#sd!au

Kendall pauses and considers this. All the vacations he's been on in life, besides his honeymoon, were family events. As an older teen, sometimes Stewy would stay for a few days at the summer house, but by and large it was just the family and whichever higher ups were in favor. The honeymoon, which Rava begged to have in Hawaii, had been more sunburning and nightly missionary than anything else. He has fond memories of the honeymoon, looking back; Rava had held his head between her thighs, knees planted next to his ears, and praised him as he went down on her for an hour, they hit every destination beach with white sand, and she held his hand like she would never let go.

He's never been on a vacation with anyone else. Part of him worries this is a vacation in the way Bellevue was a vacation after his first overdose, and it's a trick he's teetering on the edge of falling for, but then he reigns himself in. It's Stewy. Stewy doesn't lie, even if he does misrepresent or leave out details.

"I don't know if I'd want to go to the tropics. It sounds sticky."

Stewy laughs as he signals the waiter for a refill. "Fair enough, man, fair enough. Maybe we go to like, Europe. I know you've been, but still. Maybe we go to France. Get some good food, piss off the Parisians, get really drunk." He pauses. "I don't know. I just think we've earned a break."

Kendall rolls his eyes. "Stewy Hosseini, taking a break? I never thought I'd see the day."

"Well, the married life has changed me," he jokes.

But neither of them laugh at that, instead letting his words hang between them. Stewy doesn't take it back, because he never does, but the knowledge of how close their lives have become to marriage is too much brought into the light. In another world, maybe. Not this one. They can't, not with Kendall's baggage, family, and the minor inconvenience of not being gay. Stewy has never come out to him, per se, or even expressed interest in men in front of him, but Kendall knows. It's impossible to be someone's best friend for most of their life and not know that about them.

"I'm serious. Fresh start, even. We go for a month or two, I'll work remotely on whatever needs it, and we just put it on pause."

Kendall shakes his head with a smile, watching the surface of the hibachi instead of looking at Stewy. "This sounds crazy."

"We need a little crazy. Come on, don't tell me you haven't ever wanted to fuck off to somewhere no one knows you with a suitcase and a dream and all that bullshit. You never wanted to swipe your pretty little Amex and be?"

"Well," Kendall says, debating his next words, "my therapist talked me down from it in the middle of a manic episode."

It takes a moment for Stewy to mull this over. "Yeah, okay, I get that. Was that Harvard, in '99? I remember you being obsessed with teaching yourself Portuguese."

"Oh. Right. Um, yeah I was gonna fuckin, uh, go to Peru. Dad doesn't have people in Peru."

Nodding, Stewy thanks the chef for depositing the lobster onto their plate. They both start eating, and although Kendall doesn't enjoy lobster too much, he's still more than impressed by the vegetables and steak. They companionably finish their meal, Stewy pays the cheque, and on the way out, Stewy appears to check his emails. By the time they get into the town car, Stewy has pocketed his phone.

"Would you rather go to South America?"

"No."

"Cool. Do you need anything from home?"

"I mean, I have my wallet and phone. Stewy, what-"

Stewy leans toward the driver. "JFK, please. The private gates." He relaxes back into his seat just as quickly. "We're going to Paris. You can sleep on the jet, it's a long ride."

"I don't sleep much when I'm not depressed."

"Then it'll be good for you."

They get to the airport a short while later, where their flight is already waiting for them. Stewy's latest assistant, who might be named Mona or Monique or something like that, is waiting for them. Her usually stiffly coiled chestnut hair has been piled in a messy bun, and her business flashy-casual is absent in favor of a sweater and leggings. She has a backpack in one hand and a duffel in the other.

"You fucking suck," she tells Stewy. "I hate you so much. You know it's almost midnight."

"Thanks, Monica."

Stewy air kisses her cheeks and shoulders both bags, not even bothering to check them. Kendall remembers how it had been like that with Jess. He knew she was diligent and thorough, and she dropped everything to do weird things like this all the time. It's nice, but it's a luxury of wealth.

"Anybody I need to talk to has my international number, so any calls and appointments can wait," Stewy says, but Kendall gets the impression he's already texted or emailed this to her. "I'll be checking my email, keeping an eye on shit. Honestly, as long as you check your email everyday, you should be good. I appreciate you so much."

Monica laughs. "I'm honestly surprised you didn't have me pack a bag too. How will you get on without me?"

"I thought about it. But I'll be fine."

He smiles at Kendall, and it feels like there's something going on that's flown over Kendall's head. The sensation isn't unfamiliar, but he still doesn't know how to figure it out, so he casts the thought aside as they finish their conversation for Stewy to lead them both into the jet.

He immediately starts rooting through the duffel and produces sweatpants for Kendall to replace his jeans with, as well as loungewear of his own. Instead of going into the partitioned back half or to the bathroom, Stewy strips down to his boxers right there and redresses. They used to live in the same dorm, so it's not unheard of for them to change in front of each other, and yet this feels so much different. Kendall stares at the floor as he changes, and when he looks up, Stewy is reclining in one of the seats and looking through his backpack.

"Monica grabbed your meds too, by the way. I have your daily and as needed ones." He gets a bottle out and checks the label before putting two green and white pills in his hand, swallowing them down with a chaser of his flask. "Do you need the traz?"

"I wouldn't mind."

Pauline (Paulie)

Dexter got married solely because of familial pressure, same for the kids. He did what he was expected to do and buried himself into his work, making him a very absent father in Pauline's early life. Pauline was very close to her mother, even if she could be quite controlling in the way she dressed and behaved, and while she admired her father she resented him a bit for not being here.

Pauline is sweet and one of the popular kid in school. She didn't inherit her father's genius but still developed an early interest in mechanic and vehicles in general. She's Dee favorite niece (eheh).In this AU, Dexter is ace and homoromantic,

but he is not very in touch with his own feelings.... Until he does some introspection and realizes he is fucking miserable and maybe it would just be better if he left both of them? This is where shit hit the fan and the wife decides to go mask off on her homophobia and blames their daughter lesbianism on him.

A few months (and a restraining order) later, Dexter now has to take care of his daughter on his own. There is... a lot of things happening there ahah (*smack his ass* this man can contain so much character development for the people he loves). He tries his best, and she does too !

(Her second name is Albert, obviously, which was an uphill battle to get through his ex-wife and family lol)

Corvus

Mandark's situation is funnier (because I can).He's still alone (pretty unsuccessful in love... Or friendship ), at the top of M.I. and mingling with other powerful and rich people. He decided he needed a heir for his business empire and after thinking about adoption, he finally decided that he was going to summon a child with a bit of dark magic and some of his own blood. Just less paperwork.

So Corvus came to be! Born as a 12 years old with approximate knowledge of most human custom. She was made in Mandark image and share his drive and quickly picks up whatever he puts down for her to learn. Though she couldn't help but yearn for the outside world and after a few running away situations, Mandark decided to put her in middle school (it'll help her in learning social skill).

All the character development between these two/lies on the fact that Mandark wanted a heir, not a kid, and didn't expect to get attached but he did, of course. He's not exactly the best father and swinged from professional to kinda smothering but through their first year together he grew to be attentive to Corvus needs and wants, afraid of becoming like his parents.

He tells Stewy all this at some witching hour of the warm New York night, when they’re five shots, three lines, and two bowls into a bender he can already tell will carry him through the next three weeks of sorrow and grief for a business that won’t even miss him now that he’s gone. Kendall has always been replaceable, more so than any other of the C-level executives, but he knows it for certain now. In the company, in the family, in the world, he’s always been as replaceable as a plate with a smudge on it that the dishwasher missed. There’s another one in line. He only lasted as long as he did because of the weight of Dad’s name and money. Maybe he should’ve predicted that an epic crash such as this one would come to pass, but then again, he had hoped he would just carry on forever, getting higher and higher in status and in dopamine until no negative emotion ever betrayed his consciousness again.

Just a little bit more, and he would have been happy. A little bit more dinner dates with Rava before they separated, a little bit more time as CEO before his father recovered, a little bit more zeroes on his direct deposit, a little bit more courage when he talked to people, and that would have been enough. He’d have crested over whatever self-imposed barrier kept him from achieving anything real in his life. Or, on the other hand, maybe a little bit more liquor on the day he nearly drowned and it wouldn’t have been anyone’s problem, let alone his, any longer.

To his credit, Stewy doesn’t interrupt the stream of consciousness erupting from Kendall’s mouth between cramming his lungs and stomach full of anything on offer on the table that sits artfully in front of the couch. He just listens, occasionally taking another dose of whatever he has in his hands at that moment, and nods when it’s appropriate to whatever part of his spiel Kendall has reached. None of it was rehearsed, all of it tumbling from his lips as it crosses his mind, and yet it all feels like something he’s known since before he graduated from Harvard, Stewy next to him in a matching cap and gown, both of them so blasted they could hardly walk straight to receive their diplomas. Money greases a lot of wheels when it comes to that kind of thing.

“Wow,” Stewy says, when Kendall is finally finished and trying to bury the thoughts in the taste of the whiskey that costs more per bottle than he’ll probably be paying in monthly rent by the time all is said and done. Just the thought of that makes his stomach turn. He’ll be paying rent to someone else who owns the property he’s staying on. “That’s a lot, man.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Kendall lies to him.

With a roll of his eyes, Stewy kicks his leg. It’s not hard enough to actually cause Kendall pain, but it gets his attention away from his spiral of self-destruction. “First of all, you’re catastrophizing. We talked about this. You’ll more than likely get back on your feet at some point, and even if you don’t, I have like three spare rooms. I own several houses, Ken, you think I’m gonna let you live in a run down apartment in Brooklyn with a landlord who has sweat stains on every one of his poly-cotton blends? C’mon. Relax. You know me better than that.”

Kendall squints at him, trying to tell how serious he is. It’s entirely likely that Stewy’s just saying things because they’ve been using and Stewy seems to live for the sound of his own voice, but there’s a part of him that almost knew he’d say something like that. They’ve been friends since they were like eight years old, maybe younger- Kendall doesn’t remember much before the age of 15, nor between the ages of seventeen and thirty something. There was a little sweet spot between the worst of the childhood trauma and the first time he found out where his father kept the good stuff, where he remembers doing school projects with Stewy, going to dances, and trying not to get too mad at all the inane and childish things Roman and Shiv were always in the middle of. Still, Stewy’s been there through all of it. Every girlfriend who eventually dumped him, every half-assed attempt to get clean, every little nitpicking settlement Rava wanted in the split, and every sleight that Dad took at him. Stewy probably remembers more of it than Kendall does, anyways.

He eventually leans back against the soft cushions of Stewy’s luxurious couch and forces himself to take a deep breath. He’ll be alright. They’ll figure this out. Stewy only said the obvious; everyone Kendall knows has plenty of money, more than enough to have an exorbitant amount of space. Sure, most of them hate him, but he knows that other than Stewy, at the very least, neither Rava nor Connor would allow him to be homeless. Shiv and Roman might, but only for a few nights in order to ‘teach him a lesson,’ as if he hasn’t fallen asleep on at least a dozen different bus stop benches over the last twenty years of his life. The partying, the using, the constant attempts to escape the pressure placed on his shoulders by his father, made it so such an occurrence was irregular, but not unheard of. Usually, if Stewy or one of Kendall’s well-off fair weather friends saw him doing that, they would make sure he got home safe, or at the very least into a family car or a hotel room to sleep it off. If no one had done those things, he’d probably be long dead by now from some attempted crime or another.

And yet, he’s still kicking. Reinvigorated by the knowledge that he can at least take a little time to figure all of this out rather than needing to know right away so he can figure out what to stop paying for, some of the anxiety curling around his ribcage begins to fade back. Air comes easier on each and every inhale he takes, until it feels like the cold AC of Stewy’s brownstone blasting through the living room propels nothing but pure oxygen into his lungs. He’s going to be okay.

“But,” Stewy says, and Kendall rolls his eyes.

There’s always a but. Stewy is nice, but he’s still humans, and Kendall has never seen true selflessness in his entire life. Everyone always wants something; they don’t want the same things, but there’s absolutely something they hope or expect to gain in exchange for whatever they do to help him. Sometimes it’s as simple as paying the hospital bill when he went to the emergency room. They helped him, he paid them. Others, it’s as complex as the debt Dad forced upon him after Shiv’s wedding and the humiliation of running his errands. Stewy is smart and cunning. He always wants something. Often, it’s things Kendall would’ve given to him anyways, but they don’t go into any action without complete honesty about what’s going on.

“If you’re staying here while you figure out what you’re doing next, you’re getting help. That’s non-negotiable.” Kendall opens his mouth to negotiate anyways, but Stewy doesn’t give him the chance before he barrels ahead. “Roman told me about that stunt you pulled in Italy, alright? No more of that bullshit.”

“It’s not that big a deal.”

Stewy shakes his head. “It is. But, if it helps, think of it like an investment, yeah? If I invest in a little company, I’m gonna expect that company to work to stay in the green. I don’t invest in companies whose boards insist upon running themselves into the dirt. Don’t say anything about Waystar, because I mean to change that and I jumped on at your request, so fuck off. But really, Ken, if you’re living in my house rent free, it’s because I’m invested in you as a human being, which is really feelings-y for me right now. Don’t make it a bad investment. Get some fucking help. I’ll pay for it, I promise, so long as you’re doing something.”

“I’m not sobering up tomorrow.”

“Wouldn’t ask you to.” Stewy leans closer, the place where their knees touching turning into the entirety of Stewy’s thigh pressed against the side of his, a warm and solid reminder of his immediate presence. There’s no space between them anymore. “I just don’t wanna lose you, alright? So, tomorrow, when we’re not quite so fucked up, we’re gonna look around until we find someone for you to see. It’s gonna be just fine.”