Archive of Our Own ^beta

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The ring felt heavy in the pocket of his gym uniform, a bundle of nerves and joy thrumming through Sam’s body as he called everyone to the front of the school.

Finally, she would be his.

He proclaimed his undying love, so sure she would be smitten enough to stop playing hard to get and-

And she was a lesbian.

Gord Damnit-

He.. he could find another way to make her his.

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On weekends, when school work was the last of their worries and there was a lack of macguffins – they liked to collect bugs.

It was silly, and nonsense, and none of them even knew when or why they started, but the three (plus Dom, who might of introduced the idea) went down to the closest creek they could find.

It wasn’t said, but they all knew deep down they missed the humbleness of life before Witness Protection; before Gareth, before Salex, before Rowan and Paul and..

Before Yuki.

Bugs freaked the three of them out, but Dom had lived on the streets and in the trash long enough to grow an immunity to their big eyes and excess limbs – and eventually, mostly to seem more macho to each other – they grew their own immunity.

Plus, putting stink bugs and cockroaches in the girl’s lockers and hearing them shriek when they found them was really funny

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Sam had always struggled to get to sleep, echoes and whispers of memories he didn’t remember painting his mind a muddled brown – calling out for him to take their hand, to think of the before.

Before the white abyss that clouded his mind, before he found the teal-haired cat that was his roommate.

His memory had never been great, but if it had, he wouldn’t know

Lilith’s class that morning seemed to trigger something in his mind, she had been possessed, and all he could remember was her angered yelling and a much more distant flash of bright, pink hair coated with bright, red blood.

A sickening crack echoed through his mind, like the sound of skull hitting concrete – followed by the crack of gunshots.

He scratched at his skin to try and get his mind to focus on anything else, the strain of getting past his amnesia too hard for his exhausted subconscious.

He scratched, and scratched, and scratched, and scratched - but he didn’t bleed, he never bled, he didn’t think he could.

Maybe he had been able to, once, but that was just another thing to slot into his blank memory-bank.

He wouldn’t be getting to bed anytime soon, he knew, so instead he raised himself out of his constricting blankets; sparing only a glance at Coolment, who had been lightly snoring for the last five hours, 25 minutes and 21 seconds.

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The great thing about crossdressing so nobody knew who you were, was that nobody knew who you were.

The great thing about nobody knowing who you were, was that you could do really, really stupid shit without the fear of it lingering on your digital footprint until you were 40 and the internet exploded and a war zone broke out and-

Well, getting off topic – the stupid shit they had decided to do was to create a YouTube channel, more specifically, a 3am Clickbait Vlog YouTube Channel.

“OK, GUYS, IT’S SAMANTHA..”

Taurtis pointed the camera towards Sam, before aiming the camera at himself.

“and Taurissa!”

“And today, as you’ve probably already read in the title – we’re doing the 3am among us potion challenge!

Taurtis cheered behind the camera, trying not to crack up at their absurdity, struggling further looking at Sam’s own curled up smile.

“SO, as you guys can tell, it is THREE AY- AM-” Taurtis flicked the camera between the digital camera they had set up for this and Sam, keeping their analog clock that said 9pm out of screen.

It probably didn’t matter, he doubted any of their audience (all ten viewers) could read analog clocks anyways. 

“So, for this to truly work, we’re going to have to do this QUICK!! Come on Taurtis- I mean Taurissa!”

Taurtis rushed up, setting the camera on the table and taking the potion (blue cordial filled with lustre dust) to stare at Sam, holding his own potion.

“Alright, THREE- TWO-“

The two chugged down their drink, and, whoops- too much syrup, not enough water; the edible glitter clung to their throats and they both broke out in coughing fits.

“AOugh- That Among Us potion- sure-, COUGH COUGH- Oh Gord- APUGH sure hits!”

Taurtis coughed loudly onto the ground, holding himself up only by his grip on the table- raising a shaky thumbs up to the camera.

“Okay,” Sam wheezed, “Okay, so.. so now we wait..”

A loud bang on the door left them both shrieking, clinging on to each other desperately, only to awkwardly peel off each other as they remembered they had gotten Jay to help them out – once the awkwardness passed, they remembered they were supposed to play up their reactions.

“Oh my gord!! What if that’s the- the- the Among Us?!?!”

“Dude..” Taurtis shook his head, remembering he was playing the disbelieving one, “no way man, The Among Us isn’t real”.

His phone suddenly rang, and Taurtis looked into the camera, eyes wide and mouth agape as he made his hands shake and reach into his pocket.

“Oh.. oh my, Gord”.

Taurtis rushed over to the camera, picking it up and filming his phone – ‘THE IMPOSTER’ was written at the top, “The Among Us Imposter is calling us!”

Anyways, to keep a long story (a fifteen-minute episode, titled 3AM AMONG US POTION CALLS US? GONE WRONG, GONE ROMANTIC?) short, Jay had found a shockingly high quality Among Us costume online, covered it in blood and scribbled on it with sharpie to make it look scary, and chased them around the house with a knife.  The poorly edited video got 5 likes, and the two quickly forgot about it even existing – both of them forgetting the password to the account and getting locked out anyways.

The great thing about crossdressing so nobody knew who you were, was that nobody knew who you were.

The great thing about nobody knowing who you were, was that you could do really, really stupid shit without fear of consequences.

This, of course, backfires when you very publicly reveal your identity to your classmates (who, really, knew anyways) and have your video reacted to by a YouTube channel with 10 million subscribers – therefore, letting all your classmates find out about it.

It definitely didn’t help that they made no attempts to wear something that wasn’t the girl’s school uniform, logo visible and all, and made no attempts to alter their voice or appearance at all.

They were never going to live this down.

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Salex’s glassed-over eyes stared into Sam’s own, the transparent blues and browns reflecting onto his own brown and greys.

She showed up sometimes, even though she was supposed to leave that night Yuki died, in the mirror – late at night when he was feeling especially restless.  

Taurtis had been acting about the same as always, very un-my-dead-girlfriend-came-back-for-the-second-time like, so Sam assumed her visits were special to just him.

Part of him wanted to tell Taurtis, because ‘haha, your dead girlfriend is visiting me instead of you’, but then he’d just get jealous, and a jealous Taurtis was a stroppy Taurtis who wouldn’t go along with what he’d say.

Plus, he kind of didn’t want to tell him anyways.

Sometimes they’d talk, or, Sam would talk and Salex would listen – occasionally giving blank inputs; telling him where or how he’d went wrong in whatever situation he decided to talk about that day.

The topic of cannibalism came up, once, and Salex didn’t show up again for two months.

So he decided to blank it from his conscience, and she showed up more than ever - through puddles or cracked window screens, anything with a reflection.

He figured he should tell someone, eventually, but-

But it was nice to have something for himself after everything, plus, Grian would probably make a jab at him and say that she’s a manifestation of his guilt, or something – ghosts being real never seemed to make a difference in his rationale.

Deep down, he knew the real reason he didn’t want to tell anyone was because he didn’t want to admit he was losing his mind.

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Being kicked out of his home and getting ostracised from his family for being gay was probably the best thing to ever happen to him.

No, really!

The old Dom was a deeply closeted bully, deeply closeted, honestly – the fact that in a class full of girls he was only ever interested in the one chick with a beard should’ve been enough of a clue, and the ones without beards were his male classmates crossdressing in girl uniforms.

The old Dom acted out because getting in fist fights with people and getting his nose broken for the fifth time got an ounce of his dad’s attention – it wasn’t until the sixth time when he stopped caring.

The old Dom could buy his way out of things, weighed down by his dad’s words of upholding the company name and- for Gord’s sake, it was Doritos, not NASA.

The new Dom had no fears of being outed, it was long past that point anyways – and Jerry had no problem with it, so that’s all that he really cared about anyways.

The new Dom focused his excess energy on parkour, the contrast of fists to skin unlike the touch of his hands to roof granite, the pounding strain of his legs pushing him through each jump and leap which felt more exhilarating than the feel of blood splattering from one too hard punch ever was.

The new Dom was poor, incredibly, he’d do anything for a penny and well.. he liked the humbleness of it, the constant freedom of being on the move with no ties. They all shared a home in Tokyo Soul, but he made only brief visits – the crisp air in his lungs as he moved around the town. The phrase ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ frequently ran through his head, and he’d seen enough to know that a million people would be happier if they were in his old position, and would scoff at the phrase, and he’d understand it.

But it worked for him, and he would give up all his money a million times over for the life he had now.

Old Dom would never recognise New Dom, the two were opposites, and he couldn’t be happier for it.

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Sam and Taurtis loved Halloween; the free candy, the dressing-up, the whole shebang - Grian stopped being a fan sometime last year, but it didn’t really matter what Grian thought though, because once he was pestered enough, he would agree to do just about anything.

All their old costumes (and clothes) had been left in the old town, before Tokyo Soul, so it was time to get original.

Not that original though, since they decided to all be matching – which then was a matter of deciding what show and or movie they should be from.

Sam suggested they dressed as someone from HunterXHunter, but Taurtis rejected the idea since, one, Sam could just wear his normal clothes, and where was the fun in that? And two, Sam had already dressed as Hisoka for a different dress-up day, and again, where was the fun in that?

They ended up rejecting most animes or mangas, because the costumes were either too unrecognisable or too complicated for the time crunch they were in – and then moved onto movies.

Heathers was a solid contender, after all, the musical had come out only a few years prior – Sam would be Heather Chandler, Grian could be Duke, and Taurtis could be McNamara. It backfired when they overheard three different groups of girls talking about their similar plans, and their hopes for originality was diminished – it was back to the drawing board.

The Heathers idea still tugged at them, so they decided on a refresh – Sam would be JD, Taurtis could be Veronica, and Grian could be a bomb! The costumes were set already, Taurtis owned blue, and Sam owned a trenchcoat, so it was just a matter of making Grian’s.

The costume blew up in their faces, quite literally, the process of making a human bomb costume maybe wasn’t the smartest use of their abilities, because they ended up making an actual one. They all partly regretted using actual wires instead of pipe cleaners – but no one was hurt, it was a very weak bomb, and it was kind of funny – they, as in Sam and Grian, planned on making it again sometime to use against Jason.

Unfortunately, the small explosion of the bomb did catch some attention from the officer who happened to be patrolling the street at the same time, so to not get themselves arrested – it was once again, back to the drawing board.

They went through about five different movies before landing on The Rocky Horror Picture Show – none of them had actually watched the entire movie to it’s length, or watched it recently, but it was known enough, and they were running out of options.

Sam agreed to be Frank-N-Furter, the nurse outfit more specifically, because he wasn’t sure what graveyard he’d have to find to get the main outfit, and it was maybe a tad too  risqué for his tastes. Plus, he already owned a nurse-scrub-dress-costume for something else, along with pearls, and stockings, and dishwashing gloves. Makeup was the easiest part, special sugar when mixed with the right stuff made a great white foundation, and they had blueberries and strawberries in the fridge for the eyes and lips.

Taurtis went as Brad, and Grian got Janet – shockingly, the two both owned clothes similar enough to be recognisable.

For costumes made the night before Halloween, they did look quite spiffy.

Sam and Taurtis loved Halloween, Grian didn’t completely despise it – and the candy they all ate that had them curling up in pain later was worth every bite.