#I currently have one braincell and all it does is make playlists all day

[mothmansfriend]

when i’m happy oh god i’m happy

TW: alcohol abuse, non-graphic sexual content, unhealthy coping mechanisms, self harm (in many forms), drug use, couchsurfing, mentions of delusions and paranoia, otherwise reckless behaviour

Note: this takes place in @illogicallyinclined’s hockey au and is a Prequel this is supposed to represent what Remus’s manic episodes look like everyone is different, but im using a mix of my own experiences with bipolar i and some friends who were willing to talk about theirs, then changing it to fit Remus’s existing Absolutely Feral personality, Jared and Payton are OC’s and teammates of Remus, the three of them are known for wrecking havoc at all times because none of them possess a braincell.

The art studio was empty, filled only by the assorted music of Remus’s sculpting playlist on the bluetooth speaker he brought in, and Remus himself. His hands glide through the wet clay and he basks in the slimy feeling between his fingers. Remus’s hair is held back by a small headband and he is wearing a tank top and jogging pants already covered in various mediums he has used through the day. He does not know where the energy to finish every project for this semester came from but he isn’t about to object.

If you were to look around this studio, there is a high contrast painting of a tentacle creature that is unsettling in an almost unidentifiable way, half of a self-portrait which uses resin teeth as the main element, as well as his current project of a large cup shaped like a decapitated head. In short, while Remus believes these are his best pieces, the chances of the university permitting them to be displayed are very low.

Remus gets frustrated that the music didn’t seem to be filling his inspiration in the way he hoped he changes the song revealing it to be approximately 4am, and no texts received since he sent D a picture if the teeth pile around 10pm.

—

“Can you go wake Remus up and ask if he wants any breakfast, he really shouldn’t sleep in this late, even if it is Saturday” D asks from the stove while Roman grabs his carton of milk from the fridge and doesn’t bother grabbing a cup.

D grimaces at him as he chugs back the milk, once again thankful that they have separate ones (even if that is at fault of Remus deciding to mix apple juice with milk in the carton without alerting anyone else in the household). “He actually headed out like, real early this morning, I spoke to him when I got up for a shower at like six. He said he’d be back today though?” Roman replied ignoring D’s look.

“Well, that’s even weirder. I’ll make extras so he can eat when he gets back, it's already eleven.”

“Sounds good,” Roman noticing D’s almost done slides a few plates next to him and accepts D’s soft ‘thanks’.

Suddenly they hear someone miss the keyhole three times before getting it and entering. Unsurprisingly, it’s Remus inappropriately dressed for a casual outing, surprisingly he seems to be holding several bags full of merchandise. “Helloo roommates! Look what I bought!” Remus shouts, slamming the door with his foot and bringing his bags to the couch.

“Are those... cups?” D asks turning off the stovetop to curiously check out Remus’s merch load.

“Hell yeah they are! I figured since you-” He pokes at D, “Took away all our glass cups after me and Roman went to that last party, I would take it upon myself to replace them. Look!” Remus proudly pulls the ugliest Jar Jar Binks cup out of one of the bags.

Roman visibly recoils as his brother parades the worst cup he’s ever seen around their apartment. D rolls his eyes but collects the cup and hesitantly places it into the dishwasher. “Thank you, Remus, these cups are horrid but they’re functional, which, I guess is good enough. Though, how much did these cost?”

“No idea, probably around sixty bucks total though, maybe. I went to three different thrift stores. Look at this one!” Remus holds up a vaguely terrifying cup that seems like it may have once resembled Spongebob Squarepants to Roman.

“That’s… Great, Remus, thanks” Roman says taking the offered item.

—

The three make it to practice 20 minutes early because Roman likes to prove he’s dedicated and a good captain. Coach Thomas and Joan greet them and Thomas talks to Roman briefly as Joan finishes setting things up. D and Remus do some stretches as others begin to show up, D comments on Remus being shaky and Remus hops around quickly explaining that he just woke up with a lot of energy for some reason.

Coach Thomas reminds Remus to take his time during practices speeding through everything doesn’t work if he keeps messing up before he even makes it halfway through.

—

D is going to kill Remus tomorrow morning. The repetitive sound of the bedframe slamming against their shared wall, and Remus wailing like a cat in heat at 1am is not something he wants to deal with right now. It’s a Tuesday night and D knows Remus has a class at 11am, one that D will not let him skip because he decided getting laid was more important. How does Remus even get a man to willingly enter that nightmare of a room? D rummages through his bedside table for ear plugs and regrets giving Roman the far room so easily.

—

“Jesus- Hello? Do you know what time it is?” The tired voice answers the phone after the third time of going to voicemail.

“Of course I don’t, Jared, I’m not a fucking nerd! I just thought I might extend my offer of filling the fountain in the middle of campus with bubble bath and a swim to you and Payton! D already said if I woke him up he would cut my dick off and feed it to his snake,” Remus audibly pouted at the end of his sentence.

Despite it being three am, it didn’t take a lot for Jared to wake up Payton and agree to meet him just off campus to run to the 24/7 convenience store for soap for the fountain. Remus leads the group in talking a mile a minute about something that Jared and Payton actually missed out on entirely. They try to contribute but realize Remus doesn’t notice when they have their own conversation anyways. They listen to him vaguely flit through topic after topic and get lost and confused in his own sentences, and once the soap is collected, they head to the large fountain in the middle of campus.

The fifth bottle of soap has been discarded and the fountain is sufficiently bubbly by the time the three hockey players strip to their boxers and begin their bath. There are attempted drownings, bubble beards, and the fountain change being thrown around.

At some point Remus stops talking for a second, observing the lithium bulbs through the fountain streams and bubbles floating across the courtyard. For a moment, he thinks he’s never been this happy in his life, these last few days have been the best days of his life. He lets Jared and Payton know this and like stare at him for a moment before teasing him about going soft and a few “I love you, bro” “Dude, you mean so much to me” and such were exchanged. They leave moments before campus security’s due to do their rounds in the early morning and laugh when about an hour later they receive a campus-wide notification to avoid the courtyard for repairs.

—

Remus spends most of practice being more annoying than usual. He gets a bit more of a stern talking to than he has in a while, in response says that he’ll try to do better to prepare for the game this weekend.

—

He did not succeed and got an even sterner talking to by Coach Thomas and Joan, and then by Roman separately.

—

Remus has a brief moment of clarity regarding his spending habits from the last week and a half in the middle of his current project. His solution is instead of buying the club size container of hot sauce, he makes a trip to the Taco Bell off campus. After dropping off the rest of his goods at the apartment, it was pretty late in the evening and he was dressed in nothing but neon green basketball shorts, slides, and a pretty badly stained grey tank top. Thankfully, Florida weather permitted this, though the looks he had been receiving all day disagreed. It likely did not help that if prompted, Remus wasn’t 100% on the last time that he slept, but if he had to guess it was two or three days ago, but that was probably a maximum of five hours. Surprisingly, he had never felt so good in his life. He’s also pretty sure he’s said that a lot this week.

He leaves Taco Bell with a small meal bag full of hot sauce at no cost.

—

D doesn’t ask any questions when he uses the bathroom in the early morning and is met with the sight of Remus in the bathtub. He is covered in a large variety of substances. The floor is covered in Taco Bell hot sauce wrappers, there’s a box full of water balloons of various colours and sizes. Remus waves with his available hand before he resumes filling the current water balloon with what may be a bulk container of banana lube. D pisses, not bothering to ask Remus to leave and just pulls the shower curtain over a little before washing his hands and deciding to figure it out tomorrow.

The next day, D woke up around 10am to a few texts saying some prick is throwing weird water balloons at first years off this academic building on campus. D didn’t think much about it until he was leaving his 12:30 lecture walking past splatters of mayo, egg, egg shells, hot sauce, and more, all separately. While observing the damage he found Remus asleep on some grass outside said academic building and had to call Logan for help to get him home. The two are used to this by now and D reminds himself to tell Remus to clear his ‘great ideas’ with someone containing a braincell.

—

Remus spends a good majority of his day listening to one song in the living room of the shared apartment. He was there when D left for classes, he was there when Roman left a little later in the day, failing to go to his own classes at all that day. The second D returns for lunch Remus is trying to explain a hidden meaning in the song, D brushes it off and reminds Remus, that to pass his classes he has to at least go.

—

This is Remus’s third night out in an area of town he really doesn’t know. He went home yesterday for early practice before coming back out. He knows it didn’t go well.

In attempts to make himself feel better, he blew a guy who’s name he already forgot but was hot as hell, he lost count of the shots he’s done, but at least there’s no practice tomorrow. He doesn’t have to worry about when he goes home, doesn’t have to worry about Roman or D and their weird concerned looks. He’s doing great! Why are they concerned, they just don’t get it.

At 2 am everyone gets kicked out of the club. Remus walks six blocks with his new friends with the promise of couch space to crash on and additional alcohol.

It’s suddenly 4:47 am and Remus is the only one awake and all the booze is gone. He is sitting under lithium streetlights smoking a cigarette on the porch of a strangers house with the humid Florida wind enables him to sit comfortably without a jacket. There is a moment, with sirens in the distance that Remus lets his eyes go out of focus. For the first time in who knows how long, he feels present. There is cracked cement under his feet, a dog barking a few houses down, and he wonders why he’s even here. The hidden Prince twin, here, in a city he has only been to once for a tournament, in a stranger’s house, drunk off his ass, his phone dead. He takes time to wonder, is this fun to him? It has to be right? Why did he just leave without telling anyone? Spending nights on the streets, or finding someone to go home with just so he didn’t have to find somewhere else to sleep. Is this who he is now?

He doesn’t know if he can answer that. Remus shakes himself before putting out his cigarette on his arm and deciding it doesn’t matter.

He still doesn’t sleep that night, but plugs in his phone and decides he needs to go home soon.

—

This is a different club than the previous night, someone sold Remus a few pills earlier and he figured why not? He feels better than ever. He lets the man he’s making out with know that and he lets out a kind of raspy laugh that Remus thinks is the hottest thing. He lets the other man know that too before sticking his tongue down his throat.

—

Remus is in the park yelling. It is almost 6pm, he pauses for a moment, completely forgetting what he was yelling about. He realizes that he is pretty drunk. Remus would normally like to say he only drinks with an excuse, but he doesn’t remember why he’s drunk, or how he got to the park. This isn’t near campus, he doesn’t recognize this park at all. He just stops yelling and googles the next bus to take him home.

—

Upon arriving home and greeting D, Remus falls asleep in his room for almost 12 hours to make up for the missing sleep from the last four days. When he is woken up for food and offered tylenol for his hangover, he tries to tell them he doesn’t have one. They don’t believe him, but he takes the food. Remus makes a joke recalling how the other day all he had eaten was some stale croutons he found in a pantry and half a bottle of Fireball he found in the fridge nearby. The joke did not land, but he was too busy laughing about it to notice.

The three eat their Sunday lunch with small amounts of banter and D switching between who he agrees with based on who’s statement didn’t sound like it came from a six year old. As they clean up, Remus starts excitedly talking about something that’s topic changed around four times in one sentence. Roman feigns interest but got lost and doesn’t care enough; D listens and has to ask Remus to repeat things slower every few minutes.

—

Several times throughout the night, D hears Remus loudly leave his room to check the front door. In the early morning D doesn’t hear Remus return to his room, but faintly hears netflix turn on in the living room.

In the morning, Remus seems wary of the door but does not say anything.

—

One day while messing around in the kitchen Remus is struck with the need to just go. The urge is so strong that the more he stands still in the kitchen the more his body just begins to tremble with barely contained energy. He doesn’t quite know where he’s going yet, but as he grabs his wallet, double checking he has his bus pass and ID, a jacket, his phone, and his keys. Without telling anyone, he walks to the main exchange near campus where he hops on the first bus that arrives. The bus isn’t particularly busy, and it makes it easier for him as he settles into the back of the bus bopping to his music, but not having the focus to listen to a song all the way through. He hits his hands softly on the very 90’s looking patterned seats to the beat of the song, watching out the windows with both legs bouncing. He rides this bus to the end of the line and catches the next bus to arrive at that bus exchange that takes him into a new smaller city. The sun is beginning to set and he finds a pub to grab some food and a few drinks at.

An hour and a half and four drinks later Remus is fighting some asshole in the pub and they both get kicked out. He wanders these smaller streets buzzed and poking at forming bruises while he smokes a cigarette. He walks by a convenience store and two homeless men outside ask him for a cigarette, he shares and spends a solid amount of time socializing with them and gets some booze for his troubles. They eventually part ways when one of them come out from the bathroom with a pack of stolen cookies. The store attendant chases them away and Remus finds himself wandering down empty streets again. Eventually, Remus decides to sleep for a few hours curled up in a stairwell, he doesn’t quite sleep, but does relax. Again, in the sounds of small city life, yellowed flickering light bulbs, and humid wind, Remus wonders why he’s out here.

—

The flashing neon lights and bass heavy music resonate through Remus’s bones like electricity giving him a never ending feedback loop of energy. Just before the club closes Remus sweet-talks a kind of nerdy looking guy into taking him home, while he’s mostly just hoping to not sleep outside tonight, getting laid wont hurt either.

—

Sneaking out of someone’s house before they wake up isn’t something Remus is necessarily proud of, but he doesn’t want to risk them doing something cheesy like make him breakfast. Sorry sir, Remus is a Manic Pixie Nightmare Boy, do not catch feelings, do not use for your own character development. He laughs to himself a little walking down the morning rush streets.

—

After waking up in bed with a man he doesn’t remember meeting the night before is a little jarring, but this is not the first time. It makes him wonder briefly if something is wrong with him. Remus is tired. Exhausted with himself and getting a little tired of this much fun. Instead of finding a diner for breakfast he catches a bus home and asks Logan if they can hang out tomorrow. If anyone will force him to go home, go to practice, sleep and not give him a choice to study or not without expecting him to explain himself. It will be everyone’s favourite Large Nerd. Remus doesn’t know what’s happening or why he feels like this, but he needs to go home and stop this for a little bit.Virgil, D, and Logan will help him get things a little back on track.