Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“For today’s weather forecast, those of you living in the southern half of New Jersey had better get your raincoats on if you plan on going outside. In particular, the city of Seattle is expected to get about 3 to 5 inches of rain over the next 24 hours. Severe thunderstorms are also expected later in the afternoon. So-“ bip. The Weather Channel disappeared as the television set was turned off.

“Dammit! I swear there’s never anything good on TV at this time of day!” Shake hissed, tossing the television remote onto the floor, which made it explode. 

The 6-foot-tall talking milkshake-thing was sitting—or more accurately, he was sulking—in his usual spot in the rotted yellow recliner. He was absolutely bored out of his fucking mind.  

Carl had drained his pool in anticipation of the upcoming winter, which meant swimming was not an option. Shake had already gone through all the games on the Atari 2600, there was basically nothing even remotely worth watching on TV, and he’d rather do anything else other than pick up a book. Plus, with the bad weather rolling in soon, he couldn’t even go out and find something to do. 

Which left him with two options, both of those consisting of bothering one of his roommates. Well, most days it would be two options. Today it was only one option, because of fucking course Frylock was working on another one of his stupid science projects, and this time it seemed that the floating box of fries was determined to avoid being interrupted. He’d not only locked his bedroom door, but apparently he’d also evidently nailed it shut on the inside. As far as Shake was concerned, putting in all that effort just to lock the door was stupid—there was no possible way that whatever dumb crap his roommate ended up making in there was actually going to be of value in the end. It would either end up not working or it would work too well and have to be destroyed. That was what always happened. 

This left messing with Meatwad as his only option for entertainment. Normally this was something Shake enjoyed doing, but at the moment he was getting a bit bored with his usual routine of either attempting to physically harm the meatball or scare the living bejesus out of him. He needed ideas for something new. 

Shake grumbled and picked up the (somehow intact and functional despite having clearly exploded moments prior) remote and turned the television back on. He began absentmindedly flipping through the channels.

Ugh, they’re always talking about the same crap on the news these days. Blah blah blah politics, Corona, Russia, crypto, whatever—wait a minute. 

Suddenly, Shake had an idea.

Russia…hmmm…

He grinned deviously. “Hey, Meatwad!” He called, snickering. “Come out here, I need your help with something!”

This was gonna be fun.

Ten minutes later….

“You sure this is a good idea, Shake?” Meatwad said as he hopped into the cardboard box.

“Of course it’s a good idea. You’ll get mailed to Siberia, and then you’ll find the way to Narnia, kill the White Bitch or whatever her name is and then old Vladimir Rasputin or whatever his name is will be defeated and the world will know peace once again!” He got out the packing tape and was about to close the box when Meatwad piped up again.

“Wait!” The meatball said worriedly. “I gotta tell Frylock where I’m goin’ otherwise he’s gonna worry!”

Shake rolled his eyes. “He’s busy. Here, I got an idea.” He handed Meatwad a piece of paper. “Write him a note. Say that you ran away to Siberia to go on an adventure!” 

“Good idea!” 

Shake chuckled to himself. God, Meatwad was so stupid. 

After Meatwad finished scribbling out the note, Shake stuffed him back in the cardboard box and taped it shut before scrawling “SEND TO SIBERIA” on it in sharpie. 

For some ungodly reason, the mailman actually accepted the package. Shake laughed as he watched the mail truck drive off into the rapidly-worsening rain. This was going to be hilarious. 

Several hours later…

Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed across the sky. Shake was back in his recliner, giggling to himself as he heard the sound of nails getting pulled out of the wall, followed by the familiar creeeak of a door opening. 

“Well, I think that’s enough work for today…” Frylock said as he drifted down the hall into the living room. 

“The hell were you making in there, anyway?” Shake said, trying to hide the grin spreading across his face. 

“I was trying to make the most efficient car engine in history. My goal is to have it get around at least 100 miles out of half a gallon of gas. With the climate crisis and how high gas prices have been lately, I have a good feeling that this is finally going to be the invention that gets me somewhere.” He glanced around the room. “Say, where’s Meatwad?” 

Shake was increasingly failing to hide his amusement. “I dunno— snort— probably in his room hiding from the storm since he’s a total wuss.” 

Frylock glared at him suspiciously. “Dammit, Shake, what did you do this time?” 

Shake broke down laughing as more thunder roared. “He left you a note—you can read, can’t you?” He then promptly fell out of the recliner, laughing his ass off. 

Frylock picked up the note from where it sat on the floor and quickly read it before groaning in exasperation. “Siberia—of all the dumb things…Shake, where the hell is Meatwad?” He demanded. 

Shake stood up, still giggling like a madman. He turned to the box of fries. “The stupid idiot actually let me stuff him in a box and mail him to Russia!” He chortled. Frylock glowered at him, completely unamused as Shake continued. “He’s probably already on the plane over there by now—“

An earth-shattering BOOM! cut him off. It was so loud it made the entire house shake and set off multiple car alarms. 

From outside, the two could hear Carl yelling “What the hell was that?” 

Frylock looked anxiously at Shake. “That didn’t sound like thunder.” He said. 

The two food-monsters headed over to the kitchen and peered out of the window towards the inner city part of Seattle. A horrific sight greeted them. 

In the sky, glowing frightfully through the sheets of pouring rain was a giant ball of flame. A giant ball of flame located concerningly close to the South Jersey International Airport. Flaming bits of wreckage were falling out of the stormy sky all over the place. A large, smoldering jet engine crashed down out of the sky past the house. A moment later the two heard Carl yelling in frustration that it had landed on his car.

Shake looked at Frylock awkwardly. The box of fries was staring up at the explosion with wide eyes, a growing look of horror on his face. 

Finally, he tore his eyes away from the carnage and looked at Shake. “What plane was he on?” He said, the desperation in his tone loud and clear. 

Shake shrugged. “I dunno, probably a FedEx plane or something. Listen, man, for all we know that was a passenger jet and not a freighter.”

A large chunk of the plane’s tail sailed over the house and crashed down into the street, showering it in sparks. 

“I’m sure he’s fine. Hell, they probably kicked him off the damn plane before he even got on board…” Shake said, trailing off as he watched his roommate rush over to the other side of the house and open the front door, out into the rainy street. “Hey, dumbass, get back inside. Unless you want a piece of airplane to land on you!” He yelled out the door. 

There was no reply for what seemed like an eternity until finally Shake thought he heard a whisper above the sound of the pouring rain, thunder, emergency sirens and crackling flames. 

“What?” He shouted back. 

The second response was barely audible, but this time he definitely heard Frylock croak out “No.”. 

No what? Shake thought. Despite himself, he stepped out the door into the storm to get a closer look at the plane wreckage that had landed in the road. At this point though, he had a very, very bad feeling about what he was going to find. 

What he found was difficult to make sense of at first. 

There was the tailfin of a large jet plane wedged into the street, smoke still rising from it in places. On the pavement beside it sat Frylock, hunched over silently in the pouring rain, staring at the giant piece of shrapnel. Shake wasn’t sure why until he got a closer look at the tailfin and saw the logo that was boldly emblazoned on it. 

The iconic logo of Federal Express…AKA FedEx.

God, that better not have been the plane Meatwad ended up on. Otherwise, I’m fucked.

Chapter Text

This had to be a nightmare. It had to be.

Any moment now he’d wake up and everything would be just fine. It was probably just like whenever he had those nightmares about his teeth falling out. 

But the ringing in his ears, the smell of jet fuel and smoke in the air, and the sound of countless sirens and pieces of wreckage still crashing to the Earth were all too real. 

He wasn’t dreaming. He was sitting on the pavement in front of a giant piece of an airplane’s tail. There was a thunderstorm raging and the temperature was beginning to drop. 

All he felt was shock and numbness. It didn’t matter that the rain was cold and he was getting increasingly soaked. Nothing felt real. 

The sirens were getting closer and he could hear someone calling his name… this is just a nightmare. I’ll wake up and everything will be fine.

He was quickly reminded (again) that that was not the case, when the feeling of a wet gloved hand touching his back nearly made him jump out of his skin…and actually did make him fall over face-first onto the pavement. 

Frylock pushed himself back up off the ground and whipped around to glare at Shake. The milkshake stood about a foot behind him, staring at the tailfin with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“Hey, look, I know things don’t look too good here,” Shake began to say, “but I mean it’s not like we know for certain that he was on that specific plane! He might not even have gotten on one of them! They probably found him in the TSA checkpoint and kicked him out! Here, I’ll call him!”

Shake whipped out his cell phone from god-knows-where and dialed Meatwad’s number. The phone rang for a moment before going to an automated voicemail. 

Shake grinned nervously. “Hehe…guess his cell battery must’ve died.” 

“That better be the case, for your own sake.” He growled. “Because I swear that if your jackassery managed to actually get him killed this time, then I’m gonna make you wish that you blew up with that plane instead!” He got up and floated right up into Shake’s face threateningly.

“I didn’t know the plane was gonna fucking explode! ” 

“You still tried to mail him to Siberia! ”

“Yeah, well, still,” Shake continued, “It’s not like we have any concrete proof that he was on that thing! Unless his dead body just falls out of the sky, you have no way of proving I did anything wrong! ” 

Something splattered down from the sky onto the pavement a few feet away from them.

“Forget I said that. It’s probably just the pilot or something.” Shake said. 

Frylock ignored him and drifted over to the object despite himself. He didn’t want to look, for fear of what he might find. 

Please let it be a human. Please, God, let it be a human!

It wasn’t. 

It was some sort of ground-up meat. It was blackened and burned, basically completely cooked, with bits of shrapnel embedded in it. It smelled like cooked beef, which was enough to tell him exactly what he (thought that he) was looking at.

No. Fucking hell, no…

“So is it a pilot or—oh.” Shake said, shuffling over and looking down at the glob of burnt beef. “I’m…I’m sure he’s fine.” He stammered. “He’s probably just knocked out from the explosion.”

“He’s dead, Shake!” Frylock shrieked. 

“It might not be—“ Shake was cut off mid-sentence by a burst of electricity that knocked him backwards several feet. He landed on his ass on the rain-soaked lawn and struggled to pick himself up off the muddy ground. 

“He’s dead, and you KILLED HIM! ” The box of fries hovered in front of Shake menacingly, fully intent on murdering the milkshake where he stood. Shake thought frantically of a way to escape and had his next terrible idea for that day.

“Yeah, and why didn’t you stop me? You’re the one who’s supposed to be smart, so why the hell was I basically left completely unsupervised with him all freakin’ day? You’re just as guilty as I am!” He said, making sure to sound as accusatory as possible.

The electrical energy fizzled out like the last embers of a dying fire at that remark. Frylock didn’t want to admit it— especially not to Shake—but the milkshake kind of had a point. Leaving Meatwad alone with Shake for so long was basically the equivalent of leaving a small child unattended with a borderline-feral dog for the same amount of time. Or leaving a small child near a body of water unsupervised. Or leaving one with a box of matches easily within reach, or letting one play next to a busy highway. 

Or leaving your kid alone with a literal serial killer for several hours. 

“I…I think I need to go sit down for a while.” He said quietly, and then drifted back inside, feeling numb and ice-cold. Shake stood up and followed him back inside.

Right as he drifted back inside, the numbness left and the (seeming) reality of the situation slammed into him again like a tidal wave. 

Meatwad was dead.

For real, this time. 

And if he’d just been a bit more attentive, he’d still be alive. The logical part of Frylock’s brain was telling him that no, this isn’t my fault, this is Shake’s fault but the rest of it kept saying this is all my fault.  

And the more that he thought about that, the worse he felt. 

Unbeknownst to either of the two, Meatwad was, in fact, very much alive. Currently he was still in the cardboard box on board a UPS flight to Denver, which would then transfer the package he was in to a DHL flight bound for Siberia. He was also bored out of his mind. 

And he had yet to realize that he had completely forgotten to bring his cell phone. 

Back in Jersey, though, Shake had gotten back in the recliner and was watching TV as if nothing had happened. Inwardly he did feel somewhat guilty, but he would never admit this to anyone, let alone himself. It wasn’t his fault the damn plane exploded, after all. 

Frylock, on the other hand, was already doing considerably worse than Shake. 

He was lying face-up on his bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling, with the only light in the room being the dim glow of his computer monitor. It felt like the entire world was collapsing to pieces. He couldn’t help but recall the last conversation he’d had with Meatwad, and it only made him feel worse. 

“I’m gonna be extremely busy today, so do NOT bother me. Don’t knock on my door, don’t call my phone, don’t even try to talk to me until after I leave that room.” 

And then he slammed his bedroom door shut. That was it. No “I’ll see you later”, no “Stay out of trouble”, not even a simple “Have a good day”. No, the last thing he could remember doing with Meatwad was slamming a door in the poor guy’s face. 

And the more he thought about that, the more he dug himself into an ever-growing rabbit hole of guilt. He knew—he knew— that Meatwad looked up to him as some sort of father/big brother—figure. Truthfully, he’d always seen the meatball as more of a little brother rather than a son, but what difference did that make? He was still supposed to be the responsible one. 

And he was still supposed to be nice. 

And yet, time and time again he’d failed to be responsible enough, and failed to show anywhere near enough affection as he probably should have. 

His spiraling thoughts dredged up a particularly painful and very old memory, one he had nearly forgotten. 

He couldn’t have been much older than 14 or 15 when it happened…

The lab was burning. Dad wasn’t coming back. This, he knew for certain. Humans and fire didn’t mix. 

Stupid Dr. Weird and his stupid ideas. 

Now it was just him and whatever was in the jar that Dad had given him before running down the hallway directly towards whatever had initially exploded. 

He wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be. The thing in the jar, that is. In fact, the jar just looked like it was filled with…some sort of ground-up meat. Maybe raw hamburger or taco beef? He wasn’t sure. 

What he was sure of was that he had to get away from the flames before they got any worse.

He eventually found a storage shed that was far enough away from the fire to be reasonably safe. He hovered inside and set the jar down on the cold cement floor before landing next to it. 

Internally, he was absolutely terrified. What the hell was he supposed to do now? What if the government came looking for him or something? Wasn’t that what they did to things made in science labs? 

Terrified, and grieving. He knew he’d never see his father—the scientist that created him—ever again. There was no way the old man would get out of that burning labyrinth of a building alive. He hated himself for leaving the old doctor behind, but it wasn’t exactly as if Dad gave him much of a choice. 

He glanced over at the jar and then promptly fell over in shock when a pair of large and curious eyes stared back at him from within. As he struggled to get back up, the lid of the jar was pushed open from the inside and what could only be described as a softball-sized living mass of meat slithered out of it onto the floor of the shed, still looking directly at him. 

It was…weirdly cute, in a way. Sure it was also disgusting-looking but there was something very endearing about the meat-creature’s mannerisms and the way it kept looking up at him in wonderment. 

Cautiously, he reached out a fry to touch it…and the damn thing basically latched onto him and wouldn’t let go. It was warm and wet and sticky and really just altogether nasty-feeling to the touch. 

“GAH! GET OFF!” He yelped, thrashing about wildly. But the meaty blob refused to be dislodged. It simply clung to him even tighter the more he tried to remove it. At first he thought it must’ve been trying to eat him…that was until another possibility arose.

What if it was just…scared? Sure, at first it didn’t seem scared…until he screamed at it anyway. 

That was when he noticed a folded up piece of paper taped to the bottom of the jar. He removed it and unfolded it. The paper was written in his father’s handwriting. 

“SPECIMEN ID: Meatwad. SEX: Male. CREATORS: Dr. Weird and Dr. Synapse.”

Apparently this…this “Meatwad” was a joint creation between that crazy madman Dr. Weird…and his father? 

Wait a minute, didn’t that technically make them brothers?

…

…

…

Remembering that managed to make him feel even worse than before. Meatwad wasn’t just like a little brother, he was his little brother. And somehow he’d let himself completely forget about that. Until now. 

And now it was too late to do anything about it.

Chapter Text

Frylock woke up the next morning hoping desperately that the events of the previous night had only been a bad dream. But a single glance out his bedroom window revealed the engine from a 747 lying atop Carl’s (now flattened) car, confirming that everything was all too real. 

He really, really didn’t want to get out of bed that morning. Or ever again. If he left his bedroom, he’d have to go directly past Meatwad’s bedroom…with its makeshift bed that would never again be slept in and a few shitty homemade toys that would never again be played with. He didn’t want to have to look at that room. 

He rolled over and glanced at his own (closed) bedroom door, half-expecting to hear the meatball knocking on it any moment now, asking for breakfast. Instead, there was silence. Aside from the fact that he could hear Shake snoring all the way from the living room. A pang of anger shot through him when he thought about the milkshake, only to be drowned out by the endless sea of guilt he was already submerged in. If it hadn’t been for his own irresponsibility, Meatwad would still be alive and— Oh fuck. 

It was then that he remembered that, after he flipped out and nearly murdered Shake the previous night, he’d left Meatwad’s corpse lying out in the middle of the street where it had landed. All night, through the pouring rain. 

He rushed out the door in a panic and hurried out into the street, not even bothering to put on his contact lenses. The scene that now lay before him was somehow even more grisly than it had been last night. 

The street was covered in puddles of water, and the tailfin of the plane was still embedded in the pavement. That wasn’t what was upsetting. What was upsetting was the state that Meatwad’s body—what was left of it—was in. It had clearly been run over by at least one vehicle during the night—how they navigated around the tailfin was anyone’s guess—and the ground beef was now smeared across the pavement for about five feet or so. Crows and other scavenging birds had begun to pick at it, as had rats and raccoons. Worst of all, flies had already come and laid eggs in the corpse and it was now festering with maggots in places. 

He screamed bloody murder and chased off the scavenging animals, and then began frantically scraping what little of the remains he could off of the asphalt. Maggots and all. It was a disgusting process, and in the end Frylock only managed to collect about a baseball-sized clump of meat. Soggy, crushed, maggot-riddled and foul-smelling meat. The putrid ball of flesh was all that he had left of his little brother.

He gingerly carried the blob back inside and set it down on the kitchen counter, and then promptly dropped to the floor and broke down completely, in the process not noticing that Shake was now awake and watching him in confusion from the recliner. Against his own better judgement (he definitely didn’t want to get zapped a second time), Shake got up from the recliner and waddled over to his sobbing roommate.

“Whatcha got there?” He asked before seeing the nauseating mass of dead flesh and maggots that was now sitting on the kitchen counter. “Oh. I’m guessin’ that’s Meatwad…er, what’s left of him.” He said, cringing. There weren’t many things that grossed Shake out in a visceral way but whatever that disgusting blob was, it was definitely one of them.

Shake glanced around the kitchen awkwardly. “So, uh…whatcha gonna do with him now? Dump him down the sink drain?” He suggested. No response. Shake wasn’t sure if the box of fries even heard him. 

“Or we could just throw that mess in the garbage.” Shake suggested. This suggestion was replied to, but not verbally. Rather the response was a literal punch to the face. “OW!”

“We’re not throwing him away, you sick fuck! He…he’s gotta at least get a proper burial…”

Shake rolled his eyes. Crybaby. “Okay then, I’ll find a shoebox or something—“

“I’m not burying my brother in a fucking cardboard box! ”

Great, now he’s speaking nonsense. Talk about a shitty way to start the day. Shake thought. “Well then, genius, what the hell do you plan on burying him in? Where the hell are we supposed to get a coffin that tiny?”

Frylock looked down at the floor, still crying his eyes out. “I..I dunno, man…just…God damn it…” he dropped back down to the floor in a heap. “I should’ve been better.” 

Where the hell did that come from?

Oh, right. I told him it was also his fault last night. 

He’s seriously taking that bullshit to heart? Come on, if anything it was Meatwad’s own fault for being that fucking stupid. 

“I’ll…I’ll check if we have any wooden boxes in the garage.” Shake more or less forced himself to say. He may not be the smartest knife in the drawer but he knew a still-sufficiently-volatile-enough-to-worry-about situation when he saw one. The best thing to do in that sort of situation was to play along and pretend he cared (in his opinion anyway). Otherwise he might find himself on the receiving end of a fatal blast from his roommate’s laser eyeballs. 

He left and came back a few moments later, lugging a small wooden crate behind him. “I think this was a milk crate once.” Shake set the crate down on the kitchen counter beside the lump of flesh. “Is this good enough?” 

“I guess. If it’s the best we’ve got…” 

“You, uh…want me to see if Carl wants to come to the funeral?” 

“Yeah…him, and I guess we might as well try and get those aliens to come…and anyone else we know…” 

Some time later…

Carl was the only person who bothered showing up— granted, this was because in truth, he was the only person Shake actually contacted. He had absolutely no clue how to contact extraterrestrials and he was too lazy to bother doing so anyway.

Carl only bothered showing up because, in his own words, he was surprised to hear that “you freaks can actually die for real”. 

The group of three stood in the backyard beside a small six-foot-deep hole that had been dug in the ground. The wooden crate sat open, surrounded by a mound of hastily-collected dandelions in lieu of proper funerary flowers. A towel had been placed inside it to serve as coffin lining and on top of that towel sat the disgusting maggot-riddled blob that all three individuals in attendance believed was once Meatwad. 

By that point Frylock had finally stopped crying (for now), although he still seemed to be barely maintaining his composure as he drifted over to the makeshift coffin and began eulogizing. “Meatwad, buddy…I’m so sorry…” he said.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t even get you a proper coffin and a goddamn gravestone. I’m sorry I let Shake get away with hurting you so much. It’s my fault you’re in this box right now.” 

He stopped and sniffled before continuing.

“I should’ve taken better care of you. You didn’t…you didn’t even have a proper bed, for fucks sake! Or a healthy diet, or decent toys, or…or anything you should’ve had. I didn’t give you enough attention. I even… I forgot you were even my brother for a while! ”

“Uh, am I hearing things, or did he just say ‘brother’?” Carl asked.

“Yeah, I’m not sure where that’s coming from.” Shake said with a shrug. 

“I actually thought…I thought sometimes that you were…you were holding me back in life. Like you were just some kind of obstacle!” He was full-on crying again now. “It was…I was too fucking selfish to realize when you needed me most!”

Eventually after a lot of blubbering he finished his eulogy and Carl walked over to say a few words of his own, which were considerably less emotional. 

“Well, uh…of all three of you, the Meat-man was probably the most tolerable. At least he didn’t use me as a goddamn lab rat or constantly break into my goddamn house. Sucks that he’s dead but at least this means that one day the two of you are also gonna be dead. I gotta go, I got football games to watch.” And with that, Carl left for his own house. 

Shake hesitated before shuffling over to the milk crate. What the hell am I supposed to say? He wondered. 

“Meatwad, it…it sucks that you’re dead and all but…uh…do I really have to say anything? I never really liked you much to begin with. I thought you were dumb and annoying and disgustingly endearing.” He then shuffled away without another word, heading back inside the house. 

It took Frylock fifteen minutes to actually put the coffin in the ground, and a further fifteen minutes to gather the willpower to bury it. After that, he collapsed in the grass. His eyes physically hurt from all the crying he’d done and by that point he’d literally run out of tears. None of that changed how utterly awful he felt, especially as the situation continued to sink in. 

He’d never see Meatwad again. Never hear him laugh at something incredibly dumb ever again. Never see the way his eyes lit up with joy on Christmas morning whenever he opened whatever garbage they managed to scrounge up. His bedroom would forever remain empty. His toys would never be played with again. 

At least Shake can never bother him again…not that that helps. I never should’ve let Shake bother him so much in the first place.

“Meatwad…wherever you are…If you can hear me, if you see our Dad up there….tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe…and I’m sorry I didn’t try hard enough.” He whispered. 

About an hour after that, on the other side of the world, Meatwad rolled off a DHL cargo plane into the frigid air of Yakutsk, Russia. Very much alive…and very much unable to read any signs or speak the local language.

An old woman walking by saw him, and suddenly grabbed him and held him up in the air triumphantly. “Пророческий мясной ребенок пришел! Нас скоро освободят!” She declared in Google Translate Russian. The people around her began to cheer as well. Meatwad wasn’t sure what they were saying, but he smiled anyway.

Chapter Text

It was now 3 AM, the morning after the funeral. The house was silent, save for the static buzz of the television and Shake’s occasional snoring.

That silence was shattered—literally—by the sound of glass breaking as a small magenta blur busted through the kitchen window and hopped onto the countertop. 

“WHAZZUP, MOTHERFUCKERS?” Err yelled, pumping his fists in the air triumphantly as if celebrating the fact that he’d just committed breaking-and-entering. Ignignokt crept in through the broken window after him, carefully avoiding the shards of glass that were scattered everywhere. 

“Greetings, Earthlings! We have come for your money and your alcohol!” The green mooninite called. 

Aside from waking up Shake, who nearly fell out of his recliner in surprise, the appearance of the two aliens had seemingly failed to generate a response. The two looked at each other in confusion at this. 

“Excuse me, Cup.” Ignignokt said as Shake groggily fumbled his way over to the kitchen. “Where is the Fryman and why isn’t he out here trying to get rid of us yet?” 

Err, meanwhile, was already rummaging through the refrigerator. “Damn, there’s like nothing in here! What the hell do you people live off of, breadcrumbs?” 

Shake yawned. “If you’re looking for Frylock for…whatever reason…he’s probably still crying in his bedroom.” 

“Why’s he doing that? Bad breakup or something?”

“Nah, Meatwad died in a plane crash and for some reason he’s real broken up about it.” 

This statement made both aliens pause. Shake continued, stepping on a piece of glass and failing to notice he was now dribbling blood all over the linoleum as he waddled to the sink in search of water. “Yeah, he keeps goin’ on about how he shoulda been a better brother or whatever. Don’t know how the hell those two could be brothers. I mean, what the hell, did a hamburger fuck a baked potato at some point?” 

“And I assume somehow your own parentage makes more sense?”

“Yeah, man, you’re literally a giant talking milkshake.”

“I was made in a lab by an ugly ass mad scientist lady with a freaky fake lower jaw made out of metal. Yes it makes more sense, I have no idea where those two came from and honestly I don’t really give a fuck.” He shoved himself into the sink upside-down so that the tap was basically in his mouth and turned on the faucet.

“Well, anyways, Cup, could you at least tell us where you keep your money?” 

“He’s not gonna tell you anything.” Frylock interrupted as he finally emerged from his bedroom and floated into the kitchen. “Now get out.”

“Holy shit, you look like crap.” Err said, peeking out from the cabinet he was now raiding. “Guess the milkshake wasn’t kidding about you crying in your room all night.” 

Shake awkwardly squeezed himself out of the sink, splattering water all over the kitchen. “Yeah, can’t believe he’s so upset about that moron.” 

“...Wasn’t the meat-man your friend, too?” 

“Eh, not really.” Shake shrugged, and he wandered back over to the recliner and fell back asleep, still bleeding from where the broken glass had cut him. 

The pair of Mooninites glanced at each other again as Frylock looked around the kitchen in exasperation. 

“Of all the fucking days for you two to show up.” He mumbled, his voice shaking. “It had to be today.” 

“Hey, man, we just dropped in looking for a good time! It’s not like we woulda shown up like this if we knew one of you just croaked! ”

“Are you feigning sympathy for me because you want something or are you actually somehow being nice?”

“Uh…both, kinda.” Err shrugged. 

“We’re good at multitasking.” 

“Says the guy who isn’t doing anything right now but standing there.”

“I am doing something, Err. I’m keeping watch.”

“For who? The guy we’re both talking to?”

“Both of you just…just shut up and leave. I can’t deal with this right now.” Frylock said irritably, before slumping down on the floor against the wall of the kitchen with a sigh. “I can’t deal with any of this shit right now…”

The mooninites, however, did not leave, although they did go silent for a few moments. The whole house was silent again save for Shake’s snoring and the addition of the occasional quiet sniffle from Frylock. That was, until, the quiet sound of small footsteps across linoleum tiles broke the silence. 

“Listen, Fryman. We may not like you, but we are sorry for your loss.” Ig’s words were relatively unconvincing thanks to him not bothering to change his tone to a less cold and detached sounding one. 

“Yeah, man. Seriously, that shit is fucked up.” Err, surprisingly, sounded genuinely sympathetic. To a point. “Was that guy actually your brother?”

There was a moment of quiet before his question was answered with a strangled-sounding “yes”.

“Damn. That….that seriously sucks.” Frylock glared at him, getting increasingly annoyed that the two aliens still hadn’t left. “I mean it. Like, if my sister died I’d probably…I don’t even know, man.” 

“Perks of being an only child, you don’t have to worry about your siblings dying horribly.” Ignignokt said. Err shot him an annoyed look. “What? It’s true.”

“That doesn’t mean you say that to someone whose kid brother just died, jackass.” 

“Are you two going to leave or am I going to have to call the police?” Goddamnit, why can’t the world just give me a fucking break? 

“Well, actually, I had an idea. To make up for us crashing through your window and all.”

“Err, this better not be what I think you’re going to suggest.” 

“Shut up, man, just roll with it. So, you know what helps me when I get all sad and upset because my own parents ditched me in the final few years of the lunar war for some reason and my sister had to raise me despite only being like eight years old?” Frylock narrowed his eyes in annoyance as Err grinned and said “Booze!” 

“Let me guess, you want me to pay for it?” Like hell I would ever willingly go somewhere with you two idiots.

“Well, I mean, we’d appreciate it since we’re gonna go to my sister’s bar. But I mean Ig can probably cover the cost on his own since his dad’s—“

“Err, do not finish that sentence. The Fry-Man does not need to know who my father is. And we don’t need to bring him anywhere. He hates us. And we hate him.” 

“Think about it. If this helps him feel better at all he’ll owe us a favor. ” Err whispered. “Besides I…kinda have to get at least one new customer over to that bar ‘cause I lost a bet.”

“You lost a bet and now your sister is making you advertise for her crappy bar?” Admittedly, the idea of them having the annoying tightwad box of fried indebted to the two of them was very, very tempting to think about for Ig. 

“That bar is not crappy!”

“What the hell are you two whispering about?” 

Very tempting indeed.

“Err, activate the tractor beam!”

One technical alien abduction later

If it wasn’t for the fact that he was currently feeling worse than he’d felt in years, he’d probably be on the verge of exploding from curiosity. He was basically getting a crash course in lunar society, after all. Turned out that they had a functional (if not without its own issues) society within the caves and craters of the Moon, led by a monarchy with a parliament under that. 

Oh, and apparently Ignignokt’s father was none other than their fucking king. Who, by the sounds of things, was getting increasingly fed up with his son’s irresponsible, often drug-and-alcohol-fueled antics. Surprisingly he sounded rather progressive from what little was said about him, but then again Earthly monarchies tended to set the bar extremely low for progress. But apparently he was the polar opposite of his son or something. 

He wasn’t really in the mood to pay attention.

That, and he’d learned that female mooninites had an extra set of legs for some reason (and even an extra set of arms sometimes). And they tended to be larger than the males by a decent margin—he’d seen a couple that were at least 9 feet tall while the males seemed to average out at 3 to four feet.

Oh, and the females had wings. On any other day, that level of sexual dimorphism would’ve absolutely fascinated him. 

Not today, though. 

The bar was fittingly rather gloomy, a tucked-away place in a run-down slum within a city on the dark side of the moon, which was currently actually dark thanks to it being a new moon at the time. 

Korg—the owner of the establishment—didn’t particularly resemble her brother at all except in size. She was definitely on the smaller side—only about the same height as Ig. Other than that, if it wasn’t for the fact that he had been told previously, he never would’ve guessed that she and Err were siblings, mainly due to her being a darker green color in contrast to the vivid magenta her brother was.

“What the hell did you two bring into my bar this time?” She said, flabbergasted. “This better not turn out like that incident with the baby gorgatron.” 

“Relax, Korg. He’s a…a friend, from Earth.”

“We are anything but friends. These two dickheads broke into our kitchen tonight and that’s barely scratching the surface when it comes to the shit they’ve pulled!” 

“Okay, good, at least you can talk…but…what exactly are you?” 

“An abomination against God.” Ig snarked. Err elbowed him in the side. “What? How else can you describe a four-and-a-half-feet tall, talking, levitating animate box of French fries with a beard? One that can also shoot lasers out of its eyes, on top of all that?” 

“Did the two of you drag me here just so you could shit-talk me to my face?” 

The brewing argument was cut off by the sound of Korg slamming her hands down on the bar countertop. “Enough!” She yelled. “If you brought me a prospective patron, I would really prefer if you didn’t antagonize him! Do you two have any idea how bad that is for business? And do not say anything snarky and passive aggressive, Ignignokt. I don’t care if you’re the goddamn heir to the lunar throne, I will blacklist you if I have to!” Korg flared her wings aggressively as a final warning before regaining her composure and shaking her head…well, technically mooninites don’t have heads but…you know what I mean. 

“Sorry about them. Honestly I dread the day that Noxogkhoth kicks the bucket and that idiot takes his place. He’s either gonna get us into another war with Titan or maybe even Pluto this time around, or he’s gonna get us into a war with Earth and then we’ll get nuked into oblivion.” She sighed, and turned to look at the strange creature that had been unceremoniously dragged into her bar. “So, what brings you here? Other than those two, I mean. You know, like in the sense of “what’s making you feel the need to go out drinking tonight?”, that kind of thing?”

“His brother died.” Err piped up. 

Korg’s facial expression changed immediately to a look of sympathy upon hearing that. “Oh, jeez, sorry for your loss. Really, I am. That… damn, that blows.” 

Yeah, like that helps. ‘I’m sorry for your loss’, what does that matter? You never even met Meatwad once! 

“So, uh, pardon me for prying here, but…was he older or younger?” 

He hesitated for a moment before mumbling “Younger.”

“It was that talking meatball I told you about, Korg. The one with the weird voice…I mean, no offense.” 

Korg looked at him curiously. “Again, pardon me for prying here but…how exactly does that… work? Like, was one of your parents a baked potato and the other one a meatloaf? I’m not joking, I’m legit curious as to how that’s possible.”

“We were…created by the same scientist. Technically it was two scientists but there was only one of them that I really ever considered a parent.” 

“Oh…that actually makes a lot more sense than what I was expecting.” 

Frylock didn’t even want to try and guess what the hell she’d been expecting him to say, let alone ask. 

“And before you ask any more personal questions, that scientist is also dead, he’s been dead for years now, and Meatwad died in a plane crash. And I only remembered he was my brother after he died.”

Korg froze and looked at him in utter confusion. “Come again?”

“I kind of…forgot, sort of, that we were siblings.” Frylock said quietly. 

“You…forgot…” she said slowly, clearly in disbelief, “that… he was your friggin’ brother? ” Korg scratched her head in befuddlement. “How the hell does that even happen?”

“I…Honestly, I have no idea. I guess I didn’t really forget so much as I just…stopped thinking it was important.” He admitted. “I kind of pushed that fact aside.”

“I will never understand siblings.” Ig muttered rather loudly from the other side of the room.

“Yeah, well, nobody asked your opinion, your whininess.” Korg retorted, wings twitching in irritation. 

“He’s not whiny, Korg, he’s just dumb.”

“I am not! And you’re one to talk, you never even went to high school.”

“You spent most of your high school years either in detention or playing hooky, so don’t act like you’re any better.”

“Could the two of you keep it down already! I don’t need the whole neighborhood knowin’ that the Crown Prince decided to drop by my bar again. Last time folks found out you were here a riot almost started. And I don’t even wanna imagine how they’d react to a…whatever you are from earth.”

“Like I said, he’s an abomination of—“ 

“Dude, shut up before she blacklists you. She’ll totally do that for real, you know!” 

“Ignore them.” Korg whispered, resuming her previous task of wiping off glassware. “So, anyway, what can I get you? You got a preference for Earth-only stuff or do you want to try something a little more extraterrestrial?” 

“Honestly…give me whatever your strongest stuff is. At this point I don’t really care if I’m dead from alcohol poisoning by the morning.” 

Korg frowned. “Hey, Err? Take your buddy and go make sure the wine cellar isn’t leaking again. I thought I heard dripping in there earlier.” She called, and waited until the two were out of earshot before sitting down on a barstool behind the counter and looked at the box of fries sitting forlornly on a stool across from her. 

“Listen, bud, I…I don’t even want to imagine what kind of pain you’re going through right now.” She flicked her wings anxiously. “I can’t imagine what I’d do if I lost Err. God knows I’ve already come close to that way more often than anyone should ever have to. After Mom and Dad abandoned us I basically had to raise him myself. He was only three and I was…what, almost eight? He was all I had…hell, aside from this bar, he’s still all I have. And he’s a royal pain in the ass but I’d gladly take a bullet for him.” She looked at him very seriously. “I am not about to let someone drink themselves into permanent brain damage or worse for any reason. Even if that reason is my own personal worst nightmare.” 

“If it’s all the same, lady, I really don’t care right now…”

“Well, still, I just want to warn you that if I see you getting dangerously intoxicated I will have you kicked out.” 

“Whatever. You got anything stronger than regular beer or what?” Hell, I’d drink absinthe if it meant getting this weight off my chest…that I don’t actually have… why the hell am I thinking about this?

“We got stuff stronger than vodka here, bud. But, uh, that stuff’s off-limits for anything smaller than a fully-grown Sharp-Toothed Plutonian. Which includes you. If you’re interested in trying something from off of Earth, I have a few things that should be pretty safe for you to try. Dunno if you’ll like the taste of ‘em.” She took out a few odd-looking bottles of equally odd-looking liquids from beneath the counter and set them on top of it. She pointed to the first bottle, which had a vivid red and rather…opaque liquid sloshing around in it. 

“Red Weed Whiskey from Mars, it’s not very good tasting honestly, I’ve had it before and it basically tastes like blood. Or broccoli. Or broccoli covered in blood. Extremely high iron content, not really safe for drinking more than a shot glass worth of it.” 

“Are you trying to discourage me from actually buying a drink?”

“I’m trying to discourage you from drinking this disgusting Martian crap.” She said, and then pointed to another one of the bottles. “This here’s Ionian black wine, straight from the volcanic vineyards of Jupiter’s moon Io.” The liquid inside it was pitch black and honestly looked more like ink than anything drinkable.

“What’s that taste like?”

“Soot and sulfur.” 

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Okay, Plutonian Vodka, then? It’s actually less strong than Earthly vodka, and it doesn’t taste horrible. But it does have a tendency to cause brain freeze.”

“I think I’ll just have regular Earth alcohol . Whiskey, Bourbon, whatever.” He grumbled. “Just as long as it’s strong enough to get my mind off of things.”

Several drinks later…

Korg had given Frylock the boot after he’d drunk roughly five glasses of whiskey, and was starting to show signs of being extremely intoxicated. How he wasn’t just plain-old dead after chugging that much alcohol in such a short timespan was beyond her. 

The interplanetary drunk-cab ride was a rough one, to say the least. Being unceremoniously dropped straight onto the ground in front of the house did little to help him sober up. And by that I mean it did nothing at all. 

He was really, really regretting drinking so much. It hadn’t done anything to help with his grief—if anything, it actually made him feel worse. He wasn’t able to see straight and the whole world was one big nauseating blur. Eventually, after about half an hour of trying, Frylock managed to get the front door open and floated haphazardly back inside. He abruptly dropped out of the air and landed on his face a few feet past the front door. He pushed himself back up off the disgusting green carpeting and blearily looked around the living room. 

Shake was asleep in front of the TV, as usual. The window in the kitchen was still broken. 

He still felt like shit.

Frylock awkwardly hovered his way down the hallway. He paused in front of Meatwad’s room and felt another wave of grief (and guilt) go through him. Maybe it was the alcohol that made him open the door and look inside. Maybe it was just his already unstable emotional state. Either way, he slowly creaked open the door and looked around the pitch-dark room. It looked the same as it always did, except for one glaring difference, that being the absence of its occupant. 

He sighed, and shut the door, turning around to head back to his own room. But instead of continuing down the hallway, he froze. What he now saw in front of him in the hallway was unimaginably horrifying.

Sitting on the floor a few feet away from Frylock was Meatwad. 

Except he somehow looked even worse than when he’d been buried. He was mostly whole again, somehow, but he was still far from being in one piece. He was both burned and practically liquid from how saturated with rainwater he was. His eyes were clouded, lifeless, and empty, staring sightlessly ahead, and looking like they were melting out of their sockets. His mouth was torn open from cheek to cheek in a morbid mockery of a grin, his teeth jutting out everywhere. Worst of all, maggots crawled in and out of him all over his body, gnawing away ravenously at the ball of rotting flesh. He was pale grayish-colored, and he reeked of death and rot. 

“M-Meatwad? Is that you? It...it can’t be...”

As far as Frylock knew, there were two possible explanations for what he was seeing right now. Either A: he was so drunk that he had begun hallucinating, or B: Meatwad had come back as a ghost to haunt him from beyond the grave. He knew from past experience that Occam’s Razor was never on his side...which made option B the more plausible one all things considered. 

It was actually option A, but he didn’t know that Meatwad wasn’t actually dead.

The horrible specter writhed and spluttered as it opened its ragged mouth and spoke. When it spoke, it sounded almost exactly like Meatwad, if from very far away and somewhat guttural. 

“This is all your fault.” 

The ghost was now slowly inching towards him, making horrible squelching sounds as it advanced. Still talking. 

“You were the worst. Brother. Ever! ”

He backed away, horrified. “I’m sorry! I—I should’ve been better!” 

The ghost-Meatwad then leapt up at him and grabbed onto his face, staring him right in the eyes with its own dead, dripping, unblinking ones. 

“ Too late for an apology !” It screeched.

He screamed.

The next morning, Shake woke up and finally noticed the (now scabbed over) cut on his…foot? Ass? Cup-bottom? from the events of the previous night. 

“Damn it.” He muttered. “Hey, Frylock? Where’s that first-aid kit you bought?”

No answer. Somehow, Shake actually felt a tiny bit concerned.

“Ahem, hey, Fry-dick! I’m talking to you? Where the hell is the first-aid kit?” He yelled. Still no answer. 

Shake grumbled and got up, hobbling over to Frylock’s room. The door was already open. He peered inside, only to see no sign of the box of fries. Okay, maybe he’s out drinking. 

Something deep down was telling Shake that he should check Meatwad’s room. He shuffled back down the hall and peeked inside, flicking on the light switch as he did so.

“There you are, I’ve been lookin’ all over for—Jesus Christ, dude, what the hell happened?” 

Frylock sat in the far corner of the room, his back against the wall. He had his Fry-arms wrapped around himself and a thousand-yard stare on his face. He was shaking and mumbling incoherently to himself. 

And he stank of alcohol.

“Rough night, eh?” Shake said. Still no response. “The hell are you muttering about anyway?”

The milkshake got a bit closer and listened. A look of fright and concern appeared on his face when he realized exactly what his friend was talking about. 

“Meatwad, I’m sorry. Leave me alone, please. Please, stop looking at me like that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Shake was really starting to regret mailing Meatwad to Siberia.

Chapter Text

Several Years ago, some time after the fire.

Living on the streets in New Jersey was a difficult experience any time of year, but even more so during the winter. And it was especially difficult if you weren’t allowed into homeless shelters because those were intended for humans, and you weren’t a human, but instead some freak of science that looked like an oversized piece of fast food, and you had your much younger sibling to look after. 

Unfortunately for Frylock, that was an exact description of his life at the moment. Alone and orphaned on the streets at the age of 15 in a world that wanted nothing to do with him, with only a blob of meat that had the mind of a toddler for company. If only it hadn’t been for Dr. Weird and his stupid…weirdness, then the lab wouldn’t have caught fire, and he and Meatwad wouldn’t be stuck out here, starving, orphaned, and cold, on Christmas Eve. Snow was starting to fall, and the night was only going to get colder. He could feel Meatwad shivering from where the amorphous blob was stuck to his back. Frylock himself was also shivering. He needed to find somewhere warm, and he needed to find it fast. 

It took a while, but he eventually managed to find a sheltered spot atop a heating vent. He flopped down on one side and wrapped himself and his brother in a ragged old towel that the two had been using as a blanket for the past few months. He then moved Meatwad off his back so he wouldn’t accidentally roll over on top of the little blob, and wrapped a fry around him to hold him close. 

“This is probably the worst Christmas I have ever been through.” Frylock muttered. “One of these days, Meatwad, I’m gonna show you what people are supposed to do on Christmas. I can tell you, it’s not this.” 

Present day…

Shake sat in his usual spot in the armchair and tried his hardest to pay attention to the television rather than to the increasingly odd behavior of his roommate. After his…morning freak out or whatever was going on, Frylock had spent the rest of the day acting extremely strangely. He was currently hovering around the house with a lead paint testing kit, muttering to himself about child safety for some reason, with a very forced looking smile on his face. 

Before that, he’d gone out to some store and came back with a bunch of weird rubber things that were apparently for child proofing sharp corners. And before that, he’d just hovered silently in the living room for a while, closely examining everything and still with that painful-looking forced smile on his face. It was the kind of forced smile you see on the face of someone who’s trying to hide how heartbroken they are. And it was very unsettling to look at, to say the least. Not helping was the fact that his eyes were wide open and he had a thousand-yard-stare.

“No lead there…none there either…aha!” Frylock said from the kitchen. “Shake, we have to get rid of the fridge.”

“...What?” He said incredulously. 

“It’s got lead paint on it.”

“Well, duh, that thing is practically as old as Carl.”

Shake turned back to the television…and then immediately looked back towards the kitchen when he was startled by a loud BOOM. He turned just in time to see the old green fridge crumble into a pile of ashes, with Frylock apparently having blown it up with his eye-lasers. 

“What the fuck?” Shake yelled. “You just blew up the fridge!” 

This statement went completely ignored, and he watched in disbelief and confusion as Frylock took out a vacuum from one of the kitchen cabinets and cleaned up the pile of ashes that was previously a refrigerator. The box then returned to his previous wandering and mumbling, and continued to do so for another half-hour.

Some time later

Shake had dozed off in his armchair, only to be awoken by a poke to the side. 

“Uh..wha—God damn it, Frylock, what do you want?” He hissed. 

“I went to Goodwill and I picked up some stuff for Meatwad. Don’t know why I never tried going there before. Check this out, I even got him a better game console than that old Atari!” He dangled a plastic shopping bag containing what appeared to be a Nintendo GameCube and a few games in front of Shake, who shoved it away. 

“That’s…very nice. But uh, one problem…Meatwad is dead, remember?” 

Frylock said nothing, but he visibly flinched and his fake grin faltered for a moment. “I also got him some other things…some VHS tapes of movies he likes, I would’ve gotten DVDs but we don’t have the money for a DVD player right now, so-“

“Dude. Stop.” Shake interrupted.

“Stop what?” 

“Stop all of…this!” Shake waved his hands around dramatically to emphasize his point. “This isn’t going to fix things. Meatwad is dead, and buying a bunch of stuff for a dead person is just gonna waste money that we should be saving up to replace the fridge that you fucking disintegrated for some reason!” Normally Shake didn’t care about things getting destroyed, but the fridge had food in it. Sometimes. And he, for one, liked food.

Frylock flinched again, and his already-forced smile became even more forced-looking. “But-“

“You’re seriously freaking me out! This isn’t like you at all, man! You’re always the rational and level-headed one! But ever since Meatwad died you’ve been acting like…well, like a total head case.” 

“But I-“

“This isn’t gonna bring him back! You just have to move on already!” 

This statement only ended up pissing Frylock off. He put down the bags and glared at Shake. 

“So that’s it, then? You want me to move on and forget all about him?” 

“I didn’t say that. I just meant-“ 

“HE WAS THE ONLY FAMILY I HAD, JACKASS! I can’t just…move on from that kind of thing! I just—everywhere I look, I see places where I fucked up! Where I failed him! ” He was now hovering back and forth in circles, on the verge of bursting into tears. “I had one fucking job and I completely blew it…I even tried pretending he wasn’t actually dead to make the pain stop but it obviously didn’t fucking work! Nothing helps!”

Shake thought for a moment and had one of his few semi-good ideas. He got up from the chair and promptly hugged his roommate. 

“Look, man, I’m sorry. This…this whole thing is my fault. I was the one who decided to try and mail him to Russia in the first place. I’ve been a shitty friend to the both of you.” Shake practically had to force himself to say those words, but it felt surprisingly good to get them out. 

“No, it was my fault…I was a shitty brother to him. Hell, I practically forced myself to forget that we were even related! ” 

“Damn it, I said that it was your fault because I thought you were gonna murder me! You weren’t supposed to take it to heart like this!” Shake sighed as he felt tears starting to dribble down his shoulder. Ugh. That’s exactly what I was afraid you’d start doing. 

“Hell, if you really think about it, what happened wasn’t my fault or yours!” He continued. “It was who or whatever blew up that plane’s fault! Now go watch some friggin’ cat videos on the internet or something that’ll actually make you happy! Because this stuff that you’re doing right now? This isn’t helping!” 

Now, if Shake sounds suspiciously like he’s actually been through this sort of thing before, that’s because he has. Sort of. It wasn’t an actual death he had been grieving years prior (although neither was this an actual death but neither of them knew this) but rather the completely ruined relationship between himself and his “mother”, AKA the scientist who created him. They’d gotten into a massive fight after he did some…things he probably shouldn’t have (ranging from credit card fraud to attempted murder within the span of a single week), and she ended up kicking him out and disowning him. He’d never admit it to anyone, but the truth was that the events of that day still hurt to think about. 

Granted, there’s a world of difference between having a falling out with a loved one, and actually having them suddenly die in a horrific fiery explosion several hundred feet in the air, but situations caused the same thing: a fuckton of grief.

The two of them just stood there for an uncomfortably long amount of time, with Shake getting increasingly sick of being used as a gigantic tissue. Still, it was preferable to the likely alternative—which was that Frylock would fucking snap and start zapping everything in sight and then probably explode or something equally dramatic. 

It still baffled Shake as to where the whole “brothers” thing came from. He didn’t have any actual siblings (well, he did have a sister who was a couple months his senior but again, he’d been disowned) but in a way his roommates were the closest things to family he had now. Even if Meatwad was annoying and Frylock was a giant stick-in-the-mud. 

He’d asked a few times about where the other two had come from. Frylock hardly ever gave him any details or really any useful info, and Meatwad was seemingly too young to remember much. What Shake did know was that the two had been homeless for quite a while before they ran into him and decided safety in numbers was their best bet for long-term survival, and that they’d come from some science lab farther upstate. It was a good thing they’d shown up at that specific time, too, because by that point his savings account was about to run dry and he’d probably be evicted in a month. 

The relationship between the duo really confused him sometimes. Hell, one time Meatwad said he sometimes wondered if Frylock was his dad. Oftentimes it actually seemed like that was the case, based on how the two acted towards each other. Shake didn’t have enough of a reference point regarding siblings with large age gaps to recognize them as such. 

He waited until Frylock had finally stopped sobbing (although he was still quietly sniffling) to say something again.

“You never really told me where the two of you came from, you know. Is…was Meatwad actually like a blood relative…or was it like you were just raised as siblings…or…? Like, I know you came from a lab upstate but you’ve never actually told me more than that.” 

There was a lot more sniffling before Frylock spoke, and from the sound of his voice it was clear that he was actively trying to fight back even more tears. 

“We…I grew up in a biotech lab around Newark. My dad…the guy who made me, he was called Dr. Synapse. I don’t know if that was his actual last name or not. When I was around...I think four years old this new scientist came to work there… sniff …it turned out to be Dr. Weird. He and my father mostly just argued with each other, but around the time I turned 14, he and my dad worked on a project together and that project turned out to be Meatwad.” His voice cracked a bit. “I first met Meatwad the same night that the lab…exploded. I don’t think he ever even really got to meet our dad. After that he was literally all that I had left. I was supposed to always look out for him…and I can’t even remember the last time I told him I loved him.” He sniffled again, and his voice started to quiver. “I just…I’d give anything to get him back.” 

“Yeah.” Shake whispered, the full weight of his actions finally sinking in. “Me too.”

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Russia, Meatwad was completely oblivious to the distress left behind in his absence. He was currently riding on the back of a wooly mammoth on his way to Moscow.

Please don’t ask. 

Chapter Text

It wasn’t often that Shake did things for the benefit of someone other than himself. It was even less often that he tried to make someone else happy (or at least less grief-stricken). He was doing both of those things right now, which was something so improbable that you would probably have more of a chance to win the lottery, get hit by a meteor, get struck by lightning, and get attacked by a shark, all at the same time, than you would a chance to witness such a sight. It had taken him a lot of coaxing, but he had eventually managed to convince Frylock to just sit down in the recliner and watch television for a while. Which, incidentally, also gave Shake free reign over the computer.

Normally, he would be using such a chance to look at porn or make impulsive purchases. But not today. No, today he was googling ways to help someone else with grief, and printing out any results that sounded even the least bit useful. He had already accumulated a large pile of papers with info from various websites, ranging from actually good sources to advice that anyone smarter than Shake would disagree with. 

The first (and rather early) snow of the season arrived that night, carried in by a surprise early season Nor’Easter, and as Shake spent the quiet hours of the evening typing and clicking and printing non-stop, a thick layer of white fell across the city of Seattle, New Jersey. Frylock eventually dozed off in the recliner, but he didn’t sleep soundly at all. His dreams were plagued with memories of all the times he’d failed Meatwad in some way, and horrible visions of what he imagined the little meatball’s final moments were like as the plane was ripped apart from the inside by some unknown cause. 

Said unknown cause was actually the fault of a certain pair of moronic Plutonians testing out a new addition to their ship, and accidentally firing a beam of energy directly into Earth’s atmosphere, where it struck the 747 and blew it to pieces. Upon realizing they had blown up a plane and caused real, potentially war-starting human casualties, the two aliens had immediately hightailed it back to the Kuiper Belt.

The next morning, the sun rose above the small southern New Jersey city and immediately gave anyone unfortunate enough to be outside eye damage from the light reflecting off the snow. Shake, for once, hadn’t actually slept at all that night. He had now amassed an impressive stack of papers and decided that now it was time to put his plan into action. 

He combed through the pile of papers until he found a good place to start off, and then shuffled into the living room. Frylock was still asleep on the recliner, awkwardly twisted to one side and with his arms wrapped around a pillow like he was hugging it protectively… oh. He’s probably dreaming that it’s Meatwad. Shake realized.

Cautiously, Shake crept over and shook him awake. Just as he feared, Frylock awoke with a start, practically falling off the recliner in surprise. “AAH—MEATWAD?!?” He yelped. 

“Nope, just me. You’re looking a little better now that you finally got some sleep.” 

“I don’t feel any better.” 

“Yeah, the internet told me you wouldn’t.” Shake said, rifling through the handful of papers he’d carried with him. “Luckily it also told me how to help fix that.”

He found the paper he was looking for, which was literally a wikihow article on how to help someone grieving the loss of a sibling. He skimmed over it. “Okay, so…uh, you want anything in particular for breakfast? Like some waffles or some steak and eggs? French toast? Bacon? Pancakes?” 

“I’m not hungry right now, but…thanks.”

Shake frowned. Dammit, that was the easiest thing they recommended doing! Now I’m gonna have to try and get him to friggin’ talk to me!

He sighed, and leaned up against the recliner. His eyes drifted to the channel that was still playing on the TV, which hadn’t been turned off the night before. “You were watching Nickelodeon?” 

“Meatwad…liked to watch it sometimes.” 

“Oh. Do you…know what shows he liked?” Maybe talking wouldn’t be so hard after all.

“Well…I know he liked that SpongeBob one that’s been on for forever at this point. There’s also this new Transformers series that’s coming out soon that he really wanted to see. Earth…something. I don’t remember the actual name.” Frylock laughed weakly. “He was always begging me to get one of those fancy streaming services but this TV is so old that it can’t connect to them. Thank God there were still things worth watching on cable.” 

“Meatwad liked Transformers?” 

“Yeah. I wouldn’t let him watch those live-action films though. Something about them just feels off.”

“Well, I heard they suck anyways.” 

They both laughed a little that time. 

Shake turned towards the kitchen, intending to find himself something to eat, only to remember that they no longer had a refrigerator. “Well, forget what I said about breakfast earlier. And lunch. And dinner…unless Carl’s willing to give us some leftovers.” 

Frylock sighed, and turned back towards the television. He began flicking through the channels. If he had been paying attention, he would’ve caught a glimpse of a certain meatball in the background of a news broadcast from CNN, with a headline of Putin quits, cites bizarre sighting of talking meatball riding mammoth through Moscow streets as reason. He wasn’t paying attention to anything on the screen, though. After a while, he turned off the television and drifted over to a window to look outside, where a thick layer of snow was draped across the city like a funeral pall.

“It snowed already.” He said flatly. 

“Yeah.” Shake said as he rummaged around in the cabinets, hoping to find something edible. “Storm came through last night. They’re saying this winter’s gonna be a whopper.” 

Shake’s reply was only met with silence. He turned away from the cabinets to see Frylock still staring out one of the front windows, with one of his fry-arms pressed up against the glass. “You feeling okay, man? I mean, as in you’re not sick with something, right? ‘Cause obviously you don’t feel okay right now.”

Frylock was silent for a moment before quietly mumbling, “Meatwad used to bug me about going out to play whenever it snowed. I always came up with some excuse to not go out there with him.” Come to think of it, he had always seemed to come up with some excuse to not play with Meatwad in general. This realization hammered in another nail to the coffin of guilt and self-hatred he’d been building over the past several days.

Shake sighed. “Yeah, I know, we both didn’t treat the poor kid right. You want regular oatmeal or apple-cinnamon oatmeal?” 

“I told you I’m not hungry.”

“Okay, regular it is, then.”

Unsurprisingly, that bowl of microwave oatmeal went completely untouched, save for being occasionally poked at with a spoon. 

“So…what was it like? Growing up with Meatwad, I mean?” Shake asked, desperate to break the uneasy silence that hung over the house. 

“Well, I was already 14 years old by the time he showed up. So I didn’t really grow up with him so much as he grew up with me.” Frylock prodded the now cold bowl of oatmeal with a spoon absentmindedly. “Those years on the street were hell on earth. It was hard enough keeping myself alive, and having to take care of him on top of that…” 

“So that’s why you guys were at that soup kitchen the day I ran into you?” 

“Yeah. We were starving. My diet’s already limited because of these damn braces, and you know how they say beggars can’t be choosers.” 

“I wondered why you both looked like total shit.”

“Says the guy who didn’t know how to shave until I showed him how the razor worked. That beard made you look like some kind of…Shake-squatch.” 

“Touché.” Shake said, scraping the last remnants of his own bowl of oatmeal up with a spoon. “Yeah, the good old days…back before all the crazy shit started. And then that robot rabbit showed up and stepped on Carl’s car and just like that, boom, our lives were never the same again.” He swallowed the last bit of oatmeal. “Say, did those two guys seriously take you to the moon to get drunk?” 

“Yeah, they took me to some dumpy bar that the shorter one’s sister owns.” 

This piqued Shake’s interest. “Is she hot?”

Frylock rolled his eyes.“She’s a bunch of green pixels with extra legs, Shake. Not exactly my idea of attractive.” 

“Damn, she didn’t even have tits?”

“From what I can tell, female mooninites don’t have breasts. They do have wings though, for some reason.”

“Damn. That’s one fantasy out the window. So much for their species being infinitely superior to man.” 

The conversation petered out after that. 

A few hours later, Shake was starting to feel the effects of pulling an all-nighter. His head was starting to hurt, but he forced himself to ignore his own need for sleep. Anything to try and restore some semblance of normalcy to the household. 

Frylock was back in the recliner, watching some dumb crime drama show and ceaselessly nitpicking it for scientific or legal inaccuracies or whatever. It was annoying to listen to—sometimes he got as bad as Carl did during the height of football season, yelling at the TV so loudly that you could hear him from next door—but it was better than watching him continue to mope about Meatwad being dead. 

“Good God, this is so dumb. Anyone can tell you that those aren’t stoats, those are clearly ferrets! They don’t even look similar! And why call them stoats if they’re in North America! Most people here would just call them weasels!”

“The hell is a stoat?” Shake asked. “Some kind of sex thing?”

Frylock groaned. “It’s a weasel, Shake. You know, a small, deceptively cute, apex predator that can take down prey way bigger than itself and smells really bad?” 

“So, like a ferret, then?”

“They’re related to ferrets but they’re not the same thing. Ferrets look different.”

“So, would weasels actually make a nest inside a dead guy?”

“How the hell would I know that?”

He leaned back in the recliner and sniffed. “This thing reeks, by the way.” 

Shake shrugged. “You get used to it after a while.” 

“It smells like piss, Shake. Please tell me you haven’t been using this thing to go to the bathroom for the past several years.” 

“Oh, no, it smelled like that when I found it.” Shake said rather nonchalantly. Frylock practically jumped out of the recliner in disgust upon hearing that. 

“You found it?”

“Yeah, on free furniture day. You know, when people put all their old furniture that they don’t want anymore on the sidewalk, and you can just grab it for free?” 

Frylock looked like he was about to throw up. “I, uh, I gotta go next door…so I can take a shower. With soap.” He said.

“Ya know, I’m really gettin’ tired of you guys comin’ over and usin’ my bathroom all the time.” Carl said as he watched the box of fries attempt to dry himself off with a towel. “You could at least friggin’ pay me cash or somethin’, you know, for the water bills.”

“Hell no, I’m not paying you so just I can take a crap in an actual bathroom once in a while!” Frylock threw the towel at him in annoyance. 

Carl, who was by this point basically unfazed by the bullshit his peculiar neighbors seemed to constantly either cause or attract, didn’t even flinch (or even really react) when the towel hit him in the face. “So, uh, how’re you holdin’ up, Fryman? Ya know, since the funeral? Is he still dead?”

Frylock glared at him. 

“I’ll take that as a yes. You gonna just float there or can I have my friggin’ bathroom back yet?”

He didn’t get a verbal response, as Frylock simply left without another word. 

Carl rolled his eyes and picked up the wet towel from his floor. “Freaks.” He muttered.

Well, so much for the progress Shake thought he was making. On the bright side—if you could call it that—he had the recliner back now. Unfortunately, Frylock was back at it again with his bizarre and concerning behavior, aimlessly drifting around the house and talking to himself. 

And by talking, I mean this time he seemed to be having a full-on argument with himself. 

“Why couldn’t you just once have put him first instead of yourself? Just once? But no, you didn’t, and now he’s dead! ” 

“Hey, you know, I’m right here if you need to talk to someone.” Shake pointed out. Frylock completely ignored him and didn’t even seem to register that he was there. 

“You’re always so damn selfish! Every goddamn fucking time he needed you, you either weren’t there, or you weren’t good enough!” He shouted at himself, banging into a wall repeatedly. “ What. Is. Wrong. With. You? ” 

“Hello, Earth to Frylock, you’re gonna give yourself a concussion doing that. Or you might break the wall down.”

“You couldn’t even be bothered to spend money on making sure he didn’t sleep on the fucking floor! Meanwhile, you just had to make sure your own bedroom was fully furnished! What’s up with that? It’s not like you needed that damn keyboard! Or half those books that you never even read anymore!” 

Shake got up from the recliner and shuffled over to him. 

“Yo, buddy, calm down. You’re going crazy again.” 

Once again, he was ignored. 

“You only ever did the bare fucking minimum for him! He was your brother, for Christ’s sake! Dad trusted you to take care of him.”

“Frylock!”

“And you went and you let him die too! You’ve let everyone you love get killed in some sort of fiery explosion because you can’t be bothered to—“

“ FRYLOCK!” Shake yelled at the top of his lungs, finally succeeding in snapping his friend back to reality…and scaring the figurative shit out of him in the process.

“AAAGh! Jesus, Shake, you scared me…”

“I scared you? You’re scaring me, banging into the wall like that while yelling at yourself!” God, I hate having to act like the voice of reason. I suck at it. “Listen, man…Meatwad wouldn’t want you to be beating yourself up over this! And I never met your old man, but from what little you’ve told me I bet he wouldn’t want you beating yourself up either. If you need to scream at someone, scream at me. I deserve it waaaay more than you do! If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have been on that plane in the first place!”

Much to Shake’s (surprising) frustration, Frylock didn’t start yelling at him. Instead, he just sighed defeatedly and looked down at the floor. 

The two stood there in silence for a moment before Shake asked, “Lemme guess—Carl said something that set you off?”

“He asked me if Meatwad was still dead. ” 

“Yeah, well, he’s an asshole. What did you expect? You got more sympathy out of those space aliens than you’ll probably ever get out of him.” And you got an awful lot of sympathy out of me somehow. Didn’t realize I’d had it in me to have sympathy for someone.

More silence. Shake glanced out the window and noticed it was beginning to get dark. This gave him another idea.

“Hey, since you blew up the fridge…wanna go get takeout?”

A few minutes later…

“I can never…figure out how to use these…damn things…” Shake complained as he awkwardly fiddled with a pair of chopsticks and kept completely missing the entire tin full of dumplings somehow. The pair had ended up getting Chinese food. 

“That’s because you’re holding them like knitting needles.” 

“Well then, Mister Chopsticks Pro User, show me how I’m supposed to hold them.”

“I would if I had fingers. But I don’t.” 

Shake continued to try and fail to grab a dumpling with the chopsticks for a solid minute before giving up. “Screw this, gimme an egg roll.” 

Privately, he was relieved that Frylock was actually eating his dinner instead of just picking at it like he had done with their breakfast. But Shake was determined to try and preserve what little remained of his usual apathetic facade. He greedily tore into the egg roll, not particularly caring that he was making a mess as he ate. 

“Why do they bother including chopsticks anyway? I mean, you said it yourself. A lot of the stuff in Chinese takeout isn’t actually stuff that was invented in China, but by people who moved here from China. And they sell it to people who half the time can’t even tell the difference between China and…I dunno, Guatemala on the map.”

“Like you?” Frylock snarked. 

“Ha ha, very funny. That only happened to me one time. One. But I mean, like, didn’t you once say that fortune cookies were actually invented in the US and not in China?”

“Actually, they at least partially originated in Japan. And then they came to the US. But as far as I know they’ve never been much of a thing in China.”

“Exactly. So why do they put in the chopsticks if they know the customer won’t be able to use them correctly?”

“Shake, they put those chopsticks in with our meal because you specifically requested them, because you wanted to prove to me that you knew how to eat with them, even though I didn’t say anything even relating to chopsticks. I don’t even think the restaurant we went to actually gives them out…in fact, I’m pretty sure these are just wooden dowels meant for arts and crafts.” Frylock picked up one of the “chopsticks” and examined it. “Yeah, I’m fairly certain they just grabbed whatever looked like chopsticks and put them in the bag to make you shut up.”

Shake had, by this point, finished devouring the egg roll he’d picked up and begun rifling through the large brown paper bag that the meal had come in, searching for fortune cookies.

“All right, let’s see…” he said as he cracked one open. “Uh…‘The printer is broken, come back later.’ Huh. Wonder what that means.”

“I think it means these fortunes are a gimmick, Shake.”

“Yeah, but they’re fun. Remember last time we got Chinese food and Meatwad kept eating his cookies without cracking them open first and—shit, sorry. Didn’t mean to bring that up.”

It was already too late. The mere mention of Meatwad seemed to suck all the joy out of the air and replace it with melancholia and uneasy silence. Shake went back to poking at the dumplings.

After a while, though, the two started talking again. And this time, it was Frylock who started the conversation.

“Shake.” He said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“When does it get better?”

“When does…what get better?” Shake looked up from the dumplings in confusion.

“The hurting. When is the pain supposed to stop?”

“I don’t know…I know you lost your dad years ago, when did the pain from that stop?”

He watched as the box of fries fiddled with his utensils for a moment before managing to croak out another gut wrenching sentence.

“That’s the thing, Shake…It…it hasn’t stopped.” His voice quivered. 

“It just kind of…faded, over time, but it’s still there, and every once in a while it comes back.” 

For once in his life, Shake was legitimately unable to think of what to say.

Chapter Text

“Isn’t it a little early to be getting out the Christmas decorations? Thanksgiving isn’t even here yet.”

“Yeah, well, Christmas cheers people up, and you definitely need cheering up.” With a final tug, Shake managed to dislodge the trash bag full of shitty, broken-down old cheap Christmas decorations from the attic door. “Good god, it stinks up there.”

He shoved the attic door shut and dragged the sack of decorations into the living room, which currently stank almost as bad as the attic did, although in this case it stank of various cleaning products. Frylock had decided to try and deep-clean the recliner, and he was making a surprising level of progress. Shake was just glad he wasn’t currently moping around or having another frightening one-person argument. Rather horrifyingly, it turned out the recliner wasn’t actually supposed to be that distinctive ugly shade of yellow. It was actually a white recliner, one covered in god only knows how many years’ worth of unidentifiable stains. 

“Willie hasn’t been storing his leftovers in the attic again, right?” He asked Shake as the latter came into the room with the bag of Christmas decorations.

Shake shrugged. “Well, I didn’t see any corpses up there, but it sure as hell smells like he’s doing it again.” He opened up the garbage bag and began rummaging through the various bits and bobs that it contained. “Hopefully this year I can get the Christmas lights on the roof without falling and breaking my ass.” 

He pulled out an old string of multicolored lights, and started trying to untangle it. Frylock put down the sponge he was using to deep-clean the recliner and floated over for a closer look at the light string. Much to his dismay, it was clearly long past its one-way trip to the trash can. Many of its bulbs were either shattered or missing, and the cord was visibly frayed in several places, with a few even looking like they’d caught fire in the past.

“I think you’d be better off throwing that one out. It’s falling apart.” He said. “You try plugging that thing in, and you’ll either get set on fire or electrocuted.” 

Shake continued struggling with the light string for a moment before giving up and tossing it aside. “Yeah, I guess that one’s toast. I think we’ve got another one or two of them in here though.” The milkshake resumed digging through the bag, before suddenly stopping. “Oh, wow. I forgot we still had these things.” He pulled out a bunch of Christmas ornaments that were very clearly homemade, and blatantly cobbled together at that. They were made from small plastic water bottles, like the kind one would put in an elementary schooler’s lunchbox, that had been stuffed with crumbled-up red and green paper (and a lot of glitter), with loops of yarn attached at the neck so the bottle-ornaments could be hung on a tree. Shake held them up in one hand. “Yeah, still as ugly as I remembered.”

“Hey! Meatwad and I worked hard on those!” 

In truth, Frylock had spent most of the day that those ornaments were made either attempting to clean up the giant mess of glitter and torn paper that was left behind as a result, or trying to get Meatwad to stop rolling in the glitter and getting it all over himself. Which, now that he looked back on it, was actually pretty adorable, even if the little meatball still had glitter sticking out of him in places by the time February came as a result. 

The wholesome memory gave way to a painful reminder that this year—and every year after it—they’d be celebrating Christmas without Meatwad. He wouldn’t be excitedly rolling around the house on Christmas Eve, or trying and failing to sing Christmas carols door-to-door, or asking again how Santa was supposed to get inside since they didn’t have a fireplace, or doing any of the other things he always did, ever again. 

Or at least that was what Frylock believed to be the case. In actuality, Meatwad was very much alive and in fact almost home. In a few hours a plane from Russia would be landing at the nearby Seattle New Jersey International Airport, to drop off the meatball who had somehow managed to oust the country’s (now Ex) leader from power simply by being too much of a mindfuck for him to handle. Meatwad didn’t even realize he’d just effectively ended a war, or that he’d possibly even prevented World War Three from breaking out. He was just glad to be heading home, as he was beginning to get homesick. 

Roughly half an hour later, Shake was trying and failing to reassemble the trio’s beaten-up old artificial Christmas tree. 

“Dammit, how the hell does this thing go together?” He hissed in frustration. 

“I think that’s actually the top of the tree, Shake.” Frylock pointed out as Shake attempted to connect the top part of the tree with the tree stand. 

“Why the hell don’t we have the instructions anymore?” 

“If I can recall correctly, it’s because you set them on fire .”

“Oh, yeah. Fuck.”

Frylock continued watching Shake try and fail to put the tree back together for a solid three minutes. Somehow, Shake managed to screw up the assembly process worse each time. 

“Goddamn…stupid…fucking tree!” 

“You need any help with that?” 

“Oh, yeah, be my guest.” Shake huffed, dropping the tree parts on the floor. “I swear to god, that thing was fighting me.”

It took Frylock only five minutes to assemble the tree. He looked at it and sighed. Years ago, it had actually been a somewhat nice looking artificial tree, but by now it had clearly seen better days. The tree was missing at least half of its needles, many of its branches had somehow been misplaced over the years and never found, and the middle of the trunk was slightly bent so it permanently leaned to the left. It was a sad, sad imitation of a blue spruce tree.

Why even bother having a tree this year? He thought. Shake never gets anything he asks for, and the one thing I really want for Christmas is just plain impossible. Unless Santa Claus can bring back the dead.

Then again, I guess Meatwad would probably want us to still have the tree decorated. 

It took the two of them an entire hour to make the old tree look somewhat less like a depressing mockery of a Christmas tree, by way of hanging what little intact ornaments they had on it. Shake was still trying to untangle the other two light strings, and there was no telling if either one would actually work when plugged in. 

“The tree in that Charlie Brown movie looked better than ours does.” Shake joked. “I swear this thing looks uglier every year.”

“That’s because it’s old, Shake. It’s old and we haven’t exactly been taking good care of it.” 

“Yeah, well, so was my chair. Look at it now.” 

The recliner, having been thoroughly deep-cleaned by now, looked like it was practically brand-new, if a little flattened in places. The old chair’s eggshell-white color was a stark contrast to the unsightly piss-stain yellow it had been previously. It also no longer smelled atrocious.

Frylock grinned weakly. “I don’t think a deep-clean is gonna make the tree look less mangled, Shake.” 

The remaining decorations in the bag consisted of a few tattered wreaths, some stockings that didn’t have a fireplace mantle to be hung on, and some decaying nutcrackers that would’ve made better Halloween decorations thanks to the state they were in. Other than that, everything else in the bag was already broken to the point of being unrecognizable. 

“We really gotta get some new decorations at some point. These are all crap.” Shake said as he held up one of the wreaths, which was so sun-bleached that the fake holly berries on it more closely resembled mistletoe. 

“We can worry about that after we get a new fridge.” Frylock muttered, glancing at the empty spot in the kitchen where the refrigerator had stood before he blew it up. God, I can’t believe I did that…what the Hell was I even thinking?

I feel like I spent half of that day in some kind of weird self-induced fugue state…

“Well, at least it’s cold out, so if we have to freeze anything, we can just put it outside.” Shake said with a shrug. Frylock shot him a withering look. “What? You afraid you can’t handle a little food poisoning?”

The way their conversation was going made things feel almost normal again. Almost. There was still something missing. Both friends were still painfully aware of the meatball-shaped hole in their lives.

“Y’know, lately, I’ve been thinking.” Shake said, putting down the decrepit wreath. “This whole thing that’s been going on lately has…well, it’s got me thinkin’ about my Ma again.” 

“Didn’t she kick you out and disown you?”

“Yeah, but I still have her phone number. I wrote it down on the inside of my lid.”

Frylock wondered how the hell Shake could write something on what was for all intents and purposes part of his insides, but decided that for the sake of his own sanity it was best if he didn’t ask. 

Shake continued. “I’ve just been wondering lately if…you know, maybe I should call her or something? I dunno if she’s forgiven me yet…she probably hasn’t, but…” He trailed off.

“What did you even do to piss her off that much?” 

“Well, uh…” Shake scratched the back of his “head” sheepishly, “I got wasted, crashed her car, punched a cop in the dick so hard that he had to get reconstructive surgery, but she still bailed me out of jail…and I repaid her by stealing her credit card and racking up a $2,000 charge on it.” 

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” 

“That’s not the end of it. There’s more.”

“Oh god.” Frylock groaned. “What else did you do?” 

“After the credit card thing, she grounded me from leaving the property at all for three months, which, you know, pissed me off. So I…kinda threw a fit. And by that, I mean first I broke the living room TV, then I set the carpet on fire, I destroyed the couch, I broke a bunch of windows, damaged an antique lamp that my mom inherited from her parents, and then I wrecked some of her expensive science stuff.”

“...You know, the sad thing is, that still doesn’t really surprise me. Considering how many times you’ve destroyed our TV for reasons that made even less sense than that.” 

Shake sighed. “I had a feeling you’d say something like that. So, you think I should try callin’ her or not? Maybe even invite her over for thanksgiving? She probably wouldn’t show up but it would probably be better than trying to get Carl to come over again after what happened last time.”

“Don’t even mention Carl right now. I’m still pissed about what he said yesterday.” Frylock gritted his teeth in agitation. “Who does he think he is? ‘Is he still dead’? Who—what kind of fucking asshole asks someone something like that, and why? ” 

“You said it yourself. A fucking asshole.”

A few hours later, said fucking asshole was watching football and drinking beer and hoping to god that nothing weird and fucked up would happen to him today. 

“Goddamn it, what the hell is with these people lately? Friggin’ morons, what kind of lousy play was that?” Carl muttered to himself, and absentmindedly cast a glance out the window.

He promptly did a double take and spat out the beer he was drinking when he spotted a certain someone rolling down the snowy sidewalk, very much alive. Meatwad stopped and waved to his neigbor, who promptly shut the blinds and groaned.

“Dammit! I knew it was too good to be true!” 

Shake was watching television from the (still slightly damp from being cleaned) recliner when he heard a knock at the door. He ignored it at first, figuring it was either the mailman, something stupid, or Carl complaining about something. 

The knocking continued. “It’s unlocked!” He yelled, annoyed. A moment later he heard the door creak open. 

“Hi, Shake!” Meatwad said cheerfully as he rolled inside and headed down the hallway. 

“Oh, hey, Meatwad.” Shake said without thinking, before realizing who he’d just spoken to and jumping up from the recliner in shock. “Wait, MEATWAD?”

“Aw, dammit, they started decoratin’ the tree without me.” Meatwad said to himself as he passed by the crooked artificial tree. The meatball continued down the short hallway, noticed the door to Frylock’s room was wide open, and decided to head in there and greet him.

Frylock was absentmindedly typing away on his computer, with his back turned to the door. He didn’t see Meatwad come inside and dismissed the squelching noise he heard as probably coming from the attic. 

Meatwad, eager to share the tales of his adventure in Russia, happily called out “Hi, Frylock!”

The box of fries froze. “No…” he muttered to himself. “Just…just ignore it…you’re just hearing things.”

Meatwad, confused, scooted over to his big brother and looked up at him curiously. “Whatcha talkin’ about?” 

Frylock didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to see that horrible specter again. “It’s just part of the grieving process…it’ll go away if you just ignore it…”

Now, Meatwad was really confused. “Grievin’ process?” He nudged Frylock to get his attention.

Okay, I’m losing it. I just felt that thing touch me and it felt waaay too real. Frylock turned around, bracing himself for the horrible sight of that ghastly, decaying, maggot-riddled corpse looking up at him with its accusatory dead eyes again. Instead, he was met with the sight of a perfectly normal and alive-looking Meatwad staring at him with a confused expression on his face.

God damn it…this is worse than the dead-looking one…I’m probably dreaming or something. Must’ve fallen asleep at the computer. He forced himself to resist the urge to hug what he figured was just a figment of his own imagination. 

“Did somethin’ bad happen?” Meatwad asked, thoroughly confused by now. “You look like you’re gonna start cryin’ any minute now.” 

Frylock said nothing, his eyes continuing to water. 

“Uh-“ Meatwad didn’t get to finish his sentence because suddenly all of the wind was knocked out of him, as Frylock finally broke down and hugged him tightly, tears beginning to stream down his face. 

“I’m sorry! I know I should’ve been better…god, I miss you so much, Meatwad!” He sobbed. “I hope you knew how— sniff— HOW MUCH I LOVED YOU!”

“Shake, Frylock’s actin’ weird!” Meatwad yelled, somehow even more confused than he already was. 

Shake came into the room, his eyes wide. “Holy shit, I wasn’t hearing things.” He said.

“The heck happened while I was gone?” Meatwad asked, trying to wriggle out of the uncomfortably tight hug. 

“Well, uh…a plane exploded and we thought you were on it.”

It was at this point that Frylock realized the thing he had assumed was a hallucination was talking to Shake. Which meant that either he was really losing his mind, or…

He held out the meatball in front of him. “...Meatwad?” He said, voice cracking. “You’re…you’re not…you’re not dead?”

“Not the last time I checked.” 

He promptly started tearing up again. This time, though, it was tears of joy. “You’re alive…where the hell were you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Guess it doesn’t matter. I missed you so much, man…” he hugged Meatwad again, but this time not as frenziedly. Meatwad hesitated a moment before hugging him back. 

Shake stood off to the side, awkwardly watching the pair reunite. “So…uh…if he’s not dead, then what the hell did you scrape off the road?”

Frylock nearly dropped Meatwad when he heard that and realized he’d actually been handling some unidentified pile of maggot-infested wet beef, his expression changing to one of horror and disgust.

“Oh god, I stuck my bare hands in that shit!” 

The rest of that evening was an unusually happy and peaceful one for the trio. Meatwad talked non-stop about his misadventures in what he alternated between calling Siberia and Narnia. Frylock was more than happy to just sit there and listen to him ramble on about woolly mammoths and abominable snowmen and fighter jets. 

Shake lingered off to the side, mostly keeping to himself. He felt strangely unwelcome in this unexpected reunion. At the same time, though, he felt as if a weight had been lifted off of his chest. 

He hadn’t gotten Meatwad killed after all. And maybe from now on he’d at least try to be a bit nicer to the little guy. No more potentially deadly pranks. They weren’t worth the trouble. 

Late into the night, Shake sat in the recliner, watching the television with the volume turned down low. Frylock had agreed to sit down and watch TV with Meatwad an hour or so earlier and the two siblings had ended up both falling asleep on the living room floor. 

Shake had made up his mind. He took out his phone and quietly dialed in a number. He waited to see if someone would pick up. After a few moments, the call went to voicemail. Although it was only an answering machine message, Shake felt a lump form in his throat as he heard the familiar, vaguely metallic-sounding southern drawl from the other end of the phone line. “ Hello, you have reached the house of Dr. Rachel Penzler, but if ya know what’s good fer ya you’ll call me Dr. Ironclad. I ain’t able to take yer call right now, so please leave a message after the beep. ”

The dial tone beeped. Shake hesitated for a second before he began speaking. “Hey, Ma…it’s me. I know you told me to never talk to you again, but…I just…I needed to hear your voice again. A lot of shit’s happened lately…call me back if you want. You probably won’t, but…whatever.” He paused. “Love ya, Ma.” 

He then ended the call, turned off the television, and leaned back in the recliner and shut his eyes.