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It was a joke gift.
Natalie told him Crypto's birthday was coming up and asked if he wanted to come to the party. Elliott was surprised, back then he was still on a pretty awful term with the hacker. They kept getting into conflicts, slinging insults, and thinly-veiled threats at one another. The twinge in his shoulder only served to remind him of their meet cute.
Elliott had noticed that she took a shine to Crypto, more so than their fellow legends. No surprise that a nice girl like her would want to throw a birthday party for the perpetually unhappy weirdo. Elliott just couldn't understand why she'd want to invite him. Surely she noticed that Elliott and Crypto got along as well as oil and water, if the hacker hadn't already told her about how much of an idiot Elliott supposedly was in his eyes. If it was anyone else, Elliott wouldn't be surprised. He got invited to everything all the time by friends and fans alike. Weddings, birthdays, baby showers, it didn't matter. Mirage was the life of the party and everybody wanted to be around him. Not Crypto, though. Crypto always acted like breathing the same air as him was the worst thing one could do. So...why him? Was the party so lacking for guests she had to invite Crypto's Enemy Number One?
If so, that was.. kinda sad, actually. He would feel bad for Crypto if that was the case. Maybe he already did.
Elliott said yes. He had nothing to do on that day anyway. Poor drone boy's birthday fell on a Tuesday that year. Elliott couldn't attend a birthday party empty-handed though, he needed to come up with something quick.
He knew almost nothing about Crypto. No one knew what his deal was. It was already difficult to buy a present for someone who despised you, the fact that Crypto was a recluse didn't help. If Elliott had to guess what Crypto's likes and dislikes were, he would've said 'Computer stuff' and 'Mirage.' Computer stuff, as he eloquently put it, was expensive and could easily backfire if he bought something that was not up to par to Crypto's standard. No, it wouldn't work. He needed something else.
As he browsed the store, Elliott grew more and more self-conscious about his decision. He didn't want to show up at the party with too thoughtful a gift, looking desperate for Crypto's approval and attention. At the same time, he didn't want to mess up either because unfortunately Elliott's need to be loved by everyone still applied to Crypto, even if he didn't care for the hacker at all. Then there was another conflicting want, one that somehow survived all the pettiness and the tough guy nonsense. It would be…nice to make Crypto happy, because yeah he was an ass, but it was still his birthday. He'd look better if he wasn't frowning all the time, like when he winked on the train and distracted Elliott so badly he completely missed what Crypto was signaling. How beautiful it would be to see a smile on his face, and how gratifying it would feel to be the one who put it there.
It was then that Elliottt stumbled upon a seven foot tall Nessie and thought, perfect. It was destiny.
"Really, Elliott?" Ajay had chewed him out when he told her his gift. "A joke gift is worse than nothing!"
Maybe, but it wasn't nothing either. There was time, effort, and money put into it. (Too much money, seven foot tall Nessie did not come cheap.) Those were the components that make a great gift, the only thing missing was sincerity. Couldn't be disappointed if the gift wasn't well-received, if you had convinced yourself that it was just a joke. Couldn't get your heart broken if you had convinced yourself that it was just about having fun. Elliott wasn't serious. He didn't mean anything by it. It was just a joke. Even better, Natalie was so taken with the Nessie she didn't suspect anything was amiss.
When Elliott showed up with a humongous Nessie and an equally large ribbon wrapped around its chubby neck, everybody laughed at his antics. Crypto looked flustered, but he quickly composed himself and strided toward Elliott with a smug grin that didn't offset the blush rising to his cheekbones.
"Joke's on you, I like Nessie," he said like it was such a big gotcha that Elliott bought a gift he happened to like on his birthday. "Hope you didn't spend too much money on it – oh no, you already did. Idiot."
"I'm not an idiot!" Elliott protested. He tried to look offended and not utterly elated by his success. His heart raced when he heard Crypto chuckled.
Oh, it was a big joke of the night alright. Elliott tried to pull a prank and it backfired, because the person he disliked actually liked the gift! Haha..yeah. Hilarious. He sure fucked that one up. Elliott watched Crypto talked to Natalie and others from the other side of this room, his chest filled with a certain warmth.
The party was alright. Small, low-key, more like a small group hang rather than a proper party. Not Elliott's style, but it suited Crypto fine. They called it quit early in the night, probably because Crypto only had an hour or two of socialization in him before he ran out of spoons. He stayed behind to help with clean up – might as well – then Ajay made him carry Nessie from the communal area to Crypto's room since she was his responsibility. Gibraltar offered to help, but she held him back. Blah. Fine. Crypto couldn't do it on his own anyway (probably.) His scrawny ass would've been crushed by Nessie like a hydraulic press.
"It's too big. It's not going to fit," Crypto said with barely suspressed laughter as Elliott tried to shove Nessie into his room.
"Don't be rude!" Elliott pressed his entire body up against Nessie, shoving his elbow into her squishy behind, trying to get her unstuck from the doorframe. "You never talk about a lady's size like that."
"She's a girl?" Crypto looked Nessie up and down.
"Women can be Nessies too, Crypto. It's the 2734."
Crypto laughed. Elliott almost forgot what he was doing or where he was. His face felt red hot and burning.
Eventually he managed to fit her in there. Once she passed through the doorframe, Nessie fit into Crypto room just fine. She took up a lot of space on the bed but that was just his life now. Elliott couldn't help him with that. He was about to excuse himself and leave when Crypto turned to look at him.
"You came to the party," he said, almost as if he was trying to convince himself that it really happened.
Elliott grinned. "Wouldn't have missed it for the world."
Crypto said nothing; his expression was unreadable. The room was so quiet, and it was just them.. and seven foot tall Nessie. Elliott couldn't remember the last time they were in a room together without fighting. His room, too. Everything smelled like him. Elliott looked down at the space between them and only counted two steps at most. When he looked up, Crypto was looking at him in the eyes, biting on his lower lip. He could pop the tension with a needle.
Crypto put his arm on his upper arm briefly – a friendly gesture. The partially synthetic hand felt warm and cool against his skin at the time. A strange – but not unwelcomed – sensation that Elliott was not going to forget any time soon.
"Thank you for coming," he said. "Good night, Elliott."
Elliott had a terrible night; he couldn't sleep at all.
(He would learn later that it wasn't his real birthday. It was Kim Hyeon 's birthday, who wasn't real either. However, Park Tae-joon never had a proper birthday party in his life, and it was only at the age of thirty-one that he got a plushie that wasn't a dirty hand-me-down with stitches all around the seams.)
A year later, Elliott fell in love. The heart wanted what it wanted, and it didn't care that it made you look stupid in the process. How ironic that of all people, it had to be the one who called him an idiot and threw him off a moving train. Whatever, Elliott rolled with it. He couldn't stop himself from gettig all up in his feelings, so the only thing he could do was bracing for impact. First time falling for a man (that he could remember, anyway. There might have been some repressed cases here and there in his youth that were chalked up as 'wanting to be like them' instead of wanting to be with them.) First time falling for someone, and instead of getting up eventually when the novelty of it all died down, he just kept falling and falling. It was fine – Tae-joon looked stupid too anyway for returning his feelings, the idiot.
You know how these stories went. They were in love, everything was still fucked up, but when Elliott looked at Tae's face his heart felt lighter, so it wasn't all bad.
One day Ramya decided to move in with her girlfriend. Elliott whined at her all day long about not wanting to find a new roommate and she asked Why not ask your boy? So he did – and Tae-joon surprisingly said yes.
The seven foot tall Nessie was still there but now no one was laughing.
"You kept her?" Elliott asked, incredulous.
Tae-joon frowned at him. "Of course."
Elliott's joke gift had terribly backfired two years later in a way that he could never have predicted.
Nessie was gigantic and Tae-joon insisted that she be put on their bed. It was like sleeping with a damn Titan next to them. If she was in the middle, Elliott would have to climb over her, his arms too short to reach around. Even when they were cuddling or spooning, Tae-joon always ended up rolling over to the side and hug her out of habit. It drove Elliott up the walls. No one informed him that this purchase meant you would never get to touch or see your boyfriend again. Damn Nessie and her boyfriend-stealing way. Elliott missed him so bad. He wanted his boyfriend back.
He said as much to Tae-joon, but his boyfriend didn't take him seriously. Who knew what Nessie had been telling him behind his back. She was turning his boyfriend agaisnt him Elliott swore.
"Don't be so dramatic," he said. Tae-joon was smart as a whip, he had to know that Elliott couldn't just not be dramatic. It didn't work like that.
He tried moving her to the couch, but Tae-joon would make him carry her back so that only made his life harder. He tried putting her behind his back instead, but Tae-joon moved around in his sleep, and somehow thrashed himself back into her embrace anyway. Elliott was a heavy sleeper, so he never noticed anything until he woke up drooling into his boyfriend's empty pillow, while Tae-joon was buried under Nessie massive flank.
He attempted to negotiate with Tae-joon – did not work.
He attempted to negotiate with Nessie.
"You already had him all to yourself for a whole year," Elliott reasoned with her, appealing to her sympathy. "We never slept on the same bed until now AND we had sex before! Come on, give me my turn on Tae already. It's only fair."
She was stonecold silent, her beady black eyes never blinked even once.
Elliott whistled long and low. "You're one tough lady, Nessie. Never had to compromise before, hadn't you? You always get everything you want."
Her silence spoke volume.
"Fine. How about we take turn each month?"
She did not budge.
Elliott crossed his arms. " Week , then. We switch turns week by week."
Nope. Nothing.
"Day?! That's insane, Nessie. I might as well date you too at that point!"
He gasped.
"Wait, is that why?" She put his hands on her long neck, gently running his fingers downward. "Were you trying to keep him away from me because.. I'm the one you truly want all along?"
"What the hell is going on."
"Ah! Nothing!"
Negotitaion failed.
Elliott was out of option. He even considered just throwing her into the dumpster when Tae-joon wasn't looking, and then trash the room to make it look like she had been kidnapped and/or murdered. Loose cottons floating, broken furniture, green blood splashing on the walls, and all that jazz. Tae-joon would figure it out eventually though and he would be so mad at Elliott. There was nothing he could do. Elliott went through the five stages of grief and finally landed on accpetance. Fine. He had to just.. accept it. Him, his boyfriend, and his seven foot tall Nessie.
It wasn't ideal but what other option was there? Elliott begrudgingly lived with the bahemoth in his bed and in his dream. Almost every night he fell into a restless slumber, plagued by Nessie-infected dreams. There was one where he was getting married with Tae-joon, and when the priest asked who objected to their union, fucking Nessie showed up. Tae-joon left the altar so fast he left scorched mark on the floor. In one dream Elliott sold his voice to a seawitch so he could become a Nessie, but Tae-joon still ignored him because he preferred the classic green Nessie to the yellow one. It was horrible!
Though as horrible as they were, his dreams didn't hold a candle to Tae-joon's nightmares.
Tae-joon always had troubles sleeping. He switched between staying up for a week at a time or falling asleep only to wake up with night terror. He talked in his sleep, thrashed around, crying and yelling at nothingness. Apparently, it was why he didn't want to sleep in the same bed with Elliott for a long while. He always left and went back to his room after they had sex, never spent the night at his place unless Elliott gave him the couch. His heart ached to see Tae-joom haunted by the terrible memories of his past. His early childhood, Mila's disappearance, being on the run – he had been through so much. It was even worse though when his nightmares were conjured by his fears – Mila dying, being caught by the Syndicate, Elliott leaving him – like tonight.
"No, no, Elliott.. don't go," Tae-joon whined in his sleep. His face twisted into a grimace, beads of sweat covered his forehead. He started to thrash around on his side, his hands grasping at the bedsheet.
"I'm here," Elliott sat up and tried to comfort him, but Tae-joon wasn't hearing it. "I'm here, Tae. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not – "
Elliott froze up, not knowing what to do. His hand hovered over his shoulders uselessly. The last time he tried to wake Tae-joon up from his nightmare, it ended with him being punched in the face, and Tae-joon felt guilty he made himself slept on the couch for a month. He wanted to help Tae-joon but he didn't know how, and sometimes he feared he may never learn. He would never be able to provide Tae-joon with what he needed, what he deserved , to navigate through the horror that was his day and night.
Tae-joon started sobbing, tears streaking down his face. Panicked, Elliott reached out and grabbed Nessie, shoving him into Tae-joon's arms.
To his surprise, Tae-joon clinged to her immediately. He wrapped his arms around her long neck, his face buried at the side. His chest still heaved with sobs, but eventually he calmed down and his breathing steadied.
"You came back," he sniffled, nuzzling his wet cheek against Nessie. Elliott watched in awe as Tae-joon fell asleep, still muttering Elliott's name until the very last second.
He looked up to see Nessie's big eyes watching him in the dark. He could almost hear her boasting.
Elliott gave her a sheepish smile, and a rewarding pet on the head for her effort. "You've been taking care of him for me, huh? Thanks, buddy."
Nessie said nothing, but she didn't need to. Actions spoke louder than words.
Man, Elliott was so good at buying gifts.