Two Bedroom-One Bath-Roommate Not Needed

by Aurora West

Now that Sour Bill was actually sitting in his apartment, Gene had to admit that he'd misjudged pretty badly—the sour ball didn't match the décor at all.

Disclaimer: Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet are the property of the Walt Disney Company.

Author's note: This was written for a challenge to write from the POV from a character you usually don't write (an easy challenge for me as I only write two characters' POVs in this fandom, lol). As usual, this takes place within my head canon universe.

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Two Bedroom/One Bath/Roommate Not Needed

"I'd offer you a drink, but you're supposed to be a garnish, not a guest." Gene capped the cocktail shaker and gave it several quick shakes. "Then again, I suppose that's rude. What's your poison, Condiment?"

The large green ball occupying Gene's sofa blinked slowly at him. "I'm a sour ball," he said for at least the third time.

Rolling his eyes and pouring his drink into a glass, Gene said, "Fine, if you insist. What should I call you? If you're not a garnish and not a guest—you're more of a lodger, I suppose."

"You can call me Sour Bill."

Gene's mustache twitched. "How's Bill?"

Bill's jellybean hands raised slightly in a shrug. "Whatever you prefer."

There was a crash from somewhere else in the Niceland Apartment Building, which normally Gene would have attributed to Ralph. Not this time, though. No, this time he knew it was those feral children from that ridiculous game. He wasn't surprised one of them had managed to get it unplugged, none of them had any sense of responsibility. How could you, when you ate candy for every meal and had no adult supervision? Well. He sniffed. Unless you counted the fact that Turbo was still hanging around Sugar Rush, but calling him an adult was generous.

He gave Felix and Calhoun forty-eight hours before they packed it in and sent the racers somewhere else. Another crash punctuated this thought.

"How do you live with all that racket?" Gene asked the cocktail olive—er, Sour Bill.

Glancing towards the door, Bill said, "It's quiet up at the castle. They don't pay much attention to me. They think I'm boring."

Wasn't Vanellope von Schweetz supposed to live in at the castle? Then again, with all the time she spent with Ralph, she probably didn't have much time to make a nuisance of herself in her own game. Not when she was so busy making a nuisance of herself everywhere else in the arcade. Just the other night, Tron had had to extricate her and Ralph from the closed section of his game. Apparently Keep Out signs meant nothing to her. Or Ralph, for that matter, though he already knew that.

Gene sipped his martini and tried to think of something to say. He'd never cared much for anyone from Sugar Rush. A gaggle of out-of-control children, squeaky-voiced candy NPCs, pastry police—it was all too saccharine for his tastes. Even knowing about the rot at the center of the whole game for fifteen years didn't make it less saccharine. In fact, Turbo's continued presence in Sugar Rush just proved how saccharine it was. Von Schweetz let him stay and that bratty Taffyta Muttonfudge had some sort of friendship with him. He hadn't been down in the Fix-Its' apartment. Probably thought he was too good for the rest of them, but what else was new? Turbo had always had a surfeit of undeserved confidence and somehow being universally reviled by everyone in the arcade—which was deserved—hadn't seemed to dim it.

There was another loud crash, which made Gene jump. Had that been closer? Had the little hellions escaped to the hallways? Bill looked untroubled by all of it. "So you don't want anything?" Gene asked, his tone waspish.

Bill looked untroubled by that, too. "Nothing for now," he said.

For now. As if Gene had nothing better than to stand around all night waiting to see if he was hungry or thirsty.

Had this been a bad idea? Gene wasn't in the habit of having houseguests, certainly not for any length of time—and the current length of time for Bill's stay was indefinite. He'd have to talk to Felix about adding another block of tenements to East Niceland. A few days was fine. Permanently was not. Plus, now that Sour Bill was actually sitting in his apartment, Gene had to admit that he'd misjudged pretty badly—the sour ball didn't match the décor at all.

Suddenly, Bill broke the silence. "You don't like any of us very much," he said. He didn't seem bothered by the idea.

Gene sniffed, then swallowed another mouthful of his martini, draining the glass. As he went to make himself another, he said, "I have no idea why you think so. I invited you to stay here, didn't I?" Despite the fact that he'd been thinking the same thing a minute ago, it didn't seem unreasonable to be defensive about this. He concentrated on his martini while Bill looked around the apartment, apparently considering the best response to this.

"I don't know why you did that," Bill finally said.

Neither did Gene, if he thought about it. Still, it was done. "Well, there you are," he said. The perfect response for when you really preferred not to respond at all.

As he poured his second martini into the glass, Bill said behind him—monotone, as always—"You don't show up to things in Sugar Rush that everyone else does."

Gene stiffened. His impression of Sour Bill had always been that the sour ball didn't care about much. Why was he being so tenacious about this issue? "Never had much of a sweet tooth," Gene said with a chuckle that felt so false coming out that it was impossible Bill wouldn't notice.

"Even the Haunted Castle for Halloween," Bill went on, as though Gene hadn't spoken. "And everyone came to that."

"I hardly think everyone—"

"You turn and walk the other way in Game Central Station when you see the racers coming," Bill said, musingly, as though it was just occurring to him now.

"It's not a crime not to like children—"

Bill was clearly warming to his subject. "You're always saying that Sugar Rush is a game for simpletons who've had their brains rotted by too much television and internet—"

For god's sake. How was Sour Bill around enough to be able to quote this back to him? "It's none of your business what I say when I'm socializing, considering I'm not socializing with you or anyone from your game," Gene said.

"It just seems obvious—"

Something in Gene snapped. "Because Turbo lives in your game!" he burst out.

There was a silence. Long. Somehow not that awkward, though it should have been. Sour Bill shrugged. "Everyone hates him."

"That's obviously not true," Gene said, fuming. "You don't. All those little hellions don't. Anyway, it's different."

Was it Gene's imagination, or did Bill look mildly interested? "Why is it different?" he asked.

Taking a gulp of his martini, Gene turned around to face the marble counter. Should he have another? Maybe the fact that he'd said what he just had was a sign that he should stop. "It just is," he said.

Thirty-four years had gone by and he'd never spoken of this—he wasn't about to now. Not to a sour ball who everyone knew you couldn't trust. Only one person in Sugar Rush had known that Turbo had locked up all of their memories, and that was Sour Bill. For fifteen years he hadn't told anybody, and to Gene's knowledge, neither Bill nor Turbo had ever said how much the sour ball knew, let alone how and why he knew it.

But…then again, if Sour Bill had kept that secret, then maybe he could keep this one too. Maybe he was the most trustworthy character in the entire arcade.

Wait, what was he thinking? There was no way in hell he was going to reveal his most humiliating moment. He'd tried to forget it himself, and after TurboTime had been unplugged, it had seemed almost possible. Then the Sugar Rush reset had happened. Turbo's survival. Felix and Ralph befriending him. That awful, grating laugh of his. It was no wonder that so-called King Candy had been so reclusive—anyone who had known Turbo would know that laugh.

"He made a fool of me," Gene said, his tone tight with a soup of emotions. Fury, mortification…fear? He'd always known that he'd never tell anyone about this. But something about the way Bill was just sitting there made it seem like he was the perfect person to tell. Somehow, Gene knew that despite the fact that he'd asked, he didn't really expect an answer. If Gene stopped talking, Bill would shrug and be happy to not know. "Turbo, I mean."

Sour Bill shrugged. "He tricked everyone."

"No, not that." Gene hesitated, took a deep breath, and then said, "A long time ago, I invited Turbo—I asked him—" He clamped his mouth shut, let out a breath slowly through his nose, and then finished, "I asked him on a date."

He wouldn't have said it if he'd actually expected Bill to laugh at him. Still, his shoulders stiffened, waiting for the inevitable mockery. A reflex. Most people would laugh.

But Bill just kept looking at him, as if nothing about this statement surprised him. Maybe it didn't. After all, he'd spent fifteen years as Turbo's…well, advisor, or majordomo, or lackey, or something. If anyone knew the kind of pull the man could exert, it would be him. And as for the other part, Gene had been a "confirmed bachelor" for thirty-six years. What could he say, he was a product of his time. But he supposed these things became open secrets in a place as small as Litwak's.

Finally, Sour Bill said, in that morose tone of his, "Guess you dodged a bullet."

Gene laughed, startling himself. His heart hammered a little less. He hadn't even registered it was doing it. "That was obvious immediately."

"What happened?"

With a shrug, Gene said, "He laughed in my face and walked away. Didn't even say no." The memory burned in his mind, his gut, the tips of his fingers, but somehow saying it out loud seemed to diminish the way it sucked his intestines into a tight, twisted coil that he never wanted to vomit up so much as cut out. Turbo had laughed, but when Turbo laughed at you, you felt small, stupid. Idiotic. And it had been compounded by the fact that at the time, he'd been one of the most popular characters in the arcade. Gene had told himself in the immediate wreckage of his foolish decision that of course Turbo wasn't going to go out with him, not when he had his pick of anyone. Back in those days, the racer had had a habit of overshooting his own league, and he'd usually succeeded.

Which, actually, was strange to think about. Turbo hadn't ever been physically attractive. It was everything else about him that people liked. Maybe 'liked' was the wrong word. He was still the same man, probably better looking as King Candy, too. But no one liked him now. Everything that had drawn everyone to him in the 80s was exactly what everyone hated about him now. Well, that and the game-jumping. But the game-jumping was just part of what made Turbo Turbo.

So many people had acted shocked when he'd done it, when Turbo had taken out RoadBlasters, but not Gene. How could someone who thought so highly of himself possibly tolerate another game coming in and stealing his thunder? When he wanted so desperately to be adored, how could he live with being abandoned? Gene had never pretended he'd seen it coming—at least, not to himself; he had, on more than one occasion, implied to others that the RoadBlasters incident was exactly what he'd always expected to happen—but it hadn't surprised him.

Bill shifted his feet on the sofa. "So you hate all of us because of that?"

Put that way, it didn't make much sense. But you didn't let go of thirty-four years of bitterness because of one conversation. Even if it was more than a conversation, and something more like an anvil being lifted from around his neck. "I don't hate all of you," Gene said, his mustache twitching. "I just—" He stopped and thought for a second. He just what? "Everything is the same as it always is with him. He never faces any consequences."

"He was in the fungeon for six months," Sour Bill said—not defending Turbo, Gene didn't think, but just pointing out a fact. "He didn't race for longer than that. Most of the racers' fans are still a little afraid of him."

"The racers aren't," Gene said huffily.

Shrugging, Bill said, "They follow Taffyta Muttonfudge's lead."

Rolling his eyes, Gene said, "Yes, she obviously made it her personal mission in life to reintegrate him into civilized society." The little brat worshipped Turbo. "The point is, well—the point is—"

What was the point? Was it anything beyond the fact that Turbo had rejected Gene thirty-four years ago in the cruelest way possible? Wasn't that enough? It was hard to get over things in Litwak's, not when everything stayed the same, day after day.

But it was different today. Today, a whole game's worth of characters had lost their home. It was poetic justice for Turbo. For the rest of them, it was a tragedy.

Maybe the point was that for all these years, he'd been holding this stupid, humiliating secret inside, and now he wasn't, and he felt…better. Which was ridiculous, but somehow true. Letting out a small sigh, Gene said, "I suppose there isn't much of one, is there?"

Sour Bill blinked at him. And…smiled? Just a little? For not the first time, Gene wondered what Turbo had said, or promised, or threatened, or none of the above, to win Sour Bill's trust when he'd taken over Sugar Rush. Maybe someday the little sour ball would trust him enough to tell him. Gene almost chuckled at the realization that he was envisioning a lasting enough relationship that the subject might come up. He'd never been close to anyone—a failing, personal, on his part, and one which he'd always wanted to rectify but had never been able to. Something always got in the way. But suddenly, it seemed possible.

Gene set his glass down on the counter. It clinked. "I should show you where you're sleeping. I'll make the second bedroom up."

"Mmkay," Bill said, sliding off the couch and trundling after him.

But before Gene got there, he stopped and turned around. Looking down at Bill, he said awkwardly, "Er, thank you. For letting me talk about that.

Bill tilted his head. Or body, more appropriately. "I told you, the racers don't pay much attention to me." He blinked, then added, "I don't mind listening if someone needs to talk."

Maybe that was the point. Both of them were ignored. Overlooked. Gene didn't believe in fate, but there was something that felt a bit like kismet in the fact that he'd invited this gameless character to stay with him.

Suddenly, he realized he hadn't heard any crashes in several minutes. Had Felix and Calhoun gotten the beasts under control? He opened his mouth to say something snippy, then closed it. Those creatures—er, children, those children, were from Bill's game. Bill's game, which was gone forever. Maybe he could keep it to himself.

A thought occurred to him, and instead of going to the second bedroom, he motioned to the couch. "Let me make you a drink. Your game got unplugged today." He hesitated, then asked, "Is there anything you want to talk about?"