Chapter Text
“Christ on a fucking stick!” were the first words Stolas heard at his new school. He’d heard plenty of curses in his life, but the stick thing was new.
He shifted on the shitty, creaking wooden chair in the headmaster’s office and wondered whether it would break under his weight while various shouts came from the hallway. A woman who looked like she did coke on the daily and/or approached burn-out levels of stress threw the door open.
“Can we not do this now?” The headmaster gestured to Stolas with an annoyed wave of his hand. “I’m kinda in the middle of something.”
Stolas looked at his shoes, eager to let the conversation pass over his head.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Dammit Morris, it’s you-know-who again.”
“Fuck,” the headmaster didn’t bother to censor his profanity. “Goddammit to hell.”
Stolas lowered his head a little more. Maybe they’d forget he was there if he made himself small enough. His shoes were polished. His socks matched. This would be all right.
“Stolas Goetia, would you step out for a minute?”
He nodded and followed his feet out the door.
The door closed with a slam that made him flinch. The shouting continued, this time between the headmaster and the coked up woman. Something about jelly sandwiches in the cantine and fucking behind a shed.
This always happened. Wherever he went, shit followed. That was how he ended up here in the first place, banished from his pretty palace to this backalley school. Not banished , he scolded himself. That was an ugly word. Sent away, for his own good.
A harsh voice stopped his train of thought. “Got a lighter?”
Stolas whipped his head to the side to see a boy leaning against the wall. He was a good deal shorter than Stolas, with messy dark hair and brown skin. A patch of white covered half of his face and his grin spelled trouble with a delicious capital T.
“Oh,” he stammered. “Um. Maybe?” He dug around his messenger bag. The leather scratched against the wall stucco. His father had given him one engraved with their family symbol for his eleventh birthday. “To make campfires or something,” Mr. Butler had explained while he had given the item to Stolas. His father did not know his son was a recluse and a bookworm who listed ‘professional hermit’ as a life goal in his imaginary friends’ questionnaires.
“Here you go.” Stolas handed it to the boy, who twirled it between his fingers.
“Damn, you smoke fifty dollar cigars or something?” He chuckled and produced a pack of cigarettes from his leather jacket.
Stolas’s eyes darted to the glaringly obvious ‘SMOKING FORBIDDEN’ sign on the pin board next to the headmaster’s door.
The boy simply lit up his cigarette and took a drag. “Thanks.” He tossed the lighted back and Stolas stumbled over his feet to catch it.
“You’re welcome?” He wanted to bash himself over the head for saying it like it was a question.
“Blitz. The o is silent.”
Thank god, he thought Stolas wanted his name. This was a normal conversation. People told each other their names, right? He straightened his tie and cleared his throat. Etiquette lessons had prepared him for this, and his book on proper conversation had done the rest. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Blitz. I am Stolas Goetia.”
The boy, Blitz, cocked an eyebrow. “The fuck? Who talks like that? Whatever. Don’t answer that you fancy tie-wearing motherfucker.” he shrugged and sauntered away. “See ya ‘round.”
Stolas’s hand shot forward, nearly touching the spikes on the boy’s jacket. He caught his own wrist just in time. “Aren’t we… supposed to wait?”
Blitz shrugged. “What are they gonna do? Kick me out twice? I’d be back on their motherfucking doorstep before they can finish their quickie.”
Stolas slapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh.
As if on cue, the headmaster threw the door back open. “Blitzo Buckzo!” He shouted. In response, Blitz held up two middle fingers and kept walking.
Pentagram city, capital of the state of pride in the US, sported a dark red sky and a gang war between two crime lords over who was the more Italian of the two. (Apparently that meant the Italian restaurants were good, at least.)
It also had various shitty public schools with American staples like lockers big enough to stuff nerds in and bleachers to hide behind for a mental breakdown or a snog. An overenthusiastic top student body president gave Stolas the full tour. His nametag read S. Pentious, but he’d said: “Everyone calls me Pentious, my first name is sssecret.” A horde of younger students followed him around like he was the light of their life. The one named Frank helpfully opened doors for them. After a minor explosion in the science lab, they left Stolas in the schoolyard.
He shuffled towards the side and took in his surroundings. Near the entrance, two girls shared earbuds. By the storage shed, a boy with an ugly cartoon shark on his t-shirt hit on a girl who spit her bubblegum in his face. While they were distracted, Stolas slipped behind the shed. Hopefully nobody would come looking. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the space was already occupied by the boy from earlier.
Stolas held up his hand in a half-assed wave. “Hello, Blitz wasn’t it?”
Blitz motioned to the two others with his cigarette. “I’m kinda in the middle of something?”
The others were dressed from head to toe in pink and stuffed plastic bags with suspicious pills in their backpacks.
“Are those….” Stolas opened his mouth, but no other words came out. Just his luck, his newly discovered hiding spot for the socially awkward was already used by the possibly Italian criminals.
The boy grabbed him by his necktie and hissed: “I swear, if you’re gonna snitch I’ll fuck you up.”
“Angie!” The girl stopped him. “You’re the new guy aren’t ya? How are you finding his hellhole?”
Stolas fiddled with his tie bar, undecided on whether he should make a run for it. He had long legs, but he had the lung capacity of an ant. “Yes. Today is my first day.”
The girl nodded as if her friend hadn’t just manhandled him in a decidedly un-sexy way. “The name’s Cherri, this is my bestie Angel. You should come to the Speakeasy next Friday and we’ll introduce you to all the cool folks around.”
“That’s code for queer,” Angel added.
Stolas gripped the strap of his bag a little tighter. “How did you know-”
Angel waved him off with the iconic gay limp wrist. “Please! I can smell a fellow gay from a mile away. The way you walk? Showing off those legs like you are waiting for a hot stud to shove a cock between them.
Both of them laughed as he turned furiously red. He bit his lip and looked over his shoulder. Blitz was gone and the shed blocked the other students from sight.
“Is he one of your friends too?” He asked.
At that, Cherri’s laugh turned into a cough. “Nah. As queer as he is, we stay away.”
Angel leaned in closer and crooked a finger at him. “He might fuck everything with legs, but I ain’t into guys who play with fire. He killed two and the last person who rejected him barely survived the flames of his wrath.”
Cherri knocked him over the head. “Cut the depressing crap. He’s always got the good shit if you need a hit though.”
Stolas wanted to run back home to his library and build a fort out of books. Hell, he’d let a hot jock shove him into a locker if it meant exiting this conversation without another word.
Except he wouldn’t see his beloved library anytime soon, so Stolas squared his shoulders and forced a smile. “I’d be delighted to take you up on your invitation this friday.”
Angel grabbed Stolas’s hand, but before he could scribble their numbers on his palm, Pentious returned.
“Excussse me!” He held up a warning finger with the pretentious air of a hall monitor. “Miss Bomb, I hope you are not leading our newest student down your ssssinful path.”
Cherri rolled her eyes. “Chill, Pen. We invited him to the Speakeasy this friday.”
Clearly, Pentious didn’t believe a word of it.
“I sssseeee,” he hissed. “Now we should go to classss. I do not want a new student to be late on his first day.” He took Stolas to the right classroom and deposited him into one of the creaking seats.
Stolas sighed. He hid his phone under the desk and saw his favourite fic had been updated. It was a delectable historical AU where a gay man and a lesbian woman pretend to be married to have salacious gay affairs left and right.
He opened ao3 and waited for the classes to be over. Thank fuck he perfected the art of not blushing while reading smut.
The taxi he called to take him home arrived ten minutes late, leaving him exposed to the sharktooth grins of various other students and pouring rain. He did not exchange a single word with the driver, which suited him just fine. The last thing he wanted was a dressing down for turning the taxi into an aquarium.
His temporary residence was in a student housing complex of graffitied brick walls and dicks drawn on the lift doors. Waterproof sharpies had imbedded them for eternity. Mr. Butler had brought his suitcase upstairs earlier that morning, before leaving him a set of keys and a mandatory goodbye. He was probably on his flight back already.
Stolas sighed as he pressed the button in the lift. He could feel his soppy wet socks shift in his loafers. There was a delay between the ding of the bell and the doors opening, ten seconds that made him feel trapped, even though he’d been here before.
The door of apartment 409 was open, indicating that his flatmate had arrived. A boy who looked about Stolas’s age carried a stack of boxes taller than him. (That was easy, given that this person could not be five and half feet.)
He knew he would have a flatmate, that was additional punishment- No, a learning opportunity, his father had arranged. He had his own bedroom, but the kitchen-slash-living room and bathroom were shared.
“Hello, I am Stolas Goetia. I occupy the other bedroom of 409.”
Good job stating the obvious, idiot, his father’s voice supplied.
The boy put the boxes on the singular table and something inside squeaked like a rubber chicken. He turned around and Stolas got a first look at him. He was paler than Stolas, with white hair and a faint red glow to his eyes. His pastel rainbow turtleneck and trousers with two different coloured pant legs made him look like a candy cane.
“Hi! I’m Fizzarolli. I’m afraid I can't shake your hand right now.”
Fizzarolli gestured to Stolas’s soaked form with a robotic hand. It made a soft whirring sound.
“Of course! Are you attending Pentagram school as well?” he asked. Basic questions were good, right? That is what you did when you met someone, right?
Fizzarolli shrugged. “Dunno. In the words of the almighty: I am limbless, I am gay, I have albinism, I am new in town. ”
Stolas offered a weak smile. Out of all the answers he calculated for, that was not one of them.
“I was a trainee at Mammon’s star studio. Got one song out and then this happened.” He motioned to his head, then to his feet. Both his legs were metal as well, and Stolas tried not to imagine what horror could make a person lose all four limbs.
“What brings you here then?”
Fizzarolli grinned as if he just saw a cool explosion. “I’m just here to spite the fucker who did this. I bet he didn’t think I’d be back, one year later and still hot as fuck, with shiny new limbs and half a contract.” He twirled around and confetti fell out of his sleeve.
“Half a contract?” Stolas asked. He could talk about contracts. Contracts were just words, and words were fun.
“I have more of that paper left than my body, so I’m counting it as a fucking win.” Fizzarolli skipped to the door to let in a guest.
In the doorway stood a giant of a man with dark brown skin, a blue pinstripe suit and long dreadlocks. Few people towered over him, but he had to be at least seven feet tall and had to double over to enter. Stolas noticed he did not wear a shirt under the jacket and absolutely refused to stare at the man’s broad chest. (That was a lie, maybe he took a little peek.)
“Fizzie, I brought the mirrors you asked for!” the giant sing-songed.
Fizzarolli slid a bionic finger over the man’s biceps. “Great! Can you put them on that wall?” Then, to Stolas, “I hope you don’t mind me practising dancing.”
“Of course not.” Out of all the habits a potential flatmate could have, like doing cocaine and not flushing the toilet after a shit, dancing had to be one of the least disturbing.
The giant put some more of Fizzarolli’s stuff in place and as thanks he got an air horn to the face. It was almost comical how the short young man had to crane his neck to look at his giant visitor.
Stolas retreated to his own room. He could ask about cooking and cleaning later. He stripped off his wet clothes and hung them on the hangers mr. Butler had laid on the bed. Mental note for next time: don’t wear a full three piece suit and tie to school. At least someone had called his tie fancy.
It was only six-thirty in the evening, but jetlag was a bitch, so Stolas put on pyjamas and climbed into bed with some cereal. He’d have to find a suitable American cereal brand soon, and possibly clear out crumbs, but that was tomorrow Stolas’s problem.
And yes, the first thing he did on his phone was google his roommate. A bit stalkerish, but he was curious. Sue him. Mammon was a big name and the mention of a song made Stolas wonder if Fizzarolli had a music video that included twerking and throwing money. As it turned out, Fizzarolli had a whole ass wikipedia page dedicated to him like some D-list celebrity.
Sounds of laughter came from the living room. Fizzarolli and his uncle or whatever the giant was to him. He had looked vaguely familiar, though Stolas couldn’t place him and had no energy to bother. He was too old for Stolas anyway.
His mind drifted to Blitz and the casual arrogance with which he’d flipped off the headmaster. Stolas wanted to sell his soul to give so few fucks. Maybe if he cared less he’d have more friends. With spikes on his jacket and fingerless leather gloves, boys and girls would be falling over themselves in a love drunk daze to be near him.
But what did he know? The only friend he ever had was a rented out circus brat who stole a dozen rolexes and half his mother’s jewellery stash. His stupid eight year old self had thought the boy shone like the stars and his smiles had meant that Stolas was not a weird, morbid bookworm. At fifteen, he found out his father had paid the circus for the boy’s time and everything was fake as shit. (Congrats son! A new friend for only twenty cents per minute!)
Stolas buried his face in his pillow. Welcome to fucking America.
Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia
Fizzarolli , (born c. 2001–2005) is a rapper and singer-songwriter based in Mammopolis, Greed, US.
> Music career
Fizzarolli was a top trainee at MammonCo's talent agency, reportedly impressing coaches from the moment he was signed to the agency. His debut single "Look at this!" was released in 2022 to critical acclaim and viral success on TikTok.
He is the model for MammonCo's new generation of artificial intelligence based hologram performances. The first holographic replicas are currently on display in Mammon's chain of Loo Loo Land theme parks.
> Artistry
Critics described Fizarolli's debut single as "weird bubblegum pop," and compared it to "tripping addictive, humorous and sultry acid."
When questioned about his new star's music, Mammon stated: "It's harajuku gangnam style, but better! Nothing those Chinse fucks could ever do!"
> Personal life
Little is known about Fizzarolli's personal life, with no mention in MammonCo's official press releases.
Unofficial sources have speculated about his ethnicity and background, suggesting he was born in the US and of mixed Asian and white heritage. Having been a trainee for multiple years, he was 16 at the youngest and 20 at the oldest during his debut.
Fizzarolli disappeared from the public eye in early 2023. A statement from MammonCo is still pending.
