Chapter Text
Winter chill bites through my cheap gloves, freezing my hand in place on metal coated in frost. I’m white knuckling the handle of Pizza Time’s entrance, standing like a dumbass out in the cold without moving. Between the glass clouded by the cold and the chipped decal of business hours painted over it, I can't see inside. The low hum of a bass guitar rumbles from within, seeping through the chilled metal and into my sweaty fingers.
Skin Row’s streets, normally covered in the bodies of the aimless homeless the district is known for, is eerily empty tonight. Walking here I saw many of them huddled in corners, down alleys, between small nooks carved in buildings. Each of the poor bastards trying their best to stay out of the path of the winter coastal winds whipping through the streets. A few of the cold blooded bums swaddled themselves with stolen hospital blankets or torn trash bags and laid flat against grates that lined the sidewalk, taking advantage of the hot steam rising up from the sewers at night. Never mind the stink, anything to survive I guess…
Fuck. Fuck! Why am I doing this to myself? Just fucking move. It’s just a shitty pizza place, nothing to be nervous about, dumbass. Get inside, pay for the cheap slices of cardboard and cheese you get every night, and get out. Stop by Rick’s on the way home to refill on smokes, hobble your way back to your apartment as fast as your crippled ass can go, and make it back before that tilefucker greentext disappears. Now… Go.
A blast of warm air hits me as I force myself inside. I wince as the music finally reaches my ears, a generic butt rock song that doesn’t sound like her kind of thing but with her taste in music- No, nope, stop that.
The cashier, a bright yellow stegosaurus with eyes glued to her phone, raises an eyebrow as she asks what I want. She doesn’t even glance my way as I mumble out my order, “Meat lovers, and a Rokacola.” Blindly handing the order off to the kitchen staff behind her she doesn’t even bother giving me my total.
As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been here enough times the past couple months that they know they don’t have to repeat it. $8.34, enough to break a twenty and have enough left over to grab another pack on the way home. Food and cigarettes. Add to it my scavenged battlestation and a healthy amount of shitposting each night and it’d be all I need to get by. My pension from the Navy is still coming in, and while it’s not a lot each month it’s more than enough for my Spartan lifestyle. It’s a regular fucking Paradise. The only drawback to this routine?
A screeching whine from the microphone’s feedback leaves me wincing and without thinking I pull my beanie even lower. Sweet Raptor Jesus why do I do this to myself? I’m not going to look this time. Just like every other time she’s not going to be here, she’s never here any more, there’s no fucking reason to act like a little pussy, Anon.
“What was that?”
“Huh?”
The cashier’s giving me the stink eye. Goddammit, mumbling again. Initiate damage control.
“Fussy, my stomach’s just a little, uh, fussy…”
This time I’m lucky. The wagie clearly doesn’t give a shit, scoffing before returning to her phone. Spaghetti successfully contained- Ugh, nope, nevermind. The meme’s just too stale, even thinking it feels cringe.
With a deep sigh of relief that loosens my shoulders, I find my eyes drifting towards the stage before I can think better of it. Drums, guitar, my blood runs cold as my eyes drift towards the bass player’s place on stage–
“WOOAAAHHHHHH~!!!” the Quetzel singer wails into the mic, spit flying from their orange maw as they go way, way too hard for this kind of venue. Wings spread in triumph as their bassline pounds through the pizzeria… Which only gets a few winces and a glance from the audience.
…
The knots in my stomach loosen again as I confirm it isn’t her. Just some no-talent local cover band, the same as nearly every other time I’ve come here. Two months since then and it hasn’t been her on stage even once. Two months of getting cold pizza for dinner and not one more glimpse of Fa–
Trish was right about you…
–of her. Thank Raptor Jesus, that’d be just what I need, another reminder of the shitshow that was High School. Another glimpse at the bullet I dodged. A junkie Hellbent on tearing everyone around her down, still playing pretend and miserable for it. Being judged by her again, dressed down by those dull amber eyes. Her sharp nails digging into my arm, her emaciated body tense with feral fury. Her wings, missing most of her beautiful feathers, spread wide as she pulls me close. Her breath on my face again, the smell of cigarettes and excitement washing over me as I reach for her waist FUCK!
No, no we’re not doing this again! This is the last time I’m coming to this shithole. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself, the food’s not worth the stress! Every time, every single time I come here I get this way.
I’ve already been over this: I’m doing just fine. I’m living the life I’ve always wanted. Unbothered. Unjudged. Playing Rockring over and over again, telling kids on a certain Bolivian Basket Weaving board to kill themselves, jerking off when I don’t know what else to do. It’s everything, everything I’ve always wanted so why the Hell would I want anything else?
My jaw tightens as I pull myself back to reality. A pizza box sits in the serving window beside the cashier. The top of the thin, cheap cardboard box sticks to the cheese inside, leaving a greasy stain where they meet. Either she didn’t hear it was ready or, well there isn’t really an ‘or’ it’s obvious she doesn’t give a single shit. I try getting her attention, waving a little before giving a brief frustrated “Hey!”
Annoyed, she glances up without a word. When I signal to my pizza she scoffs but begrudgingly passes the greasy box over to me.
Before leaving I make sure to open it up to check my toppings. They’ve messed it up enough times I may as well make sure I got what I ordered–
Anchovies.
…
Moments of happier days flicker through my mind:
A shared exhaustion after walking all over the city,
Being disgusted with the Salmon Shithead’s master plan and storming off,
A secondhand kiss and the taste of cheap cigarettes,
A toy bought for a tip that’s now long lost,
Candlelight, sharing a meal with her…
Fang’s wings wrapping me in an embrace as she squeals with pure joy.
…
…Goddammit. Fine. Fine, okay. I give up. My face tightens into a scowl as I shut the box. There’s no winning here, there’s no chance it’ll end well, but fuck it. I wave down the cashier again.
“What?”
“My Roke,” nodding at the fridge of bottled sodas to the side, “I still need it.”
Another scoff as she turns to grab my drink.
“Wait,” she flashes me a look as I interrupt but I continue, “I need to know about a band that was in here a couple months back. Lead singer was a Ptero, one with white scales. They played bass, had a shaved head? I haven’t seen them around any more, any idea when they’re playing here again?”
The dino shrugs with indifference as she pulls my Roke from the fridge, “Sorry buddy, no clue.”
“Maybe you remember their band’s name? I didn’t catch it then but if I knew it I could maybe-”
“Look skinnie” she rests her weight on the counter, “do you think I pay attention to the bands here? We get a lot of no-talent screw-ups, real pieces of work. It’s a revolving door, a bunch of losers that can maybe hold a guitar straight, let alone play it. That’s the kind of talent we’re workin’ with here.”
She nods towards the band behind me just as, as if on cue, the singer deepthroats the mic while screeching some attempt at a guttural yell and peaking the sound in the process.
Our modern day Mozart might’ve flown too close to the sun with this stylistic choice, because as the metal gets a little too deep in his open beak for his own comfort, the Quetzal lets out an involuntary retch right into the mic before backing off and coughing out his lungs.
Like a wave passing over the room, each of the handful of patrons pushed their trays away, their appetites completely ruined.
Shaking off the sight I return my attention to the flippant Stego.
“You have to have some sort of records, right? Receipts, pay stubs. Maybe your boss could check and tell me?”
“Ohoho, yeah, right,” she scoffs, “I’ll get right on that.”
This cu- Nnnn, fuck. Fuck. As she puffs up to say something I feel myself deflate. There’s no point in arguing. No reason to fight. Maybe she notices because she softens just a little before speaking.
“Look, Skinnie,” the dino server adjusts her position as she leans forward to get closer, her eyes narrowed but without malice, “between you and me, we don’t keep those sorts of records. Like I said, it’s Skin Row. The deadbeats we get in here get paid in cash; no records left behind and we get to save a little money at the same time. If we ain’t worked with them since then, like you said, we really don’t know.”
Figures. Missed my chance, maybe if I asked them back around that time it might have worked but now? Far too little, far too late.
With a resigned nod and a meager thank you I take my pizza and soda in each arm and leave just as the band on stage finishes their set. Less ‘finish’, more ended mid-song with the bassist kicking the shit out of the drumset behind him while he was getting too into his solo. Before they could escalate from shit talking to blows I hobbled my way out of the restaurant.
Forget getting cigarettes. I’ve still got a pack and a half back home, it doesn’t matter.
Dammit, I could feel that one at least. I’ve got to stop this stupid mumbling. It’s going to get me stabbed one of these nights.
One step after another through the cold Volcaldera night. The wind picked up even more when I was inside, now whipping the cheap fabric of my outfit around and biting my nose as I walked home. Stale pizza with toppings I didn’t want hugged to my chest with one hand, bottle of Roke hanging from the other, head on a swivel for any junkies braving the cold for drug money, and a brain that just would not SHUT UP.
I’m never going to see Fang again and that’s FINE. I’ve got everything I could want, everything I DID want. I didn’t fuck up this time because I don’t want to see her again! Even IF I did it’d just be another reason I shouldn’t. I’m a fuck up, I always will be. People never fucking change. I fucked up that night on the beach, I fucked up my grades, I fucked up in the Navy, and I fucked up my chance to apologize to Fang.
You should be glad I’ve put up with your shit as long as I have, I deserve a fucking prize or something.
No, fuck that, I don’t owe her shit. I went out of my way to be there for her and what did it get me? I had to put up with her identity bullshit that whole year.
Not like anyone else would put up with a mentally ill schizo like you.
I had to babysit her unstable ass! Stand up for her to her own friends so she could play something she actually liked! I let her do what she wanted, try what she wanted! She wasn’t my problem to fix! I’m not her dad, her brother, I’m not Trish! She didn’t need me to be another set of hands trying to mold her into something she clearly didn’t want to be! I let Fang be Fang, and did she appreciate it even once?
YOU DON’T EVEN MAKE A PASSABLE FAGGOT.
…
…
I stop. My hand’s crushed the flimsy cardboard box against my chest, smearing sauce and cheese and dried fish against my thick jacket. The mush’s grease seeps into the fabric, the wind stabbing cold through the new wet spot on my chest. Somehow the cold uses that as a beachhead, snaking across my body and turning my blood to ice. That has to be it.
It must be, because I’m shivering and I can’t stop. My body aches, I feel so much heavier. My face begins to sting on top of it all, so I raise a shaking hand up to my cheek to warm it and–
It’s wet.
She looks a mess.
Her wings are ragged, feathers misaligned and a clear patch of them missing on one.
I… What the fuck is wrong with me?
Eyes puffy and red from crying.
But her smile… was…
None of that is true. I didn’t try to fix her, because I didn’t try at all. We never talked about it because it was easier for me to never mention it.
The thick black eyeliner makes her once bright amber eyes seem dull.
It’s too late to take it back. That night on the beach happened, it’s been four long years. Far, far too late for me to fix anything. Far too late for me to change.
And the expression on her face is one of absolute misery.
Far too late to help Fang. Whatever they’ve become has taken their place, consumed the Fang I knew and left this husk behind.
I clench my jaw, allowing the clutter in my hands to fall to the ground before starting to walk again. Less than a block away from my shitty apartment with my pointless hobbies and my obsession with an image board that hasn’t brought me joy in years.
My Goddamn Paradise.
Tomorrow we’ll do this all over again. And the next day too, rehashing the same circular fucking thoughts and playing the same shitty games, and missing the same awful girl. Again and again and again…
…
…Fuck it. I’m not going to resist any more. This cycle’s never going to stop, so fine. FINE.
Climbing up the stairs of my dingy apartment my body seethes with fury. I’ll do it. I’ll find them. I’ll talk to them. Whether I apologize or not, whether they accept it or not, whether they kick my ass or respond with ‘Literally who?’ when I get to them, I don’t care. I need to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I loved in them is dead and gone, otherwise I’m going to drive myself insane.
So, as I reach my floor I begin to formulate a plan. Pizza Time’s a dead end. If they haven’t performed there this long, there’s no point. It’s a wash.
That leaves me with two options.
Opening my door further displaces some of the old pizza boxes and discarded trash that’s built up inside my room. The old apartment smells exactly like you'd expect a dirty NEET’s cavern to smell: sweat, semi-rotten food, and uh… used tissues.
Option one, I wander around Volcaldera Bluffs systematically looking for Fang. Look up local venues, make a list of as many local bands as I can, and go to as many of those shows as possible to cross them off.
Punting a bit of the trash out of the way, I bump the door closed with a shoulder and engage the locks. Multiple. If some junkie wants to get in here they absolutely can, the door’s practically made of balsawood, but I’d rather it be as big a pain in the ass as possible.
If Fang’s online at all, maybe I’ll get lucky and find a pic of their band with them standing front and center. That said, there’s always a chance they just float between bands. If so it’s all down to luck whether I can actually find them. Or maybe it’s even worse, they end up leaving a band and join up with another I’ve already checked. Hell, they could have already skipped town altogether.
It’s a shit plan that won’t work, but it’s less awkward compared to the second option at the very least.
I peel off my beanie, chuck away my gloves, and kick off my shoes to a corner by the door. Keys on the table, wallet chucked by the PC. At a glance it looks like that tilefucker thread’s devolved into incoherent shitposting tearing this poor pervert’s taste in fetishes apart. Any other time I may have joined in but I’m not really in the mood.
As I lay back on my shitty twin sized bed I fumble on the nightstand for a cigarette, light it, and take a long drag. A deep gash in the drywall above catches my eye, another one I must have missed when I moved back in.
My room may be trashed, but not all of it’s my fault. On my first day back this place looked even worse than when I’d last lived here. Another puff of smoke billows to the ceiling above, the once speckled white plaster now stained yellow by another similarly irresponsible smoker.
With a quick glance around the room you can’t help but see some of the poorly resealed holes in the drywall, the white of them just a little brighter than the rest of the wall. And don’t even get me started on how I found the bathroom a few months ago…
Time moved on between me leaving for the Navy and now. Obviously. Some jackass had utterly trashed the room since then and the landlord unsurprisingly did pretty much nothing about it before leasing it back to me. I just don’t care enough to pitch a fit about it.
…Fuck I’m stalling.
I pull my phone from my pocket, tapping a few times to pull up and swipe through my contacts.
My other, better, and least wanted option is to ask people whom I know for a fact knew Fang. It’ll be awkward as fuck and likely won’t give me much, our breakup was about as far from clean as it could get so most of them likely hate my guts. Still, it’s easier than running around with no idea where to start.
Trish? Haha, fuck no. Not unless I wanna be gored by a short, angry trike. Besides I’m 99% certain the number she gave me back then was fake, though I never really tried messaging her. No point in confirming now.
Reed? Probably my best bet, I’ll just– Damn, text didn’t go through. Probably changed phones or something. Looking around online he’s still kicking around Volcaldera somewhere, but all his profile pictures are of Bob Marlin and various 420BCE memes. He’s set on private as well so that’s a no-go unless he accepts my friend request. I’d have better odds of him being sober.
Their brother, Naser? He’d definitely know where Fang was, he was too good of a guy not to. But I never asked for his number. Thankfully he’s got a pretty decent online presence: albums of events he attended in college, pics of him shopping for those God awful technicolor polos at some store called ‘Dan Flashes’ downtown, and many, many pictures of food with little one word descriptions like “Yum!”. God I knew you were a normie Naser but– Aha, got him! There’s an email listed on his MissingLinked profile. That’s one option down at least.
Fang’s mom and dad? I… Well shit I can remember their mom’s doting personality and most DEFINITELY their dad’s death glare, but I don’t remember their names. I don’t even remember exactly where they lived, let alone what their number might have been. However I think I do remember their dad’s job. Police officer? No, that’s right it was even worse, Commissioner.
A few Oogle searches later and I have his info at least, Ripley Aaron. No socials, nothing much online beyond a few articles. Looks like he retired a couple years ago, good for him I guess. I’ll bet I can find more if I dig around, but unless I’m out of options I’m going to avoid risking a Ptero twice my size ripping my spine out. No thank you.
Fang themself? Already tried about a week after I saw them last. Their number’s disconnected, all their socials from back then have either been abandoned years ago or deleted, and looking up their name online doesn’t really pull up anything. In a world of technicolor bipedal dinos it turns out edgy teens calling themselves “Fang” are extremely common. Shocking. They never really were very unique…
…
Sighing out a stream of smoke I allow my phone to drop to my chest. Shittalking my ex’s tastes is really mature, especially since I’m the one that apparently can’t move on.
Sitting up I notice the cigarette has burned nearly to the filter, its ashes balanced precariously and drooping. With a click of my tongue I reach to tap it free into an ashtray on my desk, positively piled with ashes from the last half dozen packs I’ve gone through. In the corner of my eye I can see the time, just past midnight.
This late, I doubt Naser’d answer. Unless the dude’s pulling an all-nighter. That’s what college students do sometimes, right? Either way he’s my best option here.
Pulling up Naser’s email address on my phone, I type out a short message:
From: XxAnonAnus69xX
To: Naser_Aaron03
Title: hey
I know you hate my guts but we need to talk
Im in town again and I think I saw Fang a while ago playing and they dont look like theyre doing okay
If theres any way you could help me get in touch with them I would appreciate it. I know I dont deserve it but I dont know who else to ask
Please
Anon Y. Mous
I only realized I used the burner account I made when I was twelve right as I hit Send. Great, awesome. At least there's no doubt it's from me.
Staring up at the yellowed ceiling, the lights from the street outside cut streaks across my room through the awful shades that came with the apartment. For once, despite my neighbors’ near constant fights and screaming matches at all hours of the day, my world is silent.
My stomach growls.
Dropping that pizza’s going to hurt, but I just don’t care anymore. My mind is elsewhere.
Fang’s eyes. The brilliant amber shine they had inside them when they cared for me. The dull look they had when I saw them last, miserably playing to no one. I know it, I know the Fang I knew is dead and gone. Chewed up by whatever they’ve been through these past four years, everything bright and wonderful about them gnashed away until all that’s left is… whatever that thing was on stage.
But I owe it to Fang. The Fang I knew. I owe it to them to confirm that they’re completely gone. They can shit on my life all they want for all I care, I just need to know if they’re even a little happy. A little okay. Maybe then I can live with myself. Maybe–
We forgive ourselves, and we start over.
…there’s not a chance in Hell.