Chapter Text
It was difficult to sleep.
Red had had a rather frustrating day - the yellow one had been in quite a tizzy, and the smallest one was always in some kind of tizzy. The green one had drowned their pet, and earlier in the day that electrical teacher had torn their other pet animal in half like a bag of Choddle Dollops - the loss of both had made the yellow one weepy, which had offended the other one’s ears, and then it was just fights all day.
Or maybe it had been more than one day? Things tended to blend together - especially if any of them got in a mood. The yellow one’s mood made sense to Red - perhaps they’d been rather hasty in replacing things with electric-powered versions, especially with the critter living in their home.
It had proven quite a point of contention among the three of them whether that meant Scrunty was gone forever or whether the yellow one could simply go dig it up. But Scrunty hadn’t been buried so much as, quite frankly, placed in the kitchen garbage for a few days to attract flies - and it had been totally still after the duck one had drowned it. Nothing like the duck one himself, who had been quite sprightly post-mortem. It was confusing, and only served to further sour the family(?) mood.
At first Red had assumed the green one was just mad because the yellow one was. The duck’s moods had never made total sense to him, after all - he was mercurial and argumentative even on his best days. Perhaps duck - Duck? - had simply wanted more attention today?
As the arguments continued to catch Red in their sway, tensions grew, and he realized that Duck seemed... worse than usual. Everything was offending him - again, just worse than usual. It was exhausting. Half the time Red founds himself diffusing the situation, and the other half he was just as much the problem as the other two were.
So Red had assumed it would be easy to sleep tonight. The lessons didn’t tend to happen once sun had set; on a normal day this meant the three of them were free to relax without fear of being swept from their tasks. Tonight, though, it just meant more time for them to make snide comments to each other and grumble at every little sound.
The soft felt of his bed snuggled up to his own fleece didn’t do much in the way of warmth, but his polyester pelt tended to make Red run hot, so he didn’t really mind it. However, it meant that right now, the thin felt did very little to muffle the other two’s whispered argument.
It took everything Red had in him to let them argue it out. His own admonishments would only serve to stoke the fire at this point, and with the lights out it was starting to feel like his only hope was the both of them arguing to sleep.
Sure enough, their whispers became more inaudible by the minute, until eventually the two were snoring happily.
Usually they all fell asleep at the same time - meaning Red didn’t have to listen to the loud one’s horrendous autotune screech of a snore and the yellow one’s slumbering mumbles and yelps. Today, on a day where Red was already at the end of his rope, he laid sprawled across his bed, consumed by bitter frustration at his life.
A loud series of clatters made him jump, and a strange keening sang across the house, a series of computerized beeps that danced in a jaunty path directly into Red’s utterly dismayed head. He almost groaned aloud, trying to resist the urge to just throw a pillow over his head and try to ignore it.
The happy tune continued to sing out, drowning out the evening’s usual two crickets in its disrespectful serenade.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to stop. And if Red’s luck continued to run as it had today, it probably wouldn’t stop until it woke the other two. With that worst-case scenario in mind, Red slipped from the bedroom as quietly as possible, making sure to close the door as quickly as he could. The earful he would receive for mussing around in the dark in mind, Red was glad his polyester feet slid so quietly along the cold kitchen tile.
The yawning darkness of the kitchen was even dimmer than the bedroom, and Red squinted his eyes warily at his surroundings as he tried to spot the stupid noisemaker. What he wouldn’t give for the duck’s phone. Guy monopolized the thing like he paid for it.
The tune stopped for a moment, and Red perked up - only to slump with an audible groan as the tune started immediately back up. It was short and repetitive, and served to torture Red as far as he cared.
Was it anything on the table? Red quietly circled it, shivering slightly in the darkness. It certainly wasn’t as dark as when the lights went out, the memory of stumbling around blindly among... things in the dark was still fresh in his mind as he searched.
Just dirty dishes, abandoned word searches - and the tune was beginning to sound much like a soundtrack to his stupid search.
Red scoffed at himself, turning this way and that to try to better hear where the sound was coming from. It almost felt like it was running away from him, barely there no matter where in the room he was - the song would get louder then quieter in a way that was starting to make his stomach feel unsettled.
It stopped again. Then started. Red cursed aloud, closing his eyes to better hear.
He stumbled about in the dark, waving his hands ahead of himself - their furniture tended to be quite short for the most part, so Red was in an awkward squat that made him feel quite ridiculous - but stumbling into chairs and cupboards in the middle of the night was a terrible idea.
The technique worked quite well, and Red found himself standing straight as he walked toward the sound. He felt rather clever for figuring out such a cool trick, until he walked face-first into a wall.
Red rubbed a hand against his yarn-covered face, glad at least that the loud one wasn’t here to see that. He’d think Red was a right moron for that - and Red much preferred the other to think he was smart. For whatever reason.
In the darkness, Red felt his way along the wall, this time more carefully. The tune seemed... low? Pawing around in the dark blindly, Red yelped as he touched something cold, yanking his hand back in terror.
Heart pounding in his chest, Red slowly reached out once more - and pulled back a phone.
Huh.
Red scoffed aloud - had Duck really just left the stupid thing in the kitchen, after making such a fuss all the time about having it on hand? Red turned the phone over in his hand, stepping back and half-tripping over one of the kitchen table’s chairs.
Somewhat annoyed at himself, it took Red a moment to realize this phone wasn’t quite the same as their own - it seemed quite older, covered in stickers and cracks that made it catch on his fleece. It continued to trill its cartoonish song out in the dark, sending a jolt of discomfort up his spine.
Sighing through his teeth, Red snapped the flip phone open and held it to his ear. “I’ll have you know I think it’s quite rude to be calling at this hour, downright inconsiderate-” he began sharply, even his usually monotonous tone on edge.
“Over your shoulder there’s a photo on the wall of the yellow one walking up some stairs.”
The familiarity of the voice on the phone couldn’t have struck him, let alone the tone the words were spoken with, but out of sheer exhaustion Red sent an almost instinctive glance behind him.
That wall certainly hadn’t been there before. Hadn’t Red walked ages in that direction? But there it was, a plain, normal wall - and a staircase. The photo of the yellow one ascending the very stairs before him stared down at him from the otherwise empty wall, illuminated in a thin strip of vivid light from beyond. The bars of light peeking between the banister bars lit up the kitchen table in an unfamiliar set of stripes.
None of this made Red any more willing to talk to someone on the phone, and he stared at the photo, trying to subdue the panic bubbling up his throat. He swallowed thickly, and snapped the phone closed in his hand, ripping his gaze away from the new photo.
Nope. Nope. Absolutely not. Leaving this stupid place was one thing, but going deeper in its grasp? The very thought made his fleecy hackles rise and his skin crawl. Red moved to shove the phone in a cupboard but jumped as it started its stupid ringing once more.
At this rate the loud one was bound to wake up.
Red shut his eyes tight as he lifted the phone to his ear once more. “Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you’re selling,” chastised Red in a low hiss, forcing himself to ignore how improbable and unsettling everything was beginning to feel, “but please don’t call us at night. Thank you.”
“Don’t try to be obtuse, we both know I’m just going to keep calling until you settle down and listen to me.”
This was much worse than talking to the duck - this fellow seemed tailor-made specifically to offend Red’s very sensibilities. Him? Settle down? “Now listen here-”
“No, you listen here.” Had anyone been listening in on the conversation they would likely marvel at how similar the two voices were.
Red’s felt paws were shaking with a combination of exhaustion and barely withheld fury, and the hot flood of frustration was threatening to spill loose in his volume.
“Fine,” he spat, putting a hand on his hip to turn and stare at the new photo in bold defiance of its sheer absurdity. “So you know about a picture in my house. Should I be calling the police?” Being reasonable made sense. Making sense was reasonable. When things got the worst, Red liked to remind himself that it was just life, right? Life couldn’t be that scary, right? The absurdity of it all aside, it just seemed like the proper thing to do - not that Red had ever really successfully “called” anyone before, let alone law enforcement.
“Why would you call the police on your neighbours before you sit with them for a nice cuppa?”
Even through Red’s haze of annoyance, the stranger on the phone’s sentiment made his heart flutter in a different way. “We don’t have any neighbours,” he said slowly, trying to tear his gaze away from the stupid photo of the yellow one unsuccessfully.
“I’m right here, mate,” the voice said, a tinge of amusement audible through the sardonic monotone.
A door somewhere out of view creaked open, flooding the stairs in a warm light. Suddenly the kitchen felt much colder and lonelier, and Red hugged himself with his free arm to try to stave the feeling off.
“So, what, you live in the sky?”
“Upstairs, champ, upstairs,” came the laugh from the other end of the phone. “You’re quite funny, you know. I just called to invite my downstairs neighbour to a nice cup of tea. Or maybe coffee’s more to your taste? Well, I’m sure whatever I can find would be suitable. It sounded like you had quite a busy day today, right?”
Suddenly Red felt a little foolish. He longed for a landline cord to fiddle with. “Oh. Upstairs. Right. I guess you heard all the... hubbub today.”
“Mm-hmm. Sounds like your roommates can be quite the handful. I find people are less busy in the evenings, more time to chat.”
People. This person on the phone, who lived upstairs, had met other people. Knew what neighbours were like. And, if Red was being quite honest, the gentlemen had quite a relaxing voice. He tapped his foot against the cold kitchen tile as he stared at all the dishes on the table. The other two certainly wouldn’t clean it, at least not without him there to corral them, and Red recalled distinctly the scene this morning where the loud one had chastised him for what felt like hours regarding a spot he’d found caked to his plate.
As though sensing Red’s hesitance, the voice on the other side of the phone added, enticingly, “I have a welcome basket for you, too. How about it? Shall I start the kettle?”
Red never liked admitting things to himself. He liked to keep his thoughts mostly to himself - things always got messy when he brought up feelings around the others. It was easier to stop things at their source, usually, but sometimes... His fleecy paw tapped against the floor once, twice, then stopped.
“A tea would be nice...” Red mumbled, half to himself, as he once more hung up the phone. This time, though, he wandered slowly, haltingly, to the stairs.
He certainly couldn’t remember the last time he’d climbed stairs. There was that time at their job, sure, but that was a lifetime and a half away. Red had been an entirely different person, practically. The process came to him haltingly, and more than once his stupid felt paws slipped against the hardwood and he had to grab at the banister to keep from falling.
The door at the top was unfamiliar. It looked different than the rest of the ones in the home, and Red haltingly read the plaque upon it aloud. “Big... boys...?” He’d never been quite skilled at reading, but he’d rarely found the skill useful anyway. Was that the gentleman’s name? Big?
It didn’t seem to move as he approached, and he was beginning to feel like this was a bad idea.
“Come right on in, neighbour,” came the languid call of the voice from the phone. Red fumbled with it in his hand, but realized, slightly bashfully, that the voice was coming from the door in front of him instead.
They had neighbours? Since when?
Steeling himself, Red gently pushed the door - and found himself looking upon something quite odd.
The fellow was distinctive, yet remarkably familiar. The name on the door began to make sense to him, as his head was... oversized, to say the least. The red hair tucked neatly in a smart-looking style reminded Red of the limited time he’d spent with his supposed family, but the exhausted eyes gazing at him was considerably more intense than anyone he’d really met so far. He was dressed in a sharp sweater, and looked at Red over a pair of glasses.
Red couldn’t help but be reminded of that suitcase teacher - he looked, well, smart. Was it just the glasses? No, wait, it was also the countless notes of information sketched onto the chalkboard walls. A fine layer of chalk dust laid upon the table, but a pair of steaming teas laid untouched by the troublesome powder.
The fellow smiled at him, showing a set of unnervingly perfect teeth, and Red stared. “Do I... know you?” he asked, hesitating to fully enter the room. His grip on the phone was beginning to make it creak in his hand. Still, the warmth of the new location was only beckoning him closer - and oh good lord above was that a welcome basket?
All of Red’s hesitance melted away instantly at the sight of the gorgeous basket. Wicker, with a beautiful shimmering cellophane net around it - nothing preposterous or glittery, just the natural beauty of cellophane. It felt like his birthday, to be quite honest, and Red stepped towards it, utterly transfixed. A red ribbon held it closed, but beneath the clear plastic he could spot a nice soap, a bag of delightful-looking mixed nuts, and a mug with a cheeky little slogan on it about not wanting to work with a charming cartoon character.
It was the most utterly mundane yet magical thing Red could have imagined. He had never felt this seen.
Unnoticed in Red’s sheer, unmitigated delight, the stranger’s smile only grew as he gingerly plucked his own tea from the table with his unnaturally long hand to hide behind the steam. “I believe this is the first time we’ve properly met, neighbour. I’m Harry. It’s lovely to meet you.”