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“This is- by far- the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” Lup said in lieu of a proper greeting. Taako scowled at his computer screen and didn’t look up, unsurprised by his twin crossing the room and shoving his head sideways before collapsing onto his bed. Her own was a mere five feet away against the opposite wall, piled high with unsorted laundry, criminal justice notes, and a half-eaten bag of microwave popcorn from last night’s movie marathon. Taako snapped his laptop shut with a weary sigh and slouched back in his seat, shoving his hair out of his eyes as he went. “I didn’t actually think anyone was going to vote for me,” he said. “I’m not even on the team.” “You nominated yourself.” “It was an act of passion!” It had been more of an act of justice, in all actuality. Taako hadn’t ever had an interest in the boxing team in the first place. But Lup had met Barry early in freshman year, and he’d roped her into it. Taako let himself get dragged along to practice every so often, and their junior year he met Sazed. His and Sazed’s relationship was perfect until it wasn’t- and when Sazed made a move at his sister, Taako had dumped him before he could blink. Sazed, to put it lightly, was less than pleased with him. Taako wasn’t sure if he was just an asshole, or if it was a specific act of revenge against Taako, but on a given Wednesday afternoon at the end of the school year while the club was discussing the upcoming club elections, he’d caught Sazed whispering a short distance away. He turned his attention away from his idle instagram scrolling to eavesdrop properly. Sazed was whispering about how he was a shoo-in for president, about how he was going to finalize the paperwork to split the club in half- a men’s team and a women’s team, or more specifically, male and female teams. He'd murmured something about "dividing them up properly," and Taako's ears filled with static at the words "would like to see the tranny win against real competition." Lup was the only trans woman on the boxing team as far as Taako could tell, and while she didn't go about publicizing it unless someone asked, Sazed had been close enough to the twins while he and Taako were dating to know a few of their secrets. He'd kept his mouth shut while they'd been on friendly terms, but those days were long gone, and Taako didn’t take well to anyone fucking with his sister. These were the circumstances that had him leaping out of his seat at the last second, as the soon-to-be-graduated president called for any last nominations. He didn't even think, just shot his hand up and hollered, “I nominate myself!” The president blinked. Lup and Barry gaped at him, slack-jawed and dumbfounded. Taako bit back the embarrassment burning at the back of his neck and straightened his posture. “Alright…” the president spoke slowly. “So we’ll do speeches on Friday, and then voting will commence on Monday. Sound good?” It sounded good. Everyone left, Taako tripping over his own feet on the way out the door as he wondered what the hell he’d signed himself up for. It was fine, he reasoned. It wasn’t like he was going to win. Four months later, Taako sat in his and Lup’s shared dorm room and scowled helplessly at his computer screen. He was absolutely, overwhelmingly fucked. Lup laughed, head tipped back over the edge of his bed and blonde curls brushing the floor and face flushed red. “Congratulations, Captain,” she said, and Taako groaned. He tried to convince himself that it wouldn’t be too bad, that while he wasn’t planning on going to grad school, at least he'd have leadership experience for his resume if he changed his mind. He tried to be optimistic, but optimism wasn't one of his strong suits, and it really started to falter when he met the chucklefucks he’d be working with. That following Monday, Taako stood on the lowest seat of the bleachers overlooking a small crowd of students with far more intimidating physiques than his own and called practice to order. Nearby the vice-president, Lucretia, was glowering at him while their treasurer wasn’t even bothering to pretend he wasn’t stoned. Taako met Lup’s eyes in the crowd, and she gave him a thumbs up. He cleared his throat. “Hello!” he said, and forgot what he wanted to say next. “I, um… I’m Taako. Club president. Captain. Whatever. I, um… we’re going to have a good time this semester. Win a lot of, um, fights and stuff. We… we don’t have a coach until next Wednesday, so just… warm-up I guess.” He was usually so much more suave than that. Charisma and witty banter were two of the things Taako prided himself on, but overlooking a sea of people who could crush him into the ground without breaking a sweat, one of them being his ex-boyfriend, Taako found the connection between his brain and his mouth short-circuiting. He felt dumb, and yeah Taako wasn't any sort of genius, but he hated feeling stupid. A few of the guys shrugged and broke away from the group, much to Taako’s relief, going off into the empty spaces of the room and starting with jumping jacks and stretches. A few stuck around and continued to stare at him, until Taako cleared his throat again and hopped down from the bleachers. He wandered over to Lucretia, who while looking entirely hostile, at least also looked like she was in charge around here. “So you look like you know what you’re doing,” he opened with, sidling up to her and leaning casually against the padded gym wall. Her glare became somehow more fiery. Taako was unphased. “What does the president generally do in these types of, um… situations?” She raised an eyebrow at him and pursed her lips. “You would think the president would know,” she responded curtly, and if Taako was the type of person who felt guilty, he would have been properly chastised. Instead he hummed, jamming his hands into his pockets and glancing at her sideways. “Cool, cool, yeah, you would think,” he agreed. “I guess I’ll just….” “--Prepare for next time,” she snapped back, then shoved off the wall and clapped her hands, gaining back all the attention of the wandering athletes. “Open mat today, people! Shadow sparring only until we get everyone’s physicals taken care of, don't even think about touching each other, and-- Magnus! This is boxing club! Save the grappling for Tuesdays!” Taako didn’t know whether to feel vexed or grateful that Lucretia had stepped in and taken control of the situation, but he was willing to swallow his pride after a day of such devastating losses and settle for relief. He’d come up with a plan for next time. He couldn’t keep failing forever. Taako was the master of trial and error. He got this.
At 3:30pm on Wednesday, Taako realized that the job might have more responsibility than he’d originally recognized. He stood outside the door of the boxing gym, squinting through the tiny window in the door at the alarming number of people bustling around inside. Half the boxing team idled around the hallway behind him, some of them casting him confused looks while others played with their phones and a few others rough-housed near the stairs. If they fell down and broke their necks, Taako was pretty sure Lucretia would murder him, regardless of them being adults and him not being a babysitter. Maybe the president was a babysitter. Taako really should look into his job description. Speak of the devil, it was a mere few minutes later when Lucretia made her way down the hallway, rough-housers leaping out of her way as she did so. “Mind the stairs,” she said without a glance their way. Taako wondered if there was a class or something he could take to learn to be that put together. Taako had no problem coming across as confident and powerful, but he didn't have the kind of demeanor that urged people to listen to him. Pay attention, sure, but not really follow the direction of. “Are we practicing in the hallway today?” Lucretia asked as she appeared at his elbow, sounding entirely unamused. Taako stepped back out of the way and spread his arms to gesture at the window, which Lucretia glanced through and then scowled. “You’ve got to be kidding me…” she murmured, then stepped aside and directed her attention to a sign taped to the wall nearby, which Taako hadn’t even noticed. He followed her as she dragged her finger down the list of times, then to the empty box under a column that read “reservations.” “You didn’t reserve the room,” she said, voice quiet and very close to snapping. Taako pressed his lips together tightly. “In my defense--” he started, “--nobody told me I had to.” Lucretia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another, and Taako held his own breath as he waited. She spoke without opening her eyes. “Go to the involvement center website. Fill out the paperwork. Tonight or I swear to God--” “Tonight,” he replied. “Yup. Got it. So, um… what are we doing today then?” “Figure it out,” she said, eyes snapping open. Taako raised his eyebrows incredulously. “You’re the president. You tell me.” “Right,” he said, “Give me a minute….” "While you decide, I'm going in there to try and recruit." She slipped back into the crowd and Taako watched her approach a pair of young women who were all but hanging off of each other. One of them had been rough-housing just a few minutes before, but now they both followed Lucretia as they stepped through the doors to the boxing room. Taako glanced up to find Lup laughing at him from across the hallway. He snuck over there, tail between his legs, and leaned on the wall next to her. “Get that look off your face,” he said, and her smirk just widened. “Give me a practice idea that doesn’t need the gym before Lucretia kills me.” “She hates your fucking guts, pumpkin,” Lup replied, red lips pulling back to reveal teeth that ought to be pointed. “We could go to the other gym…?” he cautioned, and Lup nodded. “We could run there.” “Perfect.” Taako shoved off the wall, shaking a confident posture into his shoulders and clapping his hands the way Lucretia had done last time to get everyone’s attention. “Listen up, homies!” he shouted, maybe a touch too loud, but there was no going back. “Technical difficulties, we don’t have the gym today, but we do have legs! Let’s run over to the student gym by the dorms and hit the weight room, first person there wins!” “What do we win?” someone called out. Taako ought to learn everyone’s names. He blinked. “Bragging rights,” he decided. “Whatever. Get a move on. Let’s go!” It wasn’t the worst plan in the world. They set off like a herd of overenthusiastic buffalo, Magnus cheering everyone on and taking the lead. The only problem with this plan, Taako realized after they’d started, was that he also needed to run too. Lup, at least, fell behind the crowd and jogged with him, Barry falling into step with her, inhaler in hand. “You’re doing great,” Barry said, and if Taako could breathe properly through his huffing and puffing, he would have said ‘yeah right.’ Instead he just grumbled miserably, watching the distance between them and the team stretch longer and longer. “Go without me,” he wheezed. “Leave me alone to die.” “Don’t be a baby,” Lup said. After practice, Taako flopped down in his desk chair and opened his computer, and he found an email waiting in his inbox. He frowned, opened it, and his eyes grew wide. ‘Attached is a link to the involvement center, ’ it read. ‘You need to reserve a space a week in advance, so we’re out of luck until next Wednesday. Get it together. Here’s a pdf to the club constitution-- you might want to check your job description.’ Taako stared at his email in astonishment and couldn’t quite stop himself from feeling grateful, even if Lucretia did hate his guts. This was an olive branch. He opened the link and downloaded the document, and he’d totally get to it, he totally would, but first he had work. Taako’s job wasn’t glorious in the slightest, but it was always a bit of a process to get ready. He was very secure in his identity, always had a sense of confidence that came from learning to disregard other people's opinions at an early age. He had distinct memories from seventh grade, him and Lup snickering to themselves as they explored the junior’s section of a JC Penny’s, wearing board shorts and dragon t-shirts and stuffing scarves and bangles and headbands into their pockets. He remembered coming out to her at fourteen. Their first time trying makeup on. Her coming out to him. But confident or not, Taako understood the limits of the universe, and his three ounces of self-preservation really pulled their weight in keeping him safe. Sometimes he went to class in flowy shirts and tight jeans and jewelry and eyeliner, but when he went to work at night the first thing he did was break out the makeup wipes. Shove his hair back under a hair net. Trade skinny jeans for baggy work pants and a plain white t-shirt. Boots became clunky work shoes, and only when he had totally transformed did he make his way to the restaurant he worked at and let himself in through the back door. His coworkers were good people. He spent most of his time with the dishwasher and the other cook, both of whom were wide, tan, tattooed men with stubble and shaved heads. They pulled it off. There were a number of people who rotated on register, depending on the day, and Taako didn’t mind any of them. The older ladies were nice, always making comments about getting him to eat more and calling his ‘taquito,’ and the younger ones were good for conversation. Taako bided his time, chopping steak and frying tortillas and stealing french fries, collecting tiny grease burns on his forearms for minimum wage. Four a.m. rolled around and his replacement showed up, and Taako walked back to his dorm with his music pounding in his ears and his eyes half-closed. He collapsed into bed fully dressed and reminded himself that it would all be worth it one day. He’d be a real cook in a real restaurant and he’d get to go to bed whenever the hell he wanted. He couldn’t wait.
He’s half-dead in class the next day when a man bun and pair of matching coppery sideburns sat down next to him. Taako frowned and blinked blearily at him, because Taako had very purposefully sat in the back corner of the room and set his bag on the chair next to him to deter potential desk mates. He’d been stationed there for all three weeks of school so far, and he’d had no intention of changing that. He closed his eyes for two damn minutes, and then someone came by and invaded his space and moved his backpack and sat next to him . The nerve . Taako glared at him with all the vehemence he could muster in his exhaustion, while Magnus just grinned back innocently. “I thought it was you last time!” he said, and his voice was too loud and too damn chipper for trigonometry class at one p.m. on a Thursday. He grunted back. “This is perfect. We can trade notes and stuff. Do the homework together.” That might not have been the worst idea in the world, seeing as Taako had only enrolled in this class to fulfill his final math credit. His advisor had told him it was easy. His advisor was a rotten liar. He blinked the last of the sleep out of his eyes and sagged back in his chair. Magnus shifted and his own seat creaked underneath him. “You any good at math?” Taako asked, and Magnus laughed-- a deep belly laugh that was far too loud for Taako’s headache. His chair squeaked. After working all night, Taako had woken up roughly to Lup shaking him awake. His phone was ringing and he wasn’t waking up to answer it, she'd hissed at him, and he rolled over and found it buried under his pillow, 12% battery and a scathing phone call from his instructor because he was over half an hour late for that morning's catering event. Taako had honestly considered not going. He really, really had, but then his instructor called him again and again and Taako didn’t have much of a choice. He fell out of bed, changed into a more attractive pair of jeans, and stumbled out the door at 7:35 in the morning. So Taako was a dead man walking, and despite the fact that Magnus was an absolute disaster at math, he dropped his head on his desk and passed out cold with the knowledge that at least somebody was taking notes for him. Not that he cared about this class in the slightest. Taako had passed AP Calculus easy-peasy in high school, so he had nothing to prove to himself. It was just a matter of remembering the concepts, and he only had so much effort to expend for that. C’s get degrees and all that, and since Taako was going to be a chef and didn’t even need trigonometry, he could hardly care less. He’d pull something together, and it would be fine. The problem was, Taako hadn’t realized how hard Magus would be to shake. He also didn’t expect some shitty athlete from the boxing club to be nice to him. It started with that one math class, and then the next. Then Magnus was talking to him before and after boxing practice and recommending drills they could run through during practice and glaring at people who didn’t take Taako seriously when he talked. Then he texting him about math homework, and Taako wasn’t even sure how he got his phone number in the first place, but it at least reminded him to do the homework. One day after practice he cracked. He narrowed his eyes at Magnus and crossed his arms and asked, “Why the hell are you being so nice to me?” Magnus looked taken aback. He blinked a few times, then shrugged and said, “Why be mean?" which was a pitiful answer. Taako could think of a half-dozen reasons off the top of his head to be mean to people. He could make an entire PowerPoint presentation on it if he needed to, no effort needed. He could probably present that PowerPoint to Magnus, and the big oaf would just listen and smile. That following Thursday, Magnus showed up with a coffee to share and a story about how he “--was supposed to meet Julia on campus, but she got called in, and it’s not like I need two coffees if you want this one--” or something. Taako sipped the coffee and cringed around the bitter lack of sugar, and he didn’t notice until they were walking through the front door of his dorm building after class that Magnus had followed him there. He nodded to the security guard and said, “He’s with me,” and let Magnus follow him to the elevator. “I totally appreciate you letting me crash in your place for a few hours,” Magnus said, and Taako didn’t remember agreeing to that at all. He might want to start listening when Magnus talked. “I’m getting tired of napping in the library, y’know?” Taako didn’t know. He nodded. “Yeah, homie, I got you,” he said. It was a thirty-second ride to the sixth floor and a short walk down the hallway. Taako dug through his messenger bag for a while until he found his key card being used as a bookmark in his ‘improv desserts’ manual. He slid it into the card reader, pushed the door open-- “ Honey, I’m ho-ome--” he sang, and in a blur of naked flesh and bedsheets, a pillow soared through the air and hit him right between the eyes with a solid thwap! A voice that very much belonged to Barry shrieked, “ Get out!” while Lup cackled maniacally in the background. Taako would have been happy to go his entire life without seeing Barry Bluejeans jiggly bits, but since that was no longer an option, he'd settle for not having to see it twice. Taako kept the pillow pressed tight to his face as he backtracked, pushing Magnus back out the door and slamming it shut once they got to the hallway. He stood there for a long moment, trying to blink the damage that Barry’s sheet white ass had done to his fuckin’ corneas, while Magnus stood silently next to him. “Student union,” Magnus declared and set off, a hand tangled up in the back of Taako’s jacket dragging him along. Taako shrugged him off and looked down at the pillow in his hands. His pillow from his bed, those fucking perverts. They were going to get a piece of his mind later. Forget his 'being mean is fun' PowerPoint, he had to start drafting this talking to. The student union was crowded as hell, but they managed to find armchairs on the second floor. Taako sank into one, propping the pillow up behind his head, while Magnus settled down and shot Taako a nervous expression. Taako raised an eyebrow. He didn’t have time for inquisitive facial expressions. “What?” Magnus’s eyes shot to him and then away just as quickly. He spread out on his armchair and shrugged, faux-casually, before saying “I didn’t know your sister was transgender.” Taako immediately sat up straight and leaned in, pillow toppling off his chair sideways. Magnus leaned down and scooped it up, and Taako couldn’t keep the hostility from his tone as he hissed, “Is that a fuckin’ problem?” Magnus's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before finding his voice and stuttering out a, “What? No! Nonono, that’s not- I just didn’t know--” They were being really loud. A few people turned to look at them, but Taako didn’t give a hoot. He stood, taking what would probably be his only opportunity to tower over Magnus, and pointed a threatening finger at the middle of his forehead as he said, “Well it’s none of your fucking business anyways--” “--You’re right!” Magnus interrupted, holding his hands up placatingly. “You’re right, okay? You’re right and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.” If Magnus wasn’t such a good guy, Taako wouldn’t have believed him. Even so, he was still prickling as he sank back into his chair and snatched the pillow out of Magnus's hands. He glared at him out of the corner of his eye until Magnus shifted and cleared his throat. “So you two get a lot of shit about it…?” he asked, voice hesitating. Taako pursed his lips and rolled his shoulders back. “Nothing we can’t handle,” he snapped. Magnus nodded. He sat back, the argument apparently forgotten and posture once again casual. “I’m sure you can handle yourself,” he said, earning himself a couple of brownie points. “But if you ever want any back up… just let me know.” “As if,” Taako said, forgiving him as he said it. Magnus shot him a grin, and Taako realized that he really was probably stuck with this guy.
Being president of the boxing team meant spending a hell of a lot of time in the gym. Being friends with Magnus meant getting dragged into conversations with other boxers about boxing. Taako found himself knee-deep in a conversation entirely in a language he didn’t understand. The guys threw around words like “sweet science” and “cutting” and “dropping.” Magnus bragged that he wasn’t “cutting” this semester. He was sticking with “heavyweight” and nobody could change his mind. Another one of the guys nudged him with an elbow and eyed Taako up and down. “What do you think he is? Lightweight?” one of the guys asked. The whole group of them turned to look Taako over. He slowly raised an eyebrow. “You can’t be that light at six foot, he’s welter at least,” another added. “Hardly six-foot," Magnus argued. "Taako, let me pick you up.” “No.” “Middleweight at most though, there’s no way he peaks one-sixty. I’m calling it.” “If that,” the other said with an eye roll. A hand around Taako’s shoulders out of nowhere made him flinch. He turned to see Sazed draped over him, and he immediately stiffened, jaw setting. “Lightweight,” he confirmed, squeezing Taako’s shoulder. “Boy hasn’t gained a pound since the tenth grade, right?” Sazed asked. Taako didn’t bother answering him. He shrugged Sazed’s arm off of him and slipped away from the conversation, crossing the gym to where Barry was going to town on a hanging bag. He leaned back against the wall and let himself fume, furious that Sazed got to know anything about him at all, and that he could act so casual about it, after everything. Barry looked over at Taako, and while his cheeks were already pink from the workout, but his blush spread to his ears and down his neck when they made eye contact. “Hey sex fiend,” Taako greeted, much to Barry’s dismay. Barry grimaced, and he asked, “What do you want, Taako?” to which Taako shrugged. “Don’t let me stop you.” He waved a hand at the punching bag, but Barry shrugged as well and walked over to sag against the wall next to him. He smelled like boy sweat and the axe body wash that had mysteriously shown up in their private dorm shower-- the stuff Taako used every so often, a dirty little secret. It reminded him of middle school. Taako wordlessly held out a bottle of water, and Barry took it without looking over. “It’s fucked up that he’s still in the club,” Barry said, following Taako’s gaze across the gym to where Sazed was talking with the other guys, all of them laughing and shoving at each other like school children. Taako glowered. “Yeah, well….” “Should have reported his ass to title nine,” Barry said, and it was kind of funny how Barry had such strong opinions on these things just from hanging out with Lup. Taako and Lup definitely shared the same brain, but a lot of it was rubbing off on Barry after the past three years. He and Taako weren’t kismet, not a chance, but he and Lup shared a connection that Taako couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Which was fucked up, in his opinion? Lup was his twin. She didn’t get to go sharing brains with other people. But Barry made her happy and treated her right, and as goofy as he was, Taako could appreciate anyone who made his sister smile like that. “Over and done with,” Taako said, then glanced up at the clock. “Time’s practically up. Help me clean?” “Wish Lucretia was here to make everyone else do it,” Barry lamented, already setting off to pick up practice gloves and target pads. Taako took a deep breath and reminded himself not to feel jealous. Not of Lucretia. Not of Barry. And not of Sazed, who could just waltz into his conversations and kick him out of them. This whole boxing thing was bullshit. For the second time in five minutes, Taako found someone familiar draping themselves across his back. “Hey Lup,” he said, as Barry leaned over his shoulder to kiss her. Taako pulled a face, and in punishment for that received a kiss on the cheek from both of them. He scoffed in outrage, shoving Barry away from him without any real intent, and staggering a bit when Lup jumped up and wrapped her legs around his hips for a piggyback ride. “We are getting shit faced tonight,” she said, lips tickling his ear. He hauled her up a little higher, jumping a bit. His arms shook. “There is a bottle of lemon vodka in the minifridge with my name on it.” “Excellent.” He had a discussion post due by midnight and thirty math problems to do by Monday, but he could steal the math from Magnus, and he’d done discussion posts while hammered before. The senioritis was hitting him hard. It was all old hat by now. Lup and Barry took literally forever saying goodbye to each other in the hallway outside the gym, but before long it was just Taako and Lup, throwing their hands around and talking animatedly on their way back to the dorm building. Taako stole her boxing gloves from her bag on the way back and put them on, pounding his fists together until Lup reached over and used his own hand to punch him in the face. Hours later, with alcohol buzzing happily through his system, his face numb and his hands light and Legally Blonde playing on Lup’s laptop, Taako had a realization. “I need to learn stuff about boxing.” “Legendary, bubbeluh,” Lup slurred. “Get a book.” “You know I don’t read.” “Go to the library.” “I don’t read .” Their conversation dissolved after that, with Lup jabbing at his side with her evil, pointy fingers until Taako shrieked with laughter, and Taako shoving her hands away resulted in a wrestling match that nearly sent them toppling off the bed and only the floor. When Taako woke up the next morning with cotton mouth and Lup’s knee buried in his back, he pushed his hair out of his face, scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and remembered his realization. He had to learn something about boxing, and he wasn’t going to do it at the fucking library.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It’s a stupid lucky coincidence that UFC was playing that night at work. It’s a rerun of an old match being displayed on the 19” box TV that lived on top of the soda fountain in the lobby. It was just past two a.m. and they hadn’t seen a customer in over three hours. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Robbie was invested. He’d abandoned his station at the sink to come lean over the counter, shouting at the screen in a language that Taako forgot after years of neglecting it, hopping up every now and then and pounding his fists on the counter. Taako took another swig of his coke and massaged his temples. “Patearlo!” Robbie hollered. “Kick him! Dale! Dale!” “You dale right out the door you came from,” Bella grumbled from her seat in the lobby. She’d given up standing at the cash register after hour two rolled in, claiming aging joints and propping up her orthopedic sneakers on the greasy red tabletop. It wasn’t worth it to argue with Bella about anything, and it wasn’t like it was Taako’s job to clean the tables. He wandered out of the back as well and leaned his hip against the counter, squinting at the screen and flinching when one of the fighters took a particularly savage punch to the nose. Robbie cheered. Bella looked at him and bared his teeth. Rice Man came sauntering over as well, a plate of “scrap” quesadilla pieces piled high in a takeout box. He held it out to Taako, who made quick work of swiping three and popping one in his mouth. Rice Man had introduced himself as Rice Man on the first day Taako started this job, and he’d been there for years before then too. He refused to introduce himself as anything else, and wouldn’t answer to another name either, but Taako had seen the payroll. He knew his name was Bert. Taako would change his name too if he’d been named something like that. “Man, I miss those days,” Rice Man said, shaking his head with a far off look in his eyes. Taako perked up and glanced at him. “You used to do that stuff?” he asked, and Robbie slammed his hand down again with a cry of outrage. “That stuff is an art! ” he declared. “A science !” “Smart science,” Rice Man agreed with a single nod. “You’re looking at the 1983 Junior Las Vegas Heavyweight Champion.” “That’s a made up title,” Bella spat from her perch, and Robbie nodded along. “Yeah!” he said. “You ain’t ever done that.” “I done more in my youth than you’ll do with your whole sad life,” Rice Man barked back. Taako slipped another quesadilla and settled back to enjoy the show. “You want to take it outside and challenge that?” Robbie stepped to the side and grumbled something under his breath, pulling the rag down from around his neck to scrub an invisible mess on the counter. “That’s what I thought,” Rice Man said. “Your third-grade karate lessons don’t hold a candle to the ropes.” “Eighth grade,” Robbie muttered back, and Taako bit back a chuckle. “Y’know, if you’re feeling reminiscent…” Taako drawled, leaning more weight against the counter, “What kinda fighting did you do anyway?” “Only kind that matters,” Rice Man replied. “Boxing. Bare-knuckle. My papi taught me everything he knew, and that man was a champion.” “Runs in the family,” Taako pointed out, hoping to keep the guy talking once he got him started. “It fuckin’ does.” “So does humility…” Robbie muttered, and with a vicious glare from Rice Man, he squeaked and went skittering back towards his station. Taako let himself laugh this time. Robbie was young, stupid, and three weeks in. He’d learn the shop eventually. Rice Man talked a big talk, and could probably dish out a real beating if he was so inclined, but he was fundamentally harmless. Lord knows Taako tested him to the ends of his patience and back, just to see where the lines were. “Best days at the gym were when you left sore, bloody, and victorious. That’s what matters.” Taako really hoped that the first time someone bled at practice Lucretia was there to handle it. He nodded, and Rice Man went on to say, “The gym is a family, y’know? For a while in high school that was all I had. Me and the boys did everything together.” “Bonding is important,” Robbie chimed in, peeking through the service window between the kitchen and the front of the store. “I remember, my karate school- we used to go for pizza and do movie nights and all that.” “Sounds like you didn’t do any real fuckin’ training.” Taako tuned them out as they started up another argument. He watched the guys on TV and twisted his mouth to the side. He wasn’t sure that could ever be him-- that guy on TV subjecting himself to a beating right there in front of God and everyone, only free if the clock runs out of he’s knocked cold. Taako had taken enough ass-kickings to last him, thank you. That and he wasn’t sure any amount of training would make him into a fighter. But he didn’t have to be a fighter. He could leave that up to Lup and the others, let them go to town punching each other in the face for funsies. Taako was just the president. He just had to know the theories, or the terminology, or whatever. He just had to make the club work, not the athletes. And hell, team bonding activities? It sounded cheesy and lame, but it was a jumping-off point. Start small, work your way up. Taako stole a final piece of quesadilla and muttered the word “Bathroom,” as if anyone was listening over Rice Man and Robbie’s shouting. He slipped around the register and into the restroom, where he pulled his phone out and searched up the local theatre. Movie night. Easy enough. Maybe something good was playing.
Taako went in on Monday with a clipboard and an announcement. “We’re going to the movies!” he told the idling crowd of sporties, who all glanced over with varying levels of curiosity. Magnus straight up beamed. “Creed 2 is out, and we’re going this Friday after practice. Tickets are seven dollars with a student discount. It’s official team bonding time.” Merle, the club treasurer, for the first time that semester said something worthwhile. “That is an excellent idea!” Taako nodded. “I know. Sign yourselves up if you’re coming, I’ll buy the tickets in bulk and you dudes can Venmo me.” That was the end of his announcements, and nobody rushed him to sign themselves up. Well, Magnus did, but that was almost to be expected at this point. He scribbled his name down, and then checked the ‘paid’ box himself before digging a few bills out of his pocket and handing them over. The leggings Taako was wearing didn’t have pockets, so he just tucked them into his waistband. Barry signed up as well, probably out of obligation. Taako added himself and Lup to the list as an afterthought. Then he was approached by a certain Merle Highchurch. Merle was weird because he always smelled just a little bit like stale weed. Sometimes stale beer as well, but not often. He had unkempt hair and a beard and was at least thirty years old. He’d explained at one point or another that he was a returning student, that he spent his twenties ‘learning himself’ before realizing he needed a degree for whatever it was he wanted to do. On this particular Monday he was wearing a baby blue t-shirt with the words ‘student ministries’ across the chest, and Taako had to appreciate how dumbly accurate the man’s last name was. “Nothing like Rocky, but I’m always down for a good ole ground and pound,” Merle said, digging an elbow into Taako’s side as he made his joke and scribbled his name down. Taako bit his tongue to keep from making a sex joke. Normally he wouldn’t bother, but this man was both a veteran boxer and wearing a church t-shirt, and Taako wasn’t sure his pride could survive him getting beat up by an old hippie. He wondered what the height limits were for someone to be considered a midget as he watched the five-foot man waddle back across the gym. Lucretia joined him next, appearing at his elbow with no sound of approaching footsteps. Spooky. “Merle's going to need the receipts from this excursion,” she said, face made of stone and words all business as usual. “All the receipts, got it. Does this go for the Hooters field trip I’m planning as well, or…? Asking for a friend.” Lucretia sighed and dropped her head back, obviously already exhausted by him. Taako felt very proud of himself. “Movie receipts,” she said. “And don’t forget to do the end of the month report this week. The binder Davenport gave you will show you how.” She strolled off, picking up a couple of rolls of hand wrap off the bench as she went and starting to wind them over her knuckles. Taako tossed his clipboard aside and lounged back on the bleachers, wondering idly where he'd put that binder in the first place. As he did so, he let his gaze wander across the room where Magnus and Lup were trading blows in the center ring. Magnus was laughing around his mouth guard, and Lup had that mischievous look in her eye that meant she was having the time of her life. That was good to know, but also a little damning. Taako could take or leave friends, honestly, but if Lup latched onto somebody they were in for the long haul. Better than Merle, he supposed, or Sazed, or any of the assholes he hung out with. Lup had better taste than that. She'd never liked Sazed in the first place. It was both a win and lose situation that those specific assholes showed up for the movie night on Friday. Eventually, after a good deal of glaring and whispering and purposeful shoves in Taako’s direction, Magnus had gotten nearly the entire club to sign up for the movie outing. They all turned up on Friday as well, and Taako was having a grand old time smirking at Lucretia and musing about how successful his idea was. She didn’t seem to mind terribly, and Taako didn’t mind that his Least Favorite Person & Co. had shown up when he got to sit between Barry and Magnus and pretend the others didn’t exist. Lup bought them a bucket of popcorn, which they plopped in Barry’s lap so they could share around him. Taako propped his feet up on the chair in front of him, causing the person who’d chosen to sit there to get up and move somewhere else. It was for the best, probably. The boxing team took up an entire row of seats in the movie theatre. This event was, to say the least, an unmitigated success. The movie wasn’t half bad, in Taako’s opinion, and after it was over Lucretia said something about there being enough in the budget for dinner if they all wanted. Forty-five minutes later, Taako had witnessed the team totally decimate the Cici Pizza’s buffet line, packing in more than Taako would have thought physically possible. It didn’t even matter when Magnus started a wrestling match with Carey in the parking lot and took a shoulder to the gut that made him puke all over Lucretia’s back bumper. Taako was laughing so hard he cried while Lucretia upbraided them both so severely, right then and there, that neither of them could meet her eyes afterward. So yeah, a total success. Maybe team bonding wasn’t as horrible as he was originally thinking. Movie night was the last chance Taako had to relax until he was sitting in the bleachers of some shitty high school gymnasium in New Mexico a week later. New Mexico was a bullshit state, and whoever decided it was a good idea to host a rumble there and invite their team was on Taako’s shitlist for all eternity. Whoever put him in the "Fightboy X-Treme" group chat was also on his shitlist, because it was endlessly. However, it was through that group chat that he learned about the New Mexico rumble in the first place. He woke up the morning after their movie even to Magnus and Carey carrying on about how the event had to be coming up soon, and how they did it every year and were really looking forward to it. Taako read through all that, uncovered an unopened email in his inbox inviting the team to the event, and he gave himself thirty seconds to think 'well fuck me' and stare at the plastic stars taped to his dorm room ceiling before falling out of bed and starting the paperwork. It was late-- all of it. The travel authorization and the itineraries and the attendance excuse forms, and Taako got an earful from the faculty in charge of all this sports club paperwork, but he did eventually get it finalized on Thursday, eight p.m. on the evening before they were set to leave for New Mexico. He got them a last-minute bus rental and begged the Holiday Inn to get him a block of rooms for cheap last minute, and while his pride was stung, he got it done. The paperwork had been grueling, and the bus ride there was worse. There was nothing louder or smellier or more horrible than a rickety twenty-person rental van packed to the brim with overjoyed co-eds hyping themselves up for the first fight of the season. Co-eds who hadn't had to spend their week filling out forms and arguing with strangers and hiding from the club's vice-president. The bus was too loud to sleep, but he did a very good job of pretending, making himself cozy in a pile of duffel bags in the back row, burying himself in a hoodie, and shutting everything else out. The chaos picked up again, though, when they hit New Mexico. Getting the rooms organized, getting the schedules passed out, giving announcements about being up and out and on time in the morning, getting the luggage unloaded that evening and then reloaded in the morning, after a night of sitting up with Lup and Barry and a handful of others, playing cards and talking shit until close to three in the morning. Then it was going to the school and getting set up and getting the team checked in and keeping everybody organized, and by the time the matches had finally, finally started, Taako only had enough energy leftover to haul himself up to the highest point in the bleachers and collapse in a row by himself. The lights were too bright, and the gym was a cacophony of whistles and shouts and loudspeaker announcements, and Taako was ready to die. The sound of pounding feet making their way up the stairs joined the din, and when they stopped next to Taako’s head and the bleachers creaked with someone sitting next to him, Taako wanted to scream. He opened his eyes and saw Merle, and he didn’t even try to look happy about it. “You ever need help with the administrative stuff, y’know…” Merle said, shrugging and threading his fingers behind his head, “That is actually my job description. Follows president's orders, or whatever." “Oh yeah?” Taako asked. “Always thought my secretary would be sexier.” "Not quite a secretary, but I can get myself a pencil skirt, if you're into that." “I can assure you, I’m not.” “There’s quite a few lookers in here today, even from our own club,” Merle added, and Taako couldn’t stop the laugh that erupted from him. “Something about sweet young men with their shirts off in a high school gym. Don’t tell my wife, though.” He nudged Taako’s head with his knee as he talked, and that’s when Taako realized that he wasn’t dressed for sport. Taako wasn’t either, but he wasn’t actually on the team. He wasn’t dressed for anything, not after the week he’d had. He was rocking the world’s lumpiest pair of sweatpants and Barry’s stupid slip-on Adidas sandals, which he was unhappy to admit were comfy as hell. Barry wasn’t getting them back. “So what are you doing up here, old man?” Taako asked, giving up on his nap and lurching back upwards. He was dragging around three of the guys’ duffel bags for some damn reason, and he propped two of them up on the seat in front of him so he could kick his feet up. Merle shrugged, popping his knuckles and then yawning around his fist. “Oh, I’m too old for this shit.” Taako snorted, and he rolled his eyes and said, “You’re not actually, like, elderly.” Merle gave him a tired grin. “My body wouldn’t agree with you, but thanks. Something changes when you hit thirty-five--” “--Ew--” “-- And things just don’t work the same. Plus I’ve had one too many concussions. Doc said if I get knocked around anymore, my brain’ll be just about useless.” Taako gaped at him a little. “No shit,” he said, officially interested. “You do a lot of this, then?” Merle nodded. Taako chewed on that and slouched down again, letting his eyes wander around the gym and the half-dozen pairs going at it below them. Now that he thought about it, he’d never actually seen Merle practice. Sure, he did some basic stuff, taking his sweet time and idling behind the others when they did conditioning and drills and stuff like that. But he never strapped gloves on, and he never sparred with the others. Taako really needed to pay more attention to this stuff. “So you can’t fight,” he said, “but you’re still around?” Merle chuckled, shoulders shaking. “I stay for the handsome boys.” Taako wrinkled his nose up, and Merle laughed even harder. “No, I just love it, y’know?” Taako let out a sigh and a confession as he said, “I wish I knew. Don’t tell anyone, cause I’m president and all, so I’m supposed to be like, boxing’s biggest fan or whatever the fuck, but I really do not see the appeal in all this stuff.” Merle immediately sat up a little straighter, leaning in close. Taako leaned back. Damn near fell out of his seat. “Whoa whoa whoa,” Merle said. “This stuff? ” Taako scooted away. “Why are all you old men so gung-ho about this boxing thing?” “I’ve been doing this sport since you were in diapers, boy,” Merle said. “This is the greatest game alive. You just aren’t paying attention.” “Uh-huh….” “What kind of sports do you like, then?” Taako raised a single eyebrow and held his arms out as if to say ‘look at me.’ “Are you really asking me that question?” “I don’t believe in stereotypes.” “Well, the answer is none. The closest thing to a sport I watch is Chopped. They run and sweat on that, sometimes.” “Now that is just sad,” Merle lamented, then stood, reached down, and latched onto Taako’s wrist. “C’mon, we’re gonna go watch. You’ll see.” “And just leave the bags there?” Taako asked as he was dragged away. If he tripped and fell, he’d take Merle down with him in a terrifying boy-shaped snowball, Looney Toons style. Merle’s comeuppance for dragging him around like this. Taako had never been manhandled as much in his life as he had been since joining this stupid club. “They get their shit stolen, they’ll learn not to dump it on you. You ain’t anybody’s mother. Now stop complaining and come on.” “You sound like somebody’s mother….” “Your mother wishes her beard were as good as mine,” Merle shot back. “If you like it enough, I’ll show you the ropes some time.” Taako rolled his eyes and tripped over Barry’s stupid, floppy shoes. “Can’t wait.” Boxing was not the sport for Taako. He’d thought it might be, while at the rumble, having Merle’s excitement rub off on him as he screamed and hollered for Killian while she pounded some poor sap’s head in. It was exhilarating, honestly, with Merle pointing things out like footwork and strategy, and how the dummy’s eyes moved a certain way every time he went to strike, how Killian could dodge a punch with superhuman reflexes, leaning just barely out of range from years and years of practice. Taako thought-- yeah, he could totally do this. But the reality of the situation was that Taako had skinny arms, and the gloves were heavy, and he was just way too lazy for this athleticism bullshit. Back on campus during practice, he let Merle put him through the wringer while the others took turns in the big ring, and after only twenty minutes of punching drills and dodging drills and hopping around like an idiot, Taako was a miserable, sweaty waterfall. He dragged ass into the locker room afterward, showering there for the first time ever, because if he spent another minute feeling sticky and crusty and gross he would actually lose his mind. He whined enough that Merle let him quit before the others, and he had the big, open shower to himself for five glorious minutes before voices burst through the barrier of water and echoed off the linoleum around them. Taako wasn’t shy, but he didn’t particularly feel like sharing the shower with a dozen men as they made ‘dropping the soap’ jokes and snapped each other on the ass with towels. High school gym class hadn't scarred him or whatever, but he'd certainly learned his lesson. He shut off the water and wrapped a towel around his waist and draped another over his shoulders. He left the shower, turning a corner to head back to his duffel bag, and the first thing he saw by the lockers was Sazed. He and another guy were in a slap fight, pawing at each other with flappy wrists. “Wait a second, homie, I think I broke a nail!” one of them exclaimed before they saw him, and Taako felt his ears burn. He pressed his lips tight together and stared them down, not feeling particularly vulnerable being the only one naked but also not absolutely loving the situation. A few strands of hair fell forward from where he'd finger-combed them back, falling into his eyes and dripping slow and methodical onto his chest. He didn’t say anything, couldn’t think of a line that would be devastating enough. He froze, stomach-turning over as Sazed glanced sideways at the others before facing Taako with a smile. “What?” he asked, stepping into Taako’s space. Taako refused to step back, curled his toes into the floor. “You want to fight me? Think you’re tough stuff now, huh?” Taako didn’t, actually. He didn’t say anything either. Just stepped around him and collected his bag, forced himself to act unaffected and casual as he tugged clothes on and strolled towards the door. He knocked shoulders with Barry on his way out, and he could hear the guys start up again as he left. He must have been doing a shit job of hiding his embarrassment, because Barry stopped him with a hand on his chest and looked him over, eyebrow furrowed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and Taako forced a teasing expression. “I’m being molested by a teammate in the locker room,” he said, grabbing Barry’s hand and pressing it more firmly against his chest. “Get off me, you animal!” he mock cried, and Barry’s eyes just barely crinkled in a laugh. It dropped quickly, though, and Barry started to ask-- “Are they…?” “Don’t worry about it,” Taako snapped back. “And don’t tell Lup, okay? Lips sealed.” “Lips sealed,” Barry agreed, and then Magnus walked in and joined them in the hallway. Taako shot Barry a pointed glare and slipped out around them before Magnus could join the interrogation. The gym was empty, save for Lucretia and Merle in the corner, pouring over something on Lucretia’s laptop. Taako sighed and wandered over to the grappling mat, which he collapsed onto and closed his eyes. He needed a power nap before walking home.
Barry was a filthy fucking liar. He didn't make it five minutes without spilling the beans, evident of the guilty expression painting his face as he, Lup, and Magnus dragged Taako out of his napping spot and announced they were going out drinking pronto. Lup had a look in her eyes suggesting Barry had talked her out of starting something, and the enthusiasm on Magnus's face was just a little too bright to be genuine. Anyone of them could have picked him up and carried him off if they wanted to, so Taako figured it wasn't worth trying to argue with them. Instead, he let Barry and Lup grab his wrists and haul him to his feet. He stumbled into Lup, who caught him before pulling him out the door, ignoring his complaints that they should at least let him go back to the dorm and change, what kind of slacker went to the bar in basketball shorts? “Live with it, homie,” Barry said, making fun of him on purpose, and Taako scowled at him until Lup reached over and slapped her lover on the back of the head. They went to the bar Magnus suggested, some hole in the wall across the road that boasted pool tables and a good atmosphere. Taako almost walked right past the unmarked door, and inside it was-- okay, it was nice, but it wasn’t anything special. The walls were covered in the school slogan and the head of their mascot, and everything was accentuated red and grey. The beer wasn’t cheap, but Taako didn’t care for it anyways. He ordered himself a long island iced tea. Lup started with a shot of jagger and made Taako take one as well. Barry sipped on a Guinness, and Magnus ordered actual horse piss. He downed half his glass in a single chug while Taako sneered at him and Lup arranged the pool table. “How can you drink that?” he demanded, and Magnus laughed. “It’s cheap, it’s smooth--” “It tastes like piss.” “So does your mom, and I still dive in like I’m drowning,” Magnus smirked, and Lup was quick to thwack him with the business end of a pool cue. He yelped, leaping away from her and whining about a charlie horse while she shook it at him menacingly and glared. “You watch yourself before I shove this all the way up your ass, amigo,” she threatened, and Barry rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “One drink Lupé speaks Spanish, I always forget,” he said, earning him a grin and a kiss on the cheek. “So what do you say, mother fucker, you game?” Taako asked, picking up a cue and tossing it at Magnus. He caught it without issue and held it up to check for a curve. He nodded. “Sure.” “You any good?” “Good enough.” “Good enough to put money on it.” The look that crossed over Barry’s face was one of pure dejection. They’d done this before, and he knew how this went. Taako and Lup would be one team, and they’d bully their opponents from here to next Tuesday and rob them absolutely blind. They’d done it before, they’d do it again, and one day they’d play against someone who wouldn’t take well to being hustled, but Magnus was a good guy. It would be fine. He smirked. “Definitely.” “You heard the man!” Lup clapped her hands and dropped the balls into place. “Scatter ‘em, babe.” Barry eyed her suspiciously and said, “How generous of you.” “Twenty each,” Taako declared before they could get too sidetracked. “Ante up.” It didn’t take long. They let Magnus get the first two shots in, knowing Barry was so miserably terrible at pool that he couldn’t pose a real threat even if he wanted to. After letting him build up an unhealthy false sense of confidence, they went to town, and it wasn’t ten minutes later that they had eighty dollars between the two of them. Magnus was dumb enough to challenge them again, declaring that the winners bought the booze. Barry collapsed into a nearby armchair and whined about why they couldn't ever play darts. Taako wondered how long it would take them to make Barry hate that game too. Three devastating games later, Magnus was dead broke and they declared it dead. Lup looked pretty damn pleased with herself, and she dragged Barry off to the jukebox to celebrate. If history was anything to go by, they’d be there for twenty minutes arguing about music selections. Taako decided to spare Magnus from that fate and led him off to the bar instead, where he bought a fifth beer for him and a third Long Island for himself. He was starting to really feel it, no longer able to feel his knees while he danced across the room. He hopped onto a bar stool with far less grace than he was used to, slipping a bit and throwing a hand out to catch himself. The hand landed on Magnus’s thigh, and Magnus didn’t even push him away or pull a face at him. Interesting. Lup and Barry took longer than even Taako would have expected, but when a Ke$ha song dropped above them, interrupting the dulcet tones of what had previously been Johnny Cash, Taako glanced out across the bar and found the two of them curled up around each other in an armchair. Gross. It was easier to pay attention to Magnus’s rambling when he was drunk. He talked about his hometown, his high school, his major in women's studies. Taako had to double-take at that one. “Wait, really?” he asked. “What are you going to do with that?” Magnus stared off into thin air for a long moment after that, and eventually he answered, “I have no fucking idea,” in a voice that was barely above a whisper. Taako could appreciate the absolute air of hopelessness. He raised his glass, tapping it against Magnus’s, and said: “I’ll drink to that.” It turned out that three long islands were two long islands too many. Taako set down his empty glass and ordered a fourth, even though his mouth was now working by its own volition and not consulting with his brain beforehand. He blinked, and there was a drink in front of him, and he found himself smiling. “Nice.” Magnus was still talking, but when Taako spoke he paused to look more closely at him and laugh. “You’re really feeling it, huh?” he asked, and Taako leaned in a little closer to him, squinting his eyes and mimicking his expression. Taako raised a hand and dropped it heavily on Magnus’s shoulder. He said, “I’m feelin’ somethin’, bubbeluh,” words a bit lazier than normal. Magnus laughed again, eyes crinkling up with it, and Taako had never liked the bearded look before, but tonight he was considering it. There was something hot about the fact that Magnus could pick him up and toss him. And he was nice and sweet and he brought Taako coffee and had strong opinions about math homework. As a true testament that Taako was very much not in control of his own actions, his brain short-circuited on him, and he didn’t put any thought into it as he leaned in and pressed his mouth to Magnus’s. Not a thought at all, and when Magnus pulled back almost immediately, a gentle hand in the middle of Taako’s chest holding him at bay, Taako’s brain had to come to a sputtering start to catch on, smoke billowing out the ears like a time worn engine. “Whoa,” Magnus said, a smile still playing at his lips. “Okay, you’ve officially had too many.” “Four is not too many,” he protested, then frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I’m hot. What’s the matter with you?” Magnus dropped his hand and retreated back into his own bubble, falling against the backrest of his stool and closing his eyes as he laughed. Taako continued to frown at him. Magnus reached up and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, then grabbed his beer and took a hearty swig. “You’re straight, aren’t you?” The realization hit Taako upside the head like a sucker punch, and he felt bitter humiliation fill his gut. Magnus laughed again, apparently unable to stop, the asshole. “Stop fuckin’ laughing at me,” Taako spat, and Magnus doubled over. Taako considered getting up and leaving, but then Magnus slapped a hand onto his knee and said, “Hold on, hold on, give me a minute,” around bellows of laughter. He fished his wallet out of his back pocket while Taako stared at the burning warm hand touching his skin. Basketball shorts had been a terrible idea, shut up Barry. Magnus squeezed him as he adjusted for his wallet and caught his balance, and Taako's heart beat a little bit harder than typical. Eventually, after a good amount of clumsy wriggling, he unearthed the wallet and pulled a picture out of the folds. “I am very much in love,” Magnus announced, evidence of the alcohol in his words. “Behold. Julia.” “What kind of doofus keeps pictures in their wallet these days?” Taako asked, taking the picture and inspecting it. The photo was a young woman, full-figured, tan, dazzling smile. She sat on a hay bale and was laughing at the camera. Her thick brown hair hung to her shoulders, and she was wearing hiking boots, jeans, and an oversized flannel. The bottom of the photo had ‘class of ‘15’ printed on it. Taako nodded and handed it back. “High school sweethearts,” Magnus confessed. “Been together since the tenth grade. We moved to Vegas together.” “God damn…” Taako whispered, shaking his head. “She’s….” “She’s perfect,” Magnus gushed on a sigh, and it was Taako’s turn to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Guess so.” “I am teasing you about this forever, by the way,” Magnus added, making kissy faces at him. Taako felt the embarrassment rise back up. He glared. He picked up his drink and took a long sip. “I need to be drunker,” he said, then waved his hand for the bartender. “Miss? Hello? We need some shots over here, thank you!” “Shots?” Lup asked, appearing at his elbow and propping her chin on his shoulder. “What are we celebrating?” “The fantasy threesome is off,” Taako replied with the saddest eyes he could muster. Lup pouted at him. Barry rolled his eyes as he climbed into his barstool, and Magnus yelped, “The what ?” “Tell them about your lady, lover boy,” Taako said, ordering them a row of tequila and handing the bartender his debit card. “Let me drink away my mistakes.” “What mistakes?” Barry asked, and Taako narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re on thin fuckin’ ice, my dude.” And maybe shots were a mistake, but they certainly did their job. Taako drank away the past thirty minutes as well as the earlier events of the day. By the time they finally made their leave shortly after midnight, Taako couldn’t actually walk straight. He stood up and immediately fell the fuck over, only being saved from slamming his head into the ground by all three of his friends grabbing onto him. He sagged like a rag doll, gripping his barstool and trying to find his feet. “Oh fuck,” he groaned, thinking idly that he really should have been more nauseous if he couldn’t even stand up. He heard his friends talking around him but couldn’t really make out their words as he followed them, stumbling, out to the sidewalk. Eventually, someone said, “Just grab him, dude,” and Taako found himself being manhandled again. Someone grabbed his arm and his hip and hefted him up over their shoulders in a fireman's carry, and Taako couldn’t stop himself from screaming. He clutched onto the arms holding him and managed to promise certain doom to Magnus if he dropped him. The four of them were a parade of buffoonery, Barry drunk enough that he sang the entire walk back to the dorms, Lup snickering and hiccuping and stopping every few minutes to kiss him. Magnus felt sturdy enough under Taako, but he did trip on the sidewalk once or twice, and he had a great deal of trouble swiping the keycard to get them back into the dorm building. The security guard didn’t spare them a second glance. Taako waved at him while they walked away. It was just as much trouble to swipe them into their dorm room, but they managed eventually. Once inside, Magnus dropped Taako unceremoniously onto his bed and collapsed face-first next to him. Taako scoffed, trying to shove him out of his personal space, while Magnus stole his pillow and said, “I’m sleeping here, good luck moving me.” Taako wouldn’t have been able to move him sober, let alone wasted. He glared at him anyways and prodded his ribs with viciously pointy fingers until Magnus flapped a hand out and landed it on Taako’s face. “Shhhh,” he slurred, speech muffled by the pillow his face was buried in. “Sleeping.” This was not Taako’s ideal situation of having a man in his bed. He said that, loudly, and Lup laughed. She smacked a kiss to Taako’s forehead before she and Barry fell into their own bed. Taako thought about complaining more, but he was exhausted, and pretty dizzy, and he found himself unable to keep his eyes open. It was nearly impossible to fight off falling asleep. In the end, he didn’t even try.
Taako woke up the next morning to Magnus scrambling out of bed and into the bathroom, where he emptied his stomach without closing the bathroom door behind him. Lup and Barry, still dead to the world, didn’t even notice, but Taako had to swallow down his own tossing stomach. A phone somewhere on the bed vibrated, and Taako groped around under the covers before finding it. The camouflage phone case definitely wasn’t his, and neither was the text on the screen that read, “I’m outside <3” from Julia. “Your woman is here to save you,” Taako called out, tugging the blankets up to his chin and curling up in the warm spot Magnus had left behind. Magnus came stumbling out of the bathroom a short while later, and he rinsed his mouth in the sink before taking the phone Taako was holding out to him-- only his face and his arm visible from his lumpy nest of blankets. Magnus grinned and saluted him, obviously still feeling it. “We didn’t cuddle,” Taako told him in lieu of goodbye. “This is not a bromance. Get out of here.” He hissed when Magnus ruffled his hair, and after the door slammed closed a moment later, he made quick work of falling back asleep.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Taako was having a particularly horrible Wednesday. It started a few hours before Wednesday, even, when he got to work and found out that half his shift had gotten hit by food poisoning somehow, and he’d been left to man the restaurant alone with Robbie, running between the kitchen and cash register all night long. Things really started going downhill five minutes after midnight, though, when the homeless man who liked to haggle them for bus money came in and spent forty-five minutes terrorizing not only Taako but the other customers who were hanging around, taunting Taako in Spanish and trying to goad people into buying him food. Now Taako wasn’t a monster. He could be inclined to fork over change for the bus or pay for someone’s meal if he was feeling particularly generous, but he didn’t take well to being hassled, especially when his night was already down the shitter. He called security, and they took their sweet damn time heading over to help him out. That wasn’t the end of it, though. At 3:45, a mere fifteen minutes before he’d have been allowed to head home and pass the hell out, an entire swarm of drunk college students descended, and one of them vomited all over the lobby floor. It was too early before the next shift to shove the responsibility onto someone else, and the smell made Robbie throw up in the lobby trash bin and rendered him absolutely useless, so Taako had to lock the doors and sanitize the entire lobby himself while the relief ambled through and clocked in. He finally clocked out around 4:30, and by then he was too riled up to even get to sleep properly. He scrubbed himself raw in the sink, bought a donut from the 7eleven, and went back to the dorms for a shower. He had another catering event that morning, and he showed up early for the first time in his college career, too jittery to sleep and too bored to spend another minute in the dorm lounge staring at his phone. But then his instructor saddled him with hosting , not even letting him cook for the love of God, like some kind of lame ass sadistic punishment for all the times Taako had shirked his duties before. He spent five hours bored out of his mind, went to class, failed a quiz, and skipped his second class so he could lay in bed and feel sorry for himself. Pulling all nighters tended to make him emotionally unstable. He really ought to remember that. At 3:20 he rolled out of bed again and made his way to the gym, where everyone was already warming up while their coach prepped in the corner. Taako considered turning right around and heading back home, since it seemed his services weren’t needed and there was no way in hell he was working out with Merle again. He started to pick up his bag, and that was when Lucretia noticed his presence and broke away from the class to make a beeline towards him. She… did not look happy to see him, and honestly if he had the energy, he might have run. “You missed the meeting yesterday,” Lucretia said, instead of ‘hello.’ You know. Like a normal person. He blinked a few times and wracked his brain, trying to figure out if this was something anyone had mentioned to him before, or if she had genuinely gone off the rails this time. “Meeting?” he asked, and she snapped. His only good luck was that the coach had everyone start in on dodging drills, so they were all far too preoccupied to notice Lucretia grab him by the ear and march him across the gym. He yelped and scurried after her, holding onto her wrist and tripping over his own feet. She swung open a door he’d never noticed before and walked into an office he didn’t know existed, letting him go once they were there and slamming the door behind them. Taako rubbed at his ear and glared at her. “Have you lost your fucking mind?” he snarled at her, and the glare she sent his way could have cut him in half. “Sit down,” she said. She kicked out a chair, crossed the room to a bookshelf, and unearthed a binder. Taako sat down cautiously, eying her as she dragged a chair over next to him and slapped the binder down on the table. “I got you a present since you’re obviously incapable of doing your job.” “Pardon me for not being grateful,” he muttered back sarcastically, a little chargained that she ignored him and rifled through it, found the page she was looking for, and pulled the book closer to him. “The Sports Club Council, have you ever heard of it?” “Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, a move he’d learned meant she was gathering patience. “Well congratulations, you’re a member. As club president, you are required to attend all meetings, as well as encourage other members to attend. First Monday of the month, every month. If you miss a second one, we’re officially delinquent.” “And nobody thought to tell me this?” he asked. “Davenport said he ran you through everything for president,” Lucretia responded, leveling him with a stern expression. Fair point, he actually might have told him about this. Maybe. Sometime back in May before he knew that this stupid job required actual work and hadn’t been bothering to pay attention to all the stuff he told him. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he lied, making it clear that he didn’t remember one way or another and making Lucretia sigh again. She leaned down and dug in her backpack for a moment, unearthed a spiral notebook, and dropped it into Taako’s lap. “Take notes so I know you’re listening to me,” she ordered. “I’m walking you through the process. Again.” “Thanks,” he spat. And Taako had known his job was hard, okay? He’d learned that lesson time and time again with the room reservations, and the travel arrangements, and the actual boxing. Hell, they were a week from midterms and he’d just started to understand all the boxing jargon, and talking to the coach still left him feeling dumber than usual, which was impressive, honestly. But talking with Lucretia put everything on a whole other level. Her binder had a page for every single task he was responsible for as president, had manuals for their organization, the sports club council, and the general rules for student organizations in general. It had paperwork and instructions and a schedule of events. It was color-coded. “You made this thing?” he asked her, thumbing through it and raising an eyebrow. “How do you even know all this?” “You weren’t exactly in line to be president,” she said, tone not very friendly as she did so. “I’ve been carrying this club all semester, but there is nothing I can do if your negligence gets us suspended. Come to the meetings, pull your weight, or so help me God--” “Right, yes, meetings. Where are those again…?” Lucretia sighed and took the binder from his hands, flipped a few pages, and pointed to an address. “First Monday. Every month. Room 1010.” “Right.” “5:30 p.m.” “Sure.” “Let me see your cell phone.” He pulled it out of his back pocket, and even as he opened his mouth to ask what exactly she wanted it for, she took it from his hand, held it up to his face to unlock it, and set to business. He watched her open his contacts, add herself, and then text herself from Taako’s phone. “I am going to text you reminders. You have your own schedule--” she flipped through the book again and found a calendar, “--but honestly I don’t trust you to read it.” “Your faith in me is amazing,” he said, shooting her a grin and ignoring the bored expression she shot back at him. “I’m going to practice.” She stood, closed the book, and handed it back to him. “Text me if you have any questions. Think about reading the manuals.” “Yeah, probably not gonna do that.” He pulled one out and frowned at it, fifty pages single space about rules and regulations and policy. “I figured,” she said, and then she was gone, and Taako’s ear was still sore as he snuck out of the office with his new binder tucked under his arm and still no real idea of what his job was around here. Last year's president had given him a run down at the end of the previous school year, but most of his instruction had been verbal "this is how I used to do it" explanations. It sounded like the guy had been a one-man show, running everything himself from a system only he was really privy to. Did Lucretia know that? Had she prepared for that? A short while later, as Taako attempted to tip-toe out of the gym to safety, Merle cornered him with a favor and an announcement, proving that Taako's bad day was only going to get worse. Taako was too tired to bother questioning it, waved him off with permission to do whatever the hell he wanted, and sighed when Merle punched him in the shoulder before going off to do just that. “I have a volunteer opportunity for the club!” Merle declared as he climbed up to stand on the bleachers, spreading his arms wide and catching the club’s attention. “You are looking at a candidate for the youth pastor position at United Methodist! This Sunday I need as many people as possible at service to prove that I can gather young people with a purpose.” There were uneasy grumbles drifting through the crowd. Carey raised her hand and asked, “What time?” “Nine o’clock sharp!” Merle answered, and yeah, there was no way Taako was sacrificing his Sunday morning for this. “One-time thing,” he promised. “I’ll buy the whole team breakfast afterward. Free breakfast, on me. What’d’ya say?” “I’m Jewish!” someone called out from the crowd, and another laughed and added, “I'm scared of nuns!” But after a decent amount of good natured teasing, a third of the club dragged their feet to the front of the room to sign up. Taako stood back, shaking his head slowly. “No chance in hell,” he said, and he jumped when Lucretia appeared over his shoulder and took his book out of his hands again. She flipped it to the club constitution, dragged her finger down the page, and held it out for him to see. “Club president is required to attend all-volunteer, competition, and social events hosted by the club," she read aloud. Taako gaped down at the words and felt his heart sink. “Son of a bitch.”
The church was nothing spectacular. Taako dragged his feet as long as he could, having a bad feeling about the situation even as he and Lup got up and dressed on Sunday morning. He elected for jeans and a button-up shirt, leaving his face plain and his hair uncombed. He ought to think about getting it cut. It was edging its way across the line from playfully shaggy to surfer boy, curling past his chin and touching his collar, and falling into his eyes constantly. Lup slipped into a sundress and a pair of boots, and she made Taako braid her hair for her while he complained that she really ought to do it herself at this point. She teased him back, saying that it was tradition to dress up for church, not down, but Taako had a feeling that dressing up would actually be rather unwise. “I could totally rock a catholic school uniform though,” he surrendered as they made the short walk over. Through campus and across the street, less than a mile away. “Plaid skirt. Tie. Imagine.” “Nf,” Lup agreed in deadpan, and it cheered Taako up at least a little. As fate would have it, they hadn't had to worry about dressing up anyways. Magnus was idling around already when they arrived, and he’d dressed down in a hoodie, basketball shorts, and tennis shoes that had seen far better days. “Dunno, man, my family doesn’t do this stuff,” he’d said with a shrug when Lup and Taako prodded at him. Barry’s outfit was almost identical to Taako’s, which made Taako feel like the world's biggest geez, matching with a straight man. This had been the worst idea ever. He dragged Merle aside before they could get too involved, gripping his arm and whispering that this all might have been a really bad idea. “Homie, churches don’t exactly like people like me…” he said, and it caught him entirely off guard when Merle’s face clouded in disappointment. “I wouldn’t take you somewhere that puts you in danger,” he said roughly. “The God I believe in isn’t like that.” Taako had no personal qualms with whatever invisible man in the sky Merle believed in; it was the invisible man’s followers that he wasn’t so peachy keen about. He’d taken too much shit for too many years to feel comfortable walking into a place like this, even if it did feel so viscerally familiar that it nearly made him feel thirteen again. Regardless, his own insecurities were nothing to argue with Merle over, and he followed the man inside. Merle dumped them all in the second pew from the front, and just like the movie theatre, they had the whole row to themselves. It was himself and Lup, Barry and Magnus, and surprisingly also Sazed and a few of his cronies. Davenport hadn’t made it, but Lucretia did, and while Taako had originally been sandwiched between her and Magnus, Lucretia made them move and sat between them about three minutes into the service, sending them both scathing glares for being disruptive. Taako was still next to Lup, though, which was trouble enough all on its own, and it was almost fun to keep “accidentally” bumping into Lucretia, just to see her eye twitch. The pastor at the front of the room wore a traditional floor-length white gown of a situation, with a multicolored cloth draped around her neck and hanging down to her knees. She was a woman, which threw Taako off a little, and her smile and eyes sparkled as brightly as the massive golden cross hanging against her sternum. At one point, Taako would have sworn she met his eyes and smiled, and it almost felt trustworthy, if Taako was in the sort of mindset that allowed him to trust holy-people. “Reminds me of Our Lady Immaculate,” Lup whispered as they stood, and then sat, and then stood again. Taako nodded. “Schoolgirl outfit, I’m telling ya, it’d take me right back.” “Could you imagine the look on Sister Beth’s face?” Lup giggled. Barry nudged her, and she nudged him right back, shushing at him as if he’d been the one talking. A pew section catty-corner to the main sanctuary seating was occupied entirely by what appeared to be middle schoolers, and one of them glanced in their direction curiously as Barry and Lup continued to prod at each other. Taako stuck his tongue out at him, and the kid quickly pulled his eyes back to the front of the room. He caught another elbow to the ribs from Lucretia, and he was about to elbow her back, but that was when Merle stepped up to the front of the room and introduced himself. He introduced the kids off to the side as well, acknowledging them as the church's youth group and thanking them for the church's decorations. Taako glanced around to inspect. Nothing legendary. Merle introduced them as well, explaining how he'd talked about the church program with the club and that enough had inspired them all to attend today. Taako wondered how Merle's invisible man in the sky felt about lying in worship spaces. He then announced, “The next song has some hand motions!” and looked far too pleased with himself. Taako failed to choke back a snicker and took another elbow in the side from Lucretia. “If you would all please rise.” He walked them through it step-by-step, explaining when to raise their arms, when to cross their fingers in the air, and when to put their arms around each other and sway, talking something about brotherhood and how everyone should, “try and have a good time with it. ” Taako was pretty embarrassed to realize that this song was familiar and that he truly had been transported back in time his childhood. He and Lup were familiar with churches of all different Christocentric flavors. A small baptist place a few miles from their grandpa's farm when they were tiny. A number of different shapes and sizes they were dragged through by different foster parents, and the Catholic school they'd earned scholarships for from seventh through tenth grade (what happened when they were sixteen had totally not been their fault, and they never should have been expelled in the first place. Their last two years of high school had been a joke). This song, in particular, had been a staple in Wednesday morning mass back during their school days. Just like in school, Taako and Lup kept up their whispering through the entire first verse, making fun of Merle’s horrible singing in the microphone and Barry’s half-hearted warbling along with it. Lup started swaying, over-exaggerating it, and she dragged Barry into it with her. Taako followed suit. It was almost better, for this situation, to have Lucretia between Magnus and himself, since it gave them the chance to throw their arms around her and squish her, giving her absolutely no choice but to participate in their shenanigans. The chorus was unfortunately catchy: And assembled as one, in the name of the Son, lifting hearts lifting hands celebrating as friends, and proclaiming the Lord, all our praises afford, we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and when Taako started singing along both loudly and off-key, Lup and Magnus nearly broke into hysterics before joining in. Merle looked pretty pleased with the situation, even if they were all making fun of him, and even Lucretia was almost cracking a smile by the end of it. The rest of the service wasn’t memorable in any way, and Taako barely paid attention to the sermon about forgiving your enemies. Barely. He didn’t need some sweet and patient holy woman telling him what to do with his enemies, and he didn’t need to spend any more time in that church than was absolutely necessary. After it ended and they were forced to shake hands with practically every deranged old person in the place, Taako was the first one out the door. He tilted his head up towards the sun and spread his arms out, breathing in the air like he hadn’t been outside for months. “Such a drama queen,” Barry quipped at him, and he shook his head helplessly when Lup mimicked him, clasping her and Taako’s hands together and closing her eyes at the sky. “I thought it would never end!” she crowed, and Barry clicked his tongue, and Magnus fell into laughter again. The rest of the club converged shortly, idling around on the steps until Merle burst out the doors in a heroic display of victory. “I got the job!” he hollered, spreading his arms wide and smiling at the sky in an exact replica of what Lup and Taako had been doing minutes earlier. “For your fantastic singing, no doubt,” Magnus said, and Taako turned surprised when he heard a laugh bubble out of Lucretia. “So the ice queen does smile,” he said, leering at her. Lucretia pulled herself back together and regarded him with a blank expression. “Perhaps she does,” she answered, and was interrupted by Merle bounding down the stairs. “I believe I promised breakfast!” he declared. “Everyone, to the iHop!” On the walk over, Taako couldn’t help himself. He found himself humming that stupid song, and maybe the church hadn’t been as horrible as he’d been expecting, but the song was an absolute curse. “I’m never forgiving you for this,” he told Merle, who didn’t even seem to mind.
On Sunday night, Taako received a text message. He was up to his elbows in trigonometry, absolutely stumped by tangents and all that they stand for. Magnus wasn’t doing much better where he was sprawled out on the floor next to him, having abandoned sitting at the desk half an hour ago and instead collapsing spread eagle on Taako’s dorm room floor where he could sigh and furrow his eyebrows in comfort. Lup was across the room on her bed, feet propped up on a stack of pillows, Nintendo DS in her hands, and shower cap on her head. Taako has a matching one due to the twin clause, a rule put into place when they were nineteen and Taako decided to pierce his own cartilage with an ice cube and a needle, and said that Lup had to do it with him. They were twins. They had to be identical. It was more of a joke than anything else, but if Lup was willing to let Taako poke a needle through her ear, he was willing to let her dye part of his head purple. She said they were doing a “low light” situation, and Taako wasn’t particularly concerned about it. He looked great in purple. So trigonometry aside, Taako was having an alright evening. That is until his phone went off, and his heart stopped in his chest. He’d blocked Sazed on every social media he had after the incident, and he’d deleted his phone number once the assault of angry text messages had stopped, but Taako had the number memorized from the day Sazed shot him that stupid, horrible smile and wrote it on his palm. Taako opened the message and scanned it, then got up as casually as he could manage and slipped into the bathroom where he could study it without Lup catching onto him. “Don’t rinse that yet, we have to flat iron first!” she shouted through the door, which Taako slouched back against before sliding down to sit on the floor. He opened the message and read it for a second time, and then a third, and he was tempted to storm back out there and go off about the bastard and the absolute nerve of him, but something stopped him short. ‘The sermon got me thinking this morning,’ the message read, ‘And I know you hate me now, and I know I deserve it, but it sucks that we never really got closure. I learned my lesson. You were totally right to break up with me. But we have to see each other every day anyway. Let me make it up to you?’ Taako couldn’t breathe as he read it over, again and again, and felt every emotion from the aftermath of the break-up crash into him at once. The weekend it happened, everything had been going perfectly. He and Lup had just turned twenty-one, and they hit the Strip that night, had the time of their damn lives. It was the Monday after, while Taako was skipping class to lounge in his dorm and poke through the PowerPoint slides when Lup had slammed through the door looking disheveled and exhausted, red-faced like she was raging and red-eyed like she'd been crying. "I'm so fucking sorry," she'd exclaimed, clenched fists shaking. "I'm sorry, Koko, I gotta tell you something." And Lup never cried. That had to be stated. She was the strongest, toughest person he knew, and she was shaking apart from the fact that Sazed came onto her and tried to grope her, and then from all the shit he said when she shoved him away. Some things were unforgivable. Forget what happened afterwards, with the stalking and the messages and turning up at Taako’s work, and forget what happened before they even broke up, the way Sazed had…. Whatever, Taako didn’t think about that. It was a mistake, and it was over, and Taako didn’t care if Sazed had gotten shot in the head with a healthy dose of church guilt. Taako didn’t listen to holy men. No way, no how, and he had nothing to feel sorry for. He texted Sazed that, and he was honestly shocked when another text came through within seconds. ‘I know ,’ it said, ‘I am so, so sorry. ’ And maybe Taako really was an idiot. Maybe he was just a big dummy who didn’t know what was good for him, or maybe he’d just really missed Sazed despite everything. Maybe he was just horny, or maybe the math had gone to his head, but he figured Sazed was right. They had to see a lot of each other. They might as well learn to be civil. That was why, with Lup pounding on the bathroom door asking, “Are you sick? I told you Eggs Benedict was a horrible idea, bucko,” he shot off a text before getting up and opening the door. ‘When and where, homie?’ He stashed his phone in his pocket and let himself get distracted by the sight of Lup and her hairdryer, going to town on Magnus’s newly bright purple beard.
Luckily for him-- and by ‘luckily’ of course he means it in the most facetious version of the word-- there was another event Taako could attend to make up for meeting the Sport Club Council meeting. If he came along, Lucretia explained, he could meet the staff and the executive board of the council, explain the miscommunication, and get the club back into good standing in their eyes. Taako thought it was totally bogus. He also thought that he was spending way too much personal time with Lucretia these days. But it was pretty obvious that if Taako continued to blow this, Lucretia would probably murder him, dance on his grave, and have a far easier time running the club without him. If she’d asked nicely in the beginning, he would have let her have the club anyways. He only nominated himself on a whim. He hadn’t meant to win, and he’d only been trying to hurt a specific set of feelings with his actions in the first place, none of those belonging to Lucretia. But it was a matter of pride at this point, because he’d failed and failed and she didn’t think he could succeed, and he was going to do just that if only to grin at her afterward. Taako was an idiot, but he wasn’t anybody’s fool. The meeting, however, might not have been worth it. He met Lucretia outside the gym at 5:00 p.m. on a Tuesday evening, holding two frozen coffees-- Carey worked at the on-campus coffee shop and gave him free drinks whenever she could get away with it. Taako didn't make a habit of turning away handouts. That, and he was willing to try for a few brownie points with Lucretia if he didn’t have to actually pay for them. “A gift,” he said, holding it out to her, and she raised her eyebrow at him before accepting it and taking a sip. They weren’t ‘technically’ allowed to bring beverages into the recreation center, but it was fun to watch Lucretia argue with the kid at the front desk. The words ‘don’t you know who I am?’ would have fit in perfectly to her tirade, and after very little effort from the student worker at the front desk, Lucretia won her argument and they were allowed to pass. She took three flights of stairs up towards a set of offices. Taako didn’t come into the rec center enough to know they existed, and he also didn’t work out enough to get up those stairs without sweating. Lucretia marched on without him though. He took his sweet time catching up. On the fourth floor was a glass door and a set of offices, a large desk, a room full of cubicles, and a large conference table. The walls were lined with posters from sports clubs and NCAA teams, as well as framed t-shirts from some school event, and the occasional plaque. “Aw man, how’d you get those in here?” a voice asked from inside the conference room, and Taako swiveled to see a short, slight man with mousy brown hair and a face full of freckles. “Perks of the vice-presidency,” Lucretia responded, looking down her nose at him and taking a sip, and Taako had to admit it was pretty funny to watch. “Lucas, this is Taako. Boxing club president. Taako, Lucas is the council parliamentarian and president of ultimate frisbee.” “What the fuck is ultimate frisbee?” Taako asked, and Lucas’s face broke into a smile. “So glad you asked!” he exclaimed, taking a deep breath as he prepared to explain himself, but before he could get another word out Lucretia walked out of the room and called, “Taako, follow me,” over her shoulder. Taako followed. He wasn’t excited to be there, but he especially wasn’t excited to hear some nerd explain to him how frisbee constituted as a sport. He trailed Lucretia through a maze of hallways to another area of cubicles, where she went about gathering people and reminding them they had a meeting to attend, promptly. She introduced Taako to a handful of people whose names he didn’t even try to remember, and soon there were eight of them scattered around the conference room table as Lucretia called the meeting to order. They talked over him, much to his relief. He hadn’t actually come prepared to contribute anything to this conversation, and as they dove into a discussion on ‘emergency funding requests’ he stopped trying to pay attention and let his mind wander. The sound of a door opening behind him caught his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder as everyone else in the room looked over. Taako’s eyes grew a little wider as a young man with dark skin and beautiful braids snuck into the room with a sheepish smile on his face. “My apologies,” he said quietly. “Traffic. You know how it is.” He rounded the table and sat next to Lucretia, and Taako couldn’t tear his eyes away. The boy was wearing a suit, with slacks and a vest under his jacket and everything. That was a rare sight to see on a college campus, and Taako wondered what kind of business he’d been dressing up for. Was he an actual business major? Did he come from an interview? Did it have anything to do with the rolled-up posters he leaned against the wall behind him, wincing slightly when they almost fell, but catching them nonetheless and putting them back? Taako noticed a moment too late that everyone on the table was staring at him. The handsome boy, specifically, staring straight at Taako with raised eyebrows and an outstretched hand. Taako immediately sprang forward to shake it. “My apologies,” he said, parroting what the boy had said earlier. “What were you saying?” The corners of his mouth barely lifted in a smile as he answered. “My name. Kravitz. And you are?” “Taako,” he answered immediately. “Taco?” “It’s a nickname.” “Kravitz is the Sports Club Council president,” Lucretia filled in for him. “Wrestling president, as well, and he has a position with the resident hall governing board, if I remember correctly.” Taako’s eyebrows shot up, and he let out a low whistle. “Busy guy.” “Kravitz, Taako is the president of the boxing team,” Lucretia added, and Taako watched with a sinking heart as the smile fell away from Kravitz’s face. He frowned, lifting his chin a little, and looking Taako over with a sour expression. “Oh,” he said. “I see.” “Guess you’ve heard of me,” Taako quipped back, sinking back into his chair and rubbing his sweaty palms on his knees. “I’m very popular these days.” Kravitz didn’t reply to that, but he looked like he was considering it for a moment. Instead, he turned to face the PowerPoint presentation displayed on the whiteboard in front of them and restarted the conversation on budgets. Taako sighed quietly to himself and watched the clock, watched as minutes ticked on from ten past five to half-past six. He was nearly asleep at the table by the time Kravitz stood and announced, “Adjourned, six thirty-four. Thank you all for coming. Taako, if I could speak with you for a moment.” He inclined his head towards the hallway, and Taako shot Lucretia a slightly panicked look before getting up and following him out the door. Kravitz went around the corner to a cubicle, and he leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. At some point he’d taken his jacket off and rolled up his shirt sleeves, and it really wasn’t fair for him to want to have a conversation when Taako could see the corded muscles of his arms. “Wrestling, was it?” Taako asked, possibly drooling a little. “I don’t do much competing these days. A bit too busy for the practice regime.” Kravitz shrugged a bit as he said it. “Oh I feel that,” Taako agreed. “I couldn’t keep up with the boxing team if I tried. And I have .” “Lucretia mentioned you weren’t an athlete.” Taako leaned back against the opposite desk and asked, “What else has Lucretia mentioned about me?” Kravitz studied him for a moment before saying, “If I’m being honest, that you’re a real pain in the neck. Look, Taako, I don’t know what your business is with the boxing club. I don’t know what you’re trying to do there, but the sports clubs are an important program. Our hockey team is practically NCAA. Last year twelve boxers made it to national championships and placed, and it is only the team’s fourth year running.” “That’s…. That’s pretty great, yeah, I mean, they seem pretty good….” “The council struggles to get funding and recognition. This year they bumped us up to a hundred thousand budget after I had to practically beg for it.” The word ‘kinky’ nearly slipped out of Taako’s lips, and he mentally thanked Merle’s God that it didn’t. He had a feeling Kravitz wouldn’t find his jokes very amusing, if the apparent upbraiding was anything to go off of. “What’s your point?” Taako asked, feeling a little bit cornered. Kravitz met his eye. “My point is that I am responsible for the well-being of every team under this council, and I don’t want to watch any of them fall apart because their leadership doesn’t know what they’re doing. Davenport worked really hard to get that club off the ground, and it'd be a real shame if that was all wasted." He hesitated, chewing the inside of his cheek, then held out a post-it note. "Here’s my contact information. Just… reach out if you need anything.” “I’m fully capable of taking care of my own club.” Kravitz raised an eyebrow. “Are you?” Taako narrowed his eyes a little. He took the note Kravitz held out to him and made a point of staring at Kravitz as he crumpled it in his fist and stuffing it into his pocket. “Yes, and frankly, you were a lot cuter before the lecture.” He turned and left at that, storming back down the hallway, through the glass doors, and out to where Lucretia was waiting by the basketball courts. She frowned when she saw him, looking him over. She sighed, “What did you do?” and Taako locked his jaw and shook his head. “Not now,” he said, and this time it was Lucretia that followed him as he stomped down the stairs, out of the rec center, and out into the chilly October air.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When the bus finally rolled to a stop in the parking lot at 5:47 p.m., Taako wiped his nose on his sleeve and launched himself down the stairs off the bus. He ran, legs burning, through the front doors and down the hall with the entirety of the boxing team stampeding after him. He checked his watch-- 5:48-- and ran faster, and they eventually skidded to a stop at the registration table at 5:49 p.m. He slammed his hands on the folding table and let out a wheeze, doubling over and holding a finger up to bide himself a few seconds to pull himself back together. He’d woken up that morning with a fever and a bus to catch. The two weeks prior had been spent frantically studying for midterms and trying to finalize the paperwork for this stupid tournament. It was supposed to be an eight-hour drive to Reno, but five hours into the trip Taako had woken up to find them stranded in the desert with a dumpy engine, and after realizing it wasn’t a fever dream, had started to panic. Registration closed at six, and he wasn’t actually sure they’d make it on time. If they were disqualified for failing to check in, Taako wouldn’t be able to handle it. He’d spent far too many hours with Lucretia pouring himself into the damn travel information, trading salty emails with Kravitz about minute details that shouldn’t have even been important. He was sure it was revenge for being an asshole or some weird way of trying to teach him a lesson, but Taako wasn’t the kind of boy who learned his lessons, actually. It took far too long to catch his breath. His watch said 5:51. He coughed weakly, felt his throat tear in half, and blinked up at the registration desk girl who was halfway through putting a file into a cardboard box. “Las Vegas--!” he gasped. “We’re here to check-in. Thank you.” The girl frowned at him, closed her box, and said, “Sorry, we’re closed.” Taako couldn’t believe his ears. He gaped at her a little, heard a few people in his group murmur behind him, and searched for the right words. “But….” he said, trailing off. He frowned. “The website says you’re open till six.” “It is six,” she said, and he looked up at the clock on the wall. “It’s five-fifty-one.” “Sorry. We’re closed.” “But it’s five-fifty-one.” “All the other teams checked in by five,” she snapped back. “You’re late. We’re closed.” The fever was obviously making Taako hysterical, because he honestly felt like the news was going to kill him. The team kept murmuring. Lucretia stepped up and began speaking to the girl, “--has to be something you can do--” but Taako interrupted her. “We were on a bus for twelve fucking hours,” he growled out, and the girl turned to him, eyes widened in surprise. “Excuse me?” “Listen, my dude, the paperwork for this stupid event is flawless. I just spent the last twelve hours on a bus with the flu, and I have a fever, and I swear to God if you don’t let us register I will throw up all over this table.” She grimaced and stepped back, setting her box down. She studied them all with a weary look before sighing and saying, “Fine.” She dug a packet out of the box she’d been putting away and handed it over, and Taako snatched it from her hands with very little grace. “There’s liability forms to sign, and double-check the information packet.” He held out the stack of liability forms to the team and leafed through the information packet with Lucretia reading over his shoulder. The school information was fine, and the competitor rankings all matched, but he paused when he got to the brackets. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, “What the fuck is this?” The girl sighed with a visible slump of the shoulders. “What? ” “This says Lup and Killian are matched for round one. They’re from the same school, and they're not even the same weight class.” Lup and Killian both glanced over, pushing out of the crowd to look at the papers Taako was holding. Lup hooked her chin over Taako’s shoulder and hummed. “Can I see their competitor papers?” the girl asked, and Taako handed them over. The papers read every athlete’s stats-- name, age, gender, height, weight, and collegiate ranking. If the papers were to be believed, Killian weighed in at two hundred thirty. Lup wasn’t a wisp in the wind, but Killian still had nearly a hundred pounds on her. The girl looked over the papers, pursed her lips, and said, “We could sort Lup into the men’s competition?” Taako hissed, “Excuse me?” and Lup’s arm around his stomach tugged him back when he tried to storm forwards, but the girl took a step back anyways. “Okay! Never mind, Jesus. Just talk to the head coaches tomorrow.” “I will.” He watched the rest of the papers made their way into a haphazard pile on the table and took a quick headcount. “Are we good to go here?” “Sure.” He clicked his tongue. “Thanks.” He turned on heel and walked back down the hallway, the team once again trailing after him, and the whole walk there he tried to ignore his pounding head and counted down the minutes before he could crawl into bed and die. The boys tried to convince him to go out to dinner to celebrate, but Taako wasn’t sure he could hold down anything but water, so after getting them checked into their hotel with key cards and instructions on curfew and bus call in the morning, he slouched his way to the elevator while the others trundled off in search of a T.G.I. Friday’s. Lucretia caught him at the elevator. “Not going out?” he asked her, voice cracking. She gave him a half-smile and said, “Won’t be hard to catch up. Do you need anything? We could find a drug store, or….” “Heroin, if you can find it.” The smile melted off her face, and he forced a cheesy grin. “Kidding! No, I’m fine.” “You did well. At registration. Could do with a little less swearing, but--” Taako blinked a few times, eyelids burning each time, and asked, “Wait, hold up. Was that a compliment? ” “Perhaps.” “Well lookie that, someone's finally recognizing my genius!” “Yeah, yeah, well--” “No, no, continue. Tell me how awesome I am.” Lucretia rolled her eyes and shoved her hands into the pocket of her boxing team hoodie, spinning slowly around and wandering back down the hallway. “Get some rest!” “You got it, boss. Awesome rest for the awesome president.” He might have heard Lucretia laughing as she disappeared around the corner, or it might have been a fever dream. Didn’t matter. He walked into the elevator and let it carry him up, dragging his duffel bag on the floor behind him as he shuffled towards his hotel room, where he was able to finally, blissfully, collapse face-first into the cool, nice sheets and pass out cold. When he woke up the next morning, Barry and Lup were curled up together and fast asleep in the bed next to him and someone had covered him with an extra blanket. Magnus and Merle were snoring away in the other double bed, not a care in the world. He yawned, throat aching like he was breathing in glass, and he glanced over at the alarm clock just to find an array of things on the nightstand. He struggled to sit up and choked down a couple of dayquil, lukewarm Gatorade against his burning throat providing so much relief that it brought tears to his eyes. There was a bag of gummy bears as well, and a tiny teddy bear wearing sunglasses and a t-shirt that read ‘Las Vegas Sucks.’ A post-it note attached to the gummy bears read, ‘a gift from the team. feel better.’ in Lucretia’s tidy handwriting, and he stared at it for a long moment before collapsing back against the pillows and drifting off to sleep for a few more hours.
A few of the fighters placed at the tournament, Magnus racking up more points towards a state title they all knew he was going to end up winning, and Lup making it through four rounds before getting bested in the fight for third. He did all the paperwork, but didn’t remember anything well enough to report it from memory. He slept the whole bus ride back to campus, and then for two days after that, electing to skip class and let the team take care of themselves for club practice, even calling off work instead of going in and getting everyone else sick. By Wednesday he was almost back in perfect shape, which meant that he was at least able to breathe through both nostrils and walk for a few minutes without getting light-headed. He made it into practice, where he hung out on the bleachers and scribbled half-heartedly at his missing math assignments while the team practiced around him. After practice and back in the dorm room, while Lup was in the shower and Barry was playing a fierce game of solitaire on one of the desks, Taako’s cellphone chirped at him. It had been a little over two weeks since Sazed had asked him out again, and he hadn’t meant to lose track of time so tremendously, but this semester was making major strides towards making him responsible. He had things to do, and now that those things were all good and dealt with, he actually had the time to stare at the text on his phone and consider the invitation. ‘A group from the club is going out this Friday. You in? ’ There was a time that Taako would have scoffed at the offer, finding the idea of spending the evening in a bar with a group of sport boys to be a safety hazard instead of a viable option. But it turned out that most of the guys weren’t half bad, even the ones who hung out with Sazed. And hell, being with him in a group was better than being with him alone. ‘Text me the address’ he responded, and then looked it up on google maps when it came in. It was quite a ways from campus, and he’d have to Uber there, but that was fine. It was just one night out. No harm, no foul. He replied with three thumbs-ups and a wine glass emoji before silencing his phone and flopping down on his bed to watch Barry play his card game. “Are you winning, Barold?” he asked. “Not a damn clue.”
Taako was a little less than pleased with the location they chose to meet, especially when his Uber bill came up to twenty-six dollars. The guy had given Taako a piece of gum and didn’t try to make small talk, though, so he left him five stars before double-checking the address and heading inside. It was larger inside than it was outside, with high industrial ceilings and a huge bar in the center of the room. There were pool tables and dartboards scattered around, and Taako had to think that Lup would love this place. Despite it apparently being a “team” outing, Taako hadn’t invited her along. He hadn’t told Barry or Magnus, either, because he knew they couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret, and if Lup found out that he was going out with Sazed, she would be totally pissed. And yeah, maybe this was dumb. Maybe he was being stupid, but he wasn’t paying another sixteen dollars to turn right around and head back to the dorms without having a drink. He didn’t see any noticeable groups at the bar when he walked in, and especially none made up of guys from the boxing team. He sauntered up the bar anyways, leaning against it and handing over his ID before ordering himself a lemon drop. He turned around, leaned back against the bar, and surveyed the room. Without warning, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and Taako nearly leaped out of his skin. “Hatchi tatchi, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he gasped, and Sazed just laughed. He had a bottle dangling between his fingers and was wearing a shirt that used to be Taako’s favorite. “You look good,” Sazed said, not moving his hand from Taako’s shoulder, and Taako glanced at it before raising an eyebrow. “I know,” he replied, and then, “I thought you didn’t like the skirt thing.” He was wearing a skirt that had belonged to Lup once upon a time until she decided she wasn’t really into it and had handed it down to Taako instead of tossing it in a donation bin. It was dark, loose without being flowy, and made of heavy material, which decorative buttons up the front. It extended to mid-shin, and he looked pretty fantastic in that, a collared shirt, and a jacket. Tonight he'd paired it with a t-shirt and a zip-up hoodie instead, a pair of combat boots that were definitely his sisters, and gunk in his hair to keep it properly pushed up and out of his face. Sazed shrugged one shoulder and said, “Doesn’t matter if I do or not. Not like you ever listened to me anyway.” Taako took in those words with a sour taste in his mouth, but he was saved from responding by the bartender setting his drink down. He took a sip and surveyed the room again. “So where is everyone else?” “Huh?’ “You said this was a team thing.” “Oh.” Sazed glanced off and took a long sip from his beer. “They couldn’t make it.” Well, that figured. “I thought we could hang out anyways. Just the two of us.” “Just the two of us?” Taako asked. “It’s not like that.” “I would fuckin’ hope not.” Sazed’s mouth formed a firm line after that, and if this was the same Sazed that Taako had dated for nearly seven months, he would have snapped and complained and probably cut the evening short when Taako refused to apologize. Instead, he turned and set off across the bar towards a booth against the wall. “Let’s grab a seat.” It was weird, being there. Taako knew better than to drink his cocktail as quickly as he did, but he needed something to do with his hands. It tasted like lemonade and sugar, and within half an hour he was getting up to get himself something else and fetch Sazed another beer. They talked about school, about how it was strange they weren’t in any classes together as seniors in the same major. Taako asked about his family and gave tight-lipped answers when Sazed returned the questions, because it turned out he didn’t want Sazed to know any of that stuff anyway. Three drinks and an hour in, Taako broke the silence by offering a game of pool. Sazed laughed him off, however, and said, “I know you better than to fall for that one, sweetheart.” Taako wasn’t his sweetheart, actually, but the drinks were chilling him out enough that he let it slide without comment. They migrated their way to the bar, claiming barstools and ordering a fourth round. “We could do shots,” Sazed offered. “You love that shit, right?” Taako did, but he also remembered how that had worked out for him last time, and he was already feeling it a bit too much to tempt fate tonight. He had to get himself home safely this time around. He shrugged and said, “Nah,” and Sazed fell silent again. “So the boxing club is doing pretty well,” he said eventually, and Taako sipped at his drink and looked him over. The mint of the mojito he’d switched to tickled the back of his throat, remnants of the flu he was getting over. “Yeah,” he agreed after clearing his throat. “Yeah, the team is doing amazing. They’re saying Magnus is gonna make state, whatever the hell that means.” “Yeah, Magnus is….” Sazed trailed off, chuckling instead of finishing his sentence. Taako sipped his drink again. “What?” “Don’t worry about it. You two are buddies, right?” Taako couldn’t puzzle out all the layers to that question, so he went with the safest answer he could think of. There were always layers to the things Sazed said to him, every conversation a potential test to pass. He said, “We’re in math together.” Sazed shrugged one shoulder, took a swig of his beer. He said, “He’s not your type, anyways,” and Taako bit back the comeback dancing on his tongue. “Sure, sure. You know, never really been into the big, bold, and hairy aesthetic. Plus he’s kind of married, anyways.” “Really?” “Mhm. High school sweethearts and all that hullabaloo.” “That’s cute.” Sazed downed the rest of his beer and slammed his bottle onto the counter. “C’mon, finish that up. You gotta match me.” Taako had taken a mixology class in junior year, but he didn’t remember enough of the numbers to correctly compare the alcohol content between a beer and a cocktail. He knew there was a difference, though. A stark difference. He took another sip, and Sazed said, “You’re just being difficult on purpose. Jesus .” “Pretty sure I’m always difficult, kemosabe, it’s kind of a personality trait.” Sazed muttered, “Yeah, I remember,” and Taako drained his glass. “Now what?” he asked, and Sazed leaned over the bar to grab a laminated menu and drop it into Taako’s hands. “Anything you want, I’m paying.” Taako clicked his tongue, said, “What a gentleman,” and ordered himself a blue Hawaiian. The rum felt heavier on his tongue, more syrupy than his last drink, but his fingers were buzzing and his head was officially cloudy and happy. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. He ought to head home soon. Sazed caught his eye and laughed. “Look at you.” “Hm?” “Don’t worry about it.” Taako wasn’t uncomfortable in the silence that settled over their conversation this time, but he was pretty preoccupied wondering what time it was and whether or not he had a discussion post due before midnight. He couldn’t see a clock in the bar, so he pulled his phone out to check: just past ten p.m. and at three-percent. Uh oh. “You got a phone charger?” “Nah.” He turned it off to save battery so he could call an uber home and slipped it back into the pocket of his jacket. He shifted, smoothing out the wrinkles in his skirt and kicking his heels against the footrest of the bar stool. “So….” “Are we good now?” Sazed asked, suddenly, cutting Taako off. “I mean, you proved everything you want to prove. The cold shoulder, and cheating me out of the presidency and all that.” He was pretty sure it wasn’t the alcohol that made his words hard to understand. Taako blinked a few times, chewing that over, before asking, “What?” “You know I wanted the spot,” Sazed argued. “You only nominated yourself to fuck me over.” Taako knew that with or without him Sazed wouldn't have had a real chance at the presidency, and he’d had a bit too much to drink to keep himself from saying so. “If I fucked over anyone, it’s Lucretia. You were hardly in the running, homie.” “Oh right, how could I forget the bitch who’s been saving your ass all semester?” Sazed glared sulkily at the bar, and Taako had to wonder what he’d ever seen in him. Taako had a lot of practice in being a diva and acting immaturely, but sometimes Sazed really took the cake. He always had. This wasn’t anything Taako hadn’t seen before. “She’ll kick your ass if she hears you saying that.” “Am I wrong?” He wasn’t, not really. Lucretia had been picking up the slack for Taako since this all started, but he’d made major improvements in the last two months, and Sazed didn’t need to know that anyways. He narrowed his eyes, took a sip of his drink, and said, “Yeah, you are actually. I don’t need anyone saving my ass if you must know.” “Oh really?” “Yeah, really.” Sazed laughed, a throaty chuckle that poisoned the air, and with just a little bit more alcohol in him, Taako would have been batting at the air to get rid of it. “Oh, sweetheart, you don’t know the first thing about boxing.” “I know enough to run the club,” Taako spat back, not his best comment but he could only be so clever with rum and vodka coursing through his system. “We were in the same election,” he added, not bothering to keep his voice down and knowing that it would embarrass the hell out of Sazed to argue loudly in public like this. It always had in the past. “You’re just pissed I got more votes than you.” Sazed laughed again, and he said, “They voted for you because they thought it’d be funny. They've been laughing at you all semester. Wanted to see if the twink could handle it.” “What did you call me?” “Am I wrong?” Taako gaped at him for a long moment, wondering how this night had managed to go so horribly wrong. He knew something like this was going to happen. He couldn’t believe he’d thought this would be a good idea. Fuck it , he thought, and finished his drink in two hearty chugs. His tongue felt sticky, and his head was far floatier than it had been before, but Taako’s night was over anyways. He set his glass down and hopped off his barstool, holding out for a solid constitution roll as he pushed off the bar and headed for the door. He heard Sazed swear behind him, but he didn’t let that slow him down. The cold air outside hit him like a brick wall, and he gasped into it after the door closed behind him, certain he could see the smoke from inside floating off of his clothes in thin wisps. The door opened behind him, and Taako glanced over his shoulder at a very unhappy Sazed. “You didn’t have to do that,” he hissed. “Do you always have to make a scene?” Taako was feeling impudent. He said, “Yes,” just to see Sazed’s jaw tighten. Sazed swore, and Taako set off down the sidewalk, not sure where he thought he was going besides away. He didn’t feel like he was swaying any, and he didn’t have to hold onto the wall for balance, so he was pretty proud of himself for keeping it together. He shouldn’t have drunk that much. He really was the king of poor life decisions tonight. Sazed swore again, and Taako heard his footsteps approach behind him. “You’re drunk,” Sazed said, “Let me drive you home.” Taako kept walking. “I can get myself home, thanks.” “Matthew, don’t be ridiculous.” Sazed’s hand wrapped around Taako’s wrist and Taako spun on him with a fiery glare. His grip was tight, familiar and frightening. Whether it was alcohol or adrenaline, Taako felt like his skin was burning. “You don’t get to call me that,” he spat. “Let. Go. Now.” “No,” Sazed snapped back, and Taako shoved him, and when Sazed shoved him back he stumbled. His back hit the wall hard enough to wind him, and the jagged brickwork bit into his shoulder blades and stung. He gasped, gulped in a breath. Sazed pressed close enough for Taako to feel his breath. “If you would just listen --” “I’m not getting in the car with you,” Taako wheezed, tried shoving him again, and got a forearm pressed against his chest for his efforts. This was all familiar too. The shoving, the struggling, and the breathlessness. When Taako was little, on rare good nights where their mom told them stories before bedtime, she'd talk about finding a love that would take your breath away. “Fuck, Taako, I’m not going to like, fucking rape you or something, would you chill the fuck out?” Sazed whispered harshly, and a jolt of panic shot straight through him. Taako remembered far too many times when they were dating where ‘no’ wasn’t heard as ‘no,’ when he was talked into things, when he was, yeah sure, consenting, but he hadn’t been happy about it. He felt Sazed's hand on his hip, fingertips touching the skin where his shirt road up, far too close for comfort. He was starting to shake, starting to panic. “I said let go!” Taako barked, shoving him again, and when Sazed grabbed the collar of his shirt in a tight fist, he snapped. He grabbed at Sazed’s wrist for leverage and stomped with all of his strength. It was uncoordinated, but it connected, the side of his shoe scraping down Sazed's shin and his heel slamming into the top of his foot. Sazed cried out in surprise and dropped him, and Taako stumbled a few feet away. “You little shit,” Sazed spat at him, and the last thing Taako expected was a fist to the face. He didn’t even register what had happened, at first, just that his eye exploded in pain, his balance fell away, and he hit the ground hard. His head spun, stars dancing behind closed eyelids as he clutched at his skull. When he finally managed to peel his eyes open with a groan, he saw Sazed standing over him, mouth agape and fist still clenched. “Fuck,” Sazed breathed out, voice high and desperate. “Fuck, fuck, why do you make me do this?” He was all but shouting now, and Taako's head was pounding. Taako struggled up to his elbows and spat out, “Get the fuck away from me.” That was all the convincing it took, apparently, because Sazed spun on heel and stormed off across the parking lot. Taako watched him the whole way, as he got to his car, slammed the door, and peeled out of the parking lot. Only when the car disappeared from view did Taako let out the breath he'd been holding. His lips felt wet, and he wiped at them with the back of his hand. It came away red. His tongue ached. He must have bitten it on impact. His head was killing him and the world was still spinning as Taako picked himself up off the ground. He clutched his head as he sagged back against the wall. It felt like his hangover was hitting him before he even sobered up, which was totally bogus. He was pretty nauseated too, but he had a feeling that had more to do with mixing liquors and poor company than it had to do with a concussion. He’d taken worse as a kid. He was fine. He’d always figured Sazed would snap, when they were dating. He’d roughed him up before, shoved him around a little, but he’d never full out decked him. Taako had never left these encounters with bruises on his fucking face. He poked gingerly at his cheek, which felt hot and swollen, and wondered if he’d have a black eye. A brisk wind blew through, and he shivered. Someone was pushing a rattling shopping cart down the sidewalk towards him. It was late out. He needed to get home. Taako pulled his phone out to call the uber, but it wouldn’t respond when he tried to turn it on. Dead. Absolutely dead. Son of a bitch. He stumbled off the wall and let his clumsy feet drag him back to the bar, crossing his fingers that the bartender would be generous enough to let him use their phone to call for a ride. He considered his options as he made his way there, trying to remember whose phone numbers he had memorized, and his list came up pretty empty.
Phone numbers he knew:
Lup.
That was it. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill him, and then she was going to kill Sazed, and Taako was in so much trouble he didn’t even want to think about it. Boxing was going to be all sorts of uncomfortable on Monday. He didn’t want to think about that either. What would Lup even do? It’s not like either of them had a car, let alone the money to Uber there to pick him up and then back to campus. He hadn’t had enough money to go out in the first place, and now he was broke, sad, and achy. She might get Magnus to come and get him. He had a car. But Taako didn’t want to hear all of his fretting as well as her lecture, let alone the two of them in one car together. Maybe he could talk her into calling Merle, but…. No, that would be worse. Definitely worse. Merle would try and have some kind of well-meaning conversation, and he would try and make Taako connect with him, and Taako was-- oh Lord, was he crying? Absolutely not. Merle did not get to see him like this, and neither did Magnus for a matter of fact, but Taako was running out of options and he only knew one stupid phone number. He dug through his pockets before going into the bar, pulling out his wallet, a bracelet, his key for the gym, and… oh. A tiny piece of paper-- a post-it note, with unfamiliar chicken-scratch handwriting and a message that read,
‘Text if you need anything: 555-545-5353.
-Kravitz’
Well, shit. Shit, shit, shit. His two options were his twin, who was going to kick his ass from Henderson and back, and the guy who hated his guts. Slim pickings. Some choice to make. ‘Anything’ it said and Kravitz had mentioned driving at the executive board meeting. He probably had a car then, right? And he was basically a stranger-- a hot stranger, but a stranger nonetheless-- so it would really be his least humiliating option. Taako was too drunk to be making this kind of decision. He'd been too drunk for that whole confrontation, and now he was standing outside of some random bar in a random part of Las Vegas, shivering on the sidewalk and wincing at the rhythmic throbbing of his face. He could hardly open his stupid eye. He still hadn't managed to stop crying. Yeah, this was kind of the worst night ever. Swallowing his pride, Taako scrubbed at his face, gripped the note tight, and pushed back into the bar. His knee hurt for some reason-- had he hit it going down?-- and he found himself limping. He didn’t even know if Kravitz was awake, or if he lived on this side of town, or if he’d be kind enough to come and pick him up, but it was this or Lup and Taako wasn't giving up this easily. He probably wouldn’t even answer, but it was at least worth a try.
The bartender was rather suspicious about it, but he let Taako borrow the phone and wait inside for his ride to show up. He had three dollars left in his wallet, so he ordered a can of coke to press against his eye while he waited. It hurt like a bitch, and by the time Kravitz showed up half an hour later, the pain had him totally sobered up. Kravitz said he’d come in to get Taako when he got there, that it wasn’t safe to hang around outside at this hour at night. He sat facing the door and was already getting to his feet when Kravitz stepped cautiously inside and glanced around. He wasn’t in a suit this time, much to Taako’s dismay, and was instead wearing sweatpants, a hoodie, and a leather jacket, all black. Lazy goth aesthetic, apparently. It worked on him. “You ready?” Kravtiz asked, walking up to Taako and stopping a few steps away. Taako swayed a bit, apparently not as sober as he’d thought he was, and Kravitz reached out to catch him. Taako held a hand up and caught his balance on his own. “Yeah.” He winced at the temperature change as he pulled the soda can down from his eye and pocketed it, and Kravitz’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, your face--” “Looks amazing, I know,” Taako interrupted, and he was surprised to see the corner’s of Kravitz’s mouth turn up in a smile. “Alright, let’s go,” he said. “You pay for that?” “Mhm,” he said. Satisfied, apparently, Kravitz held the door open and followed Taako back out to the parking lot. His car was nice, shiny like it had recently been washed and clean enough inside to be noticeable. It had Bluetooth radio. Taako poked around a little bit while Kravitz buckled himself in. “You live….?’ “On campus,” Taako replied, and Kravitz nodded. He started the car and pulled out of the parking spot, driving pretty carefully as he pulled out into the street and came to a stop at the intersection. “Do you mind if I ask about….?” “My face?” Taako asked, a bitter laugh bubbling out of his throat. “Long fucking story. A guy from--” “Wait,” Kravitz interrupted, wincing apologetically as he did so. “Before you tell me anything, since we know each other professionally… I’m a title nine reporter. If something went down with another student or something, I’m required to report it.” Taako slouched down in his seat and raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?” “No,” Kravitz said. “I’m sorry, I just--” “Take your job very seriously, I know,” Taako rolled his eyes, grimacing at the spark of pain that caused. He pulled the soda back out and pressed it back to his face with a sigh, and he took note of the fact that he’d interrupted Kravitz at least three times by now and he didn’t look even slightly peeved about it. Huh. “I’m sorry.” “Homie, you’re driving me home, you don’t have to apologize.” “No one else to call?” Kravitz asked. “Not that I mind, I just….” “My sister is going to kill me. And she doesn’t have a car. So she’d have to get someone else to drive us, and then they’d be pissed too, and I just don’t wanna get into it.” They stopped at another red light, and Taako glanced over to notice that Kravitz was staring at him, worry in the crease between his eyebrows. “If you need someplace to crash for the night, my mom wouldn’t mind, I mean, I don’t mean to be creepy or anything, I’m not trying to, um, you know….” Taako didn’t say anything, letting Kravitz flounder until his words sputtered to a stop and he closed his eyes, obviously embarrassed. This time Taako was the one fighting off a smile. “Well wasn’t that fuckin’ adorable,” he mumbled, alcohol still having its effects on his speech, apparently. “No, it’s fine, I mean. It’d be pretty shitty if I just didn’t come home tonight, y’know? Gonna think my ass got shanghaied, sold into the infamous Vegas trafficking ring or whatever.” “You don’t strike me as someone who’s easy to kidnap,” Kravitz noticed, and this time Taako let himself laugh. “Oh trust me, even if they managed, they’d give me back. I’ve been told that I’m very annoying.” He said it like a brag, but Taako was mentally smacking himself in the forehead. He needed to stop talking. He dropped his head back against the seat and went to pop his soda open. “Mind if I?” “Go for it.” “If I don’t say names, do you still have to report it?” Taako asked. “I mean, if the guy isn’t a student or whatever, there’s no real reason to report it. What’s title nine gonna do, go Batman on their ass and drag them back to the school for punishment?” Kravitz glanced at him sideways and said, “I… suppose not. If I don’t know their name, or if they’re a student…” “They’re not,” Taako lied, and he did a pretty shabby job of doing so, but he had a feeling Kravitz would let him get away with it. “It was my asshole ex-boyfriend. I knew I shouldn’t have gone out with him, he’s, God, he’s always like this. I mean, not like this. This is new, but I figured he’d get fed up with me eventually and--” “Wait, your boyfriend did this to you?” “Ex-boyfriend,” Taako corrected. “Keep up, bubbeluh. Anyways, I was kinda asking for it, I mean--” Kravitz interrupted again with a harsh, “No.” and Taako actually flinched, startled. “I’m sorry,” Kravitz added quickly. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I just. You weren’t asking for it. That’s. That’s bullshit. It’s not your fault that he hit you.” “I mouthed off,” Taako said, raising his hands in an exaggerated shrug and pushing Kravitz’s words to the furthest corner of his mind. “I should have just let him… I mean. I don’t know.” Kravitz hesitated before speaking again, voice soft when he finally asked, “What was he trying to get you to do?” Taako felt dumb as he responded, “Go home with him. Or drive me home, or whatever, but like. I know what he’s like, okay? And he can be pretty….” “Yeah….” “Yeah….” “Are you okay?” Taako was pretty sure he was riding at the edge of a breakdown, actually. He nodded, then took a sip of his soda when he felt his throat begin to ache. “I’m fine,” he said. “Takes more than that to do me in.” Kravitz chuckled, and Taako added, “I’m very durable, y’know. My aunt used to say that I bounce when I hit the ground.” They were pulling onto campus, just then, and Kravitz navigated a winding path through the parking lot before coming to a stop in front of Taako’s dorm. He put the car into park and bit his lip, and Taako studied him for a moment, not quite ready to head inside and answer questions. He still felt dizzy. This sucked. “Want me to walk you in?” Kravitz offered, and Taako threw him a grin. “I’m a big boy, I think I’ll make it,” he replied. “Thanks for…. Thanks.” “No problem.” Taako clapped him on the shoulder, and before he could do anything stupid, he popped open the car door and heaved himself up onto the sidewalk. Kravitz waited until he got inside before driving away, and Taako told himself not to be charmed and not to get his hopes up. This was an anomaly. Kravitz was a total stick in the mud and a pain in the ass, and if tonight had taught him anything, it was that he really shouldn’t be dating right now. He flashed his ID to the security and wandered upstairs, taking his sweet time and keeping his balance on the walls. When he opened the door to his room, Lup was already there, curled up on the beanbag chair, nose in a book and pajama pants on as she settled down for the evening. “Where in the hell--” she started to say, and then dropped silent as she got a proper look at him. Taako let the door swing closed behind him and stumbled towards the sink so he could wash his face and get a good look at the damage. Lup beat him there, though, one hand coming up to grab his chin and hold him still as she ran a finger over the bruise. He hissed in a breath, and she dropped his face, mouth falling open. “What happened to you?” she snapped, already furious. “Who did this? I swear to God, Taako, point me in their direction, I’ll--” “It’s fine,” Taako said, leaning around her to wet a washcloth and press the cold water to his face. “It’s not fine,” she snapped. “Somebody hit you, I’m going to break their fucking teeth, they’ll be lucky if they--” “Lup,” Taako interrupted, and his voice cracked, and ah-- there was the breakdown he’d known he was spiraling towards. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a moment. “Please. Just….” Her arms wrapped around him, pulling him tight and tucking his face into the crook of her neck with a hand on the back of his head. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Talk later. It’s okay. It’s fine. You’re fine.” Taako wriggled his arms free and wrapped them around her in return, burying his face against her shoulder and trying to keep his breath from stuttering. They stayed there for a long time, until he started to pull away and she let him go. He changed, stripping down completely and replacing his clothes with his loosest pair of boxers and an oversized t-shirt that they’d probably stolen from Barry at some point. He let Lup pull him close again, curling up with her on the bed and feeling his still drunk head spin the room around him. Lup threw something at the light switch and turned it off in one shot, a secret skill of hers, and Taako stared into the darkness and contemplated telling the truth. Instead he said, “I met a boy tonight.” “If he’s the guy who--” Lup started to say, the fire already blazing in her voice, and Taako shook his head. “No, he’s not. He drove me home.” “Who then?” Taako sighed. “Sazed.” “That son of a bitch.” “It’s fine,” Taako murmured, and Lup squeezed him tighter. “You’re right. You’re fine. You’re okay.” He chuckled, feeling all of ten years old, like he’d snuck into her bed at a new home so she could help him fight off bad dreams. He sighed, exhausted, and she said, “Get some sleep, goofus.” He wanted to argue with her, but instead he closed his eyes, felt the room spin, and drifted off to sleep.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Shit hit the fan on Monday. Taako wasn’t there to see it happen, but sources told him it was something to watch. Screaming and punching and bleeding-- a true Mike Tyson situation. He almost didn’t believe the story when Lup told him, because… Magnus? Really? Magnus? Magnus the guy who cried that one time a puppy licked his nose when they stopped to pet it on their way to math class. Magnus who sincerely apologized for five minutes straight that time he and Lup were wrestling and he’d headbutted her in the nose. Magnus was harmless, but then again, he was the number one ranked male heavyweight in the state of Nevada. On the west coast, probably-- Taako wasn’t good about checking the rankings. Now listen, Taako wasn’t a coward. He wasn’t hiding. He was just being cautious. Taako liked to sit back and wait and let things shake out around him before he figured out his next move, and on that Monday, his next move did not include turning up to boxing practice with a black eye. He'd prefer not to face the whole group with a still shiny injury, not when they'd all pester him in curiosity and give mountains of unwarranted fighting advice. No thank you, no way Jose, Taako’s good out here. He should have gone, he realized. He should have also sworn Lup to fucking secrecy, because he couldn’t think of any other reason Magnus would go off like that. Big idiot. Who did he think he was, anyway? Getting himself into these fucked up situations. Thinking Taako needed protection. As if. Lup had burst through their door Monday night and threw her gym bag aside, bursting at the seams that “Koko you’re not gonna believe what happened, I mean he lost it, and it was like- BAM! Boom! POW!” The next morning his phone rang, bright and early, and he answered it to find Lucretia. “We need to talk,” she said, and Taako found himself at Starbucks half an hour later with a chai latte and a much more reliable version of the story. There had been some sort of argument during practice, something between Lup and Sazed that Barry had broken up and everyone had brushed off. Lup wouldn’t give any details to Lucretia when she asked, and she hadn’t mentioned anything to Taako the night before. That would be fun to investigate, but that wasn’t the main event. Things went south after practice, when a few more words were exchanged, and it was when Lup was storming off to the locker room that Magnus approached Sazed. He asked to spar, and of course, nobody thought anything of it. Magnus sparred everyone all the time without any ill effects. But not this time. This time Sazed crossed one too many lines, and the next thing Lucretia knew, she glanced up to see Sazed drop cold as Magnus landed a Herculean punch. And then he followed Sazed to the ground, and he hit him again. And again. It took Killian and Carey dragging him out of the ring to pull them apart, Magnus collapsing back against Killian heaving and glowering, blood on his gloves, Sazed groaning pitifully as Merle assessed him on the floor. “I just don’t know what came over him,” Lucretia said with a sigh. Her coffee sat untouched on the table, plastic stopper still pushed into the lid, name misspelled under the sleeve. She was wearing glasses in lieu of her usual contacts, large round frames that fit her face nicely. The skin under her eyes was darker than the rest of her, and her hands were littered with ink stains. They fidgeted as she talked. “I mean, I’ve been with this club for three years now. I’ve seen plenty of assholes overstep the line of appropriate behavior, but I mean-- Magnus has never--” “Yeah,” Taako agreed, sipping his beverage and burning his tongue. He wrinkled his nose up. “This is… this is messed up.” “I thought it had to have to do with Lup, but she is refusing to tell me anything.” Lucretia looked irritated, and Taako twisted his mouth up in a smile. Lup was deadly stubborn when she wanted to be, always had been. When they were little it was always Lup standing up for them and getting them into trouble, and it was always Taako fleeing for safety, dragging his sister with him. “Don’t know what to tell ya,” Taako said with a shrug and another burning sip. “Chalupa is a woman of mysteries.” Lucretia didn’t seem to be listening to him, though, instead staring at the table between them with a furrowed brow. When she glanced back up and met his eye, it was with a morbidly serious expression. “I’m not trying to intrude,” she started, “But if you know anything about this situation, I need you to be honest with me. I can’t imagine what would make Magnus lose his cool like that--” Either he was hallucinating, or her eyes darted specifically to his black eye and away again. She’d asked about it earlier, friendly concern, and he’d talked his way around answering her. “--But I need to know all the facts so I can fix this.” And listen, Taako knew what she was getting at. Lucretia wasn’t an idiot. There were a few too many factors dancing around to all be coincidental, but he also…. He had some pride. He had an ego he wasn’t going to survive one more sucker punch. So instead of telling her anything, he stared straight back at her and said, “Would if I could, my dude. I’m in the dark on this one.” She seemed disappointed, but she didn’t push. Taako promised he would talk to Magnus, talk to Sazed, get all the answers he could and put together the paperwork. “Within twenty-four hours,” she said as he was getting up to leave. “It’s vital that this gets done promptly. I’d do it myself, but the SCC mandates the president file this one. Promise me you’ll get it done.” “I promise,” Taako agreed.
It should come as no surprise that Taako didn’t file the paperwork. Reason #1: Taako was forgetful as shit. Reason #2: Taako doesn’t do paperwork. Reason #3: Taako couldn’t actually get himself to document what happened. He called Magnus, and the two of them skipped class so they could hide out in the corner of the student union and talk about what happened. Magnus looked miserable (“I’m not like this, I’m really not, I just lost it.” ) and at times furious, and when Taako pushed for more information, something heavy and sad settled over Magnus’s eyes. “But what did he say? ” he asked, and Magnus fidgeted for a long time before answering. “Some stuff about you,” he answered finally. “Some stuff about Lup, and… look, I know you didn’t want me to get involved in this, you made that very clear, okay? But he doesn’t get away with saying that shit. He doesn’t anyways, but especially not after--” And then he stopped. Taako sighed, kicked back, and glanced off across the dining area. “Lup told you what happened?” he asked. Magnus practically gulped. “Yeah.” Taako felt like a deflating balloon. His eye throbbed gently when he thought about it, but it had downgraded from red and swollen and angry to dark and purple and awful to look at. He couldn’t be mad about the situation-- about Lup telling Magnus, and about Magnus defending him or whatever-- even though he wanted to. Lup would give him another lecture about how he needed to learn to trust people, and Taako would supply some excellent anecdotal arguments for why they’d already learned not to, and it would turn into a whole thing, and Taako was having a bad enough week already. He couldn’t think about this. It was making his head hurt. “You didn’t kill him, did you?” he asked, and Magnus nearly choked on the bite of food in his mouth. “No!” he gasped, “No, no, what, of course not, I--” he stopped mid-word when Taako started to laugh, then a heavy hand smacked Taako upside the head and knocked him a bit sideways. Taako laughed harder. “You asshole. You fucking asshole. See if I defend your honor again.” The phrasing of that sent Taako over the edge, cackling maniacally until Magnus’s scowl broke into a grin and he huffed out a few laughs. “Yeah, yeah, muck it up.” “My knight in shining armor,” Taako said, kicking Magnus under the table. Magnus retaliating by throwing a shrimp from his lunch at Taako’s head, which flew over his shoulder and smacked into the shoulder of the girl sitting adjacent to them. They left very quickly after that, Magnus apologizing the whole way while dragging Taako, who was doubled over in laughter, away from the furious undergraduate. So Magnus was fine, if not allegedly homicidal, and while Taako couldn’t get himself to dial-up Sazed and get his side of the story, he got all the medical information he needed from Barry. Barry had escorted Sazed to the student health center when he stirred back to life, just a few seconds after going out. Lucretia had been adamant about calling an ambulance, but Sazed had upright refused. He spat some blood out with his mouthguard, shooed Merle away from him, and dragged his ass to the health center. “Mild concussion,” Barry had reported. “It’s a miracle his nose wasn’t broken, but he’s beat to hell. Face, ribs-- it’s not pretty.” He’d cringed at his own explanation, muttering something about how he ‘didn’t feel sorry for him anyway,’ and then he’d tried to shift gears. He shot Taako a sympathetic look and asked, “Hey, are you like… are you okay?” And yeah, Taako wasn’t talking about his feelings with Barold fucking Bluejeans. So he didn’t file the paperwork. He sat at his computer and stared at the questions and thought about sending Magnus off to the executioner. Then he closed out the page, shut his laptop, and took a nap. When Lucretia asked if it was done, he lied, and he prayed to Merle’s invisible man in the sky that this wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.
“I can’t believe this is coming back to bite me in the ass,” Taako lamented, throwing his head back dramatically and sighing heavily enough for his soul to leave his body. Kravtiz stood next to him, pinching the bridge of his nose, and shaking his head slowly. “Taako, I need you to take this seriously,” he said, and Taako frowned at him, struck suddenly with a question. “Do you... is that a British accent?” he asked. Kravitz sighed again. “Yes. Barely. Please stay on topic.” “That’s weird as hell. Are you British?” “Not what we’re here to talk about,” Kravitz reminded, and then, “My mother is, yes.” Taako nodded, relishing in this new information. Kravitz had texted him on Saturday to check-in, and while Taako hadn’t meant to start a conversation, Kravtiz was really easy to talk to. They’d been texting all week, a nice escape from the boxing club's drama, up until Kravitz showed up on Friday during practice and pulled Taako into the hallway. Apparently they had a big, serious meeting coming. Him and Kravtiz and Lucretia and the faculty in charge of the sports club council, who were less than pleased with the entire situation. Sazed had gone over their heads and filed a complaint, and the faculty were furious. Add that to the fact that Taako hadn’t filed that stupid report, and the amount of trouble they were in was phenomenal. Kravtiz had come there to warn him, and he was acting very grim and cryptic about the entire situation. And yeah, the situation sucked. “Okay, run it by me again,” Taako said, and Kravtiz rubbed a hand over his face before answering. “Sazed went to my boss and said that Magnus beat the hell out of him, which is easy to believe. He’s bruised all to hell and has a note from the health center. My boss went looking for an incident report, and found out that you never filed one. He thinks you guys are trying to cover the whole thing up, and Sazed is talking about taking it to conduct. Worst case scenario, the club gets shut down, or Magnus gets expelled.” This whole thing was far from kosher. Taako might have been freaking out a little. He forced a laugh into his voice and said, “Well damn, you don’t pull any punches, do you?” Kravitz looked far from amused. Taako cringed. “Right, too soon. Okay, so… so what do I do next? How the hell do I fix this thing?” Kravitz leaned back against the wall and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Talk with Lucretia,” he said, “Make sure you’re both on the same page with this. Just… they’re going to have a lot of questions, okay?” “Love it,” Taako murmured. He definitely did not love it. “Magnus is not getting expelled over this.” When Kravitz looked over at him, his eyes were sad. “There are rules in place to keep people safe,” he said, sounding reluctant as he did it. “If a guy on the hockey team gets in a fight on the ice, they get benched, but with you guys… you’re trained fighters. If one of your guys goes off like that, it’s serious.” “They also train to defend themselves,” Taako countered. “It’s a two-way street, my dude, shouldn’t that, like, cancel out or something?” The look on Kravtiz’s face told him that it didn’t. He said, “Try and prove it wasn’t intentional, okay? And pretend we didn’t have this talk. My boss wanted to surprise you guys on Monday, so like….” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll keep you outta trouble, don’t get all nervous about it.” Taako waved him off with a loose wrist and earned himself the slightest bit of a smile out of Kravitz. He bid goodbye after that, claiming work to get done in the library, and Taako turned back to the closed gym door. His hand was on the handle when Kravitz called out to him again. He asked, “Hey! Is Sazed the one who…?” He trailed off and reached up to tap gingerly near his own eye. Taako should have told him to go to hell. He didn’t know him well enough to tell him that shit. That, and the whole title nine disaster, and while Taako would love to see Sazed get crushed under the hammer of justice he figured Magnus had done well enough. He said, “You know I can’t tell you that,” though there wasn’t any venom in his voice, and it definitely wasn’t a no. Kravitz regarded him for a long moment, thoughts flickering through his facial expressions, before he nodded. “I’ll do my best to help you fix this,” Kravitz said eventually. “Magnus is a good guy.” And then he was gone.
The meeting with the faculty never came the way Kravitz foretold. Instead, every club member received a very formal email with the date, time, and location of the Disciplinary Hearing they were invited to. Taako also got a very serious phone call from Kravitz, who had his faculty advisors on speaker with him, about the situation and what was going to be done, and it was very silly to pretend to be work colleagues after texting Kravitz a joke about Davvy Jones (Daddy Jones, Taako was a genius) barely five minutes earlier. He’d gotten to tell Lucretia about the situation before she got the email, at least, so while she was furious with him, it wasn’t exactly unforgivable. The two of them were alone in the hallway outside of the room of the hearing, waiting for the whole thing to get started. Lucretia had shown up at his dorm to collect him and made him show up with her half an hour early, ‘just in case,’ whatever the hell that meant. She was obviously nervous-- pacing, tapping her foot, chewing on her lip. Magnus had come with them, but after five minutes of waiting around, he’d announced he was going to puke and ran off to the restroom. A group of others were joining later-- Lup and Barry and Merle claimed they were coming for emotional support, Killian and Carey as witnesses. Sazed was going to be there, and Taako wasn’t looking forward to it. He was going to have to roll crazy high deception checks to pull off what he wanted to do, and even if they did believe his lies he had no idea what the consequences were. Expulsion, maybe, but fuck that noise. He could just go get a job on the strip and wait around for a year to finish his degree, or just move on without a degree. He didn’t need a degree to get a job as a chef. He’d only bothered with it in the first place because of his scholarship, and well… he couldn't let Lup go to college without him. But Lup was going away to the police academy in less than a year, and it was time for Taako to get his shit figured out. So expulsion wouldn’t be the end of the world. Not for him. For Magnus, yes. Magnus had people back home who cared about this hullabaloo. He had people to disappoint. He also had dreams of opening his own gym one day, maybe, and he’d been fretting over it the entire week. He can't get a job as a coach if he gets saddled with assault charges. The whole situation was an utter disaster, but Taako really ought to be used to things going to hell at this point. Besides, this was his own mess. He was responsible for cleaning it up. The only thing he had to do was convince Lucretia. There were ten minutes till the meeting when he finally worked up the nerve to lead her off to a side room for a quick conversation. “Listen,” he said. “I’m really gonna need you to trust me today.” “Like I trusted you to do the paperwork?” she asked, apparently still salty. Taako groaned, annoyed, and stooped to pleading. “Please,” he said. “I already got Killian to agree to this, but if we all don’t use the same story, this isn’t gonna fucking work. I need you to back me up on this one, Lucretia.” Lucretia crossed her arms and looked rather unhappy about it as she asked, “We’re going to lie to the council?” He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we really are. Sazed said some shit to me, unrelated kind of, about how it would be his word against mine. And well, he’s right. It is. But they’re believing my word on this one.” He was almost certain Lucretia was going to say no, and he tried to brace himself for it, until Lucretia let out a heavy sigh, straightened her back, and looked him in the eye. “Fine,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “Tell me the plan.” He did, and they returned to the hallway to wait. Kravitz was the first to arrive, and he was wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a grey blazer this time. Taako was starting to wonder if his goth jokes were actually a thing. He looked nervous, and Taako considered telling him his plan before deciding it would be better to leave him in the dark on this one. He didn’t know if Kravitz was any good at lying, and he already had the guy on his side anyway. He did try to make light of the situation, though. When Magnus rejoined them, Taako clapped both him and Kravitz on the shoulder and said, “It’ll be fine. They’ll drag us in there, give us a spanking, and it’ll all be over,” and he was absolutely delighted with the look that passed over Kravitz’s face. He made it a goal to embarrass him on the regular, just to see that face. He grinned to himself, Lucretia shook her head, and it was time to go in.
Taako had expected something a little more serious. Hard oak tables and dark walls and a judge and jury frowning over him. Not a brightly lit conference room with a handful of folding tables and some office chairs. Not a couple of grown-ups in matching red polo shirts and khaki pants. The tables were arranged in a U shape, with Sazed on one side, Taako and Magnus on the other, and the board in the tables between them. Lucretia did a good job of concealing any of her anxiety over the situation, while Kravitz’s facial expression suggested that he was ready to throw hands right there. It was a little endearing. The faculty all looked gravely serious as Kravitz stood and called the meeting to order. That scrawny kid from last time-- Lewis? Lucas? Something-- reminded the room that while Lucretia was sitting with the board, she was too close to the situation to vote at the end of the meeting, and would only speak as a witness. She nodded, Sazed glared daggers at Taako across the tables, and the meeting began. Taako’s own eye was nearly healed, still a little brown and green and awful, but it was nothing compared to Sazed. Sazed had a black eye, a swollen nose, and a fat lip. It didn’t look like the skin had broke, spectacularly-- apparently, those helmets actually did some good-- but his words came out a bit impeded by the busted lip. He told his version of the story, about how Magnus was already pissed at him before all of this started, and about how he ‘just went crazy ’ in the ring. They listened. They asked some questions. Then Kravitz turned to Taako’s side of the room and said, “Magnus, would you like to defend yourself.” That was his cue. Taako sat a little straighter, and as Magnus was opening his mouth to speak, he said, “Actually, Magnus doesn’t have to defend himself. He didn’t do anything. I did.” The silence that settled over the room would have turned to ice if left for any longer. It was Lucas who broke it in the end, his horrible nasally voice chiming in, “What?” It was time to go for all the marbles. He prayed for a nat-20 deception roll, raised his chin a little, and said, “Sazed is lying. I beat him up, not Magnus.” It was a glorious thing, getting to see Kravitz look that absolutely gobsmacked barely ten minutes after seeing him totally flustered. Taako was soaking it up. He went on to say, “Sazed and I fought. I told Lucretia I would fill out the paperwork, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to turn myself in, but Magnus can’t get expelled for something I did, so.” He shrugged, satisfied. Out of nowhere, Sazed burst out, “You expect them to believe that bullshit!?” “Might I remind the room to keep their language professional!” Lucas squeaked. “It’s the truth,” Taako countered. “You made up the Magnus story because you’re embarrassed.” “What are you talking about!?” “There’s witnesses. They saw the whole thing. Ask them.” They did. Killian went first, describing how she’d been wrapping her knee on the edge of the ring when it went down, described jumping into the ring and pulling them apart, how she’d had to carry Taako out of the ring to get him to chill, "but it wasn’t hard since he's pretty little." Taako was kind of stung by that, but she was doing him a favor, so he didn’t have any room to be mad. He just sat there and did his best to look ashamed of himself as Lucretia described the same sort of situation. After Lucretia’s testimony, Sazed burst out, “He doesn’t even know how to box!” The council turned their attention back to Taako. “You are new to the club this semester, are you not?” one of them asked. “My sister has been teaching me. She’s been practicing since freshman year.” “And you practice, now? Is that how you got the shiner?” Taako considered lying. It would be a very convenient lie, even though the “shiner” is what caused this whole mess from the get-go. He could say he got it practicing, and that would serve as solid proof that he did, in fact, practice. But no, that was a powerful card he didn’t want to reveal just yet. “No, it’s not,” he said. “But I do practice. Our treasurer has been working with me a lot this semester.” “That's me! Yes, I have!” Merle chimed from the sidelines, and Lucas’s eye twitched. “No comments from the peanut gallery, please.” The conversation went on, unfolding question by question, with enraged outbursts from Sazed and bald-faced lies from Taako. They were eating it up. He couldn’t believe how well this was going for him. They asked if Magnus had anything to do with this at all, and Taako confirmed that he did not. They nodded. After another outburst from Sazed, something along the lines of “This idiot shouldn't even be the president!” as Lucas was squawking, “Professional language!”, Kravitz lost his patience, slammed his hand on the table, and snapped, “Would you shut the fuck up already!?” “Don’t curse!” Lucas cried, and one of the faculty snapped, “Kravitz.” They both dropped silent. There was one final question. “You’ve yet to explain to us why you acted so violently towards him.” And that was the hardest one. Taako wanted to be blunt. He wanted to open with the words ‘we fucked,’ just to see everyone’s reactions, just to make Lucas blow his final fuze. Even so, Sazed hadn't really been 'out' while they were dating. They hadn't been hiding, but he'd always been shy about it. Didn't ever want to come across too 'obvious.' Didn't want anyone to look at him and 'know.' And sure, Sazed may have been the no-good, sleazy, abusive asshole that threw hands and slurs and tried to bed down with his sister, but... but Taako was better than that. Taako didn't consider himself a good person, not by a long shot, but he knew that reputation could mean a lot to a person. So he was better than that. The story worked just fine anyways. He said, “We were friends, but we had a disagreement. Then we both tried for the presidency, and he was pissed that I won instead of him. We tried hanging out again last week, and there was a fight.” “A fight?” “He hit me,” Taako said, motioning to his still bruised eye. “When we sparred on Monday, I lost my temper. That’s it. That’s all that happened.” “So it was revenge?” It really was. “Are there any more questions?” There weren’t any. They took a break, telling everyone to grab water while the voting was decided. As soon as the break was called, one of the faculty took Kravitz by the arm and practically marched him into the hallway, and when they came back in a few minutes later, he looked thoroughly chastised. Probably for the comment he made to Sazed. Taako didn’t care. He kind of loved him for it. He would have sworn Lucretia didn’t take a breath the entire time Lucas counted the votes out, and what was only a few seconds felt like literal hours. Taako realized he was holding his breath too. He made himself relax, folded his hands on the table, stopped himself from fidgeting. For God’s sake, he wasn’t twelve. “With a vote of four to one,” Lucas announced. He used Taako’s full, legal name for this last part, and that was just great, another secret his friends were in on. Lucas read Taako’s name with his horrible, grating voice and said, “...you are officially banned from the University Boxing Club.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Taako’s week was not very Gucci. In fact, his week was reaching critically low levels Gucci, if he was being honest with himself. Two weeks ago he hadn’t thought it could get worse-- first the flu, then all of the Sazed nonsense, and finally the trial. And now, when Taako was supposed to feel happy and relieved, the best he could muster was apathetic and exhausted. The trial came and went, and there’d been nothing spectacular about the weekend that followed. He’d let Lup try and cheer him up with a twin night, and he’d pretended to soak it in when Magnus showered him with gratitude for taking the blame on the whole thing. Magnus bought him a brownie, and Taako only made a few comments about how he could have baked one himself that tasted better. Lup and Magnus teamed up on him, and Taako laughed good-naturedly as the two loudly and dramatically cursed Sazed's name to the ends of the earth. Barry showed up and joined in, going as far as to check Amazon for cheap dartboards so they could pin his picture to it and enact some real 1980's-movie levels of catharsis. It wasn’t like Taako had liked the club in the first place. He wasn’t a boxer, and he wasn’t made for student leadership, thank you very much. Too much work. Not his idea of a good time. Even so, when Monday rolled around and he stood on the lowest seat of the bleachers to give his resignation, he had to put real effort into repressing the discomfort that swelled in his chest. It was all very reminiscent of their very first meeting back in August, and he once again found himself fumbling through the proper words for stepping down from his position. These people had all been strangers back then, though, just a faceless crowd of Lup's lame-ass jock buddies. They were still lame-ass jocks, but they were lame-ass jocks he'd shared busses and hotel rooms with, shared meals with, shared inside jokes with. Even if he wouldn't go as far as considering most of them friends yet, they were still friendly. It had been... well, it had almost been nice. And now it was over. Whatever. He handed the club over to Lucretia and dodged questions about the nature of his retirement. “Ask Sazed,” was the only answer he gave before walking out of the gym and letting the door slam shut at his back. The people who knew the truth were also the people who knew the lie, and it wasn’t a story that Taako felt the need to share. Whatever the club came to understand about the situation was fine with him, it wasn’t like he cared. He figured he’d be happy with his newly acquired free time-- six hours a week that he didn't have to be at practice, countless hours that he didn't have to spend on meetings and paperwork and emails and phone calls. But Monday afternoon turned out to be less productive than he’d hoped for, less enjoyable even. He took a nap. He watched some Netflix. He didn’t feel amazing. Tuesday was an absolute dumpster fire, but he plowed through class and catering and work. Come Tuesday night, four in the morning, he collapsed into his bed more exhausted than he was accustomed to. When his alarm went off four hours later, he ignored it. It wasn’t worth it to go to class and not pay attention, to try and be friendly when he knew Magnus was going to be shooting him those stupid, nervous glances out of the corners of his eyes. He was handling him, like something delicate that might fall apart or something. As if. This hadn’t broken him the first time. Sazed Disaster Round Two: Electric Boogaloo was nothing in comparison to the mess that ended their seven-month emotional cage fight. Regardless, Wednesday was bad. He feigned a headache to get Lup and his catering instructor off his case, and when Lup disappeared for boxing practice Taako found the afternoon stretching on far too long and quiet. He didn’t get out of bed on Thursday, and he did a pitiful job of convincing Lup that he was just sick or something, really, just leave it alone. He turned down her and Barry’s lunch and dinner offers, gave an inadequate explanation for why he was calling off work again, and put his earbuds in to tune it out until he could fall asleep. Friday, much like everything else it seemed, totally sucked ass. He didn’t go to his math discussion. He didn’t go to catering, and it seemed that while he didn't get expelled with this whole boxing club disaster, he might get himself booted from the culinary program anyways. Wouldn’t that be perfectly ironic? Earlier in the week he'd put his phone on airplane mode and ignored it ever since. Following the trial, and the subsequent announcement on Monday, it seemed like everyone was interested in talking to him. The Fightboys group chat, and his chat with the lovebirds fired off endlessly, and even the thought of mustering the energy to keep up with those conversations made Taako feel a little bit number. Kravitz texted him, which was sweet, but Taako couldn't think of anything interesting to say. Magnus texted privately, as did Lucretia, but Taako just silenced all of them and hid his phone under his pillow to forget that all existed. His own company wasn't any better, it seemed, and when the dorm room got too quiet Friday afternoon around 3:30 pm he dragged his ass out of bed and shuffled off to get himself a coffee. He was in line at the Student Union wearing the first set of clean clothes he'd found on the floor-- beach ball socks, Barry’s slip-on sport sandals, a pair of Lulu’s basketball shorts, and a wrinkled boxing hoodie-- when someone tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Hey, you’re on the boxing team?” Taako looked down at himself, and a curtain of unwashed hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back off his face and realized when he turned around to face the kid that the hoodie he was wearing was actually his own, his nickname and the title of president printed right there on his chest. “Oh cool,” the guy said, noticing the same thing, “You’re the president, that’s awesome.” It was not awesome. Taako opened his mouth to say so, to explain to this annoying guy in an air force ROTC uniform and a lame cropped haircut, that he had never heard of the boxing club, had no affiliation, would like to be left alone, thanks. But the kid had his hands up in the worst guard Taako had ever seen in his life, bounced a bit on his toes like he was fighting some kind of ghost right there in line at the campus Starbucks. Taako sighed, and without really thinking about the consequences of his actions, he reached out and grabbed the guy’s wrists. “That's pitiful, what on Earth are you doing ?” he asked, moving the guy’s hands into a better position. His uniform had a tiny velcro patch on the breast that said “Avi,” and Taako was grateful that they were at least both wearing damning identifiers that day. It was only fair. “Keep them here, but relax. Don’t clench your fists until you need to, and you need to relax your shoulders, seriously. The army taught you to fight like this?” “Air force,” Avi corrected. “And no, I’m um. I’m new. I don’t do those classes till basic.” “Right,” Taako clicked his tongue and pulled his earbuds from his ears with a sigh. “When does the club practice?” Avi asked him, still bouncing around like an idiot. Weren’t soldiers supposed to be lame and serious? “As if I don’t have enough on my plate, right? But I’ve always wanted to learn to box, y’know? It’s so badass.” Taako considered passing on Lucretia’s email address and calling it a day-- not his club, not his problem. Then again, doing that would leave Taako to grab his coffee and go. And then what? He had no plans. No energy to do the homework that was piling up around him. No desire to watch anything online or do anything else, for that matter. He had nothing to do, so he might as well waste half an hour escorting Avi to the gym. “They’re practicing now, actually, if you have the time,” he offered with a weary sigh, admitting defeat. He couldn’t go in-- that was strictly forbidden-- but he could open the door for him, maybe. That would be fine. Nobody would even notice he was there. “Really?” Avi asked, excited, and Taako ducked out of line and inclined his head towards the door. “Sure, whatever, nothing better to do.” It was a good ten-minute walk from the student union to the gym on the dark side of campus, and the late November wind was harsh and biting. He kind of regretted skipping the coffee, lacking its warmth and weight in his hands. He shoved them deep in his pockets instead and did his best to answer Avi’s questions about the club without sounding entirely like an asshole. He wondered silently to himself about what day it was, and how soon Thanksgiving was, and whether or not he and Lup ought to do anything about it. When they reached the gym practice was already in full swing. He could hear the shitty, bass-heavy workout music clear into the hallway, could hear a few of the guys practicing their stupid ‘battle cries,’ an idea Magnus had come up with-- and he hesitated at the door when they reached it. Avi didn’t need to know anything about Taako’s fucked up situation, though, so he only let himself idle for a few seconds before yanking the door open and poking his head in. Merle was standing nearby, taking attendance on a clipboard, and Taako waved him over with a flapping hand. “Avi’s new,” he said, all but shoving Avi at Merle when he appeared in the doorway. “Merle will give you the grand tour or whatever,” he said, then spun on heel to sulk back off down the hallway. Avi said, “Where are you going?” And Merle called out a, “Hold on a second!” Taako sighed as loud as he could manage, sagging back against the wall and trying to demonstrate that he had very little patience for whatever Merle was up to. The old man disappeared into the gym for a moment or two, Avi in tow, and he reappeared alone a few minutes later wearing a jacket and a hat and dangling a set of keys from his fingers. “Have to swing by my place. The equipment order came in, and we decided to just send it there after the mailroom disaster last time.” The mailroom disaster had been absolutely and utterly ridiculous, and Taako felt absolutely no guilt for yelling at the faculty who ‘accidentally’ returned five hundred dollars worth of new gloves to the manufacturer. “Need a strong pair of arms to help me load it up,” Merle added, and Taako shot him an incredulous look. “You’ll want to ask, like, literally anyone else, my guy,” he argued, but Merle wasn’t taking no for an answer. Taako didn’t fight him too hard on it. If nothing else it was a good way to fill a few hours, and a good way to snoop around Merle’s house, cause why not. He still made sure to look absolutely resentful of the situation as he dragged his feet down the hallway and into the parking lot, shivering at the wind and wishing he’d worn something a little warmer. His hair whipped all around his face, and once they settled in Merle’s van he stole a bobby pin out of the cupholder and used it to twirl his bangs up and pin them up on top of his head. His hair felt greasy and heavy in his fingers, and it made Taako ache for a bath. He realized with a few slow, surprised blinks that he hadn't taken the time to shower at all that week. And then he'd gone out in public like this. Today sucked. At least it was just Merle. Merle’s house was a condo/apartment type deal, up two flights of stairs and sharing an elevated front stoop with another door, both located atop two identical units below them. Inside it was messy, but maybe not in the way Taako would have expected. It looked… half-packed almost, with cardboard boxes lining the walls and spilling out contents. No shelves or any kind of real storage anywhere, and the space that might have been used as shelves-- window sills, the table, the countertop-- was covered in house plants. “Grand tour!” Merle announced and stopped right in the middle of the room. “Living room,” he said, and then pointed to three doors in turn. “Bathroom. Bedroom. Closet.” He flapped his hand at a tiny patch of linoleum, a microwave, and a stove from 1973. “Kitchen,” he said, then kicked a still-sealed box that seemed to be in use as a coffee table. “Heavy shit to carry, let’s go.” “Hold on now,” Taako said, inching around Merle and stepping further into the tiny space. There was a box open nearby with frames stacked on top, and there was no way Taako was missing that quality humiliation opportunity. He picked up the one on top, found a picture of a small family-- Merle, younger, but obviously himself in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, standing next to a half-grinning woman, a young girl under the woman’s arm and a little boy held on Merle’s hip. “Huh,” he said, then looked past the picture at the stack below it. The next one off the top was a much nicer frame-- silver instead of wood-- showing Merle in a tux and that same young woman in a wedding dress. Taako opened his mouth to make some kind of remark, not really thinking of it, but was stopped when the picture he was holding was snatched from his hands. “That’s enough of that,” Merle snapped, tossing the family photo back on the stack. Taako flinched at the crack of glass. “Did it just--” “Just grab the box and come on. Get the hell out of my house, kid.” Normally Taako didn’t tolerate being told what to do, but Merle was the guy who’d been teaching him how to fight. It was probably smart not to push too far, for safety's sake. He rolled his eyes and crouched down, grabbed an end of the box, and heaved it into the air. It was awkward work, trying to keep the box balanced as they hauled the thing down the stairs, Barry’s stupid sandals half-falling off the whole time and Merle, for some reason, at the lower position on the stairs despite their already significant height difference. “That doesn’t exactly look like a family-living situation,” Taako pointed out when they reached the bottom of the stairs safely. “That isn’t exactly any of your business,” Merle snapped back, giving him a dangerous glare over the top of the box, only his crazy eyebrows visible. Taako smirked a bit, having fun, and said, “Shouldn’t’a let me in your house then, amigo. Can’t go keepin’ secrets on an MTV Cribs tour, y’know.” “I can actually.” “I mean, wife and kids? You don’t seem like that kinda fella-” Taako faltered when he was suddenly the only person supporting the weight of the box, which Merle shoved at him roughly, and Taako stumbled to hold onto. He lost balance, dropping the thing over sideways and falling sprawled on top of it. It didn’t break open by some great feat of luck, but Taako did slam his knee into the ground and lose one of those stupid shoes. “What the fuck!?” he snapped, and Merle looked unconcerned as he pulled out his car keys and started back up the stairs. He tossed the keys onto the box next to Taako. “Load it up,” he ordered. “Forgot something.” Then he stomped the rest of the way up the stairs, muttering under his breath about ‘ya try to cheer someone up, Jesus Christ, son of a-.’ Taako shoved himself upright and looked down at the box, rubbed his sore knee and wondered how the fuck he was going to manage this by himself. He decided he wasn’t, instead sitting on top of the box and leaning his elbows on his knees, pulling out his phone and sifting through the ocean of text messages and emails he’d been neglecting. It made him feel a little sick. He put his phone away. Merle came stomping down the stairs a few minutes later, griping as he went. “I thought I told ya to do something,” he snapped, and Taako crossed his arms. “This is a bachelor pad, huh?” he said. “Wonder the family didn’t stick around with that charming attitude of yours.” Merle’s face grew stormier, and Taako knew he crossed a line. He didn’t apologize, but he did get up to start shoving the box down the sidewalk towards Merle’s van. Merle stood and watched for a moment, until Taako tripped over himself and nearly fell face-first on the sidewalk. The box had to weigh more than he did, and it wasn’t exactly designed to slide on concrete. Merle came back over then, swatted Taako’s hands out of the way. He stooped down to pick up one end of the box, and Taako panted wearily before crouching and grabbing the other side. “Glad we’re both assholes then,” Merle said, straining a bit as they heaved the thing into the air. “Hey, speak for yourself, buddy. Taako isn’t keen on helping people move shit. This is like, saint-level behavior, my guy.” Merle snorted a laugh, and Taako balanced the box against his hip as he struggled with the old latch on Merle’s trunk. They got the box loaded with minimal struggling after that, and Taako slammed the door shut and collapsed against it. “I am never going anywhere with you again,” he complained, and Merle laughed. He added, “What was all that you were going on about? I don’t need ‘cheered up.’” “That’s not what your look-a-like said,” Merle said, and Taako rolled his eyes with irritation at the nicknames Merle had taken to. “Lup is delusional,” he replied. Merle shook his head, “You’re acting weird, kid. Everyone’s noticed.” “I haven’t been around to act weird, I haven’t seen you chucklefucks all week!” “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Taako narrowed his eyes at the old man and sat heavily on the back bumper, van bouncing a bit under him. He braced his hands on his knees and leaned in to study Merle suspiciously. “Merle… I got kicked out.” He spoke slowly, half-convinced Merle was having some kind of stroke or whatever. He was old enough for that, right? “Real upstanding thing that was, too. Didn’t think you had it in you.” Taako scoffed, and Merle held his arms out. “Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t exactly strike me as selfless!” “Yeah, yeah, keep your opinions to yourself, old man. Are you always this charming, or am I just special?” Merle hummed, said, “Special, I’d say,” and Taako was officially done with this conversation. “Alright, that’s it, take me back to campus so I can go to sleep and forget this happened. I feel truly traumatized, so thanks for that, I guess.” He went around the van and hopped into the passenger seat, kicking his feet up on the dash and crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant teenager. He knew what he looked like. He couldn't care less. Merle climbed into the driver’s seat shortly after, and they were quiet as they headed off towards the freeway. Eventually, he broke the silence and said, “You know you have a lot of friends there that care about you,” and Taako nearly swallowed his own tongue. “Excuse me?” “You don’t have to take shit from anyone. Got people to teach ya to fight, hell, got people to fight for you. Magnus showed you that much.” Taako narrowed his eyes and said nothing, and Merle broke the silence again a few moments later by saying, “You know that’s not how relationships are supposed to work, right?” and Taako knew exactly what he was talking about, and he was not having that conversation. “Alright,” he snapped. “Get off my dick, I swear to God, I don’t need your wisdom or whatever. It’s none of your business anyway.” “Can’t I try and help a friend who’s going through it?” “I’m not going through anything!” Taako protested, kicking his feet down and sitting up properly. “Oh come on, kid, look at yourself.” Taako did, and he felt his stomach churn again, but that still didn’t make it Merle’s business. He spat, “Fuck you,” and then, “One more word and I will throw myself out of the car.” Merle held his hands up in a placating gesture, temporarily letting go of the steering wheel. He said, “You don’t ask about my family, and I won’t ask about this shit. Fair deal?” Taako grumbled and crossed his arms again. “Fine. Deal. Don’t kill us on the way home.” He slouched in his seat and pulled his phone back out. They didn’t talk the entire ride back to campus. Club practice was over when they got there, and Merle grabbed a few of the boxers who were milling around outside the gym to carry the box in for them. He tried to rope Taako into something else, but Taako made quick work of running off when Merle’s back was turned, pulling his hood up and hiding in it until he got back to his dorm room. Lup and Barry were tangled up when Taako got back, Barry sitting on her desk with Lup between his legs, the two of them shirtless except for Lup’s sports bra. They broke apart, Barry having the good sense to look embarrassed while Lup simply hopped onto the desk next to him and settled her hand on his knee. “You went out,” she said, and she sounded a little too happy for Taako’s liking. He rolled his eyes, collapsed into bed, and pulled his earbuds out of his pocket. “If you’re gonna get nasty or whatever, try and keep it down. Earbuds only work so hard,” he griped, shoving them in his ears and pulling his blanket back up while Lup cackled and Barry sputtered, somehow still embarrassed after several years of dealing with the twins. What a doofus. He didn’t notice much of whatever happened next, didn’t have to with his earbuds blocking out sound and his blanket properly cocooning him. He didn’t pay attention when Lup and Barry disappeared into the bathroom together, probably to share a shower or something grossly romantic like that. They wouldn’t actually go at it with him there, though. They were twins. They had at least a few boundaries to fall back on. Plus Lup was too polite, and Barry was too bashful, but even if they weren’t Taako probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He didn’t mean to fall asleep, but the sun was down and the room was dark when he opened his eyes a short while later. The bed shifted, and he glanced over his shoulder to find Lup crawling under the covers with him. “Barry go home?” he asked, voice rough, and she nodded. She nudged him a little, until he scooted closer to the wall to give her room, then tucked herself up against his back and wrapped her arm around his middle. “You smell really bad,” she whispered, voice uncharacteristically soft the way it got whenever she was being careful around him. He was too tired to call her out on it. He shrugged lazily. “Sorry.” He could hear the faintest music floating through the air, and he wriggled his arm free to unearth his phone from under the blankets. Thirty percent battery and still going strong. He closed the music app, tossed the earbuds aside, and flipped through his text messages, trying to suppress a sigh as he did so. “Who’s Kravitz?” “Guy from the council meeting.” “Nerd?” “Braids.” Lup hummed thoughtfully. He felt the pillow move as she nodded. “Goth kid,” she clarified. “Big sexy.” “That’s the one,” Taako replied, voice too flat to pass for normal. Lup’s arm tightened around him, hugging him a bit closer, and he relaxed into it with a tired sigh. He let his eyes slip shut, feeling sleep tugging at him again, and he wondered how much sleep it was going to take before he stopped feeling so bone tired. This was bogus. This whole week was bogus, and his mental state was bogus, and the fact that Lup was freaked out by his behavior enough that Merle caught onto it was bogus. Merle was bogus too, fuck ‘im. He was fine, helpful at tournaments and good with the club, but Taako wasn’t looking for relationship advice from grouchy old men with mysterious home lives. “You know there’s other clubs you could join if you wanted to,” Lup said when Taako was just on the verge of falling asleep. He hummed sleepily, refused to open his eyes. “Oh great, another group of dummies to annoy me,” he replied, wincing at the pinch he received to his upper arm. It wouldn’t be worth it to join a different club. It hadn’t been about the club anyways. It hadn’t been the six hours or more a week he spent on the dumb extra-curricular. Taako didn’t know what it was, just that he’d started to feel comfortable, like being there made sense in a way, like he might have been starting to make friends or whatever. He didn’t need to go out and try again with a whole other group of people; he’d barely liked this group of people that he’d had. What was the point of joining a club that Lup wasn’t in, anyways? Besides, he was graduating in six months. He could go without, thanks but no thanks. Lup said something else, voice tipping up at the end in a question, but Taako was too far gone-- sucked in by the exhaustion and the weight of his blanket and the warmth of his sister’s arms around him. Bad week, he told himself, on the verge of sleep. Bad week. Bad three weeks. Absolute shit show of a situation, but he’d start over on Monday and he’d be fine. Finals would come, and then winter break, and his final semester would be so busy he wouldn’t even have time to worry about the boxing club anyways. Just had to make it till Monday.
Taako's plan for "making it until Monday" consisted of little else than lying in bed until he regained the motivation to move. If he didn't find it by Monday, he'd suck it up and pull himself together, he figured. Two extra days of rest never killed anybody. His plans were interrupted rather abruptly, though, because that's something sisters were great at doing. Taako woke up Saturday morning to Lup sitting on his stomach and waving a plastic cup of frozen coffee over his nose. “Today is going to be a good day,” she chirped, and she held the coffee just out of reach until he agreed to roll out of bed and brush his teeth. Fair trade, he figured, mouth-watering a little at the frozen concoction in his hand and the realization that he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. He brushed his teeth, scrubbed some water over his eyes, and even ran his fingers through his hair before nabbing the coffee and collapsing back into bed. She didn’t make him move again, instead propping herself up with his pillows against the wall and setting the laptop up between them. Taako was fairly certain she had more important things to be doing-- she usually worked Saturday mornings, and if not work, she definitely had school work to do. She’d signed up for biochemistry, keeping up her and Barry's tradition of taking impossible science classes together-- for fun-- despite being a criminal justice major. The class had been a major time suck so far. With only three weeks left in the semester she ought to have been pouring all of her time and energy into it, not because she was struggling, but because she was a nerd like that. Taako had the lamest friends, sister included, but he had to admit Barry's biochem diagrams were pretty neat to look at. It wasn’t until well into the afternoon that Lup finally clambered out of bed, ruffling his hair none-too-gently as she got up. “You should shower,” she suggested in the voice that meant it was more of a command than anything. “Be right back.” Then she disappeared out the door. Taako did not get up and shower. He slouched a little further and pulled his phone out, flipping through the messages he was neglecting. He opened the chat with Kravitz, sighed forlornly to himself at the most recent text from Thursday, a bumbling apology for texting so many times, saying he hoped Taako was doing okay and that he was sorry for how the meeting went down. Son of a bitch. Kravitz was beautiful and charming and responsible and kind, and Taako was ignoring him. He backtracked, opened the messages from Magnus, and found himself frowning. ‘There in ten’ read one from twenty minutes ago, and then ‘oops wrong twin!!’ and then ‘don’t read these. ’ Taako would have rolled his eyes if he wasn’t too busy being suspicious. Just like that, he heard voices in the hallway. Lup’s, obviously, and she was talking to someone. He caught the end of a sentence, her saying something about “-been listening to nothing but Dolly Parton, seriously, we have to fix this.” “What’s so bad about Dolly Parton?” a voice that was obviously Magnus asked. “Not normal Dolly, depression Dolly. ” This time Taako did roll his eyes, because ‘depression Dolly Parton’ wasn’t going to be a thing ever, no matter what Lup insisted. And he hadn’t been listening to that much Dolly Parton. ‘Because I’m a Woman’ was a masterpiece! A masterpiece that had absolutely nothing to do with any shitty ex-boyfriend/ex-team members, whom Taako wasn’t thinking about anyways, so get fucked, Lup. The door opened, and Taako considered pulling the blanket up over his head. He didn’t have time to, though, before Magnus was coming into the room and throwing himself onto Taako’s bed like the world’s most annoying, boy-shaped golden retriever. “Hey man,” he said, dropping his head into Taako’s lap and dropping his backpack off the edge of the bed. “I brought you math notes,” he said. “Did you know there’s a whole different grid system? Polar grids, it’s a crazy circle, I can’t handle this shit.” Taako had known that, actually. Their trigonometry class wasn't challenging Taako half as much as he pretended it was, and maybe he owed his advisor an apology for all the bitching he'd done about her math class suggestion, but... no. She was still out there telling people this class was easy, so she deserved all the ear-ringing she received from his complaints about her. He hummed, said, “Thanks,” in monotone, and Lup stood in front of them both and crossed her arms. “Time to get up,” she ordered. “Get up, get in the shower, and make yourself pretty.” “I’m always pretty,” he snarked. “Why?” “Noneya’ business. Shower. Now.” Taako sagged over sideways, dropping his forehead against Magnus’s hip. “Can’t,” he complained, half-teasing, and heard her growl. “Too much effort.” She brandished a finger at him, talking serious business. She said, “I can and will bathe you if I have to. Do you really want to go there today?” That threat was serious business. Taako narrowed his eyes, trying to gauge her level of sincerity, and she read his mind with the cock of an eyebrow. “Yes,” she said, “Exactly like the Flu of 2013, don't test me.” “The what?” Magnus asked, and Taako’s eyes widened. “How you plan on getting me there? I'm not feverish,” he asked, pushing a little farther. She was strong enough to pick him up, for sure, but maybe not if he kicked and flailed in retaliation. Not that it would go that far. He wasn’t an actual child. Lup raised a single eyebrow and motioned to Magnus. “Brought some manpower.” Magnus grinned up at him, trying for innocence, and Taako glowered. “Fucker,” he spat. “I hate you guys. Fine. Fine. I’ll shower if it’ll get you off my ass.” “Love you too,” Magnus hummed while Lup threw her hands into the air and crowed, "Thank God." He locked himself in the bathroom without anymore hassling, and he spent his first ten minutes in there standing under the scalding spray and feeling the water thrum against his skull. They were up to something, and Taako didn’t have the energy for it. It was a dirty trick to bring Magnus into it, but Taako couldn’t really be mad. Whatever they were up to, he’d put up with it for the night, and he’d crash until way into the morning. Maybe it would help, whatever it was. Maybe it’d put his stupid head back together the right way. He scrubbed himself down, shampooing three times before finally feeling clean and leaving conditioner in for double the time that was necessary. He rubbed hot water against his eyes and temples and nose, lathered himself entirely and spent a few good minutes just sagging against the cold shower wall before he could convince himself to rinse off and jump back into the party. “-depressed like this sometimes,” Lup was in the middle of saying when he opened the bathroom door, and both she and Magnus shot him faux-innocent smiles when he raised an eyebrow at them. He held the towel wrapped around his hips and yawned on his way to his dresser to pick out a pair of clean boxers. A McDonalds hamburger pelted him in the side of the head and stayed neatly wrapped as it toppled to the floor, "Eat this," Lup ordered, and then tossed a shirt at him, "And put this on." Taako nearly dropped the towel from around his waist, holding it up with one hand while pulling the shirt off of his head with the other. It was long-sleeved, black and shimmery and made of a thick fabric, cut short enough to nearly be a crop top without being obnoxious about it. “We going out?” he asked, and she grinned at him. Pointy teeth. “Maybe.” She danced across the room to her laptop, which she propped up on his pillow to blast something out of her iTunes. The first few slow, sad notes of ‘Wig In a Box’ came through, and Taako huffed out a quiet chuckle. “Oh I see,” he said, doing what was basically acrobatics to pull on his underwear without showing Magnus his ass. He caught the pants Lup threw his way and stepped into them, reached down the pant legs to negotiate the two layers of fabric and get everything laying smoothly before zipping them up. He turned back around to see Magnus sitting on his desk, Lup standing between his legs and carefully dragging eyeliner across his skin with steady-handed concentration while Magnus held a half-eaten burger on his knee and munched. “What are you doing?” he asked, and he shouldn’t have been too surprised. The purple hair dye had been long since trimmed from Magnus’s beard, but Lup had also talked him into toenail polish. Either Lup was wildly convincing, or Magnus just didn’t have strong opinions about those things. “I’m doing Barry too, when he gets here,” she said, and that would be a thing to see. Taako chuckled again, perched himself on the desk next to Magnus, and let Lup decorate his eyes with a gentle hand cradling his face, even though he was more than capable of doing it himself. “Braid my hair?” she asked him, pulling his desk chair over and plopping down in front of him. He ran his fingers through it, tugged a few knots undone, and hummed quietly along to the song. He’d figured out how to pull the hair above her left ear into a tight french braid, tucking it all out of the way and giving the illusion of it being shaved. She’d been thinking about shaving it off anyway, but Taako liked how the braid turned out anyways. As he worked, she occasionally held fries up over her head, and he made a game of trying to bite her while taking them from her hands, his own fingers busy all the way. “You gonna tell me where we’re going?” he asked, and Magnus grinned at him deviously. “Secret,” he said, parroting Lup from earlier. Taako sighed and rolled his eyes and finished Lup’s braid off with a tiny rubber band. The familiar pattern of Barry’s knock sounded against the door, and Lup hopped up to let him in, smacking a kiss to his cheek as she did so. Barry patted Taako’s shoulder as he walked in, fist-bumped Magnus, and let Lup sit him down and paint his face like the rest of them while Taako got up to check out her work in the mirror. Simple lines over his eyelid, stretching into a subtle cat-eye, with color pressed into the bottom corners of his eyes to frame them properly. It looked fine, of course, but it was in sharp contrast with the red and purple bruises under his eyes, the gaunt look to his face, the spot of acne on his forehead. Son of a bitch. He dug through the makeup bag and unearthed concealer, which he rubbed into the most problematic areas of his face until he looked a little less like he'd spent the week hiding under his pillow neglecting himself. Then he preoccupied himself with running his fingers through his hair, brushing it out and shaking his head to see where it was settling today. It was officially down to his collar know, covering his ears and framing his jaw and driving him crazy falling into his eyes. He ought to think about trimming it into something a little less shaggy or growing it out properly. He tucked it behind his ear, sighed at his reflection, and collapsed back into bed. “Put your shoes on,” Lup ordered, and Taako sighed as loud as he could manage. “You’re such a fuckin’ drill sergeant,” he complained, sitting back up and shuffling over to the closet to shove his feet into a pair of shoes. Good enough. He looked up to find all three of them watching him, doing a shitty job of keeping worry out of their eyebrows. Barry now had matching eyeliner, which looked absolutely bizarre behind thick glasses and paired with an aging college hoodie. What a nerd. Taako shook his hair out again, stood up a little straighter, and asked, “Gonna tell me where we’re going yet?” “Nope,” Lup replied, shoving his phone and wallet into her purse with her own before grabbing him by the hand and pulling him out the door, Barry and Magnus following after them. “You’re just going to come along and have fun, is that too much to ask?” She stopped by the elevators and pressed the button. Taako said, “Yes,” being bratty on purpose now, and all of a sudden he was off his feet and being hoisted into the air. Taako screeched, clutching onto Magnus as he was thrown over his shoulder. Magnus said, “Race ya!” and took off for the stairwell. Taako held on, complaining loudly and threatening all sorts of doom upon Magnus as he went for the most terrifying ride of his life down six flights of stairs. Magnus boomed with laughter the whole time, hands latched onto Taako’s thighs in an iron grip and shoulders shaking under Taako’s stomach until he slammed out the door and into the lobby. “Put me down, I swear to God! ” Taako shouted, only to have Magnus hold onto him tighter and start to spin, tennis shoes squeaking on the linoleum. “I’m going to throw up on you, you fucking meathead, stop, stop, fucking Jesus !” “Alright, alright, give him a break,” Lup said, her and Barry strolling into the lobby, apparently unconcerned about losing Magnus’s race. Magnus finally, blessedly, stopped spinning, and Taako collapsed bonelessly and out of breath with Magnus giggling beneath him. He turned to the sound of a door opening, chirping “Julia!” and Taako perked up curiously. Magnus swung him back down to his feet, and Taako staggered a little, floor spinning under him. Magnus’s hands settled on his shoulders, and when his double vision faded he found a girl with warm skin and a warmer smile grinning at him. She was taller than him, probably only a few inches shorter than Magnus and just as impressively brawn. She was wearing jeans and a form-fitting t-shirt, thick brown hair pulled into a ponytail and freckles lighting up her face. She said, “You must be the boy who’s been trying to kiss my boyfriend,” and held her hand out to shake. One time and Taako was never going to live that down. He shook her hair and said, “Pleasure to meet the competition.” Julia laughed. “The others are on their way, let’s get going,” Lup announced, hustling them all out the door past the frowning security, ignoring Taako’s question about ‘others?’ and marching off towards Magnus’s car. It was a tight fit in the backseat, with Barry stuck in the middle and a twin on either side of them. Magnus and Julia took the front, but they passed the aux cord into the back so Lup could blast whatever she wanted and holler along. The ride to wherever they were going consisted of Ke$ha, Usher, and a truly spectacular rendition of ‘ I Need a Hero,’ with all the car windows rolled down and everyone singing along at the top of their lungs. Taako snickered and pressed himself against the car door while Barry punched the air and clutched at his chest, singing about his imaginary Superman. Magnus and Julia sang to each other, trading lovesick expressions and holding hands until Magnus had to let go to shift gears. They drove across the strip and away, through several different sections of town before finally pulling into a parking lot in Korea Town. The sun had since gone down, and the neon lights on the storefronts painted the parking lot red. He crawled out of the car and looked over the signs in the area, searching for clues. Lup grabbed him by the hand and dragged him off towards the sidewalk, beaming the whole way, as they walked past a few doorways and finally through the jingling door of a karaoke place. “Oh my God,” he said, dread settling in his stomach. “Lup, you can't be serious.” “It’s fun,” she replied, voice firm. “You’re going to have fun.” She dragged him along as she approached the counter and gave her name for the reservation, asked them to send the others who were coming back to their booth. They were in a daunting place with long hallways and closed doors, but at least not it wasn't as daunting as an open stage and an audience. Taako wasn’t big on public humiliation, thank you very much. The room they were given was a little smaller than their dorm room, with chalkboard walls and a three-sided booth taking up half the room. The table had a few drink menus, a couple of microphones, and a tambourine. “I love it,” Julia said, and Barry snickered, and Taako sighed. Even Barold J. Bluejeans was having fun, there must have been something seriously wrong with Taako to still feel this bummed out when Lup was making so much of an effort. They hadn’t even had the time to sit down before the door was opening again, and the last two people Taako would have ever expected stepped through the door. Lucretia stepped in, and then Kravitz, and they both looked about as uncomfortable as Taako felt. Taako’s mouth fell open. He turned to glare at his sister, to demand ‘what the hell,’ but she ignored him and bounded past to hug Lucretia, grab Kravitz by the hand, and pull them both further into the room. She nudged everyone into the booth with orders to sit down, and listen up, buckos. “Rule one! Tonight is a night of goofs and memes,” she announced, standing before them armed with a microphone and a tambourine. “Anyone caught singing something sad, serious, or overly romantic will be punished severely.” "Kinky," Magnus said. Barry choked on air and narrowed his eyes at Magnus while Julia cackled and held her hand up for a high five. “Rule two! We need designated drivers.” Lucretia volunteered, followed by a very loud conversation as her age was revealed. “You’re only nineteen?”
“Almost nineteen. I graduated early.”
“Aren’t you a junior?” Magnus volunteered himself as the other designated, claiming that they ought to have somebody sober who could carry their drunk asses out of there if need be, a task he and Julia arm-wrestled over before he was declared the winner. “Excellent,” Lup said, all of that settled. “Rule three, everyone else is getting drunk as fuck. Give me your orders, let’s get this shizz started!” While Lup and Barry went off to get the drinks, Magnus, Julia, and Lucretia crowded around the songbook, making lists of songs they were definitely doing and giggling over truly terrible ones. Taako watched them for a minute, fidgeted with the tambourine, and glanced at Kravitz next to him. Kravitz, who looked as awkward as Taako did. “Not that I’m not happy to see you,” Taako said, “But what the hell are you doing here?” Kravitz chuckled bashfully, dark skin getting a touch darker with a blush, eyes averting to the tabletop. “That’s an excellent question,” he said, “Your sister made Lucretia invite me, I think. I’m not actually too sure what’s going on here.” “What’s going on here is fun,” Lup announced, coming back in with a tray of beverages that she likely convinced the bar staff into letting her borrow. She set it on the table and scooped up a microphone. “You’re one of us now, we’ll have you on the boxing team by graduation, just you wait.” Kravitz laughed again, and it sounded gentle and lovely and Taako scooted a little farther away from him. Son of a bitch. He’d been ignoring Kravitz’s text messages all week. Kravitz probably thought he was an asshole. Kravitz had watched him get kicked out of his club. Kravitz had listened to him talk about his shitty ex-boyfriend. Had gotten up in the middle of the night to give Taako a ride home from a bar. Had yelled at him in front of the sports club council about being incompetent at his job, a scene that was equal parts annoying and titilating. Kravitz probably thought he was a hot mess. A mess and an asshole and a total disaster. Son of a bitch. “This is a team sport, ladies,” Lup announced as she punched in a song and the first few cheery notes spilled from the speakers. Dancing Queen. Why was he not surprised? The twins had had a Mamma Mia phase in fifth grade. What Lup lacked in singing ability, she made up in theatrics. She sang the first line, “Friday night and the lights are low,” taking Barry by the hand and pulling him up into the open space with her, the two of them crowing into the microphone, Lup glowing and Barry flushed bright red. Lup reached for Taako’s hand, trying to drag him into it, but there was no way in hell Taako was getting involved in this nonsense. He tugged his hand free and shook his head firmly, and she just laughed before dancing back into it. By the first chorus, Julia was singing along from the table, and when Lup held her hand out she climbed over all of them to join her and Barry in the spotlight. During the line ‘You’re a teaser you turn them on, leave 'em burning and then you’re gone,’ she and Julia pressed up against each other, noses inches apart and Barry doubled over in helpless giggles until they shoved away from each other and started dancing circles around him. Magnus was quick to join them, picking Lup up and spinning her around, dancing with Barry, the four of them making an absolute racket singing along loudly into the shared microphones. The second chorus got Lucretia up there. She bit her lip, looking awfully embarrassed about it, but going when Magnus took her hand and pulled. The whole group of them kept trying to wave Taako on, pull him up there with them, and Taako crossed his arms and glared. No. Kravitz was nodding along to the music next to him, grinning and looking pretty bashful about it. The song said, “Feel the beat on the tambourine, ” and Kravitz picked it up and shook it at Taako, smirking the whole time. Son of a bitch. He stood, grabbed Kravitz by the arm, and pulled him out of the booth to join the others, who all cheered victoriously. Lord, Taako needed to get drunk for the next song, but he let them drag him into the center of the crowd and let Lup take his hand and spin him and laughed when Barry sang right into his ear, breath hot on Taako’s neck. Maybe this wouldn’t be the worst thing ever, he conceded. He still slammed the closest drink the second the song was over, collapsing back into the booth and looking to get dizzy and stupid and maybe even happy, God forbid. Lup did good work of dragging people into duets, most of the room still a little reserved at first. She and Julia did a thrilling rendition of ‘U and Ur Hand’ by P!nk, and then she roped Barry into ‘Carry On My Wayward Son.’ Meanwhile, Taako was one and a half drinks in and starting to feel less terrible about it. He glanced over at Kravitz again, saw him mouthing along to the words and holding a glass of something dark and purple in his hand. Taako raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck is that?” he asked. Kravitz hummed a question as he took a sip. “What? Wine?” Taako’s mouth fell open. “Wine?” “Yes?” “You’re drinking wine at a karaoke party?” “Yes…?” “Are you somebody’s grandma, my dude? That’s like serial killer levels of weirdo, what the fuck.” Kravitz laughed and asked, “What’s wrong with my wine?” protesting half-heartedly as Taako took it out of his hand and tossed it back. Bitter. Dry. Disgusting. “No,” he demanded. “Hell no, you’re getting a real drink, wait here.” It was quick work to run to the bar and back, nearly getting lost wandering through the hallways back to the booth. He ducked around the Lup and Barry ‘Kansas Extravaganza’-- how long was that song? Jesus-- and plopped down next to Kravitz with a bottle of Sake and two small glasses. “It’s pretentious and snooty, you’ll love it.” “Thank you?” Kravitz asked while Julia asked, “Is it?” Magnus went next, performing the world’s silliest cover of ‘Hollaback Girl,’ and Julia followed it with ‘Mr. Brightside,’ which got everyone-- yes, even Taako-- jamming along like their hearts were breaking right there. Kravitz, Magnus, and Lucretia crowded around the book again, and after a good deal of giggling and prodding, Lucretia took the microphone from Lup and sang ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber, with a choreographed dance and everything. Lucretia was an alright pal, Taako had realized that a while ago. She saved his ass with the boxing club, and she worked harder than anyone he’d ever met. She bought him cold medicine that one time, and despite yelling at him and pulling on his ear and making him sit through hours of lecturing, she was actually pretty fun when she let her hair down. There had been a few times on the bus to tournaments, or in the office after practice, or during last-minute late-night paperwork calls, when she’d let comments or jokes slip, and it was always surprisingly hilarious. This was even better, and when she shoved the microphone at Kravitz for the Ludacris bridge and he stumbled through it with startled eyes and a blush on his cheeks, Taako couldn’t help but howl with laughter against the table. Four drinks in and he was feeling it. He swirled the bottle of Sake a little, shrugged, and drained it. Five drinks in. Nice. He and Lup sang ‘Wannabe,’ and ‘I Don’t Dance,’ and ‘No Scrubs,’ songs they’d designed full routines to back in elementary school. Routines they remembered, somehow, tonight, and Taako had to admit that he was having fun even with everyone laughing at him. Barry nearly jumped up in down with excitement when he found a song in the book that he liked, and he proceeded to sing some ridiculous thing called ‘The Cool Patrol Dance’ which had in-song dance instructions and the most ridiculous, cringy lyrics Taako had ever heard. They all forgot how blatantly sexual the lyrics to ‘Scream’ by Usher were until Magnus was starting in on the chorus, laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes until he pulled himself together and just dove into the song, grinding against the wall at one point and groping practically everyone who didn’t mind it, despite being stone-cold sober. Taako had to remind himself firmly that he wasn’t allowed to bang his friends, especially when Magnus tugged him to his feet and rolled his hips against his thigh and made the entire room scream in laughter. “Alright, I got one,” Kravitz announced after the song was over, typing in a song and grabbing the microphone. Taako was drunk enough to let himself stare without feeling like a creep, trailing his eyes down Kravitz from his hair-- a hundred tiny braids pulled back into a half-ponytail, the rest of them draped over his shoulders, several of them wrapped in shiny, golden bands-- the short-sleeved button-up that showed off his arms and tattoos peeking out under his sleeves, the tight black jeans that hugged his ass in a way that was damn near indecent. Kravitz faced away from them until the song dropped, then he spun around in a move that was obviously practiced and sang along to ‘It’s Gonna Be Me.’ He did the actual dance from the music video, step-for-step and flawless, and if Taako was sober he would have teased him mercilessly. Instead, he found his mouth going dry as he realized Kravitz was actually half good at singing and very good at dancing, and it really wasn’t fair of him to wear those jeans and look that gorgeous and make those eyes at Taako. Hoo boy. Taako stole Lup’s drink out of her hand and downed it, and she laughed and smacked him on the arm. Kravitz sang, ‘You don’t wanna lose it again, but I’m not like them,’ and then ‘Baby when you finally give your love to somebody, guess what, it’s gonna be me.’ Taako found himself believing the words like a promise, realized he was truly and spectacularly ruined, and giggled dumbly into his hands. “What?” Lup asked, and Taako waved her off. Barry and Magnus teamed up to sing the five hundred miles song from How I Met Your Mother, fake accents and horrible voices and an Oompa-Loompa style dance to go along with it. Lucretia sang ‘I Will Survive,’ and Magnus sang both ‘Life is a Highway’ and ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’ before they all lovingly booed him off the stage. Lup put her high school emo phase to good use by picking the song ‘I’m Not Okay’ by My Chemical Romance, and it was a bit of a shock when Kravitz leaped to his feet to join her. Taako’s chest swelled at the image of her and Kravitz, hanging off of each other and headbanging and screaming into the microphone. Eventually, Lup found more show tunes and she made Taako sing ‘Anything I Can Do,’ with her from Annie Get Your Gun, which was even more ridiculous than it ought to be from the fact that Taako was slurring and stumbling over his words. They sang ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as a group. Barry tried and failed to sing ‘Down With The Sickness,’ and Julia tried and killed it at ‘Rap God,’ which was far more impressive than it had any right to be. Taako had to argue fiercely with Lup to get a Dolly Parton song in there, but she finally cracked and allowed ‘Jolene,’ which Taako rocked whole-heartedly. Then Lup put on ‘All-Star’ and after that they were entirely meme’d out and out of time. Taako could thankfully stand up and walk on his own, though the floor wasn’t exactly holding still under his feet. He wanted to use that as an excuse to lean on Kravitz, but it appeared that Kravitz had less of a tolerance than he did. Magnus and Julia both took an arm-- Julia giggling and flushed but sober enough to walk straight-- and helped walk him out to the parking lot, while Taako draped himself over his sister, and Barry and Lucretia chatted on the walk out. “How--” Lup started to say, hiccuped, and started over. Kravitz was leaning entirely on Julia now, head tucked into her shoulder, and she was grinning and rubbing his arm. “How are we doing this, babes?” “I was gonna take Kravitz home,” Lucretia started to say, but Kravitz picked his head up. “Can’t,” he argued. “Too drunk. No way.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and Taako saw a few missed calls on the screen. Kravitz blinked at it blankly, put his phone back into his pocket, and mumbled, “Tomorrow’s problem.” “Sleepover!” Magnus announced happily, still sounding drunk despite himself. “Back to the dorms!” They retired back to the dorms, Magnus, Julia, Taako, and Kravitz in one car, Barry, Lup, and Lucretia in the other. When they got back to campus, Julia and Magnus decided they didn’t want to make the forty-five-minute drive back home and followed them inside, and they practically begged Lucretia to follow them too instead of walking across campus to her own dorm. The details were pretty fuzzy, but evidence would tell him in the morning that they’d come up with the grand plan to pull their mattresses off the bed frames and set them up on the floor. That, plus a nest of blankets on the floor, was enough to fit all seven of them, and they stayed up to all hours of the night talking and giggling like children at a slumber party. It was, Taako had to admit to himself, an okay time. He almost couldn’t remember what he’d been so down about earlier, but even if he did remember, that was a problem for later. Taako was warm and happy and surrounded by friends as his eyes slipped closed and he was pulled into the depths of sleep.
He woke up the next morning to somebody’s phone going off. Taako groaned, clutched closer at whatever his arms were wrapped around, and buried his face in it while others complained sleepily and shifted around him. The thing Taako was holding onto suddenly jerked upright with a gasp, and Taako opened his eyes to find Kravitz stumbling out of the blanket nest they’d built up and searching around frantically for something. He’d lost his pants somewhere, was sleeping in his boxer briefs and a t-shirt that Taako recognized as one of Lup’s high school band t-shirts. Weird. Someone wrapped their arm around Taako’s middle and pulled him closer, and Taako squeaked in surprise and found himself stuck as a little spoon, enveloped entirely by Magnus who was cozy and snoring and just a little bit sweaty. Ew. Kravitz found his phone on the fifth ring, answered it, and Taako could immediately hear the tinny voice of someone yelling from the other end. “Mom! Hi, sorry I didn’t call, I didn’t-- "No, I’m fine, I just-- "Yeah, I know, I’m-- "No I didn’t die , I’m--
"No! No, I did not--
"No, I wasn’t drunk, I… okay. "Yeah, okay. I’ll be home later.” The call ended, and Kravitz let it fall to his side as he stood near the door and stared off into space, expression baffled as he obviously tried to puzzle out where he was, how he’d gotten there, and what conversation he’d just had. Taako couldn’t help it. A laugh bubbled out of him, and he heard someone else giggling behind him. Kravitz’s head snapped up to look at them, and then his face flushed darker and his shoulders hitched up. “Somebody’s in trou-ble,” Lup sang, and Barry lost it, and Kravitz dropped his face into his hands and laughed. “Get back here, thug,” Taako said, holding an arm out. Kravitz sighed and stumbled over to collapse back into the makeshift bed, too bashful now to touch, but he did look at Taako and grin. Taako grinned back, and Lup started in on a horrible impersonation of Kravitz’s mom, and they all burst into laughter again-- Kravitz included. Magnus complained sleepily about the noise from where he was drooling on Taako’s shoulder, and Julia sat up and kissed his cheek. Taako grinned at her over Magnus’s shoulder, and she narrowed her eyes at him playfully. “You win this round, little man,” she said, and Taako laughed, and Magnus said, “Shut up, please , I’m sleeping,” and they all started laughing again.
Christmas break came and went. They forgot to remove his name from the boxing glove Secret Santa, so he gifted some freshman kid a last-minute batch of cookies and received a hat with a pom-pom on the top from Carey. A group of them set up shop in their dorm room during finals week, taking up every square inch of the floor with bodies and notes and textbooks. Lucretia demonstrated a terrifying ability of hers to type one thing while holding a full conversation about something else, and she didn’t stop typing her procrastinated essays for nearly ten hours straight at one point. Magnus and Taako stole his bed and complained pitifully about their trigonometry test, while Lup and Barry took the other bed and a whiteboard from Target and argued viciously over chemistry equations. Julia stopped by a few times, bearing food and a welcomed distraction and once, the golden retriever she and Magnus were dog-sitting, which she snuck into the dorms past security by some fit of magic. Merle stopped by once, just to check out the party. Lucas popped up just long enough to drag Lucretia away. Taako even convinced Kravitz to stop by, and he sat on Taako’s bed with his thigh pressed against Taako’s and chewed on the tip of his pen while reading silently from his text book with the kind of focused discipline Taako couldn’t even imagine possessing. They had a date set up, for a week from finals since neither of them were going out of town, and the date went amazing. Or, not amazing, but it was hard to top drunken karaoke. Kravitz was a gentleman in a way that Taako wasn’t used to, and he asked permission before kissing Taako gently outside the door of his dorm room, and Taako had to fight to keep his face neutral as he greeted Lup in their dorm room. Kravitz wasn't exactly a secret, but after Taako's last relationship, maybe he ought to be a little lowkey for now. They were three weeks into the next semester, the weather starting to warm in early February when Lucretia found him at work. It was eleven p.m. on a Tuesday, and he was running back and forth between the grill and the cash register like usual. Rice Man had ducked out for a break a short while ago, so when Taako heard the rattling of the door opening, he shouted “With you in a minute!” before scraping beef off the grill onto a plate of fries and ducking back towards the front of the store. “Oh,” he said, surprised, when he saw Lucretia standing there beaming at him. Beaming was a strange look on someone so serious. He blinked a few times. “Hey Luc, here for some genuine Taako cuisine?” “Perhaps,” she replied, barely glancing at the menu before turning her smile back towards him. “I have good news. Lup said I could find you here.” “News?” he asked, and she nodded. The backpack slung over one of her shoulders bulged in overuse, and she held two large binders under her arm. There was a mouthguard case dangling tied to her backpack, and she was wearing her glasses again. The hood of her sweatshirt was pulled up over her head, and her cheeks were flushed from the wind. She was bubbling over with energy despite her exhausted, overworked appearance. “Sazed quit the club,” she told him, and Taako’s brain short-circuited. He blinked. “He what?” She nodded again. “Emailed me this morning. He’s out. For Good. And I know the council said you were banned, um, permanently, but. It’s not like anyone else would mind. If you wanted to come back.” Taako mentally wrestled with the information, trying to remember his schedule to see when he had the time and when he could be there, wondering whether he’d be back as administration, and if not what on Earth he was going to do there anyway, it’s not like he fought. He must have been taking too long to think because Lucretia’s face fell. “I mean. If you’d like to, that is. You shouldn’t feel any pressure whatsoever to come back, I know it’s not really your scene or whatever.” “Did you just say ‘my scene’?” “Yes?” Taako laughed and rubbed a hand over his face. This was…. This was surprisingly good news. Taako tried not to let himself look as giddy as he felt. He said, “I’ll see if I have the time,” going for nonchalance, and Lucretia nodded. “Yes, of course.” “You hungry?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows at her. Amusement crossed her features. “I’m not…” “Taako and co. discount,” he offered, waggling them again. “My name is literally Taako, I think I’m kind of an expert around here. The place is called ‘Roberto Taako,’ I mean, I’m technically an owner. Don’t tell anyone though.” Lucretia rolled her eyes. “If you insist,” she said. “Surprise me.” “Grab a seat,” he said, going to wash his hands and set to work. “Prep yourself for a Taako masterpiece.” “Consider me prepped,” she shot back, in that deadpan way of hers, and Taako cackled with laughter.
He did return to club practice that next week, chewing on the idea and fending off boredom until he just couldn’t take it anymore. He changed into a pair of shorts and a hoodie, in case they actually tried to rope him into practicing, and set off across campus. He got tackled the minute he walked in the door as if Magnus hadn’t seen him three times that week already. He let Magnus knock them to the ground, though, and did his best to flee the wrestling match until Merle poked his head out of the office to yell at them. Merle cut off mid-yell to say, “Oh, hey Taako,” and then ducked back into the office with a shrug. It was good to be back, and Taako made a point of coming to practice at least twice a week, even if it was just to sit in the bleachers and drink coffee and watch. Sometimes he jumped in with the others, let Merle put him through the wringer or wrestled with Magnus or Barry until Lucretia told them to knock it off. He didn’t ride the bus to tournaments with the others, but he and Magnus had road-tripped it to one instead, trailing the bus from Las Vegas to San Diego. Once or twice, Taako brought Kravitz along to practice with him. They had him sworn to secrecy about the whole thing, despite being the sports club council president. He didn’t turn them in for Taako’s blatant breach of expulsion. Taako kind of adored him for it. They weren’t, like, like that yet, though. They’d gone on two dates, and they’d been fine, but they hadn’t put any words to whatever it was they were doing. They weren’t doing much of anything, and that was fine too. Kravitz was busy, and Taako wasn’t fucked up about Sazed, but maybe it was smart to move a little bit slower. Not too slow, though. He had a few plans in the works for getting Kravitz into his bed, and maybe getting Kravitz to the movies, or a nice restaurant, or something equally gushy and lame. Kravitz seemed like the kind of guy to like that stuff. So things were good. Taako was good, the club was good, Lup and Barry were excellent. Around early March, Barry had gotten Taako alone and started drafting a plan for something, asking Taako’s blessing as much as he was asking his help, both of which Taako was quick to offer. Barry’s plan in the end was dorky and cheesy and lame. Lup was going to love it. Taako was in the bleachers the Friday it happened, sipping an iced coffee and fidgeting with a roll of hand wrap someone had left behind. Practice was nearly over, and the room was muggy and gross and smelled like feet. Everyone was winding down, stretching and chugging water like their lives depended on it, dripping sweat on the floor. Taako pitied the janitorial staff assigned to this building. It had been challenging to keep this secret from Lup. She couldn’t read his mind, but the twin speak thing was real and she’d been squinting at him suspiciously ever since Barry approached him about it. He’d kept his lips sealed, though, wondering anxiously when and how exactly Barry was going to do this. That Friday, he’d nearly missed it when Barry approached Lup at the end of practice and asked her to spar. He took her hand and pulled her to the raised ring in the center of the gym, ducking under the ropes and pecking her with a kiss before they both pulled on gloves and helmets and squared up. Barry was somehow smooth enough to tuck the box into the curve of his glove as Lup was putting her helmet on. The two of them tapped gloves and squared up. Barry feigned for a moment, until Lup swung the first punch. He ducked under it, dropped to one knee, and held the ring out. He’d been dumb enough to put in a mouth guard, so he spit it out while Lup nearly tripped on him and righted herself. He grinned up at her for a moment, while she stood there and stared down at him, mouth agape. “What are you….” Barry took her hand as best as he could with the glove, gloves hooked more than anything else, and said, “Lup, sweetheart….” Taako didn’t pay too close of attention to what exactly he said, too busy filming the whole thing on his phone and watching as everyone slowly noticed and turned to watch. This was kind of perfect, being the place they’d become friends in the first place. They’d been talking about this for almost a year now, about eloping after college at a drive-through chapel and honeymooning anywhere else. Taako had a feeling they might need to adjust that plan, now. That they might have a few more people who’d want to come and watch. It was going to just be the three of them, originally, Lup and Barry with Taako as a witness. None of them had family, at least not traditionally, but Magnus and Lucretia were both in tears watching Barry propose and even Merle looked touched. Maybe they’d managed to find some replacements. Lup said yes, of course, throwing herself at Barry, knocking him flat on his back, and kissing him breathless while the whole club cheered around them. It was silly, watching them try and undo boxing gloves to get the ring on, but once they managed it, Lup grabbed Barry’s face and kissed him again, tears streaming down her cheeks. Maybe, Taako thought to himself, this stupid club had been good for something after all.
EPILOGUE:
The sun was unforgiving, and the sidewalk nearly melted Taako’s shoes as he ran. That didn’t slow him down, though, but it did have him daydreaming about owning a car. Running around in 115° temperatures was just unacceptable, but he had no choice. He had big news. He’d called Kravitz and told him to meet him at the apartment earlier than they’d agreed, to head over the minute he got the chance. Lup and Barry were both home already, and they wouldn’t mind. They liked Kravitz-- they’d tell him if they didn’t, they weren’t shy. So, just as he’d been expecting, Kravitz and Lup were sprawled out and melting into the couch cushions when he burst through the door. Barry was set up at his desk in the corner, no doubt working on something for his graduate program. Taako wasn’t actually sure what it was that Barry did anymore, but that was fine. They all that their own thing going. Barry was going to graduate school. Lup was waiting for her interview results for the police academy. Kravitz had one more semester to finish his degree, and Taako… “I got the job!” Taako yelled the instance he burst through the door. Kravitz jumped, startled, and dropped his phone. Lup sat up and beamed at him. “The fancy bartender job! Where I throw drinks and shit! The one at MGM!” “For serious!?” Lup demanded, leaping up. Taako beamed. “You fuckin’ know it!” Lup ran over and jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his waist and spinning him around. Barry shouted a “Hell yeah!” and the second Lup let him down, he ran over to Barry and gave him a high-five. Kravitz was beaming from the couch, and Taako ran over to him next and jumped on top of him, knocking him back against the cushions and taking his face in his hands and kissing him. He must have only just gotten there since he was still warm and a little sweaty, and Kravitz was typically cold all the time. Kravitz smiled against his mouth, wrapped his arms tight around him, and kissed him soundly. “Flip wizard!” Lup yelled, jumping up and down on the couch like a child. “Flip wizard!” he agreed. He smiled wide at Kravitz, felt a swell of affection from the look in Kravitz’s eyes. “Let’s go out and celebrate,” he said. “What do you say, thug? You and me? Nice dinner. Cha’boy’s got real money now. Sweet ass casino money, can you believe it?” “They’d be stupid not to take you,” Kravitz said and kissed him again. “Does this mean you can get us free drinks?” Lup asked. “This is, possibly, the greatest thing you’ve ever done.”