Whelp, I came over here from AO3 and decided hey, let's put this over here. I've already done 9 chapters, so those are already here, and they'll be over 1,000 words a chapter because mild OCD, but sometimes I write more than 2,000. Well, enjoy!

1. Bathrooms Are Creepy

Your name is Sollux Captor and your life sucks. Well, it sucks even more than usual. You're moving to a new house, far away from your old apartment in Northern Oregon to a new house in the Californian Valley. You didn't know anything about the house, of course; your father, Simon, said it was surprise. It's just like him to do shit like this. You're on a plane right now, regretting life decisions that had led up to this moment. With only an hour left to go on the flight to the airport, you're dicking around on your phone and listening to music, absently petting your brother's mop of brown hair as he lays his head in your lap and sleeps. You just want to go to sleep in your old bed, not whatever new one you have at the new house. You just really don't want to live in a new house.

While you were distracted with these thoughts, you had arrived at the airport and you're getting off the plane. The airport's boring enough that you zone out as you grab your luggage plus 'Tuna's, then hand his to him. Next comes the taxi ride to your new house and- holy shit.

Holy motherfucking shit.

It's a goddamn mansion.

How did your father even afford this?

Well, he does do a lot of computer work for important people, but damn, how did he get the money for this? Whatever, you're not questioning it. As 'Tuna walks inside to explore, you help your father unpack stuff from the moving trucks that had driven everything down here. You don't have a lot of stuff, but you definitely need to go shopping later.

As you're unpacking a light bedside table, you ask your dad, "How did you afford thith?"

He just turns to you with a smile and says, "It was super cheap! Isn't that great?"

You roll your eyes and mutter, "Yeah, great." If moving away from all your friends is great.

'Tuna comes back out to help with stuff, grinning and going on about how big the house is. Once everything is unpacked, you have to start carrying stuff inside. Best to save the most work for last, right? You start with the light stuff, like tables and chairs in the living room (more like a small house) and the dining room (you're pretty sure it's the size of your old apartment) that 'Tuna helps you with. You help your dad with some of the heavier stuff, like the dining room table (dwarfed by the room) and the TV. Eventually you're able to take your bedroom stuff upstairs, and your dad shows you your bedroom- damn. Is everything in this house in extra large form? You get a whole room to yourself, one that comes with its own bathroom and a master bed. Wow. 'Tuna even has a room right next to yours, which is a plus.

You collapse on the bed, fatigue overcoming you as you curl up. Then your dad reminds you that you still have stuff to take upstairs. You groan and get back up, going downstairs to get the stuff that you had forgotten you had to take upstairs in your tiredness. It seemed to take forever: the nightstand, a dresser, a bookshelf, a desk, a chair, a lamp. and your suitcases (some of which your dad had to help you with) but when you're finally finished, you lie down on your bed and close your eyes, ready to go to sleep even if it's only 4 in the afternoon.

Then you hear a noise in the bathroom.

You open one eye cautiously, just to peer towards the bathroom. There's nothing. You sigh and close your eye again, returning to darkness. You hear another noise and sit up suddenly, squinting suspiciously towards the bathroom with your brown and blue eyes. There's yet another noise, like something falling, and you get up and slam the door to the bathroom open, ready to yell at anyone who's in here. Except…

There's no one in there.

You blink, once, twice, then start looking around for the thing(s) that might have fallen. They turn out to be a couple of old bottles of hair gel; must be from the last owners. Ew. You throw it away immediately. You don't style your hair, and even if you did, this old shit wouldn't do any good to your hair.

That's when you hear a whisper from behind you. You whirl around, scowling, but there's still no one there. You couldn't make out what it said, but it was definitely an annoyed whisper. You roll your eyes and walk back to your bed. You're just hearing things. It's an old house, there's bound to be weird noises, right? You crawl into bed and pull the covers up, curling up under them and falling asleep.

{}

"Thollux! Wake up!"

You groan, flapping your hand in the direction of whoever's speaking.

"Thith ith important!"

You sigh and open your eyes, just to see a scared-looking Mituna. Oh shit. You and 'Tuna are closer than anything; you shared a bed back in your apartment in Oregon, and told each other everything. You two share a lot of things, everything from your lisp and heterochromatic eyes to food to your love of bees. You comfort each other also. If he's scared of something, that's really not good. You sit up and frown, asking, "What happened?"

"I thaw thomething in my room!"

"… Yeah? What wath it?"

"It wath a thigarette!"

"The old ownerth could've left it there, 'Tuna."

"But I went to pick it up and throw it away, and it dithappeared!"

Huh. Well, that's new. "Are you sure you didn't jutht imagine it?"

"C'mon Thollux, I didn't imagine it!"

You stand up, stretching, "Fine, show me where it wath then."

'Tuna grabs your hand and pulls you out of your room, then into the door on the right of your room. His room is bee-themed it seems, and he has his own bathroom also. He points to a spot right near his desk, scowling and saying, "It wath right here. Right here, I thwear."

"Well, it'th not there now and that'th what matterth, right?" you answer, half-smiling and putting a hand on his shoulder to guide him away from the spot.

He looks down at the ground, then mutters, "I gueth."

"Good. I'm going back to thleep now, good night," you start to exit the room, but he stops you and says, "Dad called uth down for dinner, that'th why I wath going upthstairth to tell you! But I had to thtop in my room to take my shoeth off when… that happened."

"Alright, I'm coming down," you say and go downstairs with 'Tuna to the dining room. When you walk in, you look around with wonder. The size of it will never fail to impress you. The table in the middle looks long enough to fit 50 people at least, and your father is sitting at the head nearest the door that you and 'Tuna walked through. He has dinner on the table, just chicken and mashed potatoes. You sit down next to your dad while 'Tuna sits across from you, immediately diving into his meal. You start on your mashed potatoes, eating slowly.

"So do you two like the new house?" your father asks the both of you, smiling.

"It'th tho big!" 'Tuna replies, grinning between mouthfuls of chicken.

"It'th pretty cool," you say, thinking back to the noises in the bathroom and wondering about those again. No, fuck, it was just the house- you shove the thoughts to the back of your mind.

"That's good. It was so cheap, and it's really big, which is a plus! This house was really a catch," your father says mostly to himself, eating with a grin.

You don't say it out loud, but to be honest, you're expecting there's a catch somewhere in this deal. Like maybe you only have this house for a month, or half of it you can't use, or there's dead bodies in the basement. Hell, you wouldn't be surprised if there WERE dead bodies in the basement. Then again, there were the noises from your bathroom- nope. Not going there.

You finally finish your dinner, then excuse yourself to go to your room and get some real sleep. You change into pajamas, then take a lingering look at your laptop and decide sleep really isn't that important and getting online is instead. You sit at your desk and start typing away, coming up with a virus to send to KK or something. He's your online friend; you met over Pesterchum. You two had a love-hate relationship, always sniping at each other, but you would comfort each other when one was upset.

Of course, part of it was sending him viruses that wouldn't destroy his computer but messed up things like only opening up porn sites when he tries to go online or changing all curse words to "diddly-darn". KK always curses at you for days until you send an anti-virus, which is usually when the joke has lost its hilarity.

Nonetheless, you become immersed in your coding, eyes focused intently on the screen, when suddenly you hear a bang from the bathroom. You're so shocked that you nearly jump out of your chair, your focus shattered. You look over to the bathroom: there's no noises now. You hesitantly get up, then walk over slowly to open the door. It creaks open- great, a stereotypical horror movie scene, now you're going to die- but there's nothing in there.

The noise had sounded like someone had banged on the wall, but you can hear your brother's snoring from here, so it couldn't have been him. It might've been your father, who likes to play pranks sometimes, but you doubt it when you glance at the clock; it's 1 in the morning. You should be asleep. You sigh and go back to your laptop, shutting it down and crawling into bed, pulling the covers up around you.

Even when you're covered in blankets, you can't help but shiver and feel like someone's watching you.