Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sometimes, when shit goes down, and he’s the only one keeping the world from collapsing around him, Fez likes to break down whatever new insurmountable, life-changing, catastrophic thing he has to get through into many smaller tasks. Ain’t no point in losing his goddamn mind over tryin’ to do everything all at once.

They ain’t build the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area in a day, or however the fuck that saying goes.

Grandma collapses? Just focus on getting her to the hospital without wrecking the car. Deal with whatever comes next when it happens. Grandma’s comatose for the foreseeable future? Apply for Medicare while making Kraft mac and cheese for Ash. Feeding his kid brother dinner does, in fact, take immediate priority over attempting to become the sole proprietor of a drug operation at thirteen.

Triage and shit. Learned that SAT word while waiting in the ER for his grandmother, and it’s stuck around in his brain ever since.

Lexi enjoys it when he shoves random overly-complicated words like that into their regular conversations in a way that somehow makes perfect sense, even when they sound completely out of place. Like dropping one of her favorite Jane Austen characters in the middle of Downtown Oakland.

It makes her smile, not because she’s thinking he can’t know what they mean and laughing at him, but because his girl is a fucking genius, on her Sherlock Holmes shit, and lexicography is but one of her various wild interests.

Lexi loves all the complicated shit behind, like, language or whatever the fuck, and he loves listening to her go off, even if her spirals about the Altaic language family make his brain buffer trying to follow along.

When panic about her play (which, for the record, Fezco truly believes is the next great American work) overwhelms her, Fez whips out a “triage” or “non-diegetic” alongside a “for real” or “know what I’m sayin’”, just to make her giggle.

It’s some positive feedback loop shit, like on her AP Environmental Science exam; he adores her, would do anything she asks, which makes her happy, which makes him love her more.

Shit.

Lexi.

Lexi’s play.

The play that Lexi wrote.

Lexi’s pride and joy that he swore on God he’d be there for.

He’s only barely able to tamp down on the urge to kill his brother. Obviously, Fezco won’t be able to make it. Not with Custer bleeding out in his house.

Lexi’s like, an angel, and he knows she won’t get mad at him or Ash. Just disappointed in herself because Lexi’s perfection is naturally spotted through with a variety of human flaws, one of which is crippling self-doubt.

And feeding into that doubt, even inadvertently, is a cardinal sin. Worst timeline shit. She deserves the entire (ever-expanding) universe, and he’s already decided to give over his whole life to do that for her.

So yeah, he could fuck Ash up right now for putting him in a position where he’s got to disappoint her. Kid deserves it and worse.

When he pulls his phone out of his suit pocket, he realizes his hands are trembling. Fezco regrets putting down his joint earlier than normal; he’d timed sobering up for when her play started, all so he could remember every moment.

But between the body on his grandma’s couch and trying to type out the perfect message to break her heart, that also can’t be used as evidence in a court of law, well. Right now would be a great time for a smoke.

He wishes desperately that he got paid to put up with his younger brother’s bullshit. Bonuses and PTO. One of them 401ks.

Like, ideally, Fez was hoping to avoid another crisis while they were still trying to sort out the Mouse debacle, as Lexi calls it, but Ashtray is the menace he raised, and he really shouldn’t have expected the kid to turn out any better. That’s on him.

It’s times like this that make him wonder why he didn’t surrender Ash to CPS and wash his hands clean.

“What are we gonna do?” At a different time, under different circumstances, the nauseous fear on his brother’s face, which makes him look like the kid he is under those face tats, would be enough to draw out Fezco’s rage against any motherfucker who dared to threaten Ash. Make some fuckin’ heads roll. Drop some bodies.

Except this time, Ashtray is the motherfucker threatening himself, threatening his own future. So what exactly is Fezco s‘posed to do now?

He’s gripping the ancient Formica countertop hard enough to break skin. “‘We’? Fuck you mean, ‘we’? We not doin’ shit. You have done enough.” He hisses out between gritted teeth, staring at Custer’s phone spluttering in an extra-large Coke from the gas station down the street.

If he so much as looks at Ash, he’ll probably lose his cool on a never-before-seen scale. Instead, Fezco chooses the mature option of staring straight ahead at the cup and wondering if Lexi’s seen his text yet.

“I thought-” Pressure builds in his skull with every whine out of that kid’s mouth. Ashtray seems to think this is middle school, and he can childishly argue his way out of a homicide charge or two.

His phone vibrates with a notification, spurring him to smack the cup into the sink in a fury. “Nah, now you lying to me for real, ‘cause I know you weren’t thinking. Can’t fuckin’ believe you, man. Didn’t I just fucking tell you you can’t be murking people in our living room?” Apparently, that didn’t stick the first time around. ‘Don’t (needlessly) kill people’ seems like such a basic, evident, obvious life lesson that he didn’t think he needed to emphasize more than once.

Was Fezco ever this stupid when he was a kid? Nah, no way.

“Bro, are you for real? You miss how he was clearly an op, and I was tryna save us?” His brother is all outrage and offended honor, gesturing rapidly with the blood-covered knife and sending little drops of red everywhere.

Fez is absolutely going to lose his cool. Should’ve sent him to fucking finishing school or whatever. It’s bad manners to spray blood everywhere- Kitty despised bad manners.

And it’s covering their whole house in Custer’s gross DNA, which will make cleaning this crime scene that much harder. Practically impossible.

A migraine threatens to blackout his vision as he motions for his brother to stop waving around the murder weapon like he’s a goddamn windmill. “Ashtray, his bitch ass was gonna do fuck all. You had one goddamn job; to chill out and not say nothin’. Couldn’t even do that.”

His phone keeps going off, but he doesn’t want to face the music. Doesn’t want to see what Lexi’s saying and break his own heart by crushing hers. She is so excited for him to see it, and any minute now, when she looks out at the audience, she’ll see his empty seat.

Maybe it’s a little morally grey for him to be more torn up about letting his girlfriend down than watching a murder happen in his living room, but Lexi will never stop being his priority, the direction of his compass, his North Star. If being a drug dealer isn’t enough to send him to Hell, this probably will do it. Eh. Fez can live with that. “Swear to God, next time someone comes over, I’m ‘bout to put you on a fuckin’ child leash, bro. Baby gate or some shit.” What are they going to do? How the fuck are they going to fix this?

Fez always has a plan, and a backup plan, and about three different graceful exits. Always.

He has no idea how to gracefully exit this with everyone he loves, though he wouldn’t put Faye in that category, intact and out of prison.

Kitty would know what to do, but she’s in a coma, and he doesn’t exactly have a wealth of other highly-capable, resilient, and tough-as-nails people to rely on right now. Kindly, Faye qualifies for none of those, and at the moment, he’s pissed enough at Ash to only assign him the latter.

“Fuck you.”

Fezco ignores the indignant venom in that reply while rubbing his hands into his eyes; maybe he can leech the headache out of his frontal lobe through force of will alone.

“Can you shut the fuck up right now? Can’t even think when you runnin’ yo mouth like that.” This is fine. All he has to do is break things down into manageable steps and then do them. Everything will be fine.

His phone starts buzzing again, and it scares the shit out of him, like, he literally flinches. A picture of Lexi’s cute nose scrunch flashes on the screen; she’s calling him. Fuck, she’s calling him.

In a panic, Fezco scrambles to go visually judge the weight of Custer’s body just to have a legitimate excuse not to pick up that call. He never declines her calls. Never. But he’s a bit fucking busy right now trying to decide how to hide this body, and the best way Fez can protect Lexi from this is by keeping her out of the loop.

Ashtray’s pacing around the sofa, muttering curses so creative Lexi would be impressed. Her favorite insults are from that Shakespeare dude, and he’s gotta admit, they’re pretty fucking catchy. The other night, they watched that movie where all the characters were Miami gangsters. Whenever some disrespectful fuckboys roll through, Fezco will mime biting his thumb to make Ash cackle from the cooler.

A flash of blonde catches his eye, followed by glazed eyes and a distinctly unimpressed face.

Fucking Faye. To be honest, for a good ten or so minutes there, he completely forgot she was in the room. “Why you raisin’ your hand? Are you for real right now?”

“Um, can I, like, talk now, please?” Faye’s valley girl voice doesn’t usually grate on his nerves, but he’s about up to the limit of shit he’s willing to tolerate. “I have an idea.”

Ashtray scoffs from the corner he has finally settled in, surveying the damage like a fuckin’ gargoyle. “For the first time ever.”

Custer’s gone fully grey and ashen, skin waxy in the afternoon sun. They’ll probably have to scrap the whole sofa, given the sheer volume of blood all over the damn thing. “Ashtray, what I just say? Shut up.” Mercifully, his grandma’s crochet blanket seems to have evaded the carnage. It’s laundry day, and Fezco hopes the current load in the washer contains that keepsake.

Faye flips his brother off, a triumphant look on her face when she realizes Ash can’t retaliate without pushing his luck. “Thank you. I have an idea. I think you should call Lexi back.”

He knows that Faye and Lexi have grown close recently; sometimes, he’s greeted by the two of ‘em giggling and egging each other on like preschoolers when he walks in the room. But how is his relationship any of Faye’s business? “Fuck are you on about-”

“I, like, Snapchatted her the whole thing already.”

What Fezco sees when she flips her phone screen to face him makes the bottom of his stomach drop out. “Ion think I heard that right. You did what?” Messages from ‘LEX<3’ keep popping up; dozens of them in the thirty seconds he spends staring at Faye’s phone slack-jawed. Nah, there’s no way. There’s absolutely no fuckin’ way she-

“Oh my god, Fezco, you need to, like, keep up. I. Snapchatted. Her. Everything.”

A small part of his brain briefly considers walking right out the front door, going to see his girl, and leaving the two dumbasses he’s unfortunate enough to call family to face the consequences of their own fucking actions.

He takes a deep breath.

Aight.

It is what it is.

Custer is dead, and Lexi knows.

Ain’t nothing he can do about either of those things.

What can he do?

Fezco answers his own question with a tidy, ordered list. Lexi loves those; she leaves them color-coded grocery lists, pastes them on his bedroom wall while she studies, tucks sprawling Post-Its covered in her thoughts and opinions into the books she lends him. He saves each piece of paper, cramped with her messy scrawl. Treasures ‘em more than his chains, adores them more than his favorite strain.

First, he’s gonna talk to Lexi, calm her down. If luck’s in his favor, she hasn’t saved anything incriminating, and he can convince her to scrub it all from her phone. Mitigating any trauma on her end is also a priority. Fuck, dead bodies don’t get any easier for him to look at, and he’s seen probably more than average.

Second, Fezco’s going to somehow get that fucking  weapon out of Ashtray’s hand and preferably down a gutter or tossed into the ocean, after soaking it in bleach. It’s not very inventive, but it will do. No small amount of satisfaction wells up when he sees his brother flinch at Fez’s furious glower; Ashtray hasn’t decided to disregard Fezco’s authority completely. Yet.

He’ll take that W.

Third… there is no third step right now. He’ll have to figure that one out when he gets there.

With that list in mind and his phone in hand, Fez answers what must be her thirteenth call in the last fifteen minutes. “Hey, Lex-”

Since the whole crowbar to the head thing, he struggles with understanding, like, words when there’s shit goin’ on in the background. It takes all of his concentration to focus on Lexi’s voice over someone’s strident high-pitched yells and what sounds like pure, unadulterated mayhem. “I’m gonna be there in half an hour.” She’s out of breath, talking so fast she steamrolls right by him.

Kinda feels like everyone’s operating on a different planet, and Fezco is both the only sane person here and the only one out of the fuckin’ loop. “What?”

Faye and Ash look entirely too entertained by the frantic phone call playing out before them. “You have OxiClean on the upper left shelf of your laundry room if you’re facing the washer. You and Faye need to mix some of that up with hot water and put it in that spray bottle you use on Ashtray when he’s pissing you off, you know what I’m talking about. Oh, and fill up a bucket with the solution too, if you’ve got one.” How the fuck does she know all this?

“I’m so fucking confused right now, what the fuck are you talking about? Did Faye not send you the Bailey Sarian shit that went down on my couch or…” Lexi’s the one who introduced him to ‘true crime’ and the whole online content genre of white ladies putting on makeup while going off about serial killers and wild homicides. More accurately, Lexi introduced both of the O’Neills to it. Fez has, in fact, seen Ash listening to that shit on Spotify. Fucker prolly falls asleep to that.

If this goes wrong, they’re gonna be that lady’s next YouTube video. Fuck. He doesn’t want to be remembered as an accessory after the fact, discussed over some fuckin’ fake eyelashes.

This conversation is going the opposite of how he expected it to. “Yeah, no, I saw it. That’s, like, not important right now. Fezco? Please spray down your whole house before Luminol makes your floor look like a Jackson Pollock painting. Get everyone out of their clothes, but you have to soak them in OxiClean for, like, at least an hour before they even get to the washing machine. I don’t know if you’ve ever paid, like, close attention at the dentist’s, but you know how they are super careful about not cross-contaminating-”

His girl is rambling now, though not out of nerves or anxiety. She sounds… eager? Excited, even.

“Lexi.” He loves her and all her info-dumping; hopefully, she can forgive him for this one instance of gently reminding her to get back on track.

One hand comes up to cover the mic as he violently gestures towards the general vicinity of the hallway. “Faye, can you get the fuckin’, whatever the fuck Lexi said? The white powder shit in the laundry room-” He mutters, trying to put some sense of urgency in his voice.

With a single, exaggerated roll of her eyes, their houseguest goes to make herself useful. “Ugh, fine.”

He tunes back into Lexi’s voice in his ear. “Okay, yeah, I’m sorry. Do not contaminate the clean stuff by touching it with the… dirty stuff. Don’t even touch anything that wasn’t contaminated without disinfecting your hands with the OxiClean, okay?” A note of stress finally enters her voice here, though he would bet good money it’s probably over the potential of them contaminating shit more than anything else.

But Lexi’s got a plan. “Um. Aight.” So they gonna be good.

Now, that don’t necessarily fill him with confidence, but once Faye slides their one bucket his way, Fezco starts filling it with hot water from the tap.

Ash has, in his apparent boredom, decided to start poking at the body with his foot, attempting to get Custer’s hand to fall off his lap. “Eyyyyy,” His brother cheers like he hit a slam dunk, hands (and knife) in the air.

It’s better just to let him have this; Fezco will pick his battles and choose another opportunity to rein Ashtray in. It’s not like Custer’s gonna get hurt worse.

Faintly, someone on her side of the call is scrambling, talking somethin’ about some letters. She pauses to agree with a request he can’t hear before returning her attention to the issue Fez thinks is more pressing. “Thank you. We’ll handle it, everything will be fine. Do not even ~trip. I got you~” Her pretty voice lifts, teasing him with his own words.

They’re two distinct people, always will be, but they overlap, mirror, intertwine parts of themselves together. FezcoandLexi, not Fezco and Lexi. Lists, words, minds, a delicate gold chain glinting around her neck, a shared Google doc where he leaves notes on her scripts that she always takes. It thrills him equally that someone like Lexi motherfuckin’ Howard slots in his rough syntax into her polished glass speech, both for her own pleasure and to please him.

And on a regular homicide unrelated call, he would return her playfulness.  “...you good? Sober?” He don’t know much about theatre kids, but maybe they’re hotboxing backstage or something. That would explain her overenthusiasm.

“Did you want me to take this badly?”

Maybe spraying Ash with the hot detergent and no warning is a little cruel. Slitting someone’s throat is also cruel, though, so turnabout is only fair. “I mean, shit. You got a point there. But yo’ play-” His brother flips him off with a single crimson-red middle finger before complying with Fez’s mimed instructions and stripping, tossing his knife carelessly onto Custer’s now-vacant lap.

He pulls out their largest black trash bags from under the sink. “My play is running for another two weekends, evenings and matinees. How many other opportunities will I get to cover up a crime scene? Probably less than two.”

The groan that comes out of his chest is equal parts exasperated and serious. “Oh my fuckin’ God. Lex, you can’t just be sayin’ that shit out loud.” Trying to calmly enunciate each word and communicate even the smallest fraction of the gravity of this situation while simultaneously shoving everyone’s discarded clothes into the bags takes up all of his brain cells.

“Trust me, no one’s paying attention to a thing I’m saying right now. Bobbi’s admirably taken over my whole gaslight gatekeep girlboss thing, it’s super impressive. Once intermission has started, I’ll get over there. Love you.” Now he doesn’t really have time right now to unpack that sequence of those words, even though he’d like to. He’ll have to ask Lexi to explain them to him later.

“Fuck. Aight, love you too.”

Step 2 of the Plan has been completely hijacked, but that’s just the way life is. Man makes plans, and Lexi laughs.

Nothin’ he can do about it. That’s starting to become, like, his motto. Maybe his girlfriend can translate it into Latin and make it official.

They got half an hour before she pulls up. God alone knows what’s gonna happen next. “C’mon, move it, you fuckin’ assholes. We gotta wrap him up. You fuckin’ too, Faye, don’t give me shit ‘bout your fucking acrylics.”

He’s actually pretty proud of the progress they’ve made when he hears the bell of Lexi’s bike ringing from outside.

Some ancient decades-old Ziplocs have been reconstituted into foot coverings for when they bundle up Custer’s dead weight in more black trash bags, head uncovered per Lexi’s last text. His brother is finally ‘clean,’ so to speak, and sulking in his room in a makeshift time-out. In between rolling up the carpets and struggling against the body’s rigor mortis, Faye bites her nails off to maximize efficiency. Guess she really fucking hated her ex that much.

He can’t blame her.

Lexi’s got a key; she basically lives half the week with them anyways, and Fezco stopped giving a fuck about her stopping by any time of day or night a few months back. He smiles at the memory. That was a good evening; she stood guard at their front door and scarred Bruce mentally for life while he carefully extracted himself from Laurie’s sphere of influence over a pot of his grandma’s decrepit chamomile tea.

“Ashtray, get the fuck back out here,” Fez calls out when he hears the lock turn.

She’s so beautiful, face radiant, and caramel brown eyes accentuated with delicate black wings. For a second, there, the scope of his world, his existence, narrows down to Lexi Howard and the solid weight of her throwing herself in his arms, the sweet scent of her floral shampoo, the soft kiss she presses to the crook of his neck.

This is what he will lose if things go wrong tonight. His grip on her tightens, and his girl nuzzles into him like she knows the dread cooling his blood. Lexi, eager, brilliant, bright, a thousand and one adjectives he could use and still not describe her properly, will be damned with the rest of them.

Over his dead body. Seriously. He don’t give a fuck. It’s her choice to get involved in this messy shit; he can respect that. Not even God himself could change her mind once Lexi’s made it up. But he can protect her from anything and everything, at every cost.

When she pulls away from him, Fez instinctively moves with her, chasing her warmth. “Fezco,” Lexi scolds playfully, running a finger over his cheekbone.

Their foreheads press together briefly, wisps of her dark hair brushing against his hand as it comes up to cradle her temple. “Hey, baby. Real sorry ‘bout all this. ‘M sorry to miss yo’ magnum opus, too.”

“‘Sup.” His brother, belligerent at the best of times, breaks their moment with a kind of nonchalance better reserved for, like, restocking potato chips on a slow day.

Ah, with Lexi here, the tables have turned, and Fez is no longer outnumbered 2-1. It’s nice to see someone else take a go at chastising Ashtray for once.

After a prolonged staring contest that the younger boy inevitably loses, she turns her attention back to him. “You can come see it another time, please don’t worry. This is certainly more pressing, and honestly, I-“

Faye pops out from the laundry room, carelessly throwing down the spray bottle in her effort to shuffle over in house slippers. “Lexi, finally. You only took forever. Look!” Lexi moves to step closer, but he holds her back; they put down a dish towel to mark where the floor becomes ‘lava,’ and he doesn’t want her to throw out potentially-bloodstained Converse. “I even fucked up my set for this.”

They can do this at a later date, right? That’s how he rationalizes interrupting Faye’s rambling monologue about nails, and Lexi’s confused yet attentive nodding at all the right places.

“Lexi. What you want us to do next?”

Determination settles on her face. She’s got the same resolve in her spine as she did during tech week, marshaling her troops and relentlessly pursuing high school spring musical perfection. Fezco has been privileged enough to witness it on the nights Lexi needed a ride, and he snuck into the theater while he waited. “Do you guys have a pair of pliers somewhere?”

She doesn’t flinch at the blood or the body. Not that he thought she would; she don’t scare easy. That being said, she’s kinda treating this like she preppin’ for one of her more complicated in-class debates. Getting away with murder is her opponent, and Lexi Howard has anticipated every counterargument. When Fez pulls her aside, Lexi looks at him as though she’s entirely rational and he’s the weird one. “You don’t understand; do you know how hard it is to authentically depict things in- in scripts, or in a writing piece without, like, really getting it, personally? Ion know, when am I gonna get another chance to experience this? I just think it will add so much to my writing. And so far, it’s been kinda fun.”

Another fuckin’ headache builds behind his eyes. “Ma, are you forreal right now? This ain’t s’posed to be fun.” How can someone typically so practical be so… impractical? Foolish? Actually, he knows the answer to his question. This is the same girl who wrote about her sister fucking herself on a carousel in public in her school play. Fearlessness and foolishness are two sides of the same coin.

But he’ll stand by her, push her out of the way of the ‘consequences of her actions’ train if he has to. Fezco would follow her into Hell. She sobers quickly, steadily holding his gaze as she speaks. “I am being very ‘forreal.’ Trust me, okay? I got this. And I won’t let anything happen to you or Ashtray.”

He trusts her.

Fifteen bottles of ethanol wouldn’t be enough to scrub the lingering feeling of Custer’s dead saliva from his fingers. Because, of course, Fezco was the one to pry out the gold teeth; Faye is rarely strong enough to lift a paper bag, and he didn’t want Lexi to catch, like, some bubonic plague or rabies or whatever nasty shit was chilling in this asshole’s mouth.

He’s actually considering some bleach or maybe just cutting off his hands entirely.

At least they got the goddamn teeth out.

It’s rare that Ash’s garage forge set up for amateur sword-making becomes relevant to the whole family, but having a propane torch and crucible on hand to destroy Custer’s dental implants seems to be a very lucky coincidence.

While his brother’s off working out some frustration with a propane torch, the three of them manage to get the couch's frame into the backyard for later. The cushions and rugs will have to be burned. Just to be safe, Fezco slips into his grandmother’s room and apologizes for what they have to do. Coma patients can sometimes hear things, right? He likes to think Kitty will forgive him and haunt his younger brother instead.

Lexi squeezes his hand silently when he heads back to the living room.

Tenderness gone, she whips out her laptop to reveal… building plans? “Okay, Fezco, Ashtray, Faye. It’s fucking showtime.”

The Internet is a magical and frightening place.

Lexi explains her genius plan in the car ride there, the four of them plus Custer loaded in the Cadillac like a fuckin’ clown car. They’re real lucky it’s 3:00 AM on a Sunday, and the streets are deserted. He drives not a mile above or below the speed limit with full stops and carefully signaled lane changes. Their headlights are on, and Fezco gets on everyone about keepin’ they seatbelts buckled. Don’t get pulled over for shitty driving with a corpse in the trunk is common sense.

They’re twenty minutes out from some address she punched into Google Maps when she starts talking.

Apparently, there’s some app named after, like, a clock, and people post random shit on there. “Kinda like Vine?” When he asks, steady gaze on the road, Fezco can practically feel Ashtray rolling his eyes. “Don’t give me that, I’ll leave yo’ ass on the side of the freeway. Deadass.” He keeps his voice even, as always. It’s only been a couple hours, and there’s no fucking way Custer’s started decomposing yet. But he swears he can sense the rot seeping into his car.

Shit.

Whole situation didn’t feel super real ‘till right now. They’re exposed and vulnerable like this, a neat package of defendants, evidence, and a victim practically wrapped in a fuckin’ bow.

His knuckles are white against the steering wheel.

Lexi taps his forearm with her phone, ostensibly to show him something, but he waves it off quickly. Some tinny Soundcloud rap that sounds like one of Ashtray’s worse mixtapes abruptly plays, then loops. “Yeah, like Vine, except worse. Anyways. You can find some really random shit on TikTok, and yesterday I actually stumbled upon a bunch of local crematoriums and funeral homes, like, running TikTok accounts? Luckily enough for us, one of them,” she announces with a flourish, “has recently posted a ‘funeral home tour.’”

As she magically procures a PDF of building plans for the crematorium in question, unearthed during some madcap Googling between musical numbers over an hour ago, Fez reminds himself to check and see if their fucking building plans are floating around on the Internet for anyone with half a brain and a quarter of Lexi’s persistence to find.

The funeral home is on the outskirts of Los Angeles proper, across the street from a train line and next to a storage facility. Barely-visible security cameras cover the visible doorway.

His girlfriend, criminal mastermind extraordinaire, came prepared.

After she points out the camouflaged breaker boxes on the sides of each building, Ash slips out of the car a few blocks down from the funeral home. It takes more than a few minutes, and his nerves are shot the whole time, but eventually, the lights of the storage facility and the crematorium go out completely. The U-Haul storage units will have their power back up shortly, but that’s just a smokescreen for the currently empty funeral home. One of ‘em will flip the breaker back up on their way out.

Custer’s fucking heavy, even with all the blood drained out of him and minus a few teeth. It takes him, Ash, and more than a few muttered curses to get the fucker out on the sidewalk in a graceless heap.

Lexi guides them down the access road with an ease borne from staring at the building plans on the ride there until she had them memorized, though she’d made herself carsick in that process.

Faye goes to loiter under the lone lamplight, frizzy blonde hair lighting up under the LEDs and hopefully drawing any lingering attention to the chick in her underwear spacing out in the middle of the night. She’ll be their lookout, though his girlfriend has greater faith in Faye’s abilities than he does.

Past the row of hearses, Fezco can see the garage door left slightly open, like someone lazily wrapped up their late Saturday night shift under the assumption that no one would be tampering with the dead. Sike. “Fuckin’ Christ,” He says, really more to himself than anyone else, as they first shove the body through the gap, then open it up further to get themselves in.

Ashtray snickers in the dead quiet. “Language.” If his hands weren’t busy keeping ahold of the multiple garbage bags hastily duct-taped together, he’d reach out and cuff his brother on the head for his fuckin’ nerve. As exhaustion bleeds through his muscles, Fez almost fumbles Custer’s head. Quick reflexes are the only thing that catches the corpse just before he could accidentally send it bouncing on the concrete.

Lexi flicks on her phone flashlight once they’re cloaked in total darkness. Now it’s her turn to have notifications popping up non-stop; seems like Faye is real bored out there. “Stop it.” A locked door provides a momentary obstacle, though it’s easily opened by a few clever twists of Lexi’s Star Wars debit card against the lockset’s barrel.

They’re in.

His brother’s sneakers squeak against the pristine linoleum, the natural result of being a dick and buying shoes to display, not to wear. In Fezco’s opinion, that’s not particularly smart economics. But what the fuck does he know? As they were rushing out the door, those new Jordans were the closest things on hand uncovered by blood.

The three of them sneak past a door labeled ‘Prep Room.’ His desire to touch Custer’s corpse any further than strictly necessary is nonexistent, not even to do whatever the fuck it is that funeral home people normally do to bodies. Just disposing of this piece of shit in a remotely-dignified manner, such as setting him on fire, is too kind. Hey, maybe that benevolence will score some bonus points with the Good Lord.

Oof. Fucking finally, Lexi gives him the go-ahead to drop the body on the floor and rest for a second.

From her back pocket, she pulls out a pair of black latex gloves he hadn’t noticed earlier. “Damn, Lex. You ain’t playin’.”

Now he wasn’t intending for that to come out all flirty, really, Fez was going for some respectful awe, but his girlfriend shoots him a wink anyways before she starts opening up body freezer drawers at random. “Courtesy of the East Highland Drama props department.”

Ashtray watches this all go down with a scowl. “You totally sure you know what the fuck you’re doin’?”

She almost gives him whiplash with how quickly Lexi turns on her heel to face his brother.

Oh, shit.

Fezco recognizes that expression. She was wearin’ the same one the last time Laurie and her goon darkened their doorstep, the same night he gave her a key to the front door. “Do you know what the fuck you were doing? What the fuck you almost did?” He ain’t got the slightest inclination to ask her to back down, not when his fury at Ashtray’s critically underdeveloped impulse control hasn’t abated. Instead, it’s curled up deeper in his chest where he was planning on holding on to it until a better opportunity to raise Hell presented itself. 

Lexi’s perfectly in sync with him, though, even when neither of them realizes it. They’re crucially different in one way; where he’s meticulous caution, she’s all bright audacity. “You are on some thin fucking ice right now, Ashtray. I know I can’t stop you from going and getting yourself killed one day with your non-existent self-preservation instincts, but it will be over my dead body if you drag your brother into that one more time. Do you hear me?”

Her ferocity echoes.

Fezco tucks his chin to hide his smirk. Victory is sweeter than a blunt. “I hear you, Lexi.” It’s at least a little funny; Ashtray hasn’t sounded this scared since he was still having ‘monster under the bed’ nightmares.

“Now shut the fuck up. Thank you.” She goes through a few more drawers, casually flipping past the recently deceased in the area until she finds what she’s looking for. “Aha, here we go.” Lexi holds up a tag while revealing a cardboard box, mist dissipating off of it like some horror movie shit. “Scheduled to be cremated first thing Sunday morning, all set with an approved Disposition permit.”

Los Angeles county got some confusing ass permit shit when it comes to setting dead bodies on fire, according to her earlier in-the-car info-dumping. It wouldn’t be as simple as just shoving Custer’s body in the crematory and letting him turn to ash.

She pulls out two more pairs of gloves, tossing a set square at his chest. He plucks them out of the air easily.

Now for the part of her plan he definitely wasn’t looking forward to.

No one moves for a few minutes. “Should I-“ Lexi cuts herself off. The longer the freezer is open, the warmer the bodies will get.

Fezco looks at the two of them. Lexi swaps her gaze between him and Ash. Ash looks like one of them emojis with a flat line for a mouth.

Real fucking comedy show over here. “Yeah, we should get it outta there and on the floor first.” Someone’s gotta break the stalemate.

When he goes to start coaxing the human-sized cardboard box, his brother steps forward and stops him. “Won’t it just be easier to leave it in the drawer and switch ‘em out like that?”

Ashtray’s serious now, ducking his head with a touch of shame. And clearly just trying his best to help. Fezco softens minutely. “Nah, we not tryna make a mess.” His brother’s still a kid, though a dangerous one.

He blinks, and for a moment, he sees the baby Ash was once, crying on the floor. Grandma had him baptized in the same parish as the rest of the O’Neills. Washed that original sin right outta him.

And what did they raise him on? Wrath and violence and fear.

Earlier that night, Ashtray was just doing what he knew. What he’d learned, from Kitty and from Fezco. Custer in those trash bags is as much his fault as it is Ash’s. 

He basically put the knife in the kid’s hand. And Ashtray only used it as he’d been taught.

Lexi moves to the opposite side of the drawer, poised to help. “Fezco’s right.” She keeps her tone gentle but firm. When he meets her eyes, there’s more kindness in her alone than in the rest of the world. Fez will not bear the guilt of the ruin he almost led his brother to alone. She’s here now, and they will fix this together.

Ash moves to join them. “Aight.”

It takes all three of them to get the box on the floor and open.

Damn, she picked a good one. Poor bastard even looks like Custer.

They swap out the bodies easily. Lexi seals the box back up, and it feels like all his worry and stress is in there too, where it will be burned away with the final tether to this dirty, fucked-up business that Fezco’s finally decided to get out of.

He really don’t want a repeat performance of tonight, and gettin’ on that straight and narrow shit is the most foolproof way of ensuring a happier ending for them all.

The drawer shuts.

Maybe he’s misremembering shit, but Fezco is having a difficult time recalling exactly what Lexi said would happen next. “What we gonna do ‘bout him?” He nods towards the leftover corpse.

“Oh.”

That’s not what he was hoping to hear.

All the color has drained from her face, and Lexi looks like she’s either about to throw up or pass out. She shrinks into herself as she stares at the random dead dude, thinking so hard Fezco can fucking hear it from five feet away.

Well, he’s able to compile data, examine it for patterns, and make educated guesses about those patterns. He’s actually pretty good at that shit. Data’s not looking good.

Fuck, it’s been a long-ass night. And it only looks to be getting longer. He starts to mourn his vague hopes of curling up in bed next to Lexi in the next hour or two.

“Yeah.” There’s more silence after he responds.

Ash is back to looking like a straight-line face emoji.

Her hands start twitching, fingers curling and uncurling in the way she does primarily when she’s stressed. Fez compartmentalizes the latent urge to go to her and wrap up her hands with his, let her curl, and uncurl her fingers against his palms. They gotta fix this first. “Um. Shit.”

Understatement of the century. But she knows that, and he knows she’s doing her best, so he hums in response. “Mm.” Lexi will figure something out. And even if she can't. He’s got her. Solutions start forming in his mind; he flips through them, mentally flagging the ones with promise.

Lexi Howard is only human, no matter the pedestal he thinks she should be on. He loves her for it, for her great kindness and her latent spite. Loves her brilliance and how her brain can run a little faster than reality, be just a touch disjointed from practicality. A perfect person would be boring, and Lexi is anything but.

“Fuck, okay. Fuck. Shit. I’m sorry, I- it slipped my mind?” She’s pacing now. From where Fezco leans against the wall, he watches her messy little bun go back and forth as she wears holes into the soles of her Converse. She didn’t want to risk the chance of foreign DNA evidence, so back at the house, Lexi tied up her hair. He lowkey wishes she’d agreed to let him braid it back.

Ashtray chimes in. “So you…”

“I… did not factor this into my plan.”

“You didn’t.” Fezco isn’t sure who here is benefiting from Ash doubling down on what Lexi just said. The fucking dead guy on the floor? If anything, kid will just make her feel worse. He slides a quick glance his brother’s way, a visual command to knock it the fuck off.

She’s panicking now, full-blown with hiccups bubbling out her chest and tears running down her pretty face. “I didn’t. I’m so sorry, fuck, I can’t believe how stupid I am, I’m so so so sorry. I’ll fix this, just give me a second, I can-”

He’s settled on a solution. Simple and elegant. Fez pushes himself off the wall, conscious of the gloves and how he can’t touch her, even though he wishes he could. “Lexi.”

He angles his torso between her and the rest of the world, caging her against the freezer to give her some privacy as she hyperventilates. “Fuck. Okay. Okay. Ohmygod, ohmygod, we can, we can-” Her frightened, overwhelmed eyes tear at his heart.

Aight. List. He needs to put his solution into a list. Someone’s gotta rein in the situation, and quickly.

First, calm Lexi down.

Second, get the fuck out of this place.

Third... he actually got a third step this time. Deal with their leftover dead body.

Fourth, go the fuck home and pray that things go the way they wanted them to.

It’s a good plan.

Priorities in order, Fezco starts working towards his end goal. “Lexi. ‘S all good. Look at me. All good. I got you.” He hates to see her distressed, hates to know that terror like glass shards are shredding up her mind.

Her voice is so rushed he has trouble following her line of thought. “I said I would fix this and I told you to trust me and I am going to get you all thrown in prison and I’m so sorry, I promise I’ll figure this out-” His poor girl. Fez bends down to press his forehead to hers, as he did earlier, hoping she can be reassured by the steady beat of his heart and the constant of his body against hers.

She won’t meet his eyes. “You good. I got you.”

“Fuck, I can’t believe I-”

His hands can’t be inactive a moment longer, so he twines their gloved fingers together, ever so careful to avoid contaminating the latex with their skin. He took her ramblings on the phone to heart, as he does with all she says. “Lexi Howard. Look at me. You good. Ain’t it ‘bout time to let me have the plan?”

“But I-”

How she’s able to still doubt herself after what she’s just done for them is a little beyond his powers of reasoning, but anxiety be like that. Unreasonable.

Humans make mistakes. Hell, Ash made a mistake earlier tonight. And yeah, this oversight isn’t great. Not really ideal. But he can reasonably fix this.

His words come out soft. “‘M not mad. Thank you. For gettin’ us this far. Right, Ash?”

It only takes a few seconds before Fezco gets a response. “...thank you.” Good. Fucker needs to work on his manners.

Hey, maybe that’s a new use for the spray bottle.

After they put it through the dishwasher a few times. Or he’ll just get a new one.

“See? We good. Now c’mon, let’s cut ‘fore Faye gets worried. I got an idea.” The bags they brought Custer here in are still usable, thank God.

Faye’s right where they left her, eagerly reporting no sketchy shit that she could see from her post. Nobody came around to even look at her twice. He flips the breaker as Ash and Lexi haul their new cargo out.

All four of them, plus random dead guy, load into the Cadillac for the sequel to their earlier clown car shit. Another address in Google Maps, this time to a cemetery he knows is attached to a few different crime rings in the area. His father heads one of them. And Fez can’t deny himself the opportunity to make his dad’s life just a little harder.

If bodies turn up there that aren’t supposed to be there, either the workers will keep their mouths shut, or the cops will dismiss it as a garden variety mob homicide.

They get in real easy. Finding a fresh grave is easy too. Maybe God approves. Ashtray picks the lock on the nearby storage shed and comes up with shovels. It takes everyone to make quick work of the dirt covering this random-ass coffin and more than a few exclamations from Faye about her great acrylic sacrifice, but they’re done in an hour. Just in time to see the sun peeking over the horizon.

Body, in. Soil, back over it. Boom. Done.

They get home within the hour, and honestly, it’s a little anticlimactic.

Faye scuttles off to the spare room after throwing her gangly arms around Lexi, then Fez. Most of the time, she's clearly on a different plane of reality, but there's real gratitude on her face then. Her shoulders seem lighter. Good. For all the shit they give her, Faye's undoubtedly had it rough and Custer's been nothing but a nasty piece of work. He won't be haunting her anymore.

Ashtray is the only one who lingers in the doorway. He doesn’t have to verbally apologize to Fezco, not when penitence shows in his posture. Fez knows what Ash is planning to do next and appreciates it. They can bicker another time.

His brother catches the car keys chucked at him before disappearing back out the door. They’re not totally safe yet, but that’s the task his brother wordlessly volunteered for. Which frees him up to focus on step four and step four and a half (being with Lexi).

All quiet on the East Highland front. 

They shower together, nothing else going on. Neither of them is really in the mood for that, given they’re both covered in grave dirt and sweat. Lexi’s washed her hands with the antibacterial hand soap prolly, like, four times by now, and she gets him to do the same. Getting away with murder is exhausting and messy.

She doesn’t speak until they’re clean and tucked under his covers. “I’m really sorry, again. I told you to trust me. And you can trust me with stuff like this. I’ll do better next time.” Lexi seeks out his warmth like she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she lets go.

Fezco smooths back a damp curl from her face. He gets it, why she’s frightened of that still. Forgetting about a whole other corpse is prolly categorized as more than a little mistake. But he’ll be here through every mistake, and he doesn’t mind spending the rest of his life proving that to her. “Ain’t I just say you don’t gotta be worried about that?”

She shifts in the silence. “..yeah.”

“I mean it. And there won’t be a next time. Ion… Ion think I wanna keep us in this game much longer.” There’s conviction in him. He’s been doubting their life for a while, ever since Lexi walked in, but tonight was the final straw. No more of this shit.

This is the last body he ever wants to hide. He’s fucking sick of going about his day knowing there’s an inescapable expiration date hanging over his head. Over his baby brother’s head. Ashtray deserves better. And on the rare occasions he reflects on his own life, he starts to think he deserves better too. “Fezco, that’s… I, I hope you didn’t just make that decision on my account? I would never try to pressure you or change you.”

Lexi never has, it’s true, but she didn’t have to. His choices are his own. Especially the decision to link his will and his goals to hers.

“We clearly can’t keep goin’ the way we were before. Don’t want that life for Ash, or for you. You deserve better than this, Lexi. And I’mma give it to you. I promise.”

She chose him. For whatever reason, Lexi saw in him a person worthy of her. Who is he to deny her unwavering faith, to question her judgment? Fezco will give her good cause for her love.

Lexi presses slow kisses along his collarbone, scattering them up his throat until she’s level with him, and brushes her nose against his. The moment is fond, syrup-sweet, gentle. Fezco wants a forever of these. “I love you.” She’s smiling again. Now that his hands are free and clean and hers again, he runs his fingers along the curve of her jaw, brushing past her lush mouth, wandering along the fine arch of her brow. Close like this, he can see the dozens of flecks of gold in her deep brown eyes.

Lexi leans into his touch like one of those cats she loves so much.

So he doesn’t feel so bad about teasing her, just a ‘lil. “Love you too. But for real, though, how the fuck were you so down to, like, hide this body? Like, goddamn, you almost too excited. And you got that big ol’ brain, so I knew you knew what you were walking into.”

Lexi giggles, the rising sun painting her skin golden and radiant. The last of her stress and panic has fled with the night. “Honestly? It was fun! Except for the part where I totally fucked up and would’ve gotten us all caught if you hadn’t helped me. Thank you. I mean, Ion really want to do that again, and I also want to get through a performance of my play without more crises than usual, but it was fun!”

Fun is not an adjective that should be attached to what they just did, but what does he know? She the wordsmith in the relationship, not him.

It was real fuckin’ badass of her, though. Practically swooped in and saved their asses. Well, with a bit of backup. Fez always knew she had it in her. “You built different, Lexi Howard. Built fearless.” He remembers the wish he made earlier in the haze of panic and uncertainty. Of needing someone else to help him face the world and everything it can throw at him. Highly capable, resilient, and tough-as-nails are all adjectives inherently attached to her in his mind.

Lexi presses her mouth to his. The kiss is leisurely, indulgent. She’s not going anywhere, and neither is he. He loves her more than he knows what to do with, so he pours that love back into her with his lips. “So are you. I don’t know anyone braver than you, Fezco. I’m only so fearless because I know you’ll be right there with me.”

He don’t know about all that, but he’ll take the praise. Fezco is nearly as shy as her when it comes to stuff like that, but she never lets up. “Thank you. For comin’ through. For helping us.” Lexi is rare and precious to him. And fuck, he’s so grateful. She’s a real miracle, proof of some higher good. Her hands turn lead into gold. “I mean it.”

She brushes a butterfly kiss on his cheek. “Always. I got you.”

“I know.” It’s the kind of knowledge he’s going to build them a future on top of.

Christ, this whole fucking evening was ridiculous. Actual true crime shit. Lexi looks at him for a moment before they both burst into laughter. His eyes close as he snickers, desperately trying to catch his breath between chuckles. She’s doing as poorly as him, hands clasped over her mouth to hide the sounds of her mirth.

 “But fucking Ashtray, am I right?”

“Oh my god, yeah. I can look up some therapists?”

“Not a bad idea, shawty.”

They fall asleep together, her leg over his hip, his arm cradling her shoulders. There are no dreams for either of them, just the overwhelming feeling of loving and being loved. When he wakes, it’s hours later. Someone’s just shut the front door. Ashtray.

Delicately, Fezco untangles himself from her and leaves her to her nap after one last kiss.

His brother looks at him from across the bare floor of their living room, the air still scented with laundry detergent. The chasm between them seems larger now that the couch and carpets are gone. Then Ashtray makes the first move. “We good. And… I’m sorry.” Fez blinks and finds his brother wrapping him in a hug, just a hint of guilty tension in his smaller frame. He realizes Ash is worried about being rejected.

Forgiveness comes quickly. “Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

They separate, and no more words pass between them. There’s no need. His brother will live to be stupid for another day.

Custer is gone. Ash has made sure of it, patiently stalking out the funeral home for the past however many hours. He must have watched the crematorium open and counted the smoke billowing from the chimneys. No cops were called, no alarmed funeral home employees reported an unexpected body. Business as usual.

They’re in the clear.

Faye is free of Custer’s ugly ass. No more shackles remain to chain them to Laurie and to the game. Lexi has her firsthand murder scene clean-up experience.

W.