#they were able to capture guyslikeus so well and their CHARACTERIZATIONS ARE DEAD ON

[askguyslikeus]

((thank you to guest writer @actualbird !!!))

See the thing about Evangeline is that it's pretty much as old as Jeremy and Michael's entire friendship. Probably older, actually. Evangeline, of course, being the minifridge in their dorm that houses the Jeremy’s fantastic stock of Mountain Dew Red.

It was passed down into the Mell household from a distant relative before landing in Michael's basement for prime snacking purposes. There, high on sentimentality and weed, teen Jeremy and Michael named the fridge after roughly an hour of scrolling through baby names while Evie ("Holy shit," Jeremy remembers saying to the ceiling. "Evie can be its nickname. That's so cute. Evie.") kept watch in the corner.

They take Evie with them when they go to college ("Ohana means family," Michael had said. "And family means no fridge gets left behind.") and it's been smooth sailing ever since. Evie doubles as a bedside desk. Evie's fridge door is home to various post its, three weird magnets, and the loving “P1” sign. Evie's soft, steady hum rings out through their dorm without fail.

Well, without fail until a few weeks ago when Evie's hum sputters from a constant thrum to an erratic buzz. Jeremy didn't think it was a problem because Evie was still refrigerating and a good smack usually set the it back on track for a few hours, but when the smacking stopped working, he just gets used to the weird buzzing beat. At one point, Michael says he could probably make a sick song from the beats, but before he can help Michael record Evie, Evie makes a final, desperate, pathetic sounding thunk.

The next day, Evie is nothing more than a lukewarm cupboard filled with equally lukewarm soda.

Which is how they end up at a Target that weekend, staring down at the overwhelming magnitude of the kitchen appliances section. Jeremy, in the face of an entire aisle of minifridges, feels uneasy. Out of depth. Intimidated. Out of everything he's faced in his life, right now, slowly walking past fridges that look cooler than he is, this feels like war. Which it absolutely isn't but the connotations of buying a fridge seem monumental at the moment. This is a life milestone. Buying a fridge.

Jeremy says none of this. Instead, he looks at a fridge, turns to Michael, and very intelligently says, "Fridge."

"Fuck, man," Michael nods sagely, placing a hand on Jeremy's shoulder.  "They sure do."

They indulge in maybe three seconds of solemn eye contact before Michael breaks, his poker face splitting into a smile before turning into straight up cackles.

"Shut uuuup," Jeremy rolls his eyes, trying to shove Michael but he slings an arm around his shoulder, still snickering.

"Nah, dude. Do you have like, any other wise words to tell me?"

"Yeah, two. 'Fuck' and 'off'." Jeremy sticks his tongue out because he's like five, whatever. "Look at the fridges, dude. We have to pick a fridge."

"We have to pick a fridge," Michael repeats, but his words have a rhythm to it. Jeremy's seen this happen enough to know what'll happen next.  "We have to. Have to pick a fridge," Michael says, bobbing his head to the beat he's making. Michael can turn anything into a jingle. Jeremy once read him the ingredient list on a box of Nerds and he turned it into a theme song. Dextrose, sugar, malic aaaaaacid, corn, corn, corn syrup. It was awesome. It was catchy. It was stuck in Jeremy's head for days. "Gotta pick a fridge. A fridge. A fridge." Michael croons, turning his gaze to Jeremy. "Because we are---take it away, Jer."

"Uhhhh," Jeremy thinks, hoping real hard that he doesn't just say 'fridge' again. "Fffff--" he says. Fuck. Salvage the situation. "Fffffridgehunters. We are Fridgehunters."

"Oh, shit, that sounds rad.” Michael grins, high fiving Jeremy. “Fridgehunters. Hunting for a fridge.”

For the lack of anything better to do, Jeremy adds some harmony. “Hunting for a fridge,” he sings before realizing they do have something better to be doing. “Dude, we can’t be singing about hunting for a fridge if we aren’t even looking at the fridges.”

“Compelling point,” Michael says valiantly. “But consider that, for some reason, I feel really intimidated by all these fridges.”

“Oh, thank fuck. Me too.” Jeremy sighs in relief. “Inheriting fridges is one thing but like, getting one? Choosing one? We’re going to die here.”

“No. No we won’t,” Michael says, suddenly determined. He lets go of Jeremy and stomps to a nearby fridge. “Come on, Jeremy. Let’s fucking do this. For Evie.”

They both look at the fridge. Jeremy reads the, what, the fridge stats (?) printed on the little card on the door. “These sure are words.”

“Yep,” he pops the ‘p’ and offers nothing more. They’re going to die here.

Jeremy belatedly realizes this all is ridiculous, but this is never a surprise. He'd be more worried the day he and Michael sit down and do something sensible and serious. Jeremy says, "We should've brought somebody else with us. An adult."

"We are adults," Michael winces. Yeah, he knows. Terrifying concept.

"An adult-ier adult," Jeremy explains, before he backtracks and realizes that they know nobody who fits that criteria at all. "Or just anybody who'd be helpful. We should've brought Rich."

"That would be entertaining, but not helpful." Michael opens a nearby fridge for no apparent reason, seeing as he’s looking at Jeremy and not the fridge. "Though, he'd make a great backup singer for the Fridgehunters theme. Have you heard him beatbox?"

"I mean, I've heard him choke on milk, so close enough." Jeremy looks into the fridge. It's got some heavy compartment stuff going on in there. Advanced shit. Too advanced, so Jeremy closes the fridge.

"We could've brought PJ. She seems like she'd know how to...fridge."

"Wrong," Michael opens the fridge again. "You see what I'm doing here? The weird nervous opening and closing this fridge thing?"

"Yeah?"

"PJ would open every single fridge in this aisle. And she'd do it out of glee," he shuts the fridge for emphasis. "Face it, man. Nobody's got it together. Collectively, I figure we could like, Voltron our way into becoming a singular functional human, but individually?" Michael pulls open the fridge door with a flourish. "Nah."

Jeremy nods, until he feels a literal lightbulb go off in his head. "Jake."

"Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,” Michael takes Jeremy by the shoulders. “We should've brought Jake. God, we're idiots. Jake could buy a fridge. Jake looks like he could put together IKEA furniture correctly."

"He's been doing that thing with the Rubik's cube." Jeremy says, moving him and Michael to a different part of the aisle, one with simpler looking fridges, hopefully.

"What, solving it?"

"Yeah."

"Who the fuck actually solves it?"

"Jake. He caught me staring and explained, like, algorithms."

"Burn the witch." He hears Michael mutter as they walk. “Dude, is it just me or are these fridges like--”

“Needlessly complicated? Totally,” Jeremy says. Thankfully, it seems like the fridges are getting more and more reasonable. “Evie was a good, cold cube. Probably from eighties, but still straightforward.”

“No nonsense whatsoev---FUCK.” Michael yells directly in his ear.

“Agh, holy shit, what?” He whips his head to Michael. Michael who is pointing at a fridge like it committed a murder right in front of him, but when Jeremy sees it, he understand. “No way.”

“Yes way.” Michael smiles, walking over to open the fridge. “Jeremy,” he says. “Same fridge.”

“Same fridge,” he murmurs in disbelief, looking at a fridge that was pretty much exactly Evie sans the bit where he hopes it’ll work. What are the goddamn odds. “So like. Evangeline the second?”

“You read my mind, man,” Michael crouches down to look inside the fridge. “But uh. Evie the second who is also the P1 fridge. So P1 the second? Player one two? Twelve?”

Jeremy crouches down due to peer pressure caused by literally one person and shrugs, “Don’t make us do numbers, Michael.”

“Fair enough,” Michael nudges Jeremy and raises a fist. “The Fridgehunters have a fridge.”

He laughs, solemnly tapping his own to Michael’s before saying, “I mean, technically, we haven’t bought it yet.”

“You’re ruining the moment.”

“We probably need to go find somebody and---”

“The moment, Jeremiah.”

“Reality, Michaelmiah.”

They do end up finding an employee, or rather an employee finds Michael mid-tackle and they try to make themselves presentable in under three seconds, scrambling from the floor and standing up. Because they’re adults. Who are going to get this fridge right here.

We wanna get this fridge, Jeremy thinks. What Jeremy ends up saying to the employee, “Uh, fridge.”

To his left, he hears Michael do a terrible job at holding in laughter, and Jeremy jabs him in the side with his elbow.

Just another day in the life.