Chapter Text
Trey was alone in the Heartslabyul kitchen. Where was everyone else, you ask? Well: Riddle was off somewhere dealing with yet another problem caused by Deuce and Ace, most likely something to do with a potionology accident; Cater was shopping with Idia and kept insisting that it wasn't a date (sure buddy, we all know you're in denial); and the rest of the Heartslabyulites (hello is that a word) were generally anywhere on campus except for the kitchen. So Trey was all on his lonesome.
If he was being honest, he didn't mind solitude. It was nice to be able to hear himself think for once, what with Ace and Deuce always arguing about something or other in his ear. He slid the tray of muffins he was making into the oven, quietly anticipating the warm, cinnamon-y smell that would soon envelop the kitchen. He sighed as he started to put away ingredients. Lately he felt like something was missing from his life. It's not like he didn't enjoy life in Heartslabyul -- that was the last thing he could possibly mean. He loved hanging out with Cater, Riddle, and the freshmen (when they weren't ragebaiting Riddle). But he felt a little empty, like he was anxiously waiting for something to come along and complete him.
Once he finished putting everything away, Trey stood up a little taller and stretched. Today, he was weirdly tired. Maybe he ought to go take a nap or something. Casting a glance at the oven, Trey figured that he'd be able to wake up in 20 minutes or so. Convinced of this, Trey began to make his way to his dorm.
-----
The Boiled One, more commonly referred to as Phen by his acquaintances, was frustrated. They had been sitting Filbus's dining room for hours trying to tell Jeppy that Filbus existed. Jeppy was being extremely persistent, however, in claiming that Filbus didn't exist, that Filbism didn't exist, and that the very five story house they were sitting in at that moment did not exist. Phen was getting tired of this nonsense.
"Care for some tea?" Filbus asked as he walked in, holding a purple Sofia the First teapot.
"DO YOU NOT SEE HIM?" Phen shouted at Jeppy. "HE'S RIGHT THERE, HE EXISTS."
"Nuh uh," Jeppy protested, his eyes full of contempt. "We're all hallucinating him. Filbus doesn't exist."
Filbus nodded in agreement. "Yes, I don't exist. But really, you should eat a chair. It's quite beneficial to your health."
Exasperated, Phen silently took the tea that was being offered to him. Upon taking a sip through his gaping chest cavity, he realized that this wasn't tea at all. It was actually a horrific imitation of tomato soup consisting of watery ketchup and what appeared to be ground teeth.
"Filbus. You need to stop stealing teeth from Locust. It's not easy being the tooth fairy," Phen admonished the hat adorned figure before him.
"Who are you talking to, Phen?" Jeppy asked innocently.
That was enough to send Phen into full crashout mode.
"GET YO AHH OUT OF HERE TWIN 💔" Phen said very calmly as they dropkicked both Filbus and Jeppy out of the window alongside the horrendous tea. He then proceeded to use a chair to beat up Filbus's fridge, much to the latter's horror.
"MY TEA MATERIALS," Filbus screeched.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN MATERIALS" Phen said again incredibly calmly.
Filbus genuinely did NAWT have an answer to that.
Taking the silence as an answer, Phen stormed out. He didn't know where he was going, he just knew he had to get out of there. They'd had enough teeth and gaslighting for one day.
Jeppy started helping Filbus up from the ground.
"Are you and your nonexistent injuries okay?" he asked, rather obliviously.
"Yessir," Filbus said and began breakdancing into the sky. Jeppy watched him go and was promptly hit in the head with a massive vintage rocking chair that had fallen out of Filbus's pocket.
"I fear this event has left me concussed," Jeppy announced. Nobody was around to hear him. The Sunman decided to go back home, so he hopped into Filbus's wooden car and took off down the street at an astonishing 0.1 mph.
-----
Finally making it to the dorm, Trey collapsed on his bed. He was strangely drained and he wondered why...
Oh. Maybe it was because the Headmage had sent him on a mini side quest into some random slow burn Florid AU where everyone was forced to live underwater and he had to be a background character for a month (as far as I know this fic doesn't exist I came up with the concept on the spot lol). It had felt like he was there for ages but in reality it took something like five minutes out of his day. It was especially excruciating in the beginning when Trey was lowkey drowning and nobody cared because he was a freakin background character.
Hey, maybe I should have mentioned that had happened earlier. It's probably fine, though.
Sitting up, Trey took off his glasses and carefully set them down on the night stand next to his bed. He fell asleep promptly after and unfortunately instead of landing on his bed, he faceplanted onto his clover-shaped rug. He wasn't hurt or anything, though. Probably. He didn't wake up when this happened so I'm choosing to believe that he didn't end up retaining some kind of horrific injury.
Trey fell into a dreamless sleep; quiet darkness enveloped him and he was finally able to rest.
Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. Forty. An hour. Six.
Night fell. And eventually, Trey woke up. His back ached from being folded like a lawn chair on the ground but he felt well-rested, more so than he had in months. He sat up and felt around on his night stand for his glasses as he realized that it was dark. What time was it? The sky was dark and he decided to go with the idea that it was currently night. How long had he slept for? He felt that there was something important he was meant to be attending to...OH NO.
HIS MUFFINS.
Frantically putting his glasses on and poking himself in the eye in the process, Trey hurriedly stood up but then stopped when he saw something. No. Someone.
Someone standing in the corner of his room.
Trey couldn't make out much in the darkness but he could tell that this figure was tall.
"Hello?" he whispered into the darkness.
"Hey there," the figure responded. Their voice sounded like several different ones layered upon each other, with a melancholic tone about it. They sounded a bit ragged, as if they had been yelling just a bit too much recently. "I just want you to know that I turned off the oven for you."
What? Trey took a moment to process this information instead of questioning why this stranger was in his room.
"When did you turn the oven off?" he asked, deciding to prioritize the most important items first. "I was supposed to take them out of the oven a few hours ago." Maybe more than a few hours, Trey thought.
The stranger was quiet for a moment, as if they were trying to remember. "I think..." they murmured, "like five minutes ago?"
Dread settled in Trey's stomach. "Is the kitchen okay?" he asked weakly. "Was there a fire?"
"No, your oven's indestructible."
Trey leaned against his bed, extremely relieved. He would have started tweaking if anything had happened to the kitchen. "That's...that's good." Trey rose from his position on the floor. "I'm going to see the state of my muffins."
He walked toward the door and the stranger followed him, commenting, "I think they're ash at this point."
They weren't wrong.
The muffins were banished from existence. Gone. Reduced to dust. They hadn't stood a chance in the first place.
“My muffins…” Trey looked down at the ashy remains in disbelief. How had the kitchen not caught on fire yet? How could he have been so careless?
The stranger stood a bit behind Trey, unsure of what to do. Leaving seemed rude, but surprisingly, they couldn’t find the words to comfort the desolate baker. He couldn’t help but admire Trey’s green hair and how it resembled the prickles of a hedgehog.
That’s…cute, they silently thought.
They immediately corrected themselves. OBJECTIVELY. Cute. Yes. I'm not the kind of being to randomly start crushing on some guy who's currently mourning the ashes of his muffins.
While Phen was having an internal crisis, Trey was looking forlornly at the tray of ashes and decided there was nothing that could be done to save them. He quietly sighed the way I do when I realize there's an insanely low chance that I'll manage to pull anyone -- whether it be from a gacha showcase or an actual person -- and set the tray down on the counter. He finally turned to the stranger to get a better look and --
whoa.
Trey was speechless.
He couldn't begin to describe this imperfectly perfect stranger before him. They were tall, with mangled red-pink scar tissue and skin that looked as if it had been boiled; Trey noticed a massive hole in their chest where gleaming organs were visible with their slightly crooked ribcage encasing everything within. They had hair-like needles on their head poking out in various angles.
They were beautifully grotesque, and Trey couldn't possibly look away.
Before the stranger could catch him staring, Trey quickly looked away, awkwardly turning his head to stare at a wall.
"Um," he said, anxiously turning his head back to the stranger, "who are you?"
It finally occurred to the both of them that it was in fact not normal to barge into Heartlabyul's kitchen at 11:30 pm accompanied by someone whom they had never met before.
"I'm the Boiled One Phenomenon." Thinking it sounded too formal, Phen rushed to say, "but! You can call me Phen."
"Phen," Trey murmured in awe. "I'm, uh, Trey."
Trey realized immediately after that he must have sounded incredibly stupid. 'I'm, uh, Trey'? They probably think I don't even know my own name...
But Phen showed no sign of thinking anything of the sort.
"Trey?" they said, almost like a question, tilting their head slightly to observe Trey. "That's a nice name."
WAIT WAIT WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT'S A NICE NAME??? Phen was crashing out in their head. IS THAT SOMETHING NORMAL TO SAY????? DID I COME OFF AS WEIRD??????????????
"Thank you," Trey rushed to say. They both stood awkwardly staring at each other for a few seconds before Trey couldn't bear it any longer and blurted, "So, uh...why exactly are you in my dorm?"
Phen thought about their response for a moment.
"Well, it started like this..."