Toxic

by Genii

FINALLY FINISHED! ! 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. [the love child of dakki and saturday.]

2. Chapter One

Author's Note: SATURDAY: Dakki's sick.

DAKKI: ((nods fervently))

SATURDAY: But she wrote anyway, which is why she rocks beyond belief.

DAKKI: ((blows nose))

Disclaimer: We own nothing except Racetrack's watch, which belongs to Dakki, and Spot's M.A.C Mocha lip gloss, which belongs to Saturday.

.o.

Chapter One — Free Willies

.o.

By the third day, Spot couldn't take it anymore. He was more or less okay with not being able to access his email or call any of his friends back home, and even the fact that he had to ration his hair gel to two tablespoons a day didn't bother him as much as I thought it would. But there was one thing that he couldn't survive without, and when it got to be too much, he climbed into Swifty's truck, connected his laptop to the cigarette lighter, and ordered everyone inside.

"Come on," he said, slipping the DVD out of its case and popping it into the computer. "We need Kate and Leo."

"What happens if he goes for more than a week without seeing Titanic?" Racetrack muttered to me as we were smushed into the backseat.

"He dies."

And yet, no matter how much we all claimed to hate it, we were still utterly hypnotized as we watched the movie unfold. I really can't tell you how many times I've seen Titanic with Spot, and you probably wouldn't want to know. In fact, our entire relationship was, in a way, based on the movie: we watched it on our very first date at the beginning of Sophomore year, at a little revival theater on Brattle street that Spot had lured me into by saying they were having an all-night 'Twin Peaks' marathon, and then proceeded to cry the entire way through and blow his nose on my shirt. By the time the credits rolled, I was head-over-heels in love with him. And don't even ask me why.

Anyway, even now, I still secretly liked the movie. We all watched, rapt (except for Swifty and Bumlets, who had escaped to do things I didn't really want to think about, and Spot, who kept trying to stick his hand down my pants every ten seconds but still managed to pay attention to the screen) until the credits rolled, at which point Racetrack sighed in an I-have-something-important-to-say kind of way, and began to speak.

"Today," Racetrack announced dramatically, "we go hiking."

The reaction was not quite what he had been hoping for; Spot was messing around with the Special Features on his DVD, David was watching the screen, and I was pretending not to watch David. Bumlets and Swifty were nowhere to be seen, but there were very suspicious noises coming from the tent, which we were all trying very hard to ignore.

Race cleared his throat significantly and repeated a little louder, "Today, we go HIKING."

I nodded without taking my eyes off of David, David said "Okay" without taking his eyes off the screen, and Spot said "Sure thing, hon" and glanced back at Race for a second. And did a double-take.

I tore my eyes from David's incredible profile and glanced at Race too, immediately wishing I hadn't. Y'know how I said he was a complete camping fanatic? That was an understatement. Yes, my little Italian friend was decked out in everything from a Camelback to a huge sun hat to enormous waterproof pants that made him look about 90 pounds heavier. Holy shit.

I whistled. "And I was wondering how you managed to pack three more duffel bags than Spot..." I chuckled, looking him over.

"I can't say I've ever seen hiking boots of that nature," David remarked.

"Dear God, does all of your footwear feature fuzzy pink bunnies?" demanded Spot.

Racetrack flashed that wide, white smile of his and modeled the outfit for us, looking like Spot on prom night. "I feel pretty!" he sang. "Oh so pr—"

"And you call yourself a straight man." Spot tutted loudly, but he was looking very turned-on.

"I am," said Race indignantly.

"He talks like a parrot!"

"Stop with the 'West Side Story' references!"

"ALL RIGHT, EVERYBODY OUTTA THE CAR!" Race reached forward and closed Spot's laptop. "Ow — shit, Spot, didja have to bite me? Get away!! AHH! Anyway, I've got 38 Coppertone Sunscreen for David's sensitive skin. Who's gonna put it on 'im?"

Naturally, I volunteered.

"And I," Spot declared importantly, "am going to break up the little love-fest in our sleeping quarters. That sex area has already been claimed by me and my boyfriend." He winked at me, made an obscene and very disturbing tongue gesture, and marched off happily, leaving me irritated beyond words.

Race stared after him for a minute, eyebrows raised, and then handed me a little bottle. "Put this on Dave and make sure you don't miss any places -- extra on his nose, all right?"

"Thanks, mom."

"Shut up, David."

"Hey Race, where can I get a sunhat like that? Very sexy."

Racetrack shot me a withering look that said quite clearly, "I am using all of my self-control to restrain myself from kicking you in the nuts" and straightened his hat. "I'm going to go and make sure the trail mix hasn't been attacked by ants," he said, and he left with a flourish.

David grinned and tried to take the bottle from me. "It's all right, Jack, I can do my own sunscreen," he said with a grin.

"No!" I yelped.

He raised an eyebrow. "Why...?"

I couldn't think of a plausible answer to his unfinished question, so I bent my head low so that my baseball cap would cover my bright red face and began to squeeze out sunscreen into the palm of my hand. "I can't believe Spot still thinks we're going out," I said to fill in the awkward silence.

"Yeah. Does he have, like, separation issues or something?"

"I think so." I dipped my finger in the blob of sunscreen. "He didn't even write depressing, homosexual poetry when we broke up. He just ... didn't notice."

David laughed. I lifted my face so that I could smear the gunky lotion onto his body, and for a few seconds I found breathing almost impossible -- it had just occurred to me how difficult it was going to be to pull this off without getting a huge erection. Slowly, with a trembling hand, I reached forward and spread sunscreen down his nose and over his cheekbones.

Gaaaaaaah...

It was as though a huge electrical shock had bolted through my body, starting from my fingertip and shooting up my arm and throughout the rest of my body. I gasped slightly and glanced at David, to see if he had felt it too.

He hadn't, apparently, because he was humming quietly and staring off into space. "You deal with it very well," he said after a minute. "Spot, I mean. If that were happening to me, I'd be having severe issues getting any sleep at night."

"I do have severe issues getting to sleep at night," I mumbled.

"What?"

Our conversation was interrupted by a muffled yell coming from the tent. "SPOT!" Swifty was hollering. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?? I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU!! GET THE HELL OUTTA MY SLEEPING BAG!"

There was a thump and a yelp, and suddenly a very scared and very almost-naked Bumlets toppled out of the tent. "DON'T WORRY, SWIFTY, I'LL SAVE YOU!" he shouted dramatically, and he flipped his hair back out of his eyes and dived headlong back into the tent.

"I'M BEING RAPED!" Swifty shrieked.

"I'M SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED!" Spot yelled.

"SHUT UP AND GET AWAY FROM MY BOYFRIEND!" Bumlets roared, and soon it was Spot toppling out of the tent. He frowned, dusted himself off, and blew a raspberry at the tent. "Yeah, and don't come back," said Bumlets from inside.

I looked at David. "Maybe we can lose Spot in the woods today, eh?"

"Let's pray," David said seriously, and smeared a blob of sunscreen on my nose.

.o.

The hiking experience was not exactly what I had wished for. What I had been hoping would happen was that we would go on a very short hike, one that didn't involve me panting like a dog, and climp up onto a cliff or something, and then lie down in the sun. And then, while Bumlets and Swifty were busy making out, and Race was checking the barometer built into his MountainMan3000 all-weather, all-pressure, omni-stabilized multi-purpose wristwatch complete with can opener, dental drill, laser pointer, and miniature popcorn popper as well as twenty-six additional features necessary for survival in the wild (available for only eight hundred dollars legal tender in black, stainless steel, or midnight chartreuse), David and I would lie down on the tundra, and look up at the sky together, and talk, for hours and hours. And then, David might take his shirt off, and after a while his (beautiful, freckled) fair skin would start to burn a little from the hot Alaskan sun, and I would get some more sunscreen from the dispenser on Racetrack's watch, and rub in into his warm back.

And as we watched the sun set behind Mount McKinley, David would say, "It's so beautiful."

And I would say, "No. You are." And then we would kiss. A small, perfect kiss. A guy can dream.

Well, you may have already guessed that the hike didn't exactly go that way.

Racetrack was, as he said, serious about camping. I liked to say that he was a fanatic, but he preferred his own terminology. And people who were serious about camping were serious about hiking too, and those people, apparently, went on fourteen-mile round trips up hills, through eight hundred blackberry bushes to a glacier-fed stream called Moose Creek.

"It'll be fantastic," Racetrack said. "Anyone want beef jerky?"

"Race...have you ever walked fourteen miles in you life? Have you even walked four?"

"No, but it can't be that hard," he said lightly. "Gatorade?"

"No, I..." I paused, and looked over Racetrack's shoulder at the map of Denali National Park that he had unfolded. "Race, tell me how you chose this hike?"

Race shrugged. "The guy at the park entrance recommended it."

"Really?" I asked. "Really, the guy at the park entrance recommended a fourteen-mile uphill hike to six college students, five of whom have never hiked before and considered AM/PM to be the great outdoors? He recommended it, Race?"

"Well..." Racetrack ran a hand through his hair, considering. "...Maybe 'recommended' is too strong a word? Let's put it this way, he said there were five categories for hikes: 'Relaxed', 'Intermediate', 'Challenging', 'Strenuous', and 'Bury My Heart at Denali National Park'." He paused. "...I took a chance."

It wouldn't have actually been that bad if I could have gotten close to David, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Instead, Spot took the opportunity to spend the entire hike up the hill hanging off of me with his arm around my neck, asking me to point out wildlife on the trail.

"What's that?" he asked, leaning so close to me that I was afraid he was going to start chewing on my earlobe again like he had for most of Mile Number 3, and pointing to a birch up ahead that was identical to eight thousand other birches next to it.

"That's a tree," I said. "Some kind of very tall tree." I hoped I wasn't being too technical.

"Oh, it's wonderful how you know so much about the great outdoors," Spot breathed.

"Tell me, Jack, back home in Colorado—"

"Utah."

"What?"

I sighed. "I grew up in Utah, Spot."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Pretty sure."

He shrugged. "Well, whatever. But, back home in Utah, Jack...did your family have a farm?" He smiled lasciviously and licked his lips.

"NO," I said, quickly. I had a pretty good idea where this conversation was going.

"'Cause, I have to say," Spot murmured, "the idea of seeing you do farm work gets me pretty hot. I mean, if you can look so sexy just sitting in the library, studying Griswold Vs. Connecticut..." he paused, smiling, and tried to make eye contact. "Wanna hear a secret of mine?"

"Not really," I said.

"I have this fantasy," he said, "about you baling hay in a barn--you're wearing these faded blue jeans and cowboy boots, and you're all sweaty, and hot, and..."

"And you come outside and offer me lemonade?" I said irritably.

"How did you know?" Spot squealed. "Anyway," he said, "whaddaya say we slip off into the woods, and...y'know...get to know each other all over again." He raised his eyebrows suggestively and put his hand on my ass. "Ooh. Boxers."

"SPOT!" I screamed. "I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU! WE'VE BEEN BROKEN UP FOR TWO MONTHS!" I jumped away from him, but not fast enough to avoid him licking my neck. Or quietly enough to avoid David looking back to see what was going on. Goddammit.

"Are you wearing those shorts I got you for Christmas last year?" he asked, oblivious. "The ones with the Grinch on them?"

"SPOT, DO YOU UNDERSTAND A WORD OF WHAT I'M SAYING?"

"You don't have to yell," he pouted.

"I'M NOT YELLING!" I yelled.

"Y'know, Jack..." Spot said. "I know we're broken up and everything, if that's what you're worried about."

"I—you do?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "But just because we've broken up, that doesn't mean we can't still go out, does it?"

"Well, it does actually, that's what breaking up is." 1

"But...we can still have sex, right?"

Before I could come up with a good answer to this irrevocably skewed bit of logic (or begin to seriously contemplate hurling myself headlong into a bush of poison oak) I heard Racetrack shouting from a few yards ahead.

"WOOHOO! WE MADE IT! I'M A REAL PIONEER NOW! Hey, Bumlets, take a picture of me next to this tree?"

"Sorry, Race, I forgot my camera."

"Oh, that's okay. There's one in my watch. See?" He pointed to his wrist. "Between the MP3 player and the calculator."

"This one?"

"No, below it. That one does spreadsheets."

I jogged up to the front, where everyone but Spot and I had been walking. All I could see ahead of us was a tangle of blackberries. "Jesus, Race, how do you even know we're there? I don't see a creek."

"Oh, it's just through those bushes."

"You can see over them?" I marveled.

"No. It's on the GPS on my watch."

Before I could say anything else, a hot pink streak shot past us, towards the stream. "LET'S GO SKINNY DIPPING!" our Brooklynite friend shouted, as he disappeared from view. A pair of pink rubber briefs sailed through the air in his wake, and landed on my head. "WHEE!! FREE WILLIES! JACK, COME AND—AAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!"

"...And that would be the blackberry bushes," said Race with a smirk.

It came as no surprise to the rest of the guys when I tried my very hardest to convince them to leave Spot there for the rest of the afternoon. I bribed, I begged, I offered them my car, but in the end Racetrack reminded us all that Spot was the only one among us with any fashion sense whatsoever, so I gave in. I might need to borrow his M.A.C Mocha lipgloss next week, anyway.

And so it was that we continued our hike, Racetrack leading (as always), Bumlets and Swifty closely behind (trying to be discreet about the fact that their hands were practically down each other's pants), David and me behind them (avoiding eye-contact at all costs), and Spot at the rear (carefully removing thorns from his formerly flawless, moon-kissed body). Conversation was pretty much limited to Racetrack's "And here we have the Chocolate Lily, or Fritillaria camschatcensis, named for the deep, chocolate-color of its petals" and the occasional giggle from Swifty, which only heightened the feeling of awkwardness in the air.

After a few minutes, I noticed that Spot's whimpers and grumbles behind me had pretty much stopped. Glancing back, I immediately realized why. Ohhhhhhhh shit.

"David," I whispered, poking him in the ribs. "Holy crap, David, where's Spot?"

"What?"

"Spot's gone."

David whipped around. "Oh god. RACE!"

Racetrack, who was in the middle of identifying a Wild Iris to the back of Bumlets' head, looked up, irritated, at the pair of us. "David, is this important?" he demanded.

"Yeah, it is! Sp—"

"Because I think that Bumlets and Swifty are really benefiting from my lecture, and I would hate to deprive them of such a learning experience," he went on airily. "Now the scientific term for the Wild Iris is Iris setosa, but—"

"RACE, SPOT'S MISSING!" I yelled.

Racetrack stopped. "Spot's... what?"

"Missing? Y'know, like, not here?" I clarified, looking desperately around for a sign of anything hot pink. It wasn't that I was concerned about Spot's well-being; I was more concerned for the rest of the world.

"He's on the loose?!"Race yelped."God save Alaska!"

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was cut off by a sudden noise echoing through the trees.

"You're just too good to be true... Can't take my eyes off of you..."

We all froze. "What the hell was that?" Swifty demanded, his hands still tightly gripping Bumlets' waist.

"You'd be like heaven to touch... I wanna hold you so much..." the voice continued breathily. The five of us looked around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice, but none of us saw anything. "At long last love has arrived, and I thank God I'm alive... You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you..."

And suddenly I saw.

Standing on a ledge about twenty feet away, doing a sort of jazz-walk back and fourth and humming the background orchestrations, was none other than Spot Conlon, obviously wishing he was Heath Ledger. He stopped suddenly, stretched out his arms to me, and sang, "I LOVE YOU, BABY, AND IF IT'S QUITE ALL RIGHT, I NEED YOU, BABY, TO WARM THE LONELY NIGHT! I LOVE YOU, BABY, TRUST ME WHEN I SAY... OH PRETTY BABY, DON'T BRING ME DOWN, I PRAY! OH PRETTY BABY, NOW THAT I'VE FOUND YOU, STAY! AND LET ME LOVE YOU BABY... LET ME LOVE YOU..."

We stopped him before the key change, thankfully. I can honestly say that I have never been more mortified in my entire life, including the time that I pinched some random guy's ass whom I assumed to be Spot, but who turned out to be a very short, very built, and very homophobic stranger. This was ten times worse, and Spot was ten times more tone-deaf.

And do you know what the worst part was?

Hmm?

When we got home, Spot insisted that we pile back into the back of the van and watch "10 Things I Hate About You" on his laptop. It was really very lucky that Race, Swifty, Bumlets, and David were between Spot and me, because if I had been able to reach anywhere near Spot's neck... well, let's just say we wouldn't have to worry about any more Britney Spears keeping us awake at night.

Insert evil glare here.

.o.

That night, we all arranged our sleeping bags in a rather odd configuration on one side of the tent, so that Spot ended up alone on the other side. For the life of him he couldn't figure out why, but he realized that this way there would be more room when he lured me into his bed later on, so he wasn't too upset. He spent all of our dinner of dehydrated lasagna making disturbing tongue gestures and lifting up his shirt whenever someone tried to speak, so it went without saying that we were all pretty ticked off at him by the time we got into our sleeping bags.

We soon forgot our irritation, however, a few minutes after we had put out the campfire. Bumlets was singing us a complicated sort of Gaelic lullaby that he had learned in a gay chatroom last year, and we were all almost asleep — when a twig cracked outside.

Yeah, I know, I sound completely paranoid. I know it could have been a bird or a chipmunk or the police coming to take Spot away, but somehow, the way this twig cracked sounded like it was something much bigger.

And we freaked out.

"It's Bigfoot!"

"It's the Blair Witch!"

"It's a grizzly bear!"

"It's a deranged lumberjack!"

"It's Ricky Martin!" Spot shrieked, pulling the top of his hot-pink sleeping bag over his head. "He's back from the dead and he's out for revenge!"

"Spot," Swifty reminded him, "Ricky Martin isn't dead."

"When was the last time you head 'Livin' La Vida Loca'?" Spot asked defensively.

"In that gay bar in Cambridge you dragged us to the night before my phlebotomy exam."

"Oh yeah."

"Man," Racetrack said, "you sure were lucky one of those guys in furry hotpants used to be a cardiologist. If it weren't for that, I don't know how you ever would've passed."

We heard another twig snap outside our tent. "It's Enrique Iglesias!" Spot screamed, and shot back into his sleeping bag. It was going to be a very long night.

.o.

Shoutouts (written by Dakki this time, which doesn't mean that Saturday isn't grateful beyond belief to reviewers, but in order to get this done on time, one of us had to write it... And this is one kick-ass run-on sentence.)

Erin Go Bragh:

BUMLETS AND SWIFTY: YAY!

DAKKI: Thanks. They needed that. XD.

BUMLETS: Wanna go make out now?

SWIFTY: Okay!

DAKKI: ...But they'll always have each other... ((grins))

DALTON: ((upstairs)) Hey, why won't the bathroom door open? I—AAAAAHHHH! MY EYES! MY EYES!

Madison Square:

DAKKI: Camping is actually highly underrated. I mean, apart from the whole not-being-able-to-get-to-your-email-for-a-week-at-a-time-thinking-all-of-your-friends-have-forgotten-about-you-and-you'll-die-alone-in-the-jaws-of-a-Grizzly-bear-(you know, alone except for the grizzly bear)-thing, it ain't so bad. ((pause)) Remind me why I like it so much?

DALTON: Cute backpacking guys.

DAKKI: Oh yeah...

Braids:

DAKKI: ((attempts to curtsy and ends up falling flat on her face)) ((from the floor)) ...Thank you...

DALTON: ((preens)) ...We are great, aren't we?

DAKKI: ((trying very hard not to hurt his feelings)) ...Actually, Charlie, I think she means Saturday.

DALTON: FINE! I can see when I'm not wanted! ((runs off))

DAKKI: WAIT! I CAN'T GET UP IN THIS DRESS!

Dreamer:

DAKKI: Honestly, didn't you see it coming? Maybe a nice musician number on the Brooklyn docks...Spot gets out his glitter leotard...the newsies in wet long johns start to can-can…((starts to drool))

DALTON: ((stares))

WHAT?

Sapphy:

DAKKI: My fair Sapphinella, you underestimate us so. For are we simply fanfic authors?

DALTON: ...

DAKKI: FOR ARE WE SIMPLY FANFIC AUTHORS?

DALTON: ...

DAKKI: ((pokes))

DALTON: OH! ...No, we are not simply fanfic authors! We are...

DAKKI: CAPED CRUSADERS! Dun-dun-dunnn...and they're pink, too!

.o.

Author's Note: DAKKI and SATURDAY and DALTON: I love you, baby, and if it's quite all right...

DALTON and SATURDAY: ((stop singing suddenly and evilly))

DAKKI: I deedoo, baby, to keep be warb at dight!

DALTON and SATURDAY: ((snigger))

DAKKI: ((glares)) Shuddup, I'b god a stuffy dose.

DALTON: ((still sniggering)) Yeah, we noticed.

DAKKI: ((smacks him)) ((goes back to bed))

SATURDAY: And that is our first chapter. Please leave a review, and send flowers for Dakki because she's feeling pretty crappy. Dalton and I couldn't help making fun of her congested style of talking, but please be nice to her in her weakened condition. She's the real genius of the Genii. ;-)

-Saturday and Dakki