I Prefer the Mind Control Rewrite - Chapter 3
This is the third chapter in my rewrite of I Prefer the Mind Control. I hope the rewrite is even more awesome than the original!
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To start a wonderful fucking morning, I slept through my alarm. This meant I had exactly zero time to take a shower if I wanted to make it to my 8:30AM French test on time. Professor Moore was the kind of hardass who locked you out of the classroom and docked your participation points if you were more than five minutes late. More important than missing the shower was the fact had exactly zero time to get coffee.
Have you ever tried to take an important exam when you were inadequately caffeinated? It didn’t work very fucking well, at all. I’ve tried it before, with disastrous results. This French test? I needed results that wouldn’t be a disaster, but, instead, I had to stumble blearily towards the classroom. Being brilliant, I stumbled in the wrong fucking direction. Yeah, somehow I ended up halfway towards the Science Complex before realizing where I was.
The panic woke me the fuck up, at least. My heart pounded when I glanced at the giant clock on the side of a nearby building. 8:30AM. I could make it. I raced towards the Languages Center, heart pounded harder with every step I took. This time, I knew the direction I was going in. I didn’t know about the crack in the paved pathway. It fucking caught me. I faceplanted. Still had fucking time to get there.
Except, I didn’t. My books spilled out from my open zipper, flying every which way.
“Watch where you’re going, dork!” That had to be one of the infestation of frat boys.
“This isn’t fucking middle school,” I grumbled as I gathered my stuff as fast as I could. My phone said it was 8:35AM.
Fuck.
I didn’t think it would take that long to faceplant and get back up. But apparently it did. Maybe if I knocked on the classroom door and looked pitiful enough through the little glass window, Professor Moore would grant me a small act of mercy and let me, like, take half the test or something?
Who was I fucking kidding?
My body sagged in defeat. I thought about going to the classroom anyway. School -- school shouldn’t have been so hard. Make that mysteriously fucking impossible. I had a brain, dammit. Don’t look at me like that; I have a fucking brain. Oh, you suck at school, too? Why couldn’t you make my story a wish-fulfillment fantasy where I’m a straight-A supergenius?
I almost sank into the ground right in the middle of fucking campus, but I figured that might be a bad idea. Getting back to my dorm was more difficult than it should have been, though. My body felt like academically incompetent lead: heavy and poisonous. Evidently, my brain was some kind of poison because it did not meet the bare minimum of functioning. I was twenty fucking years old. That was two whole decades to learn how not to suck.
Apparently, I needed more than two decades to figure out how not to suck. I looked around the grassy lawn where I stood, wondering what the fuck I had done wrong. Okay, I had obviously fucked up by missing my alarm, but -- why was college so damn hard? Wasn’t it supposed to be a fucking paradise for those of us who didn’t fit in during high school and earlier for whatever reason?
Sighing, I started walking back towards my dorm. Soon enough, I spotted the building with its ancient reddish bricks from several squillion years ago. Seriously, the place was fucking ancient, with an air conditioning system to match. A kid had even gotten heat stroke during a Summer Session because the building got so hot and his AC decided it was on break. But I fucking digress.
You know why I’m digressing into random bullshit? Because I don’t want to fucking think about what an abject failure I am. I hope you’re not judging me, because I don’t need that right now.
When I got to my room right by the stairwell, I stuck the key in the door with yet another sigh. My stupid brain rolled itself over with thoughts of just...why. Why did school things not want to work for me? I had a fucking brain -- didn’t I?
That was when I heard the noises. It was Preston and his girlfriend, Bonnie Williams. I remembered her full damn name because she introduced herself as “Williams, Bonnie Williams” as a kind of joke. And, no, author, they weren’t making those kind of noises. You have a dirty mind, which I suppose makes sense if you’re writing a story where the first chapter has a fucking threesome.
Bonnie and Preston, they were arguing. And it sounded fucking vicious.
“All you talk about is your stupid roommate with the IQ of a rock,” Bonnie hissed.
Hey, I knew some very intelligent rocks! Wait a second, I was the roommate. School troubles aside, my IQ was at least above that of your typical rock. Or so I assumed.
Preston said, “Bonnie, that’s not even true.”
“It is, and you fucking know it,” she spat. “You wouldn’t stop whining about how he had a hot new boyfriend whose identity you couldn’t even reveal. As if that’s a bad thing!”
“I don’t trust his boyfriend, okay?” he muttered. “They’re from totally different worlds. I don’t think it’s gonna work out.”
She grumbled, “You only think that because you wish you could be with him.”
“I don’t even like guys that way!” he said.
I couldn’t see them, but I would have sworn Bonnie was glaring at Preston. “You don’t seem to like girls, either.”
“What? What on Earth? I’m dating you, Bonnie,” he muttered.
Eavesdropping was bad news, but I couldn’t fucking stop listening in.
“And making out with you is like trying to do CPR on a dried-up slug,” she said.
Preston cried, “Excuse me?”
“You have no passion. You don’t even want to sleep with me, and we’ve been going out for six months already,” Bonnie grumbled.
They hadn’t slept together? Preston told me they had. He even bragged about it. What the fuck?
He said, “I like to take things slow. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” she muttered. “I would be fine with it if you weren’t always talking about your dumbass roommate and saying things like ‘he’s as hot as a supermodel, only short’ and ‘he needs better jeans to show off that cute butt of his.’ You never talk about my butt, and I have a very nice one, I’ll have you know. My previous boyfriend always told me I did.”
Preston hissed, “You’re gonna bring Charlie into this?”
Wait, what? Bonnie had to be smoking something hardcore because I was damn sure Preston had never said anything about my ass. To his fucking girlfriend, no less.
“I’ll bring him in if it’s relevant,” she snapped. “At least he appreciated me.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?”
Bonnie said, “I don’t know. Maybe I should be.”
Yeah, I was fucking frozen to the door, listening in on a conversation I definitely did not need to be hearing. Were they going to break up? Over me? That -- that had to be impossible.
I refused to believe it.
“Are you breaking up with me? Over the fact I like Dylan?” Preston’s voice was high, strained.
She muttered, “So you’re admitting it? Finally.”
“I -- I -- that’s not what I meant,” he stammered.
“Oh, it is what you meant. And, yes, Preston, I’m breaking up with you. It’s obvious you don’t want me,” Bonnie said.
Being too fucking stuck, I didn’t hide when she opened the door.
“Speak of the devil!” she cried, exasperated. “This is just perfect.”
Bonnie glared at me like she wanted to set me on fire. If she had any psychic ability whatsoever, I would be stopping, dropping and rolling right now because those eyes? Pure fucking hate. I had done nothing to her, though. Preston didn’t even like me that way.
I said, “Bonnie? I think you’re, uh, kinda -- kinda fucking mistaken. Preston doesn’t like me that way, I’m sure.”
To avoid those eyes of doom, I stared at the hallway ceiling. It was missing an entire tile in the corner. I felt like I were missing an entire brain because the idea that my roommate liked me was beyond incomprehensible. Just because two dudes were roommates, didn’t mean there was some secret crush deal. Bonnie must have been spending too much time reading fanfiction, where any two fictional guys who so much as accidentally looked at each other might be soulmates.
“Ask to see his phone,” she hissed.
I raised an eyebrow.
Bonnie said, “He’s got way too many photos of you and was always glancing at them on our dates. Just take a look and tell me he’s not some creepy stalker wannabe with a crush.”
She stormed off down the hallway without saying anything else. I stood there, jaw hanging open. What the fuck? Care to explain this particular outbreak of bizarre? I don’t think anybody’s secretly royalty this time, but they’re sure acting weird. Oh, you’re not gonna help me out? Why did I even ask?
I dropped my backpack to the ground and leaned against the wall. I slid down it to land on the floor. Preston hadn’t left the room, apparently, and I didn’t want to talk to him, not without time to fucking process this shit. He -- he just couldn’t like me that way.
Part of me wanted to call Xan, though it hadn’t been very long since we first met and I didn’t know the rules for contacting fucking royalty without seeming like a desperate creeper. Still, I needed some kind of something. Normally, I would call my parents with my drama, but they weren’t an option. If I told them “oh hello, I inadvertently wrecked the relationship of my roommate who has some kind of crush on me,” I would have to tell them about my fucking failed test.
Preston and Bonnie seemed -- okay, they didn’t seem like they would last even as long as they did, and Preston was a lot less...horny than the average college kid would be with a girl as hot as Bonnie. But me? Honestly? I didn’t want to be the cause of their breakup. Preston was my closest friend on campus, and I seriously didn’t fucking need any weirdness to come between us.
I put my head in my hands. Maybe if I blocked out the world, it would go away. That wasn’t how it worked, though. I knew that. My shoulders began to shake; was I going to start fucking crying in the middle of the hallway? That would be fucking spectacular. Despite my efforts to hold them back, tears fell from my eyes. At least most students in this dorm were in class or still asleep. Pretty fucking weird that Preston and Bonnie were even awake enough to break up.
“Hey, are you okay?”
The voice took way too long to register. My brain -- it had fucking overloaded after missing my French test. Finally, I realized it was Preston speaking.
“Go away,” I mumbled.
“Shouldn’t you be in class right now?” he asked.
I blinked back the stupid tears and looked up at him. “I was late by more than five minutes. I missed the fucking test, unless he decided to have mercy and let in latecomers, in which case I still missed the fucking test because I didn’t bother to check. Either way, I’m screwed. What do you think happened?”
Preston said, “I’m sorry. Professor Moore is a douche.”
“I’m sorry Bonnie was delusional and thought you were in love with me,” I muttered.
“Yeah, about that...”
His face was turning fucking pink, and his gray eyes wouldn’t look at me. He -- Bonnie just couldn’t be right. Preston ran a hand through his sandy blond hair; he was definitely agitated.
“Bonnie was being delusional, right?”
Did I even want a true answer to that?
Preston muttered, “I thought she was.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He sat down next to me. “It means -- she’s, um, kind of not exactly wrong about my -- feelings for you. Which I kind of just realized, right as she was breaking up with me.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I -- like you, like that. Not -- on purpose.” he said.
I almost laughed. “You wouldn’t -- do that on purpose. Human brains don’t, like, work so logically. You can’t fucking choose who you like.”
Preston hugged his knees to his chest. “Not that I thought I ever had a real chance, but...”
“But what?”
He muttered, “I wish I had figured this out before you went and got yourself a royal boyfriend.”
“I don’t even know if Xan is my boyfriend,” I said. Honestly, I didn’t fucking know where we stood. I was no expert on Zimaran relationship patterns.
Preston stared at the dingy carpet in the hallway. “Don’t -- think I even like girls that way. Had my first kiss at seventeen, and it was a -- major letdown. My sister Hannah was always teasing me about how ‘gay’ I was because I didn’t chase girls and stuff. I guess she was onto something, huh?”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said.
I was bi, and that had never bothered me. Sure, other people gave me crap for it, but they were stupid. As far as reasons to hate myself went, that wasn’t even on the list.
“My parents, my whole damn family, they -- don’t agree with you.” Preston choked on his words.
“Well, they’re stupid if they feel that way,” I muttered.
He said, “You may think they’re ‘stupid,’ but they’re paying for my tuition. And -- they’re visiting next weekend. Hannah’s even coming, too. All of them are -- are gonna wonder why I’m not with Bonnie. And she goes here, too. They -- could easily run into her. I don’t know what she’ll say.”
“Well, it would be a dick move if she did tell your parents why you broke up,” I muttered.
Preston barked out a harsh laugh. “Exes love dick moves.”
I said, “I can’t -- return your feeling right now, but I can offer, like, moral support when your parental units invade campus? I’m still your friend.”
He looked at me, eyes shining with tears. “Even with...?”
“Of course. Even with that.”
Sure, the whole “roommate crush” thing was fucking awkward, but I wasn’t gonna stop being Preston’s friend over it. It would be wildly hypocritical if I started judging him over his sexuality, which seemed to be afraid of. He needed a friend more than ever right now. I may have sucked at life, but I wasn’t such an asshole that I would abandon someone in need like that.
As weird as this was, I would offer what support I could. After all, Preston had befriended me when I had trouble finding anyone to hang out with. I fucking owed him, and I would do my best to pay him back for the kindness he had shown me.
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written for 500themes #418 - "Time and Space"
next chapter
previous chapter
---------
To start a wonderful fucking morning, I slept through my alarm. This meant I had exactly zero time to take a shower if I wanted to make it to my 8:30AM French test on time. Professor Moore was the kind of hardass who locked you out of the classroom and docked your participation points if you were more than five minutes late. More important than missing the shower was the fact had exactly zero time to get coffee.
Have you ever tried to take an important exam when you were inadequately caffeinated? It didn’t work very fucking well, at all. I’ve tried it before, with disastrous results. This French test? I needed results that wouldn’t be a disaster, but, instead, I had to stumble blearily towards the classroom. Being brilliant, I stumbled in the wrong fucking direction. Yeah, somehow I ended up halfway towards the Science Complex before realizing where I was.
The panic woke me the fuck up, at least. My heart pounded when I glanced at the giant clock on the side of a nearby building. 8:30AM. I could make it. I raced towards the Languages Center, heart pounded harder with every step I took. This time, I knew the direction I was going in. I didn’t know about the crack in the paved pathway. It fucking caught me. I faceplanted. Still had fucking time to get there.
Except, I didn’t. My books spilled out from my open zipper, flying every which way.
“Watch where you’re going, dork!” That had to be one of the infestation of frat boys.
“This isn’t fucking middle school,” I grumbled as I gathered my stuff as fast as I could. My phone said it was 8:35AM.
Fuck.
I didn’t think it would take that long to faceplant and get back up. But apparently it did. Maybe if I knocked on the classroom door and looked pitiful enough through the little glass window, Professor Moore would grant me a small act of mercy and let me, like, take half the test or something?
Who was I fucking kidding?
My body sagged in defeat. I thought about going to the classroom anyway. School -- school shouldn’t have been so hard. Make that mysteriously fucking impossible. I had a brain, dammit. Don’t look at me like that; I have a fucking brain. Oh, you suck at school, too? Why couldn’t you make my story a wish-fulfillment fantasy where I’m a straight-A supergenius?
I almost sank into the ground right in the middle of fucking campus, but I figured that might be a bad idea. Getting back to my dorm was more difficult than it should have been, though. My body felt like academically incompetent lead: heavy and poisonous. Evidently, my brain was some kind of poison because it did not meet the bare minimum of functioning. I was twenty fucking years old. That was two whole decades to learn how not to suck.
Apparently, I needed more than two decades to figure out how not to suck. I looked around the grassy lawn where I stood, wondering what the fuck I had done wrong. Okay, I had obviously fucked up by missing my alarm, but -- why was college so damn hard? Wasn’t it supposed to be a fucking paradise for those of us who didn’t fit in during high school and earlier for whatever reason?
Sighing, I started walking back towards my dorm. Soon enough, I spotted the building with its ancient reddish bricks from several squillion years ago. Seriously, the place was fucking ancient, with an air conditioning system to match. A kid had even gotten heat stroke during a Summer Session because the building got so hot and his AC decided it was on break. But I fucking digress.
You know why I’m digressing into random bullshit? Because I don’t want to fucking think about what an abject failure I am. I hope you’re not judging me, because I don’t need that right now.
When I got to my room right by the stairwell, I stuck the key in the door with yet another sigh. My stupid brain rolled itself over with thoughts of just...why. Why did school things not want to work for me? I had a fucking brain -- didn’t I?
That was when I heard the noises. It was Preston and his girlfriend, Bonnie Williams. I remembered her full damn name because she introduced herself as “Williams, Bonnie Williams” as a kind of joke. And, no, author, they weren’t making those kind of noises. You have a dirty mind, which I suppose makes sense if you’re writing a story where the first chapter has a fucking threesome.
Bonnie and Preston, they were arguing. And it sounded fucking vicious.
“All you talk about is your stupid roommate with the IQ of a rock,” Bonnie hissed.
Hey, I knew some very intelligent rocks! Wait a second, I was the roommate. School troubles aside, my IQ was at least above that of your typical rock. Or so I assumed.
Preston said, “Bonnie, that’s not even true.”
“It is, and you fucking know it,” she spat. “You wouldn’t stop whining about how he had a hot new boyfriend whose identity you couldn’t even reveal. As if that’s a bad thing!”
“I don’t trust his boyfriend, okay?” he muttered. “They’re from totally different worlds. I don’t think it’s gonna work out.”
She grumbled, “You only think that because you wish you could be with him.”
“I don’t even like guys that way!” he said.
I couldn’t see them, but I would have sworn Bonnie was glaring at Preston. “You don’t seem to like girls, either.”
“What? What on Earth? I’m dating you, Bonnie,” he muttered.
Eavesdropping was bad news, but I couldn’t fucking stop listening in.
“And making out with you is like trying to do CPR on a dried-up slug,” she said.
Preston cried, “Excuse me?”
“You have no passion. You don’t even want to sleep with me, and we’ve been going out for six months already,” Bonnie grumbled.
They hadn’t slept together? Preston told me they had. He even bragged about it. What the fuck?
He said, “I like to take things slow. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” she muttered. “I would be fine with it if you weren’t always talking about your dumbass roommate and saying things like ‘he’s as hot as a supermodel, only short’ and ‘he needs better jeans to show off that cute butt of his.’ You never talk about my butt, and I have a very nice one, I’ll have you know. My previous boyfriend always told me I did.”
Preston hissed, “You’re gonna bring Charlie into this?”
Wait, what? Bonnie had to be smoking something hardcore because I was damn sure Preston had never said anything about my ass. To his fucking girlfriend, no less.
“I’ll bring him in if it’s relevant,” she snapped. “At least he appreciated me.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?”
Bonnie said, “I don’t know. Maybe I should be.”
Yeah, I was fucking frozen to the door, listening in on a conversation I definitely did not need to be hearing. Were they going to break up? Over me? That -- that had to be impossible.
I refused to believe it.
“Are you breaking up with me? Over the fact I like Dylan?” Preston’s voice was high, strained.
She muttered, “So you’re admitting it? Finally.”
“I -- I -- that’s not what I meant,” he stammered.
“Oh, it is what you meant. And, yes, Preston, I’m breaking up with you. It’s obvious you don’t want me,” Bonnie said.
Being too fucking stuck, I didn’t hide when she opened the door.
“Speak of the devil!” she cried, exasperated. “This is just perfect.”
Bonnie glared at me like she wanted to set me on fire. If she had any psychic ability whatsoever, I would be stopping, dropping and rolling right now because those eyes? Pure fucking hate. I had done nothing to her, though. Preston didn’t even like me that way.
I said, “Bonnie? I think you’re, uh, kinda -- kinda fucking mistaken. Preston doesn’t like me that way, I’m sure.”
To avoid those eyes of doom, I stared at the hallway ceiling. It was missing an entire tile in the corner. I felt like I were missing an entire brain because the idea that my roommate liked me was beyond incomprehensible. Just because two dudes were roommates, didn’t mean there was some secret crush deal. Bonnie must have been spending too much time reading fanfiction, where any two fictional guys who so much as accidentally looked at each other might be soulmates.
“Ask to see his phone,” she hissed.
I raised an eyebrow.
Bonnie said, “He’s got way too many photos of you and was always glancing at them on our dates. Just take a look and tell me he’s not some creepy stalker wannabe with a crush.”
She stormed off down the hallway without saying anything else. I stood there, jaw hanging open. What the fuck? Care to explain this particular outbreak of bizarre? I don’t think anybody’s secretly royalty this time, but they’re sure acting weird. Oh, you’re not gonna help me out? Why did I even ask?
I dropped my backpack to the ground and leaned against the wall. I slid down it to land on the floor. Preston hadn’t left the room, apparently, and I didn’t want to talk to him, not without time to fucking process this shit. He -- he just couldn’t like me that way.
Part of me wanted to call Xan, though it hadn’t been very long since we first met and I didn’t know the rules for contacting fucking royalty without seeming like a desperate creeper. Still, I needed some kind of something. Normally, I would call my parents with my drama, but they weren’t an option. If I told them “oh hello, I inadvertently wrecked the relationship of my roommate who has some kind of crush on me,” I would have to tell them about my fucking failed test.
Preston and Bonnie seemed -- okay, they didn’t seem like they would last even as long as they did, and Preston was a lot less...horny than the average college kid would be with a girl as hot as Bonnie. But me? Honestly? I didn’t want to be the cause of their breakup. Preston was my closest friend on campus, and I seriously didn’t fucking need any weirdness to come between us.
I put my head in my hands. Maybe if I blocked out the world, it would go away. That wasn’t how it worked, though. I knew that. My shoulders began to shake; was I going to start fucking crying in the middle of the hallway? That would be fucking spectacular. Despite my efforts to hold them back, tears fell from my eyes. At least most students in this dorm were in class or still asleep. Pretty fucking weird that Preston and Bonnie were even awake enough to break up.
“Hey, are you okay?”
The voice took way too long to register. My brain -- it had fucking overloaded after missing my French test. Finally, I realized it was Preston speaking.
“Go away,” I mumbled.
“Shouldn’t you be in class right now?” he asked.
I blinked back the stupid tears and looked up at him. “I was late by more than five minutes. I missed the fucking test, unless he decided to have mercy and let in latecomers, in which case I still missed the fucking test because I didn’t bother to check. Either way, I’m screwed. What do you think happened?”
Preston said, “I’m sorry. Professor Moore is a douche.”
“I’m sorry Bonnie was delusional and thought you were in love with me,” I muttered.
“Yeah, about that...”
His face was turning fucking pink, and his gray eyes wouldn’t look at me. He -- Bonnie just couldn’t be right. Preston ran a hand through his sandy blond hair; he was definitely agitated.
“Bonnie was being delusional, right?”
Did I even want a true answer to that?
Preston muttered, “I thought she was.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He sat down next to me. “It means -- she’s, um, kind of not exactly wrong about my -- feelings for you. Which I kind of just realized, right as she was breaking up with me.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I -- like you, like that. Not -- on purpose.” he said.
I almost laughed. “You wouldn’t -- do that on purpose. Human brains don’t, like, work so logically. You can’t fucking choose who you like.”
Preston hugged his knees to his chest. “Not that I thought I ever had a real chance, but...”
“But what?”
He muttered, “I wish I had figured this out before you went and got yourself a royal boyfriend.”
“I don’t even know if Xan is my boyfriend,” I said. Honestly, I didn’t fucking know where we stood. I was no expert on Zimaran relationship patterns.
Preston stared at the dingy carpet in the hallway. “Don’t -- think I even like girls that way. Had my first kiss at seventeen, and it was a -- major letdown. My sister Hannah was always teasing me about how ‘gay’ I was because I didn’t chase girls and stuff. I guess she was onto something, huh?”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said.
I was bi, and that had never bothered me. Sure, other people gave me crap for it, but they were stupid. As far as reasons to hate myself went, that wasn’t even on the list.
“My parents, my whole damn family, they -- don’t agree with you.” Preston choked on his words.
“Well, they’re stupid if they feel that way,” I muttered.
He said, “You may think they’re ‘stupid,’ but they’re paying for my tuition. And -- they’re visiting next weekend. Hannah’s even coming, too. All of them are -- are gonna wonder why I’m not with Bonnie. And she goes here, too. They -- could easily run into her. I don’t know what she’ll say.”
“Well, it would be a dick move if she did tell your parents why you broke up,” I muttered.
Preston barked out a harsh laugh. “Exes love dick moves.”
I said, “I can’t -- return your feeling right now, but I can offer, like, moral support when your parental units invade campus? I’m still your friend.”
He looked at me, eyes shining with tears. “Even with...?”
“Of course. Even with that.”
Sure, the whole “roommate crush” thing was fucking awkward, but I wasn’t gonna stop being Preston’s friend over it. It would be wildly hypocritical if I started judging him over his sexuality, which seemed to be afraid of. He needed a friend more than ever right now. I may have sucked at life, but I wasn’t such an asshole that I would abandon someone in need like that.
As weird as this was, I would offer what support I could. After all, Preston had befriended me when I had trouble finding anyone to hang out with. I fucking owed him, and I would do my best to pay him back for the kindness he had shown me.
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written for 500themes #418 - "Time and Space"
next chapter