Chapter Text
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Collin asks, shifting his hold on the duffel bag in his arms. He glances back and forth down the darkened school halls, shivering a little, and looks back at Suzy. “We’re gonna get in trouble.”
Suzy responds with a huff. “Not if we don’t get caught, we won’t,” she says, not looking up at him. The lockpicks she’s working with slip from her fingers, clattering to the ground, and she pauses to glare at them for a second before retrieving them and getting back to work.
“Where did you even learn to pick locks?” Collin asks after a moment.
“Googled it.”
“And you seriously believe information you got from some random source on the internet is accurate?”
“WikiHow never lies.” With a final click, Suzy pulls the tools out and pushes the door open, giving Collin a smug look before tucking the picks behind her ear and wandering into the room.
Collin just gives her a dry glare, uncaring of the fact that she can’t actually see it. After a second, though, he hurries after her, shutting the door and clicking the light on as he goes, and glances around quickly.
Somehow, from all Suzy’s rants about them, Collin had almost expected the Activity Club’s room to look like the hideout of some demonic cult or something, but looking around the only thing that seems off are the sofas — Are school clubs even allowed to bring couches into a classroom? he wonders, and then an irritated grunt from Suzy draws his attention back to her.
There’s a computer on the desk near the back, and Suzy has settled herself in the chair in front of it— lockpicks no longer behind her ear— with a scowl on her face. Collin raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong? Did that computer insult my cat or something?”
Suzy blinks and glances over like she’d forgotten Collin was there. Then, somehow, her expression darkens even further. “It’s password protected,” she mutters once Collin’s stepped close enough to hear.
“Oh, obstruction of the flow of journalism, gotcha.” Collin shifts his weight and slings the bag over one shoulder, watching as Suzy starts tapping out different guesses.
It’s hard to follow her fingers, but he’s pretty sure she’s going through various combinations of the Activity Club members’ names. Spender, Mr Spender, Rick Spencer, Richard Spencer, all possible variations on their history teacher’s name, none of which unlock the computer.
Collin quickly finds his attention slipping, eyes wandering across the largely unremarkable room aside from, again, the couches. Of course they wouldn’t make their room obviously full of secrets, he catches himself thinking, and restrains the urge to smack himself. Don’t start thinking like Suzy now, he chides, wandering towards the couches and letting himself drop into the cushions. If you do that, then you’ll probably start losing your morals too. And also your sanity.
He blinks slowly, eyes flickering over to the door again to confirm it’s closed before settling back up on the ceiling. The only things he can hear are the clacking of the keyboard, Suzy making increasingly frustrated grunts to fill out the pauses, and the distant hum of the air conditioning.
It feels weird, being inside the school in the middle of the night. It’s not the first time Suzy’s dragged him out to go on late-night investigations, nor even the first time those investigations have lead to them breaking and entering. She’s never broken into school at night though. Or if she has, she’s never taken Collin with her.
Collin yawns, rubbing at his eyes, and then jumps as Suzy lets out a frustrated yell and flips the keyboard into the monitor. Collin nearly gets whiplash turning to face her, and blinks a few times at the sight of her staring down the screen with a strained grin on her face.
“...Suzy?” Collin tries, and the corner of Suzy’s mouth twitches. “You okay?”
Suzy’s eye twitches, and she turns her head to look at Collin. “Am I? Am I okay, Collin?”
Collin swallows slowly. “...I dunno, I think you’d know better than I would.”
Suzy stares at him for a moment, lips twitching, and after a moment she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath through gritted teeth, slowly letting it out. When she opens her eyes again her grin looks just as forced, but more ‘genuinely trying to be cheerful’ than ‘I will tear out your throat with my teeth’. Collin breathes a sigh of relief.
“You know what?” Suzy begins, picking up a pencil from the desk and twirling it around her finger. “This is fine! It’s not a total lost cause, I can still get something out of this, even if the computer is frustratingly unavailable. You remembered to pick up that stuff from Lisa, right?”
Collin sighs and reluctantly pulls himself from the gloriously soft cushions. “Yeah, and you’d better be grateful. It used up the rest of our stars.”
Suzy whistles appreciatively as Collin hands the bag over to her. “All of them? Must be some quality goods in there, then.”
Collin laughs wryly. “Yeah, how many times have you gone to the school store again? Remind me.”
Suzy makes a face at him before pulling the bag open and rooting around in it. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I just didn’t think she charged those prices on anything other than drinks and information.”
“She only sells drinks and information, normally,” Collin deadpans. “I don’t know why you thought she’d change her business tactics just because we asked if she could get something out of the ordinary. If anything, it’s even more of a reason to overcharge.”
“Oh, hush, you,” Suzy grumbles, before pulling out a small, disk-shaped microphone. “Is this it?”
Collin nods. “Yeah, that’s the thing. She also gave me some batteries to go with it...”
Suzy nods and sets the microphone down, continuing to dig through the bag for the batteries. It takes her another minute to find them, those minutes pockmarked with her first sticking her face in the bag like that’ll help her search — “Really, Suzy?” — and then with her making a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and just dumping the entire contents of the bag on the ground.
With a resounding clatter, dozens of lockpicks of all shapes and sizes fall to the ground. Suzy drops right after to sift through them, moving picks into little piles until finally she finds the set of tiny batteries taped together.
Collin sighs. “I’m gonna have to clean that up, aren’t I?”
Suzy makes an affirmative noise, not even glancing at him as she inspects the microphone in search of a place to put the batteries. “Thanks for volunteering!”
Collin sighs again, deeper this time, before kneeling down and grabbing the discarded bag in one hand. Diligently he shovels the lockpicks in, occasionally pausing to glare up at the cheerfully-humming Suzy.
He doesn’t understand why Suzy insists on dragging him out of bed every other week or so to casually break the law with her like this. You’re a pack mule! she always says, but there’s never anything involved that she can’t carry herself.
His fingers hit wood, and he snaps back to alertness to find a pencil lying the among the remaining few lockpicks like it’s trying to blend in. He picks it up, examining it curiously and finding absolutely nothing remarkable about it at all. Just an ordinary pencil, doing ordinary things.
“Hey, Collin, you gonna stare at that pencil all day?” Suzy cuts in, casually reaching over, snagging the pencil from Collin’s grip, and tucking it behind her ear. “I’m done setting up the microphone, so whenever you wanna finish picking up my lockpicks, we can go.”
“R-Right.” Collin hurries to finish up, scooping them together and shoveling them in before standing up and zipping the bag shut. “Right, let’s go, so I can actually get some sleep , Susan.”
Suzy scoffs and waves her hand dismissively. “Sleep? What, do you think I’m gonna just let you catch some Z’s while I set up the receiver?”
Collin stares at Suzy for a moment, expression slowly shifting into a look of dawning horror. “You— You can’t be serious.”
“I totally can.” Suzy punctuates that by pushing the door open and setting off at a run into the darkness.
“Wait!” Collin calls out, his cry echoing down the halls as he barely pauses to turn the light off before chasing after Suzy. “Suzy, wait, when am I supposed to get any sleep?! ”
When Dimitri gets into the clubroom that morning, early enough that he’s not sure all the teachers are even there yet, he’s greeted by the sight of his clubmates fast asleep and snoring at the desk. He pauses at the door when he sees this, raised eyebrows left unseen by all but a passing spirit.
Collin is in the chair with his arms folded into a makeshift pillow at the edge of the desk and a pair of headphones half-fallen from his head, like he’s dozed off listening to music like Dimitri himself makes a habit of. Suzy, on the other hand, is perched on the armrest and leaned against the back of the chair, balanced just right so as to not fall off as long as she remains right where she it.
So, in short, she’s doomed to fall as soon as she wakes up.
Dimitri considers the situation for a moment, contemplating waking Suzy himself, then discards the idea. He’s not feeling cruel. The headphones on Collin, though, those look distinctly suspicious. Collin doesn’t usually listen to music, he notes, then immediately wonders why he went through all the trouble of actively thinking that sentence. Of course Collin doesn’t listen to music, he knows this. It’s obvious.
Before he can get too sidetracked by his thoughts, Dimitri creeps silently across the room and daintily plucks the headphones from Collin’s head with barely a shifted hair, pulling them over his own ears. Only the soft hiss of static greets Dimitri, and he frowns.
As Dimitri sets the headphones back down next to Collin, he finds his eyes drawn to the pencil behind Suzy’s ear. There’s nothing innately unusual about it, she’s worn pencils like that many times before, but he can’t help but feel like there’s something off about it this time.
As he reaches over in an attempt to grab it, Suzy finally shifts on her sleep. With that slight change in balance, the chair slowly tips backwards, Dimitri helpless to stop it before a resounding crash echoes through the small room. Twin yelps of surprise and pain occur at the same time, and when Dimitri finally looks up to assess the damage he finds a tangle of limbs underneath the toppled chair.
He winces in sympathy. “You okay?”
Suzy lets out a vague noise, dazed from the unexpected fall and not fully awake. “Wha…?” She blinks a few times, trying to focus on Dimitri’s face as he leans across the desk to look down at his two fallen comrades. “Dee, why’re you upside down?”
Before Dimitri can correct Suzy’s assessment of the situation, Collin reminds her of his existence by letting out a pained groan. She frowns, blinking sleep away from her eyes, and looks down. “Collin? Why are you lying under my butt?”
Collin groans again and tries to push Suzy off of him. “You fell on me,” he grumbles, giving up halfway and folding his arms over his eyes. “‘M tired, lemme sleep...”
Dimitri hums thoughtfully. “While I would ordinarily support sleeping at all hours of the day, school does start in a few hours and you don’t have your supplies. What are you even doing here so soon?”
“Broke ‘nto the Activity Club,” Suzy mutters through a yawn, pushing the chair off her and laboriously sitting up. She blinks a few times, and then her expression lights up. “Oh yeah! Me and Collin broke into the Activity Club room last night and planted a bug!”
Slowly, Dimitri’s eyebrow creeps its way up his forehead again. “Is that so?”
“Yeah!” Suzy bounces to her feet, pushing her glasses up to rest on her forehead. “I also picked up a trophy to signify my successful trek into enemy territory—”
Suzy’s hand darts up to her ear and stops there, a puzzled frown dropping onto her face. “Where’d it go?”
“Where’d what go?” Dimitri asks, already scanning the ground. Based on where her hand went, though, I have my suspicions...
Suzy starts scanning the ground as well, ignoring Collin as he starts to pick himself up. “My trophy, I had it tucked behind my ear— Ah! There it is!”
She stoops under the desk and returns triumphantly brandishing a pencil. “This thing!”
Dimitri blinks. Thought so. “A pencil? That’s your trophy?”
Suzy tuts at him. “Ah, it’s not just any old pencil. This pencil—” Suzy pauses for dramatic effect, swishing the eraser end of the pencil through the air— “Belonged to the Activity Club. But no longer! From this day forward, this pencil will symbolise last night’s resounding defeat of the Activity Club’s defense systems! For glory!”
Dimitri gives her a long stare, matched in equal measure by the triumphant manner with which Suzy holds her new pencil, and then he shrugs. “Well, whatever floats your boat,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “All that aside, you’re gonna want to hurry if you want to get your stuff in time for school.”
Suzy blinks and pauses, halfway through tucking her ‘trophy' behind her ear. “What do you mean?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t bother bringing all your textbooks with you on your heist?”
Slowly, the realization dawns on Suzy’s face, and Dimitri smirks. “If you run, you might just be able to get to your house in time to ride the bus back up,” he says.
Papers go flying in her wake as Suzy whips past Dimitri and out the door, her footsteps rapidly fading into the distance. After a moment, Dimitri glances at Collin. “You gonna go too?”
Collin blinks slowly, leaning against the the desk, and after a moment’s consideration shakes his head. “I think… I’ll just say I slept in. And forgot my books. I’m not gonna run halfway down the hill on two hours of sleep.”
Dimitri nods sagely. “A wise choice. You can borrow mine for the classes we don’t share?”
Collin grunts noncommittally and drops back into the chair with his hands over his face. “...Sure. D’you mind if I keep the chair for a while?”
Dimitri waves him off, already heading for the door. “Don’t worry about it, I got a full night’s sleep, I can go without a nap for a while. I’ll wake you up before classes start.”
He barely catches Collin’s muttered thanks, the noise hitting his ears a moment before the door closes, and with a faint smile he turns and walks away.