"Well, that went about as well as could be expected."
The other three human members of Team Cockroach made various noises of agreement in response to Chidi's statement as they staggered through the doorway of the small Icelandic primitive home. It was the morning after the official "Welcome to the Neighborhood" party, and they had only just finished dealing with the fallout of Eleanor's drunken debacle the night before.
And as far as Eleanor was concerned - looking at her companions and their assorted states of disarray - she had pretty much forking nailed it. Tahani was still pouting and picking bits of shrimp out of her long hair, and Jason was nursing the largest cup of froyo she had ever seen - though she supposed he deserved it after almost getting eaten by that giant teddy bear. (She may have gotten a little too in-depth when describing her lifetime ban from Build a Bear. It was a good thing she had been talking to Chidi at the time, or things might have gotten dicey). Speaking of Chidi…
She heard a sharp hiss of pain from behind her and turned to find the man in question wincing as he gently prodded the back of his head. "VHS tapes," he muttered incredulously. "Why in the world would the chaos sequence cause VHS tapes to fall out of the sky?"
Eleanor spun back around and quickly marched towards the kitchen, tossing a quick "Who knows dude? Mysteries of the afterlife" over her shoulder. Hopping up onto a small stool – honestly, if they had really wanted her to think this was the Good Place, they should have given her a fridge she could use without feeling like a toddler - she yanked open the freezer and stuck her head inside, taking a deep breath and relishing the frigid air as she scanned the space for an icepack.
Okay, so maybe she was still a little bit freaked out over the tape Mindy St. Claire had shown her. And the things that were done …. and said on it. Maybe moreso the said part. Sex was something she was more familiar with; she'd fallen into bed with plenty of guys under strange circumstances. None that were quite as nerdy as Chidi, mind you. Although… She leaned her head out of the freezer just enough to peek at him, engaged in what looked like a very serious conversation with Tahani. Maybe if she got him out of those glasses, helped him loosen up a little….
Nope, no, she was not going to follow that train of thought any further. She shoved her head back into the cold and stood on her tiptoes to reach the bag of frozen peas she could see stuffed into the back of the freezer. That wasn't the biggest problem anyway. What she had said -what they both had said – still hung over her like a fog. It was making her feel…weird. Sure, Chidi was nice, but so far she failed to see what about him could possibly put him on the same level as Stone Cold Steve Austin and Gary, the guy at Spiderz Nightclub who had kind of looked like Stone Cold Steve Austin. She barely even knew the guy for fork's sake!
In this timeline, at least, a voice in the back of her mind whispered as her hand closed around the peas. Well, yeah, no shirt. Clearly in some of the 800-plus reboots she had gotten to know him pretty darn well. But this Chidi? He was practically a stranger. Eleanor sighed, slamming the freezer door a little harder than she really needed to, then hopped down off her stool and made her way back towards the trio in the living room. She studied Chidi as she approached, but aside from the fact that he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose like a nerd in an 80's movie, nothing about him stood out to her. She was looking at one of the three men she had ever said….that thing to, and she didn't really know him at all.
It was kind of driving her crazy.
"What I would like to know," Tahani began in her haughty accent as Eleanor settled onto the couch next to Chidi and gently pressed the pack of peas onto the spot where the tape had hit, "is why the four of us have been grouped together for our so-called 'soul mates'. If Vicky really wanted to torture us, one would think she would pair us all up with different members of her….demon posse".
Eleanor snorted "Demon posse? That's the best you can come up with?" she waited until Tahani had huffed and looked away before continuing; "According to Michael, this is how they paired us up the first time around. He said it was the time we had all seemed the most miserable the longest".
"Yes." Tahani sniffed, casting a disparaging look over at Jason, who had abandoned his yogurt and was instead wholly invested in making his gummy bear toppings kiss, "I can certainly see why they would think that".
"It is interesting to consider though," Chidi began, giving Eleanor a grateful smile and reaching up to replace her hand holding the peas against his head with his own. His fingers ran lightly across the back of her hand as she drew it out from under his, and she was a little proud with the lack of reaction she showed at the tingling feeling that shot up her arm at his touch. "The party last night, the chaos sequence, and now the soulmate pairings… as clichéd as it sounds, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. You have to wonder what Vicky thinks she's going to accomplish-"
Eleanor groaned and dropped her head back against the hard wooden back of the couch (fork, she hated this house). "Dude, you are such a nerd. Can we please just move on and get ready for this lesson? Michael will be here soon and I don't want to give him any excuse to welch on our deal".
Chidi tilted his head to the side and shot her a look she pointedly ignored, but at least he and the others got up and started grabbing books and preparing the giant chalkboard that had somehow appeared in her living room (Janet, most likely). A few moments passed in comfortable, if not companionable, silence, until they heard Jason yelp as he slipped and hit the floor. By the time the others had reached him, he had scrambled to his feet, leaning on a nearby dresser for support and holding something in his hand. Something black, and boxy, and – oh no.
"Dawgs, check it out!" Jason exclaimed, waving the VHS tape around excitedly. "It was under this dresser – I almost didn't notice it, but I was trying to balance a stack of books on my head and they fell and when I dove to catch them, I fell on the floor and there it was!" He pulled the tape closer to his face and examined it. "What do you think it is?"
Chidi seemed to be stuck in a state of shocked disbelief, which could be a good sign. "Do you….not know what a VHS-….wait, hang on!" Eleanor felt her heart drop into her stomach as his hand shot out and snatched the tape away from Jason. "This looks exactly like that tape that hit me during the chaos sequence. I didn't think it was real." He rounded on Eleanor, who was trying very hard to keep her face arranged in a surprised, clueless expression. "Eleanor, what is this? Why do you have it, and why were you hiding it under a dresser?
She was…panicking, to put it lightly. Her eyes flicked from one face to another – Chidi's indignant; Jason's confused but excited; and Tahani's…. a little too entertained for her liking, but none of them helpful. Her mind was somehow moving a million miles an hour and had completely stalled at the same time. She couldn't come up with a good excuse; she couldn't even come up with a halfway decent one. She could barely think at all.
All she knew was that they couldn't watch it. If they watched it she was going to be on the next train out of here – she'd spend the rest of eternity hiding out with Mindy and her lukewarm beer. Why had she even taken the tape back with her in the first place? She should have just left it – sure, Mindy was a bit of a horndog, but then Eleanor wouldn't have gotten into this mess, and Mindy would have at least had something new to watch. She seemed like a pretty chill person –except for, you know, filming her houseguests having sex – maybe she deserved some fresh porn…oh!
Her frazzled brain latched onto the word, and before she could stop herself, she heard her voice, strained and unnaturally high, squeak out: "It's…porn?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Eleanor could still hear words ringing in her ears. Porn? Out of anything else she could have said, she went with porn? Well, maybe it would be enough to throw them off – Tahani and Chidi certainly looked taken aback. Jason, on the other hand, had his face screwed up in what she could only guess was thought. Then he started laughing.
"Homie," he began, startling the others out of their daze and bringing all eyes to him, "if you want to watch porn, you don't have to hide it! Janet can get you porn whenever you want". Satisfied with his statement, he went to lean back against the dresser, but missed and nearly fell over again.
Tahani narrowed her eyes at Jason "We have barely been here a full week, how could you possibly…? No, never mind," she held her hand out in front of her, cutting Jason off even as he opened his mouth to reply, "I do not want to know". She turned her gaze from Jason to Eleanor, a shrewd glint in her eye that the latter did not like. "Although it is interesting that you should keep this particular…film in your home. Is there something special about this tape, Eleanor?"
Eleanor's eyes went wide as she scrambled to think of a response. "I- I don't know what you're implying," Her face felt hot, and she was suddenly itchy all over, and god, this was going just as badly as she was afraid it would. "but that is just-"
"Yoo!" Jason cut in, "Is it a sex tape?! That is so dope. I didn't know you were kinky like that Eleanor; mad respect, right Chidi?"
Oh. Oh no. She had been so caught up in her panic she hadn't even noticed that Chidi had yet to say a word. She slowly turned towards him to see him still considering the tape, head tilted again and a strange expression on his face. He looked up at the mention of his name, and she felt herself freeze as his eyes met hers. "No, Chidi, it's not…. it's nothing like that", she tried to assure him, but her voice sounded forced and slightly pleading to her own ears, and she couldn't even be properly alarmed by that because there was something in his deep brown eyes that she just couldn't make out and he wouldn't stop looking at her long enough to give her a chance to.
He finally broke eye contact with her as he looked back down at the tape. He licked his lips as he studied the tape, and she realized with a sudden rush of heat that he was curious. Pure, moral Chidi Anagonye was curious about what kind of porn Eleanor Shellstrop liked to watch. Well. That was definitely news. His tongue ran across his lips again and she was caught between the bizarre urge to either laugh and run from the room or grab him and crash their lips together so she could chase his tongue with her own. "I don't know Eleanor," he began, thankfully stopping that particular image in its tracks, "you do seem to be treating this like it's personal".
What a little shirt. "No! I am not!" she exclaimed, lunging forward and grabbing the tape out of Chidi's hands. "This tape – which we will never speak of again" she waved the tape through the air as she stalked back to the fridge, stepped up on her stool, and slapped it down on the top of the freezer, "is a completely random, totally anonymous porno starring two people that he have definitely never met before, okay!?" She returned the living room and rounded on the trio, all of whom were wearing the same stunned face. "Now can we please just get started on this lesson? We're five minutes late already. And where the fork is Michael?"
A soft chuckle came from behind her, and Eleanor turned to find Michael standing in the doorway, barely containing his laughter. "Oh, don't let me stop you." he urged, voice dripping with amusement. "This is already a thousand times better than any 'tutoring' you could give me. Please continue".
Eleanor rolled her eyes and pointed at one of the uncomfortable, slanted chairs set up to face the chalkboard. "Sit down and shut up Mikey Boy. We've got some learning to do".