An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
This is my gift to @yeahboiislay / @bhenchod for the @aftgexchange ! I really hope you enjoy, i had so much fun with the prompts you gave!
Having the evening to themselves, Matt and Neil plan an awesome Boys' Night that consists of movies, a surplus amount of food, and maybe a bit too much alcohol. Everything starts of great, but when they wake up the next morning with no memories, no money, and no eyebrows, they try to retrace their steps to figure out what the hell happened last night and run into a few problems.
~ ~
“Neeeeeeeiiiiiiil," Matt sings as he sails through the door to the suite, arms laden with a mountain of food. He grins at Neil and drops the snacks – seven different boxes of candy, two large bags of M&Ms, a six pack of soda, a bowl of popcorn, and a rather large bottle of rum – onto the table where they skitter to the sides and would have fallen if Neil hadn’t caught them in time. “Are you ready?”
Neil bounces around his friend, cradling one of the bags of M&Ms to his chest. He raises it above his head in triumphant glory at not letting it fall to the floor and meets Matt’s full-wattage smile with one of his own. Despite his hesitation at the amount of junk food and alcohol Matt had proposed for tonight, he could feel a current of excitement coursing through him. “I’m ready,” he declares.
“Do you mind?”
Neil’s attention is pulled to the couch, where an irate Aaron is stationed. He looks a little rumbled with his glasses askew on his nose and at least three different textbooks spread out on the coffee table in front of him. He frowns at the pair. “Not that I care, but what are you two yahoos up to anyway?”
“Boys’ night!” Matt and Neil answer in unison. They share an uncoordinated fist bump, difficult because Matt is a foot taller and Neil is still holding the bag of M&Ms over his head.
“Dan and the girls are doing their own thing and Nicky has a skype date with Erik,” Matt explains.
“And Andrew and Kevin are in Michigan trying to recruit more players for next year,” Neil adds, eyeing the precariously leaning tower of food behind Matt.
“You can join us if you’d like,” Matt says before Neil can protest. Neil shoots him a look just as the pile of snacks topples over and Matt dives for it, successfully avoiding Neil’s scornful expression.
“No thanks,” Aaron says. He regards the snacks and Matt trying to push them back into order with more than a little disdain. “I’ll just go to Katelyn’s. Don’t make too much of a mess, and have fun I guess.”
The bottle of rum rolls past Neil’s feet in a haphazard escape, and Matt darts after it on his hands and knees.
“We’re just gonna watch some movies and eat junk food,” Neil says. “How big of a mess can we make?”
_ _
Neil wakes some indeterminable time later with the worst headache he’s ever had in his entire life. His first thought as he comes slowly back to awareness is
ow, fuck
, and the second is
why is the ceiling so close to my face?
He blinks blearily at the too-close ceiling and wills the pain throbbing in his temples to go away. When his vision clears and Neil feels like he can move without keeling over, he realizes that’s he’s not staring at the ceiling at all, but at the underside of the coffee table in Matt’s suite.
Neil groans, clutching his head, and wiggles out from under the table. One of his shoes is missing, but it’s probably the least of Neil’s problems, because the room is an utter disaster.
It looks like a warzone, popcorn strewn across the room and smashed into the carpet, and a section near the television has a suspicious and atrociously orange stain that is half-heartedly covered by a couch cushion that does not belong to anyone Neil knows. Neil gapes at the carnage for one, stunned second and fumbles for the TV remote to turn it off, powering it down in the middle of an informercial about a magic towel that can clean any mess that inexplicably seems to be playing on repeat.
Silence rings in Neil’s ears, blotted out only by the blood rushing to his head. He briefly wonders what the hell happened last night, but trying to think back makes his head hurt worse, so he decides to go seek out Matt. Neil doubts Matt is in any better shape that Neil is, but maybe he remembers a bit of what they did to get in this situation.
The person he finds passed out in the kitchen is not Matt at all. For one, they are about six inches too short and their skin is three shades too pale. Secondly, they are dressed in nothing but shorts and the grinning head of Palmetto’s mascot, Foxy Roxy. Neil blinks in surprise at the half-naked stranger slumped on the floor before making sure they’re still breathing. When Neil is satisfied that he didn’t accidentally stumble across a body, he continues his search for Matt.
Neil finds him face-down on the floor behind the couch, snoring soundly and cradling a bottle of vodka, dyed an electric shade of orange. That, Neil supposes, would explain the stain by the TV. At least Matt is mostly dressed.
“Matt,” Neil hisses and nudges him lightly in the ribs. When he doesn’t stir, he kicks him a little harder. “Wake up,”
“Allison leave those gnomes alone,” Matt mutters incoherently. He turns over in his sleep and the vodka rolls away from him. Arms now empty, Matt wraps his arms around himself and hugs his chest. Neil isn’t paying attention to any of that though, his eyes are glued to Matt’s face, still slack with sleep.
Mostly, he looks normal. Except he doesn’t have any eyebrows, and what looks to be a single fake mustache from Party City is clinging for dear life where his left brow should be.
Neil presses a hand to his mouth, not sure whether the look on his face is one of horror and shock, or of laughter. He kicks Matt again.
“Ow, fuck,” Matt groans and opens his eyes. He says nothing at first, squinting up at Neil with a look that says he has the worst hangover ever. Then his eyes widen and his mouth falls open into a comical little o.
“Neil,” he says, hushed. “Your face.”
Neil’s hands fly to his face, scared of what he might find, but instead of the eyebrow’s he expects, his fingers meet smooth, freshly shaved skin.
“No,” he whispers.
Matt cackles, still staring at the unfortunate lack of facial hair on Neil’s face.
“Don’t laugh,” gripes Neil, covering the place where his eyebrows used to be with his hands. “Yours are gone too.”
The humor drains out of Matt’s face and he gasps, clutching his forehead. His clumsy hands dislodge the fake mustache and he watches it flutter to the floor with something like horror on his face. “No,” he mourns, picking it up and cradling it in his hands.
“What the hell happened?” Neil demands.
Matt is still staring at the faux-facial hair, mouth opening and closing in shock. Neil grabs his face and forces him to focus. “Matty,” he says, “we’re in deep shit.”
“The last thing I remember is walking to the liquor store for more alcohol,” Matt says, coming back to his senses. “This was before…” Matt spots the guy passed out in the kitchen. His eyebrows would have furrowed in confusion if he still had any. “That,” he says. “But after we had a popcorn fight.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” Neil admits. “Hang on, where’s my phone?”
“Why?” Matt asks. “You never use your phone.”
“Unless I’m drunk.” Neil ducks his head under the couch, looking for anything that looks vaguely like his outdated cellphone. He only finds more popcorn. He gives up his search when he swipes his hand along the kitchen counter and it comes away sticky.
“Maybe you left it outside?” Matt suggests. “I think you tried to call Andrew right before we came back in.”
“Great,” Neil says. He makes for the door, but Matt’s arm shooting out in front of him stop him in his tracks.
“We can’t go out like this,” he says, motioning to his face. He casts his gaze around the destruction in the room and his eyes light up when they fall on the coffee table. He lunges, knocking various bottles of soda and a sock away in his haste to get whatever it is he’s scrounging for.
He holds it up for Neil to inspect. It’s the remaining fake mustaches, tucked safely inside a plastic packet that is indeed from Party City.
“This could work?” he says. He glances from the mustaches to Neil, considering. He hold it up to Neil’s face. “I think this might actually be your shade.”
“I’m not putting that on my face,” Neil says, nonplussed and at awe that Matt would suggest such a thing.
“Go and be eyebrow-less then,” Matt sniffs. “Release your inhibitions.”
Scowling, Neil snatches the mustaches from his hands and fishes out them out. He shakes them out on to his hand. Two fall out, only enough for one.
There’s a beat of silence. Matt and Neil look at each other, and then at the fake mustaches.
“You can – ” Neil starts but Matt interrupts.
“No, no. You take them, buddy,” he says tearfully. He takes the mustaches from Neil and peels the paper off the sticky backing and carefully presses each one into their proper places.
They stare at each other for a long moment; Matt, eyebrow-less. Neil, clinging onto the last vestiges of his dignity. Matt is the one to break the silence.
“Neil,” he says, “you’re going to need to put your shoes on.”
After Neil locates his other shoe and he and Matt leave to find Neil’s phone, their search is interrupted by a large man angrily shouting in their direction. He storms over, red-faced and spitting out a stream of explicatives that would have any southerner clutching their pearls.
“Is he talking to us?” Matt asks. He’s still quite hungover; a pair of sunglasses shades his eyes from the afternoon sun and he wipes away the damp sheen of sweat clinging to his forehead with the back of his hand.
Neil, equally as hungover, squints at the man approaching. Upon further inspection, Neil recognizes him as the pitcher from Palmetto’s baseball team, Ricky Mercado. As far as Neil knows, they have never interacted.
“Nah,” he says. “He must be after someone else.”
“Neil Josten!” Ricky screams and too late Neil notices that he and Matt are the only other people in sight.
“Oh shit,” Neil says.
“What did you do?” Matt whispers, voice pitched furiously low.
“You better watch it, Josten,” Ricky says, close enough that Neil can see how truly mad he is. He reminds Neil of a bull, nostrils flaring, eyes wide enough to see the ring of white around the iris. Ready to charge. “I’ll fuck you up.”
Neil’s eyes narrow. Ricky is a lot taller than Neil and sure, he’s muscular, but Neil has survived all attempts on his life thus far in his twenty-year old life and he is not about to get taken out by some dumb baseball player who isn’t good enough to play the most important sport in the world, exy.
Slowed by the hangover, his brain doesn’t catch up to his mouth before he shoots back, “I’d like to see you try.”
Ricky seethes, and for a moment he does look like he’s about to charge. Neil braces himself but Matt scoops him up and throws him over his shoulder before Ricky can take even a step closer.
“No he would not!” says Matt over his shoulder as he books it back to the safety of Fox Tower.
Or, it would be safety if Ricky Mercado wasn’t a baseball player, and therefore didn’t have access to the building Matt was currently seeking for refuge. He stayed on their tail, shouting, gesticulating wildly, and occasionally throwing in some uncreative death threats. Neil has heard better and more convincing.
Actually, Neil thought Ricky might be acting out whatever Neil had done to piss him off, but Neil was either too hungover or Ricky too bad an actor for him to really understand what had happened.
They make it back in the building and up the stairs still intact, and soon enough they return to Matt’s suite. The mess is still there, the half-dressed mascot is not, and a new figure stands in the kitchen, surveying the damage. There’s a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and he looks rumpled in the way that spending a few hours on a plane would do to a person. He turns around, face unimpressed and arms folded across his chest.
“Andrew,” Neil says the same moment Matt sags with relief and whispers, “thank God.”
“Boyd,” Andrew acknowledges him. “Why are you carrying Neil over your shoulder?”
“Your boyfriend.” Matt jostles Neil as he says this and Neil wiggles until Matt lets him down. “Almost got us killed. He pissed off one of the baseball players and now he’s hunting us down. Please save us.”
As if on cue, there’s a loud banging on the door and Neil thanks whatever deity above that Matt had thought to lock the door. The person on the other side yells in frustration and begins to slam against the door. Neil is starting to think Andrew had a point when he said Neil has a way of making people want to kill him.
“Hmm,” Andrew says noncommittally and looks around Matt to where Neil is attempting to hide behind his large body, covering his forehead so Andrew doesn’t see the fake eyebrows. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a familiar gray cell phone.
“Oh!” Matt exclaims. “Where did you find it?”
“Nicky. He said he confiscated it last night,” Andrew says, eyes never straying from Neil’s face.
“We got a little drunk last night,” Neil admits, inching toward the door. He thinks death by angry baseball player is preferable to Andrew seeing what he had done to his face.
“That explains these,” says Andrew. He tossed the phone to Neil, opened up to their thread of messages.
It starts off normal, but at around midnight, Neil sent a video of himself dancing on the coffee table while someone off-screen throws popcorn at him. It’s far from what Neil thinks a person drunkenly dancing on the table should look like. The lighting is bad and so is Neil’s dancing, arms thrown in every which way and hips doing a little too much. It appears he’s attempting the macarena with a few added steps.
The second message is from an hour later and reads, would yoi still loveme if I ddni’t have eyebrows :(
So the jig is up.
Neil cringes and drops his hands. Andrew, privileged to have eyebrows fully intact, raises them at the sight of the ginger mustaches stuck to Neil’s face, and reaches up to peel them off. Neil thinks he sees a flash of amusement in his eyes before Andrew lets the mustaches drop to the floor. Neil is too embarrassed to say anything, but Andrew doesn’t notice. He looks around the room before grabbing a disemboweled lamp and weighing it in his hand.
“Get this mess cleaned up,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
Then he leaves, and Matt and Neil stare after him.
“Is he going to – ” Matt starts but Neil interrupts.
“Not important,” he says, waving his hand to get Matt’s attention. “We need trash bags and a vacuum cleaner.”
“And the will of God,” Matt nods as he begins to pick up cans and boxes of candy from the floor.
It takes an hour, three large black trash bags, and some duct tape to get the mess cleaned up. By now Andrew has returned, and is idly watching them from his perch on the arm of the couch. He offers no help, instead he slowly and methodically eats through a pint of ice cream, digging out the chunks of chocolate to eat first. When asked, he does not explain what he did with the lamp.
“You missed a spot,” he says and points to the large orange stain on the carpet with his spoon.
Matt pushes the entertainment center three feet to the right, where it covers the majority of the orange carpet. “No we didn’t,” he replies.
When they’re finished, Matt collapses at the kitchen table over a bowl of cereal and begins to snore. Neil wanders over to Andrew, head ducked to his chest and hood pulled over his eyes. Andrew pulls the hood down, eyes trailing up to the empty spaces where Neil’s eyebrows had been just last night.
“Do you think I can draw them on?” Neil asks. He’s seen Allison touch up her eyebrows with a brow pencil, so he should be able to draw in what he was missing, right?
Andrew huffs and curls his fingers in the collar of Neil’s hoodie. “Idiot,” he says softly, and presses a kiss to Neil’s forehead. Neil melts into his embrace, relieved that the whole fiasco is finally over and he can relax in Andrew’s arms with Andrew’s lips pressed against his.
“I hope you didn’t throw those mustaches away,” Andrew says once he pulls away, and Neil laughs.
“Too late,” he says and decides that he’s never drinking that much alcohol ever again.
