ii.
It's a year after high school, and Randy is bored. He can't think of why.
He's doing almost everything he used to do – he plays video-games with Howard, hangs out with other freshmen on NCC campus, does his homework, etc. After years of this, he doesn't quite understand why boredom is happening now.
It's not college. At least, Randy doesn't think it's college. Community college barely even counts as college, right? And he really is loving the drastic lowering of standards and rules. It's awesome. It's true freedom.
Maybe it's all this new energy he has. It feels like high school had been sucking all the energy out of him and now that he's left, he has more than enough to spare. It's just – it's there.
He starts running, to burn it off. He lifts weights too, sometimes. He jumps hurdles. He swims. It's never something he'd thought would happen, but he's become intimately familiar with the campus's gym. Randy just feels so wide awake, some days. Like there's something big he should be out doing.
Howard won't do any of this with him, of course – dainty hands is his excuse, although how that hinders running is beyond Randy – but he doesn't look at Randy strange when he finds out about this sudden exercise.
Despite a reluctance to say anything, Randy couldn't help Howard from finding out. He can't fathom how to hide a new hobby from someone you spend all your time with. There's no way. Plus, Randy has learned by now that he is a total shoob at lying to Howard.
None of it mattered, anyway. Howard didn't find it weird.
"It's good for you and all that nonsense, right?" He'd shrugged. "Besides, it's only wonk if you enjoy it."
Randy hasn't told him that he does. He does enjoy his muscles burning and his breath bursting in his lungs – he likes devoting his all to something physical.
Randy also hasn't mentioned that recently, exercise too has began to bore him.
"You ever think," He says carefully one day, "that there's something we should be doing?"
Randy is draped over Howard's bed, head dangling near the floor, while Howard lays stomach-down at the other end, face in his hand. Somedays they just sit in the same room and watch videos or check snapchat on their own phones, not saying a word to each other.
Randy isn't sure why – as his mom likes to say, what's the point of hanging out together if they don't talk – but he supposes after so long doing everything together, it's harder to come up with a reason to spend time alone.
Howard doesn't look up from his phone at Randy's question.
"What, like our homework?" He asks. "Wait, I don't think I have any homework this week."
"Lucky." Randy mutters. He's staring at the ceiling, hands folded across his chest, phone placed underneath them. "No, I just meant...don't you ever feel like you're forgetting to do something important? Like there's a movie you were supposed to watch or a job you forgot to quit?"
Randy can feel his friend tense on the bed. He wonders if Howard remembered he actually does have homework this week.
"I dunno, Cunningham. Why? Is there something you forgot to do?" Howard brushes the topic back to Randy so easily, he doesn't even notice.
"I...I think there is." Randy says, squinting at nothing.
Howard doesn't tell him he's crazy. Howard doesn't ask what it is that's been forgotten. Instead Howard nods, like that's a normal feeling everyone gets, and the feeling doesn't dwindle, exactly, but Randy does feel better. Vindicated.
"I'm sure you'll figure it out, Cunningham."
Maybe. Randy still feels bored, feels – unfulfilled – but he closes his eyes and lets Howard's words encourage him.
"I'm sure I will." He murmurs.
Randy can't breathe.
They're walking to their dorm. It's late at night, later than they realized, and he and Howard's argument of Buffy vs. Wonder Woman has blinded him to that fact for the last couple blocks.
Somehow, striding confidently under street lights had put Randy's instincts at ease. But they shouldn't have been.
It is really really late.
Randy's eyes only open when he hears the screaming. There's faint thumps, like blows being exchanged, coming from the alley across the street. He can hear a young girl shriek – in anger or fear or both.
Everything in him freezes solid.
He hears the sounds of a struggle, he feels the cool night air, he catches a glimpse of something metal in the moonlight – but all of that seems far away. Distant.
Randy finds he can't breathe, can't think. At first, he marvels at how much of a coward he is. Then it hits – this wave of emotion flooding him out to sea isn't fear.
It's courage.
Howard has stopped behind him. He has just enough time to say,
"Uh, Cunningham, I don't think –"
Then Randy is throwing his bag at Howard and sprinting across the street without looking back. There are no cars because it's so late and it's only seconds before he skids into the alley.
They haven't spotted him. He isn't breathing hard or making much noise and they are making an incredible racket.
It's a man, classic ski mask tugged over his face, yanking at a large purse in a girl's hands. The girl – looks Randy's ageish – looks downright furious; she grips one handle impossibly tight, smacks the robber repeatedly with her other hand, and oh, wow, Randy spots the dropped pepper spray rolling away from her.
Unfortunately, the man is bigger. He's already punched her several times. He also has a knife he's trying to pull out and scare her with.
Randy moves and the world slows.
He sees;
The knife finally slipping free of the man's belt.
His own legs pumping beneath him.
The girl's eyes widening in fear.
The ground and sky switching as he ducks and rolls, arm outstretched.
Both figures blinking, turning slightly.
Suddenly everything snaps back into normal time.
He jumps up smoothly with abandoned pepper spray in hand like he's practiced that roll on concrete in front of a mugger thousands of times.
It feels right. It feels good.
There's a manic grin on his face as he fires the spray into each of the man's eyes. He doesn't wonder about how he knows to use pepper spray – he chalks it up to being easy to use.
"I think that belongs to her." He says, feeling so comfortable and in his element that he doesn't want this to end. "Besides, I don't think you wanna mix that purse with those boots."
The man screams in pain and lets the other strap go to clutch at his eyes. He steps forward, unstable, or maybe just stumbles, but suddenly Randy's body flings into action and round-house kicks him into the wall.
"What the hell..." He moans, blood trickling from underneath his mask.
Later, Randy will think that too. Right now, Randy's heart can only think, finally. He can only feel so very alive. This is what he's been missing, somehow.
This feeling – this significance. It's not enough that he was physical, that he exercised, he needed meaning to it. Maybe he even needed the violence.
Still, he can't regret it, not if the fighting helps someone.
It's only a few more seconds before the mugger is stumbling down the alley away from both girl and Randy, shaking and cursing as he goes.
That guy won't be bothering anyone else tonight.
"W-who are you?" The girl asks him after a minute, a tremor in her hands as she tugs her purse close.
Randy watches her flinch and some of his happiness trickles away. He holds up the spray to hand it back to her.
The girl steps back, afraid. Afraid of...Randy? That's a sobering idea.
He rolls the pepper spray along the ground so that it bumps her tennis shoes gently, and he tries to smile at her.
"You should probably report that guy to the police." He advises, voice soft. "I'm just gonna...go check on my friend. Over – over there."
It's late and there's not many reasons for this girl to trust Randy, not after she's just been attacked. Randy finds that he can't hold it against her.
Yet, he's compelled to ask.
"Do you need anymore help?"
She glances from him, across the street to the extremely non-threatening looking Howard.
"Can..." She swallows. "Can I just walk with you guys? Just for a little ways? I..."
She doesn't finish.
Instead, she edges around the – the, oh man, there's a little bit of blood on the concrete – and flees to the sidewalk. Randy goes with her willingly.
He expects to have to explain himself to Howard. This is...it's different . In high school, Randy is fairly certain he was – not self-absorbed, exactly, but he knows he was a little self-involved. He hadn't gone out of his way to help kids being bullied. He hadn't been the 'hero type'. He'd been focused on himself, which isn't terrible, but it isn't great either.
Howard sighs at the pair as they hustle across the street. Randy expects yelling, he expects demands for explanations, he expects bewildered looks.
"You just had to get involved, didn't you." Is what he gets instead. Howard sounds tired, sounds fond, sounds frustrated. It's like this isn't a surprise at all.
Randy shrugs and tries not to let this reaction throw him.
"I mean...I couldn't do nothing. I had to help. Oh right." He turns back to the girl who's striding slightly behind them with her hands wrapped so tightly around her bag her knuckles have turned white.
"I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Randy, Randy Cunningham. This is Howard."
Howard offers a nonchalant wave. He's acting like this is all normal, which either means he's more freaked than he's letting on, or Howard's mind is so consumed by something else it really isn't sinking in right now.
"Um..I'm Sera." The girl says. Her shoulders are still trembling. "Thanks – by the way."
"Hey, you almost had him." Randy offers.
Her face darkens.
"I probably should've just given him the purse. I-I didn't know he had that knife. I thought...I had the pepper spray and I –"
She can't seem to go on.
"– thought you had it handled?" Randy finishes for her. She bristles, so he continues, "I get that. That was so me on my Government midterm. I was like, this study guide is so wonk, I don't need studying. I am the super bruce cheese at politics. Then I got the grades back the next week?"
He gives a weak laugh, willing to joke about it but also still a little sore.
"Spoiler alert," He mock-whispers. "I did not have it."
"I did." Howard butts in. "I am the actual super bruce cheese. I aced it."
Randy frowns at him.
"You 'b'-ced it. Barely."
Sera giggles, maybe kinda in an unhinged way, and some of the tension drains from her shoulders.
It takes ten extra minutes to walk her to the police station nearby, and five minutes to make sure she's alright.
All in all, it ends up being four AM before Randy makes it to his dorm room. He's had more excitement in the last hour than he's had in eighteen whole years. He will not be making it to his eight o'clock class today.
It's cool, though.
At least he's not bored anymore.
A/N: Sorry for small appearance of OC. She won't show up again, I promise.
Also yes, I know community colleges never really have dorms, but I like the idea of Randy and Howard living on their own.
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