I've Got the Strangest Feeling This Isn't Our First Time Around

39

 Bang bang bang!

"Alright, I'm coming!" Mario whines as he makes towards the front door, and when the frantic knocking doesn't cease, he yells, "If you don't calm the fuck down I'm not gonna bother open---" right as he opens the door to Luigi holding up a piece of paper.

"Look familiar?" Luigi says, not bothering with so much as a help as he shoves it in Mario's face.

Mario takes it and looks it up and down and says flatly, "The algorithm for dreamwalking? Considering I see it on a daily basis, it better look familiar.", then shoves it back at Luigi. "I'm going back to bed." and starts to shut the door.

But not fast enough, as Luigi shoves himself inside and says, "Not even gonna bother asking the follow up question of 'why the hell am I violating Dream Lab security protocol to bring it here'?"

"I don't ask questions I already know the answers to." Mario says grumpily. "You think protocol doesn't apply to you."

"And you'd be right." Luigi admits as he reaches into his bag. "If it wasn't already out of the lab and onto here." And holds up Luna's disk.

Now Mario appears to understand what's going in as his eyes bug out, " That's what Luna had on there?"

"You awake now?" Luigi all but demands. "And starting to get why I'm actually here?"

"Because someone broke into the Dream Lab and dropped it off with her." Mario says slowly.

"And..." Luigi says. "There's a chance it might've been you."

Mario jerks back like he's just been slapped. " Me? Sell out my team? My lab?"

"Occam's razor. The right answer is usually the simplest one." Luigi shrugs. "I can't for sure say it's not you."

"Oh yeah? I can't for sure say it's not you either." Mario turns the tables.

"Because I just make it a point to show up at people's houses in the middle of the night and accuse people of things I did." Luigi rolls his eyes.

"I don't know. Do you?" Mario pushes, which Luigi doesn't take kindly, to, holding out a hand.

"Phone. Now."

"Excuse me?" Mario says. "What do you need my phone for?"

"To prove it wasn't you, of course." Luigi says, but Mario just walks away towards his bedroom, calling back, "You can't prove something didn't happen." As he sits on the end of the bed.

"You also can't not prove I can't prove something didn't happen." Luigi snarks back as he joins him, hand out. "Just hand it over and be done with it."

"And there goes months of trust right out the window." Mario mutters.

"I'm sorry, you're lecturing me about trust?" Luigi laughs, but it's not even close to the happy kind. "When I met you in the lab for our first dreamwalk, you tried to convince me you were an uncaring asshole, only, oopsie, no one, especially me, was buying it, so you dropped the pretense and revealed you were just a regular asshole like the rest of us. Pauline's your oldest friend, yet she doesn't know that much about you, and you beg me to be honest with you but can't be bothered to do the same with me."

"Did I not tell you the truth about Bowser?" Mario reminds him, but Luigi's not gonna let that deter him this time, "You mean the stuff I could've tracked down myself if I'd actually cared to?"

Mario stiffens at that, clearly hurt, but Luigi just plows right along, "Did you or did you not leak the dreamwalking algorithm to Luna?"

"No, never!" Mario exclaims.