Archive of Our Own ^beta

Oliver waited until they were inside, handcuffed and glassy eyed, everyone hunched unnaturally in shame.

“I guess they really do have paddy wagons,” he said. “I thought it would be more wrought iron and bars, but I guess they have to do glass in the windows. And I guess they just call it a van.”

Mabel’s head hung down, her body coming off the adrenaline of Bunny’s final moments. She made an indistinct noise.

“Oliver, could you stop guessing, please? It’s obvious we’re not good at it, and it’s really not that interesting,” Charles said sharply. “Mabel, are you okay?”

She made a face. “I don’t know where she came from, guys. I went into my apartment and the hallway was normal. It felt fine, I turned my back on the door and she stumbled in. She was almost gone. I went to catch her, but y’know - couldn’t! And I didn’t hear anything! Why would someone put her in our merch? This is crazy.”

The two men replied at the same time.

“The sweatshirts are selling nicely-”

“It’s obvious to anyone you’re being set up-”

They glared at one another, and Oliver jerked his head at Mabel’s devastation. He jerked a few more times and Charles continued.

“Listen, we’ll get a lawyer, and at least this time it’s clear it’s a murder,” he said. “They’ll search for evidence and find out what really happened to Bunny.”

Unable to resist his bitterness, Oliver tried to jerk to throw his scarf back. “Huh, that’s the work of future generations. There was a lot wrong with Bunny before she had an extra hole in her.”

Mabel looked at him, disgusted. “Hey! She was a person. She was a really unpleasant person, but what the hell?!”

Nodding, he mumbled, “You’re right, bygones.”

With his limited law enforcement experience, Charles didn’t think bygones worked as an alibi. He cleared his throat, about to launch into his reasoned plan to convince the NYPD they would be the last three people in the Arconia to try to get away with murder. It was messy, and they had just gotten out of one mess. They had prevented a mass tragedy. Surely if they’d wanted to kill Bunny - as they all sort of had at one point or another - they could have made sure it befell her in the chaos.

He took a pause to self-edit. It was probably best not to mention any murderous intentions ever, or remind people she’d hated them.

“You know who had really good guesses? Our fans. They’ll exonerate us. The Arconiacs are on the Case!” Oliver declared proudly.

It had the vocal flourish of the title of a true crime podcast, and Mabel groaned.

“I don’t think podcasts are really effective at solving murders,” she said. “If we’re really that desperate, why don’t we connect them with Jan and wait for results?”

She knew Oscar was watching and listening. He would notice anything he could to help her. Mabel had spent months trying to poke around to save him, but they were older and wiser. That police detective knew them. She would be extra sensitive to another framed murder. She had warned them to shut up and that felt like good advice.

“Not to stir the pot, but Jan did have some good ideas regarding Tim Kono’s killer,” Oliver agreed philosophically.

Charles rolled his eyes, and their young friend sighed. “Okay, first - She knew the Dimases didn’t kill him because she was there when she did, Oliver! It wasn’t incredible detective work on her part to see we hadn’t caught her when Charles was still dating her.”

The actor’s cringe and loudly cleared throat was only matched by the shorter man’s shudder.

“Oh, Charles, that horrible phlegm rattle chills me,” he said. “When you do that, it makes me feel like you might kill me.”

It might have been implied, in that particular rattle.

Oliver gave the biggest shrug he could with his hands confined, then he attempted jazz hands to see if it was possible. “You are right about Jan. We shouldn’t reward taking a human life, just because it gave her such an insight into our case. If we were going to do that, we should have killed Bunny for our second season. I mean, this works for that, we just use ourselves as the false leads and our early twist is set to show that wasn’t the case . . . I mean, then the choice of our fan hoodie is actually genius, like leaving our signature right on the body!”

Mabel felt her eyes water. “We’re going to the electric chair,” she said.

Charles looked at her with concern. “NO, we’re not. We’re going to get lawyers. We’re going to shut up until we have lawyers,” he said. “Because Oliver and I were together on the roof, and Mabel was barely downstairs for five minutes. So we all know that none of us did this. We, if we have to gauge it this way, are just as good as Jan right now at being sure the police have the wrong culprits.”

He felt them look at him softly, with sad eyes and pouts. He smiled cynically.

“That is absolutely her loss,” Mabel told him with a brave smile. “And we’re all going to be fine. We just won’t talk about it until we have lawyers. It’s like all the tv shows, right Brazzos?”

“Right!” He focused on her and was pleased to see she’d sat up a little better and was less pale.

Oliver stared between them, making little sniffs and noises like a truffle pig. He bit his lip and leaned in. “Huh! I see it now, a spray of the old Hollywood sparks. Interesting,” he said quietly.

When they blinked, he was quick to lean back and look away. “Not that you would ever,” he said, glancing at Mabel. “Or you, Charles. But I get just the pinch of a spice when you gang up on me. Opposites attracting between the ingenue and the grizzled old loner. Grant is a child, and Marv doesn’t follow the shipping, but Sam and Paulette talked about it a lot. The Haden Maidens and the Mabelines were always into it about the possibility you might bone.”

The sickening suggestion was almost as jarring as Bunny’s fresh corpse. Charles froze in shock, and Mabel actually made a gagging sound.

“I know you would never,” Oliver said, looking at her sympathetically. “And Charles, you would never be able to. But I can see how an outsider might be fooled.”

“BONE!?”

Charles nearly lost his voice shouting it, and he looked at his young friend with the intention to apologize profusely. She averted her eyes so fast he knew she’d been picturing something, which made him picture something. That left both of them too mortified to yell at Oliver as he somehow kept talking.

“I told them it wasn’t the case and they were going to start a new conversation on the message board about it. Of course then it was all about the love triangle with Jan in the middle, and I suppose they met Oscar and might have taken a turn to shipping him with Mabel,” the director said sanguinely. “The point is nobody thinks you would be sleeping together!”

If offered a quick death, Mabel might take it. She’d confess to Bunny’s murder and her two partners in not this much crime could be freed. They’d clear her name later. It was just a shame she had to die with the worst ideas trotting through her imagination to a jaunty original score and Oliver’s remarkably cartoonish set design.

“Please, can we just not speak,” she begged.

“Yes, sorry, we can do that.” Oliver lasted two seconds. “I like Oscar. He’s a fine young man and he’s going to stick with you through all this. And Charles you’ll find a wonderful, age appropriate woman in the nursing home. Someone sedate who loves you for yourself?”

He was not feeling sedate. He might need sedation. He might also figure out a way to get his legs back and through his cuffed hands so he could bring them around his front and kill Oliver.

“The nursing home? You’re talking like a maniac right now,” he said sharply. “It’s all really offensive - to both of us.”

Oliver looked astonished at his own running stream of consciousness, which had to be a bad sign. “Oh, I know, particularly to Mabel. I talk too much when I’m nervous. I’m so sorry, dear. I genuinely don’t think you’d ever touch Charles except to give him a meal replacement shake or help him out of his chair. It’s on those crazy few stans who see that as a premise for a smutty short story. You should read these things. They don’t even know what to do about the height difference! There are barstools and harnesses involved. Awful!”

Oh God, he was still going and she couldn’t plug her ears because of the handcuffs. Mabel and Charles both started trying to shout over him.

“Please, please, please stop!”

“I cannot believe you would say those disrespectful things to a young woman-!”

“A good friend passes the rumours along first hand, before they go through the whole theatre-!”

The van pulled up short, and the back door opened roughly. Detective Williams looked in at them with an incredulous expression. “Did you not hear me telling you NOT TO SPEAK!?”

Silence dropped like a canister of tear gas, and Charles hoped everyone just had the brains to hold their breath and shut up. He counted off blessed seconds until Oliver tried to explain himself.

“I missed lunch, and we’ve all had some champagne to celebrate,” he said earnestly. “Not to celebrate Bunny’s demise! It was to us, together. And then I unwisely said something about Charles and Mabel boning, which was a disrespectful way to put it. The internet is uncouth! I have been picking up some vocabulary I could have done without. It is not at all woke online.”

The dignified officer of the court slumped and put her hands on her hips, walking it off for a moment. She turned slowly back, and stood tall to address Mabel directly.

“Okay, Miss Mora, do you need to ride up front with me?”

Mabel didn’t want to keep riding with Oliver, but she couldn’t make it seem like Charles was a sexual predator, and that felt like the next terrible implication about to be blurted.

“I’m fine with them, we’re just upset,” she said. “I’m sorry, Detective.”

For someone who always looked overwhelmed by them, Williams looked done. She stared them all down for five seconds each, and frowned.

“I do not know what this is,” she said. “But if there is any boning in it, I cannot anymore with this!”

Charles hurried to agree. “We cannot either, us as well. We can’t even now, let alone with the-the-thaaat,” he stuttered.

She was already shutting the doors for the remainder of their ride to be questioned. “Jesus.”

The single word covered it for all of them.