Actions

Work Header

Sass-Badger Versus Son-of-No-One

Summary:

Malik did not hate Altair because he was rich, handsome, famous (for nothing), athletic or apparently charming (to women). No, Malik hated Altair because he was a sexist pig with a perpetual audience that was influencing a whole generation of tweens to think it was perfectly okay to say whatever dick thing came into their heads. That was why he started his blog; he just didn’t count on Altair finding it or becoming it’s number one fan.

Notes:

I deleted the whole damn story by accident. can't figure out how to get it back. excuse me while i throw myself off a cliff. Goddamn it.

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter Text

At this point if you’re not dead, you might want to wait until after eight to come home.

Malik was woken up by the polite-but-insistent knocking on the door that sounded hollow and distant when it drove through his swollen skull. There was gritty, thick crud at the edges of his mouth and a distinct pain at the base of his neck when he moved his arm in a wild flail toward the noise. He had (mostly) given up begging for a few more minutes of sleep when he started high school but now and again, (when he felt like he was dying) he was known to whine, “just five more minutes.”

There was a metallic clank-and-grate and then footsteps that stopped not too far from his left. A woman was standing there wearing a suit jacket with red detailing that looked remarkably unlike anything his mother had ever worn. There was a slight, pronounced, sympathy in her face as she said, “I’m sorry sir, check out was at eleven.”

Opening his eyes completely drove stakes through his skull that rattled in loose, broken pieces in the space where his brain had apparently fled. He shot upright (wished he hadn’t) and then doubled over as a surge of vomit rose in his throat. The woman (still unnamed) was quick with a black wastebasket. He grabbed it out of her hands and heaved the entire contents of his stomach (a terrible smelling liquid mess). After she was standing a polite distance away looking at the state of the room around them. At his pants thrown across the TV, at the empty bottle of (was that Vodka?) and an assortment of empty wrappers thrown carelessly around the room. The sheets and blankets of the second bed in the room were torn back and left on the floor and the remains of what (looked like) a pizza were smeared across the sheet and pillows.

“Sir,” she said again. And she plucked his shirt down from the curtains and held it out toward him. “I need you to gather your things.” Malik clutched at his vomit-filled wastebasket with one arm and reached out to accept his shirt from her. His face had to have been a violent purple-red color because her look of careful disinterest got a little green at the edges as she said (very softly), “are you okay? Do you remember what happened?”

(Oh, but she thought he’d been roofied.) He nodded his head (but he didn’t remember) and tried to summon up enough of his scattered brains to work out a thank-you and failed.

Her sympathy was maternal and brief before she said, “do not make this a habit in your life.” Then she was leaving with a smart click of her heels.

Malik sat there (dumb with shock) for a span of several minutes, realized he was holding a basket full of puke and set it down on the floor as he fell out of bed in an attempt to disentangle himself from the blankets. His head was throbbing and his mouth tasted like bile and his legs were protesting wildly with a twinge in the back of his thigh that knocked his stride off balance. He made it to the bathroom, squinting at the overwhelming lights and found his socks floating in the toilet (gave them up for lost but removed them before he flushed). Every towel in the little bathroom was in the tub, bloated with water and there was a slice of pizza (most disintegrated) resting on top of it with a long blue ribbon floating in the puddle still caught in the tub. Malik pulled at it, dislodged the washcloth keeping the tub from draining and had to fight with a towel that was wrapped around the ribbon before discovering it was a medal. One of the medals that the prom committee had come up with as extraneous awards separate from King-and-Queen.

Malik stood in front of the massive mirror, looking at the medal and his aching body. Suddenly aware of the bruised-in-hickey at his throat, the little marks and scratches at his hips and the damning slickness all but literally coating his ass and thighs.

“Oh fuck,” he said to the mirror, to the stupid medal, to himself. And then reality hit like a punch to his gut because it was (after eleven,) the day after he was supposed to be home. He had gotten drunk, followed (someone) to this stupid hotel and gotten fucked. His mother, his patient-and-kind-and-devout-mother was going to murder him in the name of honor and mercy.

Malik left the stupid ribbon on the floor where he dropped it, grabbed what he could find of his clothes and yanked them on with a fumble-fingered-carelessness. His head was throbbing freshly every single time the sunlight stabbed into his eyes. His stomach was curling up with fresh threats at every movement of his body. He had to crawl on the floor to find his second shoe and his suit jacket was in the closet hanging on a hanger next to his belt. His phone was in one of the dresser drawers along with an open box of condoms and a shamefully empty bottle of lube. (There was that much, at least, to be thankful for.)

He grabbed his phone and ran. The woman who invaded his room was behind the desk when he darted through the lobby and her voice wished him well as he ran out into the parking lot and kept going. He didn’t stop running until he’d found himself on the corner of Parke and Hills and couldn’t contain the urge to puke another second.

When he’d finished defiling a bush, he checked the messages on his phone and found a steadily increasing stream of worry from his baby brother that reached a fever point at one AM the night before. His Mother called-didn’t-text and she had only called once at two AM and left no message. Malik’s hands were shaking as he tucked the phone back into his pocket and took in a deep enough breath to figure out how to get home from where he was.

--

Breaking News at 11: Altair Ibn-La’Ahad still an ignorant asshole

True to form, Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad, not even a full fourteen hours after attending a prom at Castle-Mount High School, manages to spread ill-informed, bigoted and generally offensive opinions and advice to anyone that will listen. The prom that Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad attended, most likely as a publicity stunt, had made local headlines for the progressive attitude of the students and faculty alike. This was the first prom for Castle-Mount High School that openly welcomed students of every sexual orientation to attend with a date of their choosing. The imminent Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad announced that he would attend the prom with a close friend (read: friend’s younger sister who seemed less than thrilled when interviewed) purportedly at her request. While this stunt, like many of the other juvenile stunts pulled just this year, was exploitative, attention-seeking and vaguely inappropriate (please Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad, as you have just turned twenty, refrain from attending parties primarily populated by seventeen and eighteen year olds that have not yet technically graduated high school) it was ultimately rather harmless. Unsatisfied by the lack of attention this ‘favor’ garnered, Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad resorted to characteristic ignorance with a stunning display of homophobia. And I quote,

It was kind of uncomfortable, the experience I mean. My family doesn’t believe in that kind of thing, you know? I mean, it’s fine if you think you’re gay or if you want to date a girl or something. It’s just not something I would do. There were just so many guys, you know, dancing with other guys. Where were all the ladies?

Possibly, Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad since your own date did not even want to spend time with you, they felt as if you simply weren’t worth their notice.

--

“Well,” Kadar said quietly. The one thing he had learned about living with Malik (the whole of his life) was that in the face of bitter vitriol (especially the written sort) one should choose their words with the greatest of care. It wasn’t often that Kadar—terribly unworthy younger brother that he was—got invited into the inner sanctum of Malik’s room or was encouraged (forced) to read yet another one of his angry posts on the internet. Much less often was he invited to join in the ground floor of a one man protest against a mostly uninteresting semi-celebrity. Much less often—almost never—had his brother disobeyed their mother, come home hung-over wearing someone else’s shirt, looking decidedly disgusted with himself and said nothing at all in the way of a greeting before taking a shower that went on for nearly an hour. Rarely (but not as infrequently as Malik disobeying their mother) did Malik bother to watch the sort of nonsense TV that Kadar enjoyed but he (almost always) did get angry about stupid crap celebrities said. It wasn’t always this level of anger though. Malik’s whole body had clenched up in shock and bitter, stunted fury as soon as Altair Ibn-La’Ahad (really, barely even worth noticing as far as celebrities went) had shown his face on the TV. “It’s…to the point.”

Malik was sitting in the computer chair with it tipped all the way back and his hand curled around the arm rests like some massive, unhappy bird of prey. The tight pinch in the center of his face that he had come home with tightened just a little further and seemed to run ever so slightly to the left. His eyes (still weak, watery and pinkish) were narrowed and glaring intently at the screen. He was chewing on his bottom lip in a way that meant nothing good. “What does that even mean?” Malik demanded.

“That means if you wanted people to know you hate the guy, I think they’ll pick up on it. What the hell did he even do? Did he spit in your drink? Did he call you names? Did he spike the punch?” The last option was possibly the worst he could think of considering Malik’s sole goal in going to prom (against his own wishes) was to be sure that nobody spiked the punch. He had appointed himself the guardian of the punch but going by all the classic signs of a hangover hanging around his head he’d either failed or decided to purposefully drink. (The very thought of Malik chugging any kind of alcohol was so opposite of everything Kadar believed in that it was nearly unthinkable.) “Is that why you didn’t come home? Did he spike the punch?”

“The problem is that he’s a role model for idiot tweens like you and he’s just saying whatever comes into his stupid head,” Malik said. “You heard him, I played you the interview. At some point he needs to be held accountable for what he’s saying. This isn’t the nineteen hundreds anymore! Some people are gay and want equal rights.”

Kadar nodded his head. “So he didn’t do anything to you personally?”

“No,” Malik snapped at him. “He offends me on a purely moral level.”

“Well, it’s good then. It’s full of moral righteousness. Not that it’s going to do you any good because Mom’s going to ground you forever as soon as she gets home.” Kadar picked up his drink off Malik’s desk and kicked the stool he had been sitting back against the bookshelf on the opposite wall.

Malik obviously did not care. He had dug his heels into the rug under his chair and pulled himself back up to his desk before Kadar even finished moving out of the way. “I need a screen name.”

“Why can’t you just post this on your blog? The—king of whatever one that you have. Or that other one that you started a few months ago. Zombie chicken feet or something like that. What was that one about? Fertilizer?”

Malik spun in his chair to look at him. “Because people know that those are my blogs.”

“Like, six people.” This bit of humor did not amuse his brother.

“Nobody can know that this one is me,” Malik said with absolute seriousness. His faded blue shirt and his pink (a gag gift from a friend) socks undermined the determined and deadly look on his face but the tone of his voice had enough edge to make up for it. “I mean it, Kadar. You can’t tell anyone about this. Not your friends, not Mom, not some girl you’re trying to impress into making out with you.”

That had been one time when Kadar was eleven and Malik’s ability to use a computer with competency had still been vaguely unique and noteworthy. Telling some girl that his brother ran a bunch of blogs protesting pollution and social injustice barely earned him enough interest to finish the sentence. “Fine,” he said.

“Promise,” Malik insisted.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone about your crusade against Altair. It’ll be our dirty little secret.” For the six months it took Malik to get bored and move on to a target more worthy of his attention. If this one lasted that long in the face of graduation and the impending start of college. “But if you actually get anyone to read this nonsense, let me know because at least the comments might be funny.”

Malik did not appreciate this. “I need a screen name.” Before Kadar could even think of something to suggest Malik was saying, “I need a screen name that could be for a man or woman and that does not sound like something I would come up with.”

“Why do you—”

“Name,” Malik said again.

Kadar growled at him. “Badger,” he said. “Because you’re so foul tempered even lions are afraid of you.”

Malik did not even care about the insult. “Badger is already taken. I need something better than badger. What kind of a suggestion is badger?”

“I’m a sarcastic jerk that doesn’t appreciate my brother’s attempts to help me?” Kadar offered. Then he pulled open the door to leave. “You better think of something before Mom gets home and grounds you for the rest of your life.”

“Get out,” Malik said, “close my door.”

--

Son-of-no-One: ’Longest night of my life. #too many dicks on the dance floor’ (35m ago)

Desmond had not ever actually been given the task of taking care of Altair because Altair was old enough to take care of himself. Nobody had ever even mentioned to him that he might be interested in the full-time job of saving the arrogant snot from himself but he still found himself unable to walk away from a disaster-in-progress. That was how he found himself standing three feet to the left of Altair’s obnoxiously oversized bed watching the idiot hiding his face under pillows bemoaning the state of his hangover and his life in general.

“Too many dicks on the dance floor,” Desmond repeated. Because it was absolute gold as far as one-hundred-forty-eight characters went. The sort of thing that the public expected from Altair. The sort of thing that people with too much time were going to seize up as they hailed Altair as the poster boy of everything wrong with spoiled young people everywhere. “The longest night of my life.”

“It was,” Altair whined from the bed. “It was the longest night of my life.”

“Yeah?” Desmond said. He was not even going to address the brilliant, brief interview that Altair had given out to whatever crafty newsperson had tracked him down. The idiot was drawn to cameras like moths to a flame with much the same ridiculous inability to see a deathtrap. “Do you remember any of it?”

Altair’s silence dragged for a moment too long. He threw the pillow at Desmond and rolled himself up in the blanket instead, his ankles and feet the only bit of him left sticking out. His voice was a muffled noise as he said (petulantly), “I remember being bored and being hit on by a bunch of homos.”

Desmond rubbed the bridge of his nose and recited as many numbers of pi as he could remember before speaking again. By the time he was calm enough to offer a reply to that startling ignorance, Altair was already looking at him from the end of his blanket-cocoon with his bony bare shoulders and hairless face making him look younger than he was. “Was that before or after you got drunk?”

“Before,” Altair said. Then, “I don’t remember what happened after. I didn’t spike that punch though. I mean, I might have if someone else hadn’t done it first but it wasn’t me that did it. How do I get dragged into shit like this?”

“You offered,” Desmond said patiently.

Altair deflated with a sigh, reached for his phone that he’d abandoned on the bedside table and hung off the side of the bed with his thumb moving across the keyboard in that way that meant he was making an already bad situation worse.

“Be sure to tag this one, ‘pity party’.” Desmond left him to do it because Altair was not his problem to manage. He went downstairs and dug around through the cabinets filled with junk and fruit snacks to try to find food worth actually eating. He discovered a block of cheese in the fridge and a box of crackers in the freezer (for some reason) and went out to the living room to watch what was left of the game. Altair was already there, sheet over his head like a hood and legs crossed in front of him.

“I don’t know why everyone’s pissed. I don’t have to like gay guys. I said it was fine.”

“I think you miss the point,” Desmond said. “People aren’t mad because you don’t like gay guys—well they are mad because of that—but they’re mad because you’re an insensitive jerk who treats women like sex objects but doesn’t want other guys to do the same thing to him.”

“Who does?” (That question was best left unanswered at this juncture. Some people just weren’t ready for higher levels of thought.) “Not all of us can be socially conscious.”

“You could be,” Desmond said. He reached forward to grab the remote and flipped through the channels until he found the right one and offered Altair a sleeve of crackers. “It’ll blow over, nobody actually cares that much about you.”

Altair took the crackers and tipped his whole body so he fell into Desmond’s left side. The hard bones of his skull rubbing against his shoulder as he tipped his eyes up to look at him with all his concentration. He had long since outgrown the adorable roundness of his youth but years of practice had convinced him he could be charming with his face alone. “You always know just what to say to make me feel better,” he said softly. “I love you.”

“Better watch out, that’s a little gay,” Desmond said.

Altair’s sly grin was a mirror of every stupid thing he’d ever said. “I’ll always be a little gay for you.” Then he righted himself and opened his stupid freezer crackers.