#and... yeah so... nobody liked sangini's boyfriend but she's the one who 'suggested' i write this fic (suggested MORE LIKE INSISTED)

[sanerontheinside]

y’all, i dunno... I thought I posted this shit before but I guess not anyway at some point I probably mentioned writing fanfic about my friend group from college  I can’t find that particular post tho which is probably for the better but I’m also an idiot who’s gonna post it now under a cut for, idk, shits and giggles. 

also, icky ricky is, legit, what they named the bathtub. he’s not a real actual person. that doesn’t change the fact that the spider who lived in Sangini’s room was Ricky’s pet. 

the worst part of this is none of the names have been changed yet and Alex=saner so spoiler alert I die real fast. blink and you’ll miss it. 

When the girls moved into their apartment that year, they joked about the bathroom looking like a murder scene. And it did: they assumed it was just rust staining the bathtub, and anyway their apartment complex had been on the short end of the list for renovations last year. Meredith was the first to move in. By the time the others had arrived she’d caulked and cleaned the bathroom, and given it a fresh coat of paint. All the while, as she was there alone, she kept hearing odd stirrings in the apartment - was it infested with mice as well? But she wasn't the type to get creeped out by murder scenes and odd noises in empty apartments, and decided the neighbours were doing the stirring. It was more logical than the reality, really.

It was when all four girls had finally settled in that things got a little bizarre. Everything seemed pretty alright at first. Noises were blamed on the neighbours. The bathroom - well, for all its faults, it was largely in working condition. But the lighter sleepers could tell you that apart from the drunk neighbours upstairs and the apartment assistant next door throwing loud-ass parties, the scuffling got louder at night. And it moved around. And sometimes - sometimes - the toilet flushed itself.

Sometimes it flushed itself during the day, too. Not that this wasn't a thing toilets did, as their friends assured them. It wasn't something you could call Housing about. Eventually you got used to it.

The bathtub, too, was something of a mystery. It happened that a couple weeks into the semester, it stopped draining. The girls called Housing Services, who sent a lady to give it a onceover. The lady assessed the situation, attempted to fix it, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The next day another guy came, but the tub, probably deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble, was by then draining just fine. It periodically had bouts of stagnation thereafter, but they didn’t seem to last very long.

Nobody thought much of the scuffling, or the random flushing, or the moody bathtub, or of the neighbours (nobody ever thinks much of their neighbours anyway) until the day that - until the night that - until the morning that Sangini blearily wandered out of her shared room with Khushbu and over to the refrigerator. The apartment upstairs was alive with staggering horses freshly drunk from some frat bar, the apartment next door had a spectacularly destructive sound system - so far as headaches go, a real menace. Not to say, sensitive heads, belonging to Comp-Sci majors who code by night, sleep by day, write essays by the crimson-gold of sundown. And so: at four in the morning a rather disoriented CompSci major with a pulsing head and a late-night gnawing stomach shuffled over to the refrigerator, stood in front of its dimmed light for a moment, staring at the packed inside, and reached over for the milk.

Her hand stopped a little short of it. She considered the situation, wondering just what was so odd about it. Sangini turned to the living room carefully and peered across it at the half-curtained window with a perplexed look on her face, then looked back at the refrigerator.

If there was no one in the living room, why had the refrigerator door been wide open? She hadn't opened it. In fact, if not for the little bit of light that snaked its way out of the the vegetables and boxes and eggs and bottles and things, she would probably have tripped halfway across the hall.

"Meredith?" She was certain that she'd left Khushbu asleep in the room, and aware that Meredith generally clocked out at ten or eleven and revived at five for a morning jog. "Neha?" Also unlikely. Two in the morning - maybe. But, four?

Whoever it was, they'd been here moments ago, since the refrigerator light was still on. Sangini shuddered, shook her head, and decided she'd opened the door herself. Milk, cereal, bowl, crunch.

Thump.

Okay - Sangini didn't have anything to do with that thump. She paused over her next spoonful, slowly raised her head, and peered into the darkness. "Uh, hello?" she asked the room at large. There was no answer.

Light. Yes - light would be nice. Right now it was dark outside and the blueish moon was doing its best to round the corners of the Richardson Apartments, but the complexes were packed together with the occasional tree in between, and the moon wasn't getting anywhere - the struggle was too damn real. Sangini cautiously walked over to the door, hit the light switch with a lightning jab, poised defensively at the rest of the seemingly empty living room. But there was no one there.

Sufficiently creeped out, she picked up her bowl and spoon and withdrew the heck from the living room. Whatever was digging through their packed refrigerator, it could have at it. Would be nice if some of the food in there got unloaded.

The next day was largely uneventful, in terms of scuffles. Khushbu had a co-op, and a moderately heavy day of classes. Sangini, as usual, slept in, then headed off to class herself. Neha shared certain classes with Khushbu and preferred to study at the library. Meredith, after her morning jog, also came back to the apartment only briefly. And Sangini happily forgot about the creepy thing.

Nature took its revenge on the close-packed campus in the winter, triumphed in spring, waxed vengefully hot in the summer, celebrated its victory over Rutgers humans anew in autumn. Now, after spring break, the weather was a bit more cheerful, and the ice was gradually receding as Nature entered its refractory period after pounding the natives with cold, wet, slushy dirty squelchiness, and decided it liked nice weather after all. It was the perfect week to celebrate Neha's birthday, and that evening the group got together at Henry's, the diner on Livi.

At least three separate conversations meandered all over the table of approximately ten people. Neha ordered a caramel coffee straight away, and set about weighing the vegetarian options on the menu - a limited number, but a pretty decent selection. Neha Sikka - not Sangini's apartment mate - was doing sugar shots in the corner by the window next to Ian, who was encouraging her. Sangini and Ben and Kriti were warring over pasta choices. Alex suggested coffee flavours and dessert choices, and punched Ben in the shoulder whenever he said something she didn’t like. Sanjana and Ashwini pored over the menu in search of something they hadn't tried yet. Bethann looked for someone with whom to split the Bruschetta, and was trying to convince Khushbu at the moment. Pooja, who lived on Cook-Doug and whom they almost never saw, joined them about twenty minutes into the meal. Aditya ordered quickly and went back to discussing comics and computers with Ben. Jeff ‘the Ninja-Crow’ presided silently by the windows.

Eventually Alex started talking about that time she couldn’t fall asleep for half the night, heard something clanging in the suite that sounded a lot like the heater was broken. She’d come out and found Sam cutting up a kiwi over the sinks. Sangini instantly remembered the creepy thing.

“Guys-guys-guys-guys!” she hissed excitedly down the table.

Ben answered with his predictable ‘What!’ [-do you want from my life-, unspoken], Alex immediately devoted her attention entirely to her salmon, Neha and Kriti were busily splitting and sharing their dishes. Really, trying to get everyone’s attention was more than a bit like herding cats. “Guys, I think there was someone in our apartment last night. At, like, four in the morning.”

“Ben, did you sleep there?” Alex asked quietly.

“No.”

“Did Matt sleep there?”

Sangini shook her head. “Nobody slept over.”

Alex wasn’t giving up. “Jeff, did you come in through the window?”

“Nope.”

Alex shrugged. “Honestly, your bathroom flushes itself, your bathtub plays games with you, and you think there is someone in your apartment at four in the morning. Maybe it’s haunted.” Not that she believed in ghosts. Although, she seemed to entertain the idea of friendly, mischievous spirit-gremlin-type thingies.

“Yeah!” Ben half-shouted, and returned to his previous conversation.

Sangini persisted: “No, but I’m serious, I’m pretty sure I heard breathing in the living room. And the fridge was open before I got to it. Alex? Come stay with us?”

“Overnight? I can’t, I have a long day tomorrow. But I can go back with you guys.”

Alex wasn’t particularly afraid of ghosts, and it was nice to think that if there was a ghost, she could beat it up and scare it back to the Netherworld. Almost in jest, she took the precaution of enlisting Khushbu’s help, however.

But when they all got back to Richardson, they opened the door to a pretty bizarre sight.

He'd been coming out of the bathroom - they could still hear the toilet flushing - and hadn't had enough time to duck into Meredith's room. Sangini had immediately pushed Alex to the head of the crowd, between herself and the intruder.

"Uh," he said. "Uh, hi," he thought to add.

"And who are you, exactly?" Ben supplied, as Alex still seemed to be running through swear words un her head so that she didn't say them aloud.

“Nobody,” he mumbled.

“Got a name?” Alex drawled, having finally hit on the part of her brain that didn't require a censor.

"Uh," he said, "yeah. Rick. Name's Ricky."

"Ricky," Ben repeated flatly. He nodded. "So, what’re you - how did you get in?" The man just stared back.

"Were you here last night?" Sangini called out finally.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, the guys let me live here last year, I sorta don't have a place to go, so -"

It was the first coherent sentence he'd spoken, and it got away from him by the end, but at least he spoke. Alex walked forward to a chair - Ricky shrank back as she did so.

"So you've been living here since last year?" Ben asked, as everyone followed Alex's example and filed into the room.

"Yeah. I lost my job, and, uh - well I used to be a plumber here, so..."

"What, have you been living in walls?" Neha asked in disbelief. Snark popped out of her when she was nervous or worried.

"Under the couch. Sometimes the beds. Depends."

They all jumped as the buzzer rattled in the ensuing silence. "Somebody has to let Ashwini in," Khushbu said quietly.

"Uh, should we?" Jeff asked.

"Would it change anything?" Neha pointed out. "We're all freaked out anyway."

So Khushbu ran out to let Ashwini into Richardson. Ashwini pointed out, in a timely fashion, that Khushbu was looking more worried than usual, which of course only flustered Khushbu more. Ashwini was finally getting around to asking her what was wrong as they walked through the door. She stopped dead at the sight of Ricky, who was grinning a somewhat nauseated grin. The poor guy honestly looked terrified.

“What the hell?” Ashwini stuttered out a breathy, nervous laugh.

“‘Shweens! This is Ricky. Ricky, this is ‘Shwini.” Sangini made the introductions, for all the world like this sort of thing happened every day.

‘Shwini, as usual, didn't miss a beat. “I thought you named your tub that.”

There was an awkward pause. Ricky, thankfully, didn't notice. And anyway, Alex immediately distracted him with a very enthusiastic - “Hey, you gotta show me how you hide!”

Ricky blinked. “Uh, okay.”

Alex was suddenly excited and jumped up. “Seriously, there's no space here, I want to know how you do it.”

Ricky stared at her looking a little shelled, said “okay” again, and turned around and walked back down the hall into Sangini’s room. Alex darted after him, grinning madly, while everyone else tried to explain - badly - what the heck that was about to Shwini.

By the time Alex got to the room, though, she’d nearly lost Ricky in the dark. He hadn’t turned on the lights, not in the hall and not in the room, and Alex pretty much blocked the better part of the dim light from the hall.

“You sure you wanna do this?” Ricky asked, awkward as before. “I mean like… not everybody wants to go through walls ‘n stuff.”

Alex laughed. “You kidding? I’ve always wanted to walk through walls.”

Ricky brightened. “Oh, yeah? Cool. This way, here - see? This part of the wall kinda feels funny, like it’s buzzing, yeah?” He ducked over to the window at the head of Sangini’s bed and put his hand beside the frame.  

Alex pressed her hand against the cinderblock gently. “Yeah, sure. So you just… go through?”

Ricky nodded enthusiastically.

“Okay then.”

Ashwini was not to be distracted, and not really one to be unnecessarily polite. “So who was that creepy dude?”

Ben perked up from across the room. “Who, me?”

“No, Jeffrey,” Ashwini deadpanned back at him. “Why is there a creepy guy in Sangini’s room?”

“He’s the creepy bathtub,” Ian clarified, though it offered absolutely no clarity.

“Come on, guys, I’m serious!”

Ben shrugged. “Hey, where’s Alex?”

“Alex?” Sangini turned and called down the hall. “You guys coming back?”

Alex wandered out of the room, looking pretty cheerful. “Nah, Ricky bailed. Said he saw a guy coming over whom he didn’t like.”

Someone buzzed the door again. “Oh, I think that’s Matt!” Sangini exclaimed, completely missing the sudden hush as she twisted around and booked it for the door.

Alex snickered. “No situational awareness, that one,” she sighed, as the door shut.

“Yeah!” Ben shouted, and went back to playing Cards Against Humanity against Aditya, Pooja, and both Nehas.

personally, the highlight of my night that year was the ddos attack on Rutgers, probably the first of three, which was eventually determined to be caused by bots based in Russia, and why they picked RuTGeRs UniVerSIty of all places is still a fucking mystery my dudes. 

Then they lost the Internet.

Alex had been relaxing, quietly writing her fiction, discussing something with Ben. The conversation could have been mildly disturbing for the uninitiated.

The moment the Internet blipped out, she scowled and asked what was going on.

"Apparently a disgruntled student has launched a DDoS attack," Jeff remarked flatly.

"Wait, for real? Shit," Alex muttered. "Dunno about disgruntled students, but this clown is disgruntling me and my not-yet-downloaded thermo hw and practice problems."

“Yeah - meanwhile, you’re writing fiction,” Ben smirked. Instead of hitting him for pointing out the obvious, though, Alex shrugged.

"Yeah - no, guys, that may not be true," Sangini interjected quickly.

"Well if it is true, if I fail this midterm, and if I find this joker, I will tear out his throat in a most disgruntled manner," Alex said lightly, as if commenting on the weather.

Aditya had been keeping tabs on emails from the university's tech office and soon discovered a Twitter account that claimed to be the hacker.