Chapter Text
Smoke swirled around the room like fog on a rainy day, beams of light from the small basement window getting caught in the plumes. You were at your friend’s house again, idly passing a blunt to each other and laughing.
“I’m telling you, it’s real. Why would I lie?” Your friend spoke, smoke puffing out of his mouth. He then passed you the ever-shrinking blunt as you laughed.
“You’re full of shit,” you retorted, taking a puff. The ginger leaned back, giving a slight shrug.
“Yeah whatever. You always say that…” He said, tone getting quieter but still playful.
He was on another one of his conspiracy tangents. The dude had quite a mouth on him when he got high, otherwise he was usually a quiet and reserved fellow. Even after being his friend for years, some of the things he said and did still weirded you out from time to time, but not in a bad way.
“The water system is all hooked up to the same shit! They can’t have different pipes underneath a campus!” You shot back, handing the blunt to him.
He took it, his reddened eyes peeking out from underneath his sunglasses, “How would you know? Have you been down there?” He smirked, smoking up the last bit of the blunt in an almost cocky manner.
“Well- no, but neither have you!” You crossed your arms.
“Says who?” He leaned back into his beanbag.
“You’re really full of shit. You have not gone down into the sewer systems beneath a college campus! Bull-fucking-shit!” You howled with laughter. This just made the dude’s look get even more testy.
“Everything was different. They have a whole different system down there.”
“No no no!” You shook your head rapidly, still laughing, “You didn’t! Shut the fuck up! Besides, if they were really pumping this polluted water or whatever into schools, you’d need a place to store the water, like a tower or something. You’d be able to see that,” You pointed your finger at him.
He just shrugged again, “It could have been under the ground.”
You just rolled your eyes, dropping the subject. There was never any use arguing with him about his theoretical ramblings, not truly anyways. He had a tendency to get uncomfortably serious if indulged too much so sometimes you had to be a bit “tactical” about speaking with him.
“Shit, why’s it so quiet?” He scratched his head, staring at the ceiling.
“Cause I stopped talking?” You answered slowly.
“No no, not that. The music! Damn, how long has it been off?” He pushed himself off the beanbag and went into the corner of the basement where he kept the little record player he had, fumbling with the vinyl to turn it over. You just chuckled at him, watching him through your hazy vision.
“Man, I don’t know why you still mess with those. Just use CDs! They’re way more convenient,” You said.
He held his palm out at you as he gently dropped the needle on the record, “Don’t need to hear it. I’ve already told you a million times, no.” As he walked back, the gentle grunge music he liked listening to finally came back on, setting the relaxing ambience up again.
“Yeah, you say no quite a lot,” you crossed your arms with a smirk.
“Like working with you at that shitty little job where that little manager of yours keeps constantly staring over your shoulder? No fucking thanks,” He laughed.
“He wouldn’t be able to see over your shoulders, dude,” You chuckled again.
“Well I don’t need anybody getting that close to me. He’s always… Hovering. Everybody there is always hovering. Eh..” He shook his head
“You’re always seeing things that aren’t there- I mean I guess my boss does hover- but my coworkers are fine! Not my problem you hate people,” You snorted.
“I don’t hate people.. Mm, well.. Hm…” He suddenly got a weirdly focused look and locked eyes with the carpet. His expression made you giggle, which in turn made you start laughing so hard tears were forming in your eyes. The laughter was contagious, and eventually Dude started laughing with you. You were always so captivated by his laugh. He never seemed amused by anything unless he was high, and then when he was, his laughter almost sounded forced as if he’d forgotten how to do it in the first place.
When the hysterics eventually died down, he rubbed the tears from under his sunglasses, looking down at the floor again, “I don’t hate everyone. I like you. I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, sure. You make a good point. What other friends do you have?” You teased, making his brows drop.
“Whatever, you can suck my dick,” He scoffed, looking away. You guffawed, loving how easy it was to fluster him.
A comfortable silence set in and you stared at the ceiling, shutting your eyes and listening to the music while getting lost in thought.
The Dude… You’d accidentally met him wandering around a community college campus years back. Everyone was creeped out by him. You were too at first, but your curiosity got the better of you and you decided to approach him one day. Apparently no one had ever done that before so he took a quick liking to you, in his own way. He was rather antisocial and prickly and you could tell why he didn’t make a lot of friends. Once you finally got underneath the “mysterious edgy guy” exterior, he was extremely awkward and had a tendency to make others uncomfortable. It was to the point where even being conventionally attractive and tall didn’t help his case.
You liked that about him, though. The rants he’d go on, his very intense fixation with firearms, his unique opinions on just about everything… They kept you hooked like a fish. No other friend was quite like him. He had a name of course, but he abhorred when anyone called him by it for reasons he never explained, so he insisted on being called by any other nickname. You’d always just called him ‘Dude’. You’d actually gotten so used to it that actually saying his name felt weird now. It was just one of the things that intrigued you.
He lived in the city you were in, renting out the basement from a stingy married-couple that neither of you got along with and they made it quite clear that they didn’t really like you or Dude either. Still, he somehow paid rent despite not having a job you knew about, so he was allowed to stay on the condition he follow the rules. The owners were out on vacation, so that was the only reason you and Dude were allowed to get high and blast music without a care in the world. Other than that, all hell would have broken loose the second they smelled the grass wafting out from the basement.
“God damn it dumb bastard, why’d you have to pass out again?” Something shook you and you jumped up, quickly looking around. You were still in Dude’s basement and he was looming over you, looking a little irritated. It was suddenly dark outside now.
“Shit… What did I do? I fell asleep?” You wiped your face, cringing when you felt the drool smear all over your chin.
“Yeah and so did I! You know one of us is supposed to keep watch,” He huffed.
“Fuck, I shut my eyes for once second. I didn’t even realize…” You rubbed your face, wiping off your chin with your shirt. You ignored Dude’s slightly pissy attitude, used to it by now. He had a weird issue with sleeping alone while high but he never did much about it but fuss for a bit then forget about it.
“Yeah I told you that stuff was strong. So what, you gotta go now?” He backed away, staring you down.
“Well what time is it? I have work early tomorrow…” You sighed, not wanting to get up from your spot.
“I don’t know. I don’t keep clocks down here. I hate the ticking noise. Probably nine or something?” Dude shrugged. You subtly smiled to yourself upon learning another bit of trivia about him. There was always something new to learn…
“I’ll go check upstairs. I have to take a piss anyways…” You pushed yourself up with a grunt, taking a moment to stretch out before you headed up. Dude just kept staring at you the whole time, standing motionless. You didn’t mind, it was just another thing you’d gotten used to. To anyone else he’d be extremely unsettling with how often he tended to stare, but to you he was just your buddy being himself.
You walked upstairs and down the hall to the bathroom, checking a clock on the way. Turns out it was pretty damn close to 9 P.M., just like Dude had said. You shook your head, knowing you were going to have to leave. It took you 30 minutes just to drive back home and counting your nightly routine you’d be lucky to be asleep before 11.
When you went back down to the basement, Dude was sitting on the edge of his bed, writing something in the little leather diary he always kept close to him. He didn’t seem to acknowledge your presence when you entered.
“You were right on the money, it’s pretty much 9 already. I gotta head back home.”
“Alright.” he kept writing, not looking up at you. Ah, so the high wore off already. It was pretty easy to tell a sober Dude from a high Dude. He usually seemed uninterested in everything but in your heart you knew he was always listening intently.
“How long did you say it’d be until the owners got back?” You asked, walking over to your spot and grabbing your things.
“Don’t remember. A week or so?” He answered briefly, eyes still locked with his journal.
“Okay. Well I’m gonna go. Bye Dude.” You waved, fully knowing he wasn’t going to wave back. Long drawn-out goodbyes weren’t really a thing with him.
“Okay, bye.”
You were at the foot of the stairs when he stopped you by calling out your name. You looked back at him, seeing he’d put his journal down.
“Do you want to come over again tomorrow?” He asked.
“Maybe. Depends on the time,” You replied.
“Later on in the day then?”
You rocked on your feet for a moment, looking down in thought. Since the homeowners had been gone you’d been hanging out with him a lot… You hadn’t been able to get very many personal errands done, but… Ah, what the hell? Being able to hang out with Dude like this was getting less and less common. You’d jump at the chance whenever it arose.
“Yeah sure. I’ll stop by after work. But can we please play one of my bands this time?” You teased, making the corners of his mouth rise ever so slightly.
“Okay.” He nodded.
You waved one more time before exiting the house. As you drove home, a super small part of you was chastising yourself for saying yes to hanging out again, but you suppressed it. Seeing him was becoming infrequent ever since he’d dropped out of college after one semester and you got a job. He didn’t like to go out much either, so meeting him anywhere was a super rare occurrence. That behavior, however, had slowly gone up over the years. When you first met him he was actually okay with going out for a drink every once in a while, despite how constipated a crowd made him look. These days… Not so much.
You didn’t mind though. Hanging out with Dude was not like hanging out with other friends. It wasn’t always to laugh and chat and have a good time, sometimes he’d be totally agitated about something or other times the two of you would sit and barely talk at all. It didn’t matter though, because something interesting was always bound to happen with him