Autumnal Darlings Prompt #23: Movie Night and/or Slasher
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Background: Ace hasn't been communicating with Tanaka all day. He knows something is wrong, and he also knows just how to cheer up his best friend.
Notes: I was originally gonna write this from when we were in high school, maybe pre-daisugace, but then, well... the election happened. So this is post-timeskip now. Reminder that this is a platonic selfship.
wc: 1826; written in first-person from Ace's POV
Doomscrolling. The act of spending an excessive amount of time reading large quantities of news, particularly negative news, on the web and social media. At least, according to Wikipedia. How does one define excessive exactly? Is it about length of time in one sitting? What if it's one article that's a ten-minute read vs ten that are one minute a piece. What about research dives? Is it still doomscrolling if I'm piecing together historical evidence and scholarly research to show that this is all somehow Reagan's fault?
Being an American overseas has never been easy, as much as Mom would like to argue with me on it. But now the thought of even booking a flight to visit my father for the holidays has my anxiety lighting up like a Christmas tree. It was supposed to be the first time Dad has met Daichi and Koushi in person since my college graduation, but now....
What was even the point of getting that degree anyway? It's not like I'm using it? Stupid fucking housewife, can't do shit—
THUD THUD THUD
The knocking on the front door is hard enough that it rattles my nearly empty glass of water on the bedside table.
I snuggle deeper under the covers. Dai and Kou have keys, so they don't knock. We haven't ordered anything in a while, so no mail deliveries. And no food delivery today either—Dai's on a weird diet to support one of the guys at the station, and Kou and I are suffering alongside.... mostly. (Kou eats lunch at school, so he gets to skip out on five meals a week. I generally don't eat lunch, so I'm out five to seven.)
I start to pull up the security feed on the doorbell, but a phone call comes up instead. "Ryuuuuuuu 😝" shows on the Caller ID, and "You and I" by Anabor starts to play at full volume as his ring tone. Fucker changed his ID again.
"Shitshitshitshit...." I fumble with my phone, trying to decline the call, despite having it directly in my face. Instead, I manage to turn it into a video call.
"Oi!" Ryuunosuke Tanaka is holding his phone at an angle from below, so I'm looking up his nose. But I can see our porch light above him. "Open the door! Need proof of life! Suga! Daichi! Are you in there?!"
"They're not home." I manage to say. I sniffle, unsure whether I'm about to start crying or if I'm finishing up. My cheeks haven't been dry for hours, my nose is raw, and my eyes sting.
"Where are they?! This is probably one of the scariest days of your life! Outside of, y'know, breaking up with that shithole ex of yours and the subsequent six months because his dad was connected to the mob, but still!" I can hear shuffling, like he's adjusting his grip on something he's holding in his hands.
"Ryuuuu," I whine, really not wanting to think about Johsei right now. He still waltzes through my nightmares at least twice a month.
"Where's the damn key?" He takes his phone and puts it between his shoulder and ear, so now I'm getting a really good look at his ear canal. I can hear the jingling of his key ring. "I'm going to lose this pizza if I have to keep fumbling around y'know."
The word "pizza" gets my attention. "Did you get it from that place on third?" I poke my head out from under the covers, but don't commit to getting out of bed yet.
"No, I got it from the place over on fifty-second—of course I got it from third! It's a shitty day, you want shitty pizza. I have Kiyo's keys, so can you please come let me in? Your ice cream is melting too."
Instead of responding, I hang up on him. I crawl out from under the covers, slip on my slippers, and briefly consider pulling the big fluffy comforter off the bed, before picking Koushi's college alumni sweatshirt up off the floor and pulling it over my head instead.
I have to turn on the lights as I make my way through our house. Usually they'd be on by now, I hate having a dark home, but I haven't made it out of the master bedroom suite yet today. I had pulled on Daichi's sweatpants before going to the bathroom first thing, and made the mistake of checking my phone. I went back to bed.
Ryuu is waiting on the other side of the door when I open it. He has the biggest, dopiest grin plastered on his face, two large pizzas and a half gallon of strawberry ice cream balanced in one hand, his backpack slung over one shoulder, and his phone and keys in the other hand. He's still wearing the polo and sweats that his gym has instituted as a "uniform".
I squint into the sunlight, and realize I haven't been wearing my glasses all day. "Did you bail on work?"
"My last two clients for the day are Americans on business trips, so they cancelled on me. Where's Daichi and Suga?"
"Kou has a staff meeting and is going out for dinner after, and Dai was on call and has been at a structure fire since...." I make a point of looking at an imaginary watch on my wrist. "Before I woke up at ten."
"Right. And your glasses are....?" Ryu raises the pizzas over my head and shoulders past me through the doorway, kicks off his slides, and making his way to the kitchen.
"Not totally sure." I close the door and follow him to the kitchen, where he's already put the ice cream away and is pulling plates out of the cabinet.
"Have you taken your meds?" Now he's searching a different cabinet, moving cups around.
"No. And it's too late for me to take them." I open one of the boxes of pizza. The crust is as thin as paper, the sauce is leaking over the sides, the cheese is burnt in places, and the pepperoni (real pepperoni!) has grease pooling like an acne-ridden teenager. Shitty American pizza for a shitty day in America.
"No cat videos AND no meds? I have my work cut out for me." He puts a full glass of water in my field of vision, and I know better than to argue with him, so I drink it down all in one go.
"So, movie night. I grabbed a whole bunch of dollar bin movies from the video store by the gym. What's your flavor of punishment?" Ryuu fills up my glass of water, hands it back, and then starts pulling open drawers. "If I were Ace at 3 AM last night, probably terrified of what I will see when I wake up, where would I have left my glasses that help me walk in a straight line?"
I pull a slice of pizza out of the box, not bothering with a plate just yet. The moan I let out is unnecessarily euphoric as I take my first bite of food today. It's sloppy and mostly tastes of tomato and oil, but it hits the spot. I finish the slice in three more bites and then grab a second.
Meanwhile, Ryuu has wandered off in search of my glasses. He comes back with them as I'm moving onto my third slice. "On the cat tree in your office?" I shrug my shoulders, mouth full. There usually isn't a rhyme or reason to where I leave them when I go to bed, but especially so last night. This morning? Whatever. Ryuu puts them on my face for me and I push them up my nose with my forearm.
Ryuu hops up to sit on the counter and grabs a slice of pizza for himself. "Do they even know?"
I shake my head. "They knew I was worried last night, but they both went to bed before I did. And Dai was going to stay home with me, but then he got called out to the structure fire. I haven't texted or called either of them because they're both busy."
"Y'know they'd wanna be here."
"And you know that I'm not going to pull them away from their jobs just because I'm having a bad day. Kou is raising the future and Dai is saving lives. The results of the American presidential election is by far less important."
Ryuu raises an eyebrow in disagreement, but doesn't push. He licks his fingers clean and then slides off the counter. He goes to the fridge, where he had dropped his backpack on the floor. "Movie night. What are we watching? Bad plot, bad characters, or bad effects?" He unzips the bag and starts stacking movies on the counter, simply based on vibes.
"Bad plot. Those are usually the horror movies, right?" I put two slices of pizza on each plate and move towards the living room, knowing that Ryuu will grab napkins and our drinks. I sink into the couch—Kou would have a fit if we spilled this pizza on the kotatsu. The couch cushion covers can be removed and thrown in the wash, the futon not so much.
Ryuu comes in and sets our drinks on the slim table sitting behind the couch, for that exact purpose. He tosses the napkins at my face, and then moves to the television, DVD in hand. Back to me as he crouches, he says, "This one is one of those blank DVDs that you can burn stuff onto. I can't read the title, though. It's in English, but the handwriting is worse than Kageyama's in high school."
"What the fuck did you buy? What if it's a snuff film?!"
He finishes fussing with the DVD player and TV settings and laughs. "I have more questions about it being in the bargain bin than about it being a snuff film, if it is a snuff film." He comes back to the couch and puts his feet in my lap as he sits. I narrowly manage to lift the plates of pizza out of the way in time.
I hand him his plate and we both settle in as the credits start to play. The Nail Gun Massacre flashes across the screen.
Ryuu and I watch the slasher three times all the way through before Kou gets home.
"Love! I'm home!" Kou calls out, shutting the door; he could hear Ryuu and I laughing from outside.
Kou walks in to the living room as the pool scene starts, and he watches in abject horror. "What are you guys watching?!"
I snort, which makes Ryuu double over in laughter, clutching his stomach and rolling off the couch and onto the second pizza box, thankfully empty, on the floor.
"Inarguably the worst slasher film I've ever seen." I say through hiccups, wiping at my eyes with my sleeve.
i would like to introduce you guys to my cat thor:
he is orange and adorable and my precious little baby boi and i would kill anyone who does anything to him that makes him feel distress.
fun facts about thor:
he has IBS and takes pills regularly to keep him healthy
he has freckles on his lips and nose (orange cats get freckles because they are basically the cat equivalent of redheads)
he likes salt and vinegar chips and parmesan cheese (if you eat these you must protect your food when he’s around) and these are the only human foods he consistently tries to eat
he drools. a lot. if you are holding him and he’s happy any purring prepare yourself to be drooled on. it’s gross but i love him so it’s fine
