This is the worst party Murderface has ever been to.
Nathan, Pickles and Toki have scattered themselves throughout. Murderface doesn't care where they ended up; fuck them for leaving him alone. He doesn't know the person who's throwing this party—some old friend of Pickles's, Tony or something like that?—or anybody there, really. He recognizes a few bitches from school, some dudes from the skate park, and that's the extent of it. He crosses his arms and breathes out through his mouth, lets his knees fall open, scowls. He watches a couple, this chick with badly dyed bottle blonde hair and some douche wearing a way oversized jersey, making out in front of him, mutters under his breath about how if he were in that guy's shoes he would do better. Not that he would want that chick—he's not into trashy sluts like her.
Somebody falls on the couch beside him, knocking into his side. He looks to see a guy, maybe a few years older than him, holding a bottle of beer with froth sloshing out around his hand, his head near Murderface's thigh. He's wearing sunglasses, indoors, at night. What a dick.
Murderface twitches his thigh into the guy's head. He spills of his beer onto his shirt. He's even wearing a fucking suit jacket, indoors, on a hot Florida night. Who even does that? He scowls at his couch mate as he readjusts himself and sits up.
"Well, how do you do," the stranger says. He has a nasal voice and slurs his words, but not in the way that he's drunk, more in the way that he just naturally slurs his words. "My name's Dick Knubbler." He juts out a hand. Murderface sneers but shakes it, finding Dick's hands hot and clammy.
"Your name isch literally Dick," Murderface says, balking. Unbelievable.
"Well, no, it's Richard," the guy says. He takes his hand away and adjusts the ascot he's wearing. "I go by Dick, though."
"Why the fuck would you choosche that?" Murderface asks. He crosses his arms over his chest.
Dick shrugs. "I just always did," he says. He looks around, surveying the party, and turns back to Murderface. His eyes have this almost fluorescent quality that stand out in the smoky atmosphere of the party, unnerving Murderface further. "Hey, wanna get out of here, babe?"
Murderface sputters. "I'm not gay," he spits out.
"I didn't say you were." Dick tilts his head to the side and screws his face up at Murderface. "I just think you seem, I don't know, cooler than everybody here. I'm not having that good of a time. Are you, hon?"
Murderface ignores Dick's overuse of pet names and puts a finger to his lip, musing. He feels flattered by Dick, enough that he wants to spend more time with him and see what else he can milk out, and this party sucks. He glances at the couple he'd been watching make out and see that they're still going at it and finds that their bodies are now pressed together in an armchair with the chick in the guy's lap. He has no idea where Nathan and Pickles are, and he's pretty sure he just saw Toki pass through the hallway with a cup in one hand and puke down the front of his shirt and he doesn't want to deal with that shit. He looks at Dick and evaluates his options—the guy's weird, but Murderface has never been opposed to the odd things in life, and he's spoon-feeding him compliments, so he obviously has good taste and can't be too bad. "Okay," Murderface says. He gets off the couch. "Fuck thisch."
They exit the party. Murderface finds out that Dick drives (albeit badly) this speedy little black car, and they decide to go downtown. The night is still sort of young, it's only ten thirty, and they go to this record shop that's open into the early hours of the morning. Dick tells Murderface that he's seventeen, about to turn eighteen, and that he dropped out of high school to become a music producer.
"How'sch that going?" Murderface asks, leaving through the old vinyl records. He considers buying a rare one he spots for his grandmother, who's into old fat black ladies singing soulful songs, but decides against it.
"Uh, yeah, about that," Dick says. He's standing off to the side with his arms folded over his chest, sunglasses covering his eyes. "Not well, babe. Not well. I'm trying for the local scene, y'know, but the scene here isn't that hot at the moment."
"Oh," Murderface says. He plucks a record from the bin. "That schucksch."
"Yeah," Dick says. He clears his throat and fixes the ascot again before leaning into Murderface, close enough that Murderface can smell his alcohol-stained breath. "I've had to, ah, turn to other ventures to make bank. What I'm saying, babe, is that I deal drugs. Do you want any?"
Murderface starts to stammer out a negative response, caught off guard, but stops. He and his friends have been getting their drugs from Pickles's brother, and despite the high quality they're high in price and stressful to obtain. He narrows his eyes at Dick. "How much do you schell them for?"
"Cheap," is Dick's response.
"I'll talk to my colleaguesch about it," Murderface says, using colleagues because it makes him feel professional and badass. Dick nods and they go back to perusing the record store. Dick buys some weird novelty Japanese soda they sell towards the back; Murderface sticks a CD in one of the huge pockets of his cargo shorts, is surprised when he gets away with stealing it.
"I live near here," Dick says, speaking over the hood of his car at Murderface while they're getting into it. "We can go back to my place and chill."
"You're not trying to pick me up, right?" Murderface asks, though if Dick is he's been pretty much succeeded by that point. "I'm jailbait," he says.
"So am I, babe," Dick says. He laughs and gets in his car. Murderface, confused, has no option but to slide into the passenger seat.
Dick takes Murderface's lack of negative answer as an affirmative one. They end up in a shithole apartment building that Dick apparently lives in, though it's still nicer than the mobile home Murderface occupies alongside his grandmother and incapacitated grandfather. The place stinks of stale drugs and despair, the wallpaper is peeling and yellowing, the carpet is worryingly mushy, and the elevator is on its last leg, possibly literally. The inside of Dick's apartment is much the same, brick walls covered in an assortment of fliers and posters and newspapers, a huge stereo shoved off to one side and an ugly couch on the other. They sit in mismatching chairs by the stereo and feed it various types of music, bullshitting about style and meaning late into the night. It beats the party from earlier by far, even if Murderface is a little concerned over his friends' lack of caring that he disappeared. He ends up spending the night at Dick's, sleeping on his couch underneath a scratchy woolen blanket that Dick unearths from the depths of a closet overflowing with questionable items.
He wakes up to see another guy, wearing a sweater vest and a handkerchief around his head, making tea in the kitchen. Murderface sits up and pushes the blanket off his lap, walks over to the breakfast bar bordering the kitchen and takes a seat in one of the beat-up barstools. "Who the fuck are you?" he asks the guy, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
The guy turns around. He had a pencil-thin mustache, a chubby face and small teeth, but the evil glint in his eyes is enough to make Murderface freeze and his bladder contract. In that moment he's convinced that he's walked into some weird gay murder duo and is about to be chopped to bits. "I'm John Twinkletits," the guy says, lisping. "Who the fuck are you?"
"William Murderface," Murderface responds. "But my friendsch call me Murderface."
As if on cue, Dick appears then, wearing only a robe pulled over pajama pants and fuzzy slippers. He walks past Murderface and ruffles the back of Murderface's hair; Murderface twitches. "Oh, this is William, my new friend," Dick said. He smiles at Twinkletits; Twinkletits regards him with scrutiny. "You're making tea?"
"I'm making tea for me," Twinkletits says. He turns around to look at his tea kettle, his hands on either side of his stove. "You can drink some of your nasty coffee." He makes a dismissive hand motion in Dick's direction.
"Isn't John wonderful?" Dick asks, and Murderface can't detect any actual sarcasm in his voice. Dick reached up to retrieve a container of instant coffee from on top of the cabinet and starts scooping granules into a coffeemaker. "You want any, babe?"
"No thanksch," Murderface says. He stands up from the counter. "I really schould get going." He checks his phone—no new messages, no missed calls.
"Okay, babe." Dick walks Murderface out of his apartment, going as far to open the door for him. "We'll be in touch about the—" he lowers his voice— "goods, alright?"
"Yeah, I have your number," Murderface says. He double-checks the contacts in his phone to see that he does, and he has it under Literally Dick in his contacts. He looks at Dick and feels like he should shake his hand or hug him or something, but Dick saves him from further, awkward contemplation by putting a hand on his shoulder and nodding a goodbye. Murderface exits the apartment, unaware that a beautiful friendship had begun to form, instead thinking of how much he has to take a piss.