Room 307, Monday Evening

[dollpocalypse]

After an hour and twenty-five minutes spent trying to trace a text message that had just come in on his phone, Topher was forced to conclude two things: one, it was legit, and two, he sort of wanted to crawl under his bed and never come out ever again.

But there were bags of chips under his bed and he really didn't want to find out if the chips had rodent friends down there, so he had to settle for burrowing under the blankets instead, laptop open in front of him as he vengefully and imprecisely shot at zombies in a video game.

Like this weekend hadn't been bad enough. Like he hadn't gotten a stupid (albeit newly vanished) haircut and a hangover. Like he hadn't made a total moron out of himself in front of Ben and Jello Girl and Peter, then hurt his hand making the world's shittiest piece of technology. Now he'd done something to piss Tony off too, and -- here was the kicker -- he didn't even know what it was. Because Tony already knew about that stupid fanfiction story that that bitch Karla had told everyone about, and he hadn't been mad at him after the whole lap-sitting thing on Thursday night, and their encounter as kids on Saturday hadn't been too horrible, and nothing bad had happened in frat, so... what was it?

For a second, he wondered if maybe Kenzi had said something... but they weren't close, were they? He dismissed the idea and shot furiously at zombies. The volume was up ridiculously high, but he wasn't too bothered by the noise of the explosions right now. Or the gore. Even the stuff that normally squicked him out was fine.

[[Door closed, post wide open. This kid. So much emo.]]

Comments

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

Dave returned to the room after yet another coffee run since, you know, he spent a whole weekend without any. It didn't matter that he was a child at the time. He needed to make up for lost caffeine.

And once he was there, he had to deal with loud zombie deaths. "Can you turn that down?" Dave asked.

[dollpocalypse]

"Why does it matter?" Topher moaned, firing away at a stupid zombie who had probably just friend-dumped his genius best friend over text message or something.

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

"Because it's kind of loud and distracting the other person in the room," Dave pointed out.

[dollpocalypse]

Topher kept up the shooting.

"Fuck that," he pronounced. Which was obnoxious even for him, really.

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

"Hey, someone's in an even worse mood than usual," Dave said, irritatingly cheerfully. "It's gonna be a fun night, isn't it?"

[dollpocalypse]

Topher stared at him.

"No," he corrected Dave. "It's gonna be a terrible night. Because everyone sucks and the world should suffer."

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

"Just out of curiosity, what did I do to deserve that?" Dave asked.

He was ignoring what Miley did with the droid baby vomit.

[dollpocalypse]

Mellowing somewhat, Topher tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

He just wanted the general world to suffer, see. Not Dave specifically.

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

"Being told I suck and should suffer?" Dave repeated. Since Topher just said it. It was fresh in his memory. "And with the door closed, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one suffering from loud death noises coming from your computer."

[dollpocalypse]

And out came an expression that Dave had never seen on Topher's face before. Because it was an expression of pure, quiet rage.

"I'm. Suffering. Too."

That was maybe a little terrifying.

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

"I'd suggest turning the volume down again, but something tells me that's not why you're suffering," Dave theorized. He almost wanted to hide under his bed after seeing that look, but, well, there was that damn strobe.

[dollpocalypse]

Damn that strobe. Damn it to hell.

"No," Topher confirmed, his voice scary-quiet. "It isn't."

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

"What happened?" Dave asked.

[lockestheway]

And look, there was someone knocking on his door!

Nothing like turning into your own bratty childhood self to remind you that occasionally you had to at least pretend to be a decent human being to people.

[dollpocalypse]

Oh, what the fuck.

"Who is it?" Topher asked warily, speaking loudly over the sound of zombies being slaughtered.

[lockestheway]

"It's me," Peter said, and then, realising that not everybody lived on Planet Peter, added: "Peter. Can I come in?"

[dollpocalypse]

You'd have to excuse Topher for tensing slightly. Or, you know, drawing the blankets tighter over himself.

"Yeah," he called, though he wasn't sure if he meant it.

[lockestheway]

Peter mentally weighed the advantages apologising to Topher had versus actually having to apologise again, then... kind of copped to the fact that while yes, salvaging Topher (again) would be useful to him, maybe apologising would just be the right thing to do.

But mostly it was the useful to him part.

He opened up the door after he'd gotten the okay and stepped in. "Hey," he said. "I needed to talk to you."

[dollpocalypse]

Topher wondered if it was obvious that he was freaked out. Nervously, he ran his thumb over the bandage on his hand, exposed on the outside of the blankets.

"Yeah, shoot," he said, trying to think about just this and not, say, the horrible devastating text he'd just gotten, or the whole bullying thing from Saturday. Anticipating what he thought Peter's request might be, he offered, "You need me to rig something up for you?"

Oh, Topher.

[lockestheway]

"No," Peter said, after a brief pause. "I just came by to talk about the weekend. I was a real snot."

[dollpocalypse]

"Oh."

A pause.

"Yeah, no, that's nothing. Don't worry about it."

Bullshit.

[lockestheway]

Peter gave that a shrug. "Well, I'm sorry, either way," he said. "I'm not exactly proud of that time in my life."

[dollpocalypse]

"Yeah," Topher said, glancing down. "Me neither."

Not that it was the same thing or anything -- he'd never made anyone do stuff they didn't want to yet -- but god, he could really live without the memory of being such a passive idiot.

"I was telling Ben, it's not like it was all your fault, anyway," Topher offered, even though he still wasn't sure how much of that he believed. "I mean. I gave you my stuff, right? Not exactly a genius move."

[lockestheway]

Look, Topher, if you wanted the full-on therapist treatment, you'd have to take this part of the conversation to Ender.

"And I pushed you around to get you to do it," Peter said, which was as much time as he wanted to spend on that angle. "So I'd say this ball was in my court."

[dollpocalypse]

Topher wasn't sure what to say to that. He knew Peter had been a dick, but he was here willing to take the blame for the first time ever, and now apparently it wasn't his fault. Even though everything else this week... kind of was.

Apparently.

"Hey, so, um, I could fix that lamp for you," he offered hesitantly. "I mean. It's kinda shitty. You know, now that I can... actually figure out how things work."