"No."

"Wh—"

"No, just, just shut the hell up dammit!"

Stricken silence in the living room. A nice apartment Howard's renting now. It's been a long time since Randy's seen his old best friend, the one he's never really been able to replace. They'd been attached at the hip since age three, he wants to say, reflexively. But attached implies that they could've ever been unattached. No, because as far as he'd been concerned for most his formative years, they were inseparably fused together. Take one of them away from the other and they'd crumble. Only a Randy can save a Howard. Felt so clever when he made that shit up. But high school broke a lot of that, in ways that cracked corners in their relationship neither of them expected. Corners they didn't know existed. Relationship. Just a friendship—

He did ask for more. Didn't go the route of a typical, pointless unrequited romance, like in every other fiction media or true-to-life story out there. He ought to know the tropes; he's a writer, himself. Told him straightforward. Years ago. He thought so, anyway. Blurting out "I LOVE YOU" in the middle of an argument to make the other person less angry to keep it all from escalating further counted, right? And then, rambling about how he understood if he didn't feel the same—no one ever expects actual denial. That was why it hurt so bad. It still does. Sometimes Randy wonders if he simply likes to be hurt. It's inevitable to happen by this point, that's not the worry. He looks like he's been subjected to a meat grinder a few times over. The worry is the part with all the fucking emotions.

(It's only been a week and a few days. He counts that as a long time.)

"Ever since I got back from tour, all Alice has been telling me is that you've been on her case while I was away!"

"You ever figure she's exaggerating?"

He doesn't like that. Brows furrow and eyes narrow. Typical guy's instinct to defend their girlfriend. He used to react that way for Randy. "No. I trust her. She doesn't just say things like that."

Really? The bitch who's constantly throwing me under the bus to make herself look better in front of you?

He's been back for nearly two months. Randy has a feeling Alice has been plotting this out since long before then. She's about as jealously possessive and insecure and Randy himself is, and he's also pretty sure they both know it. It's a push-and-pull game of who gets to keep the object of their affections. He never thought he'd be beaten at his own game. Years ago he was the one scheming ways to make sure his biffer never strayed from his side. They were stupid teenagers back then; he figured by the time they were adults he wouldn't need to anymore. Because Howard would have learned better by then to think anyone else was good for him.

But here they are.

He dated Debbie first but they broke up at graduation so she could focus on her journalism studies. Randy hadn't minded her so much. She was his friend, too, along with Theresa whose crush on him never really came to be anything. He ran off entirely too often, for entirely too long periods of time, to act as the Ninja and those duties were important...and they still are; the four-year period Nomicon informed him, in the beginning, turned out to be more flexible than it made it out to be originally. So she moved on from him and he didn't mind. She was a better person than most people on that whole campus and deserved better than a slowly crashing car wreck like Randy Cunningham in her personal life. He let it go but never the one relationship that mattered above the rest.

The one that might be breaking once and for all right about now.

"She doesn't like me," he tries, sputters a bit before the pronoun forms. It feels weak. He feels like a third wheel. He never liked cursing overly much, and he's already reached his usual daily limit today, but he feels like a cuck more anything whenever Howard's around now. He tries to explain over and over. The answer is always the same: I don't see you that way, man. It's just not in the cards. "Because she knows you and I are closer than she is with you."

It's like talking to a brick wall. "Well, maybe that needs to change, Cunningham."

And just like that, it's final. He can hear it in Howard's tone, over the cacophony in his miserable little heart that screamed: Nothing was ever supposed to change. Nothing was ever supposed to change...