As the other pledges were being installed for the party, Andy found his face crammed into Scruffy’s armpit as he was carried across the room. Scruffy had been pretty busy, and the slightly musky smell of sweat kept catching in Andy’s throat. He didn’t need to breathe, he probably didn’t even have lungs at this point, but he kept inhaling and exhaling anyway – panicking and trying to yell out, but his jaw was held in place by the pressure of the arm around him and the torso he was pressed against.
‘That’s the quietest he’s been all night,’ Cyclops chuckled, setting up an easel in the corner.
Scruffy laughed and took the rectangular object out from under his arm and put it down on the easel. It looked like a rigid 13”x11” board of smooth, pale tan material that was roughly 3” thick... with a human head on top of it. Andy squirmed, the whole board warping slightly but his squashed neck and his head were the most mobile, though his mussed up blonde hair remained rigid from the overuse of hair product. Before he had been flattened and squashed, he had looked every bit the stereotypical rich-boy. He had been coddled a lot in his childhood, and he was always the most dependant of his friends. He was relieved when he found they were all going to the same college because he wasn’t sure how he’d manage without them. His friends were a mixed bunch, and he found himself an unlikely addition to their social clique. They didn’t coddle him like his family did, and got him in to trouble a few times by convincing him to join their boyish escapades. Now, though, his friends had gotten him into a situation nobody could have predicted, and with none of them able – or willing - to help him out of it, he was well and truly helpless.
'You can’t do this to me!' Andy yelled, his voice a little muffled where his face had squashed against Scruffy’s armpit.
Cyclops nodded at Andy’s flat nose, ‘He’ll set like that if you’re not careful.’
Scruffy nodded. There wasn’t much point picking out these boys to use as furniture if they weren’t going to look their best doing it. He leaned in closely to Andy, who recoiled and blushed – acutely aware that he was naked as Scruffy’s eyes examined his delicate face. Scruffy gently stroked Andy’s face, making Andy blush more. Scruffy was only smoothing out a few creases and his gaze was actually somewhat cold. The man then remoulded Andy’s nose back in to its correct shape, gave him another look over, and stood back up to admire his work.
‘I like you better,’ Scruffy pondered, ‘when you’re quiet.’
Andy wasn’t quite sure what Scruffy meant by this.
‘Oh dude, you can’t,’ Cyclops laughed as he caught on, ‘It’s not in our instructions, and if he sets like that he’ll be stuck that way until his hazing is over.’
Andy started to panic again, ‘stuck what way!?’ He screamed, ‘Can’t what?! Don’t you dare do whatever it is! Fix me up right now! I’m telling you this is illegal! My father’s a lawyer!’
Scruffy frowned. He really wanted to smooth Andy’s mouth over to silence the kid while his setting body was still a malleable enough, and this new bout of yelling didn’t help Andy’s case.