Towards morning, Felix slowly awoke and stretched out limbs that were stiff from sleeping on the sugary floor. He couldn't exactly remember where he was at first, but then the scent of stale sugar reminded him- he was in the Fungeon because he'd climbed in to see his old friend, who was currently sleeping with his arms wrapped around the handyman.
"How did I get in your cell?" Felix yelped, scrambling backwards and finding with relief that at least he was still clothed.
"I got rid of thome more brickth and pulled you through," Turbo replied sleepily but happily as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. "You looked tho cold in that thell."
"Thanks for the offer but you know that the president will put you in a more secure cell when she sees the damage you've done," Felix worried. Seeing that the racer was still smiling stupidly, he elaborated, "One that I won't be able to break into as easily."
"Oh, you'd better go then," Turbo decided, pushing him back towards the hole that Ralph would be proud of. "I'll thee you later. You are coming back to get me, aren't you?"
"You'd drive yourself crazy if I didn't," Felix confirmed, and after sitting on the floor, leaned back against the wall after he'd fixed it.
"Do you still have feelings for me?" Turbo asked after a few minutes of sitting in silence.
"No," Felix replied, "I moved on ages ago. Heck, excuse my language, I almost gave up on love altogether. And then I met Tammy, she's just the most dynamite gal."
"Of course you moved on, you thought I was dead," Turbo figured. Felix thought he heard a sniff on the other side of the wall.
"Are you crying?" he asked, never able to ignore someone so upset.
"No," came the reply, but it sounded vaguely watery.
"Yes you are," Felix smiled softly. "You still love me, don't you?"
A sniffle. And then: "Yeth."
"If I get Vanellope to let you out, you're not going to try to sabotage my relationship with Tammy, are you?" Felix wondered after several moments of consideration. This was a game-changer, although he really should have seen it coming.
"You'd hate me if I did," Turbo admitted. "Can I just love you from afar at least?"
"Is 'afar' to you the end of my arm?" Felix asked, smiling at the memory of Turbo hanging off his arm wherever they went. He was so flamboyant, almost verging on girly, but because everyone loved Felix and he was always with Felix, he'd never been made fun of for it. Now that he was seen as a bad guy, however...
"Yep," Turbo replied, and Felix could tell by the tone of his voice that he was grinning.
"Alright, little cavity, which cell did you put my boyfriend in?" Felix scrambled to his feet and waited eagerly at the door of his cell at the sound of his girlfriend's voice. It was so nice to be going steady with someone, especially someone as special as her.
"This one," Vanellope replied, and soon enough Felix's cell was opened and he ran out into the arms of the sergeant who held a special place in his heart.
"She's quite high-definition. I thought you liked the older games," Turbo commented icily, coming to the door of his cell to glare out. He'd tucked his hair under his jumpsuit and replaced his helmet so the president wouldn't see his new hairstyle and try to remove his only way out of this place.
"Now, Turbo, play nice. This is Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun, from Hero's Duty. We've been an item now for a few days," Felix introduced them.
"Seems like you've got a thing for 'T' names," Turbo commented. "Were you drawn to her because her name starts with the same letter as mine?"
"Turbo..." Felix warned, and finally the racer whirled around and stormed off to sulk on the little bed in his cell.
"Seems like you go for the feisty ones," Calhoun grinned and ruffled her boyfriend's hair.
"He's not normally like that," Felix defended him, and turned to walk out of the game. "He's actually quite nice when he's not around someone he's threatened by."
"I'll believe that when I see it," Vanellope scoffed, joining them. "He was always such a meanie, even when he first came here."
"And who was he a meanie to?" Felix wondered.
"Me, the other racers... oh, maybe he was threatened by them," the young president figured. "I still hate him but if he's nice to people he's not threatened by, maybe he's not so bad."
"So will you let him go?" Felix requested, almost pleading. "The other game characters might shun him but he really wants to get out. He said that he hates this place."
"The other characters might shun him? Of course I'll let him out!" the president declared with an evil glint in her eye. "Maybe they'll kill 'im for me."
"Now, I don't think anyone's out for his blood. That would be you, little lady," Felix corrected her. "That reminds me, I have to have a word with Ralph. Little girls should not be using the language you use."
"Oh, she didn't learn it from Tappers," Calhoun informed him with a laugh. "I took her into my game a couple of times. Little rat wandered into the mess hall and overheard some conversations." Felix frowned at this knowledge.
"Well, just don't go around using that language too often," Felix warned the small president. "I wish I could somehow discourage it but there's no stopping you, is there?"
"Nope," Vanellope replied happily, and grinned as she walked ahead of them.
It was quite fitting that when Turbo returned to the arcade, everyone stopped to stare at him.
"They look like they've seen a ghost," he commented to Felix, his hands clenched into fists at his sides so he wouldn't take Felix's hand out of habit. They may have once walked through Game Central hand-in-hand but that was no longer the case, as was made painfully clear by the woman who was lucky enough to be holding hands with Felix.
"They have, considering you've been thought dead for years," Felix informed him. "And you didn't have a long braid last time."
"Fair enough," the racer shrugged. "Maybe I should change my clothes considering I probably won't be let near a racing game anytime soon."
"Now, that's a certain fact," Felix chuckled. "Cheer up, buddy. I know you loved racing but there must be something else you're good at. Maybe you could help me fix the building in my game since we've recently started letting the unplugged games have a home there."
"But I'm not good at anything else but racing," Turbo whined. "Why do you think I was so frightened my game was going to be unplugged?"
"I guess that's the problem with old games," Felix sighed with a look to his girlfriend, "They weren't designed to do more than one thing. But games these days have full backstories and everything."
"I'm flattered," Calhoun smiled, and leaned down to plant a kiss on her boyfriend's cheek. Turbo watched, feeling an uncomfortable mixture of jealousy and despair.
"So is there any game in particular you want to see?" Felix asked, leading the racer out onto the Station. Turbo looked around with wide eyes. This place looked so different, even though it still looked the same in some aspects. There were old games, as well as the general layout of the station, but the games had changed and more characters wandered about. Some looked surprisingly high-definition.
"Can we go to our favourite place?' Turbo asked, not even realising that he'd referred to them as a couple. It was habit, after all.
"Sure," Felix replied after nervously scratching the back of his head, having picked up on the 'we'. "Some of the other characters might shun you, though. They've all heard about you and what you did all those years ago is still seen as a major crime."
"Oh, I know," Turbo nodded. "I got the fame I wanted, just not in the way I wanted. I never wanted to be known as the bad guy."
"Then you shouldn't have been so reckless," Calhoun suggested in her usual brash tone. It still sounded like she was scolding him to Turbo, though. The three of them continued over to Tappers but, as Turbo stepped through the gate, and alarm sounded and the Surge Protector appeared.
"Hold it right there." Turbo stopped and tried not to tremble at the sight of the Surge Protector.
"Please don't arrest me," he pleaded. "I've already served time in the Fungeon."
"I don't trust you going into other games, not after what happened with Roadblasters. That's why I do this job," Surge informed him, giving an icy look to the racer.
"He's with me, Surge, he's not going to do anything bad," Felix tried to convince the blue man
"Well, it's not like he can do much damage in Tappers," Surge figured. "You can go in but you'd better stick with Felix. He can keep an eye on you."
"I will," Turbo promised, and grabbed Felix's hand in his eagerness. Calhoun gave him a look that could have chilled the boiling hot Diet Cola Hot Springs and Turbo quickly withdrew his hand, wishing he had pockets.
Inside Tappers, the patrons all stopped talking as soon as the infamous racer stepped in. Cringing, he hid behind Felix as they slowly made their way to a back booth. Hushed conversations started around him and Turbo tried to make himself invisible.
"I shouldn't have come here," he mumbled, scooting closer to Felix. "Everyone's thtaring at me."
"I told you this would happen," Felix reminded him, gently patting his knee. "Just try to ignore them."
"Hey there, Felix, Calhoun," Tapper greeted them, and then his eyes widened when he noticed the third character seated at the booth and trying to hide behind Felix. "Turbo? You were my favourite customer. It's nice to see you here again."
"Hi, Tapper," Turbo greeted him. "It's nice to be here again. I missed this place." In truth, he'd missed every part of his old life.
"I'll bring over the usual, then. Do you want anything, ma'am?" Tapper asked Calhoun, who looked around for a list of drinks.
"Do you have anything stronger than root beer?" she asked finally, having found no such list.
"Of course I do. I'll bring you the drink Turbo normally gets," Tapper nodded, and walked back over to the bar.
"I didn't think he'd still have that," Turbo admitted, watching as Tapper poured out the drink that was like rocket fuel. "Are you sure it won't be too strong for you, Tammy?"
"That's Calhoun to you," the sergeant growled, "And I'll be fine. It's only alcohol, right?"
"It's like rocket fuel," Felix informed her. "Turbo likes it because he says it suits his name. It's strong Russian vodka."
"Who else drinks it? I had to drink that awful root beer as King Candy and Tapper would probably stop restocking my drink if I wasn't here to drink it," Turbo commented, grimacing at the memory of the taste of root beer. It was almost as bad as the soda that all the water in Sugar Rush was.
"Well, Zangief's Russian and he likes it," Felix informed him. "I don't think you met him."
"I don't remember the name," Turbo agreed, and eagerly took the glass that Tapper sat in front of him. "Leave the bottle please, Tapper." He'd need something strong to get him through this night if the vodka was going to have the same effect on Calhoun as it always did on him.
Sure enough, about half an hour later, the sergeant was locking lips with Felix in a way that made the handyman blush bright red to the tips of his ears. Turbo watched on, seething in jealousy as he drank from the bottle now rather than the glass.
"It should be me kithing him like that," he muttered to himself, glaring at the scratched tabletop. He'd never dealt well with jealousy, and the large amount of alcohol he'd consumed was seriously impairing his judgement. These things combined made him jump on Felix as soon as the sergeant decided to call it a night.
"Turbo, what are you doing?" Felix managed to get out before the racer started kissing him, pawing at his shirt. Oh, but it felt good to kiss him again.
I know Turbo's sudden flamboyancy might seem a little OOC but my headcanon is that Turbo was always flamboyant. He just didn't seem that way in the reveal because he was frightened/enraged. Oh, and another one of my headcanons is that the concept of sexuality doesn't exist in the arcade so someone can be with a guy or a girl no matter their gender and no one bats an eyelid or defines them as gay or straight. Really, humans only have that concept because of religion (as far as I know, I could be wrong) and in the arcade there is no religion (that we know of). But if you really must define the sexuality of the characters in this ship, Felix is bi (obviously) and Turbo's gay (flamboyantly so). So that's why nobody really reacted to the news that Felix and Turbo were once a couple. Thank you and goodnight! (no seriously, it's night-time here). Oh, and I only have the Vampire Academy series to go on for the description of Russian vodka.