Work Text:
“Maybe it’s time you get a new computer, man.”
“I can’t. I already gave this one a name.”
Sisco Karlisle stares exasperatedly at Free De La Hoya’s laptop screen as he opens and closes it for what feels like the millionth time that minute. He’s not some sort of tech wizard or anything, but somehow he’s always getting called in to fix his friends’ stuff ( i mean, come on, trad is literally right there and he probably knows more about what he’s talking about than sisco does, anyways. but trad makes real threats to not bother him while sisco’s are empty and that’s why everyone keeps bothering sisco ). This was the third time Free’s laptop has frozen up that week, and therefore it was the third time that Sisco had to get to the bottom of it himself because, as usually, the words that Free says are of no help to him.
“Were you on any sketchy websites?”
“Probably not.”
“Download anything weird recently?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s with all the ‘maybes’?”
“I don’t know.”
The computer finally boots up after the billionth time of trying to open it, and Sisco immediately seizes the chance because if he didn’t, then it might have frozen again and he did not have the patience to try and deal with this for a fourth time. He tries to use the trackpad and notices that the cursor teleports around the screen instead of moving smoothly. He clicks on the chrome tab which simply fades out after a few seconds of clicking it. And then the mouse buffers for what feels like forever , so he turns back to Free. “What the hell are you doing on this thing? Making uranium or some shit?”
“Sisco, I can’t make uranium from my computer. I can’t even 3D print that.”
“I—it was—I was trying to do a metaphor—whatever,” Sisco sighs, moving the mouse around again because that’s all he really knows how to do. Like he said, he wasn’t the IT guy, but he supposed having basic knowledge of how a computer should work is more than everyone else had going for them right now.
“...can I 3D print it?”
“You can’t think of anything else since you got that 3D printer, can you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, at least you’re admitting it,” Sisco sighs, going back to the screen. The cursor finally managed to cooperate with him and now actually appeared to be following—albeit sporadically—where he wanted it to go. “Okay, let’s see what we got here...” he says, clicking on the icon to open Free’s web browser, and then sits back watching it buffer. “I say we’ve got a good five minutes before that thing even starts to load. Anything else I should know beforehand? You got any freak tabs open right now?”
“Maybe, but I’m pretty sure you could just not click on them.”
“Yeah, okay, but how am I supposed to know what weirdo sites you go to, weirdo?”
“What do you consider weirdo sites?”
“Uh—well, you know. Weirdo sites.”
“Uh huh. Well, if we’re talking weirdo sites, I don’t have anything like that open. All I’ve got is youtube and a bunch of twitter profiles where they post pictures of their cats and stuff.”
“...then why did you say ‘maybe’??”
“I just like messing with you.”
“I swear to god one of these days I will have had enough. One of these days, I’m gonna—” and then Sisco sees the tabs beginning to load up in the flash of his glasses so he goes back to that instead of arguing with Free ( a fruitless endeavor, really ). “Okay, let me just click reopen closed tabs so we can go back to where you were before—my god...”
He’d say like 100 tabs opened back up, maybe more because he couldn’t even see what the addresses were—it was that congested. “Alright, your first issue is...all that.”
“All what?”
“All these damn tabs you have open! Like goddamn, what kind of operation are you running here that needs all these open? You grading papers or something?”
“No, all these tabs are important.”
“Okay. Alright. I want you to go through each and every tab—if you can even click on them before your computer blows up—and explain to me why you need the tab open.”
Free scrolls through every single tab for an agonizing amount of time waiting for them to load before giving his reasons ( they were very bad reasons by the way. he had a classroom open from when he was in high school “for nostalgia”. he had doordash open at all times “in case he was hungry” bro you have your PHONE ). Sisco thinks about arguing, but then realizes that he would probably lose no matter what he says because while Free was not a good speaker , he was probably the world’s best contrarian . So he decided to skip all the hassle and clicked the “close all” button instead.
“:(“ Free says.
“Now how the fuck did you do that. Actually, I don’t care, look, your screen is running better already now that you actually have the space to see what you’re doing.” However, running better is not exactly that high of a bar to clear when the standard was literally at the lowest possible setting. Sisco would probably describe the current state of the laptop as operable but still a complete utter and total pain in the ass to actually operate . “I’m gonna go ahead and see what shit you’ve got downloaded on this hunk of junk—by the way, I still think the best course of action would just be to get a new laptop. You know they got that other model on sale right now? Heard it runs pretty well, and it won’t take too long to transfer all the important (keyword important ) stuff, anyways.”
“But will it be named Elise ?”
“... you can name anything Elise .”
Free looks up, seemingly lost in thought. Sisco simply rolls his eyes and continues staring at the laptop waiting for the downloads file to load up—which was, as expected, taking forever. What the hell did Free do to this poor thing?
Sisco struck up conversation again as the icon seemed to buffer agonizingly slow with no sign of speeding up any time soon. “What do you even use this computer for, anyways? For a guy with so many goddamn tabs open, I’ve never actually seen you sit down and put this thing to use.”
“I use it to play Fireboy and Watergirl.”
“...”
“ In the Light Temple . Elements is fun, too.”
“Seriously man, what do you actually use this for?”
“Okay. Sometimes I play Run 3.”
“Alright, looks like everything is finally starting to load. Shut up.”
Sisco stares at the screen as Free’s files open, each row loading like it’s the worst web browsing experience in the entire world. “Is there anything I should be aware of before I start opening some of this? I don’t want like, ‘hot girl 7’ in my face. Well, not right now, anyways.”
“Sisco, I swear on my life, that would never happen. I’m gay, it would be ‘hot guy 7’.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let’s see what you got here.”
“You should start with that folder.”
“The one labeled jumpscares ? Yeah, not a chance.”
Sisco scrolls down when the screen reaches a functional state of loading. He figured it would be a good idea to sort by size, because whatever was causing the issues on Free’s computer must have been something big, right? Anyways, he wasn’t a tech wizard. But he always got rid of whatever was largest and irrelevant...est whenever he needed a quick cleanup on his laptop anyways, so it’s probably the same here.
The first thing that catches his attention is a locked folder, sitting right at the top of the downloads screen.
“...yo what’s this?” he asks, both because he is genuinely curious but also because he suspects that this mystery file is likely behind all of Free’s computer problems.
“Nothing,” Free answers quickly. “Move on.”
“Woah what’s the big deal?” Sisco grins. “What are you hiding in there?”
“Like I said, it’s nothing. Can we please move on.”
“I would, but I got a hunch that whatever’s in that file is probably what’s causing your computer to be slower than Trad’s fastest run time.”
“I’m gonna tell him you said that.”
“I make that comparison to his face all the time—if he hasn’t killed me by now, he never will. Anyways, what’s in the folder?”
“Nothing. If it’s causing problems then delete it, problem solved very easily .”
“If there’s nothing in it then how come it’s so damn huge? Like damn. Is there where all the ‘hot guy 7’s’ are?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, I don’t wanna delete it without finding out what’s inside. It might not actually be what’s freezing everything up, y’know? What’s the password?”
“I’m not gonna tell you. Delete it and if my computer still isn’t working then we’ll move on to the next one,” Free tries, exasperated for maybe the first time in his life.
“Is it your birthday? Is it my birthday?” Sisco tries a couple of the first things that come to his mind to no avail.
“Happy birthday.”
“Very funny. What about your favorite ice cream flavor?”
“Dude, I don’t even know my favorite ice cream flavor.”
“‘SiscoXFree4Ever’?”
“...gross.”
He tries that one and it doesn't work, and he agrees that it’s a rancid password anyways. “...if you don’t give me the password I won’t help fix it anymore.”
“That’s unfair.”
“You’re unfair.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Give me that—I’ll delete it myself.”
Sisco holds the laptop away from Free ( like a fucking child ) and kicks him away. “You won’t get much use of it in this state. It might still be messed up after you delete it—and what if there are some secret important computer files in there? You could completely brick your monitor.”
“There’s nothing important in there,” Free says, crawling over the couch and kneeing him in the stomach. Sisco falters, but is mostly fine due to his rock hard abs and ends up pushing Free off again, flipping over and sliding the screen underneath him. They are idiots.
“You’re stealing my personal property—that’s a crime.”
“Your computer’s existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of others.”
“I don’t really get it but honestly I don’t understand anything you say so whatever. Give me back my laptop or else I’ll go ape-shit.”
Sisco snorts. “Yeah, you’ll go ape-shit and put yourself in the hospital again. What’s wrong with hot guy 7? Are you trying to keep him all to yourself?”
“No, I’d share hot guy 7 with you. This is something else that you don’t need to see because if you open the file you’ll die.”
“Hell yeah, win-win.”
“It’s my secondary jumpscare file.”
“Liar.”
While this whole conversation has been going on, Sisco uses the minimal capacity of the computer’s functionality to search the desktop and other files for any documents that may contain the password. After finding mostly nothing of note ( he was gonna rip on Free for the OC folder one of these days ), he eventually reached a document simply titled “top secret folder on my laptop password”, with the only thing written in it being “kethup”. Yeah, kethup .
“Kethup,” he repeats out loud, and if he were capable of doing so, Free’s eyes would have widened at the sound of it.
“Don’t do it Sisco. You don’t know what you’re messing with.”
“Come on man, you’re finding out my deepest darkest secrets literally ALL the time, least you could do is let me have one of yours.”
“You’ll put the both of us in danger. I’ll—um. I will be very mad at you.”
Sisco gives him a thumbs up and enters the password for the folder, because he is an evil little man. He clicks open the file as Free sits down on the couch and—
Uh.
“Free.”
“Yeah what’s up?”
“I think I found out what’s making your computer screw up so bad.
“Yeah.”
“Why do you have 250 gigabytes of french fry pictures downloaded on your laptop?”
“...”
He is baffled. Appalled, maybe. Flabbergasted, perhaps. What the fuck? “...this is the dumbest thing to hide from someone, ever.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t really trying to hide anything. I acted all freaked out on purpose so you would feel like you actually accomplished something for once in your life after you opened it. I even misspelled the password on purpose in case you made a typo while entering it.”
“...so your master plan was to make a fool out of me? The very kind and generous man who always helps you fix your dumb ass laptop?” Sisco says, jaw still on the floor and skin about to break out in angry anime veins symbols.
“Kind and generous is a stretch. And yeah, basically, it’s my life’s philosophy. Everything I do, I do to embarrass you. Besides, I would never let you actually discover a secret of mine. That would just be pathetic.”
“What’s this one-sided relationship, now? Never? There’s a lot of time before we both die, dude.”
“Says you . I’m gonna live forever and you’ll probably dip tomorrow.”
“...I’m deleting the folder.”
“Wait don’t—it took me a long time to download all of that.”
“Hopefully it doesn’t take as long to delete. You’re welcome.”
“Sisco wait I didn’t mean it that folder has some really good pictures in it,” and then they were back to their dumb tussle. Because they are dumb, but they’re in love with each other, and doesn’t that matter more than dumb french fry pictures clogging up your dumb boyfriend’s computer so you have to fix it for the one millionth dumb time even though, as stated many many times previously, you aren’t a dumb tech wizard?
No. They are in love, but sometimes french fries are more trouble than they are worth. Or something like that. There’s a lesson in all this, but I’m not sure where.
Eventually, Sisco gets better at fixing computers and decides to use his newfound power in order to not help Free fix his computer anymore because he is tired ( but he fails at this task, because he’s certain he’d do anything for Free if he asked. ). At some point, Free uses the password ‘SiscoXFree4Ever’ for an unknown reason on an unknown file. It’s not so bad, he guesses. And he never did get those french fry pictures back, so he lost a couple of hours of the day, but his computer did run faster afterwards, so he couldn’t complain. He wonders what he should download next, and he wonders if he can download a program that can 3D print uranium.
Or maybe he’ll 3D print some french fries instead. Yum. Sisco might eat them by accident, which would be really funny, and also kind of cute.
They can share. All is fair in love and war.
And he will print some uranium, eventually. Mark his words.