Work Text:
Delivering to Timm’s apartment was always a hassle for Roy, one he couldn’t describe. It was easy enough on paper; Timm lived only a few floors up from the pizzeria, and Roy delivered up throughout the apartment all the time, but Timm’s apartment was a specific grind on his nerves. He had nearly snagged his foot on the mouth of his conversation pit more times than he could count. He swore one day he was gotta finally break something. It was baffling he even had a conversation pit- no other unit he’d seen had one, except for the big apartment Papa raised Roy and his sister in at the top of the complex- but why the fuck did Timm’s have one too?
Annoying architecture aside, Timm himself was another story. He never answered the door fully clothed. The last thing Roy wanted to do when he was on shift was be bombarded with chest hair (or worse, hair from much lower), but Timm had seemed to make a sworn duty to make as much of his body visible as possible when Roy specifically was working. He’d tried to complain about this to Joy, and she had looked at Roy like he was nuts.
“He is always in, like, sweat pants and some 80s shirt when I go up.”
Life always seemed to give Roy such oddly specific challenges.
Sometimes, Timm wasn’t even the one at the door. Sometimes it was Hugo, or Nevada, or the weird man with a bowl cut. Roy didn’t know that guy’s deal , but Timm seemed obsessed with that one. They were often in a state of undress that Roy did not care for. Once, Timm asked if Roy wanted to join, and Roy said no and set the box into Timm’s hand as fast as he could. Timm was a nice enough guy, but Roy couldn’t imagine leading the life he did-or at least, in the small snippets he got through the apartment door.
The work day had gone to shit early that shift, before Timm even called. Joy called in, claiming roller derby had knocked her ankle out of place. When Roy said he would come check on her, she said it was fine, and Roy spent the next two hours worrying about his ailing sister. Yuko had chewed him out for a good thirty minutes on a slightly unaligned pepperoni, embarrassing her in front of the PTA brunch, and Chuck had taken over twenty minutes to finally make his way to the door, looking like he had just rolled out of bed. At least Chuck had the courtesy to seem embarrassed for taking so long- he was red in the face and sweating.
After his order came in, Roy mentally prepared himself for whatever Timm would have in store this afternoon. The elevator croaked as it made it to Timm’s unit. Stepping out into the hall, one couldn’t miss which room was Timm’s- he’d borderline labelled it with decals on the door and a fuzzy doormat that said ‘shag pad’. Roy never stepped fully onto it, as if doing so was going to activate some curse- one he didn’t know the reason or purpose of, but that Timm probably utilized often. He knocked on the door.
“Sit it on the table for me, alright baby? I’ll be right out!”
Roy sighed and tried to jimmy the door open while not dropping his three pizzas; it was such an annoying number of pizzas to order and then make Roy open the door about. He was lucky he didn’t drop them. He’d probably have a breakdown on Timm’s ‘flower power’ throw blanket, haphazardly thrown on the ground.
Roy wished he knew what damn table Timm was talking about. His coffee table had so many cups and random items on it, Roy knew it couldn’t possibly be that, and he had practically negative counter space, and all he saw to put anything at all on was-
A Snoopy table.
Not only that, but a baby Snoopy table.
Where the fuck did Timm even get one of those? Roy was sure he didn’t appreciate Snoopy like he did; he sighed as he walked over to it, about to roll his eyes and set them down when he noticed a white residue on baby Snoopy’s sleeping forehead.
“What the fuck is that.” Roy mumbled. He walked to Timm’s coffee table, and out of some strange sense of frustration, stacked cups until he could make enough room for the pizzas without anything toppling. He came back to baby Snoopy and crouched beside it like a real wounded animal. He rubbed the strange powder off with his thumb and tried to smell what it was, and something bitter hit his nose.
“ What is he doing to you, Snoopy, ” Roy whispered to the table. He bunched the bottom of his shirt up and wiped off the table as best as he could with only a few swipes of polo.
Roy hated to be an impulsive person, but he sadly acted without thought more often than he’d like for someone trying to dwindle his chance for public embarrassment as much as he was. He looked around Timm’s startlingly quiet apartment; there was a 60% chance Timm had gone back to sleep or was at least out of it enough that Roy could rescue this novelty table without much fuss. Roy looked around the apartment, again, like he was plotting out a grand Dynamoe level heist, and in lieu of a well-thought-out plan for Snoopy’s escape, he just picked it up and bolted for the door.
He barely lifted Snoopy before hearing a voice- definitely not Timm’s voice.
“What the fuck?”
Roy’s blood almost froze. It was the worst option. It was the bowl cut one. He’d never seen them so dressed down. Roy was almost astonished that the name brands carried down to the underwear, too. He’d never seen… Versauce underwear?
“What are you doing with that table?”
“Um.” Roy set Snoopy back down slowly. “I’m… buying it off Timm. in exchange for… free pizza.”
The man crossed his arms. “No, you are not. I paid with card.”
“I-”
Another unceremonious entrance, and another culmination of the worst possible way any of this could be going. Timm came out of the hallway in little more than a tiger-striped thong and a pair of socks. “What’s going on, candyman? Oh! Roy! You’re here!”
“And he’s a thief.”
“You’ve gotta be trying to fake me out with that jive talk! Piazza would never.”
“He tried to take the little dog table.”
“His name is Snoopy,” Roy said too quickly and too aggressively for his own tastes.
“What’s going on?” Hugo yawned as he walked into the room, shirtless but sporting some thematic music-themed pajama pants, throwing an arm around Timm. This was fantastic for Roy; another witness to his public suicide.
“I was just leaving,” Roy threw his hands up. “Enjoy the pizzas, yeah? I’ll get out of your hair-” he locked eyes with Hugo and became overwhelmed with the desire to gnaw his own arm off like a distressed animal. “I’ll leave you guys to your meal.”
“Is that true, baby? Don’t tell me you were trying for a five finger discount on my Snoopy table!”
“There’s been a misunderstanding, I promise-”
The bowl cut one (Roy really needed his name) shook his head. “Where I’m from, you’d lose a finger for trying to take from someone like that.”
Roy’s eyes almost bulged out. “I wasn’t thinking, I saw the powder on little baby Snoopy’s head and I panicked-”
Timm put his hand on Roy’s shoulder. “I get it, man- you’re an empath. Nevada’s like that too, she starts to wig out if I use the microwave when it's ‘sad’. You thought this puppy was in distress, but don’t you worry- Snoopy loves coke!”
“He would not!” Roy snapped, jerking away from Timm’s touch, face already so red and stomach clenching so bad that he went back around not caring what happened here. “Baby Snoopy is just that- a baby- he would not want to do any drugs, it would hurt him very badly, his little brain is still developing! Regular Snoopy wouldn’t either, he’s hanging around Charlie Brown and the kids all day he can’t risk getting into hard stuff like that! Jesus Timm, think about things before you blurt them out- WAIT,” Roy paused, and looked at the white powder peppering the bottom of his shirt. “That was cocaine? ”
Even the bowl-cut man seemed taken aback by the sudden tirade on Baby Snoopy’s sobriety. Roy started trying to fan his shirt out, trying to feel less like a drug mule. It did not work, and the bottom of his shirt was still a bit lighter in patches than the rest of the deep red. He felt like he might throw up. “Can I use your bathroom?”
Timm didn’t respond for a moment, taking in the scene for himself. “Oh- yeah, baby, it’s down the hall.”
The trio mumbled as Roy went down the hall, dizzy by what he was certain in his limited drug knowledge had to be an extreme contact high. His hand fumbled for the door knob, and revealed to him a horror even worse than Timm’s living room, which was his fully carpeted bathroom. Austin Powers greeted him on the shower curtain, trying to beckon Roy into a room that felt like a petri dish. Roy’s hand stayed on the knob, and he made no further attempt to enter the bathroom. He was locked in a staring contest with Austin Powers.
Austin was winning.
Finally, Roy ripped his eyes away from the atrocious shower curtain and made it up to the light switch, flicking on a warm orange light that made the green carpet a more putrid shade. He was not vomiting in here. He barely wanted to wash the coke off his shirt in here. He worried, retroactively, that more would show up somehow. He flipped the water on and awkwardly wetted his hand, then wiped it at the spots on his shirt, which just made it damp. He had no idea if any of the drugs were off of him; he just had to hope. He took a deep breath, trying to find somewhere to sit before he had to make it back into the living room, and only came up with the matching carpeted toilet seat cover and the edge of the shower beside Austin. He moved the shower curtain over so he at least wasn’t bumping arms with the design.
He put his head in his hands; why the fuck did he feel the need to pick up the table? A rattling breath left him, and he rose back to his feet. He did the damn thing, now he had to go out, apologize, and probably get the cops called on him for stealing and drug peddling.
When he walked back into the living room, Timm was halfway through a slice of pizza. Roy didn’t know why it made him uncomfortable Timm didn’t use a plate, of all things, from today that could’ve.
“Did you like the shower curtain?” Timm asked, still chewing. “Just got that in.”
“It was… fine?”
“Fine? That’s Austin Powers, baby! Put some respect on that swinger's name!”
Roy held his tongue back from asking why it was a bigger affront to disrespect Austin Powers than it was to steal from him. Instead, he sighed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking- I saw the table and I just acted. I can wait on the couch for the cops and-”
Timm laughed. Out loud, almost clenching his stomach as he did so. “Oh, that’s rich, darling! There’s no cops in the shag pad- they wouldn’t like what we and Snoopy are up to too much, would they?”
Roy scratched the back of his neck. “I guess not. You’re just gonna let me go?”
“All you did was pick up a table,” Timm laughed, giving Roy a pat on the back.
“And ruined some of the coke.” The bowl-cut guy mumbled.
“Oh come on Mousse, you know where to get us some more, eh?” Timm elbowed Mousse with a grin, and Mousse glared at him like he could turn Timm to stone. Timm quickly took up another slice of pizza. “Besides, I’ve been robbed plenty. You get used to it, and I don’t like to make a lot of enemies. Why hold a grudge?”
Roy stumbled over his words before landing on apologizing to Timm again. “-and I’m really sorry this hasn’t been the first time? You should tell someone about that?”
“Like the police?” Timm tapped his own forehead, then Roy’s. “It’ll all come up Timm, don’t worry. Mousse!” Timm stood back up. “Give the pizza man a tip.”
“Don’t rob people.”
“I was thinking cash, candyman.” Timm leaned into Mousse’s ear uncomfortably close, and Roy was thankful Timm was not a good whisperer as he told Mousse to maybe not give advice he can’t follow himself. Mousse rolled his eyes, sauntered over to the next room, and came back with three dollars. He tucked it into Roy’s shirt pocket and patted his chest.
“Don’t spend it all in one place.”
Roy assumed it was a joke, but Mousse’s face never left its neutral-to-pissed-off expression, so it just sounded like a command.
Roy tipped his hat to the trio and finally walked out the door, waving bye to Hugo and Timm as he left. When the door closed, he, first, ran for the elevator, praying to whatever god answered first to never be in that situation or anything like it ever again. Second, he googled where to buy vintage Snoopy tables.