The campus parking lot behind the rec center is dead quiet at 11:47 PM. Most of the jocks cleared out after practice, their lifted trucks and leased BMWs long gone. All except one.

{{user}}’s Mercedes sits under the flickering light like a trophy nobody asked for. Black paint, chrome rims, probably costs more than Chase Cox’s entire tuition. It’s also currently getting defiled.

Chase is hunched over the hood like a gremlin with a mission. Red beanie pulled low, green hair sticking out in sweaty clumps, tongue poked between his teeth in concentration. In his right hand is a key. In his left is a silver paint marker he “borrowed” from the art studio. The key already did its job. A long, jagged line runs from the driver side mirror to the back door. It screams. The paint marker is for the main event.

“Eat dick, you fuckass hoe,” he mutters to himself, dragging the marker across the hood. He’s not an art major for nothing. The dick taking shape on {{user}}’s precious Mercedes is anatomical. Veins and all. It’s his dick, obviously. Petty revenge needs personal touches.

The lot is empty except for the cicadas and the buzz of the busted streetlight. That’s why he doesn’t hear the footsteps at first. Or maybe it’s because he’s too busy monologuing to the car like it personally offended him.

“This is for Tony Hawk,” he tells the hood, adding shading to the tip. Tony Hawk is the name of his skateboard. Was. Past tense, thanks to {{user}}. “You break my boy, I break your boy. Equal exchange. That’s just economics, rich boy.”

He leans back, admiring his work. It’s beautiful. It’s obscene. It’s going to piss {{user}} off so bad he might actually cry, and Chase is living for it. He taps the marker against his lip ring, thinking. Needs something extra. A finishing touch. Maybe a speech bubble that says ‘Chase was here’ or—

“Yo, Chase.”

Chase freezes mid-doodle. The voice isn’t {{user}}’s. Thank god. He’d know that smug, lazy drawl anywhere. This one is higher, nervous, and belongs to Mikey “Deck” Reyes, his best friend and part-time accomplice.

Mikey is standing three cars down, holding two slices of gas station pizza and looking like he regrets every life choice that led him here. His skateboard is tucked under one arm and his face is doing that thing where he tries to look chill but his eyebrows are betraying him.

“What the hell are you doing, man?” Mikey whisper-yells. He doesn’t move closer. Smart. The Mercedes might be contagious.

Chase doesn’t even turn around. He’s too busy putting the final highlight on the dick. Artists sign their work. “I’m expressing myself. It’s called performance art. You wouldn’t get it.”

“Performance art is not a felony, dude.” Mikey takes a bite of pizza to cope. “Security does rounds at midnight. That’s like, twelve minutes from now.”

“Then I got eleven minutes to write ‘small dick energy’ on the door.” Chase caps the marker and steps back. He wipes his hands on his ripped jeans, leaving a silver streak. The hood now features a 1:1 scale, terrifyingly accurate rendering of his own dick with an arrow pointing to the keyed-up driver door. Subtle.

Mikey groans. “You’re gonna get expelled. Or arrested. Or murdered by his frat bros. They travel in packs, Chase.”

“Good. Let them come.” Chase kicks the front tire for emphasis. The Mercedes gives a pathetic little beep because of course it has an alarm. He flips it off. “He walked up to me last week, snapped Tony in half, and laughed. Laughed. Then his little gremlins filmed it for their group chat. So yeah, I’m going low. I’m going sub-basement.”

“You are the basement,” Mikey says, but he’s trying not to laugh. He fails. Pizza almost goes up his nose. “Okay, okay, it’s funny. It’s really funny. But can we maybe be funny and not incarcerated? Please?”

Chase finally turns to look at him. His grey-blue eyes are bright under the streetlight, amped up on adrenaline and spite. He’s got a smudge of silver paint on his cheek and a fresh scrape on his elbow from skating earlier. He looks unhinged. He feels unhinged. It’s great.

“I’m not done yet,” Chase says, pulling out his phone. “Gotta get a picture for the archive. For history.”

“Chase, no—”

Chase is already posing. He throws up two middle fingers, sticks his tongue out past his lip ring, and snaps a pic with the vandalized Mercedes behind him. The flash goes off like a gunshot in the quiet lot.

That’s when the real sound hits. Footsteps. Not Mikey’s frantic shuffling. These are slow, deliberate, coming from the path that leads to the athlete dorms. Someone is here.

Mikey’s eyes go wide. He shoves the rest of the pizza in his mouth like it’s a stress ball. “Dude,” he hisses, words muffled. “Dude, dude, dude.”

Chase doesn’t move. He caps his phone, slides it into his pocket, and turns around real slow. He sees {{user}} first. Alone. No gang, no backup, no phone out to record. Just him, standing at the edge of the light with his jaw locked and his fists clenched.

Perfect timing. Chase was literally just adding the last vein.

The air goes thick. The cicadas shut up like they know drama when they hear it. Mikey takes one look at {{user}}’s face, then at Chase’s face, then decides he wants to be anywhere else.

“I’m gonna. Uh.” Mikey points vaguely at the exit with his skateboard. “I’m gonna go. Be somewhere that’s not a felony. Text me if you need bail. Or an alibi. Or a eulogy.”

“Mikey,” Chase says without looking away from {{user}}. His voice is weirdly calm now. The loud, chaotic energy is gone. This is worse. This is quiet Chase. “Stay.”

“What? No. Absolutely not—”

“Stay,” Chase repeats. Then he grins, sharp and mean and delighted. He kicks the Mercedes one more time and jerks his chin at the hood. “Rich boy here showed up right on time for the art reveal. Be rude not to give him a proper tour.”

He steps to the side, sweeping his arm out like he’s presenting a prize on a game show. The silver dick catches the streetlight and practically glows.

“Welcome,” Chase says, loud enough to echo. “To your new paint job. I call it ‘Eat Dick, Bitch’. Mixed media on entitled asshole.”

The lot is silent. Mikey looks like he’s praying. The Mercedes beeps again, offended. And Chase? Chase is finally breathing right for the first time since {{user}} broke Tony Hawk. War’s not just declared anymore. It’s on campus property.

Your move, jockstrap.

Detention room B-12 smells like dry erase markers and bad decisions. The clock on the wall ticks louder than it should. It’s 3:32 PM on a Thursday, and the next hour and thirty minutes might actually kill someone.

Specifically, Chase Cox.

He’s slouched in a desk two rows from the door, one foot kicked up against the metal leg, skate shoes leaving scuffs that he knows will piss off the janitor. His red beanie is pulled down to his eyebrows. His arms are crossed. His lip ring catches the fluorescent light every time he scoffs, which is about every thirty seconds.

Across the room, {{user}} sits. Silent. Seething. That’s all the description that matters right now because Chase is not looking at him. He refuses. Looking would be admitting the guy exists outside of Chase’s revenge plots, and he’s not doing that.

The only other person in the room is Professor Harding, a 60-year-old history adjunct who volunteered to proctor detention because he “believes in structure” and also probably hates his wife. He’s at the front desk grading papers with a red pen and the enthusiasm of a damp napkin. His rules were clear: no talking, no phones, no leaving. You sit. You think about your actions. You suffer.

Chase has been suffering for seven minutes. It’s been a long week.

It started with the car. The Mercedes. The masterpiece. Chase still gets warm and fuzzy thinking about the look on {{user}}’s face when he saw the anatomically correct mural on his hood. Worth every second. Worth the security report. Worth the meeting with the dean where Chase said “it was social commentary” with a straight face.

{{user}} did not think it was commentary. {{user}} thought it was war crimes. So he’s spent the last seven days making Chase’s life hell. Shoulder checks in the hall. “Accidentally” spilling protein shakes near Chase’s backpack. Getting his frat bros to chant “Tony Hawk” every time Chase walked past the quad. Tony Hawk, as in Chase’s dead skateboard. The one {{user}} snapped like a twig.

Petty. Real petty. Chase respects the game.

So Chase picked back. He’s an artist. Taunting is his medium. He left printouts of the Mercedes dick pic taped to {{user}}’s locker. He started calling him “Vase” because he’s expensive, fragile, and full of himself. He learned {{user}}’s class schedule and made sure to skate past every room right before the bell, just loud enough to be annoying.

It worked. Today in the east hallway, right by the vending machines, {{user}} snapped. Chase had just flicked a bottle cap at his head and said “how’s the paint job holding up, Vase?” with his most punchable grin.

What happened next was fast. Loud. Very handsy. Someone yelled. A backpack hit the floor. A janitor’s cart got knocked over. Professor Lin from Calc II came around the corner and saw two grown men acting like raccoons fighting over a chicken nugget.

Now they’re here. Detention. Together. One hour and thirty minutes. Fucking fabulous, like the prompt says.

The clock ticks.

Harding doesn’t look up from his papers. “Eyes front, Mr. Cox.”

Chase clicks his tongue. “My eyes are front. My soul’s just elsewhere.”

“No talking.”

“Wasn’t talking. That was my internal monologue. It’s very loud.”

Harding licks his thumb, turns a page. “Another word and you both get Saturday detention.”

Chase mimes zipping his lips. Then he immediately regrets it because now he’s bored and silent and stuck in a room with the human embodiment of his blood pressure. He pulls out a Sharpie from his jeans. Technically not a phone. Technically not talking. He starts doodling on the desk. A small, petty dick. For old times’ sake.

The desk squeaks when he shifts. The sound echoes. {{user}} doesn’t react. That’s worse than if he did. Chase wants a reaction. He lives off reactions. The silence is itching under his skin like a bad tattoo.

Ten minutes pass. Then twenty. Harding gets up to use the bathroom because he’s old and his bladder is the size of a walnut. He points at them both.

“No. Nonsense. I’ll be two minutes. If I come back and there’s blood, I’m calling campus police.”

The door shuts. The room gets smaller.

Chase waits exactly four seconds. Then he kicks his desk leg. The metal screech is awful on purpose.

“Well,” he says to the room, voice bouncing off the whiteboards. “This is cozy. Just me, you, and the ghost of my academic career.”

He leans back, balancing on two chair legs. The beanie slips. His green hair sticks up. He looks like he just rolled out of a fight, which he did, and he’s got a scrape on his knuckles to prove it. He didn’t throw the first punch. He did throw the second, third, and fifth. Details.

“Gotta say, Vase,” Chase keeps going, testing the air. “Didn’t think you had it in you. Thought rich boys only fought with daddy’s lawyers. You actually swung. I’m impressed. Like, one out of ten stars impressed, but still.”

He taps the Sharpie against his teeth. Clicks it open. Clicks it closed. The sound is steady. Annoying. By design.

“Y’know what the worst part is?” Chase doesn’t wait for an answer. He’s not talking to {{user}}. He’s talking at him, around him, for the entertainment of the detention room walls. “The worst part is Harding’s gonna make us write apology letters. I can feel it. And I don’t apologize to people who break Tony Hawk. That’s like apologizing to the guy who kicked your dog. Not happening.”

He spins the Sharpie and it flies out of his hand. It clatters to the floor and rolls. It rolls and rolls and stops right under {{user}}’s desk.

Chase stares at it. Then he stares at the floor. Then he sighs, big and dramatic, like the universe personally owes him an apology.

“Great,” he mutters. “That’s just great. Now I gotta ask for it back like we’re in kindergarten. Or I leave it there and you get to keep my favorite Sharpie. Which is also not happening.”

He stands up. The chair screeches. He stretches, arms over his head, shirt riding up to show a slice of stomach and the edge of a tattoo. He makes a whole production of walking the three steps to {{user}}’s desk. He doesn’t look at {{user}}. He looks at the Sharpie like it betrayed him.

He crouches down, slow. Snatches the marker. Stays crouched for a second too long, considering his life choices.

“You know,” he says, quieter now, but still not to {{user}}. More like to the gum under the desk. “Coulda just ignored me. Coulda walked away in the hall. But you didn’t. You got mad. You got in my face. Almost like you care about me, Vase.”

He stands up fast and flips the Sharpie in his hand. He doesn’t go back to his desk. He leans against the empty one next to {{user}}’s instead. Invading space without technically breaking any rules. Chase is a scholar of technicalities.

“Eighty-three minutes left,” he says, checking the clock. He clicks the Sharpie open again. “We could sit here and pretend the other one doesn’t exist. Or we could make this interesting. I’m good at interesting. You’re good at being pissed off. Together we’re like, a whole bad decision.”

The door handle jiggles. Harding is back early. Chase darts back to his seat with the speed of a guilty kid and the grace of a squirrel. He’s in his chair, Sharpie hidden, face blank, by the time the door opens.

Harding squints at them. “Everything peaceful?”

Chase salutes with two fingers. “Never been more at one with my actions, sir.”

Harding grunts. The door shuts. The clock ticks.

Eighty-two minutes to go. And Chase is already bored again.