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iMessage–Fezco
I got superman boxers on today

Fezco's notification was the first thing Mariah read after waking up from her long ass nap, ignoring the rest as she focused on the way her insides warmed upon seeing his text.

The sun had set, making it dark in her room, and the house was quiet, meaning that everyone had gone to eat like Isabella said they would. Just, without Mariah. She learned not to take it to heart whenever they all went places without her, since it happened quite a lot.

Plus, nothing could take away the smile she held as she reread Fezco's text, laughing at the text itself and also laughing at what she thought of replying with. She got out of her bed and walked around the empty house, staring down at her phone as she placed a Doordash order for Wingstop.

She scrolled through her Tiktok for you page while she waited for her food, remembering that she hadn't texted Fezco back after receiving a text from her delivery driver, letting her know that they had dropped off her food.

After grabbing her food and setting everything up all nice in her bed, she grabbed her phone and rated her delivery driver 5 stars before going to text Fezco back, smiling as she typed.

iMessage

Fezco
I got superman boxers
on today

Mariah
oh we moving fast huh

Mariah
let me see👀

Fezco
My boxers?

Mariah
duhhh

Fezco
Ok give me a few mins

Fezco
I'm eating

Mariah
omggg me too

Mariah
twinsssss

Mariah
what are u eating I got
wingstop

Mariah
oh wait my bad lol ill leave
u alone to eat

Mariah set her phone down in her lap before grabbing a few fries, midway into eating them when her phone started buzzing.

Incoming call from Fezco

Her eyebrows pulled together in slight confusion as she picked her phone back up and answered the call, putting it on speaker.

She stayed quiet, waiting for Fezco to speak as she took the chance to finally eat the fries she had held to her mouth.

"You there?" Fezco spoke after a few seconds of silence.

"Um, yeah," Mariah covered her smile with her hand, feeling like a whole 15 year old on the phone with the guy she stalked in the halls at school.

"Why you ain't say nun then?" Fezco asked with a laugh, smiling because he could hear her smiling.

"I was waiting for you to say something, you called," Mariah excused.

Fezco smiled on the other end, glancing back at Ashtray's door to make sure it was closed before putting his phone on speaker, "My bad, hey."

"Hi," Mariah said back, still smiling as she started to eat. "Why'd you call?"

"Cause I wanted to talk to you," Fezco answered, sounding nonchalant but really he was bouncing his leg under the table due to how nervous he was.

Mariah smiled even more, if it was even possible, "We were talking."

"Nah we were texting, it's different. Plus you was gonna leave me alone," Fezco said as he bit a dino nugget's head off.

"Yeah, so you can eat."

"Well now we can talk and we can eat," Fezco told her. "You been eating for four hours?" He jokingly asked after not receiving a text back from her after four hours.

"What do you mean?" Mariah asked him.

"Took you long enough to text me back," Fezco quoted her text from earlier, speaking slower than usual so she'd get what he was trying to say.

Mariah scoffed, "Shut upppp, you took twelve hours, I took four."

"I was busy though," Fezco reminded her.

"And I was sleeping."

"Aight, fair point," Fezco laughed, lining up all the dinosaurs on his plate.

They both fell silent, the only thing audible being them both eating. Well, trying to eat, since neither of them could stop smiling.

"My panties have butterflies on them," Mariah spoke after a while, laughing at her own sentence.

Fezco grinned, "Why you got butterflies in yo draws?"

You put them there bitch.

Mariah ignored her thoughts, and also the butterflies in her draws, laughing at the way Fezco worded what he said.

"Cause they're cute, and these were on sale," Mariah answered as a matter of factly. "Anyways, how was your day?"

"Uh...it was cool," Fezco replied, not knowing exactly how to answer. No one ever asked him how his day was. "Just worked, pretty much."

"Do you do anything other than sell? Like, is it a side thing or?" Mariah asked, getting more comfortable on her bed as she ate.

"Uh, kinda, I mean I got a store but I sell drugs out the store so..." Fezco shrugged to himself, not really wanting to talk about selling drugs since he fucking hated it, but also not wanting to tell Mariah that.

"You have a store?"

"Yeah–"

"Wait, how old are you?" Mariah interrupted him.

"19, you?"

"I'm 18, I thought you were like, grown as fuck when you said you had a store," Mariah laughed.

Fezco smiled, "Nah, it was my grandma's, but she got sick a couple years ago so I'm running it for her."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Mariah empathized, taking notice of the way his voice slightly faltered when he told her his grandma was sick. She knew the feeling.

"It's cool. She uh, she was a drug dealer too and shit."

"Your grandma was a drug dealer?" Mariah smiled.

"Yeah, best one I ever met. I started living with her when I was like, 11. Shit, I was her business partner," Fezco told Mariah, recalling the memories he had of his grandma correcting the people they worked with when they called Fezco a kid.

"And now your little brother who didn't have weed is your business partner?" Mariah asked. "What's his name again?...Rollingtray?"

Fezco let out a laugh at her misnaming Ashtray, "It's Ashtray."

"Right, my bad. Is that his government name?" Mariah laughed.

"Ima be honest, I don't know his government name," Fezco admitted, hearing a confused hum on the other line. "He's my brother, but he's not my brother brother, you know what I'm sayin?"

"Kinda," Mariah said. "So, it's just you and your brother?"

"Yeah."

"Why are you eating alone then?" Mariah wondered.

"Ash in his room playing on his game wit his friends and shit, I ain't gon bother him. Uh, what about you, though?" Fezco asked. "What's yo life story? You live alone?"

"Hell no, I'm hella scared of living alone," Mariah said with a laugh. "I live with my sister and her boyfriend and their kids."

"Big family? So why you eating alone?" Fezco wondered back.

"They all went out to eat and didn't wake me up from my nap," Mariah explained, making Fezco click his tongue. "It's fine though, they kinda always do that. They're the family and I'm just like, kinda here."

Fezco knew it wasn't the case for many, but he always liked to imagine big families full of love where everybody got along, where they all ate together and other shit like that.

Hearing that Mariah was 'just there' in her family, and that she was excluded a lot and was okay with it didn't sit right with him. She really deserved better in like, every department it seemed.

He'd never had a big family, being him and his dad for his early years, then him and his grandma, then him, his grandma, and Ashtray, and now just him and Ashtray, but he always thought it'd be nice being part of one.

But big or not, he loved his family. His grandma, Ashtray, Rue since she was like his little sister. And he would die before he said it out loud, but he had thought about Mariah perhaps maybe possibly one day joining his family.

He knew it sort of sounded crazy, but what were the odds? He wouldn't ever exclude her.

"Damn, 'm sorry," He mumbled. "How come you live wit yo sister?"

"My mom died when I was 16 and I don't know my dad so she kinda had to take me in," Mariah explained.

"Shit, my bad. Ain't mean to overstep," Fezco told her, hearing her hesitate before she spoke.

"No, you're good," Mariah assured him, smiling to herself at how easy it was to talk to him.

They ended up talking all night long since Mariah wasn't working and Fez had a free night. They talked about anything and everything.

They talked through their meal, the both of them feeling some type of comfort in no longer eating alone anymore.

After Mariah finished eating, she had let Fezco know she was gonna throw the trash out, and he had told her to take him–her phone–with her.

"I gotta make sure you go n come back without a scratch," Fezco told her, throwing his own trash in the can in the kitchen to make Ashtray take out tomorrow.

"Okay Superman," Mariah rolled her eyes to herself, smiling nonetheless as she took her phone with her instead of hanging up.

As she walked back inside the house, without a scratch of course, Fezco was looking for some rolling papers in his room to roll himself a joint. Which led to Mariah sneaking into Mouse's stash to snatch a dime bag of weed so she could roll up as well, so she and Fezco could smoke together.

"Okay, I got it," Mariah smiled at the dime bag as she hurried to her room, closing and locking the door behind her.

"You wild, ma," Fezco laughed to himself as he rolled up. "When you start smoking?"

"When I was 15. I tried a whole bunch of shit during my experimental phase and then left that phase with weed because all that other shit is crazy, I don't fuck with that."

"Word," Fezco agreed. "Ion fuck with it either. I seen how bad that shit can fuck you up...and I know it sounds hypocritical cause I sell em and shit, but I wouldn't ever fuck with no drugs aside from weed."

"I don't think it's hypocritical. I mean, I wouldn't go to a strip club for fun yet I'm a stripper," Mariah tried to reason. "It's different when you know how shit is behind the scenes."

"Word," Fezco said again, nodding to himself before laughing. "I don't even fuckin like strip clubs. Or selling drugs. But I be at Wayne's selling motherfuckers coke."

"You don't like strip clubs?" Mariah asked.

"Hellll no."

"Wait, if you don't like selling then why don't you just like, quit?"

Fezco told Mariah about his grandma's sickness in depth, explaining that she was bedridden and that her medical bills were a fuck ton of money. He told her that it was unlikely she would ever wake up, especially now years after she'd entered her coma.

He told her about why he started living with his grandma, told her about his abusive dad. He told her about having to support himself, his grandma, and also Ashtray, told her about paying off the house and running a two sided business, and that selling drugs was sometimes barely getting them by with how expensive shit was getting.

He told her he had to drop out of highschool, so he couldn't get a regular job, and he was pretty much stuck in the world of dealing. That's why he couldn't quit.

And after he asked Mariah why she wouldn't quit at Wayne's. She told him about her rocky relationship with her sister, and about how she almost kicked her to the streets when she graduated high school.

She told him about how her sister had taken all the money she saved up throughout high school for cosmetology school, and ruined her plans of going. She told him about how now she had to pay rent and save back up for school because she was too scared of living alone.

Mariah stopped mid sentence as she told Fez about some article she read online about different human trafficking tactics that the sick fucks in the world used, hearing the front door open followed by Isabella's voice.

She told Fezco to shut up although he wasn't talking, the both of them quietly laughing at the way they were being quiet for no reason at all.

It's not like Mariah would get in trouble for being up late and on the phone with a boy, she was 18 and like she called herself, an orphan. What mom or dad would be telling her to go to sleep?

She just didn't want Isabella's nosy ass knowing she was on the phone, especially not with a guy who wasn't Danny.

Mariah and Fezco changed the previous subject, since they had both completely forgotten what they were even talking about due to being high out of their minds, speaking in whispers until Mariah heard the door to Isabella and Mouse's room shut.

They both finished their joints around the same time, letting each other know when they were done.

Mariah sighed contentedly as she laid in her bed, listening to Fezco changing out his clothes like he said he would after smoking his joint and hoping she could be watching instead of listening.

Mariah plugged her phone into her charger as he told her a story about his grandma, interrupting him for a second to advise him to do the same so his phone wouldn't die.

Fezco told her stories about his grandma, he told her stories that his grandma would tell him. He told her about the day he met Ashtray, and he told her about the day his grandma got sick.

Not many people knew Fezco. I mean, they knew his name and who he was and what he did, but they didn't know Fezco. Because nobody cared to know him. To East Highland, he was just the local drug dealer.

Mariah knew him better than the people who he had known for years, and she hadn't known him for even a week yet. But she listened to him–she cared to know him.

"Yo uh, earlier when you said we was moving fast, what did you mean by that?" Fezco asked Mariah after a while.

She thought for a second as she rubbed the sleepiness out her eyes, "When?"

"When I told you I was wearin Superman boxers," Fezco lightly laughed, pulling his money printed blanket over himself.

"Ohhh," Mariah remembered, laughing with him at the thought. "I don't know. I thought you were tryna get me to tell you what I had on."

Fezco furrowed his eyebrows before he understood what she meant, running a hand over his face and smirking.

"And like, that usually leads to a guy asking me to send him a picture, you know?" Mariah continued. "And then that leads to something else. That's why I said moving fast."

Fezco dropped his smirk, knowing it was disrespectful to ask that, and feeling bad for making her think he would.

"Shit, I only said that cause you called me Superman," He clarified. "I wasn't gon ask you for nun."

Mariah smiled at the way he rushed to explain that that wasn't his intention, he was so cute. She would have definitely sent him something if he asked, but she was happy he didn't, she was happy that that wasn't even a thought.

"That why you asked to see my draws?" Fezco asked after moment of silence.

Mariah laughed, thinking of half lying and saying she wanted to see if he actually had Superman boxers, or half lying and saying she just wanted to see his boxers because of what hid behind them.

"Maybeeee," She responded, her flirty tone making Fezco blush.

"Word?" He asked her, his lips curling up into a smile.

Mariah could hear his smile as one formed on her face too, nervously fiddling with the spikey hair on her stuffed dinosaur's head.

"Word," She finally responded. "Tell me another gangsta grandma story."

"Aight, let me think of one," Fezco said before beginning to tell Mariah about how his grandma shot his dad in both legs.

As Fezco's speech started to slur more than usual, Mariah's eyes started to become heavy, signs that they were both starting to fall asleep.

"Shit, I'm over here fallin asleep," Fezco mumbled, moving his head around on his galaxy printed pillow.

Mariah lightly laughed, "Yeah, I can hear it. Same though."

She glanced at her digital alarm clock that only served to display the time due to how many times she had smacked it off the bedside table, reading 2:57 a.m. off the screen.

"It's almost the devil's hour, Fezco," She pointed out.

"Hell nah," Fezco mumbled.

"Literally," Mariah laughed. "You should sleep, you worked like, all day."

Fezco's heart warmed at the care she showed for him, which not a lot of people had.

"Alright ma, ima text you tomorrow," He advised Mariah.

"I'll be waiting. Good night, Fezco."

"What happened to Superman?"

Mariah smiled, "Sorry, good night, Superman."

"Good night, beautiful."

not proofread cuz ima lazy bitch