look, he saw that his roommate had fallen back asleep again, breathing deeply and regularly and drooling onto his pillow a little. The blanket had slipped off his spherical body, as it almost always did, and he was faintly shivering in the chilly air.
With a fond smile, Sulley took the few steps over to the bunk bed and gently dragged the blanket back into place. Without waking up, Mike instinctively snuggled closer, his lips forming a tiny smile at the sudden warmth.
It was long before Sulley went back to bed himself. For what felt like an eternity, he just stood in front of that bed, staring down at this tiny monster, this completely unthreatening little person. The one who had changed his life in so many bad, but also in so many more good ways.
What they had was not friendship, he knew. Oh, what Mike was giving was friendship, all right. But was it a mutual thing? What had he done to deserve that friendship? Did he have to deserve it? Or was it simply a matter of declaring it, or even of acknowledging something which was already there?
No, he knew he did not deserve Mike's friendship, knew he had never deserved it in the first place, but for what it was worth, he also knew he did not want anything to happen to this guy.
Not if there was anything he could do about it.