Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cody shook himself awake to the sound of someone banging on his door. 

Someone fucked up, he thought furiously, rolling off the bed and struggling to his feet. This horrible planet being what it was, he knew whatever awaited him on the other side of the door would be a trial, a calamity.

The banging - knocking - continued as he ignored it and looked around for his things. Call it Krouse's lack of sense, but he hadn't had even a full day to rest since the last move. 

And they still listen to him. She still listens to him. He'd poisoned her mind, changed her from the girl he-

"CODY!" The roar stopped him in his tracks. His bladder loosened a bit - it was a truly gory voice, he couldn't be blamed. "Open the door now!"

He dropped his 3DS and stepped to the door. The woman herself, Noelle Meinhardt, stood on the other side.

She stood something closer to 7 feet than 6 these days, her only clothes a T-shirt that stuck to her feminine curves and a long skirt - really more of a tied cloth - that hid her less pleasant ones, the many legs and the mouths and tentacles. On top of that, she smelt of dirty laundry. 

He looked up to meet her eyes. Oh, also her mouth was open and drooling blood. Awesome.

"What is-"

"Hi Cody come over here please," she grabbed his wrist and he found himself being dragged along by force and superior height. "There's a small situation and we do need your help quick as you can."

"We?" 

He was pushed into the bedroom in the girls' apartment mirroring the boys' without concern for his dignity or comfort. The room stunk of blood and sweat, and on the bed-

"You."

Krouse waved with his free hand, the other one being pressed to a pillow on his neck. He was shirtless. Despicable. Both the pillow and the bed and his own skinny, repulsive chest were drenched with blood, dark in the greyscale of the night. 

"You woke me up to heal him?" He spat, unable to move his eyes from him. 

"You've done it before!" At least she had the decency to sound ashamed. "You need to hurry, Cody, he's losing a lot of blood. I think I hit an artery or, or something important."

"Yeah, Cody." The dark-skinned man's voice was as drilling and unpleasant as ever. "I'm kind of bleeding out here."

Cody shuddered in disgust, watching him sink into the sheets with a faint, "Save me, Perditiooooon..."

"I don't see how this is my problem. You're the one with the hundred-pound bite strength."

"Seriously? Seriously?" He bristled at the disbelief in Noelle's tone. Didn't she understand his very real complaints with her chosen man? She looked between them before stepping closer to him, crowding him into the room with a snarl of bloodstained teeth and a rumble from her lower half. "Do you see how it may become your problem? Really, really soon?"

He snarled back. Fuck you, he thought, fuck you both. You never see my side of things, you selfish blind bastards.

"Fine," he flicked his hand towards the bed and the man lying prone both, rewinding them through seconds and then minutes. Some of the blood cleared, but he hoped they had to explain what didn't to the others, come morning. 

Krouse was flat on his back both beginning and end of the process - but something else did stand to attention. 

Cody retched.

He continued retching, raising one finger to the girl he had one held in actual regard, as he shoved through the door. 

"Thank-"

"Do not thank me," he hissed. "Fuck you. Jesus. Ugh. I'm gonna go use my power on my own brain. Fuck off."

"Was that Cody?"

Noelle nodded without raising her head from her hands in misery. 

"Huh." Krouse's joking tone faded as he moved her chin gently and took in the blood coating it. "Oh, this again? What was it this time?"

"Neck."

"Add that to the tally," he sniggered. It turned to a full, gasping laugh, as without turning his girlfriend raised one of her tentacles and shoved him across the room, back into the pillowed bed, her tied-up bedsheet fluttering up over her limbs and back down. "Oof!"

"Less talking, I think."

Chapter Text

The room shifted and changed, one, two and three times. Each time, everyone except Krouse and Cody would change places, their expressions growing more and more drawn and nervous. Cody, for his part, looked positively gleeful, grinning at her.

Krouse frowned. “I don’t see what you’re doing.”

“-n’t, huh!” Cody was laughing, and Krouse frowned in sudden tension as -

There was a fist in her face, and she toppled backwards and fell across the floor. 

“Just stop!” Marissa was shouting, and even Luke, so angry just moments ago, stepped over to grab at Cody’s arms. “Leave her alone, you’ve done enough!”

“Ugh.” She pushed herself to a sitting position. Her body was painfully bruised from that fight with the unpowered guy in the hospital. “What’s he doing, some kind of speed power thing? Lets him get the jump on people?”

“On you, yeah.” Cody rubbed his hands together, his knuckles red. “Too bad you don’t remember any of it - and if I use it on myself, I don’t get the satisfaction.”

Go on, tell me more, you dumb motherfucker.

“It’s time travel.” Luke butt in. He still wasn’t looking at Krouse. He wasn’t looking at Cody either, so maybe not a hopeless situation.

Cody shrugged, “Directed time travel, anyways.  Backwards only, a few seconds at a time.  You teleport away, I set you back to where you were, then get you back for being a bitch.”

“And I bet that makes you feel like a real big man,” Krouse mused. There was something there she could just about grasp… “You done, then?”

“Maybe, maybe not. What really has me tickled is that I don’t have to tell you if I’m done or not. I can do it to you again and again, whenever I feel the urge.”

Silence.

“Dude,” Luke croaked, looking green in the face. Jess’ hands were over her mouth.

Cody looked around at the others. “What. What?”

“Glad to know you get to blow off some steam,” Krouse hissed through her teeth, letting her disgust come through in the twist of her lower lip. She met the shocked glance Jess was throwing her.

Suddenly Cody’s face went red as his brain, such as it was, caught up to his mouth. “I- that’s not -” He looked around wildly. “You know I didn’t mean it like -”

It took an unfortunately long time to draw in all the air she needed, swapping herself with Luke, but grabbing Cody by the greasy hair and driving his nose into the nearest table was quick work.

“Don’t try it again,” she called, rubbing her hand clean of Cody-slime on her coat and nodding reassuringly to the other girls at the same time. “Let’s move on.”

Even you should know better than to think that would give you the last laugh.

Chapter Text

I had been waiting for this day for months.

Plans and hopes rushed through my mind, each more nerve-wracking than the last. Dreams of victory beckoned to me, close enough to taste. It wasn’t just Nationals I was preparing for, it was something much bigger. My first step - our first step - into the wider world of the competitive scene. I could already hear the cheers. 

"They sure are taking a while."

The cheers, and Oliver’s stupid, bashful fretting. I’d tried to tune it out as soon as it started, but his whiny voice kept worming back into my ears. I couldn't let it distract me - not today, not on my day, the culmination of everything I’d earned. Star player? Not me. But I was here. 

They were taking a while, though.

The doors to Luke’s apartment opened, and the others came in in a wave, led by Noelle. She held a powdered donut in one hand. Her worried gaze only electrified me further when it fell on me, and I rose to my feet.

Here we go. Here we fucking go!

“So. Everyone’s here? I’m all set up.”

Noelle took a deep breath. “Cody…”

“Yeah?” It was exciting to have Noelle address me individually. She wasn’t the prettiest girl in the group, but she was the captain, and the first girl who’d paid that much attention to me. Once, I’d even thought that her usual bashfulness meant she liked me. 

Marissa came in too and set a hand on her shoulder. She was probably the least good player here, barely better than Oliver or Krouse. She got decent results in matches, though. I could count that the girls here took the game as seriously as me. 

“We’ve been talking. I mean, we discussed - anyway.” Noelle brushed at her fringe, even though it was already off her forehead. She was wearing a cute hairband. “We think that the team will have a better chance today if - if we change some things. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no big deal? What, you mean some new strat or something?” Of course something would go wrong right at the last minute. Noelle had a tendency to spring these ideas on us, but she was being unusually apologetic about it. They usually worked. But right before a match? My palms itched with excitement and stress. I’d be fine, I had taken shake-ups like this before. I usually played second-to-last anyway, or right before Jess’ more eccentric style. To make sure the opponent fell to either tried-and-true training or off-beat invention.

“No.” She took a deep breath. “No, Cody, we decided we want to try having Krouse play.”

It took me a long time to process those words. I could read my computer buzzing away behind me, like it had been all night. All week. 

Krouse.

My mind repeated those words to me, over and over like I could somehow have misunderstood. They must have some secondary meaning that was flying over my head, it couldn’t actually be that-

Krouse.

I had been here before.

They want Krouse.

I couldn’t sit there with bile rising up through my stomach forever - I looked around at the others. Someone to talk some sense into the girl. But nobody met my eyes. Jess was missing, but Luke caught my gaze and looked at the wall. Marissa was shuffling her feet. 

“You’re kidding.” My voice was louder, in the silence. “You’re fucking kidding me!”

Noelle flinched away. Good! Fuck her, and her boyfriend, and her willingness to simply bend to whatever he wanted. She hadn’t even wanted to be with him - with anyone. I liked her - loved her - but she was the biggest doormat I had ever met - and if this was Krouse’s idea, she was a coward, too. 

And nobody said anything. Nobody stopped her?

It was an act. The way Noelle looked at me without daring to meet my eyes, her sorrys. A naive act, like she didn’t know what she was doing to me. 

So many things I could say to rip it away from her, so many arguments I had to defend myself, and what actually came out of my mouth was the weakest.

“Krouse? You think Krouse can do what I do? You think he has what it takes?”

“Not what you can do,” Marissa interrupted. “But what the team needs.”

“Oh, you go fuck yourself.”

Useful. I was a tool to them. I’d come here thinking I was welcome - that we had something - I had thought this would be somewhere I could be more than the unliked outcast, the nerd at the back of the class, but not one of them had wanted me. They turned against me for Krouse, who even Luke called a bastard at the best of times, because – because what? I was good. I was good enough. But because he was…

Better. He was better, and that was all that mattered. He got everything he wanted handed to him, and laughed and squandered it. And they only gave him more. 

“I helped get this team off the ground! I lost sleep for this!” It seemed so small put like that. “You need me! You need me over him!”

“Cody, stop screaming,” Luke put in, looking more irritated than anything. I was a nuisance to him.

“It might not be permanent.” Noelle was still fiddling with her hair. Her stupid shit-brown hair that pissed me off. “If he needs to be benched, you - you’re our next best pick.”

And even that made my heart jolt with the hope. And I recognized that feeling, and it disgusted me.

I just wanted you to like me.

“Is that what he told you?” I said. “You expect him to just give it up? He was waiting for this! I didn’t want him on the team in the first place and now you’re replacing me with him!?”

“Cody, we talked it over.”

“Without me!”

“Because we knew you’d react like this, and we wanted to make sure everyone agreed with the decision.”

Everyone agreed.

“And I bet he was there too!”

“He was, but he kept his mouth shut!”

“You think the others would tell him no right to his face?” You think he can’t convince them? Oh, but you’re just so willing to let him do what he wants-

“Honestly? Yeah, we would.”

Luke. I stumbled over my words, trying to catch my breath or think of anything else to say, but my head was spinning.

And then the door opened. And there he was, safe behind Jess and her wheelchair.

Snake. Liar. Slimy little-

“You.” My voice barely sounded like my own. He walked in looking like my own personal nightmare. “You!”

He said something, but I barely paid attention, raising my fist and aiming right at the insufferably calm look on his face.

Luke grabbed my shoulder and stepped between us. “Cody, you’re pissed. I get it, but you need to stop.”

“I thought we were friends.”

And there were tears welling up in my eyes and they would see, but I knew they wouldn’t see, I was a sideshow and invisible all at the same time. Such a weirdo. And I felt like I was curling up, like all of my insides, every part of me that hurt - which was all of me - was curling in, pulling away from the inner surface of my skin, turning into a tiny painful ball of organs and spines. And I wanted Noelle to - I just wanted one of them, any one, I wanted someone or something I couldn’t name, I wanted-

I want.

I thought it, and the ball of spines and organs rose up into my throat to choke the life from me.

I bent over, choking and coughing, my head screaming with shrill tinnitus. I moved forwards, barely remembering why but only that I had to, something I needed to destroy was there.

Hands on my shoulders held me back. 

“Cody,” Luke’s voice brought me out of the spell of whatever I had been imagining. He was close, right in my personal area, some boundary between me and the rest of the world. His eyes were widening, like it was his stomach I’d put my fist through. “Cody, oh fuck.” 

“What?” I spat.

“You’re-” Of course he wouldn’t leave me with a reasonable way to hide the tears in my eyes, that everyone could see and laugh at. 

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” His voice was nothing like I would expect from him, it was gentle like he was talking to a little kid. A treacherous part of me reacted to that like a kid would, not to the betrayal. 

“Seriously. We-we could r-reconsider it, maybe next match you can be-”

I punched him. My hand flew, almost on its own, and smashed into his face so hard my knuckles stung. I felt the wet of his spit on it. Luke staggered, clutching his face. Krouse shouted something, finally roused from his serenity, one of the girls called something out in worry.

But Luke held up his hands and waved them all back. “It’s fine! It’s fine. Cody, I get that I deserved that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, man. I - fuck, I shouldn’t have done that.” He shook his head. It had gone a gratifying shade of red where I hit him, and he looked as miserable as he should.

Krouse leaned over to talk at Jess. “Is he overdoing it?”

“Shut up, Krouse!” My voice wasn’t the only one saying it. “You need to lay off him.”

That felt good to hear. Luke normally wouldn’t say a word against the guy, his usual excuse being that he’s known him for years. But he was his most insufferable, grasping self around us the way he would rather hide around the girls.

“Hey, I remember what we agreed on.” Krouse’s voice gained a sly edge, already trying to get his foot in the discussion. “I just don’t see a good reason to let Cody run wild like that.”

“Run wild?” Luke took a step away, towards him. I stepped forwards as well, keeping up at the same proximity.

Krouse tried to puff himself up. “Luke, your face has gone red. It’s not like you to let a guy take it out on you. Let him use a cushion for that, or something.”

I had no response to that. I could feel myself losing the argument-

“He’s a better friend than you.”

Krouse’s mouth fell open. Yes. Yes! I had known it was true, thought it to myself often, but until that moment everything around me had raised him up as it pulled me down. That must sting his ego. 

He smiled and made a show of snorting, though his dark eyes held a storm. “What is this, drama club? Don’t we have a match to get to?”

“Right!” Noelle chirped as he jumped up and began waving them others forward. “Everyone who isn’t set up already, do it now. We need to work on our game plan. Krouse?”

He was leaning against Jess still. “I hope we didn’t miss it over dealing with the big baby and his tantrum.”

“Krouse!”

“Here!”

“We need to go over your build. You were thinking about going second or third, with the… triple-class build?”

“Noelle.” Luke walked towards her. “I - I think that Cody should play. He should be on the team.”

“Oh, why couldn’t you have mentioned it earlier?” Noelle wrung her hands. “We’re actually going to be late like this.”

Jess cut in, “It’s no good to go back on our decisions now. We can reconsider after the match.” Though they were all giving Luke shifty looks. 

“So,” I said, “It’s fine when he’s there, but I don’t even get a - an appeal?”

“Yeah, it’s not fair to Cody. If nothing else, he can have my seat.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jess said, “Just because you feel bad for him.”

Like I was something to be picked apart right in front of her. I found myself walking towards her, and as I passed Marissa she turned to me. She began to hiss-

“Cody, we don’t have the time for this. You can have your appeal later, now man up. We’re going to be late for the-”

-but stopped short, blinking at me. “-the, the game…” 

She stared at me, her blue eyes wide, and I felt uncomfortable under the attention. “What?”

“N-Nothing,” she glanced around. “Nothing. Never mind.” 

Weird. “Are you going to stop me?”

“What?”

“Are you on my side, or theirs, Marissa.” Or his.

“I… Noelle’s my best friend, Cody. She - look, after this game, you can talk to her.” She turned and met Noelle’s gaze. Team Captain over there still looked frustrated, but nodded. “She’ll change her mind. We can work it out.”

Noelle's expression changed and she started shaking her head. I opened my mouth to give her a piece of my mind, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me. Marissa. Her face was close to mine, and very serious. This was probably the first time she’d ever touched me at all, even though we’d been friends for months.

Krouse was still arguing with Luke, his rough voice a distraction from the adrenaline that contact was giving me. He’d gotten two computers, not just one, in his suitcase - ingratiating himself, even now, in ways that came easy to him.

Marissaissa didn’t like him.

Copying some memory - it certainly wasn’t my own instinct - I took her wrist and pulled her along with me towards him. He wasn’t far, just on the outer side of what I considered my ‘personal space’, that Luke still stood within. We’d practically been back-to-back. And I stepped close to him, and the rush I felt over that was even greater than that from the girl’s hand in my own. 

Three against one. 

But Noelle walked up behind him and I knew better. Three against two, and I would lose.

I would lose.

I couldn’t lose again.

Krouse had already wormed his way into a victory today - he was ready for a fight, and I was unarmed. 

Before his smirking mouth could say a single word, I had walked right past him - good, see how you like it - and taken Noelle by the shoulders. She started, and I felt awful about it, but I wasn’t touching her inappropriately in any way - and this was important.

“Don’t listen to him. Listen to me, Noelle, you can’t let him keep manipulating you-”

Her sob cut off my next words. There were tears welling in her eyes and her cheeks were puffed out. I stopped to let her breathe, but she was nodding again. 

Krouse tapped my arm with two of his fingers. “Hey. Give her space.”

I turned to glare at him. He was still grinning toothily, one eyebrow lightly raised. But his voice, though light and unconcerned, was stern. “She doesn’t like being touched, when she’s like this. Let her breathe.”

Loathe as I was to listen to a word he said, I stepped away. Noelle pressed her palms into her face, and I looked away too.

“What happened?” Jess was on the other side of the room setting up. “Noelle? Marissa, what happened here?”

“Nothing! Um, nothing, we just…” she glanced back at me. Unsure what she was asking for, I tried to nod reassuringly. I was still plenty pissed at her, but she had stood by my side earlier. Though she was looking more worried about Noelle. “Noelle needs some space, that’s all. Let’s all relax before...”

“I don’t understand,” Jess repeated, looking around at my friends. “I don’t understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” I said. “They just changed their minds. Saw sense.”

“You call this sense? Krouse, don’t you have anything to say about this?” 

“You know me, Jess, I make my own decisions. Even Cody couldn’t talk me into something like this if I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Even Cody?” She sounded freaked out.

“Look, I saw a different side of him, okay?” He looked uncomfortable for the first time since I’d met him. “A… honestly, I don’t know how I missed it.”

The door creaked open and all of us looked at Oliver.

He flushed. “Um… You guys can talk, I’m not really… I mean, this is a little…”

“Where are you going?” I called.

“Just… to the bathroom.”

“You’ll miss the game. Not going to give Krouse some company?”

“No, I - I really have to - go. Be-back-soon.” And he turned and ran.

“Get him back.” The others almost tripped over themselves in their haste to do as I said. They began to fight over who got to do it. Who’s the fastest- “Luke, you go.” I could feel him as he left my space, but he remained by my side in spirit. I knew I had time. “And get back soon!”

Jess had rolled herself to the edge of the room. Only the bedrooms were that way. 

What if they leave my side again? What if they turn on me again?

For now, they wanted to stay close. I could feel some of their body heats, that close. If this wasn’t some kind of delusion, then what else could it be except them… seeing sense at long last? Me getting what I wanted most?

Besides, we had a game today, and Jess knew what she was doing.

I stepped forward.