A/N: Jessi here (Sorry!) Some bash slash for the masses and I can dredge up the three tests and the paper I'm supposed to be writing. I'm such a nerd.
[Kaila]- I wrote the Adam and Charlie scenes. Hope it doesn't get confusing. And sorry it's not particularly good writing, I'm home sick with the flu.
Disclaimer: Disney owns Mighty ducks, Portman owns Fulton, Andy and Cam are real… and ANDY won't let me borrow his X-men comic books. *grumbles*. Horace the Giraffe did exist, I swear!
[Kaila] I must add that the threats belong to the authentic living Andy. No one else.
~*~
Portman traced patterns on the stucco ceiling with his eyes. If you squint, that group of poky thingies right there looks like a giraffe… AC/DC still blared over the boom box. He smirked, thinking of all the pansy preps they were keeping up with their "abominable music taste" as Jeff Burton had so dubbed it. That twat was the worst; aristocratic ass. It seemed they got the worst people on their floor. Then again, they weren't well liked by the general populace at Eden hall. No one really knew them, they just stared in the halls at their bandannas and black clothing spewing blatant propaganda for bands better than that crap they tended to listen to; for neither he nor Fulton were very accepting in musical tastes. Besides the Duck clan, who didn't really understand them anyway, they had managed found two other misfits.
Portman turned his dark eyes to the lump on the other bed. He could barely trace the slight rise and fall of Fulton's breathing. The small window stood open, allowing a cold breeze to fill the room. Turning on his side to gaze at his sleeping roommate better, he crossed his arms over his bare chest, attempting to shroud his sensitive skin from the biting Minnesota air. Too lazy to pull the thin sheet around him, he suffered in the cold, eyes never leaving his best friend's back.
Fulton had forgiven him, he didn't know why, but maybe his roommate understood something about Portman that even he didn't know about himself. Maybe he found some instability in him, but was still able to forgive. The Chicagoan had apologized profusely, but he friend would have none of it brushing it off with a "you were shit faced." Somehow when Fulton had mentioned that to him, he felt more remorse.
Andy Kim had called Fulton a self-pitying ass. Affectionately. Portman still punched him, eventually that ended in a trip to the dean. He supposed there was some element to Fulton who liked to degrade himself, almost to an art form, but Andy constantly had to stick up for Cam, who would just brush off anything. Sometimes he coveted their relationship; the best friend hood that knew no cracks or blemishes. He would never have that with Fulton. They had taken the black diamond through the ice, whereas Andy and Cam expertly maneuvered together, the bashes always managed to catch edges and hit trees. Maybe because they had gone too far, the fat dark line they had crossed into no man's land only proved to add rocks and flying projectiles to the mix of a fragile relationship. Their friends had managed to skirt around the line, together, synchronized. He heard plenty of talk about the two, but that was what it was, just talk. When Andy came near, mouths seemed to zip shut. How a barely 5'6" stocky Korean kid managed to intimidate people, he would never know. Perhaps it was the threats that weren't limited to slitting your throat and tying a plastic bag around your head and hanging you upside down to drown in your own blood. Or as Portman had heard in full, unable to forget the face the blonde basketball player made as Andy recited the threat melodramatically "I'm gonna tie you to the back of my car then drive you around the track several times to initiate turf burn as well as several types of road rash all over your body, then lock you in a furnace room and allow you the bare minimum needs for survival then release you with an incurable infection that's turned many colors and has begun to smell." And that was only in response to the poor kid having made fun of Cam's t-shirt. The kid had this blatant bite that, even to his own 6' 2" muscular hardass ness was… frightening. Such an odd compliment for his friend's tall lanky apathy. Yet where Cam was, Andy wasn't usually far away, maybe it was visa versa but they were mismatched twins, complete with the ESP.
Fulton had wanted to take a chance and tell the Ducks outright. He said they would understand, and they had been friends with most of them since kindergarten. Portman wasn't so trusting. The subject made his brain hurt as it tried to separate the team into categories; so far none of them were in the 'fully support' column, and far to many in the 'probably disgusted' He was no mathematician, but those didn't look like good odds. Let them have their suspicions, but the team was a good thing to have; to break that up would be stealing the last three and a half years of his life.
Portman rolled back facing his ceiling, remembering why he didn't think about that. I think I'll name the Giraffe, Horace.
*~*~*
Adam groggily rolled over entangled in the mass of flannel sheets and comforter that surrounded him. Yawning he slowly opened his eyes, which after a momentary mass of blurred colour and mystification began to focus. The only light in the dorm came from the blinking neon alarm clock flashing 2:47, which slightly illuminated anything within a 10 foot radius of it.
Not caring for what he saw after seeing his bed still occupied by his hockey bag, not his captain, somehow anticipating that he would be asleep beside him, he shifted his body back into the sea of malleable blankets struggling to work his way back into his dream, slightly disappointed. He knew that the only attempt he had at his deluded fantasy world was confined to his subconscious.
~*~
Charlie stumbled onto the crisp grass feeling the amicable crunch of new frost being shattered. The small house in front of him was familiar, from the chipped and cracked paint that hadn't changed since he first met the inhabitants when he was 6, to the old bent-rimmed basketball hoop in the front. But Charlie disregarded the rest intuitively and walked around to the side, falling into a memorable window-well. He rapped on the gritty glass caked with grime, each knock sending pains like razor blades shooting through his clenched fists. Growing impatient he attempted to look through the filthy glass, shocked when it suddenly slid open, a familiar face and a warm gust of air welcomed him in.
"Conway. Had a feeling you'd stop by soon," a black boy smiled knowingly as though he had planned his arrival, stepping aside letting him jump to the carpeted floor, "Did you walk all the way from your pansy cake-eater school?" he pondered holding out a hoodie in outstretched hands. Charlie readily accepted the sweatshirt, pulling it quickly over his head, tousling his brown curls in an attempt to unfreeze them.
"Nah Hall, from my mom's," he mumbled flopping out onto a bean bag chair that was scattered aimlessly in a corner. The room had a reassuring scent to it… the indescribable perfume… like the pot his mom had stumbled upon.
"Fight?" the black boy said omnipotently lying on the floor melodramatically, his small body overwhelmed by his baggy corduroys and hoodie.
"Knew you hadn't lost your touch Hall, she found your present," he sighed biting his lip, sinking into the chair, the cold still having un thawed from his bones.
"Ah. Oh well eventually my mom stopped caring," he said dazed from his relaxed position. "It's not like she's home often enough, working two day jobs and a night shift. Casey'll stop caring. It's all a matter of perspective, so you smoke a bit of weed, to my knowledge you aren't running around joining gangs, knocking chicks up, etc."
"I knew that's what you'd say dude… I guess I can't be as disconnected from reality as you manage to be. But that bitch, she just pisses me off so bad," he growled choppily, unable to continue his thoughts.
"You're still young my friend. Still cutting I presume?" he asked nonchalantly, as his hand scrounged the floor for the glass pipe lying next to him.
"Dude… no… wait… how the hell do you know?" he stuttered, caught off guard by his friend's inevident knowledge.
"Your tone. It's sharp, rageful, illogical, masochistic; you could use a hit bro. You need to let things go, just get in tone with what life is telling you," he revealed, sitting up into a cross legged position, passing his friend the piece and his lighter. "You get the first hit Conway. You need it more than I. "With accepting hands that had regained feeling he readily took the offer.
"Thanks, but do you have any-" he began to ask as he held the mystic translucent rainbow coloured glass to his mouth, flicking the lighter on, the flame dancing inexplicably until hit the bowl where it was distinguished. Sighing he inhaled deeply.
"Booze. I thought you knew me better than that. I don't understand why people choose to drink their uncertainties away into a rut of stupidity and hostility. But yeah, Tyler should be stopping by with some in shortly, unless he gets sidetracked."
Charlie shook his head, not surprised by his friend's aura of divinity for to his knowledge that's how he'd always been, rather why he was so omnipotent. At first he attributed to the massive amount of weed his friend smoked, beginning in grade 7, but as the boys' friendship advanced he began to realize that his knowledge did not come from a drug induced state, for it was too authentic and poignant. He didn't spew incoherent garbage as he toked up, rather an intense enlightenment and discernment of reality.
Sighing he took another hit, unable to express his cognations into congruous words. He kept everything bottled and boarded up, not letting the slightest tinge of sentiment out. The only exception was the occasion fits of rage he had on the ice, but no one had yet been able to see through those (besides Jesse of course) shrugging them off as a bad temper that stemmed from hockey. Everything was caked, glued and plastered behind a nauseating veneer of perfection. Just like every other hormone-fueled teenager in existence he spat mentally ashamed that he had fallen to such shambles.
."Talk Conway. Or at least pass me the piece," Jesse's satiric impatience snapped him from his haze of deliberation. "I'm not going to force anything out of you, it will come in time, but do remember you can't hide much from me." The brunette nodded groggily, handing the pipe to his friend in response, still unable to string together a single utterance.
"You're exhausted. Physically and psychologically. And due to my overwhelming sense of generosity I'll allow you to crash here for the night. Seeing as it's 3 in the morning and you have no where else to go," Jesse chuckled to himself, still very much awake. "Only G-d knows that you need it."
Cracking a smile of thanks, Charlie snuggled deeply into the worn bean bag, eyes falling shut, finally able to forget the fact he'd have to go back to Eden Hall and his mom's, and face it all again. But that was the future, he was in the present, he contemplated as he drifted off to sleep.