Chapter Text
Hero finds himself in the cemetery paying respects to his dead teenage sweetheart on a late December morning. Snow covers the trees like dust on Mari's side of the room; weatherman says it'll snow again tomorrow. The man kneels down to wipe away sticky snow and frost off the headstone.
Weird to think of himself as a man. He'll be twenty next week, but nothing about the occasion feels like it. He feels like a boy in a coat and pants his mother bought for him, playing Hero than being him.
He'll think on it later, when he's not at the graveyard.
And there come the tears. It's been half a year Chavez, get your shit together.
"Hi Mari. I'm back for winter break. It's been a while, hasn't it." It'll never be long enough. "I've kept up my studies. Kel's doing well and so is Sally. Sunny's doing really well too, it's like he was never gone at all." His phone vibrates, probably the group chat he really should mute one of these days.
But he made the promise to stick together this time. Promises aren't carried by singular, grand spectacles with a hint of the eschatological about them, they're constant, mundane things, obligations that remain through the days and weeks and months.
In this case, Sunny's probably sent another inexplicable meme to the group chat, but Hero leaves that be, this isn't a chatfic.
"It— it…" The word catches in his throat the first time, leaks out the second. What's left to say now? That he misses her dearly, every single day, every time he has a moment to himself he compares it to a memory when she was still here? It's pathetic, it's a wonder what she ever saw in him.
But that's not it, and he knows it. He doesn't want to keep going like this. But Hero can't bring himself to vocalize that he wants to move on. It's been four years, the grindstone of life has worn him down.
He's just another depressed, burnt-out gifted kid struggling through college.
Sunny did him a favor, telling him it wasn't his fault. And if it wasn't his fault, what's the point in feeling sorry for something he didn't do? He tells himself this every day; doesn't stop him from feeling sorry anyway. It's frost in his joints that saps his warmth no matter how many layers he wears.
Hero closes his eyes. "I should move on. I'm sorry." He's not sure he should be, but he is. The world is gray and cold, winter without promise of spring. "I don't know how, but I don't think I'll ever be okay otherwise." He takes a breath and feels his back stretch back into place.
"I love you. I hope you're happy, wherever you are." It still fucking hurts.
Hero turns around. Sunny's kept his distance, face no longer shriveled on a starvation diet, shoulders marginally broader in his parka, gray and blue like ice at night, fur lining on the hood. His arm is locked with Basil's, hair grown out under two hoods and is that lip gloss?
"Hey," he nods. "Sunny. Basil. How are you?" They shrug, mittened hands still in pockets.
"About the same as you." Sunny's other eye is the color of honey, crimson flecked about the iris like volcanic glass.
"We're here with Polly, she's waiting inside the church," Basil says. "If you want to wait for us, that is." Hero nods and smiles.
"Sure. I'll go see her then." Snow crunches under his boots as he walks back. The crunch of Sunny's pants against the snow faintly reaches his ears. Cold wind smashes itself against Hero's face and hands.
The church is hardly warmer, but the wind stays out and the difference is enough. The old house of worship is as he remembers, timelessly unchanged like its hymnals and scriptures.
Polly stands by the wall, dressed warmly in thick black with gold embellishments. Mittens like Basil's, but brown like her hair under the beanie. "Hero. It's been a while, how are you dear?"
"Things have been great." Lies. Didn't realize he changed to stats for his major. "Dressed warmly, I see."
She chuckles back. Why is that more warming than staying in here? "You're not so badly off yourself." Hero. You feel that in your stomach? It's not indigestion, Hero.
"Thank you. Winter's here and it brought gifts. Seven inches and counting." It's the eyes. Sunny switches them out as he feels like it. Basil's glow in the dark because he's built different. Polly's are amber and caramel, topaz under the jeweler's light or fire glass in the pit.
"Not the first time I've had that," she dryly notes. Wait. "Luckily, Sunny's staying with Basil and you know how that boy gets." First day Sunny came back, he'd already delivered pizzas, painted a room, and got Kel to pay him for shoveling his driveway. Kel keeps insisting he never asked Sunny to do that.
"He's industrious." Boy knows how to grind for dough. Hero knows the feeling; textbooks are expensive and, well. The IRS doesn't have to know every cent he makes and he left the maid outfit at the dorm.
"It's a bit past one. Have any of you eaten lunch yet?" Smooth. "I'm feeling peckish myself, wanted to know if you were interested." Brained, that is. Couldn't be any more on the nose if you were a finger when the office printer breaks.
"O-oh?" Hero, I understand you read the tags, but you have to at least try. "I haven't eaten breakfast either," she admits. "Basil hasn't eaten too, I don't know about Sunny." That's fine, if it were just the two of them, Hero might actually have to do the moving on part, to say nothing of this wishy-washy asking someone out, next to the fucking final resting place of your last love.
In Hero's defense, he's letting his brain rest after the Sisyphean labors of finals week. He makes absent-minded small talk with Polly until Sunny and Basil return to the church, calm of the grave about them.
"Hey kids. Hero wants to head off to lunch. I know you haven't had anything yet," Polly says. Sunny's head flicks to Hero, then Polly. Something's rumbling in that kid's brain.
"Actually, I came in to say Basil and I are going to be here a while." Basil's turn to flick his head, their synced scripts thrown into disarray. "Go get lunch without us," Sunny says, slapping Basil's mouth shut before he can protest. Locks his arm behind his back with the other hand. "We have to go. Have fun, you two."
Sunny closes the door and leaves them alone again, them and the homeless men secretly sleeping in the catacombs below the church because the pastor abhors the lack of shelters in Faraway, much to the chagrin of the recycultists who use it as a meeting area since Freddy's mom started renting out the garage to Steve while he gets back on his feet after the divorce.
"Just us, then." So it is. Hero's not sure why Polly looks sheepish, almost coquettish if he didn't know or believe better, but he puts on his award-winning smile anyway. "My treat?"
That's a lie, his smile has won no awards recognized by a state or federal government. She crosses her arms, brows curved with interest. "If you say so. Got anywhere in mind?" They can… fuck.
There's that smooth, dormant brain kicking in. Where to, Hero?
"There's a cafe in the next town I meant to try out." The cafe is real, his intent isn't. Kel picked up some fantastic sandwiches from there though, so he's reasonably sure this won't be a disaster.
The street is cold and piled with blackened, hardened snow on either side of the road. At least it's warm inside the car, an old but serviceable steed whose backseat is piled with gym bags, tennis rackets, spare clothes, old notebooks, and an unopened box of whiskey Polly claims her friend gifted her that she forgot to take.
They also take their hats off and undo their coats. Hero's gaze lingers longer than it should but he's not ready to dissect that yet.
The cafe has Kpop on loop and half the menu is in a foreign language, English translations written on notebook paper over cardboard, taped together for a laminated look to maintain some semblance of the illusion this place knows what they're doing.
They order coffee and sandwiches from a mean-looking woman who'd rather be blasting punk rock in the back with the dishes than take orders up front, because dishes don't complain about their coffee or ask if she's really a woman. Behind the counter and through the plastic curtain, Hero sees a balding man watching YouTube videos about stock investing as he chops vegetables in clockwork near-perfect rhythm as afforded to him by decades of routine.
"They're short-staffed, so that woman normally in the back had to come up front, and that's the owner in there right now," Hero says as they walk out of earshot. "They are? Nice deduction." She's impressed, Hero. Keep it up. Don't fuck it up, or at least make it hilarious if and when you do.
They take a seat by the window, a second floor view of the main street below to snow-cloaked awnings and bundled-up passersby despite the weather, going about their daily business this December 23rd. Overhead, the sun continues to shine dimly through thick globs of clouds like gunmetal and highway guardrails.
"So what've you been up to lately? Still in pre-med?" she inquires, something she understands. Hero nods back. "It's running more smoothly than I expected. How were your studies?"
She sips her coffee. "I took the fast track. Did my two years, took the exam, and dived right into it." She had her reasons. "You, on the other hand, have a long road ahead of you." That he does, it's going to be a long road to recovery wait you mean medical school. Right, that too.
He nods with affected weariness. "Yeah," he sighs. Okay, not that affected, life's a fuck.
"I've always wondered. You're still Basil's caretaker, but you don't live with him. Where do you live?" he asks. Sunny's staying with him over winter break, but he doesn't think Basil reserved the room solely for that. Or perhaps he has, he doesn't know the half of Basil's inner thoughts that don't revolve around Sunny.
"I live around here, actually," she says. "It's a nice little town, it doesn't have everything but what it does have is walkable." Advice he's given Kel, people like to talk about themselves. Plus, the more she talks, the less he has to and the less chance she has to find out he's as interesting as a box of pencils that didn't come pre-sharpened.
"There's an antique shop, a bookstore owned by a restoration specialist, there's a butcher's shop that sells venison and duck and occasionally rabbits." She's animated when she talks, hands and shoulders jostled by her words as she forms them. "There's also the arcade, which you know, there's one in the city but it's a franchise. I like shopping local, especially when I can just walk over and there it is."
"Wow. That's a hell of a medley." A seed of a plan forms in his brain, driven by forces he won't name. "Have you always lived here?"
Eyes flit up and to the right, but Hero doesn't remember what that means. "It belonged to my great-uncle, it was where he grew up. He didn't have kids of his own, so the family split everything up, and I got this house." Sentiment on the tongue, and something else. She was close to him, and misses him.
No actually, Hero can't relate in the slightest to missing someone you knew. And if you believe that, Sunny's standing next to your car and would like you to look the other way for five minutes.
"It's a little matchbox at the edge of town," she says, not wholly in the cafe anymore. "Loneliest little thing you ever did see."
The moment passes. Polly returns to the cafe, sipping on coffee, waiting on lunch, entertaining a depressed teen burnout's advances as long as he's paying.
Someone else calls them to the counter for their sandwiches, delicate-looking things with bread named something unpronounceable, packed with cheeses and meats also from regions of Italy they can't pronounce let alone find on a map. Solitary olives on a toothpick deceptively instrumental in holding the sandwich together.
Hero's hungrier than he thought, Polly exactly as hungry as advertised, no words exchanged as they enjoy devouring their prettily-piled food stacks like the ravening creatures they are. The meats are delicious but they've sauced it finely enough to accentuate without overshadowing.
"Oh my god." Hero breathes, moans in place of further praise that gets Polly to give him an inscrutable look. Wait no.
Polly chokes trying to swallow more than she can handle, and the awkward air finds itself replaced with an even more awkward air charged with energy that sets Hero on edge for the rest of the meal, keenly aware of the sort of fic in which the sap finds himself.
Hero makes up his mind and dares to take a risk, spurred by a mix of the sensible, the daring, the foolish, and the bonk-worthy.
Or it's equivocation. If Hero's being honest with himself, he's never been the most interesting guy. The off-brand oatmeal of breakfast foods. Nothing about him stands out, he's just there. Dating is a two-way street and his side's bland like those anti-horny corn flakes.
The honesty nearly retracts his next move for him. Luckily, caffeine. They have remarkably flavorful coffee.
"You know," he starts, "as long as we're here…" He trails off long enough for Polly to give him her full attention. "I heard from a certain someone that there's an arcade here?"
"Oh?" The lunch alone is ambiguous, he can always say he meant for Basil and Sunny to come with them. No such excuse now, no teenagers to chaperone. He's asking her out, this is no longer an innocent outing between two marginal acquaintances.
She thinks on it, finger to her lip. "I think if you're trying to challenge me, I'm going to. Kick. Your. Ass." That's... more spirited than he expected. "Oh, you're on." He knows a contest when he sees one. Living with Kel will do that to anyone.
Polly leaves a cash tip as they go. They recognize her; Hero feels dumb but forgets as soon as they walk outside and snow from an awning falls on his hair and down his shirt.
The arcade is quiet enough to remind Hero how loud arcade machines can be. Stuffed dolls and other prizes are hung up on the racks behind the main counter, manned by a portly middle-aged man vibing to whatever's in his airpods. The venue is deliberately poorly lit; Hero sees his hand's outline blur in the dim light.
The indoor minigolf course is downright psychedelic with neon orange and lime colors directly painted onto the walls. Polly didn't mention this. Something about the art looks familiar actually, though hell if he can place it.
"There's a minigolf course here?" he asks. "Oh yeah! Yeah there is, I forgot to mention it." Clearly. Hero's never done d— Hero's never done acid and now he never will, wagering he's seen all there is to see with it.
"I haven't been here in a while. Some of these machines are new, let's take a look." Hero lets Polly lead him through the maze of brightly stylized arcade machines, curtained booths for the horror games, the glass cases for that weird game with the coins and pushing them into the trays that boring gambling addicts think enthralling. The carpeting is nondescript dark bluish-black with neon-colored shapes and outlines, made by the same company that made bus seats a generation ago.
Polly stops them in front of some new, shiny, loud machine as though that description differentiated it in the slightest from every other new, shiny, loud machine around it. Her face is stuck on amusement, half-open mouth caught in the smile you give a child when they say they went potty in the display toilets.
"This is… new." Hero looks the machine over. He'd heard Minecraft had a few spinoffs, but an arcade game? Looks like what was it called, uh that old school one, wizard needs food badly?
"This is…" Polly's grin lies uneasy on her face. "They have an arcade port?" Apparently so. "If it's anything like the console port, it should be easy."
Hero blinks and stares at her, in a genuinely baffled way this time. Grin works onto his face. "You've played this before?"
She makes a face like the janitor caught her vaping in the bathroom stall. Again. "Basil doesn't need me as often anymore. I have lots of free time on my hands."
"Host advantage," he blurts without thinking. Polly punches him in the arm.
The game starts. Hero gawks at the screen taking in the sights. Minecraft from a fixed perspective, how fucking cursed.
Looks and plays like a regular hack and slash, to Polly's chagrin. "Less Diablo, more Gauntlet. Okay, I can get behind this." Is that what the console version is? How does that work?
Hero dies on the first screen as he contemplates that thought too much. "Lasted all of two minutes," says Polly, gamer girl that she is. "Still not the worst date," he swears she mutters.
"Just testing out the game." Alright so he's playing from behind. Something something all his life. Not actually true, but that's how self-deprecation works, right? It's what's in with guys his age, deny anything and everything remotely salvageable about yourself.
Hero subconsciously knows that as a burnt out, depressed college degenerate, playing Minecraft is permitting time to pass through his hand like sand out the top of a broken hourglass because Sally's object permanence isn't quite there yet and Kel has some explaining to do.
What keeps the remaining five percent of him entranced that the game has not is the burgeoning discovery that Polly's much the same, still like stone when focused, stomping her foot when the boss kills her because it's bullshit she rolled out of that in time.
Hero is at once enchanted and horrified.
The game kindly informs them they've beaten every map, hoping they understand that it's time for them to leave, go touch some grass, be anywhere but here.
"We just spent over two hours playing a Minecraft arcade spinoff," Polly puts in the worst possible way, sweat on her brow shiny under the shitty lights. "How about something else? Maybe something less physical." No disagreements there.
Which is how sir Henry motherfucker Chavez ends up straining his eyes trying to read a minigolf score sheet in the venue lights, awful bordering on shitty. These pencils make Basil look edgy in comparison. Sorry Basil not sorry get fucked.
Forgiveness is hard, alright?
"Have you ever played minigolf?" Polly asks him.
"A few times, yes," he says. He's… not as confident, it's been a while and Polly soundly trounced him on the high scores at the last game. This woman's a menace.
Wait how is minigolf less physical and how did he get roped into this he's smarter than that. Then Hero sees Polly bent over lining up her shot, and that train of thought promptly derails.
Hero finds his first conclusion vindicated when Polly's ball is rebuffed by the windmill. "Fuck!" she says, a ten year old in earshot.
The kid's mother glares at them as she covers her child's ears like it'll undo the worldly lesson they've learned today. "Sorry!" she smiles, sheepish. "I need to watch my mouth. You know what it is, I can hold it in when I'm with the boys. Even if Basil and Sunny say things that'd make my grandmother blush. And not only does she have blood circulation issues, she's also dead."
She putts the ball in on the next shot; double bogey for her. "Am I not one of the boys?" Hero asks.
Polly leans on the golf club, brow arced as high as it'll go, other hand on her hip. "What do you think?" The smile is veiled and scornful but it's there.
Stop staring and answer her dammit. "Point taken." Thank you.
Hero maintains a steady lead that grows wider as Polly grows more agitated with her swings. Putts. Whatever. She teaches the kid behind them two more swear words, prompting Hero to always let her play first, stand between her and the kid's mom lest someone start a scene.
View's nice too, he supposes, and not the murals. Which he recognizes on the sixth hole when it brings him by the corner where the artist's left their signature, one V. Romero. She lives on Basil's block, doesn't she?
The last hole is an incline ramp that costs Hero half his lead, but he still wins five points ahead. Or eight, it's hard to read the score and he feels the ghost of a headache lingering in the periphery should he stay here too much longer.
"Well!" Polly cheerily says. "That sucked—" she catches the mother glaring at her and wisely gestures at Hero for them to turn in their clubs and head outside to catch some air first.
"That sucked ass. Like, all the ass, Hero. There's not a single cheek left unsucked."
Between the acid trip and the eye strain, this is the straw that makes him lose his shit, turning left and up to laugh into the overcast sky. Polly grabs at the score sheet, he lets her take it.
"Look at this. Look at this, this is so sloppy. I'm embarrassed to have made this sheet, I should never be allowed to pick up a club again unless it's to beat someone with."
Polly, not helping. Hero's lightheadedness reaches its crescendo there, in an arcade slash indoor minigolf course parking lot on a late December afternoon with an unreasonably alluring caretaker who contains multitudes he didn't expect.
He's in Polly's car headed back to Faraway when he realizes he hasn't thought of Mari once during that whole excursion. It stems the last of any adrenaline he carried into the car.
He looks around, uncomfortable with himself. Stares at Polly and finds it worse. Then she looks back and compounds it.
"What's up?" she asks him.
"Just admiring the view," he says, not wholly in the car. His face feels warmer than it should, more intense than anything in recent memory even with today's ongoings, and no, he will not stop and think about what he just said.
It's also in Polly's car that Hero understands why his cheeks burn so fervently, reminiscent of the first time all too many years ago.
The clouds are thick and dense overhead, puffy and frayed at the ends like daubed brushes, gray where the sunlight doesn't reach, pinkish gold where it does, vibrant blue in the distance behind naked trees.
"Today was fun," she smiles. "You're an entertaining man to be around, Mr. Chavez." Glint in her eyes.
He suspects he's looking in a mirror. "Well Ms. Campbell, I'm only as good as who I'm with. Today was wonderful."
The air is warm, despite all signs of coming snowstorms. "How long will you be in town?" she asks him.
School starts again in three and a half weeks. "Three weeks." He seizes the initiative. "I'd love to do this again with you, and sooner rather than later."
The air is warm, by the flush of red on her cheeks. "Then I'll hold you to it, Hero. You have my number, you have mine." Don't keep a lady waiting.
Hero's never wanted to come back home as little as he does when he and Polly stop in front of it. "Your stop. I have to go check on Basil, make sure he has dinner."
She doesn't want to; she wants this to last longer. Quiet winter walks are at once timeless and too brief for the walker's liking.
The air is warm, Polly's lips pressed against his cheek, then brushed against his ear. "I'll see you around." She walks away: down the street, a right turn at the intersection, then she disappears behind the row of houses. She knows exactly what she's done, that hooplehead.
Leaving Hero stumbling to the ground when the bread twins emerge from thin fucking air when he wasn't looking. "Nice," Daphne says. Or was it Bowen? Fuckers.
"Hi to you guys too." His butt hurts but it's cold so it stings little. The twins have matching coats held closed by oversized buttons and cloth sashes, boots made for crushing throats, and eyes hiding the will to do so, crispy bread brown and homicidal.
Hero, stop projecting.
"We cordially invite you to hang out with us," Daphne says.
"Please," Bowen adds. He looks at the house, at the street, then pats his coat smooth to reveal odd lumps along his sides. "We have refreshments."
You make a compelling argument. "Alright, hold on," he says. Hero opens the front door, finds Kel laid down on the couch with Sally on his stomach, the two of them playing patty cake. The former is using someone's lap as a cushion, uh blue haired girl with the sea salt eyes. Cris, that was it.
"Hey Hero, how was your date?" It went fine and Hero does a double take.
"Who told you?" Kel explodes from the couch, Cris catching Sally when she goes flying. "Oh my god, you actually did it!"
His brother is jubilant bordering on manic, this hyper gremlin child that Hero still refuses to acknowledge is taller than him. Cris has a more reserved "Holy s… smokes," mindful of Sally in her hands.
"Wait, Hero, does this mean you're Basil's dad now?"
Shut the fuck up Kel.
"That's not… no." Polly can call him daddy if she— Hero would like to die right about now actually death sounds really peachy keen right this second. Why did he come back in the first place?
"I meant to say I'm going to hang out with the twins, so I'll be back later. Or tomorrow even," he says.
Kel stop waggling your brows like that. "Sure you are~" Kel where the fuck did you learn to talk like that? "Alright man have fun with your date."
Wordless groaning expresses his consternation better than any poet. Hero takes his leave and finds the bread twins sitting on his fence.
"Alright I'm good. Let's go."
Hero used to feel like the statues outside the bread twins' house was staring and judging them for drinking, flittering about whenever he blinked as wolves circle their prey. He still does, those stony bastards make honey badgers look cuddly. Old dead people, man.
"You know what I hate about the holidays?" Bowen starts, second shot in hand and bottoms up man. "Commercialization. No one celebrates it for the remembrance of God anymore, it's all about buying and spending and they have the nerve to start it in October like sir we don't have candy yet and also this is a Wendy's."
"Brother, you slept in and missed Christmas mass last year," Daphne reminds him.
"And I'll fuckin' do it again." He looks to Hero who's considering cutting him off already.
"Do you really want to be this drunk this early? Sun just went down, Bow."
He sneers at the nickname. "You're lucky you're cute. Well, no. You're more…" He breaks into uproarious laughter at some dumb joke in his own mind. Care to share, Bowen? "Henry's a trad husband."
Daphne spits her vodka all over the desk. Oh for fuck's sake. Hero gets up to get some towels. "No it's fine Henry, you're our guest, I got this."
He insists anyway. She insists back, bodily shoving a supposed alternate universe version of Hero where everything's the same but he's to the left and she flails like some disaffected disco drunk in her immaculately tailored work clothes. Self-tailored if he remembers right.
He refrains from staring because that rarepair can wait for another fic.
"You absolutely are," she says, trying to get her head together.
"Firstly," Hero says, spraying cleaner on the table, "you've only had one shot and I've seen you chug, so stop playing. Secondly, I regret introducing you two to Reddit." What hell has he introduced to the world.
"But you are like, the stereotypical husband. No, better than the trad husband, the chad trad."
Hero takes a shot and closes his eyes. "Bow. Daphne. Shut your mouths and let me drink in peace."
They fail to do so. "That's not very chad of you."
Hero menacingly aims the spray bottle at them.
"Killjoy," Daphne snarks. "Let us live vicariously through you! Do we look like we have anything going on in our lives? We got bread, Henry. Bread on the deck, bread on the floor. We got some brioche, that sounds lovely, let me go get some." She gets up and wanders off to get the bean roaches.
Bowen dumbly grins at nothing in particular. Hero wants to imagine he looks dashing, reserved, a dignified young man partaking in liquor, societal norms be damned. He knows better. Joke's on him, knowing better has never stopped drunk idiots from doing stupid shit in the history of ever.
Daphne brings back cupcakes. "Our darling little brother took my fucking bread I'm going to have words with that boy and I want those words right now!" She proceeds to pout while aggressively eating a chocolate sprinkle cupcake.
"And you believe he's trapped in these cupcakes," Bowen asks. He takes one for himself and begins searching. Monch.
"Henry eat your food you need the energy, I'm not kidding." Daphne demonstrates her steadfast judgment by downing another shot.
But it's so warm and cozy in here. "Do we have to?" Bowen silently refills Hero's glass.
"Eat and drink for tomorrow Mikhael dies." She's lost it, not that Hero thinks she ever had much to start with. "If we leave then we can't keep drinking."
"Fucking, watch me, Henry, ye of little faith. Polly doesn't like you for your brain." She stands on the table to make her point, blunted by taking the stand after her little speech. "Stupid himbo looking... I don't know any bread from your country."
He thinks about it. "Well tacos came from there."
She makes a face, as does Bowen. "That's racist." Hero's turn to make one, these two operate on curious levels sober; inebriated, the laws of space, time, and sanity are forsaken for their shared twin mind wonderland.
"It's also wrong. Tortillas. Taco is the food. Tortillas are the bread. Jesus Christ Henry, it's like you don't even know us. Have you been drinking too much?" says Bowen, who is a bitch that takes another shot.
To Hero's chagrin, Daphne drags them out minutes later, a thermos for each of them carrying what's left of their bottle. Bowen gracelessly wraps the empty bottle in three trash bags, then runs over to where Sunny used to live to unceremoniously drop it in their bin. Santa's gift to him this Christmas is making sure he doesn't slip and eat shit running in his current state.
Daphne confidently leads them out the street and due north, to the park. Some of Kel's friends are playing basketball with shorts in the winter wind. Hero pulls them both away before they spot the baker twins ogling their legs. "And I'm the himbo, right."
"There's no sexual connotation to himbos, Henry. If you're hot, buff, and dumb, you count."
He has been hitting the gym, there's stretch marks where his muscles have come in. "Wait, what do you mean dumb?!"
"Henry, Polly's been crushing on you for a while now," Daphne tells him. Alright listen he's been depressed but also he feels like he would've seen that.
"Like how?" he asks.
"Like how? You want me to cite my sources, sir Henry motherfucker?"
"Motherfucker. Wait, Henry got it in?" Hero considers asking Basil to help him get away with it.
"Source, colons, trust me." ...death for Bowen that is, not the other thing. Kid has enough trauma for two lifetimes as is.
In the eye of the stupid storm of fuck, Hero wonders if Daphne talks to Sunny at all. He really doesn't want to imagine that conversation, he doesn't have any brain cells to spare.
Daphne immediately stops at the end of the path to the old lake beyond the park. Hero peeks over her shoulder to see Aubrey and Kim making out at the pier, going at it and dangerously tempting fate to plop them both into the water below.
"Bowen, I need a plan. How do we interrupt them?" You don't. But not interrupting them isn't a plan to interrupt them, it's the absence of a plan. Maybe. Hero takes another swig of his thermos. Logical thinking is hard enough sober, then you have these Us and As without the little cross bit at the bottom and all these ifs and thens.
"HAVE YOU SEEN OUR BROTHER?!" he shouts at them. If he planned to dunk Kim into the lake, it worked. If he planned for Aubrey to storm over screaming bloody murder to beat the gluten out of them, that worked too and Hero's the first to run.
"I'm actually going to stomp your throats! You fucking assholes!!!" Hero could defuse this, or he could watch Aubrey turn them into flatbread. But he's next, so uh. Dammit guys.
Hero gets in front of them, hands raised placatively. "....hey Aubrey. This is all a big misunderstanding." The leather jacket intimidates him, as do the steel-toed boots and work jeans.
"Hero, what the hell, are." Her face falls flat as she looks him over with teal eyes where brilliant skies and verdant grasslands meet at the horizon. Understanding gives way to disappointed scorn. "They're drunk. And so are you."
"In my defense, I feel pretty sober." He refrains from taking another shot, so Bowen does it in his stead, failing to help their case in any way except numbing the pain. "You and Kim should get home. Cuddle up with some hot chocolate."
Her cheeks move with her thoughts. "I guess. Kim's totally going to steal shit from the bakery though."
"Wait that's illegal." Yes it is.
"So is underage drinking." So is that.
"Bowen let me do the talking." Please.
"No I have Daphne for that. Tell them!"
Aubrey sees something on Hero's face that softens hers. "Sheesh. Hero, get them out of here, I'm so sorry they roped you into babysitting." She saw pain, then.
"Have you seen Mikhael around anywhere? It's why we were out here." Kim joins them, sopping wet and shivering with clattering teeth, warmed by furious anger.
"Have you checked Charlene's house?" Oh yeah. That works.
"Thank you Kim."
Kim kicks Daphne in the shin, sending her to the snowy earth with a muffled oof. Bowen follows suit but on his back.
Aubrey looks at Hero. "I didn't kick him."
"Solidarity." Bowen declares. "Ow."
Faraway, true to name, is far enough from the cities that the stars still shine vividly in their places in the firmament. Every step into boot-mashed snow is an experience worth savoring, every breath and moment in time.
Hero makes a mental note that he needs a lot of water before he goes to bed tonight, then promptly eats the note. Mmm, brain ink.
Sunny bars their way, stood at the end of the intersection between the streets, heavy bag trailing behind him. He has a toolbox in the other hand. "Pub crawling again?" he asks.
Again? Hero looks to the pair of them. "You know it, baby. Hot girl shit. The usual." Daphne continues talking but his brain's reflexively tuned it out. Putting those two in earshot is a cognitohazard.
Wait, you can't suffer a cognitohazard if you have no cognition to hazard to start with.
Brilliant as ever, Hero drinks more vodka. Outstanding move.
Sunny pokes Hero in the side, something in his hand. It's some trading cards? "Do me a favor and I'll forget I saw this. Angel got his cards taken away the other day and I'm not heading over to that side of Faraway for a few days. Can you drop this off at his house?"
Hero takes the cards wait this is actual cards. When did Angel get an interest in Magic? When did he get the allowance for an interest in Magic? "We're stopping by Charlene's house anyway, I can do this." Sunny nods, gives him a thumbs up.
"What's in the bag?" Bowen asks Sunny.
Sunny icily looks him in the eye. "Catalytic converters."
"I didn't know you could convert cats," Daphne says. "When'd you become a Cat-holic?"
Sunny blinks. "Stay safe bestie." He takes his leave before Hero can think to, I don't know, stop Sunny from walking away with several thousand dollars of stolen parts.
Hero dimly wonders how Polly's doing.