(It's been a long time since I wrote anything, so bear with me as I work out the details. Alison is Billy's friend, introduced in Tomorrow's Just Another Day, but you don't need to read that first.)
Honk honk honk-honk. Hoooooooooonk.
Neighborhood video clerk Alison leaned hard into the middle of her steering wheel, parked on the dirt “lawn” of the Conjectural Technologies trailer. Late afternoon, not dark yet so the neon sign remained off.
The door of the trailer creaked open and Pete White stuck his head out.
“Hey Bunny-bunny! Send your better half out, we got a matinee to catch,” Alison shouted out of the window of her car, nicknamed the Angel of Death for it's general state of disrepair. (A nickname that would prove as over-dramatic as it was prescient.)
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Late in the year as it was, the sun was already going down by mid-afternoon but Pete wasn’t taking any chances. He draped a towel over his head like a terry-cloth ghost costume as he walked from trailer to the Death Angel.
“I told him we gotta get there early to get a prime seat in the front. We’re gonna see Nixon and throw toilet paper whenever Anthony Hopkins’ accent slips,” Alison explained as if it was the most rational thing in the world.
Pete leaned into her open window, gripping the edge of the door, “Slight problem,” he flashed his rehearsed game show grin that eight years of orthodontia, multiple bleaching sessions, and a soul-deadening employment in show business had won him. The smile was designed to reassure people but outside its natural environment on set it did anything but.
“See, Billy’s been kidnapped,” White said, trying to sound upbeat, “Ah-gain.”
"Kidnapped, huh? Weird" Alison repeated back, not really processing the meaning, distracted my Pete's atypical manner. The usual rosy pink of under-cooked chicken was parboiled out of his complexion. He looked blanched.The corners of his smile twitched unnervingly.
"Are you OK, Powder?” Alison asked, the sincerity in her voice sounding alien even to her.
She shifted her eyes from his face to his fingernails digging into the vinyl of the car door. Gripping the edge of her car window so tightly his fingernails were leaving half-moon indentations in the Naugahyde and his knuckles were an even whiter shade of pale.
"I'm a little... tense, I guess." White admitted, sweating and forcing his plastic smile even wider, eye flinching.
“Wait...” the wheels in Alison’s brain turned, “You just said Billy's been KIDNAPPED?" Alison shouted, "For real, though?" Pete nodded.
“I was in the… radio studio,” Pete paused to see if Alison would call him on it actually being a garden shed, “We had a disagreement, and I took some time to cool off and when I got back fifteen minutes later, he was gone.”
“Maybe he just stepped out?” Alison offered, knowing full well the only thing within walking distance was desert scrub and a patchy mile of neglected blacktop
"Kidnapping confirmed. Got a fax just now claiming responsibility,” White pulled the crinkly fax paper from his pocket. In dot-matrix printing, the shadowy group claimed responsibility, warned him not to alert the authorities or attempt a rescue and that Billy Quizboy would be returned to him relatively unharmed in 48 hours. Yadda yadda. Standard boilerplate kidnapping stuff.
“Jeez...” Alison shook her head, “That kinda stuff really happens?”
“To Billy? It happens a lot. This is the third time this year!” White said, his tension undercut by a note of irritation, “So far he’s always come back OK, like the note says but every time it happens I can't help but worry that—“ White cut himself off and bit his lip to keep from fully breaking down.
“You look like you need a drink,” Alison said, jerking her head to the passenger side door, “Hop in.”
“No way I’m riding in that deathtrap. We’ll take the scooter.”
He walked the ConjectureScooter out of its makeshift carport. Alison parked her station wagon and walked over.
“I'll drive; you navigate.”
He tossed her the helmet sitting in the sidecar, “That’s meant for Billy so it’s not going to stay on unless you hold it on."
→ Read THIS on AO3 instead
"I thought you were taking me to get a drink."
"I'm underage, dimwit. I can't take you to a bar; I'd get carded, duh," Alison said with an eye roll, proving her moody teenage bona fides more than her words did, "If you're that desperate for booze I'm sure the fry cook has some 'cough medicine' you could pour all over your Moons Over My-hammy.”
“That’s at Denny’s. This is an International House of Pancakes," White said, offended.
“Well, pour it up your Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-and-Fruity, then,” she said sourly, stabbing a little coffee creamer with a fork.
The waitress came around and filled both of their coffee cups.
“Read me the fax they sent you,” Alison demanded, "All the details."
"They call themselves," he unfolded the fax sheet from his pocket and narrowed his eyes at the small, poorly-printed type, "The Masters?"
"The Masters? Masters of what? Renaissance Art? Puppets? The Universe?"
"The Shadow Masters," Pete corrected himself, confirming with the paper, he began to read out loud, "The Doom Foursome, Champions of the Shadow Masters has—"
"They mean The Masters as in the golf tournament 'The Masters'?" Alison interrupted as it dawned on her, "Golf? Oh my God that is so fucking lame. He was kidnapped by golfers."
Pete continued reading directly from the fax,"The Doom Foursome has recruited young Master Quizboy as our caddy for a round on the back nine. Do not contact the authorities and he will be returned to you within 48 hours. Footnote."
He squinted even harder at the bottom of the fax, mumbling to himself, "These guys need an editor. This metaphor's all over the place. And our fax machine is almost out of toner..."
"Need your reading glasses, grandma?" Alison asked mockingly.
He scowled and begrudgingly handed the fax to Alison who read out the tiny print at the bottom, "Kidnapping carried out within Guild of Calamitous Intent (GCI) approved guidelines for abducting minors outlined in Section IV, subsection 4-B, i.e. ‘Rusty's Law.’"
"Does it really say that?" Pete said cheerfully, snatching the paper back, "I gotta remember t' show Billy when he gets back. He'll get a real kick out of that!"
"Why would they write 'abducting a minor,' Billy's an adult," Alison asked, unsure, "He's twenty-two, right? He says he’s twenty-two."
Pete shook his head and held up a finger, "The Billy you know, your bosom companion, friend and sometimes backdoor lovah-lovah-man—“
Alison rolled her eyes, “Hardly.”
“That Billy Whalen— he's 22," Pete held up a second finger, "The Billy who got kidnapped, the one who's the world's greatest self-taught unlicensed doctor and professional boy genius, Billy Quizboy, is 12," Pete hesitated, "Maybe he’s 13 now. Gotta check that fake ID we made for him when I get back."
Alison frowned.
"It's part of the kayfabe," White explained, unhelpfully, with a shrug, "There's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the SuperScience biz, you just have to roll with it."
“We’re getting off topic here! Billy’s been kidnapped. Ten minutes ago, you were a gibbering wreck over him not coming back and I’m out the ten bucks I paid for movie tickets. Fuck it, let’s mount a rescue and get him back!”
White sipped his coffee
Alison continued, “Hire some mercenary soldier-of-fortune types to go get him. Like the A-Team but with a flying van! And... and... rocket-launchers! Or, like, signal a secret quasi-legit government agency.”
White held up the fax from the kidnappers, “The note said exactly not to do that and he’ll be returned in 48 hours. If we try to rescue him and it goes wrong, it puts Billy in even more danger!”
“That’s so lame. Do you always do what kidnapper’s faxes tell you to do?”
“But also,” White fidgeted, “If we tried to rescue him, Billy’d throw an absolute shit fit. He’d claim I’m ‘robbing him of agency’ and ‘infantilizing him’ and all that other lingo he picks up from reading college textbooks. And I don’t want Billy to yell at me. He uses big words I don’t understand and accidentally spits in my face while he’s saying them.”
“So all we can do is just… wait?”
“Billy always comes back OK. I mean, every time this happened before he’s been OK, so I assume he’ll be OK this time but the doubt keeps creepin’ in, y’know”
“Why kidnap Billy anyway? They’re not asking for ransom, not that you bozos have the money to pay it.”
“Look at this, White held up his index finger about an inch from her face.
“If you’re trying to flip me off, it’s one finger over, Snowflake.”
“No, really. Look at it. You can’t tell that I cut it off and Billy reattached it, can you?” White said. She bugged her eyes in disbelief, grabbed his hand and looked over the finger critically.
“You cut your finger off and he—”
“A perfect reattachment. Not a scar or a mark or even a bruise on it and that’s on an ALBINO skin. We bruise, like, if you breathe on us hard.”
“Wait a minute, why did you cut your finger off? How did you—”
White ignored her, “Billy’s just THAT good a surgeon. He’ll probably end up the best in the world, without ever settin’ foot in a medical school, and that’s why all these cranks and yahoos keep kidnapping him!”
White lowered his surgically reattached finger and fixed his pink gaze on her, "I'm saying this with the presumption that you care about Billy like I do, ok? Like you care what happens to him."
Alison felt scolded enough by his tone to shut her mouth.
White let out a sigh before plowing forward, "Billy's fragile, see."
"He's actually a lot more emotionally resilient than you give him credit for," Alison started to protest. White waved her off like he was shooing a fly.
"I don't mean metaphorically. I mean actually fragile. He's just a little guy. His bones are weak. His DNA is Swiss cheese with all kinds of genetic crap in it," White passionately, if inaccurately diagnosed, "You should see how many pills and supplements he takes in the morning not to die every day. He has a pill-organizer at 22!"
"Fragile, right," Alison rolled her eyes, “Billy told me you whacked him across the face with a Commodore 64 keyboard-hard drive because he called Tom-Tom Club a novelty act.”
“That was just friendly roughhousin’. Billy had no right to besmirch the heart and soul of Talking Heads’ rhythm section,” White dismissed, "My point is that if one of these rent-a-goons Mr. Pretend Bond Villain hires for their play-acting kidnap-a-boy-genius scene uses a little too much chloroform on the rag— Boom! Billy's in a coma.”
Alison looked upset, focusing instead on stabbing her pancakes with her fork, but White continued unrelentingly.
“The paid-by-the-hour henchman puts a little too much mustard on his back swing when trying to cosh Billy unconscious? Hits him right in the fontanelle? Boom! Fractured skull. Head trauma…. Billy's dead."
Alison dropped her silverware, “Stop. Don’t say stuff like that.”
"I'm saying it because that's what runs through my head every time this happens. It hasn't gone down like that yet. YET," White emphasized, "But the more he gets kidnapped, the likelier it gets, right?"
"I don’t know!” Alison said in a panic, “I failed Statistics, man!”
“Yeah,” Pete shrugged, “Hazard of operating in this business.”
“What business,” Alison accused, “The business of being easy targets?
Pete sat up in the booth as asked formally, “How much do you know about SUPER SCIENCE?”
Alison repeated mockingly, “SUPER SCIENCE!”
Pete tried to hold on to his dignity, “Yeah, it sounds goofy I guess, but that’s the common term for it. What we do.”
“Sooper-Science,” Alison whispered, still amused, giggling slightly.
“I guess you could call it ‘Fringe Science’ or ‘Alt Science,” but “Super Science” was Jonas Venture’s preferred term and he pretty much set the standard,” Pete explained, “It’s all a dumb PR exercise anyway when the US realized they couldn’t keep calling it “Mad Science” after the war when the “good guys” are the ones doing it, y’know?”
Alison listened as she ate a forkful of pancakes.
“So you don’t know anything about Super Science? Or, y’know, whatever you wanna call it.”
“I spent my whole childhood growing up on Air Force bases, of course I know about Super Science. There always was a black hangar, restricted access with nerdy science guys going in and out working on the next 100 Billion Dollar Super Stealth Fighter that can travel at the speed of sound and go backwards in time or whatever.”
“Well, yeah, that’s part of Super Science. Kinda the top elite level of it,” White admitted begrudgingly, annoyed he wasn’t starting from a clean slate, “Man, what Billy and I could do with a military contract, it’s basically a blank check. But, yeah, there’s more to it than that.”
He leaned back, getting into pontificating mode, “Like, designing stealth bombers for the Air Force would be like, U2-Playing-Sold-Out-Shows-At-The-Budokhan. Billy and I are still at the ‘playing open mics for three people" stage. We’ve got the talent, we have a small following, but we just need a label to sign us, y’know, to give us the resources and the money we need to actually play at our level. If that makes sense…”
Alison give him an A-OK sign as she swallowed her pancakes, “Nice metaphor, Chalky.”
“The trouble is, unless you’re a legacy with your own compound like Venture or already a billionaire or you’re affiliated with a university or a corporation like all these other Super Scientists, you gotta hustle.”
“You hustle… Super Science,” Alison looked incredulous.
“Every freakin’ day,” said White with a cocky smile, “We’re the scrappy independents. We’re starting from nothing but we have guile and we have hubris and we have hustle.”
“My friends give me shit all the time, saying I’m exploiting Billy’s genius,” White said, looking out the window, “Like, I’m a parasite, but I’d like to see Billy run this business on his own.”
“You have friends?” Alison asked dubiously. White ignored her.
“See Billy make a cold-call to some random Aerospace PR person fishing for info. He’d get all tongue-tied and probably be so nervous he’d piss himself,” White smirked, “Real smooth.” He snickered at the scenario running in his head.
“You’re being awfully mean behind his back, considering you’re in love with him.”
“Huh?” White asked, giving away he hadn’t been paying attention for the last five minutes. Alison shrugged.
“I never claimed to be the brains of the operation, sure— Billy’s a goddamned genius! A lot of the time I feel more like his manager than his partner in this. Like, I do all the behind-the-scenes work and cater to his whims, make sure ‘the talent’ is happy.” White continued to bitch.
“Billy’s the temperamental arteest type, huh?” Alison egged him on, “Follows his muse not directions.”
“You gotta remember, Billy’s never had a real job. Never been on a deadline or reported to a boss so I have to basically trick him to stay on task instead of falling off into some side-quest.”
“But how do you trick a genius?”
“I irritate him into working. Pretend I don’t understand what he’s doing until he breaks it down step-by-step to me like I’m an idiot, that way he has to confirm the project is on track,” Pete explained, tapping the side of the head, “Or I can suggest something that absolutely won’t work. Insist I’m right until, out of spite, he finishes the job to prove that I’m wrong. That usually works, too.”
“So pissing Billy off is all strategic?”
“It’s called tactical incompetence,” White said proudly, “I could write a book on it.”
Alison poked at the silver-dollar pancake on her plate, wondering if she was accidentally employing the same strategy in her friendship with Billy by just randomly being a dick to him most of the time.
“But it’s not just managing Billy, I gotta charm the potential clients, too, after I figure out who’s buying ideas and who’s looking for new inventions. To get the down-low I gotta listen for industry rumors from the super science community. Basically, there’s a bi-weekly poker game for State alums. I always lose like $50, but it’s the best way to know what’s going on in the scene.”
“The scene. THE SCENE,” Alison parroted, looking around the room for a distraction.
“All the shitty schmoozy stuff, the deal-making, the worming our way into conferences— stuff people pretend isn’t part of super science. That’s the stuff I do.”
“A real slime ball,” Alison muttered, “Who are you sliming up with your shitty, schmoozy, sleaze, though? Who wants to hire a super scientist other than the US Military, since you said they’re out of your league?”
“Government subcontractors,” White answered, “NASA-affiliates. Aerospace Industry. Medical Tech Companies. Some computer stuff, but less than I’d like. Sometimes for a specific product, sometimes just a general call for ideas. I got a thick rolodex and I know everybody’s business.”
“You’re like the hub that all super science gossip flows through.”
“Billy’d be hopeless at this stuff,” White concluded, adding a moment later— “Plus I know how to run QuickBooks. Billy gets a nosebleed from spreadsheets.”
“Should we get the check?” Alison asked, hoping to break White’s expositional flow. No dice.
“Besides pitching locally, we appear at about six conferences and conventions a year either as speakers or presenting a new invention or being on a discussion panel. Three days in a hotel, schmoozing and drinking. It’s all getting our name out there. Oh, plus bangin' all the Con pussy.”
Alison retched and mimed vomiting.
“I mean for me, not for Billy,” White backpedaled, “I mean, he’s supposed to be 12 or 13 years old at those conferences. We haven’t sunk as low to playing to the pedos for gigs yet.”
“I stand by my previous comment,” Alison said flatly and mimed vomiting again.
“A year ago, Billy figured out a good way to raise our profile was writing articles on spec for the Industry Publications. There’s about a half-dozen magazines that everybody reads.He’d submit something every week. Nothing heavy just, like, trend reports and lab product reviews. “Who’s hot in Super Science this month” Maybe some blandly funny-ish column like “The Lighter Side of Particle Accelerators. Y’know. Fluff.”
Alison waved to the waitress and mouthed "check please."
“One piece he wrote really took off. It was about cyborg prosthetics and maybe we’re all too hasty to replace severed arms with robot limbs when there’s a simpler way to reattach arms. It wasn’t peer-reviewed or anything, just a first-person opinion piece with funny anecdotes about cyborg arms. It was like a Super Science Dave Barry column."
The waitress handed Alison the bill and pointed back to the register to where she could pay it. Alison nodded thank you. Pete was oblivious to the entire exchange.
"The thing gets published, takes off like crazy, and now there’s a goon at our place with a rag soaked in chloroform every other day!"
Alison placed the paper check in front of White, indicating if she had to listen to this screed, pancake supper was on him.
“Why can't these clowns just make an appointment instead of kidnapping him? Billy’s so juiced to play God with a stranger’s body he’d gladly do it without the grabbing and bagging. Like they don't have a phone or somethin'?"
"Billy keeps getting kidnapped because he knows how to reattach arms?" Alison checked back into the conversation, "In a new and interesting way, of course."
White shook his head, "Yeah. Lots of reattaching arms and legs and treating laser blaster wounds… villain injuries."
"Villain injuries?" Alison questioned. White ignored her.
“There are some upsides. Like, they almost always ‘tip’ Billy for his work when they return him. A couple thou’ in possibly stolen and illegal currency,” Pete shrugged, “We make more on the kidnappings than we do on pitches, honestly.”
“One time when he was kidnapped, Billy found previously undetected early signs of cancer in this guy who had stuffed him in a bag a few hours earlier. He was so grateful he was in frickin’ tears by the end of it, and sent Billy home with 50,000 in gold Krugerrand— a bitch to convert to dollars, lemme tell ya. He’s in remission now. We got a card and some Harry & David pears from him at Christmas,” Pete mused, “Nice guy, y’know, for a kidnapper.”
A streak of bright red light flashed across the horizon outside the window.
“What the fuck was that,” Alison pressed her face to the glass, scanning for other phenomena, “A shooting star?”
“It was probably a Super Villain testing his gear in the desert,” Pete said, continuing his bored tone
“A whu—?” Alison cocked an eyebrow
“Past the highway out there up into the foothills is government owned no-man’s land so they’re free to go as fast as they want in their rocket-sleds or personal anti-grav saucers or whatevs,” White gestured vaguely, before suddenly recalling, “Billy and I designed a rocket-sled once but didn’t have the funding to actually build it.”
“I’m with you on the ‘super’ scientist thing,” Alison air-quoted heavily, “But you’re saying there are comic book-type supervillains out there?”
“Who do you think buys all the shit super scientists invents, duh.” White shrugged.
“Laughing maniacally, planning world domination,” Alison muttered in disbelief, "Is that who kidnapped Billy?" White nodded.
“They’re mostly just rich assholes into playing dress-up,” White corrected, “Except when you’ve got a million bucks to spend on your hobby you can hire fifty henchmen for $4.25 an hour and have a blaster gun that really shoots lasers.”
Alison rested her head on her hands, overwhelmed with either the waste or the stupidity. Or both.
“It’s somewhere between community theatre and, Civil War re-enactment,” Pete explained
“And you and Billy are the prop-masters?” Alison asked, incredulous.
“We could be, but Billy is dead against ‘working for the forces of evil,’ which sucks for our bank account since next to a government contract being a house designer for a super-villain is basically a blank check,” White started absentmindedly picking his teeth with the tine of a fork, “The irony is if it weren’t for the whole ‘villainy’ angle I know that Billy would be all over that comic book costumed shit.”
“You’re sure about that? Billy seems to have pretty good taste, but—”
“He collects toys. He obsesses over those Rusty Venture Saturday Morning cartoons from the 1970s. I’m sure he downplays it around you, acting cool and mature, but in his head… his great big cavernous head… he’s still a little kid.”
“But you Super Scientists don’t go for the costumes?”
“Super Science isn’t good or evil; we pursue knowledge regardless of the outcome. Driven by curiosity and, if I’m being honest, profit. The difference between pure science and super science is we’re expected to produce actual stuff— Death Rays, Transporter Cubes, Mind Control Helmets.
“A Super Scientist who produces a DEATH RAY isn’t considered evil?”
“Nah. Only using it for evil purposes would be evil.
“Well then, Montblanc,” Alison leaned in, “tell me some of the net-positive uses of a death ray?”
“Um…” White searched his mind, “Pest-control?”
Alison rolled her eyes yet again. This conversation was almost too stupid to continue but at least White wasn’t worrying about Billy as much now.
White started again, “Like Billy, there’s a lot of not-quite-grown-up man-children in the business so we’re starting to get some near-costume bleed. It starts innocently enough when a guy who’s not comfortable speaking in public has to present to a conference so maybe he dons the neon-green lab coat instead of the white one to jazz it up… You’re going to be wearing your mind-reading circlet for the presentation so why not spray paint it gold and add a few gems to it… And BAM!” White slammed his coffee cup on the table, startling Alison, “Before you know it you’re going to work in a unitard and chrome body armor.”
“It’s a slippery spandex slope.”
“Yeah, if I’m ever walking around with a big dumb hat and a goddamned cape on, put a bullet in my brain while I still have some dignity left.”
“Not with that haircut,” Alison said under her breath.
“Let’s pay the bill and get out of here," White said, grabbing the check and walking toward the register.
As if on cue, the door of the International House of Pancakes opened and a squat middle-aged man wearing an antlered helmet and a puffer jacket over a spandex catsuit came in and went to the counter.
“Picking up a dinner order for Imbolc the Horned God,” he said in a nasal voice, “I called ahead.”
The waitress at the register looked through her receipts and turned back to the kitchen to figure out where his to-go order was.
“It might be under ‘Doug,’" Imbolc called after her as she disappeared into the kitchen.
White got in line for the register behind him with the check in his hand. Imbolc looked over his shoulder.
“Hey man, didn’t expect to see another of us at the ol’ I-Hop”
“I’m a not… I mean,” White tried not to make eye contact, searching for the politest way to end the conversation before it started.
“I’ve never seen you at the Guild Hall; are you new?”
“I’m not a super villain,” White mumbled into his sleeve, trying not to be overheard, “I’m not a part of that whole…”
“But the costume and the red eyes, I assumed— I mean, you look evil.”
“I’m not in a costume, I just have albinism. It’s a genetic disorder, ok?” White snapped wearily as he leaned over Imbolc and put his check and a twenty on the register, not waiting for the waitress to get back.
Alison walked up to him and he ferried her to the door and away from Imbolc.
“Like I said,” White muttered to her under his breath with a glance back to the register, “Put a bullet right between my eyes if I end up like THAT.”
→ Read THIS on AO3 instead
White pushed in the screen door to find Billy on the couch. Not tied up. Not in a bag, but stabbing a plastic tub of hummus with a spear of carrot like he was mad at it. In his other hand, Billy absent-mindedly twirled a golf club
“What’s that?” White asked, pointing at the club
“I think it’s a mashie?” Billy said, “Maybe a niblick? Who knows?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be kidnapped?” White asked flatly, closing the screen door behind him.
“Standard arm-reattachment surgery,” Billy shrugged, wiggling a carrot stick between two fingers, “Since it only took me 15 minutes, I convinced them to cut the kidnapping short and let me go early.”
“Powers of persuasion,” White said with admiration, leaning over to take one of Billy’s carrots.
“They didn’t even have food for me! Can you believe it?” Billy shouted, his mouth full of humus. “How were they gonna keep me for 48 hours when they didn’t have any food in their Bunker HQ! Total amateurs.”
Billy jumped to his feet. “They tried to take me through a McDonald’s drive-thru!” He pointed at White with the butt of his golf club, You don’t take the kidnapping victim to a drive thru, especially when you’re driving a souped up golf cart with a mounted missile launcher on the fucking back of it,” Billy snarled.
Billy then pointed his club at the ordinary, if lumpy, plastic grocery bag on the couch, printed with “Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You” down the side.
“They said it was five thousand but I didn’t count it,” Billy said, calming down
White picked up the gratuitously grateful plastic bag, “You know the teller lady at the bank says they can’t take bills with blood on them any more. It’s a health code violation.”
Billy snapped, “I SAID I never touched the money. It’s clean! Jesus!”
White tried to assess the amount of money by shifting the weight of the bag in his hand before turning to head to the lab.
Billy looked down at his blood splattered t-shirt and open flannel, “These fuckin’ amateurs. Didn’t even have scrubs for me to change into. I had to do surgery in my civvies.“I really liked this shirt, too,” Billy muttered quietly to himself, “Maybe I can get it out with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. Sometimes that can get out a blood stain…”
“Hey Billy—“
“Ugh, what?” Billy groaned.
“Your girl with the Buddy Holly glasses—“
“Alison! Fuck! We were supposed to go to the movies today. She must be so pissed I stood her up!” Billy scrambled for the cordless phone on the other side of the couch.
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I explained everything and we went out instead and…”
Billy stared at his roommate. “Alison and you went out? “
“…y’know, she’s not so bad.”
→ Read THIS on AO3 instead
NOTES:
The title is a knock off of My Dinner with Andre, a notorious(ly boring? YMMV) movie where two men just talk over dinner for two hours.
I'm pretty sure QuickBooks accounting software was still Quicken in 1995, but hopefully 1% more people will get this joke if I use the modern name
No one called International House of Pancakes "iHop" in 1995, despite the corporate name being ihop, inc. That branding was heavily pushed through advertising in the 2000s. Imbolc is ahead of the curve.
