Author's Note: Aha, I see you have stumbled upon our masterpiece!! ((cackles)) This fanfic is not the work of one evil genius, but two evil genii-- that is to say, Dakki and Saturday. This is Saturday speaking at the moment, for our beloved Dakki is currently regaling our boys with Amazing True Tales of the Wilderness from her recent camping trip to Alaska. (And no, that is not a coincidence.)
DAKKI: ((points to a small gray speck on her mantel)) See that, boys? How'd you like to see that coming at you, teeth bared and mouth foaming, a murderous look in its yellow eyes?
DALTON: Dakki, that's lint.
DAKKI: Oh.
Disclaimer: We own absolutely nothing, except Racetrack's slippers, which belong to Dakki, and Jack's gratuitously tight sweatpants, which belong to Saturday.
Prologue.
It was only after I had been broken up with him for almost two months that I realized my ex-boyfriend sang in his sleep.
It wouldn't have disturbed me quite so much if he had been singing good music. I'm all for a little Led Zeppelin in the middle of the night, and Talking Heads wouldn't have been too bad, either. But he wasn't singing any of that. No, at three o'clock in the morning I awoke to the melodious sound of Spot Conlon singing Britney fucking Spears. Holy shit...
Racetrack rolled over in his plaid sleeping bag and glared at Spot's sleeping form. "Should I throw something at him?" he asked me, smirking.
"Definitely."
"Got any heavy, pointy objects on you?"
"None that I can think of."
Race ran a hand through his hair. "Damn."
Allow me to set the scene. I, Jack Kelly, along with a few of my closest college companions (ooh, tongue-twister!) were on a camping trip in northern Alaska. I know it sounds ridiculous and dangerous and rather pathetic, but... Well, that's why we wanted to go. We decided it would be a bonding experience for us—Racetrack, David, Bumlets, Swifty, and me—before fall semester at Boston University started in a few weeks, and we were all back to studying premed and prevet and preslacker and (in Racetrack's case) "Early Design and Production of Eighteenth-Century Prussian Doilies", which had ended up being his declared major, although he had absolutely no idea how.
We had been all set to fly up for three weeks of male bonding and fishing and building fires and whatever else you were supposed to do when you went camping. And then Spot invited himself along, and it all went to hell.
My ex-boyfriend's off-key rendition of "Toxic" was beginning to wake up more of the guys. Swifty snuggled down deeper into his sleeping bag, grumbling, and Bumlets quietly started to sing along through his pillow. David, however, remained an immobile lump in the sleeping ban next to Racetrack's, his snoring gentle and unbroken. I was incredibly jealous that he was able to sleep through this.
"…Too high, I can't come down, losin' my head, spinnin' round and round…"
Racetrack was still glowering at the back of Spot's head, barely visible over the edge of the Brooklynite's hot pink sleeping bag. "All right, someone has to put a stop to the madness," he said to me. "I vote we draw straws and the loser has to go and poke him awake."
"Don't bother, I'll do it," I murmured, yawning and getting up.
"I'm addicted to you, don't you know that you're toxic?" sang Spot hazily.
I was beginning to regret my offer to wake Spot up -- I was sure that he would react strangely when pulled from his Britney fantasies. "Hey, Spot," I whispered, nudging him in the ribs. "Spot, wake up!"
He did. "Cowboy, has anyone ever told you that you look amazing with no shirt on?"
"Yeah," I answered offhandedly. "You were singing 'Toxic', Spot, and you woke everyone up. You're mental. Go to sleep."
"I like those pants on you," Spot remarked, looking me over.
"You're mental," I repeated, panicking slightly and trying to cover up my rather tight sweatpants with my hands.
"You're sexy."
"AHH!" I ran both hands through my hair. "Spot, we broke up two months ago, and you're not allowed to call me sexy anymore. GO TO SLEEP."
And he did.
But he blew a kiss at me first.
Barely anyone got any sleep that night. Spot would sleep for about fifteen minutes before starting to sing something else, and then somebody would wake him up and tell him to be quiet, and then the whole thing would start over again. Everyone took it in shifts, except for David, who was fast asleep the whole time, and only woke up at around seven, looking as innocent as a sixth-grader in the Superman pajamas that brought out the blue in his eyes.
Not that I was looking at his eyes or anything...
Racetrack once said that a person's personality can pretty much be summed up by what they slept in. At the time I didn't really think much of it, but now that we were all gathered around the campfire in our pajamas, glaring at Spot over our mugs of instant coffee crystals, made with authentic Milkman powdered milk and non-dairy hazelnut flavoring, it suddenly made a lot of sense. Spot, despite the cold, had on nothing put a pair of black silk boxers. Bumlets was wearing a West Coast Dance Explosion T-shirt and some pink legwarmers, which he claimed used to belong to his sister; Swifty was wearing a bathrobe he had stolen from the Chicago Hilton. And Racetrack, of course, in addition to his plaid pajamas, had on an enormous pair of pink fluffy bunny slippers, which were currently doing a lot to jeopardize his position as the only straight guy on the camping trip.
"I can't believe he's had those since freshman year, and I never even heard about it," Swifty murmured, shaking his head. "Jack, why didn't you tell me?"
"Roommate's code," Race answered for me, as he spooned something white and gooey onto everyone's plates.
I recited with him: "Observed since the time of the Romans, it has only three clauses—One: Thou shalt not steal from thine roommate. Two: Thou shalt not draw humorous designs on thine roommate's face with a red sharpie when thine roommate is passed out in the hall. Three: Thou shalt not tell thine friends about thine roommates pink fuzzy bunny slippers."
"Really?" David asked, curious. "There's actually a roommate's code?"
"No. I lied." Race propped his bunny slippered-feet up on a stump and dug into his breakfast. "And I'm sorry to say that Jack has already broken the first two clauses, so he is failing miserably as an acceptable roommate."
I resisted the urge to fling him some of the gooey substance I had just been served, worried that it would attach to his skin and begin to suck the life out of him. I decided that sticking out my tongue would be hostile enough, and he returned the favor with a grin.
"So, uh, Race…" Bumlets began, pushing his food around on the plate, not quite trusting it enough to take a bite. "What…what exactly are we eating here?"
"Denver omelet mix," Racetrack said. "They used to give it to the marines as punishment." [A/N: Ten points and a strawberry lifesaver to whoever can name the movie that line came from.]
"Race, we've only been here for two days. Don't we have any fresh food?"
"Well…" Race admitted, "Yes. And we would have eggs, if Spot hadn't insisted on trying to juggle them yesterday morning. But don't you love camp food? We got dehydrated stroganoff, dehydrated ravioli, dehydrated chicken soup, dehydrated lasagna, dehydrated raisins…"
"Aren't raisins already dehydrated?" David asked, poking at his omelet mix.
"Yeah, but with these ones, they dehydrate 'em again. They're, like, the size of a grain of sand. It's fantastic."
Racetrack, as you might have already figured out, was a little camping crazy. But then, I guess that's to be expected of someone who grew up in Lower Manhattan and considered New Jersey to be the great outdoors. I grew up on a farm just outside Provo, Utah, with nine older brothers and a bunch of Mormons for company, and I spent more nights per year sleeping in a tent than I did inside. None of this was new to me; all I wanted was real eggs for breakfast.
"So," Spot said, tugging at the waistband of his silken boxers, "I was wondering, did anyone hear a strange noise last night?"
He walked right into that one. Everyone glared at him with renewed hate, except David, who was busy sprinkling dehydrated raisins on his omelet and didn't take any notice.
"What?" Spot asked innocently.
"Is it possible to drown oneself in half a quart of instant coffee?" I asked to nobody in particular, looking down at my mug and wondering how the hell Spot and I had managed to go out for over a year.
"That would be nice," said Swifty.
And so began the unusual misadventures of five teenage boys and one potentially hermaphroditical Brooklynite in the wondrous land of Alaska. Little did we know the dangers that awaited us as we sat there around the campfire, eating omelets which tasted suspiciously like day-old manure and half-listening to Racetrack's lecture on how incredibly useful knowledge of eighteenth-century Prussian doilies could be later in life. The only thing I was concerned about at the moment was how Spot was eyeing my bare chest in a very suggestive manner, but things were going to be changing very soon.
Especially Spot, out of those silk pajamas. I only hoped he wouldn't take out his red feather boa for warmth...
Author's Note: There you have it. Reviews are greatly appreciated, as is constructive criticism (because we're open minded young women, we are!). You may have some trouble from the preppie-muse faction, but that's just to be expected.
-Saturday and Dakki