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Sylvain has a plan. Which means they’re doomed from the start.
“Did your plan involve being late?” Ingrid hisses. She has her hands full cramming Sylvain’s numerous suitcases into the back of her father’s minivan, but she’s never too busy to point out when Sylvain’s fucked up.
They’ve made this trip for a couple years now — a jaunt from their hometown, across the US-Canada border, down to Syracuse to pick up Dimitri and Felix, and onward down the coast to an enclave of anime, video games, and hundreds of people done up in skin-tight bodysuits and foam armor. They should have this down by now. This should be a well-orchestrated exercise.
Instead, Sylvain is nearly two hours late, pulling up with mussed-up hair and an apologetic coffee in his hand that Ingrid takes, though not without giving Sylvain an earful. She’s been up all morning, doesn’t he know, and his stuff is packed all wrong, how will we fit everything?!
It’s another fun twist of the knife when Ingrid haphazardly shoves the massive prop lance she’s made for Sylvain into the car, only to find that it’s so long it sticks up into the driver’s cab.
“Oh, that’s fun,” Sylvain tucks himself into the passenger’s seat and flicks the jiggling, spine-like nubs at the base of the blade, a perfect replica of the Lance of Ruin for his Dark Knight cosplay. “Nice attention to detail.”
Ingrid shoots Sylvain a venomous glare and, with a turn of her keys, says, “Thank you.”
The ride to Syracuse is uneventful, as long as Ingrid thinks of Sylvain’s continued apologies for his tardiness as non-events. “It’s fine,” she mumbles. “I shouldn’t expect any different.”
“Ouch,” Sylvain winces, rubbing an imaginary wound on his chest. “Although, we could make up some time if you—”
“Absolutely not,” Ingrid cuts him off. There will be no speeding in this minivan, not so long as she’s at the wheel. Cruise control is on, 110kph exactly and not a notch higher.
Two and a half hours of ignored pleading from Sylvain later, they arrive outside Dimitri and Felix’s dorm, more than fashionably late. Felix takes one look at the mismatched jigsaw of the packing job Ingrid’s done and says, “What the fuck.”
“You’re the best at suitcase Tetris!” Sylvain swings an arm around Felix’s shoulder, and Felix must be extra horrified, because he doesn’t even move to shake Sylvain off. “We left you a fun puzzle to solve.”
While Felix takes up furiously re-arranging the car, Dimitri lumbers out of the dorm, looking a lot like a celebrity trying and failing to avoid detection — all-black outfit, sunglasses on, hoodie pulled up tight.
“It’s a migraine day,” Felix explains without looking back. “Or, yesterday was, I guess.”
“Please, don’t worry about me.” Even with sunglasses, Dimitri’s earnest gaze burns through. “I’ll be fine once we get on the road.”
Ingrid helps Felix get the cooler into the backseat, wedged carefully between a replica of the Aegis Shield (for Felix’s Mortal Savant cosplay) and a pack of Top Ramen (breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the weekend). “We’re off to a bad start, aren’t we?”
“So negative!” Sylvain spins the key fob on his finger. “Things can only go up from here.”
++++++++++
They spent a lot of time on the road as kids, the four of them all packed into Lambert’s wood-paneled station wagon, Rodrigue in the front seat navigating. The very back of the car is the favored spot — less chance for parental scolding — and so they trade turns, a rotation of pairs.
Sylvain, insufferable, creates a graph for the likely noise levels of each pairing. Unsurprisingly, “Dimitri and Ingrid” yield the lowest decibel count — so quiet you forget they’re there, the chart reads — while “Felix and Sylvain” are the loudest. Have earplugs handy.
A lot changes in not a lot of time.
“Dimitri and Felix” become the quietest pair — they won’t even look at each other — and Ingrid starts to prefer sitting shotgun, as Rodrigue takes on the now-empty driver’s seat. Sometimes, Sylvain sits in the back by himself, tracing patterns in the window where they used to cheer for raindrop races.
Sylvain feels silly the first time he asks Ingrid if she can help him with a cosplay. You’re good at making stuff, right? He’s back in their hometown after dropping out of college for the second time, and Ingrid is the only person who doesn’t make him want to run to his room and hide under the covers.
I know this character, Ingrid says when Sylvain shows her the reference picture. Felix is obsessed with this game. Just a little opening, an excuse to pick up where they all left off. It’s as easy as that.
It feels good to be road-tripping all together again. At least, until Dimitri grabs the aux cord.
“You’re kidding.”
“Shut up, Sylvain.” Felix is tapping away at his phone, but he still manages to throw Sylvain a threatening glare.
“No, this is like,” Sylvain searches for the words to describe the unbearable combinations present in Dimitri’s Soothing Music playlist, an unholy amalgamation of The Wiggles, Chinese folk music, and Tchaikovsky deep cuts. “This is next level awful.”
“Sylvain,” Ingrid starts, at the same moment Felix hisses, “I said shut up, it relaxes him!”
“And you yelling also relaxes him?”
“Actually,” Dimitri twists around in his seat. “A little. It’s familiar.”
“Oof, dude,” Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been rooming together too long.”
Felix returns to his game of Love Live with a dismissive scoff. Look at that: a full combo.
+++++++++++++++
Convincing Dimitri to join their burgeoning cosplay group is a simple matter — he’d do anything for his friends. Convincing Felix is only marginally harder. He laughs, at first, before calling Ingrid back the next day with a list of Cool Video Game Swords he wants her help 3D modeling. Hook, line, sinker.
They’re making horrible time, barely across the New York state line and already with a dozen rest stops under their belt. The cooler is leaking, and Ingrid hisses you are a horrible tiny man, with a tiny bladder at Felix when he asks if they can stop again.
The silver lining is the neon glow of a diner sign where they pull off. Ingrid’s drooling as she parks haphazardly, leaving the rest of them in the dust. When the boys catch up, she’s already rattling off a generous order to the server.
At least lunch isn't posing any problems. Dimitri is overly polite to the server, Ingrid ribs Sylvain for being late and throwing off their whole schedule, and Felix, who hates peace, stabs a knife through his burger so hard it hits the ceramic plate underneath.
“Did Sylvain tell you why he was late?”
Ingrid blinks. “He... didn’t. Why?”
Felix’s tone is ominous enough that the mood of the table darkens. Sylvain swallows and says, “Nah, it’s nothing. Let’s drop it.”
“No, let’s not,” Felix deadpans. “You’re really not going to tell us? You’re okay with everyone assuming you’re a fuck-off failure forever?”
“Felix!” Ingrid shoots him a capital “L” Look, but Sylvain waves her off.
“No, it’s — Yeah, okay. You’re right.”
Felix leans back in the diner seat, vinyl squeaking over-loud beneath him. “Sylvain is taking night classes to finish his degree,” he explains to the table. “His dad can’t keep a secret, and neither can mine, apparently.”
“Oh my god,” Ingrid’s hands fly to her face. “You were late because you had class last night? And you let me yell at you for so long?!”
“I’m not—” Sylvain waves his hands in front of his chest, like he can ward off the earnest looks his friends are giving him, all that genuine emotion like a poisonous cloud. “Look, I should have said something but... It’s not a big deal. I’m trying to actually finish something.” He winces. “For once.”
He pauses, but no one pipes up. That’s the curse of having friends who know you too well — they give you space, they give you silence, they give you the time to finally dig down to the truth.
“Part of me will always be that fuck-up,” Sylvain shrugs, voice soft. “I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up.”
“Sylvain,” Dimitri puts down his grilled cheese. “You’re not a failure.”
The sight of Dimitri’s uneaten cheese sandwich finally tips Sylvain over the edge, the tears caught in his eyelashes finally falling. He fixes his gaze on his now overly-salted eggs, and his friends do what Sylvain never allows of himself — they let him cry. And they don’t ask anything more than that.
Once tears have been wiped and plates have been cleaned, Sylvain insists on paying. Felix drags Dimitri off to get snacks, leaving Ingrid to kick rocks outside the diner.
“Wait, Sylvain.” She tugs on his sleeve, chewing the words around in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have — I shouldn’t keep assuming you’re the same guy as when we were teenagers. It’s not fair.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Sylvain rubs a hand down Ingrid’s arm. “I mean it. It’s not like I could have gotten where I am without you around to kick my ass.”
It’s true, even if Ingrid doesn’t look convinced. Ingrid is stubborn enough to drive anyone up a wall; Felix cares so little about other people’s opinions it borders on callousness; Dimitri is so relentlessly optimistic it becomes tiresome.
From another angle — determination, bravery, kindness.
“You wanna drive next?” Ingrid offers, dangling the keys in front of Sylvain’s face.
“Can I speed?”
“Just this once.”
“Just this once.”
Ingrid must know he’s lying — she knows him too well. But she hands him the keys all the same.
++++++++++
“We’re lost.”
It’s Felix who says it, which means they’re really lost. They’re in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, and the GPS has been Recalculating... for at least an hour and a half. It’s Sylvain to the rescue, and it’s embarrassing how quickly he steers them back on course, sans GPS. A rare opportunity to flaunt his preternatural sense of direction.
“See I told you—” Sylvain doesn’t even get time to gloat before the conspicuous hissing of air leaving a tire begins. He grimaces and pulls slowly toward the side of the road, the tire popping somewhere in the second-to-rightmost lane.
“Told us what, Sylvain?” Felix deadpans, words sharp enough to cut through the screeching noise of metal on asphalt. Ingrid’s white-knuckle grip on the grab handle is so tight that Sylvain has to carefully uncurl each finger once they’ve safely pulled over.
“I’m. Going. To. Kill. You.”
“That seems like an overreaction. I only almost killed us.”
This is when Dimitri, who was happily napping in the back of the van, finally wakes, popping his head out of the van with sleepy eyes. “Are we there?”
“No,” Felix doesn’t look up from his phone, probably texting Rodrigue for their AAA number.
“We have to have a spare tire, right?”
“Dream on.” Ingrid pulls her sweater tight, shivering in the cold. “You really think my dad would spring to get a new one? There’s no room with all of Sylvain’s bullshit anyway.”
“Ingrid...” Sylvain looks visibly hurt. “You said I did a really nice job with this build.”
Felix has said, on a few occasions, that he misses flip phones — misses being able to hang up on people with the overly-aggressive clat! It’s clear by the way he angrily hangs up on his call with AAA that he’s currently thinking about that. “They’re too busy tonight. Too fucking busy for four people stranded on the side of the highway.”
“We’re not stranded, Felix,” Dimitri rests a hand on Felix’s shoulder, and Felix simultaneously relaxes and tightens up. “Is there a place we can go for the night? We’ll call back first thing in the morning.”
Dimitri’s always been amazing like this. He steps out onto the side of the road with bare feet, still blinking awake, and manages to corral them all into relative calm, make a game plan, and call them a taxi to take them to the nearest motel for the night.
“That’s why you’re our leader, Dima.”
“I’m not—” Dimitri ducks his chin to hide an oncoming blush. “We don’t have a leader, Sylvain.”
Ingrid knocks her knuckles against the jut of Dimitri’s chin. “That’s also why you’re our leader.”
++++++++++++
Sylvain spares no expense when booking their con room. It has to be spacious, with two beds and room for a cot, a balcony to store their stuff, and close to the elevator. Snatching the best room is an artform, and Sylvain is their Rembrandt.
Which makes this motel room a scribbled drawing on the corner of a forgotten receipt. There’s a king bed covered in a cigarette burn-ridden comforter, a toilet that barely works, and a TV that plays only static, like something out of a horror film.
“It’s better than sleeping outside!” Dimitri announces cheerfully.
“I can’t believe this.” Ingrid makes a beeline for the bed, flopping down diagonally across it. “This is a disaster. How did we fuck up so badly?”
“Who cares, I’m hungry,” Felix grumbles, rifling through the takeout menus left on the side table. “Chinese or pizza?”
Ingrid pops up off the bed immediately. “Pizza!”
“Can we get extra cheese?” Dimitri asks, metaphorical tail wagging.
“No,” Felix snaps, punching in the number to the pizza parlor. (But they all hear him mumble yeah, can we get extra cheese? as he orders.)
This, of all times, is when it hits Sylvain: he forgot the wigs at home.
Ingrid’s head whips up, horror plain on her face. “You what?!”
Oops. Shouldn't have said that out loud. “I think I packed them in my old duffel bag, which is sitting on my bed. At home.”
There’s a second where Ingrid’s face flashes purple, the rage of a hundred days of con crunching burning in her eyes. Sylvain — and Felix and Dimitri, for that matter — brace themselves for the storm to follow.
And then, it just never comes. Instead, Ingrid starts laughing, and all three boys look at her with saucer-wide eyes as she dissolves into giggles, doubling over. It’s contagious, hitting Dimitri first, that deep, room-filling boom of a laugh; then Sylvain; then Felix, like a wave. They should be worried about their neighbors calling the front desk with a noise complaint. But it’s impossible to stop, not until they’re near tears, collapsing on the bed in a tangle of limbs.
And isn’t this how it’s always been for the four of them? Impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins; a codependent mess of a friendship. The most complicated and difficult and precious thing any of them have ever owned.
“At least we’re together.” It’s Dimitri who says it, but they’re all thinking it, trading smiles like secrets.
Let the disasters come and come and come. At least they’re together.