high rise hearts ☆ lifesteal smp au

𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐘 ✧

𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲: normal oneshot
𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀: none (there's a swagdoons reference and platonic clownzy but nothing serious lol)
𝘁𝘄: n/a
𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆: n/a
𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁: lifesteal decides to have a giant get-together in clown's apartment, and, knowing them, it devolves into drunken chaos

─── ⋅☆⋅ ───

𝐏𝐎𝐕: branzy

It was late at night when he'd gotten the text. Very late. He'd stayed up all night dealing with boring documentation for his amusement park, something about estimated annual revenue or whatever. He'd forgotten already, having basically passed out on top of the papers while trying to fill them out. It was only the notification of his text that woke him from this drowsy state and inspired him enough to check his phone.
Rubbing his sleepy eyes with the sleeve of his dark purple hoodie, he reaches across his desk to fumble for his phone. The desk lamp is on, but it only serves to further blind him. He unlocks the phone, the passcode etched into the muscle memory of his fingers, to see a message from the one and only ClownPierce, labeled as "clown 💅✨" in his phone for some reason. He must have been drunk or something when he labeled that.

> clown 💅✨: yo branzy are u up for a house party
> it's like fuckin 3 am bro
> clown 💅✨: idc lol
> clown 💅✨: it's at 8 tmr, my apt
> clown 💅✨: u coming
> ugh finee
> imma have to clear out my schedule tho
> clown 💅✨: lets gooooo

He clicks off his phone. He didn't have anything to do tomorrow, contrary to what he'd said, and a little party wouldn't hurt. But before that, he'd have to get some sleep- he felt like he'd not had a good rest in a month or so.

Branzy pulls up at Clown's apartment block at 8:13 the next day. He's changed out his hoodie to a black one with a skull printed on the back, along with dark purple sweatpants with a black stripes down each side. He hadn't been sure what to wear to the party, so he just grabbed some clothes that looked clean from the top of his dresser. At least he'd bothered to comb his hair- the wavy silvery locks looked decidedly more tame than they had yesterday.
The dim street outside is packed with cars- clearly the party wasn't small- and he has to navigate carefully in order to find a parking spot. It takes him far too long to find an open space, and when he does it's about a block away from the building. Classic New York parking. He pulls into the open space, trying his hardest not to bump into the nearby cars, and walks back to the apartment. It's already 8:23 when he gets there.
The building has a buzzer system to let people in, and Branzy clicks on the button for Clown's apartment. The buzzer rings once, twice, three times before a familar voice answers: "Who's this-?" He knows it's Clown already, even though he can barely hear him over the clamor of other voices in the background. He sounds a bit drunk, by the likes of it.
"Branzy-" He just barely has time to finish his name before Clown goes "Oh, I think it's Spep-" and buzzes him in before hanging up. He sighs and pushes open the door, trekking up the three flights to the apartment. When he gets there, the place is unlocked, and Branzy swings open the heavy metal door and peers inside.
The lights inside are off, but he's able to make out plenty from the rainbow LEDs strung along the walls and ceiling. There's a table with punch and snacks set up in front, along with a few bottles of liquor. The TV's on, blaring some sports match or whatever, and confetti and napkins litter the wooden floor. Music- Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"- is blaring from a speaker in the corner, and people are everywhere, standing around casually talking or curled up on the couch sipping punch.
The first person to notice him is Clown, holding a red plastic cup. He smells of liquor. "Oh- oh hey Branz- glad you could make it-" He stutters out, giggling. His plastic clown mask is pushed to the side of his head, exposing his lightly freckled face and mop of inky hair, tied in a small ponytail. Before Branzy can reply, he's playfully shoved inside with the door shutting behind him.
"Oh alright- this is a big party, wow-" Branzy says, laughing along with Clown. Even though the party's only just started, there's a good amount of people here, and he recognizes all of them as fellow Lifestealers. The gang loved to party, regardless of whatever drama there was between them, and Clown's apartment was a favorite place for it.
He's bad at small talk, but Clown, being drunk, doesn't really care. "Yeahh, I invited maybe like everyone... I forgot really- like I kinda just pulled up my contacts- you know?" He's dragging Branzy by the hand over to the couch, where a small group of people have set up a water bottle on the table for a favorite party game.
"Clown! Branzy! We're playing spin the bottle, wanna join?" Vitalasy pipes up. The couch and surrounding carpet are full of participants, arranged in a circle, and they both struggle to find spots for themselves to sit. "Alright, who's going first though-" Clown starts, before being interrupted by "Me! MEEE!" from a girl in a horridly bright orange jacket and pinkish-purple shades, which Branzy notes is Squiddo.
She takes hold of the half-full bottle, pondering what she should say, and finally decides on something: "Alright whoever this lands on has to CHUG THE PUNCH BOWL!!!" followed by "oohs" from the crowd. Branzy gulps- knowing the people here, the punch is most definitely spiked, and he's not as big a fan of alcohol as most of them are. He'd stomach it though, if it came to that.
Squiddo spins the bottle, and it spins fast, around and around until it finally slows, landing on Woogie. Reddoons, who is right next to him, bursts out into laughter: "HA- that was so close man..." Woogie groans, curses and finally gets up, accompanied by ecstatic cheering from everybody playing, including Branzy.
He makes his way to the punch table, edging beside Spoke, who is reaching for another cup, and picks up the bowl. Branzy watches as the entire thing is emptied by the polar bear man, some of the fruity red liquid spilling down his suit front towards the end. Everybody cheers once he sets the punch bowl down and wipes his mouth, grinning. Spoke doesn't seem too happy the punch is now gone though- he reaches for the alcohol instead, muttering about how he wasn't sure if there was enough punch left to refill.
He staggers back and pushes to sit beside Branzy- he looks drunk already, and probably forgot where he used to sit- making some joke about how he handled that easy squeezy, before he reaches for the bottle to spin. A few more rounds pass without much event, until it's Parrot's turn to spin: "Whoever this lands on has to karaoke a love song!"
He spins the bottle with ferocity, a stray blue-green feather flying off his head, and it lands on Branzy. He groans in dismay- he's really bad at singing, but this only seems to motivate the others, pushing him in front of the TV and pulling up some oldies song. Someone shoves a microphone in his hands as the piano begins to play and lyrics pop onto the screen.
He does his best, but his voice fails him as usual, and, not knowing the song, he's left singing about half the lyrics in the most off-key tone he's ever heard. Thankfully, the noise of the drunken crowd singing noisily behind him cover up his voice a bit, and he's spared the embarrassment of failing the high note at the end because everyone else does too. (Except Woogie; he nails it somehow.)
Puffing and out of breath, he wipes the sweat from his forehead, brushing his slick hair out of his eyes in the process (it's stiflingly hot in the apartment, with so many people packed into one place) and grabs the bottle while trying to think of something. He remembers Woogie's solo of sorts and decides it'd be funny to pick on him- "Whoever this lands on has to steal Woogie's tie!" This was immediately followed by a protest from said polar bear: "Hey, what'd I do?" Giggling, Branzy replies: "Outshine me at karaoke, that's what!"
The bottle of fate spins round and round, settling on Squiddo, who looks extremely happy to have been chosen for some strange reason. She practically launches up from her seat on the carpet and seizes Woogie's tie, although she takes the time to undo it before she strangles him. Giggling, she takes the blue fabric and ties it around her head like she's a ninja, grinning like a fool. Woogie scoffs at the ridiculous look but doesn't bother to take the tie back, instead leaning back on the sofa.
"You look ridiculous." A tired voice interjects. Branzy looks over to see Ashswag standing by the punch table, refilling his cup. His glitchy eye fizzes quietly in the background like static. "Hey! That's not nice- oh, you should join us! We're playing spin the bottle!" Squiddo interrupts her own sentence and gets up, dragging a protesting Ash by his suit sleeve- "But I don't wanna, bro you idiots are gonna drag me into something stupid again-" to sit beside her. He frowns and drinks a bit of his punch, but doesn't get up.
"Oh, and it's my turn to spin- whoever this lands on has to do a trust fall with someone! And the next person this lands on has to CATCH THEM!" She eagerly spins the bottle and who does it land on but Ash. "Fuck this bro my luck is so shit I swear to fuckin god-" He starts cursing like a sailor, his punch spilling over the rim of his cup with the sheer amount of hand gestures he's making, while Squiddo spins the bottle again. It lands on Subz, who looks perfectly happy with the role he's been given.
Ash is dragged to stand backwards on the couch, and Branzy scoots over to give him some room to stand. Behind him, Subz stands, trying to give as much room as possible for him to fall in the cramped apartment. "Well here goes nothing-" Ash falls backwards and Subz somehow messes up reaching out for him. With a thud, he hits his head hard on the table, spilling his punch cup on the carpet and his favorite magenta suit, and spews out a few more choice curses, glitches already popping up around his deep purple-black hair as a sign of distress. He gets up and rubs his head, glaring at everyone giggling. Branzy laughs too- the scene is comical.
It's interrupted by Spoke, who's disappeared and brought back a glittery disco ball. "I just remembered I had this in my car! Want me to plug it in?" Clown, who's been standing in the background for most of the game, excitedly rushes over, and they both move to set it up over the living room ceiling. Soon enough, it's done and the two sit back down in the circle, this time with fun rainbow patterns dancing over their hair. Branzy has to squint, the lights are so bright.
"Alright, since I was victimized last round I think it's my turn..." Ash says, shoving his messy hair out of his face. He seems to have recovered from his fall, although a few glitches still tweak the edges of his hair, giving him a frazzled look. "Whoever this lands on has to shove his face into the ice cream tub in Clown's fridge." There's a noise of protest from Clown- "How do you know what's in my fridge Ash!?" but the bottle is already being spun. Funnily enough, it lands on Clown himself, and everyone seems to think it's hilarious. Even Branzy giggles a bit.
"Oh my god.." Exasperated, Clown slowly walks over to his fridge and opens the freezer door with a puff of icy air, the rest of the cast trailing behind him. He pulls out a tub of fresh chocolate ice cream and opens it, then unceremoniously smushes his face into it. Everybody cheered, although Clown now had ice cream all over his face and looked quite disgruntled about it. He wipes his face off with a paper towel and everyone sits down again.
It's Clown's turn to spin the bottle now, and he's a bit sour from the ice cream fiasco: "Riight everyone, I've got an idea- double round! Whoever two people this thing lands on gotta kiss~" and sure enough everybody dissolves into gasps and nervous laughter. But knowing Lifestealers, nobody would kiss anybody unless they were to die, and this statement was only proven today.
The first time the bottle spins, it lands on Ash, and Subz and Squiddo next to him end up having to hold him down so he doesn't try to strangle Clown. His glitches have basically consumed his face, and he's spouting depravity at a mile a minute. The next time, it lands on Redd and nobody is able to stop him in time from withdrawing a knife from his suit sleeve and throwing it straight into Clown's chest, sending him straight to the respawn ward of the hospital with a puff of smoke, leaving behind only a fragile glass heart.
Cackling, Redd vaults over the table and scoops up the heart, absorbing it the second it touches his fingertips. There's an uproar, more of a war cry, now that the audience has been unofficially given permission to kill.
It's normal for parties like this to devolve into warzones, and so it does as everybody pulls out their hidden knives or shotguns from sweater pockets, sleeves or boots and starts maniacally swiping at whoever's closest. Even the little group playing Monopoly in the corner turns out to be armed to the teeth and joins in the skirmish, hurling a few rounds at whoever dared to try them. After all, when you can respawn, killing is all in good fun, and Lifestealers know this far too well. At least everybody's drunk, so nobody's aim is good.
Branzy isn't the best at melee, but he can hold his own with the pistol hidden in his sweater. He loads the gun and fires a few shots at Parrot, who's getting a bit too close for his liking, and succeeds in landing a hit in the guy's shoulder. He yelps and stumbles backwards, allowing Branzy to duck away to avoid a thrown knife from Subz.
He really doesn't feel like going through the paperwork respawning brings with it, but the world had other plans for him today, in the form of Leowook's semi auto rifle. He wasn't even sure how he snuck that in, but before he knew it he'd been peppered with bullets and plunged into the dark void of death.

He awoke on a soft white hospital bed, free of injury but decidedly dizzier. The cold, crisp sheets were a comfort to his steaming body, and he turned over sideways to cool his cheek and saw a disappointed-looking nurse with scrubs and a hair cap on. He knew her face well from the many times he'd been here: "Oh, do keep yourself in one piece for more than three days, man. I'll get you your documentation-" and she's off.
He glances past her previous position to see Clown filling out paper on a clipboard a bed away, and when the now-masked man glances over he gives Branzy a little wave. He returns it with a smile, reminding him that even after all that, in the end they were all good friends.

He wouldn't be forgetting that party anytime soon, that was for sure.

─── ⋅☆⋅ ───

𝗮/𝗻: this was super fun to write lol. i might consider doing another similar oneshot but longer. chaos is fun yk? ☆ bk

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