Yo Bitch With Tentacles

It would also lose him his job and land him in jail.

He doesn’t understand what it is about Adam specifically, but any time Lawrence so much as hears his voice, the spirits nestled deep in his marrow just sing for blood. Maybe it’s that stupid smile that’s almost always on his face, or the ease with which he carries his confidence. The easy answer that sells tickets has to do with their divergent views of The Authority. Lawrence suspects it might just be Adam.

He bristles initially when a knock raps against the opposite side of his door, before realizing that it has to be James. He catches the reflection of his tattoos and notices that they seem to turn translucent green for a moment before solidifying. By the time he wrenches the door open, the marks have settled.

“Are you going to be good to go?” James asks without giving Lawrence a chance to speak. He has one pristine eyebrow raised in a sharp arch and his eyes rake over his partner where he stands in the doorway. His expression is doubtful. “You know we’re on in less than a half hour, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Lawrence huffs out. He takes a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. Just give me a few more minutes.”

James tilts his head to peer into the room beyond Lawrence’s shoulder, checking for any damages. Seeming satisfied, he nods.

“Ok,” he says. “If you, y’know, need to vent to somebody… I’m here. So is Bruce.”

“No, just-” Lawrence shakes his head. “Ten minutes. I’ll be out.”

James is opening his mouth to say something when Lawrence closes the door on him. He walks back to the table that holds an assortment of snacks and beverages and pours himself a double shot of whiskey.

Their match doesn’t go well at all. Lawrence can’t get to James to tag him in right away when he needs to switch. He gets some time to recover on the sidelines, but it’s not enough. James does what he can. It all goes downhill anyway. By the time it’s obvious they have no chance to turn things around, their opponents are just taunting them.

Lawrence knows it’s his fault. And James is pissed.

When they get backstage afterwards, he doesn’t deck Lawrence, doesn’t yell, doesn’t do anything that he has every right to do. He just levels Lawrence with a look, shoulders rising and falling with his still laboured breaths. He is very calm when he does speak, his voice quieter than usual.

“You need to figure this shit out.” It’s not a request. The way he frames it makes it a requirement. The stakes don’t have to be stated - it’s clear that there is a jeopardy to their professional partnership here. Lawrence knows he can’t be letting his recklessness put someone other than himself at risk out in the ring.

But it’s also not something James expects him to do on his own, or right away. Just… soon.

That much is clear in the way his voice softens when he pointedly says, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He waits for Lawrence’s nod to confirm before he goes, even patting his shoulder when he passes.

Lawrence nurses his whiskey at his makeup table for a long time before he finally gets up and wriggles out of his shorts and boots in favour of his infinitely more comfortably street clothes.

After he grabs his gym bag, it takes another couple minutes of staring around the room, vaguely checking to see if there’s anything he’s forgetting, before he has to motivation to leave. When he gets to the door, he breathes deep before opening it.

He is immediately met with the sight of soulful, big, brown eyes and a tentative smile.

Lawrence slams the door in Adam’s face. Loudly.

A noise like a growl comes tearing out of his throat. He crosses the scant feet over his dressing room floor that it takes to kick the vanity chair to the ground. It lands with a crash, wood clattering against tile as the offending piece of furniture skids.

The split lip that he’d earned in his earlier match his apparently reopened, if the taste of warm metal on his tongue is any indication. The symbols on his left arm burn and voices pound the drumbeat of a dead language against his temple. He’s on the edge of bursting.

He squeezes his eyes shut until he sees galaxies, holds his breath, counts to three.

When Lawrence lets the air out again, all his rage is expelled with it. His shoulders sag under the weight of a bone-tired defeat that is just now truly settling in. Really, all he wants right now is to go home to his shitty apartment, sink into his futon and watch cartoons, or maybe play Final Fantasy. And as much as he prays that the living incarnation of his bane won’t still be there when he tries to leave again, he knows better.

He still has to brace himself when he opens the door again.

Adam flinches when the door swings open. He’s standing the tiniest bit farther away, Lawrence notices, but, nope, still there. When he seems positive Lawrence isn’t going to deck him right there, his hand raises and he waggles his fingers in a little wave.

“Uh, hi,” he says. The smile is still timid, and it seems against the laws of physics for such a broad man to look so compact. When Lawrence doesn’t move. Adam takes his chance to continue. “I wanted to knock earlier but, uh… I was kind of scared?”

“What are you doing here?” The question is more tired than irritated.

Adam’s tongue flicks out to swipe across his lips. His eyes wander toward the ceiling and he’s rubbing at his left wrist with his opposite hand.

“I watched your fight,” he says. “I wanted to come by and see if you were doing ok.” He shrugs nervously.

Lawrence sighs, a heavy sound that resigns him to his fate. He shoulders out into the hall and Adam moves with him, waiting just over his shoulder when he turns to lock the door behind him.

He’s still standing there, folded in on himself and looking expectantly at Lawrence. It’s then he realizes that he has yet to say anything.

“Have you been waiting this whole time?” Lawrence blurts.

The halls are dim, light concentrated to the secondary fluorescents embedded into the ceiling only every few feet. The distant hum of an industrial vacuum reaches their ears, muted and far-off. Other than that, it’s quiet - almost eerily so. The usual buzz and clamor of hundreds of people filling the seats just beyond the walls is strikingly absent. Everyone went home long ago.

Except Adam, who stuck around to… what? Check up on Lawrence? Make sure he wasn’t choking on pills and drowning in liquor?

“Why?” Lawrence presses, fingers tingling as he balls them into fists at his sides.

Adam looks a little surprised at that. He shrugs, and then, like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever been sure of: “That’s what you do when you care about people.”

Lawrence’s stomach churns at the admission and he isn’t quite sure what to make of it. There’s a swirl of emotion in his chest and it’s impossible to put a name to the conflicting feelings. The whole thing is confusingly endearing, and Lawrence doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Do you have a car?” he asks, mouth moving before his brain can fully catch up.

Adam nods.

“Let me walk you out.”

The stupid smile that Adam gives him manages to illuminate the hallway more than the lights.

Lawrence spins to start marching down the hall and he hears Adams footsteps as he scrambles to catch up. When he does, he easily falls in step at Lawrence’s side. His presence is impossible not to notice. He’s almost the exact same height as Lawrence, but his shoulder to waist ratio is something else entirely. It’s an exaggeration to say Adam’s shoulders take up half the hallway, but damn those biceps are ridiculous.

It’s a fairly short walk out to the small, close parking lot that they share with the staff, most of it indoors. There’s a faint early spring chill in the air and Lawrence stuffs his hands in his hoodie pockets.

“Can I ask you something?”

Adam actually jumps a little when he speaks. Lawrence somehow resists the urge to roll his eyes and makes himself finish the question.

“Why do you keep doing this? Trying to make conversation with me, hell, even being nice to me. We’re rivals.”

Adam stops, and the action is so abrupt that Lawrence tenses. He has to quell a spark of dark energy that threatens to leak through, ready to lash out at the first sign of danger.

“Just because people want to see us fight doesn’t mean we can’t be nice to each other,” Adam reasons. He sounds so convinced of the fact that Lawrence is almost ready to believe him.

“I attacked you backstage before you even knew who I was,” Lawrence reminds him, hands flailing in the space between them to emphasize his point. “You should hate me.”

He doesn’t even mention the fact that Adam seems to be scared of him on top of that.

Adam shrugs, head bobbing with the movement of his shoulders. “You didn’t know me either.”

He just walks away after that, scratching his head and mumbling to himself in confusion while he stretches on his toes, looking over the aisles of cars. Lawrence is frozen in place. Adam is so frustratingly, infuriatingly calm, and it’s driving him to the edge. Lawrence wants to scream, wants to tear his hair out, wants to grab Adam by his shoulders and shake some sense into him. Either that or just puree his brain and be done with it.

Because how does Adam not get this? How can he smile shyly at Lawrence every time they pass in the hall, or send him cards when he wins, or wait at Lawrence’s door long past when he should have left just to make sure he is emotionally stable? When all Lawrence wants is to take Adam’s face in his hands and slam him against a brick wall. Repeatedly.

Except, this is his chance. He could tackle Adam right now, while his back is turned. There would be nothing to hold him back - no ring, no rules. And instead he wanders forth through the moonlit dark, wondering what kind of car Adam drives and hoping there is nothing (or no one) waiting at home that Lawrence has kept him from.

“Oh, there it is!” Adam exclaims, stretching his chin to peer over the scantily filled aisle of cars to their right and into the rows beyond. He turns back to Lawrence and his eyes widen in remembrance. “Where did you park?”

It’s Lawrence’s turn to shrug and he makes a fleeting gesture in the same direction Adam is already facing.

“Great!” Adam says enthusiastically. He waits for Lawrence to catch up before bouncing onward with renewed vigor.

They cut through a pair of adjacent empty spaces and directly across a couple more painted rows to get to the farmost edge of the lot. There are only two cars parked against the line of dry grass that meets the pavement. One is Lawrence’s black Nissan, and the other-

“This is me,” Adam says, waving at the red Accord that sits next to Lawrence’s car with only one space between. “Actually, I’m glad you came out here with me. I was kind of worried I wouldn’t be able to find my car. Where’s yours?”

Lawrence gestures forward. “Right there.”

Adam looks between the two vehicles, then at Lawrence. “We parked right next to each other. That’s funny.”

Lawrence has to snort out a laugh at the stupidly obvious comment. Adam apparently takes it as some kind of agreement and smiles over at him. He crosses his arms over his chest a moment later and that’s when Lawrence first realizes he’s wearing nothing to ward against the cold other than a tight t-shirt. But he stays standing in full, open exposure to the weather, watching Lawrence carefully, almost expectantly.

It actually makes Lawrence shift on the balls of his feet. He’s unused to such close scrutiny, and it doesn’t help that he has no idea what Adam is anticipating, or how to either fulfill or contradict it.

“Well,” Lawrence says, swinging his arms. His voice is strained, clipped, and he knows he sounds awkward, but he feels awkward, too. “Good night.”

Adam looks surprised - disappointed? - and for a moment Lawrence fears he’s going to try and say something to prolong this encounter. But he nods and his hands lips into the back pocket of his jeans to retrieve his keys.

“Drive safe,” he tells Lawrence. The note of finality gives Lawrence a means to escape, and he takes it. Quickly. In a flash, he has his own car keys out of his bag and is opening his door to take shelter inside. He gets one foot through before Adam’s voice is interrupting him again.

“We should talk more.”

Lawrence stills, looks back over his shoulder. It’s Adam’s turn to sound awkward. The suggestion - request? - isn’t nearly as easy coming as his conversation from earlier. He’s looking down at where his hands are connected, taking turns bending individually stretching fingers. The soft clicking of his joints is too loud.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says automatically, uncertainly.

As soon as the word is out of his mouth, he is slamming his car door closed and peeling out of the parking lot, the only thought in his mind to put as much distance between himself and Adam as possible. As quickly as possible.

Even he’s not sure what was behind that ‘yeah’. Whether he was actually agreeing in some form or if it was an empty response because he didn’t know what else to say. Bits and pieces of the brief words exchanged between them drift into his consciousness the whole way back to his apartment. The entire thing was jarring, almost unreal, and it all makes something stir within Lawrence’s chest. Something like anticipation, maybe fear.

It’s not so much the waking up alone that kills him as it is going to school the next day. Specifically, going to school and seeing him with her.

Stan has third period Biology with Wendy, and they always walk together before Stan meets up with Kyle to go to their English class while she heads to her Honors Literature course. Kyle waits at Stan’s locker every day and has to watch as he and Wendy walk down the hall, standing close, the South Park High power couple always turning heads.

He’s never close enough to hear what they’re saying, but they always smile and laugh. The pair always stops so Wendy can wave him off, sometimes with a hug. Then Kyle has to smile despite the churning of his stomach as Stan approaches him, oblivious to the knife twisting deep into Kyle’s heart.

Sometimes, Stan stands there for so long to talk to her that they’re late to their next class. Kyle is forced to wait awkwardly, leaning against his locker as the hallway gradually empties and the last few straggling students hurry to class. Sometimes, he just wants to say fuck it and ditch Stan to go to class alone so he won’t be late. He never does.

That had been the case earlier today.

Stan and Wendy had walked out of the classroom, then stopped at her locker across the hall and a few feet away from Stan’s, where Kyle was waiting. (Something else Kyle is bitter about - his own locker is on the other side of the school.) Normally, Wendy would hurry off before the bell so she at least wouldn’t be late, but today whatever they’d been discussing was apparently important enough to keep her. So there they’d been - the hallways completely empty save for the three of them. Stan and Wendy, leaning close, talking quietly so that Kyle, standing helplessly, pathetically waiting for his best friend, couldn’t hear them.

Finally, Wendy had glanced over at Kyle and said something. She’d touched Stan’s arm and giggled, and he’d squeezed her hand before leaving her side.

“Dude,” Kyle had said, flatly, not smiling for once.

“Sorry,” Stan had apologized quickly. The grin was still on his face, leftover from his time spent with Wendy. “We were just discussing our plans for this weekend.”

Kyle turned and walked away without saying anything else.

Now, sitting in his room alone, he feels like he’s going to burst.

For some reason he hasn’t been able to get the image of Wendy’s smile and Stan’s hand holding hers out of his mind. Part of him knows he should just be glad that Stan is so happy. Despite everything, they’ve grown up together - literally been through hell and around the world with each other. Stan is still his best friend.

On another hand, Wendy has been dating him on and off since they were nine, nearly ten years ago. It’s not fair to her that they’ve been doing this behind her back for so long. Kyle has been acutely aware of that fact from the first time it happened. His own selfishness is what’s made him cling to those precious few moments of happiness that he gets when they’re together. It’s also what’s made him hate himself so much.

He’s been rendered numb with the force of his own self-loathing since he got home. He can’t muster the energy to move. Stan has been texting him periodically for the last hour and he’s looked at each message without responding.

Kyle is everything ok?

You left without me after school.

Did something happen?

You know you can talk to me.

Did I do something?

His phone buzzes again against his bed and Kyle breaks his monotonous staring at the ceiling to read the new message.

Dude I’m coming over.

Kyle sits up abruptly, stomach leaping uncomfortably at the thought of having Stan here right now.

No, he texts back immediately, his first response all afternoon.

Stan takes a minute to answer and Kyle can conjure a perfect image of him standing in his doorway, already halfway out, hesitating as he tries to figure out what to say or if he should just come anyway.

Why not?

Kyle doesn’t know how to answer that. Why not? Stan has always been his best friend. He’s never had anything to hide from him. There’s never been a single thing he couldn’t tell Stan. Until now.

When, after another minute Kyle doesn’t answer him, Stan shoots off another message.

I’ll be there in five minutes.

Stan lets himself in, just as he’s been doing for years. Kyle doesn’t hear the front door, so he jumps when a soft knocking comes at the door to his room.

“Kyle,” Stan says from the other side. “Can I come in? Please? I need to talk to you.”

Kyle wants to hide, pretend he’s not here. He wants to scream at him to go away, to leave him alone, but the ever-dominant rational side of him knows that won’t get them anywhere. They need to talk this over. Kyle can’t keep living like this, but the idea of losing Stan forever is too much for him to bear. So, after a minute, he gets up and opens the door.

Relief floods Stan’s expression, clear as day. His eyes flicker over Kyle’s face and up and down his body, as if checking to make sure he’s unhurt. Kyle’s heart aches at the side of him.

“Stan,” Kyle says shakily, voice cracking on the first word.

He feels the heat of tears prickling at the corners of his eyes and he wipes at them desperately. Stan leaps into action without hesitation, stepping towards him quickly. His hands come to rest on Kyle’s shoulders. He opens his mouth to speak, but is beat to the punch.

“I can’t do this anymore!” Kyle exclaims, hiccuping.

Stan stiffens, his hands tightening on Kyle’s shoulders. Hurt flickers in his deep blue eyes. His voice is quiet when he asks, “What do you mean?”

“This!” Kyle laughs, hysterical, swinging his arms in a wild arc that doesn’t actually indicate anything. “I can’t take it! Every time you get drunk, we fuck, and then you’re gone and I have to go to school the next day and see you with Wendy! A-And it hurts!” He spits out the last word, trying to smother a sob that ends up coming out as a hiccup. “But, fuck, I love you, Stan! I have for a long time. And I get it if you want to be with her. I-I mean, you two are perfect. But it’s not fair! You can’t do this to her. T-To me…”

Kyle finally meets Stan’s wide-eyed gaze when his hands come to rest gingerly on either side of Kyle’s face. He is surprised when Stan pulls away for a second to swipe his sleeve across his face with a sniffle before returning his hand to its place. He’s shaking.

“Kyle,” he says, and with the way his voice sounds, the word becomes something precious and earth-shattering. His thumbs slowly and tenderly caress the soft, flushed skin under them, and the intensity in his eyes could start wars that there’s no doubt he would finish single-handedly. “Wendy and I broke up months ago.”

Kyle stops breathing. He grabs Stan’s left arm, grip white-knuckled.

“What?”

“For good this time,” Stan rushes on, suddenly desperate to get the words out, like he’s almost out of time and what he has to say could change the world. “I’d already known how I felt about you for a while, and she knew, and there was someone else for her, too. The only reason we were still together was because it was so familiar, I guess; I’m not sure we knew how to do anything else at that point. We finally talked and agreed it was the best - the only thing to do. Neither of us really announced it, but I thought you knew. We hadn’t been together for a long time when you and me first… you know…”

Kyle is grasping for something to say, but he can’t breathe. So this whole time…?

“Kyle. Kyle, I’m so sorry,” Stan barrels on urgently. “Oh my god, I thought - I’m such a fucking asshole. That’s why you’ve been so fucked up lately. You should have told me! Shit, I can’t believe I’ve let you feel like this for how long?”

“So, let me get this straight…” Kyle manages, still blubbering a bit through tears that Stan’s warm hands are managing to keep at bay. “You thought we were dating this whole time?”

Stan nods after a moment of hesitation in which his brow furrows in that cute way that means he’s thinking carefully about something.

“Wendy is like my sister. Well, like a good sister,” he adds. “And I was never even really drunk when we did stuff.”

Kyle starts laughing. It’s uncontrollable and maybe a bit manic, but there’s genuine joy somewhere in there, too. He can feel it in his chest, loosening his previous stress. He can’t believe how fucking stupid they both are. How stupid this whole situation has been.

On impulse, he surges forward and wraps his arms around Stan’s neck, pulling him in for a kiss. It’s not an unfamiliar sensation - it never was, even the first time - but this is different somehow. Now, it means so much more.

Stan eagerly returns the kiss, pulling Kyle close in a full-bodied embrace that’s all comfort and warmth. He ducks away, burying his face in Kyle’s shirt after a minute to breathe and Kyle suddenly realises he’s smiling, but he can’t stop.

“I love you,” Stan breathes, the way he says the words making them sound sacred.

In a way, Kyle supposes, they are.

Eventually, they get tired of standing and make it to Kyle’s bed together. They flop down, tangled in a tight embrace, just holding each other and taking in the feeling of it.

“We’re so fucking stupid,” Kyle vocalises at some point, something that has been recurring in his mind since the first time he thought it earlier.

Crowbar couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong. Before this had all started, he had thought things were actually going very well. Up until about a week ago, they’d been spending a lot of time together. There wasn’t much else they needed to be doing when they weren’t messing with the Midnight Crew, or keeping watch against one of their alleged attacks or threats. So, Crowbar had been spending his days keeping the rest of the Felts from accidentally killing each other, and his nights with Die, be it in his room, or under the stars, or in front of the fireplace in the living room.

As Crowbar stayed up to make sure everyone had fallen asleep, Die sat with him. Most of the time, they just sat in silence. Die would mess with fabric and string, crafting something new, or just playing around with the material. Crowbar would read, or take care of Felt Mansion business – such as making sure they had enough food and scheduling grocery shopping accordingly – or just sit in silence, lost in thought.

Sometimes Die would start talking, asking him little questions, or noting something that had happened that day, or start some deep train of thought that he’d likely been chasing around in his head for days. Sometimes, they stayed in silence the whole time. After Crowbar was sure that everyone was asleep and all was quiet, (he always had a feeling about when the others had nodded off, and he’d somehow always know who was being kept awake by something or other troubling them) he would walk Die back to his room before going to his own, waiting for sleep. After the one time Die had fallen asleep in the living room while waiting with Crowbar, he always made sure that the sixth member of his team went to sleep early if he was too tired to stay up.

It was so nice, and Crowbar had felt like he was actually making real progress. He’d been so confident of their relationship that he’d actually been seriously thinking about when would be the best time to ask Die out properly.

Then, everything had gone downhill.

The switch was instantaneous. One night, they had been sitting in the atrium, looking up at the stars through the glass ceiling, having a conversation that made Crowbar’s heart flutter, smiles on both their faces. Crowbar had been so happy, so confident, that he planned to ask Die out to dinner at the first chance he got the next day. But, when he got to breakfast in the morning, still in his pyjamas and feeling lighter than air, happier than he’d been in a long time, he’d made eye contact with Die, and, in a blink of an eye, he was gone.

Silence had filled the room and a hurt confusion had settled in Crowbar’s heart. He would have taken a moment to consider the possibility of it being a coincidence, except for that damn silence, heavy and suffocating. That meant that the others knew something that he didn’t, and that pissed him off.

Now, Crowbar was wandering (more like pacing in a very agitated manner) the Felt Mansion, waiting for Die to appear suddenly again, so he could ambush him and stop this ridiculous… thing, that had been going on for just over a week. He had been asking the help of the other Felt members, insisting that nobody got left behind, and finding Die would be for the good of the gang. They agreed, because their leader had been acting completely crazy, and they were getting fed up with it. Sure, they cared about Die, but no one was too broken up about his absence, and they certainly weren’t worried about his well-being. He could take care of himself, and he was pretty good about using his time powers, unlike some (say, Eggs and Biscuits). They all just wanted Crowbar to stop freaking the hell out about it.

Upon consulting with Fin, Crowbar could learn where he might be able to intersect Die when he returned. Several times, he had shown up to the location just to see that Die was already there, and then gone again as soon as he saw their fearless leader. The fact that Die could just pop in and out as he pleased like that made it damn near impossible to catch him, and Crowbar had no other ideas than waiting around for him to appear and tackling him to the ground when he did, wrenching that doll out of his long, dainty little fingers so he couldn’t go anywhere. Given, there were probably several better approaches he could have taken to getting this job done, but he was in hysterics, and not really up to full capacity right now as far as the whole “thinking of plans that were actually good and utilised the strengths of your team rather than trying to brave it out by yourself and, most of all, weren’t stupid” thing went.

Crowbar glanced over at one of the nearby clocks in the hall. According to Fin, Die was supposed to be here, and he was going to show up soon. The seventh member of the team was wound tighter than a spring, clutching his signature name-sharing weapon in both hands. He’d never planned to use it like this, but he was about ready to knock the stuffing out of that damn doll, if that was the only way to go about it, and, actually, having it in his hands just made him feel better.

He was focusing as hard as possible, concentrating on nothing but his job of scanning the hall. He was the epitome of focus, the absolute definition of concentration; the most concentrated person in the world. Nothing could get by him, not a fly on the wall, or a member of the Midnight Crew in the hall… Hey, that rhymed. That was a pretty good one, Crowba-

Die materialised right in front of him, without as much as a whoosh of air or a sound of warning. Luckily, his back was to Crowbar, which meant he had the advantage. It took a second for the surprised Felt leader to react, and when he did, it was not the best thing he could have done when trying to sneak up on someone.

“Die!” he called out.

The leprechaun with the green top hat whirled around, eyes widening in alarm. Ok, so shouting his name had probably not been the best course of action. In his surprise, it had just been the first thing he’d thought to do.

Luckily, Crowbar was a little quicker to react than Die was. He sprung forward in a desperate lunge before Die could whisk away again, grabbing the pins out of his hand, not caring that they may have jabbed into his flesh a bit when he did. Die let out a noise of surprise. Crowbar grabbed for the doll next, but the voodoo master had broken out of his stupor and anticipated that action, quickly manoeuvring out of his reach.

Crowbar was so close he could see the absolute look of panic written across Die’s face clear as day. He watched in horror when he realised what he was planning to do.

“Die, don’t-!” he cried, too late.

Before he could stop him, Die had reached up and plucked out one of the two pins that had made their home in his hat for safekeeping – the two that he never, ever touched – and he jabbed it violently into the doll’s head.

Crowbar had rushed forward to try and stop him, and ended up falling on his stomach on the empty space on the floor where Die had been only a split second before. He lay there, dazed for a moment, trying to process what had just happened. Then, he totally freaked. The fuck. Out.

In a moment, Crowbar was running down the hall, shouting.

“EVERYONE UP!! EMERGENCY FELT MEETING! RIGHT NOW!”

He banged on doors as he ran by, scrambling for the living room. There were a dozen other green bodies hot on his heels by the time he reached his destination.

“What’s going on, boss?” asked Stitch, pushing his way to the front of the pack, ever level-headed, even in his ridiculous striped pyjamas. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he looked tired, but concerned, like a good doctor/tailor would be. And as far as doctor/tailors went, Stitch was the best.

The rest of the Felt, sleepy as they may have been, realised that something fairly not good must have been happening, to cause their fearless leader to wake them all in the middle of the night. The murmurs at varying levels of wakefulness quieted down so they could listen to what the seventh member of the Felt had to say.

“Die was just here,” Crowbar started immediately, addressing the other twelve leprechauns in the room (besides Snowman, and, of course, himself and Die). He didn’t see me at first, so I was able to get the drop on him and take his pins.” He stopped to wave the aforementioned objects at the rest of the gang, also showing off a couple of new spots of scarlet soaking his palm and fingers. “But, I couldn’t get the doll, and he managed to stick another pin in it.”

“I thought you said you got the pins?” Doze interjected slowly, not following.

“All but two…” Quarters corrected him. “Die always keeps two pins in his hat so he knows where they are and can keep them safe.”

“Yeah… Crowbar’s and his own, right?” Itchy piped up, suddenly a bit more interested. “So, which one did he take?”

There was a moment of silence as the leprechauns waited expectantly for an answer. Crowbar sucked in a sharp breath, voice choked.

“I don’t know,” he managed.

No one said anything for a long time, until, finally, Clover piped up.

“Why is that bad?” he asked.

“Well, whenever that weirdo does his voodoo thing with one of those pins, he travels to a timeline in which that person is dead, right?” Stitch explained gravely. “It took a long time of debating, but we eventually determined that, if Die were to insert his own pin into that doll of his, it would, essentially, very likely be suicide.” He looked sternly at the seventh Felt. “You sure you don’t know which one it was?”

Crowbar shook his head, swallowing a lump in his throat and struggling not to panic.

“I saw it all happen, and it was pretty impossible to tell,” Trace backed him. “I don’t know either.”

“Well, what do we do, then?” Matchsticks grumbled.

For once, Crowbar didn’t have an answer, and that was probably what made them more uneasy than anything else. Itchy shrugged over at Doze, and Clover exchanged a worried look with Quarters. Finally, with a sigh, Stitch turned around to make his way upstairs.

“I’ll go check the effigies,” he said quietly.

“Or you could just ask Die,” Fin said suddenly. “I mean, he’s right there.”

Crowbar’s heart twisted at those words, and he looked up sharply to the spot the fifth place was pointing to.

Everything happened at once, and it was all a huge blur. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds more, Die manifested right in front of Crowbar’s eyes. He didn’t even have time to look surprised and Itchy had already confiscated the doll from him, putting it safely into their leader’s hands. He let out a huge breath of relief that was nearly a huff of laughter upon seeing his sixth team mate was, indeed, very alive, and also very pissed.

“H-Hey!” he spat. “Itchy!”

Die’s green cheeks flushed red and he cast his most terrifying of glares at the first Felt, who just rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out in return. Crowbar quickly came to his senses.

“Alright!” he snapped. “False alarm; everyone back to bed right now! Sorry to have bothered you.”

With exasperated grumbles and muttered curses, the rest of the Felt shuffled out slowly, all heading back to their rooms, frustrated to have been woken in the first place.

“I said now!” Crowbar shouted, impatient to have everyone out of the way so he could talk to Die alone.

Finally, finally, the living room double doors closed with a loud bang, and he was left face to face with the one leprechaun he’d been dying to see more than anything else over the last week. Die had taken a seat on the couch and was staring at the floor, refusing to meet his gaze, a guilty pout on his lips.

Crowbar whacked him with his crowbar.

Die clutched his head, whining.

“Ow!” he exclaimed. “What was that for?!”

“How about avoiding me for a week?” Crowbar snapped, all of his emotions bubbling out in a burst of anger. He whapped him again, more lightly this time. “And that was for making me think you were dead!”

Die’s eyes widened and he pulled the brim of his hat so it was covering his eyes, face taking on a reddish tint.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“That’s a start,” Crowbar answered softly with a world-weary sigh.

There was a long silence in which the leader of the Felt stood with his arms crossed over his chest, staring down at his teammate and friend. There was obviously something on Die’s mind, and Crowbar wanted to hear it; he also wanted to give the sixth a chance to say what he was thinking.

“Y-You really thought I might be dead?” Die finally said shakily, voice quiet and unsure. “I-I mean, yeah, I guess I can see why, but, you know, I know which pin is which even without being able to see them. I mean, I keep them both there for… f-for a reason. So, I obviously know where they are. A-And I didn’t think you’d be that concerned about it… If I was dead, I mean.”

His voice trailed off until it was barely above a whisper at that last statement.

Crowbar wanted to chuck his signature weapon at the idiotic leprechaun with all his might. Instead, his hold tightened around it, and his other hand clenched into a fist, his whole body tensing up as he struggled not to commit a homicide in his own living room.

“Of course I would be concerned!!” he snapped instead, loud enough that he was sure he could be heard from several floors above. “In fact, don’t you think I might just be a little – oh, I don’t know – upset about that?!”

“Oh,” Die said, staring blankly at him from under the brim of his top hat. “I didn’t realise –”

“What? You didn’t fucking realise that I care about my team? I care about you?” Crowbar interjected violently. “You didn’t realise how much you mean to me?”  

At that, Die stood up, eyes flashing with something Crowbar didn’t quite understand. He walked up to the seventh Felt, standing tall although he was still a bit shorter than Crowbar.

“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted, voice breaking as he grabbed the lapels of Crowbar’s coat. “I know I’m nothing to you!”

Startled, the seventh Felt could do nothing but stare into dark eyes, bewildered and not a little frightened. Die stared back for a moment before all of the fight seemed to go out of him completely. He looked down, covering his face with one hand, the other not releasing its trembling grip on the taller leprechaun’s coat. He repeated the same sentence, a cracked whisper this time, “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” Crowbar answered softly, a stunned reflex. Without thinking, he gently loosened Die’s death grip on his suit jacket and held his smooth, delicate fingers in his own larger, rougher ones as if he were handling glass.

“You are,” Die said weakly, any kind of argument leaving him. “They told me. Everyone said you found out I liked you and made fun of me. A-And I knew you were going to stop talking to me. That’s why you were acting so weird that night out on the atrium. You were all nervous around me because I creeped you out.”

The voodoo master let out an exhausted sigh, and Crowbar couldn’t help but huff out a little laugh. He raised the hand that wasn’t holding Die’s to his soft cheek, and tenderly tilted his head up a little so he could rest his forehead against the shorter leprechaun’s. The seventh Felt took a deep breath, his senses filling up with everything Die – the feel of his hand with those lithe, skilled fingers, his subtle scent of magic in tumult just beneath the surface of his soft skin.

“I was nervous that night because I was planning on asking you out in the morning,” Crowbar breathed, the words liberating in a way he had never experienced.

Die’s eyes fluttered open, and they shined up at him, blinking largely at the statement.

“Oh,” he whispered.

“Yeah, oh,” Crowbar huffed out a laugh.

And then he kissed him, with barely a tilt of his head, lips meeting gently like a breeze touching down over the petals of a new flower. Die’s free hand came up, finding the back of his neck, raising gooseflesh in the places where his fingers danced across Crowbar’s skin.

Crowbar was the one to pull away first, in need of a breath. In a moment, the tender atmosphere they had created was shattered, to be replaced by heat and want, and Die threw his arms around Crowbar’s neck, pulling him down to attack his lips, an action that Crowbar willingly reciprocated. A shiver went down his spine as Die’s hands slipped underneath the collar of his suit jacket, and he could feel the smirk on the shorter leprechaun’s lips against his own as he undid the buttons quickly so that Die was free to slip the jacket off his shoulders. He broke the kiss so he could toss it aside, and had a moment to see his own emotions reflected in the witch doctor’s eyes before he was attaching their lips again, struggling to get Die’s much heavier trench coat away from his body, although he managed fairly quickly with his gang mate’s help. As soon as it was successfully on the floor, he lifted Die up, earning himself a squeak and feeling the sixth Felt’s legs reflexively wrap around his hips.

Crowbar stood still for a moment with his arms under Die’s thighs, supporting his weight, breathing a bit laboured. He let his eyes wander over the sight of the other leprechaun without all those layers on, watching his face flush cutely as he pulled his green top hat more securely over his head, since it had been disrupted when he was suddenly lifted. He was usually so protective that he would be covered by his trench coat and full ensemble even when everyone came down to breakfast to find that he had woken up earlier than everyone else once again and was already eating, and when Crowbar had walked him back to his room before bed all those nights in a row they’d spent together talking about nothing and everything, or just enjoying each others’ company. He concluded that Die should definitely take his coat off more often.

He didn’t realise he’d voiced his thoughts out loud until Die squeaked out, “Crowbar!” and, turning bright red, buried his face in Crowbar’s shoulder, and even then he could do nothing but laugh at the reaction.

His arms went around Die’s back until he had him practically in a huge bear hug, still holding him above the ground, and he stuck his nose in the crook between his neck and shirt collar, breathing him in with a huge grin on his face.

Crowbar pulled back and gently set Die back on his feet, lifting the shorter leprechaun’s chin so he could meet his eyes.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again, alright?” he said softly, heart clenching at the thought that he could have lost this before it even got a chance to begin.

“I’m sorry,” Die apologized quietly. He folded his arms over his chest and shrunk in on himself a little in that familiar posture of self-doubt Crowbar had seen him default to so often. “It’s just, nobody seemed to disagree with him, a-and Itchy said I was a freak that y-you could never care about, which I figured was probably true, so-”

“Itchy,” Crowbar growled menacingly, putting one hand comfortingly on Die’s upper arm and giving a light squeeze. “I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

Die started, eyes widening at the threat.

“In fact, I’m gonna kill all of them,” Crowbar continued, absolutely steaming. “Twice. Once for letting you think you were right and not ripping Itchy a new one, and then again for not telling me why you started avoiding me so we could have prevented all this shit in the first place.”

The sixth Felt looked a little startled, but there was a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” he said, kissing Crowbar’s cheek once, quickly. “But later, okay?”

Crowbar instantly softened, grinning down at him.