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szallejhscorner · 3 years

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Hello Szallejh-chan. Can I request where the reader is living with Chishiya. The reader is like 4th year college student and Chishiya is already an intern and he was being paid (canonical Chishiya is rich coz his father is a doctor with high position). While the reader is struggling financially because she doesn't have a family anymore. She needed to support herself. She's struggling to balance part time jobs and being a full time student that it takes toll on her physical and mental health. She wouldn't ask Chishiya for money or would borrow money from him coz she's too shy and wanna keep her dignity. Like she's getting skinny and mentally drained and would often breakdown when Chishiya is not around because she's exhausted trying to survive and making ends meet. Then, by accident Chishiya heard her crying and found out that the reader is struggling financially and he helped her. I don't how would you do the helping part but I trust your judgment. Sorry if the explanation is too long I just wanted to be specific. Thank you! I hope you are healthy both physically and mentally ♥️ (this request is actually based on my current situation right now struggling between working and studying).

Hi Nonny (:

Wow, this is a long one. I'm sorry that you have to face such struggles right now, and I hope things will turn to the better for you soon! Thank you for the ask ~

If one of you is going through something similar, let me tell you that it’s not wrong to ask for help. We all have to endure situations that we can’t go through alone, and there will always be a way to get support. Don’t let things like this destroy you, because strength doesn’t mean to suffer alone. Strength means to reach out your hand before you fall to the ground.

Stay safe, all of you!

Would a trigger warning for a panic attack be appropriate here?

Falling Apart

You’re not sure you can do this much longer. It’s too much, all of it. This should have been a dream come true, living together with the most handsome man in entire Tokyo and studying what you’ve wanted to study since you were a little child.

In the end, it turns out to be a nightmare.

You feel drained. University is taking most of your time during the week, with all the papers and essays and courses you have to attend, and then there’s the part time jobs. Work at the grocery store every saturday and sometimes on other evenings as well, work as a waitress in the restaurant down the street on sundays.

The last day off you remember has been half a year ago, and still, you can’t even afford a simple breakfast. Financial support is rare when none of your family is left in the country, and the restaurant had issues with paying out your salary this month. There had been troubles already last month, and the month before.

With not a single penny left on your bank account, you don’t even have enough to buy a simple bottle of water. Payment from the store is just enough to pay the monthly rent, at least your half of it. Chishiya pays the other, and he doesn‘t struggle at all. How should he when he’s already working as a surgeon, in a famous clinic with a famous name? Some would even call him rich, although he couldn’t care less about that.

And yet here you are, starving while sitting in front of a brimful fridge.

The food has all been bought by Chishiya, with the money he earned. You don’t deserve any of it, and you refuse to take it. As a grown-up woman, you should be able to afford your own stuff, right? You shouldn’t rely on your boyfriend for such simple needs.

Chishiya wouldn’t even mind to pay it for you. He would instantly pay all of the rent if you told him about your struggles, but you’d rather sink into the ground than do that. He knows that it’s not easy for you, yes, although you’re doing a good job making him believe that it still works out so far. Despite the regular breakdowns you’re suffering from.

Looking at the tremble in your hands, you don’t think you can keep it up much longer. You’ve been so tired for an eternity now, and not only because there is not really an opportunity for you to sleep much. It’s the mental exhaustion that’s the worst, the fears and worries and doubts shouting and screaming inside your mind, causing you headache after headache.

Today you’ve been lucky that the restaurant’s chef offered all of you some snacks as an apology for the lack of payment, but a couple of fries and burritos can’t make up for the weeks and months of stress you’re going through. And it won’t help your current state to get much better at all.

You don’t need to take a look into the mirror to know what you’d glance at - a creature made of nothing but skin and bones, dark bags under the eyes and protruding cheekbones. The glow in your eyes has long vanished, being replaced by a constant worry how you’re supposed to make it through each day.

You’re tired, and you’re hungry. But most of the time, you just want to sleep. Hours. Days. Weeks. An entire month.

The worst is that you know this will never be possible. Instead of allowing yourself to dream, the nightmare continues to get darker. Afraid to go to bed because the next day will only be worse than the last, and because it will only bring new problems instead of solutions.

With a defeated sigh, you drop down onto the chair. Chishiya’s chair. All of the furniture inside this house belongs to Chishiya. The table, the kitchen, the carpet you walk on. Nothing is yours. You’re like a vermin, infesting this house. Unasked. Unwanted.

Useless.

The tremble of your hands increases, and so does your heartbeat. It begins to race painfully against your ribs, while at the same time, invisible claws tighten around your lungs, making it impossible for you to breathe.

All warmth has vanished from your body, replaced by ice cold needles that spike your skin together with the freezing sweat running down your spine. Like a sharp blade cutting deep into what’s left of you, draining you even more.

The worst is that you can’t breathe. Trying to do so hurts too much, and you hear your own voice gasp and plead for it to end. It’s a frightening sound, like a scared and hurt animal. Weak, desperate, brittle and fragile. Terrifying.

Trying to move, you realize that your legs don’t obey any longer. They have been replaced by a huge mass of concrete, unable to carry you away from this place. You’re frozen in space, helpless and alone.

You need to sleep. You need to breathe. You need to sleep! You need to breathe!!

All of a sudden, hands appear out of nowhere and clench around your wrists, pinning them onto the table while a body against your back doesn’t allow you to move. Its warmth is too much, and the claustrophobia makes you gasp even more. It’s only making it worse. And you can’t manage to scream proper words to make that clear.

“Focus on breathing.”

That voice. Chishiya. Last time you had checked the clock, it had been hours left until the end of his shift, and it feels like only minutes have passed since then. How long have you been sitting on that chair? How could hours have passed just like the blink of an eye?

No matter what, this is too much. The warmth of his skin against your cold body. The force with which he keeps you still. No. No. NO! “I-... you have... let me... please... Please, I-”

Your voice is nothing but a scratch, unable to build a proper sentence. And Chishiya doesn’t listen; instead, his touch only intensifies.

“Focus. On. Breathing.”

You do. You’re not exactly given another chance anyway, so you listen to the sounds of Chishiya’s mouth close to your ear and try to mimic them. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Surprisingly, it helps. Despite the pain and pressure around your chest, your lungs still fill your air. You’re not suffocating, no matter how much it feels like you do. You’re not dying. And together with your breathing, your heartbeat returns to normal as well. The rush in your ears ebbs away and some of the warmth returns to your limbs. While your fingers are still trembling, it’s not that bad any longer, and it takes you a while to realize that Chishiya isn’t holding your wrists any more, finally giving you the freedom you longed for.

You focus on breathing for a while longer. In an out. In and out. In and out.

Then, as unexpectedly as Chishiya’s hands, a mug of hot chocolate is placed in front of you. The warmth of the cup immediately spreads to your hands when you wrap them around it, and the sweet scent is soothing while you wipe your cheeks dry of tears that you didn’t even notice falling.

Chishiya sits down on a chair next to you, with enough distance that he doesn’t touch you. While he has never seen you like this before, he seems to know exactly what’s good for you. Not that you ever wanted him to see you that weak... He was never supposed to witness that side of yours. And you have to pull yourself together to stop your hands from trembling harder again. It can’t be helped now; it’s too late to hide.

“You need to quit one job.”

His voice is calm and determined, and it sounds so easy when he says that! Of course you know that it would be better. You would want to quit both of them actually, to focus on studying and good grades, but you can’t. It’s nothing but an unreachable dream reminding you of the helpless situation you’re in. “I... can’t.”

Your voice still sounds desperate and forein. Too weak. You don’t want to sound weak.

Chishiya exhales a breath and watches how you sip your chocolate. At least the drink helps to ease your sore throat, but the look in his eyes is unquestionable. “I don’t care which one. Two are too much. I can’t allow you to continue like this.”

Those words sound so weightless, spoken by his lips. A man who has never faced financial struggles, who has a rich dad, a well-paid job. Everything. He doesn’t know what it’s like to dread every day because the money will never suffice for the entire month. It is so easy for him to offer help, when he‘s not the one living in shame. No, you are the person not able to provide themselves with food and all. The vermin that has to beg for everything.

In the following silence, you realize that you have spoken those thoughts out loud. Not that the current situation could get much worse.

“Is that really what you think?”

He could never understand. It’s not his dignity about to be thrown away. Just yours.

You don’t answer, but the look in your eyes must have said enough. Chishiya places his hands on the table, so close that his warm skin is brushing against your cold fingers. “One year.”

“Huh?” Unable to follow his train of thought, you simply stare at him, causing him to chuckle.

“Let me pay the rent for one year. Focus on university until then. You can keep one job or quit both, but two is not an option. One year. When things look better then, you can pay it back bit by bit. You won’t owe me money then, and you won’t be in my debt.”

It’s an easy offer. You know he will be able to pay it without any effort, and while you don’t feel comfortable with it, you will pay him back. Not because he needs the money, but because you need it for your dignity. Maybe, if you want to avoid such breakdowns in the future... well, it could be worse, couldn’t it?

You lean against his shoulder, and never before have you wanted to sleep so much. Never before, even though you’ve had such breakdowns already, you have felt so tired. “I love you, Chishiya, but...”

“Then prove it.”

Too tired to ask, you reach out for the mug of chocolate to take another sip, knowing that Chishiya will explain it to you anyway.

“Prove it and stop destroying yourself like this.”

You sigh. His offer makes sense, and you would be foolish to decline. Most of all, he does it because he cares for you. Because he thinks you’re worth more than going through such struggles.

“Okay. One year. Not a single day longer.”

#chishiya #chishiya shuntaro #aib chishiya #chishiya x reader #oneshot #alice in borderland #imawa no kuni no alice

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lexa-lives-in-us · 3 years

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Saving Tips for Hard Times

I found this old document where I collected a series of tips to save money. This is all part of my experience of when I was near homeless, and some work depending on where you live, some don’t. Here we go.

BILLS:

1. The optimum temperature for refrigerator operation is 5°C, and -18°C for freezer operation. As a rule of thumb, for each additional degree of refrigeration output about six percent more electricity is used.

2. Unplug your appliances. Lamps, microwave, tv, computers etc. They don't need to be plugged until you use them, and it saves energy to keep them unplugged. Therefore, money.

3. Do homework for phone companies and internet plans. Call them! Often they are toll free and if you mentioned that you were already with them or thinking of going with them and then found out another company had a better deal, they could offer you deals for lower prices. I had to do it all the time for my phone, until they couldn't really offer anything better.

4. BIKE. Invest in a used bike if you can, especially for the warmer months. It offsets the transit costs and better your health.

5. WALK. That's the same as the bike, honestly.

6. Pay your bills on time, you will avoid late fees which can up to HUNDREDS of dollars wasted over the course of a year. If you can, set up automatic payments so you don’t forget.

FRIDGE:

1. Every time the refrigerator door is opened, cold air escapes and warm ambient air enters. To compensate for the temperature increase in its interior, the refrigerator must then use energy to bring the temperature back down. Always avoid opening the door unnecessarily and for too long.

2. When defrosting frozen food place it in the refrigerator. Not only does this ensure that the food is carefully defrosted, its presence cools down the refrigerator interior, reducing the amount of work that the compressor has to do, and therefore lowering energy consumption.

3. Never put warm food in the refrigerator as this will heat up the interior, as well as other stored foods. Hot food should always be allowed to cool to room temperature before placing it in the refrigerator

MONEY:

1. Keep all the containers like glass bottles, juice bottles, jars, cans etc. Look for your Return-It depot and have trips to return them. They give back coins for laundry, small expenses etc

2. Use that junk mail. Go through it, find coupons for food, for essentials like toilet paper or shampoo.

3. CHECK. THAT. DOLLARSTORE. They often have things like pasta, ketchup, toilet paper, batteries etc for literally 1 dollar. Pasta is pasta, toilet paper is toilet paper. Seriously. Don't need to spend 5$ on a shampoo bottle when you can have it for 1/5 of the price.

4. Do homework and check with different banks for which one offers a better plan. Some of them are willing to help out. Sit down with their advisors, find the best solution!

5. Use the envelope system! For example, one envelope with a label “food” the other with “entertainment” the other with “bills”. Then set the right amount of cash for each. That’s what you’re allowed to spend each month. If you realize you need more for food, grab it from the entertainment envelope. Adapt and arrange as needed.

6. If you can, set up an automatic saving (example 50$ every paycheck) for both regular saving AND an emergency fund.

7. Use the 24-Hour Rule. Avoid purchasing expensive or unnecessary items on impulse with a self-imposed 24-hour rule. For any non-essential item, wait 24 hours before purchasing. It’s perfect for online shopping where your items can simply be added to your cart to purchase later.

8. Make a grocery list BEFORE going to the grocery store and STICK to it. You’re going to avoid buying things you don’t really need.

9. DO. NOT. SHOP. WHILE. YOU. ARE. HUNGRY. Or you’ll end up buying food that you actually don’t need just because you feel snacky!

10. Only use ATMs from your bank, or you get charged small fees.

11. Set a “No Spend Day” per week, where you consciously DO NOT spend any money for that day.

12. Ditch the paper: Cutting out paper towels and using cloths and napkins that you can simply wash and reuse is a simple way to save.

13. After you wear clothes, hang them outside your wardrobe, on a door or something. You can air them out a bit, then stick them in the closet without washing. You can basically reuse the same clothes two or three times without having to wash them, sometimes they just need a bit of air and they won’t smell AT ALL.

14. If you don’t own or want to spend money on an iron, hang whatever blouse you need to iron in the bathroom while you shower. The steam will humidify the fabric and straighten it up.

15. Hang stuff to dry. Really don’t need to spend money on the dryer.

16. Sign up to the library. They have so many books and DVDs nowadays. You can also just go, sit at the library and stay warm for a while, so that you don’t have to sit at home and either suffer the cold or use money on your own heat.

17. Budget, budget, budget. Get a lil notebook, write down the monthly expenses, cut what you don’t need. It gets easier with time.

FOOD:

1. Make a meal plan. Write 10-14 days worth of dishes that you can do (lunch, dinner, everything you need). You can then toss them around as you go on with your week, but that way you have a pretty clear idea of what you use and the food you go through for how long. It also reduces the risks of getting take out since you already have plans for what to eat.

2. Cook double! Seriously. Make that dinner and double it up. Leftovers can be frozen or put in the fridge for the day after.

3. Meal prep. Once a week, prep a bunch of different recipes. Let them cool down, stick them in the freezer. At that point you’ll already have all these meals at the ready to just thaw/microwave or oven up.

4. You don’t need pop. You don’t need alcohol. You most likely don’t need milk, but go for it if you wanna. Just remember dairy products go bad WAY more quickly than non dairies, so consider getting food and drinks with no dairy in them. Mainly, though. Water. Just drink water. Lots of it too! Sometimes our brain can’t tell the difference between hunger and thirst. You think you’re snacky? Drink some water instead! It’ll quell your hunger.

5. Freeze fruit! If you think you’re not gonna be able to eat fruit in time, put it in a Tupperware or a ziplock and slap it in the freezer. You’ll be able to then use it for smoothies.

6. Use the Italian saying “Colazione da re, pranzo da nobili, cena da poveri.” Which quite literally means “Breakfast as a king, lunch as a noble, dinner as a poor.” Breakfast should be very filling, carbs, protein, vitamins. It carries you for the whole day. Lunch should be quite filling too! But supper doesn’t really need a lot of it, and if you REALLY have to skip a meal, skip supper. Your body doesn’t need that much sustenance while sleeping.

7. This is for the desperate times but I’ve done it, and I would do it again if I ever had to. Go to markets that have like… Fruits and veggies. Talk to them. Ask them “HEY, can I have the fruit/veggie that you have to throw away?” Ask them if you can have the ugly produce, the one that doesn’t look pretty enough to be put out. Or ask them to have whatever extra they have to dump because is past the expiry date. EXPIRY DATE IS USUALLY MUCH LONGER THAN WHAT THE LABEL SAYS. I wouldn’t risk it with dairy stuff or with things that are VERY expired, but one or two days? Totally fine, I promise. And if you have to? Dumpster Dive. Especially at markets with fruit and veggies that have to be sold on the same day (because it’s not considered “fresh” past that day.) Or behind pizza places like Dominos or Panago or whatever chain. They get pizza orders wrong all the time. Just give a peak behind these buildings and look inside their boxes. You have no idea how many times I found perfectly fine pizzas. For free! IF YOU DUMPSTER DIVE, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GLOVES, A MASK AND PLASTIC BAGS TO PUT YOUR STUFF IN. ONCE AT HOME, DISCARD GLOVES AND WASH PRODUCE THROUGHLY. Also check tumblr for your divers community, they usually know the best spots.

CLOTHES:

1. Thrift shop! So many GOOD used clothes are out there! Honestly! My whole wardrobe is thrifted and everything looks brand new. It takes a bit of research and maybe that shirt you liked is not in your size, but you can find EVERYTHING, from socks to bras, at a thrift store. Don’t thrift underwear though. You want to go new with those.

2. Invest in some needle and thread, then open youtube. There are SO MANY tutorials that teach you how to mend holes in socks and underwear. And really, no one will really notice if a mend is perfectly done or not. After a week, you’ll forget it too! But that prevents you from throwing away clothes that could just be mended a little.

3. Something doesn’t fit you? Too small, too big? YouTube, homie. They have tutorials on how to fix these kinda things! All you need, again, is needle and thread.

4. Organize clothes swaps with friends and/or neighbors. Everyone brings clothes they don’t need, put them in a pile. Go through the pile and grab whatever there is. There’s no money exchange, one could go home with 1 item and one could go home with 50 items. Who cares? The extra stuff… DONATE IT TO A SHELTER.

Feel free to add more, and stay safe!

#saving #saving tips #saving tip #money management #savings #small savings #homeless #saving account #my tips #signal boost #thrifting #dumpster diving #recycle #creative reuse #reduce reuse recycle #reducereuserecycle

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thecampfirestory · 3 years

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so this is smth my friends and i used to do in middle school and i just remembered it and it gives mad cf! gang vibes so:

we would ... borrow ... 3 shopping carts from the grocery store near our school , then flip one upside down . the other 2 shopping carts are positioned on opposite sides of a basketball court . we split into 3 pairs of 2 , 2 people got into the regular shopping carts with branches/twigs . their partners would push the shopping carts towards each other at full speed , all 4 of the people are screaming . THEY ARE ROMAN CHARIOTS GLADIATOR FIGHTING !1!1!1! the 3rd pair of people are the lion and the emperor (emperor gets to watch the chaos) . the “lion” would go into the upside down shopping cart and make feral noises like gRhagGahNshrnRrhgHhrr as the chariot fight happens . then , the winner of the chariot fight decides if they want to challenge the lion and if they won , they would be emperor (which would mean they got to pick the roles for the next time we did this and be able to sit and just watch) or they could let the loser challenge the lion and if they won then they’d be emperor . if not , the lion gets to be emperor next time . whoever loses the lion fight has to return the shopping carts and buy the group snacks and or drinks .

i wanna say ypu IMMEDIATELY had me the moment you say "we would.....borrow.... 3 shopping carts" and then it only got better and better as u kept on going GSHDHDIJDNDJDK

YES ABSOLUTELY 100% this is DEFINITELY something they do

they all go feral and yes i am including Roman if he gets to be the lion he WILL roar as loud as he can

#ask #campfire!concepts #campfire!vee #campfire!nate #campfire!achilles #campfire!florian #campfire!cadmus #campfire!dee

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ms-demeanor · 5 years

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You know what’s funny is whenever I make a tech post I get people going “this is blatantly untrue” and I get people going “this is really good information and everyone needs to know it” and the dividing line is how much time you spend with people who are tech literate.

Yep, I would tell my computer savvy friends where they could get keycaps and fix their keyboards; I don’t even have to bother telling my computer savvy friends how to run a fifteen year old laptop because we’re all pretty good at it.

But GODDAMN I just read a response to my “cheap computer season” post that claimed that it was totally reasonable to run a macbook from 2010 and

Look.

That’s not a reasonable thing to tell a student who needs a functional computer to do research and write papers. (have fun trying to find installation discs from when the OS was still named after cats and have fun trying to get a browser to get along with that OS)

You know why most people bring me laptops with missing keys? Because the key got ripped off by their two-year-old and damaged the soldering in the keyboard and I have no idea it’s going to be “oh, yeah, that’s a ten dollar fix” or “sorry, that’s going to be an hour and a half to disassemble and reassemble and we’ll have to order you a new keyboard specific to that model out of new old stock” and the thing is the second one is much, much, much more common in my experience than the first.

Do I think you need to replace a laptop when the bezel is cracked? No. I also don’t carry my laptop powered on in the bag with a flashdrive sticking out of the USB port. Customers do weird things that I don’t understand and when a customer tells me they want me to fix the bezel they think it’s a twenty-dollar snap-on repair because they have no idea how this works and then they get mad at me when I explain “no, you’ve gotta have this specific piece of plastic, these haven’t been made in five years, and you might be better off buying a used model online than trying to track down a new bezel.”

So here’s the thing: Can Macs get viruses?

There are three answers here.

“No, of course not, Macs are made to be virus-proof”

“Macs need antivirus protection because, while it is less common than infections for PCs, there are types of malware that can infect macs and it’s worthwhile to guard against that”

“tEcHnIcAlLy a virus has to be self-replicating and IOS’s file management system [or some other bullshit] prevents that so TECHNICALLY Macs can’t get viruses and what you need is anti-malware software if you need anything because you’re fairly likely to have security through obscurity”

I’m aware of the third position and voicing the second position to people who believe the first position.

YES TECHNICALLY YOU CAN KEEP A COMPUTER RUNNING INDEFINITELY AND YES IT’S TOTALLY POSSIBLE YOUR LAPTOP WILL LAST TEN YEARS.

“Well if you treat it right and run it well it’ll be in great shape for a long time”

YES THAT IS CORRECT DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK ON THEIR OWN CARS DRIVE AROUND WITH THE OIL CHANGE LIGHT ON FOR MONTHS?!?

Tons of people in the world today use computers. They use computers every day, they use computers at home and at school and at work.

Tons of people drive every day. They use cars for fun and for commuting and for their jobs.

That doesn’t mean that all (or even most, or even half) of the people using these things is any good at keeping them running, or even has the barest idea of how to start tracking down a problem.

Someone in the notes of that post described a green line on their screen and thought that was a symptom of hard drive problems. I don’t have the hours in the day to catch this person up to speed on why a display issue on a laptop isn’t indicative of hard drive issues.

Do you know how much people think it’s going to cost to get data off of a broken drive? Not “won’t power up” not “won’t spin” but “I dropped this and part fell off and now it won’t power up or spin and also the platter is chipped”? I’m going to have to send that shit to a clean room and the customer is *staggered* that it might cost more than a hundred dollars to get their data. “Outrageous, what kind of blackmail operation are you trying to run here, just plug it in and get my pictures.”

A year or so ago I was at Jiffy Lube (ew). I’d been shooting the shit with the mechanic when a parent and child rolled in in a panic. And they should have been panicking! They’d thrown a fucking rod because they’d been driving with no oil in the car for god knows how long because neither of them had had the oil changed in the two years they’d owned the vehicle.

*I* can keep a 30-year-old car running. I can put a belt back on an engine in a dark parking lot with a wrench and a headlamp. I can drop a gas tank and replace my fuel filter and thumb my nose at the mechanics who tried to upsell me on “replacing your old, worn-out air filter” the day after I’d popped a new one into my truck.

These folks couldn’t keep a new car running with three alarms telling them what was wrong.

*I* can power up my 2005 macbook running Leopard and use garage band to record a song or do some design work on my copy of Adobe CS3; I can kludge its FF3.5 browser into playing nice with the internet and accept that it’s going to be a slow piece of shit.

The lady who called me confused by the fact that the password to her email was different than the login information for her grocery store rewards account will not be able to function if she gets a pop-up that says she’s using an outdated browser and will think it’s a virus if her bank won’t let her log in on that browser.

And you know what, I’m kind of sick of this attitude.

I would *fucking adore it* if computers were actually easy to repair; I’d love it if you could run new OSs on old hardware (especially on macs because I think apple are kind of shitheads about planned obsolescence).

But you know what, no, most people *CAN’T* reasonably expect to use a ten-year-old computer and have pleasant experience of it. It’s going to run slow. It’s going to shut down when they don’t want it to. The battery is going to swell slightly with the heat and your touchpad is going to go nuts. Your USB ports will stop working. Standard wear and tear that most people don’t know how to protect against and don’t know how to repair is going to make it harder to use AND software requirements will outstrip the hardware capabilities of the computer.

If your old computer sucks it’s not your fault. If you can’t happily use a 10-year-old laptop to do your homework that’s okay, it wasn’t designed for you to use it that way and YOU SHOULDN’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT.

Because that’s kind of what a lot of these “well anybody should realistically be able to run a laptop from 2010″ responses comes down to: if you need new hardware you’re just not doing it right. If you have to replace your computer you didn’t make good choices when you bought it. If your battery dies it’s because you didn’t take care of it.

No. No. No. No.

This shit is A) designed to fail and B) actually really hard to keep running (hey how many blown capacitors do you think someone has to have on their motherboard before you say it’s not their fault for wanting to replace the laptop)

ALSO SOMEONE IN THE RESPONSES OF THAT POST LITERALLY SAID THAT IF YOUR BATTERY DIED AT THREE YEARS IT WAS BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T DOING THE DRAIN CHARGE CYCLE RIGHT AND FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. It’s discharge cycles and heat, motherfucker; they are going to fail at some point and people shouldn’t feel bad if their batteries stop working after a couple years.

UGH.

You shouldn’t have to be a mechanic. You shouldn’t have to be a computer technician. Yeah, your shit will last longer if you know how to take care of it but, fuck. Imagine you were still using internet speeds from 2010. Imagine all your devices still had USB 2.0. Imagine you couldn’t log onto your online bank because your hardware won’t run he software that your bank recognizes because the hardware manufacturer decided it won’t support the older hardware.

What I was trying to get across in that initial post was “computers fail, and they fail pretty frequently; your life will be better and you will save money if you plan on replacing them at a regular interval and have reasonable expectations in terms of cost and failure. So buy a cheap computer now because you’re probably going to need one at some point”

And now I’ve got to Do A Yell about how there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism and it’s unreasonable to expect tired, overworked, broke people to become experts in computer repair in order to do their homework or play the goose game.

FUCK THAT.

IT’S CHEAP COMPUTER SEASON MOTHERFUCKERS. LAPTOP FAILURE RATES INCREASE AT THREE TO FIVE YEARS AND DESKTOP FAILURE RATES INCREASE AT FIVE TO SEVEN YEARS. RIGHT NOW THERE ARE DISCOUNTS ON NEW COMPUTERS AND IT’S CHEAP TO GET AN EXTENDED WARRANTY.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER AND WORK ON COMPUTERS IF YOU WANNA AND PLAN TO REPLACE REGULARLY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WORK ON COMPUTERS.

ALSO CHANGE YOUR FUCKING OIL YOU’RE PROBABLY DUE.

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rrazor · 3 years

Text

everyday is everyday | m. issei

tags: domestic fluff, alcohol, pda

“hey.”

you look at him, chin in your hand. your fingers cover half of your mouth.

“what?”

his curls fall over his right eye. it makes you smile: how soft they are, curly they are, the way they fall over his eye. you gently brush them away.

“i have a trade offer.” he scooches closer. you lean back, he leans closer. you’re leaning against the wall now, caged in by it, the desk, the booth wall and him. your hand stays stubbornly on your chin.

“what is it?”

he wants your hand off your chin so he takes it away. he’s taken aback when you push it against his chest.

“wait, my back hurts.”

“oh.” relief. he lets you sit up but stays close, in your personal space, popping your bubble.

“well? what’s the trade?”

he watches your hair spread out against the back of the seat as you lean against it. he mirrors you and laces your hands together.

“well,” he purses his lips. “i was thinking…”

you hum. out of the corner of your eye, you see tommy from calc one. in your eyes, there’s issei.

“—that if i receive a kiss, i’ll give you in return.”

you raise a brow. “really? that’s it?”

he pouts, dipping his head lower as a hand comes up to squish your cheeks. “hey.”

you’re in public—the economic department’s study space and—,

“didn’t say ‘no’,” you grin.

he grins too, cheeks pinking when you lean up to kiss him. he tastes like the vanilla flavoured lip balm you gave him last week. a squish to your cheeks has your lips puckering lingering than you’d like them to be as he plants a swift one before finally pulling away.

“well?”

“mm?” he rests his forehead on yours.

“where’s my kiss?”

he chuckles at the endearing frown on your pretty face, thumbing over your soft cheek. “right here.”

a yawn and there’s tears forming in your corner of your eyes. through the kitchen window, you watch as the street lights flicker on, muddled orange yellow spots giving light to the streets.

“where did you get them?”

a look to your right, past issei’s shoulders and you see a girl with balayage highlights in her dark hair. she’s pretty, real pretty. a little blurry but you can still tell her eyes are gorgeous. you don’t know if she’s paying attention to you right behind him, sitting on the kitchen island. she asks another question, “which one’s your favourite?” you know, that which, out of the eight piercings he had, was his favourite but you’re not about to tell her. resting your head on his shoulder, you look down, accustomed to the way people tried to hit him up.

he tells her his favourite as his fingers grace along the inside of your calf. his thumb and fingers dance along the skin of your ankle, drawing images you try to visualize in your head as you close your eyes.

“right, babe?”

you glance up at him.

“sorry?”

he puts his drink down and turns around, facing you entirely. you half wish he wasn’t so broad and tall so you’d be able to see who else was around you.

“tired?” he mumbles, kissing your forehead.

“a little.” you sit up straighter, stretching a little. the girl with the nice golden hair is half a ways away, walking back to her group of friend who start to comfort her. “what were you talking about earlier?”

“the time hiro almost broke the chair at the shop with how hard his leg had kicked when he got his.”

you hum, admiring how good he looks in the starchy yellow light. “did it hurt?” you rub a finger over his bushy brow, lighting passing over the studs in his skin.

“my piercings? or his?” he has a hand on your knee now, other one over yours on the counter. he watches as you giggle, tipping away a little more than you would if it wasn’t for the red solo cup in your left hand.

“no,” you lilt. he laughs along with you, kissing you through your cute fit of laughter.

“meant when you fell from heaven,” you slur, breaking away into another melody of giggles.

he chuckles, putting your arms around his neck as he carries you, keeping you tucked tight against his chest. “do i look like i came from heaven, babe?”

you nod, lying your head on his shoulder as he takes you to the car, to home, to heaven.

he feels you before he sees you, arms around his waist, head between his shoulders.

“you’re back.” he automatically puts his hands over yours and also over the large mango in your hand.

“‘m back.”

“why’re you holding a mango?”

“it’s huge,” sugawara snorts. “the heck you get that from?”

you release your arms to stand next to them, holding the precious fruit in the palm of your hands. “from the grocery store.”

“why a mango?” sugawara takes a sip of his caramel macchiato.

you shrug, rubbing the smooth skin.

“y’gonna eat it like an apple?” he continues.

you shrug again. “maybe.”

sugawara looks at issei, who shrugs at well, before announcing his leave for his chemistry class.

issei looks down at you and offers his coffee which you shake your head at. “why’d you get a mango?”

“it was all i could afford,” you say. “wanna share?”

he chuckles, “sure. you hungry though?”

you grin, tucking the mango into your armpit and putting your palms together. “snacks?”

he puts his hand into yours, placing a kiss on your forehead. “got mints, but i’ll treat you to something at the new korean restaurant.” he leads you along to the school’s food court, buying you a plate of black bean noodles and pork dumplings on the side to share. you share your large mango, bought for $1.29 plus tax. you cut it into three and he gets the juice all over his hands when he takes the middle part with the refuse. the fruit is tender and he laughs when it slips out of your hand a tad only for you to use your chin to stop it from falling. it’s sweet, sticky and you have to hold onto his phone while he washes his hands in the washroom.

“hand cream?”

he pockets his phone and nods, holding his hand out for you. “is it mango-scented?”

“nope” you squeeze out a generous amount out for him. “pomegranate. this is mango-scented though.” you pull out a tube of lip balm and he stills his head, letting you put it on for him. the scent is soft, but strong and he finds himself nodding at how nice it is.

“it’s nice, isn’t it?”

he hums his agreement, helping you zip up your backpack and taking your hand to walk you to your next class. he kisses you good luck and is there to pick you up at 5:30pm on the dot, surprising you with a bag of mangoes.

“look!”

he looks, watching as you unpack something that’s a pretty mint green and white. “a wireless keyboard?” he reads.

you grin happily, delicately setting everything down on the table and pressing at the keys, satisfied with the sound and feel them. “wanna try?” you pass it on to him as you glimpse over the instruction manual. he taps at the keys and grabs onto the small mouse that came with it.

“this is so small,” he mutters.

“hm?” you look over to see the entirety of his palm already cover the top of the mouse. “oh.” you take it from him and while it is noticeably smaller than a regular mouse, it works just fine. “it’s fine,” you say, testing the scrolling bit.

he helps you set it up, tiny mouse and everything. sitting next to you, he watches as you open up your notes app and type gibberish onto the page, a look of sheer joy on your face. he smiles along, slotting himself behind you while you type away like a little secretary.

“think you’re gonna be more productive?”

“nope!” you laugh. “but at least it’s cute; it’s for the aesthetic, ‘sei.”

he snickers, placing his much larger hands over yours as he too, types away on your new keyboard, mashing keys and filing the screen.

“stooop.” you move to swat his hands. “i can’t move my hands!”

he laughs, enveloping them entirely despite your protests but eventually does let you go after a couple of thrashes and elbows to his stomach.

“it’s a nice keyboard though,” he adds, kissing your forehead.

you huff, returning a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “‘course. i have good taste, y’know.”

“mhm,” he chuckles, hand coming up to hold your jaw gently as he plants a full one on your lips. “i know.”

#matsukawa issei x reader #matsukawa issei #matsukawa x reader #haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #hq x y/n #hq!!#mattsun x reader #matsukawa drabble

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atlafan · 4 years

Text

Take it Slow - Part Sixty-Eight

a/n: okay this is my first shot at a harry:y/n fic, and it will be multiple parts. y/n had a bad experience with an ex over a year ago, and finally accepts her coworker and good friend Niall’s invitation to go on a blind date with his friend Harry.

Warnings: FLUFF SO MUCH FLUFF, and a wee bit of smut.

Masterpost (all previous parts can be found in the masterpost)

The next day you and Harry drive out to a Lowe’s to check out their outdoor section. Your balcony wasn’t huge, but it was large enough to fit a small table a few chairs, with room to fit a grill.

“These chairs are comfy.” You say sitting down on one of them. “Come sit, tell me what you think.” Harry shrugs and takes a seat in your lap, and you start laughing.

“Rather comfortable I’d say.” He moves his butt from side to side. “Could really see myself sittin’ on this outside.”

“Harry!” You squeal. “Get your big butt off of me, we’re in public!” You giggle. He turns to look at you.

“Oh, so when we’re in public you don’t want this ass, but at home-“

“Harry!” Your face goes beat red, and he stands up. You stand up and shake your head at him. “Please, just sit in the chair.”

“Geeze, didn’t think you’d get all flustered.” He sits down. “This genuinely is a nice chair, I think we should get a few.” He stands up and takes your hand. “What do you think of a glass table, this round one looks nice?”

“Good eye, I agree.” He kisses your temple, and then you go to look at the grills.

“We don’t need a huge one right now, just somethin’ to get the job done.”

“I don’t even know how often we’d use it, we don’t eat meat.”

“Yeah, but we could throw veggie burgers on it, or just regular veggies. Corn, god, I love corn on the cob in the summer.”

“Me too, actually.”

You both pick one out that you like, and find an associate to order everything up. The gift card your dad gave you was a big help. They said they’d be able to deliver everything by the middle of the week. Harry walks over to the paint section to show you some of the colors he’s thinking for his office.

“Lou called me yesterday, forgot to tell you.” Harry says on your drive home.

“Oh? Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah, everything’s fine. They’ve just pushed the date off a little later. El wants to wait until the baby’s born. Said she didn’t want to be pregnant in all of her photos.”

“Don’t blame her for that.”

“Neither does he. Plus it just gives them more time to save up for everything.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Oh, she’s good, about to start her second trimester. Lou said you can actually see her bump. He’s been enjoying actually gettin’ to be a part of things this time. He didn’t get to do any of the pre-baby stuff with his ex, other than a few doctor’s appointments. He said every night he rests his head her stomach and like talks to the baby.”

“That is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’d do the same thing, you know?”

“I’m sure you would. You’d have a stack of bedtime stories ready to go too.”

“Mhm, and I’d sing to it.”

“Harry…you don’t sing now.”

“I do sometimes.”

“Only if the volume’s turned all the way up.”

“Maybe I get a little self-conscious because you’re such a good singer.”

“I am not, stop it.”

“You’re more confident.”

“Doesn’t mean I sound good. Although, when I can actually hear you, I have to say, you have a lovely voice.” He blushes and takes your hand to kiss it.

You get home and start up a few chores. Your sheets were in desperate need of a wash. Harry scrubs down the kitchen while you take care of the living room.

“We can go to the grocery store tomorrow right? I don’t really feel like goin’ back out.” He says.

“Of course, no rush with that. Just wanted to get some of the cleaning done today.” Harry’s phone goes off, and he answers it.

“Hello?” He furrows his brows and then his face softens. “Oh hey! Yeah, no, just took me a second, how are you?” He walks away from you. You shrug and sit on the sofa, turning the TV on. About twenty minutes later he comes over to sit down next to you.

“Who was that?”

“Old friend from uni who lives up in Vermont.”

“Oh?”

“He, uh, breeds labradoodles. Two of ‘em just had a fresh littler.”

“How often do you talk to this friend?” You raise an eyebrow at him.

“Once in a while. Anyways, I know your allergies get bad, but labradoodles-“

“Are you asking me if I want a dog?”

“A puppy.” He corrects you. “And for free at that.”

“Dogs are like three thousand dollars, he’s just going to give you one for free?”

“He owes me a favor.”

“For what?”

“None of your business.”

“Harry Edward Styles.” You gasp.

“Y/F/N Y/M/N Y/L/N.” He crosses his arms. “Do you want have a dog with me or not?”

“Do you think now’s the right time? We’re both always so busy.”

“I could bring it to the studio with me, it’ll be like havin’ a shop dog.”

“That’s true.”

“And I know a dog is a lot different than havin’ a kid, but I think it would help with the baby fever.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I mean it! Please, please can we get the puppy? He sent me some pictures, this one would be ours.” He shoves his phone in your face, and you see the cutest little brown haired puppy you’ve ever seen.

“Harry, can we even afford a dog with everything going on right now?”

“Think we could manage it. Buy the food in bulk. It’s the vet visits at the beginning, and then it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Is this a boy or a girl? Not that it really matters…”

“Think it’s a boy.”

“What would we name him?” Harry’s grin grows.

“Are you saying we can get the dog?”

“Obviously! Look at how cute he is!” Harry takes you in his arms and practically squeals.

“We can name him, uh, whatever you want, lemme call my friend back.” He gets up and makes the call. He comes back a few minutes later, very excited. “Said the pup’ll be at eight weeks this week, so we can pick him up next weekend if we want.”

“Next weekend?! We have to get so much stuff. Food, bowls, a collar, a tag. We’ll have to register him at town hall.” Harry grabs your face and kisses you.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” You sigh. “Now, what should we name him, let me see the picture again.” He hands you his phone. ‘What names do you like?”

“Max?” You look at him and scrunch your face.

“That’s so generic. What about Peter?”

“Peter?!”

“Yeah, we could call him Pete.”

“We are not namin’ our dog Peter.” Harry gasps and snaps his fingers. “I’ve got it.”

“What?”

“Winston.”

“Winston?”

“How fuckin’ cute would that be?”

“Winston Styles?”

“Oh, so the dog would have my last name?”

“Duh, he’s going to be our baby isn’t he?” You think for a second. “What about Buster?”

“Buster Styles…that could work.” You both look at the picture again. “He looks like a Buster.” He throws his arm around you.

“Yeah, he does.”

“You’re gettin’ a dog?!” Niall says in the car Monday morning.

“Yup, his name is going to be Buster. He’s so cute Niall.”

“That’s a huge step.”

“Oh, and being on the same lease together isn’t?” You joke.

“No, it’s just…like if something happened…now a dog is in the middle of it.”

“Something as in us breaking up? Are you stupid?” He makes a face at you. “Niall, Harry and I are happier than we’ve ever been, why would you even say something like that?”

“I don’t know…just gotta think about those things sometimes. So, like, hypothetically speaking, you truly plan to marry Harry some day?”

“It’s not even a hypothetical, Niall. That’s the plan.” He smiles at you.

“Can’t wait for you two to fight over which weddin’ party I’ll be in.”

“Mine of course.” You scoff. “Fuck him.” You both laugh.

Harry and your dad finish all of the major renovations by Wednesday, which leaves him to start painting on Thursday. He told Rachel he’d prime everything. She came in after her school day was over to help him finish it up.

“I’ll be able to come after work tomorrow to start Mariah’s office. It looks so great in here.”

“Yeah, we did pretty good right?”

“Harry, can I ask you something?” He puts the paint roller down and looks at her. Rachel looked cute today, she had these white painters’ overalls on with splashes of old paint all over them. Harry just had old jeans he didn’t care about on and a t-shirt.

“Course.”

“We never really get alone time to talk. I guess, I just wanna know…um, I really care about Y/N, she’s one of my best friends…and I know you both love each other, but you’d never do anything to hurt her right?”

“Oh my god, no, of course not.”

“I care about her a lot, and I’ve never really liked any of the guys she’s dated. I like you, obviously, but I’ll be honest, it took me some time to warm up to you.”

“Really? Why didn’t you ever say anything to me?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I was honestly shocked when she told me you wanted to set me up with someone, I didn’t know you cared that much. Mariah makes me really happy, so I’m sort of grateful for you.” She laughs.

“I felt terrible when all that stuff with Lora happened.” He sighs. “I’m really happy things are working out so well with you and Mariah.” You both grab the paint rollers and continue to prime the walls. “I want you to know…I’m in it for the long haul with Y/N.” She looks at you.

“What does that mean exactly? I know you two are getting a dog soon…”

“Yup, his name is gonna be Buster.” He smiles. “We’re drivin’ up to Vermont early Saturday morning. We’re gonna spend the night in the Burlington area, and then get the puppy Sunday.”

“That’ll be nice…what comes after the dog though?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, okay, you’re living together, and now you’re getting this dog with her…it’s all so…grown up.” Harry starts laughing.

“You make it sound like I’m this thirty-year-old dude sweepin’ her off from her life.”

“It’s just…last time a friend settled down we never saw her anymore, and you know how the rest of it went. Getting a dog with someone is like the test to see how you’d be as a parent. I feel like all of a sudden you two are gonna be in the suburbs with two kids and we’ll never see her anymore. Practically lost her once after the whole thing with Jake, I can’t lose her again.” Rachel feels tears prick at her eyes.

“Hey, woah, I’m not takin’ her away from anyone. And she’s told me she doesn’t exactly want to move out of the city yet either. There’s no rush for anything.”

“But you two talk about having babies all the time.”

“Not all the time.”

“Harry.”

“Well, it’s important to talk about don’t you think? Be on the same page with your partner.”

“You wanna marry her?”

“At some point, yeah.” She smiles and nods.

“You know, I had a huge crush on her when we first met.” She chuckles. “When we became really good friends, I eventually told her. I think we both cried. She told me she felt terrible that she couldn’t return my feelings. Like she was genuinely torn about it. I think it made us closer. I got over it of course, but that feeling of just wanting what’s best for her will always linger. When we got to spend that semester in California together it made me realize that she’s so special, you know? She deserves the world.”

“And I wanna give it to her.” He puts everything down. “Would it be alright if we hugged?” He had tears in his eyes too. She puts everything down and opens her arms up. They share a nice embrace. You and Mariah walk in with dinner. Mariah coughs loudly to get their attention.

“We just had to go and date the two biggest blubber bags out there, didn’t we?” She says to you and you start laughing.

“What the hell are we gonna do with you two, what happened?”

“We were having a nice moment until you two ruined it.” Rachel says sticking her tongue out at you. You stick yours out back. “What you bring for dinner?” She asks excitedly, walking over to Mariah to give her a kiss.

“Sushi.” She smiles.

“Got some foldin’ chairs in the back, hold on.” Harry says and goes to get them. He stops short, turns around to kiss you, and then goes to get them.

“He’s cute.” Rachel says.

“Yeah, he is.” You smile.

Harry comes back with four folding chairs so you all can sit and eat.

“Harry, if you leave me the keys I can come in this weekend to paint while you’re gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t mind. I can get Mariah’s office and the kitchen done easily. Then when you get back we can do the rest.”

“Then it’s just the furniture right?” Mariah asks.

“Yeah, we’re going to have a waiting area over there.” Harry points. “Two small love seats, and then Isaac’s desk should be here any day. Got him one that he can stand up at too like he’s been wantin’. And then our desks will be here in a couple of weeks along with our chairs. We can start bringing the equipment in once the painting is done.”

“I’m so excited, I can’t wait to put my two weeks in. It’s been insufferable without you there.”

“Right, because my attitude just brightened the whole place up.” He says sarcastically, making you all laugh.

“I swear I thought Julia was going to kill herself when she saw your office all cleared out after you left. Luckily, her and Dana are done in two weeks. We might actually hire Dana for the summer. Paige really enjoyed her help.” Harry nods. The mention of Julia’s name makes you cringe.

“You didn’t tell any of them where I went did you?”

“No, but everyone hounded me. I just told them you wanted to focus on your freelance work. Not like it was a lie.” She shrugs.

“I just don’t want any of them findin’ me. Isaac’s kept quiet?”

“Mhm, he’s just excited to get out of there too.”

The four of you finish eating, and you tell Harry you’ll see him at home while him and Rachel finish up. You’re in your pj’s, cuddled up on the sofa watching TV when he gets in. He strips all of his clothes off, besides his boxers, and plops down next to you.

“Harry…”

“Didn’t wanna get paint anywhere.” He yawns. “How’s my baby?” He kisses your cheek.

“Good.” You giggle.

“Just imagine, you’ll have a little pup all cuddled up with you on these later nights.”

“Mhm, it’ll be nice.” You yawn. “I need to set up the little bed inside the crate for him. I mean it, he’s not sleeping in the bed with us.”

“I never disagreed with you, but if he starts cryin’ you can be the one to comfort him.”

“He won’t cry because he won’t know any different. We just need to make the crate a safe space, not a punishment, then he’ll have no problem sleeping in it. Then when he gets a little older we can take the bed out of the crate and he’ll know that’s his bed.”

“You know I’m kind of looking forward to being away for the night.”

“Me too, I’m glad we’re making a weekend of it. I’ve never been to the Ben and Jerry’s factory, I’m so excited.”

“There’s a cider mill right down the road from there too that we should check out.”

“I’ve never been to Burlington either. I think I’ve been to Vermont like once in my life.” You laugh. “We never really had a reason to go.”

“The lads and I would head up there to buy weed on the cheap.” He says nonchalantly. “You know, before it was legal here.”

“Hm, interesting.”

“Alright, miss straight edge.”

“I’m not judging.”

“Mhm, yeah. There’s worse drugs out there, you know?”

“Yeah, like mushrooms.”

“Should’ve never told you that.” He shakes his head.

“Well, you did.” You crawl into his lap and he lays back so you can lay on him. “Hi.” You nuzzle into his chest.

“Hi baby.”

“What were you and Rachel doing earlier, when we walked in?”

“We just had a moment is all.” He strokes your hair and rubs your scalp. “She…really cares about you.”

“Yeah.” You look up at him. “She’s the best.” You smile and lean in to kiss him. “So are you.” You nuzzle your nose to his. “I love you so much, I’m really happy.”

“I love you too, darlin’. I’m happy too.” You kiss for a while on the couch before you both start to feel sleepy. Then it’s off to bed.

You both get up early Saturday to get to Vermont. It would be along, and annoying drive. You took some pills to help you not get carsick. Harry was an excellent driver, but you knew there would be a lot of back roads involved at some point.

You put on some cuffed jeans and a white short sleeve crop top. You pair it with a blue cardigan and your white tennis shoes. Harry has a loose pair of jeans on and a band t-shirt.

“I’m so happy it’s gettin’ warmer out.”

“Me too.” You look around. “Everything’s all set up for him.”

“Yup.” He kisses you and grabs the overnight bags. “Let’s go.”

Harry lets you put a playlist on. A mix of old and new songs. You gasp when a particular song comes on. You’ve Made Me So Very Happy by Blood Sweat & Tears.

“Oh my god I love this song!” You turn the volume up and sing along. “Have you heard this before?”

“Yeah, I thought a woman sang it.”

“There are a ton of covers. I think I like this one the best.”

You continue to sing while Harry listens to the lyrics. Every word perfectly describes how he feels about you.

I chose you for the one. Now I'm having so much fun… You treated me so kind, I'm about to lose my mind…You made me so very happy. I'm so glad you came into my life…

Harry makes a mental note of the song for future use, especially when he sees how much you love it. You hold his hand while you sing. You must resonate with the lyrics too.

You eventually make to the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory. You couldn’t wait to stretch your legs. You practically run inside.

“I need to pee so bad!” Harry laughs at you while you find a bathroom.

“Tour’s only five bucks a person, I got us two tickets.” He says when you come back. You thank him and wait to be called in with the rest of the group.

A short movie is shown, and then you all are brought in to see how the ice cream is packaged and produced. Next you’re brought downstairs where they give you a sample to try.

“Mm, oh my fucking god.” You can help but moan when you lick at the chocolate malt ice cream. Harry looks at you. “You have to at least try it.”

“I don’t like chocolate ice cream. And you better be careful that’s gonna upset your stomach.”

“No it won’t it’s only a little, and it’s soooo good.” You lick at it again and smile. “That’s some good shit, wow.”

When you’re done you take a picture together outside in front of the sign. You drive down the street to the cider mill. You go inside and see all of the things that can be made with cider and or syrup.

“Look Harry, a maple syrup hot sauce, this could be fun to try.”

“Sure.” He smiles.

“Are you feeling tired? I could drive the rest of the way to the hotel.”

“Would you mind? It would be nice to close my eyes for a bit.”

“Of course.” You kiss him on the cheek, pay for your things and head to the car.

You kept the music volume low while he slept. You pulled into the parking lot of the small hotel. It was really more like an inn.

“Baby, we’re here.”

“Hm? Oh, okay.” He stretches and gets out of the car. He grabs your bags and you both go in to check in.

You get into the room and put everything down. You both wash up and head back down to the car. You drive into Burlington and pay to park near Church Street.

“Look at all the shopping! And the lake! Who knew there was such a populated area?” You laugh.

“Well, UVM is like right over there.” He nudges you.

“Shut up.” You nudge him back.

You both do a little shopping before finding a nice vegetarian place to eat at. After dinner you head down to walk along the peer near the lake.

“I can’t wait to see Buster tomorrow, Harry.”

“Me too, baby.” He holds your hand as you walk.

“Do you think he’ll like us?”

“Of course!” He laughs. “We’ll be the best parents ever.”

You drive back to the hotel and you both get settled in for the night. You both do your nightly routines and get into bed. You face each other, limbs getting tangled in each other. Harry’s leg slides between yours, and he cups your cheeks in his hand. He pulls your face closer to his and your lips connect. You grind slightly against his lig, and he pushes it against you harder. A small moan leaves your lips. You tug at his shoulder to pull him on top of you.

He runs his fingers over your folds and fingers you for a bit to get you ready for him. You wrap your legs around him as he enters you and he kisses you. He buries his head in your neck while he rocks in and out of you. You grab one of his hands you lace your fingers together.

“Harry.” You moan. “Feels so good.” You look up at him and he’s already looking down at you. You kiss each other, and you pull him closer with your legs.

“Y/N.” He moans into your ear. “Love you so much.”

“I, ngh, love you too.”

He rocks in and out of your faster, and then with a sharp thrust, he gets in really deep and stays there. You grind against him as your tongue finds his.

“Oh my god, shit, shit, shit, Harry!” You release around his cock. You squeeze his hand tightly.

He picks up the pace again, chasing his own high. He pants and groans, and with another moan of your name he comes inside of you. He collapses next to you. You both kiss again, not leaving anytime to your breaths. He bites your bottom lip and sucks it into his mouth.

“I’m getting hard again.” He says against your lips.

“Want me to suck on it?”

“Please.”

He lays on his back and you get between his legs. Sure enough he was hard again. You don’t waste anytime getting your mouth on him.

“Fuck.” He groans. He thrusts up and you take him deeper down your throat. You swallow against him and cradle his balls. He grips at your hair and you start bobbing up and down him. “Shit, I’m gonna come.”

You give him a thumbs up as you keep your mouth on him. His come shoots into your mouth, and you take all of it. You come off him and swallow.

“Thank you.” He says, out of breath.

“Mm, my pleasure.”

You get up, use the toilet, and rinse your mouth out. You crawl back into bed, and he wraps himself around you. He kisses the back of your neck a few times before completely settling in.

The next morning you both get everything together, and head out to where Harry’s friend lives. It was only about thirty minutes later.

“Adam!” Harry says when he sees his friend coming out to greet him. “Hey, mate!”

“Harry!” The hug each other. “It’s been ages!” Another Brit, how interesting.

“Adam, this is my girlfriend, Y/N.”

“Hey, greet to meet yeh!”

“Same to you.” You shake his hand.

“Pup’s in the barn, follow me.”

You take Harry’s hand and follow Adam around to the barn. You hang back while he goes over to the pen they’re in.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks.

“I don’t want to watch him take him away from his mumma.”

“Oh, sweetie…”

Adam comes over cradling the puppy, and you burst into tears when he hands Buster to you. Harry and Adam look at each other and then look at you.

“He’s so beautiful, thank you.” The puppy yips, gives you a lick on the chin, and nestles into your arms. “Harry, he’s so cute.” You say through tears and a high pitched voice. “Here, you take him.”

He smiles and takes him from you. He holds him up in the air at first and then cradles him.

“He’s perfect.”

After chatting with Adam a bit longer, you take Buster out to the car. You had a car-seat for him, but you decide to hold him instead. You just didn’t wanna let him go. Harry would occasionally reach over and scratch his little head. He slept for most of the ride. You stopped a couple of times to give him some water and let him pee.

When you finally get home you let him scamper and sniff around. When it looks like he’s about to pee you pick him up and put him on a piddle pad.

“It’ll be easy enough to let him out for a wee, can just bring him to the balcony.”

“What and have our plants and new furniture smell like piss? No, no, we’ll be taking him out. The piddle pads will work for now. We’ll have to take him out every hour so he gets used to it. C’mon baby, are you hungry?”

“Actually, yeah, I a-“

“Harry, I was talking to Buster.” You shake your head at him and laugh. You whistle to Buster and he follows you. You scoop out some dog food and put it into his bowl. You stick your fingers into the dry food while he eats.

“What are you doin’?”

“I read about this. It helps the dog know not to bite you if you feed it treats and stuff. It needs to know it shouldn’t be rough with you.” Buster eats what he wants and then laps at his water bowl. “He’s just so tiny, I can’t get over it.” You pat the top of his head. “Okay, in like fifteen minutes we should take him out. I’m working from home tomorrow so I can help house train him.”

“Sounds good.” He smiles. “So…can we eat dinner then/”

“Sure, if you feel like whipping something up. I’ll have to take him to get registered with the city tomorrow. I’ll call the vet too to set up a check up like Adam said.”

“Thank you.” He kisses you and goes into the kitchen. Buster follows him in and so do you.

You take buster out to do his business every hour like you said. You ring a little bell each time you take him out too. Eventually the three of you get snuggled up on the couch together.

“Oh, let’s take a selfie, then all our friends can help welcome him.” You take your phone out and sit between Harry’s legs, facing away from him. You hold Buster up to your chest so you can get him in the picture. Harry kisses your temple right as you snap the shot. “God, I’m gonna cry again.”

“I couldn’t believe how emotional you got, usually I’m the mess.”

“I know!” The dog huffs. “Sorry baby, mumma didn’t mean to be so loud.” You coo as you strokes his hair.

Harry was so at peace. Hearing yourself refer to yourself as mumma thrilled him. When it was time for sleep, you put Buster inside his crate with his cozy bed. You stuck the crate in the hall outside your bedroom. You didn’t want to put it in the bedroom since he would wanna get on the bed with you. You start getting teary eyed when you get into bed.

“What is it, love?”

“I just feel bad leaving him out there all alone, I don’t want him to wake up scared.”

“Do you want to bring him in here with us?”

“No, we need to be stern about this. He needs to know our bed is for us, and his bed is for him. I’ll be okay.” You wipe your eyes.

“C’mere.” You lay your head on his chest and sigh.

Luckily, Buster didn’t make much of a peep throughout the night, and you and Harry were able to sleep just fine. Your little life with Harry was growing, and you couldn’t be happier. You weren’t sure if you were ready for the responsibility of having a dog, but somehow you ended up being a natural, and Harry took note right away.

#harry styles #Take it Slow #harry styles x reader #harry styles y/n #harry styles x y/n #harry styles imagine #harry styles fluff #harry styles fluff fic #harry styles smut #harry styles smut fic #harry styles fic #IM SO SOFT OMFG #i love them so much #come hang in my ask box #i have tissues to pass out

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catspinach · 3 years

Text

i spend a lot of money and i feel bad bc i know its all stuff that i dont necessarily need but the majority of those purchases are just regular things that i use daily? feels like im supposed to settle for the bare essentials but im sick of that!! i want comfort!!! anyways im once again in debt lol

its kind of on me tho too bc I havent been working:/ i have a job doing grocery shopping for people that i can do on my own time but i just.. cannot get myself to do it because the last order i did my car started smoking and i found out its very unsafe to drive and i gottaget around to junking it. i know its so unrealistic that the car my mom is lending me would do the same but im scared, okay!! then i thought i had a job lined up with a friend but her managers flaked on me and i havent rly been able to find anywhere that pays decent. idk, it feels like this is all on me and im sure a lot of it is.. i just feel bad idk, like i do impulse buy a lot but its never anything crazy? like who am i to refuse a pair of ear buds that arent from the fucking dollar store, or a 6 piece nugget from mcdonalds when i cant bring myself to cook anything, or even just a bottle of smirnoff. idk i think i give myself more shit for my spending habbits than i should since nobody else i know rly spends as much, but nobody else i know has to pay for car insurance and gas and food and phone bills and-

im hoping that over the fall i can start working on campus again. that was the only job that ive ever genuinely enjoyed and im scared to work anywhere else bc the other 11 jobs ive had made me just a bit suicidal !! :') i cant just suck it up anymore, i wanna be able to enjoy my work life and have a comfortable amount of cash to not be in debt all the time:((

#idk am i sounding selfish?#im still caught up on the $160 su jacket i bought last year when i still had cash #never spent so much money on any single item aside from my cars that were both totaled #and like my computer and stuff but that wasnt technically my money ahaha #sry im just rly stressed abt cash rn and its not good for me #long post #vent

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bramblepeltao3 · 3 years

Text

Meanwhile, Part 1

Little tidbits, jokes, ideas, and prompts that don’t really fit in the main story.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Amelia asked, a bit of actual fear trailing in her voice.

“Yes, of course I do. You remember those cookies I baked? They were good.” Cor would not be swayed from his determination to actually cook a real dinner tonight. “I can cook. It’s just been awhile since I had the time to do it. You need to stop doubting me.”

Amelia hummed in disapproval. Baking was one thing. It involved exact measurements, temperatures, and timing. As long as you followed the recipe exactly you were guaranteed a reliable end product. Cooking though? There were too many openings for error. Undercooked meat, overcooked starches, burnt sauces, vegetables heated beyond any remaining nutritional value, she could go on, really. There were too many chances to feed Prompto something that could make him sick.

She would very much prefer they simply buy something pre-made or order takeout again.

She had to admit though, watching Prompto excitedly take part in the grocery shopping experience was cute. Like, sickening levels of absolute cute. He would ask what was next on the list and, not quite able to read everything or reach anything, would pick something at random and ask if that was the right thing.

He was one for eight currently.

“Is this it?” He asked, holding up a can of store brand baked beans.

“Not quite buddy. That’s okay, I don’t think you know what artichoke hearts look like.” Cor said picking the needed item off the top shelf. “It was out of your reach anyway.”

He was planning on making some sort of Altissian chicken and rice recipe. It involved artichokes, tomatoes, a special kind of rice that takes a long time to cook, and a lot of broth. It was promising to be a disaster, but at least Amelia could monitor the food safety aspect of it all.

“And with that, we’ve got everything. Ready to check out?” Cor asked.

“No, you’re missing one thing.” Amelia corrected. “Check your list again, you wrote down basil. You didn’t specify fresh or dried, but you still need that.” Sometimes her picture perfect memory came in handy, like now. Sometimes it wasn’t the brain melting burden she’d come to view it as.

Cor pulled the paper list out of his pocket. “Well yeah, you’re right. Dried basil is fine, next aisle over.”

Prompto got a head start, running with his arms out at his sides, sweater sleeves dangling over his hands. Amelia picked up her pace, not wanting to let him leave her (or Cor’s) line of sight for too long.

As she turned the corner she watched as Prompto stopped very abruptly in his tracks. He turned around to look at his sister, seemingly very concerned about something. Amelia felt anxious, and hoped Cor would hurry it up with the cart.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, maybe a little too intensely.

Prompto looked very sad, started looking at his shoes and whispered, “I don’t know what basil is.”

She swore she didn’t realize she had been holding her breath.

“It’s an herb. That’s a plant leaf you can eat that tastes good.” She explained. “It starts with the letter B, which is the second letter of the alphabet. So since all the herbs and spices over here are in the same order as the alphabet, the basil is at the top.” She pointed to where she could see but not reach the basil.

“You can eat leafs?” Prompto asked, an obvious lightbulb going on in his head.

“Only some, and not ones you find on the ground.” Cor said, all caught up and retrieving the ingredient. “Please, do not eat the leaves that you find on the ground.”

Prompto nodded.

“Buddy, I love you, but I need to hear you say it. Say, ‘I promise I won’t eat the leaves I find on the ground’.”

Amelia knew, in her heart, this was a completely necessary step to ensure Miss Asha wouldn’t call Cor telling him Prompto jumped into a leaf pile and treated it like a buffet.

“Okay, I promise I won’t eat leafs from the ground.” Prompto actually looked disappointed. He was too pure for this world.

“Thank you. Alright, this time really we’re ready.” Cor navigated the cart back down the aisle and towards the front of the store. The regular checkout lanes were all backed up, so he diverted course to the self checkout area that had many open kiosks.

“I wanna help!” Prompto said, as expected.

“Okay, you see this black and white box on the bag? Hold the bag up so the red line in the glass can see it. That’s how it knows what’s in the bag.” Cor said, handing the rice to him.

“Okay!” He chirped, grabbing the bag and holding it awkwardly at an angle. Amelia instinctively moved to help but the kiosk beeped.

“Please place your item in the bagging area.” The robot woman commanded.

“Oh. Good job, you did it!” Amelia said before looking at the screen. “Wait, that’s not right…”

“What?” Cor asked, turning around while holding the package of chicken breast.

“The computer thinks the rice is cereal.” She said, pointing at the line item of ‘Froot Loops’.

“Did I do it wrong?” Prompto asked pitifully.

“It’s not you, it’s the robot lady. She did it wrong.” Amelia reassured him while Cor flagged down a human to help get it right.

“I wanna help again!” Prompto said, high spirits returning. He grabbed the carton of chicken broth and awkwardly held it up again.

“Please place your item in the bagging area.”

“Wait.” Amelia stopped him. “It did it again.” She frowned, looking at another ring up for ‘Froot Loops.’

“You think it’s a conspiracy by the cereal companies to inflate their numbers?” Cor asked sarcastically.

Amelia had a sudden and horrifying revelation.

“Prompto, give me your hand please.” She asked, taking his offered right hand. As she held it up, the sweater sleeve dipped down, giving the scanner full access to the unfortunate tattoo on his wrist.

“Please place your item in the bagging area.”

Amelia simply looked at Cor, who looked back in horror.

They got it fixed again, the attendant apologetically offering a discount for the trouble of the broken kiosk. They silently walked back to the car, loaded their bags, and strapped in. After a moment of sitting in silence, Prompto got anxious.

“What happened?” He asked, fidgeting in his car seat.

“N-nothing, nothing bad happened, Froot Loops.” Cor could no longer contain himself and started laughing. Amelia quickly followed with a snort, losing her composure and attempting to cover her laughter behind both hands.

Prompto, not one to ever feel like he’d been left out of a joke, also began laughing.

“Why Froot Loops?” Amelia gasped for air. “Why did it have to be THAT?!”

“Okay, okay, everyone settle down.” Cor took a deep breath before turning the car on. “Freaking Froot Loops…” He whispered to himself.

---

“Wow, respect where it’s due. This tastes really good.” Amelia complimented the dish set in front of her.

“I helped!” Prompto chirped from his chair.

“Yeah, I saw. You did great stirring the big spoon.” Amelia smiled at her cereal box branded brother. She wondered if she would ever be able to get over that.

“I told you, I haven’t had the chance to do it as much the last few years, but I learned a lot from Weskham.” Cor said, finishing cutting up Prompto’s serving into small non-chokeable bites.

“Who’s Weskham?” Amelia asked, thinking she’d known all two of Cor’s friends by now.

Cor looked a little sad for a moment. “An old friend, owns a restaurant in Altissia now. He had quite a gift and taught me a lot when I was younger. Really miss that guy.” He looked sad again.

“You should visit him, then.” Amelia said matter of factly.

“Yeah? Maybe I will. Maybe we could have a family trip there some time.” He said, eliciting a groan of disapproval from Amelia. “Mmhmm, you’d like it.” He reassured her.

“I wanna go to Tisha!” Prompto squeaked.

“You don’t even know where it is.” Amelia said, giggling.

“Is it by the park?” He asked.

“Bit further than that, Froot Loops.” Cor replied.

Amelia inhaled sharply and nearly choked on her dinner.

“Further than the park?” Prompto asked, looking wonderstruck at the idea.

Cor smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure you’ll see it someday.”

#ffxv #cor leonis #prompto

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shhh-no-ones-home · 4 years

Text

unexpected chris motionless x reader

+++++++++ Request from @tiffanyamber1995 : "Chris motionless one shot where he comes home from a long tour and is tired of being single and he meets y/n."

this is not my best work but i really didnt know what else to write so sorry for that but i hope you like it anyway, its a little different but i think it works.

Song: friday im in love by the cure

tag list: @cynic-spirit @alilpunkrock @svintsandghosts @theoneandonlykymberlee @thisplace-ishaunted @musicsexandpizza69 +++++++++

I looked intently over the shelf in front of me. I was in desperate need of groceries but was also hungry so going to the store was probably a bad idea. Right now was prime time for impulse buys but I couldn't decide which cookies I wanted, Oreos or nutter butters. I heard a sigh from behind me, shaking me from my thoughts and realizing someone was waiting for me. I made a quick minute decision, stepping to the side and reaching for the Oreos. Just as I was grabbing for them someone elses hand came crashing into mine, finally making me look up at the stranger.

"Sorry."

We both said at the same time, making me smile bashfully at him. I pulled my hand away to scratch the back of my neck.

"Uh, go ahead I think I'm still deciding."

He smiled at me as he took the pack and tucked it under his arm, shifting the case of vanilla coke in his other hand.

"Can't decide between regular or double stuff?"

He asked, joking a little bit. I let out a quick laugh at his comment.

"If only it where that easy. No my heart says Oreos but my brain says nutter butter."

He nodded in understanding, glancing quickly at what I already had in my cart. It wasn't much but it was almost period week so I was stocking up on a few favorites.

"Hey, why not both?"

I snorted a bit.

"I definitely don't think I need both."

He shrugged, side nodding.

"If you're worried about not being able to eat them all yourself I could gladly offer my services."

He said with a smile. Okay, so he was cute and clever.

"If I get both can I take you up on that offer?"

He laughed a little bit.

"If you'd like."

i smiled bashfully at him.

"Both it is then."

I said grabbing a pack of each and placing them in my cart. he had a wide smile on his face before reaching into his pocket.

"Here, wanna give me your number? I'll text you."

I nodded taking his phone from him and texting myself.

"And what am I saving you as kind sir?"

He let out a nervous laugh.

"Oh right, I'm Chris. And you are, y/n?"

He said looking down as his text history. I nodded.

"That I am, and it's nice to meet you Chris."

I said holding my hand out for him to shake.

"Likewise."

°°°°°°°°°

When the day finally came I was super nervous. Chris and I had been chatting for almost a week before deciding on a day for him to come over for a "date." Neither of us wanted to do anything crazy so we agreed on an at home picnic and movie type thing. It was nice in theory but it also meant that I had to speed clean my house and get food, now knowing he was vegan, or at the very least vegetarian. i wiped my hands on the towel before hearing a knock at my door. i took in a deep breath as i walked to the door and opened it. in front of me was chris, smiling widely and holding a small bouquet of flowers.

"what a nice surprise."

i said, taking them as he handed them over.

"i know you said you werent really a fan of fancy things but i thought itd be a nice gesture. after all you did insist i didnt bring anything but myself."

i laughed a little bit as i let him in, id always been the host type and hated making people do stuff i could do myself. in this case it was cooking and entertaining.

"its much appreciated, these are beautiful."

"well i did think of you when i was picking them out."

his words made me blush as i lead us both into the kitchen, getting a vase down and filling it with water.

"do you mind if i arrange these before we get started with the movie?"

he sat at one of the bar stools on the other side of the counter.

"be my guest."

i unwrapped the rubber band on them and slid them out of the plastic.

"i got everything out so if you wanna start eating youre more than welcome."

i said picking up a strawberry and popping it into my mouth, sending him a reassuring smile as i cut the stems of the flowers to fit in the vase.

"you really went above and beyond."

he said looking over what i had made. i wouldnt necessarily say it was a lot but i didnt really know what he liked so i got options.

"well if theres one thing i am its an overachiever."

i joked nervously and he sent me a smile, picking up one of the oreos and biting into it.

"theres nothing wrong with that. i could probably say the same of myself but im more of a perfectionist than an overachiever. everything always has to be just the way i want it, which is kind of hard when youre on the road all the time but you learn to work around it."

i nodded along to what he was saying.

"do you like it?"

he looked up at me with wide eyes.

"being on the road i mean. i know you said you were in a band but surely you must like it."

he laughed a little bit.

"oh yeah, im a real road rat. i love getting to travel all over the place and perform and just experience stuff."

i nodded along again, pushing the now full vase to the side and leaning into the counter with my arms crossed under me.

"i dont know if id ever be able to do that. like it sounds fun in theory but i think id yearn for a stable home life after a while."

he rubbed his hands across his thighs.

"yeah i get that, its not for everyone, specially for people who have careers and families but ive never really thought about that stuff as an interest. like yeah itd be cool to have a wife or at least life long partner but the kids and stuff ive never really entertained the idea of."

i smiled at him, laughing a little bit.

"same here, kids are kind of a no go for me. like dont get me wrong i love my nieces but taking care of a small human is so much work and its so time consuming."

"right? plus you have to worry about what theyre doing at every moment and i definitely dont need that kind of stress in my life."

i picked up a cookie and tapped it against the counter.

"ya know i never thought id be having a conversation about family goals on a first date."

i looked up at him and he smiled at me nervously.

"well i guess you just go where the conversation leads you right?"

i nodded before taking a bite of the cookie.

"that you do. but i guess since we're on the topic. have you been actively looking for someone to date?"

i raised a brow as he looked down at his lap, thinking about my question.

"if im being honest no, but with the life i have id be lying if i said i didnt miss not having someone to share stuff with. just like someone who gets me and is willing to be there for me."

i looked up at him with hopeful eyes that this would go well.

"and you think that might be me?"

he shrugged.

"maybe. id say things are going pretty well so far."

i half smiled.

"id say so too."

he picked up another oreo.

"what do you say about that movie?"

i perked up a bit.

"yes, you pick, i got out a few that i think you might like."

i stood up and walked into the living room, him being right behind me. i watched his face light up at what i had laid out on the coffee table.

"sick!"

he said picking a few up and looking at them.

"oh yeah, i definitely think this is going to go well."

i laughed a little at his reaction.

"which one first?"

#wattpad #x reader #chris motionless #chris cerulli #miw #imagines #one shots #requests #224

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moonguilt · 4 years

Note

random klance and adashi headcanons? 🥺🤲

i have been meaning to put some grocery shopping headcanons out there… so here u go (plenty more beneath the cut as well):

-when keith and lance are falling in love and in their honeymoon phase with each other, they jump at the opportunity to go grocery shopping together because a) they wanna spend every moment with each other, and b) it’s domestic af and it makes them feel like they Have Something

-once they’ve been together a while, the novelty wears off and the laziness kicks in and they both try to find increasingly ridiculous ways to get the other person to go shopping without them

-keith usually goes for willful/feigned ignorance: “what kind of toothpaste did you say you wanted?” like 4 separate times, and then “idk they all look the same to me, i usually just grab whatever” and when lance inevitably goes on a tirade about the importance of his Very Specific brand and flavor, keith concludes with a “maybe you should buy it in person if you want to be sure you get the right one”

-lance’s tactic neglects logos and instead relies on pathos: “keeeith i am so tired” “keeeith my toes are still so cold from the walk home” “i promise i’ll go next time keith pleeeaase kosmo is in my lap and he’s so comfy look at him keith look. we are having a bonding moment keith dont interrupt us”

-when lance REALLY wants something Very Specific and is genuinely worried that keith will mess it up, he will give in to keith’s strategy and just go shopping himself, but 90% of the time keith is a Weak man and lance always gives him a big toothy grin and a kiss whenever he agrees so honestly you can’t blame him

-also it gives him a chance to restock his emergency midnight snack lunchables stash without lance giving him the “you are a grown man and my mamá gave me so many good recipes for us to try out and yet you choose to bring this under our roof” lecture (even though keith is sure that he bought 5 packs last time and only ate 3 of them but now their pantry is mysteriously devoid of lunchables, which means somebody in this house is lying about their disdain for lunchables)

-but ANYWAY sometimes they still actually do go to the store together just like old times and when they do:

-taking turns doing the thing where you run and put your weight on the back of the shopping cart and let it glide-(getting caught doing exactly that by an employee and being told off for it after they nearly knock over a chef boyardee can display)

-choosing an item on the list that they have no idea where to find & racing each other to see who can find it first

-“do you see this toothpaste keith. do you see this? can you see the name? can you read the flavor? you see how it says ‘for sensitive teeth’? do you see it?”-“considering you are practically shoving it down my throat, yes.”-“well then maybe your esophagus will be able to remember it for you next time you go shopping”

-keith grabbing the last pack of rainbow gold fish bc they are his favorite-toddler wanted those goldfish & starts crying-”ah shit fuck hey hey hey uhhh” cue keith turning a desperate look toward lance bc he Does Not Know how tf to handle small crying child-lance is like “dude, baby, sweetheart, my man, just give him the goldfish we can get the regular ones”-but keiths like?? bitch?? i got these first?? also im gay and these are my pride fish?? dont be homophobic-lance is about to argue with him abt it but then the kid’s mom gets involved and is like “how could you make my baby cry he’s just a kid let him have his goldfish dont be selfish”-you’ve activated Protective Lance mode-“um okay first of all, rude, keith got them first. second of all, this isnt even healthy for your kid. THIRD of all these are rainbow colored and keith is gay so maybe dont be homophobic??”-things escalate and keith and lance nearly throw down with karen and little jimmy in the snack aisle-they savor every last one of those fucking rainbow goldfish later that night, just out of pure gay spite

-lance spending several minutes inspecting individual broccoli stalks meticulously to make sure they buy only the very best-he narrows it down to two but keeps debating between them until keith comes up behind him and slumps against his back, wrapping his arms around lance’s waist and muttering something about how cold the produce aisle is-lance makes a snarky comment about keith being a whiny baby & keith retaliates by slipping his freezing fingers under lance’s shirt, prompting a startled yelp and giving keith the opportunity to pluck a broccoli stalk from lance’s hand and put it in the cart

-“okay, while we’re here, let’s grab a cucumber for the salad”-“gotcha, one cucumber coming right up–.. hey.. hey, keith, this one kinda looks like a–hehehe–hey keith, do you think i could–hnnkeehehe–do you think i could fit this one up–”-“oh my god”-“what do you say keith–you, me, this cucumber, a bottle of wine–”-“alright im getting on line.”-“wait wait babe im kidding come back let me put the cucumber in the cart”-“NO go get a different one, i am NOT letting that one anywhere near our salad”

-selfies with the local Stop & Shop robot. lance thinks it’s kind of creepy but keith thinks it’s cute and lance thinks that’s cute, so

-“lance we left the reusable bags in the car”-“quiznak. well that’s okay, we can just use plastic bags this one time and i’ll make sure we put them to good use at home so it’s not wastefu–”-“no. we paid money for our bags. we have to use them. i’ll be right back”-“keith we parked way down on the other side of the–oh my god KEITH WATCH OUT FOR THAT OLD LADY holy shit SLOW DOWN oh my god man”

-keith tries to sneak those storebought sugar cookies, you know the clear-boxed ones that they always put out front with holiday-colored frosting and sprinkles, into their cart-“keith what is with your obsession with processed food”-“it was all had to eat when i was living alone in the desert”---“baby that is very sad and you know i empathize with your tragic anime backstory but put those godawful abominations back or so help me”

-only, keith isn’t the only one who likes processed food

-yeah, another reason keith is so used to it is because even after he started living with shiro, he kept eating that junk because that’s all shiro ever ate too

-shiro is a slut for kraft mac & cheese

-this presents a problem for him and adam, because adam loves spicy food and loves to make spicy food for shiro to eat

-but shiro is a big baby, and due to his inability to cook and his subsequent reliance on kraft & campbell’s & top ramen, he basically has white people taste buds

-adam is scandalized when he learns this the hard way after finding shiro nearly in tears over his half-eaten serving of dum aloo

-adam promptly declares that shiro needs a culinary intervention and they have been working towards the recovery of his palate ever since

-shiro is a creature of habit though, and he will try to convince adam to let them buy kraft mac & cheese whenever they go to the store together (which is often because unlike keith and lance, they never got tired of it and they still consider it a romantic domestic activity to this day. they’re just gay like that)

-when keith and shiro have their “broganights” together they indulge in all their crappy processed comfort food, much to the consternation of lance and adam, who bond over their shared exasperation and begrudging affection for their respective partners

#klance #adashi #thank u for the ask i had fun with this hehe #sorry the klance ones are more extensive... i have a bit of a bias in case u havent noticed #headcanon #domestic #lavender letters #ask

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donobionic-sardonyx26 · 5 years

Text

( I wrote this based off where I work and stuff. Nothing specific but it does take place in Beach City. Just imagine some retail/grocery store in Beach City lol)

Balloons (a spinel x reader fic)

It was 3pm. The sky was a light blue, the air a nice breeze; not too cold, but not too warm, and the sun was shining lovely rays through it all. Sunny, autumn weather. The type of weather to jump in a pile of leaves, or go the fair with some friends. You could be out enjoying it all, however, you were trapped in this hell hole you called a job.

Well, hell-hole was a bit much. The job sucked, sure, but there was some good too it. You got things at a discount, people could bring in service animals or regular pets, so, that always brightened your day. And the job also allowed you to have a certain someone accompany you when you just weren’t able to leave her by herself.

Suddenly you heard a cat-call whistle from your right.

“Well, hello nurse~” the voice purred.

“Too bad I don’t see a price tag on you! I’d definitely take you home with me! Hold the receipt!”

You rolled your eyes at Spinel who leaned against your register, winking at you.

“Spinel, you see me everyday.” You tried to suppress your smile.

“And everyday feels like the first time~” The pink gem sighed lovingly leaning her head on the conveyer belt. It triggered the censor causing her head to move along with it before her head hit your register.

“Ow.”

You covered your mouth to hide your snicker.

This was one of the good parts about work. Since people in beach city seemed to be nicer than the average joe, your manager was more than understanding about your situation with Spinel. He allowed you off on some of her worsts days when she really couldn’t handle being home, but ultimately he allowed her to accompany you to work, just so long as you stayed focus and she didn’t cause too much trouble.

It was a nice deal. You and Spinel were able to enjoy each other’s company while you worked, and her being there was definitely entertaining.

You shook your head as you watched Spinel rub her head, pouting slightly.

“What just happened would be avoided if stood behind my register and not in line,” you said as you ran your hand through her hair.

“Well, you stand in line if you wanna buy something right?” Spinel smile at you.

“Oh, really, and just what do you wanna buy with my money?”

Spinel smile even wider as she handed you a little baggy of latex balloons.

You sighed mentally. Ever since Spinel learned your store blew up balloons with the helium tank reserved for it, she practically became obsessed. Ever since she first accompanied you to the store she would take a balloon with her every time you both left from your shift, which you would have to run back and immediately pay for.

She stopped soon after you explained that not could the apartment only house so many balloons, but also that buying a balloon everyday was starting to rack up in money.

But that didn’t mean her love of balloons ever ceased.

“You know I can’t blow these up with the helium tank, right? I can only do the ones on display.”

“I know! I just wanna try somethin’ with ‘em.”

You looked at her skeptically.

“It’s not bad I promise! Look, I have it all thought out, doll face!” Spinel waved her hands. “These have 15 in a pack, I can blow em up myself, and you can do so much more with these than the others!”

It’s not that you didn’t trust Spinel, it was more of the fact, trouble seemed to just find her. And even the most innocent tasks of buying her balloons made you second guess.

But the way she used those pink puppy dog eyes along with batting her eyelashes was enough to sway you into scanning the balloons and shoving your own debit card into the chip reader.

“Now move, you’re holding up my line.” You teased tossing the items to her.

After few minutes passed from you tending to other customers, you turned back to look at Spinel.

You watched as she happily tore open the plastic bag that held the balloons. She pulled out a long pink balloon and stretched it out before inhaling loudly and blowing into the latex. It stretched out and you realized that those weren’t regular latex balloons.

They were too long and none too circular.

Spinel tied the end of the balloon into a knot before slowly but carefully beginning to twist and turn the pink balloon in different knots before exclaiming:

“Ta-dah!!”

You blinked in amazement.

“It’s a bunny!” She explained handing it to you.

“I-I know what it is... since when could you make balloon animals? Did they have these at home world...?” You asked hesitantly.

“Oh no!” Spinel blew up another balloon next before using it to tap her chin.

“I think it was a couple of days ago. You were sleeping. I had one hand holding the phone and the other wrapped around you, of course,”

Your cheeks slightly flushed as she continued to talk.

“I was searching stuff like balloons and I saw that not only do so many different balloons exist but you can make em into stuff! Like this!” She showed you another balloon animal; another bunny, this time blue.

You gave her a bemused look as you took the second bunny.

“Got anymore tricks?” You asked.

She blew up another animal balloon, once more a bunny, but this time yellow.

“I may have only watched videos on how to make bunnies...” she admitted making you laugh.

She’s so cute in the easiest of ways...

“Well, thanks. Here, you can watch some more tutorials on my phone while I’m working. I’m not using it anyway.”

“Don’t mind if I do! Thanks, toots!” She smiled giving you a peck on the cheek before you turned back to your register.

You greeted the elderly customer who smiled back at you as she finished setting her groceries on the conveyor belt.

About three more customers passed. It was almost 3:40pm.

“Yes, almost quitting time.” You sighed stretching your arms over your head.

You were about to tell Spinel before another customer came up to your register.

A young lady, who looked pretty tired. You watched as she tried to stop her little girl in her shopping cart (around the years of 2 or 3) from hitting things on your register with a wooden spoon.

She looked at you apologetically but you just smiled and asked her how her day was going.

“Long.” She breathed out before making you both chuckle. She continued to place her items on the machine and you bagged them with speed, very eager to leave.

“Alright, your total is $32.50.” You told her. You watched as she pulled out her wallet before you noticed the toddler still holding the spoon.

“Did you get the spoon from here, ma’am?” You asked.

The lady looked up before looking back at her daughter. “Oh, yes, we did, I’m sorry. Sweetheart give the nice lady the spoon.”

“But... but I wan’ it.”

Here we go...

“She’ll give it right back sweetie, I promise!”

The toddler looked at you, and you internally cringed.

You could see it, the tiny hands balling into fists, the mistiness in her eyes, the frown along with the pink hue that formed on her face.

Here comes the tantrum.

The toddler kicked her legs as she started to scream, fresh tears streaming from her face. You were used to this, babies and tots just couldn’t comprehend the fact that you were just trying to do your job. You were used to the little pouts and glares you would receive, only to turn into smiles once you did, in fact, give the item back to them.

However, this kid was determined not to give you the spoon. Which wasn’t even a toy you might add.

If only you had the scanner gun like other store had.

“Hey, there, little lady! What’s the matta?” You heard Spinel ask from your right.

The girl stopped crying and hiccuped out a response.

“I wan’ the spoon...” she said before pouting at you. Somehow, you felt guilty.

“Well, here, hows about we do a trade? You give the nice lady here, the spoon and I’ll give you this!” Spinel smiles revealing a pink and yellow balloon flower.

“A pretty flower for a pretty gal, like yourself!”

The girl who had stars in her eyes all but thrusted her arm with the spoon at you before Spinel handed her the balloon. Quickly you scanned the item and handed it back to the little girl as the mother began to pay her total.

“There, see, now you have the flower AND the spoon!” Spinel booped her on the noise making her giggle.

“Now, what do we say?” The young mother looked at her daughter, gently.

“Tank you.” She smiled looking at you and then spinel.

The mother waved and gave a silent “thanks” as well before she strolled off with her cart of groceries and he daughter.

You quickly turned off your light before anymore crying kids could come up to your line.

“Wow, you’re better with human kids than me.” You turned back to the pink gem.

“Well, makin’ smiles was what I was made for! Though, It’s a little easier to make kids happy then the diamonds anyway.” She muttered rubbing the back of her head softy.

You took notice of the sadden look on her face.

“Well, with just one action you made three people happy. You made the little girl happy, her mom, and you made me very happy everyday. So, thank you.” You gave her a kiss on the nose.

“A-aw, gee, what are friends for?” She blushed, hands behind her back, moving her foot sheepishly.

You smiled. “C’mon. I gotta clock out in the back and then we can go home. We’ll Watch even more balloon animal tutorials.”

Spinel smiled as she grabbed your hand, the other holding on the balloons she bought.

“Sounds like a great way to spend the day, toots!”

End.

(Yeah, that’s all I got.)

#spinel #spinel x reader #spinel is babey #balloons #self indulgent shit

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perscinnamon · 4 years

Photo

BONSAI!

1. Everett

Sometimes, it's a simple answer found in your own home.

1999; a year of restless anticipation and empty grocery stores, a considerable population of gym rats and game shows and the bitter smell of black coffee through the suburbs of Everett, Washington.

The world was coming to an end as we knew it according to David Eddy and McGraw-Hill which, to Mark, seemed fucking ridiculous. But, what did he know? He was too busy trying to keep his joint together, bits of weed falling between his shaking fingers. He had woken up at exactly six-thirty for the past month and a half so he could clamber his way to the upstairs bathroom, the only one in his house with a window, to smoke before school. He knew his parents slept in unless it was Sunday. He also knew that they didn't know the difference between the smell of incense and the smell of weed.

When he was finally able to assemble his joint, sticking his tongue out a bit to lick both sides and stick them together, he sighed in relief.

He grabbed his lighter off of the counter and put the toilet seat down, climbing up on top of it to unlock the window and push it open.

Mark leaned each elbow on either side of the windowsill, lighting his joint and taking a deep inhale. He watched the cloud of smoke as it left his mouth.

He liked this feeling; the cold fall breeze nipping at his skin as his heart fluttered in his chest and his head felt light, the high settling in quickly.

The sun was just starting to rise. Of course, Mark couldn't actually see this since he was facing the West, but he watched with sleep in his eyes as the sky slowly lit up, cascading the neighboring houses in a blurry coat of morning sun.

Yeah, he liked this. He liked this a lot.

That is, until the sharp sound of a car horn in his driveway jolted him from his weed-induced reverie.

"Ah— Ow, what the fuck..." Mark groaned in pain, holding his head where he had hit it on the top of the windowsill.

He leaned over as far as he could, looking past his roof to find exactly who he'd expected.

Johnathan Suh, a lanky 22-year-old sitting in a bright red 1987 Corvette Convertible was grinning smugly up at Mark, his long arm swung over the passenger-side headrest. Mark had known Johnathan for as long as he could remember, the Suh family were regulars at their church.

"What do you want?" Mark croaked from his bathroom window, joint still in his right hand.

"What do you think? I'm driving you to school!" Johnathan yelled back, not bothering to consider the fact that it was 6AM in a sleeping neighborhood.

"Why?" Mark said, taking a hit from his joint.

"Because your parents don't trust you after last weekend. They trust me, so hurry or I'm leaving." Johnny said with an impatient hand gesture.

Mark exhaled dramatically, flicking the stub of his joint off the roof and hopping down from the toilet seat. He glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and ran a hand through his messy hair, his cross pendant flashing around his neck as it caught the dim bathroom lights.

He was clad in a pair of navy blue boxers that hung at his hip bones as he made his way to his room, pushing the door open and reaching for his dresser drawer. He managed to throw on a pair of black trousers and his wool uniform sweater, a pair of mismatched socks on both feet as he took two steps at a time down the carpeted stairs. He grabbed the pair of P.F. Flyer's he kept by the welcome mat and his black Jansport backpack, making sure not to slam the door behind him as he padded to Johnathan's car.

"Took you long enough." Johnathan said, wearing that same grin he always seemed to have plastered on his face. Mark shook his head with a soundless chuckle, hopping over the passenger door and throwing his bag in the backseat.

"Buckle up, kiddo. I don't want another ticket under my belt. I got pulled over last week because one of my taillights were out. One!" Johnathan exclaimed with frustration, still grinning, as he pulled out of Mark's driveway and cruised down the street.

"I mean... That's still illegal." Mark said, his voice still relatively hoarse with sleep as he pulled on his shoes.

Johnathan's car was definitely a hand-me-down, given to him by his uncle with a rearview mirror missing and three flat tires. He managed to clean it up decently enough but it never seemed to be the kind of car he could see Johnny in. Mark could see him in some 1970s Shaggin' Wagon. Or an Achieva.

"Yeah, but, like, the car is ol— Wait, you're one to talk about legality!" Johnny said as he slowed at a stop sign, throwing a quick peace sign up at the Nissan Quest passing us.

"It was one time, Johnny." Mark said with a frown. Here we go again...

Johnathan had been grilling Mark incessantly for his recent drunken fiasco the previous Saturday since their parents spoke about it at church Sunday morning.

"Dude, yeah, two days ago. How did you even manage to get ahold of a bottle of wine near a Jewish holiday? They buy that shit up every Shabbat." Johnny said with a chuckle, pulling on to 41st St. past the cemetery.

"I got it from Paul's. I managed to get out of there before he opened up a can on Jacob's brother. That's why I was driving so fast, I wasn't even that drunk!" Mark explained hastily, looking out at the passing headstones. Some were in the shapes of crosses or angels or hearts. It would suck to be buried in Everett, Mark thought as they drove by in a blur.

"If you pull some shit like that you're in for it, Markie-boy. Your dad doesn't play around. I'm actually surprised he didn't ground you." Johnny said calmly, turning right on to Rucker Ave, past the Safeway Fuel Station.

Mark shrugged, bored of the conversation topic as he rested his chin in his palm. He hated when Johnny ruined his high like this, especially when he talked about his dad.

He loved Johnny like a brother and for a Tacotime employee that carved wood into spoons and smoked Nutmeg in his free time, he was a pretty cool guy.

He could also be totally overbearing.

As they pulled into the roundabout at the front of Mark's school, he faced Johnny with ruffled hair and a pink nose.

"Could you pick up a gram or two for me later? I'm gonna be at Hyuck's."

Johnny hesitated for a moment, rubbing his forehead with a sigh.

"Fine, now get out of my car." Johnny said with a playful shove to Mark's shoulder.

Mark grinned winningly before getting out and grabbing his backpack, turning around to say one last thing.

"Pick me up at two."

"Three."

"Two-thirty?"

"Whatever, go to class."

Mark chuckled, walking towards the school with his untied P.F Flyer's, his laces swinging around his feet angrily as he shoved both hands in the pockets of his trousers.

He didn't mind this place. For a stuffy private catholic school covered in brick and vine, it wasn't too bad.

It was the kids that were the worst.

He liked a few of the student's at St. Pius School. He liked his friends and, although he didn't talk to the girls too much, he definitely liked looking at them.

As he made his way up the front steps, he caught sight of a Bully Piston bike racing by him. He watched it screech to a halt in front of the bike-racks.

"Hey, Hyuck!" Mark called from the top of the stairs.

Hyuck turned around as he was locking up his bike, a grin on his face as he flashed a peace sign, rushing up to Mark and shoulder-checking him.

Mark stumbled back with a laugh and shoved Hyuck with his elbow as they made their way through the double-doors.

"How've you been, bud? Heard you knocked over the Bailey's mailbox last weekend."

Mark grunted, rolling his eyes.

"Can people stop bringing that up? It's been, like, almost a week."

"I haven't been here to press you about it. Also it's Monday." Hyuck said nonchalantly, stretching his arms over his head as he nodded to a giggling group of girls to their right.

"Where've you been, anyways?"

"Out."

"Out where?" Mark asked again as they approached his locker. He rotated the lock carefully, silently mouthing his combination numbers.

"My dad's." Hyuck said, leaning his shoulder up against the locker next to Mark's.

Mark frowned. He knew about Hyuck's situation with his parent's recent divorce but didn't know it would resort to him being taken away for an entire weekend.

"That's dumb."

"I know." Hyuck said, ruffling his dark curls with his hand as he watched the students around them waste time before they had to head to morning mass.

"I'm coming to your place later, right?" Mark asked, glancing at Hyuck before putting a binder in his backpack and slamming his locker door shut.

"Yeah. I might have a few people over Friday if you wanna stop by to pregame." Hyuck said, yawning.

"Maybe. I'll see how my dad's feeling."

"Kate might be there."

"Oh- Okay." Mark said after a minute, not really knowing how to reply to this statement. Kate was a pretty blonde that sat on the other side of his Psych classroom in third period.

"Don't be weird about it, Mark. I'm trying to get you laid." Hyuck said with a low chuckle, playfully bumping Mark with his arm.

Mark rolled his eyes.

"Thats all you think about, Hyuck."

The bell rang.

Hyuck shrugged.

"I like to have fun, can't blame me."

Morning mass was always a slow process, all the students gathering into Ardolf Hall at an irritatingly slow pace. The stress of having to find his friends in the pews before looking like a loner was too nerve-racking for Mark. That's why he avoided it.

He had ditched Hyuck to go to the bathroom and separated himself from the usual crowd of people that we're headed towards the double doors of the school chapel five minutes ago, heading down the empty hallway with his head down, staring at the floor pattern and stepping from one green tile to the next.

The boy's bathroom was always pretty gross, in every sense of the word, but there wasn't anywhere else to get away.

Mark walked in, scrunching his nose at the smell as he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, eyes red, lips chapped, face pale. He sighed in frustration at his appearance before dragging his eyes down, towards the stall directly behind the mirror.

Mark shrieked and jumped back, scaring the girl sitting on the toilet behind him who let out an almost identical yell.

"What the hell?!"

"Damnit." The girl said as she stared at the coke on the floor that she had previously been forming into a neat white line on top of her Economics textbook.

They stayed like that for a bit, the girl sitting on the closed toilet seat with a textbook on her lap and her coke dusting the tiled floor, Mark leaning up against the sink with wide eyes.

"Wh— What are you—"

Heavy footsteps drew closer outside the bathroom door.

"Sh." The girl said, holding her hand to her mouth cautiously.

They came closer, a hand reaching for the bathroom door and swinging it open.

The girl peeked past the stall door and her shoulders relaxed, lunging towards the boy that had just entered the room and hitting his shoulder.

"Christ, Duffy! You almost gave me a heart-attack." The girl said with furrowed eyebrows.

"Not my fault you're so damn jumpy all the time."

Mark stood there awkwardly, his cheeks bright red.

"Since when are you buds with Mark." The guy, Duffy, said to her, gesturing his head towards Mark with a raised eyebrow.

Mark scratched the back of his neck, pushing off of the sink he had been leaning against.

"I'm not. He walked in and scared me shitless." She said, glancing back at him.

"I'm just gonna go. Sorry." Mark said, inching past the couple slowly.

"Hold on. What are you doing over here, anyways?" Duffy said, a look of suspicion on his face. The girl stood behind him, arms crossed.

Reid "Duffy" Durbin was a notorious presence at St. Pius. He was a self-proclaimed DJ and if he wasn't hosting a party he would show up anyways, always with a baggie full of pills nobody bothered identifying as they scarfed them down. He sported a bristly excuse for a go-tee and a patchy buzzcut. He and Mark didn't really run in the same crowd, although Duffy and Hyuck were pretty tight.

Mark didn't really have an excusable answer so he just shrugged.

"Just getting some air..."

"Not much air to get in here." The girl said with a chuckle.

Duffy groaned in annoyance, "Okay, I hate to be an ass, but... Mark, can you leave? I'm trying to run a business here." He said this as he held up a baggie of what Mark assumed was more coke.

The girl crossed her arms anxiously.

"Um, yeah... Okay. Sorry." Mark said with hesitation, reaching for the door handle and pulling it open.

His strange interaction that morning had killed his high and left him drowsy for the remainder of the day, forcing him to watch the clocks at the front of his classrooms as the hand spun clockwise in repetitive circles.

Mark thought about the run in with Duffy and coke-head girl all day, half humiliation and half curiosity. Since when does Duffy sell coke? He had always been just a friendly neighborhood weed plug.

It was weird, but Mark didn't think much of it as he waited by the bike-racks while Hyuck unlocked his bike.

"Isn't Johnathan picking you up?"

"Yeah, but not until two-thirty. I'll probably wait in the library until he gets here."

"You can just hitch a ride with me, you know." Hyuck said as he walked his bike down the sidewalk, Mark following beside him.

"Yeah, but he's bringing bud."

Hyuck made a face that indicated that he understood Mark's rationale.

"Fair enough," Hyuck mounted his bike, "see you at my place, then!"

Mark nodded and waved, watching Hyuck race off, dodging a mini van pulling into the roundabout. It honked at him and he gave it the finger.

Mark snorted at the exchange and turned back towards the school, kicking a half-eaten apple core lying on the sidewalk.

He kept his head down the entire way to the library, kicking acorn tops and stones, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk instinctively.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back.

Mark made his way into the library, the smell of dust and paper overwhelming. There were a few people sitting at the wooden tables in the middle of the room, books or lined paper spread out in front of them. A few people sat at the computer desks at the back as the librarian piled books on a rolling medal cart.

He took a seat on the floor in a back aisle near the history books where nobody ever bothered going. He stretched his legs out and unzipped his backpack, pulling out the book he had been reading for his English class. The Crucible.

The only thing he could hear in the room was the occasional sound of the printer going off or someone coughing.

A kid stepped over him to reach for an obnoxiously heavy Civil War book, a thick History packet in his hand as he eyed Mark and walked off, scuffed Nike's shuffling against the dirty carpet.

Mark had been reading for almost fifteen minutes, his tailbone already aching, when he heard the doors to the library slam shut. He jumped and looked up and around, only seeing the aisles of books that surrounded him.

His eyes, wide as ever, scanned the area as he got up with a grunt, creeping away from the history books and towards the middle of the room, the hair on his arms standing up.

As he approached the middle of the library, he realized he was alone. Not one person reading a book at the wooden tables, nobody typing away at the clunky old computers in the back desks, not even the librarian with her dusty medal cart stacked with books.

"Hello?"

He stood there as his voice's muffled echo filled the room.

And suddenly, it was dark.

#mark lee #nct mark lee #mark lee imagine #mark lee au #mark lee fic #nct fan fic #nct #nct fic #poopoo peepee #hope u like dis #nct mark

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rocket-remmy · 4 years

Text

Intro To Queer||Morgan and Remmy

In which Morgan explains to Remmy what U-haul Lesbians are.

(Content warning: Mild homophobia mentions)

Morgan had shed two of her extra sweaters and done her hair to greet the InstaCart driver without getting weird looks. It was bad enough being perma-cold, still living at the Traveler’s Rest, and ordering jelly beans along with her tea and microwave soup. She could at least spruce up and look like the composed adult she wished she was. And now Remmy was coming over! With a thermal blanket! It was silly, certainly, but Remmy for some reason thought well of her without Morgan putting in too much effort. It as a nice, if not unfamiliar feeling, and Morgan didn’t want to disappoint by answering the door half-feral in her pajamas and hoodie. She made herself some coffee, courtesy of Cassie, and took her cup outside to watch the sky. She hadn’t seen the sun in three days, but the cloud cover was looking extra thin; maybe she’d get lucky. When she saw a lanky ragamuffin of a person start ambling uncertainly up the stairs, she leaned over the railing and called down. “Are you Remmy?”

Remmy had met a lot of people off the internet in the past few weeks. It was almost becoming a regular thing, now. But it was a community board! It was supposed to be for this kind of thing to happen safely! It was just a weird thing, for Remmy. Remmy, who had mostly been without internet and cell phone service and satellite TV for several years. They had an old bunny ears box back at base, but they were only allowed to turn it on every other night, and only for an hour or two, if the Lieutenant was feeling nice. They had radios, though. Lots of radios. The point in all that, Remmy reminded themself, was that the internet just wasn’t something they were used to. But hey hadn’t been led wrong yet. And Cece vouched for Morgan. So this was going to be okay. Remmy didn’t really know what to expect, or what else to bring, so they’d brought some tea Blanche had bought them, a beanie, some hand warmers, and, of course, the blanket. When someone called out to them, Remmy stopped and looked around. “Yeah! That’s me!” Squinted. “Are you Morgan?”

Now that they were closer, it was painfully, sweetly, obvious who this was. Remmy, who apparently hadn’t gotten around to buying a backpack or even one of those reusable plastic bags from the grocery store, had taken it upon themselves to wrangle her get-well presents and carry them all the way from Gallow’s End. It was just the kind of earnest thing someone who could call her a good person without meeting her would do. Morgan gave them a friendly wave and came to meet them at the top of the stairs. “It’s me!” She called. “Come on up, I’ve got snacks I don’t want to move to my new place! You know, you look pretty good for someone who lost an arm today.”

Remmy couldn’t see too well from far away. It was probably the missing eye, but it could’ve also been the pile of stuff in front of them that prevented them from fully seeing Morgan. Just a puff of curly hair and a sweater, right now. “Hey!” They called out, trying to give a wave, but realized they’d drop all the stuff if they did that, so they just gave a shrug. “Coming!” Padded quickly up the stairs until they reached almost reached the top, finally able to see the person waiting for them at the top, pausing in blindsighted surprise. Morgan was shorter than Remmy, but she had one of those cute, innocent faces framed all the more by her bustle of curls on her head. It wasn’t the sight Remmy had been expecting, and this would make the second time they’d almost stumbled into something when seeing a pretty girl for the first time. They tried to hand off the stuff, stuttering to say a proper hello and almost running straight into the pole at the top, a foot catching on one of the stairs.

“Oh my god!” Morgan reached out to snag some of Remmy’s things and put a steadying hand on their arm. They were cold to the touch, about as frozen on the outside as she felt on the inside. Morgan made a careful note of this, in case it helped them figure out what they were, and helped them up the last step. They had lost their balance out of nowhere. “Careful, don’t want you to lose a foot too. Although, who knows, maybe it’s not that big a deal! But uh, you sure you didn’t get any other injuries on the beach?” She smiled at them coyly; there was a flustered look in their face, like they were embarrassed, the way teenagers sometimes got. Heck, the way even she’d sometimes gotten over a pretty face. “We don’t have to talk about it, though, let’s just get inside in one piece, yeah?” She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders as she spoke and propped open her rickety door for Remmy to come inside.

“Sorry!” Remmy called out, even as they stumbled and tried to catch themself on the railing. “Sorry! I’m just--” Clambered up the last step and onto stable ground, though that wasn’t saying too much for Remmy. Their dad always said they could probably trip over nothing. Standing up straight and holding out the blanket, Remmy gave as much of a grin back as they could, their eyes darting to try and stay focused on Morgan, but having a bit of a rough time with it. This usually happened with new people. “Umm-- yeah. I mean, no! Nothing else! I think. Just a lot of lobsters! Or um-- whatever they were. But yeah! Inside. Let’s do that.” Scooted through the door before turning around to look at Morgan, unsure of what to do now. “Uh-- I didn’t know if you needed anything else! So I brought like...a hat. And some tea! And those handwarmers. They’re great, you can even put them like in your gloves or socks and they make your whole hand or foot warm!” Stood with their hands held out, holding up the aforementioned gifts, a crooked smile on their face.

Morgan curled up at the foot of the bed, nicely cocooned in the thermal blanket for all the good it did and let Remmy talk themselves out. They were a nervous one, and she couldn’t suss out just from observation whether it was her, or the day, or just...Remmy. “Thank you,” she said. “This is really kind of you to do for someone you’ve just talked to a couple times. But listen, I was planning on having some jelly beans with my coffee and watching some old Grey’s Anatomy episodes if you hadn’t come,so you don’t have to stay if hanging out in a room like this with a stranger-like person makes you nervous. And, you know, we can try and unpack some of that stuff you mentioned too, if you did feel like staying around.” She took another sip of her coffee and smiled up at Remmy in a way that she hoped convey her lack of desire to murder them or whatever else they might be worried about. “You just seem tense, which is more than understandable, and I don’t want you stick around because you feel like you have to, okay? This right here is perfect.” She clasped the blanket a little tighter. “I’m good.”

“Oh, well-- you were like super nice when we talked and answered my questions and put up with me,” Remmy immediately said, “And plus I accidentally flaked on helping you pack that one time! But I-I promise it’s not you! Well, I mean, it’s kinda you-- but not in a bad way! In the like ‘you’re really pretty and I didn’t expect that and I sometimes just get really nervous around pretty people’ kind of way! So like… not bad.” They paced a minute, before deciding to force themself to sit down in the one little chair by the bed. “Not that I’m hitting on you or anything! I just think you’re very pretty! And like nice and sweet and you didn’t freak out on me when I told you my arm grew back.” A pause, where they were sure they should need to take a breath, but didn’t. “And I wanna stay! I do. I’m sorry-- the rambling probably doesn’t help. It’s uh-- my doctor said it’s a coping thing. Um, cause my mind races a lot? I guess that happens to vets um...a lot. When they come back. You sure you’re okay? Is the blanket helping? Can I get you more coffee or something?”

So it was just Remmy, poor thing. Morgan couldn’t help but smile wider, fluff her hair back and over the side the way she thought made her look even younger as they stumbled over themselves to explain. Like, very pretty? Who even talked that openly anymore? Did Remmy even know how to be any other way? Morgan was almost afraid to ask. This town had some dark shadows hiding in it, and even if most people she had met were nice, people like Remmy were usually the first ones kicked down and crushed when something went wrong. “Remmy, I would bottle you up and keep you on tap for dark days if I could. Figuratively speaking, of course. Not actually, even if that was a thing that I could do, which it isn’t.You are, as the kids say, too good for this world, Remmy. Grab one of the other blankets and come sit by me. I have all the coffee I need--nothing actually makes me warmer, so I’ve been going with distraction to help facilitate a nice placebo--and I promise not to bite, or hit on you either. Although you are very fine looking yourself and it’s always nice to get some queer attention with a face this girly.” She wriggled her free hand out of her blanket burrito and patted the floor.

Remmy looked over at Morgan, then to the spot next to her. “Oh? I mean, you may not be able to bottle me, but you can definitely message me any time! I don’t sleep a lot or often anymore, cause of all the meds I’m on, although now I’m not sure it’s cause of those. Cause, like, if I’m not human, then, do human drugs work on me? You know?” Swallowed heavily. The word reverberated in Remmy’s head. Queer. Not that it was bad or sounded bad or was negative in anyway, but that ingrained, visceral reaction to hearing the word, the one that was drilled into Remmy’s head, made their fingers wring tightly together. “Is it that obvious?” they blurted without thinking, then stopped, biting their lip. “I mean-- sorry! It’s not that-- I’m not like-- I mean I am like that, it’s just-- new.” They stood up from the chair, sat back down. Looked at the spot next to Morgan and her welcoming face; the blanket burrito looked comfortable, too. Remmy bit the inside of their cheek, before standing up again and tentatively scooting over, sitting down next to Morgan, making sure to not touch her. Their eyes stared holes into the ground in front of them. “I’m not like-- ashamed or anything. I think. At least, not anymore. It’s just-- cause in the military-- with DADT-- and most of the higher ups didn’t approve. But like-- it’s obvious?” Finally, they looked up at Morgan, but only for a brief second, before their eyes fell back to the floor in front of them. They weren’t sure what they wanted the answer to be.

“Oh, Remmy,” Morgan whispered. Whatever she had expected them to say next, it hadn’t been...all of that. This was much more real shit than Grey’s Anatomy. “Wow. Okay….okay…” She breathed out slowly, knowing she should pick her words extra careful. Shit, of course Remmy would be fucked up after DADT. In her head, it was over when it was over, and as bad as things were for people like them, people didn’t talk about it getting back-walked like they did other things. She tried to think about what she would have wanted to hear when she was more scared of herself, or scared for different reasons. What she wished she’d heard after the news broadcasts and the protests blipped off the TV and she crept back to bed, unnoticed by her parents. She had no clue. “Well,” she said gently, watching the ripples in her coffee cup as it quivered, “Straight women don’t get so flustered like that around girls. And second, you’re a ‘they,’ right? I only know that from knowing you and your pronouns, but all the same…” It felt like she was breaking some bad news to Remmy, and she didn’t want to be. But how else did she talk about this when she remembered so vividly-- “Look, I was seven, when they were making jokes about gay plague in the white house press briefing room, and the president was pitying those poor gays, bringing it on themsleves, and my grandma said things like, ‘it’s adam and eve, not adam and steve!’ I didn’t know how I was then. No one did, because I liked my dolls and my dresses so much. But it was in my head when I started figuring it out.” Worse than that, it had convinced her she was the reason so many bad things happened to her family. If all the gays in New York City could bring down a plague, of course one girl could ruin her family. It had been happening since she was born, so why not? Even after her mother told her never, baby, never, this is so much bigger than you, this has nothing to with how special you were made, Morgan had found herself wondering anyway for a long time after. But she wasn’t ready to tell that part to Remmy, or to anyone. “I get how afraid someone can be about this. And you should keep saying...what your are, and that you’re not ashamed. As often as you can. Because it’s probably going to take awhile before you really get there.”

“I don’t know what I am,” Remmy said after a long silence. They were trying to let Morgan’s words settle in, but it felt as if there were trampolines inside their head and everything was just bouncing around with no stopping, no one thought to hold onto. “I mean...I know I’m not...what I was born as. And it’s weird, but that’s somehow easier to accept than being--” they stopped. Maybe they were still ashamed. They couldn’t say the word out loud without feeling their skin bristle and their hands shake and their senses sharpen. Just like when they were in the field, that impending sense of doom. That someone had spotted them, that someone knew, and they were going to hurt them. Because they could. Because they wanted to. Remmy swallowed. “They still said those things, even when I was born. When I was growing up, where I was from. It got you beaten at best, and killed at worst. I didn’t even know until I was older. I couldn’t even entertain the idea that I might be.” They hadn’t even noticed there were tears in their eyes. Remmy scrubbed one away with their sleeve. “Sorry...I know that’s not fair. You lived through a really rough time, too. And-and you very brave, to have been open about it. Sometimes I wish I had been, maybe this’d all be easier. Maybe I wouldn’t be pushing thirty and just now trying to figure out how to talk to pretty girls, you know?” Remmy gave a sniffle and a crooked smile. “But I am now. And I just gotta...think about that.” They scrubbed their face again. “You musta been so scared…” they said quietly.

Morgan stayed still and quiet. She hadn’t been open, was the thing. Sure, she came out to her mom, once in awhile she sat in the back at student meetings. She’d kept a flyer in her notebook about a bus trip to visit the AIDS quilt when it came to Austin once. But she let her sweaters and her makeup do most of the hiding for her, and if she ever stared too long at a girl, or brushed up too close, there was always some excuse and people always seemed ready to take it. She didn’t have her first real date until she was practically Remmy’s age. She still hadn’t had much in the way of a real relationship. How could she, with what happened to her dad? “Yeah, course I was,” she said quickly. “But it was never going to be easy, okay? No matter what disaster you were born in the middle of. I mean that in a nice way. You’re not...doomed or anything just because you’re on your own time. Temporality is different for queer children. Does that make sense?”

The hesitation should have given a Remmy a hint at something else, but they kept quiet. If Morgan didn’t want to bring it up, neither would they. Remmy looked back down at the carpet, playing with a snagged bit that had stuck up and begun to fray. “I don’t think I feel doomed. I just feel...cheated, I guess. Like...I missed so much time. Time that I can’t get back.” They glanced over at Morgan. There was a sort of relief to being able to dump all this on someone, finally, but Remmy still felt that pang of guilt. That saying these things, talking about this, was just dumping their problems on someone else. It was don’t ask, don’t tell for a reason in the military. It wasn’t just queer people that kept their mouths shut. It was everyone with something that showed any bit of weakness or non conformity. Their life had been order and strict and routine for so long they hadn’t realized that time was being stolen from them, bit by bit, as they fell in line and did as ordered. “The first, um-- the first time I kissed a girl was in high school and it scared me so much I pretty much ghosted her for the next two years. Which is kinda...hard to do in a school of only 300 students.” They were quiet again, and found that they really wanted to be closer to Morgan. Scooted slightly. She felt safe. It’d only been five minutes, but Morgan felt safe. “I wish it was easy.”

Morgan noticed Remmy scoot closer to her. She looked over her shoulder at them. She had imagined them as older, even with all the anxiety, they were so reserved, so haunted. But in this moment they just seemed lost. “Maybe one day it will be,” she said. “You’ll...take the leap enough times that you get used to it!” She brightened herself up with a big smile. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, but she hoped it made Remmy feel better all the same. “Not ghosting girls you kiss is probably a good start. I mean, unless that’s something you agree on doing together, in which case, that’s great.”

Remmy gave a little smile, still crooked and tired on their face. But they hoped Morgan got the point. They were grateful for her. “I just don’t want anyone to ever have to suffer like that, you know…” They stopped picking at the carpet. “Not even for myself, I just...don’t want anyone to go through that.” A tiredness settled over them, one they hadn’t felt in a long time. “Yeah, I think I can handle that. The um-- not ghosting anyone.” They scooted a little closer again, then leaned over and set their head on Morgan’s shoulder. She was still shivering slightly, but it didn’t bother Remmy. They just liked being close, to a physical body. “I’m still just figuring out how to navigate being...you know, um...liking girls? And now I might have to try and learn what it means to not be human…” a sigh. “How do you do it?” they asked. “Be so open with it all? The magic, the liking girls...Isn’t it scary?”

Morgan didn’t mind Remmy’s cold little head on her shoulder. As they settled in, she tugged on their arm through the blanket and tucked them around her in a way that felt more cozy to her. She leaned her head in theirs, trying to nest in like those nesting necklace halves, but not quite getting it right around ears and jawlines and tufts of hair. “The magic is actually kind of easy. Kind of. I mean, my shop is Beck’s Witchery, it would be stupid to talk out of both sides of my mouth about that. But when I say I’m a witch, nine times out of ten people assume I mean I burn incense in a pentagram stamped cauldron and like, doodle rhyming spells with the help of my tarot cards. It doesn’t mean anything. I only talk about the alchemy when I think it’s at least reasonably safe to. And if I’m wrong, then they just don’t believe me. They assume I’m delusional, or stupid, or both, and in that case, what’s the point anyway, right?” She sighed and tried to settle into Remmy again. She couldn’t tell if they really were as cold as they felt or if the chill inside her was just that bad. “As for making time with pretty girls, well, I hate to break it to you, but it really was just practice. I um, I was actually your age, basically, when I went on my first date-date.” She laughed. “Is that something people say? Date-date? But my first kiss was a little before then. Real kiss, unless we’re counting drunk truth or dare, which I don’t think we should. She just uh—kinda did it. We met at a bar, danced and drank, and she walked me to my car. ‘I’m gonna kiss you goodnight okay?’ And I was so relieved and excited I didn’t do anything. I just...melted and watched her walk away. Like, crap, people do that? It made me realize I could do it too. Make it into something easy. It’s not so different from magic in that way. You have to say what you want if you want to get anything at all. And then, well, all the practice.”

Remmy let Morgan tuck herself against them, staying still while she adjusted. They missed being close to people. Though their other teammates hadn’t been so openly intimate, Remmy could always count on crawling into a bunk next to Dario and falling asleep in his arms. Moose was a nice cuddle buddy, but it was hard to spoon a dog. “I guess, yeah,” they said, trying to take in exactly what Morgan was saying. It was hard, though, for Remmy to brush people off like that. “I don’t think I’m as um...easy going as you might be. About other people. Maybe that’s not the word, um…” They paused as Morgan shifted. “S-sorry, I can move if…” Cleared their throat. “Oh, uh-- I think people still say date-date. I guess there’s a difference between like, friend-date and date-date.” They reached out to pick at the carpet again. “I’m sorry…” they weren’t sure for what, exactly, but if felt like the only thing to say. “I’m glad you um-- got to experience that though. And learned how to be yourself. Guess we’re all kinda...running late on that dating thing, aren’t we?” They pulled their hands back into their lap, thinking for a moment. “A girl kissed me the other night. Um-- outside a bar. It was….really nice actually. And now she wants to come over and watch movies and I’m freaking out a little.”

“You’re fine, silly,” Morgan laughed. “And by easy-going do you mean demi, or like, just not into hook ups and friends with benefits? Or just like...confidence? These are all big distinctions, and I’m feeling curious.” She nudged Remmy in their side through her blanket, teasing. “And we’re not running late! Not...exactly! We operate under different temporal rules because or coming to understand ourselves has been so historically fucked and endangered! And delayed queer adolescence is a thing and---I’m turning into a lecturer now,” she laughed again. “So tell me more about this girl. And also don’t freak out. You’re a cute, scruffy little stud. You’ve got nothing to worry about.” Well, except getting their heart broken. Which, given this was a rando at a bar, seemed pretty likely. But that wasn’t exactly pep talk material.

Remmy felt their cheeks get a little warm. “Um-- I don’t think I entirely understand what demi is, but um...I guess I’m not really into hook-ups. I like feeling a connection with someone. Never really...considered friends with benefits thing before. There wasn’t really room for um-- sexual experimentation in the army. And since I joined when I was seventeen, I didn’t really...leave myself that room to explore.” Morgan always seemed positive about things, and Remmy liked that. It was a sort of kindred experience. There were a lot of people here, and back at the VA that were nothing but bad vibes and pessimism. Not that Remmy really blamed them, everyone had their own shit going on-- but it was nice to meet another person who also tried to look more on the bright side of things. “It’s okay. To lecture. I don’t know a lot of this stuff. I feel so...outside of the um-- culture? I don’t know...how to explain it. I try my best, but it’s-- there’s a lot.” They couldn’t help but smile at the mention of it, though. “You think I’m cute?” More of a tease, but Morgan was the second person to tell them that. “Oh, um-- her name is Taylor. She’s a singer.”

Morgan nudged Remmy again. “I think you’re very cute. If you ever figure out your stance on friends with benefits, you should definitely let me know.” She wasn’t exactly holding her breath. Remmy was fresh as a baby when it came to the whole intimacy and relationships. Morgan had heard more than one woman swear they never wanted a basket of rainbows and forever, but she didn’t buy it. Maybe it wasn’t what fit everybody, but she couldn’t imagine someone not hoping it might and trying to find it. “A singer? Like, rock and roll, or just a girl and her guitar, or, I guess they come with a ukulele more often now. Either way, not too shabby. But why are you freaking out? If she’s interested in you, what’s to worry about?”

Remmy’s cheeks got warmer. “Oh, um...o-okay.” They swallowed, and were suddenly thankful that Morgan couldn’t see their face right now because it was probably beet red and they were sure their eyes were wider than coins. Remmy had done friends with benefits with a couple of the guys before, but that was because dating was almost strictly forbidden in boot camp, and there wasn’t much time for anything else when they were deployed. “Yeah! A singer. Um-- I think more rock? She’s in a band. It’s called Knot Known. I guess they’re going on tour soon, that’s what she said. I walked her to her car and she gave me her card.” They smiled again, softer. “I-i don’t know why I’m worried. I just...get that really weird feeling in my stomach and like, I’m gonna say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or not be good enough or funny enough or smart enough.”

“Aaw, you like her!” Morgan cooed. “Oof, and after just one meeting. She is either crazy impressive, or you fall hard and fast, bless your heart.” Called it, she thought with a wry grin. “But that’s not always a bad thing. We need more hearts of gold in this cold, cold world. But, you can’t let all those butterflies get the better of you. You just have to be yourself, let yourself enjoy the moment. Like right now but different.”

“What!? No! I mean-- I like her, of course I do! She’s nice and pretty and--” Remmy paused mid-sentence and closed their mouth. Their whole face felt warm now. “I...okay, maybe I do like her, but like-- I don’t know if I’m ready for anything. Or if I want anything to happen? I just…” They crinkled their nose, felt that tightness in their chest again just like that night outside the bar. “It felt really nice. To be...liked by someone like that. N-not that no one’s ever liked me! It’s just always been...guys.”

“Bless your poor heart!” Morgan laughed. “Guys? No shame, or judgement. But guys will get into anything if they think there’s a piece of ass for them in it. That’s their thing. And you don’t really sound like someone who also likes guys, so she’s still your first. Your first serious crush!” She wanted to pinch their cheeks, they were getting as flustered as a child. “Of course it feels different! Just, okay, don’t go too hard, like bring flowers on the first date. Try and keep your cool for a little bit before you fall into big, deep, U-Haul love. And having a crush doesn’t have to mean doing anything about it. If you want to take it slow and steady, you should do that.” Morgan was thinking all of this out as she spoke, but it sounded right, like something a person with relationships would say, and it made enough sense for her to stand by it.

“I mean, I dated guys for a long time,” Remmy said. They understood that dating guys before didn’t take away from who they were now, or even back then, but the idea of being an imposter among queer peers still plauged them when they thought too much about it. Not realizing you were gay until you were 28 didn’t seem like a very shared experience. “Oh, yeah-- o-okay. I mean...I’m not even sure it’s a date. It’s just movies and stuff. U-haul l-love?” They blinked, finally sat up, looked at Morgan confusedly. “I don’t know...what that means.” Furrowed their brow. “There should be like...a book for all this. Or like a youtube tutorial video.”

Morgan looked at Remmy with a fond kind of pity, so alone! So anxious! So much life ahead of them! “It’s just a thing people say, or said, maybe I’m dating myself. But it’s just this idea that, when it comes to women dating each other, they’ll get attached super quickly, and by the second date they’ll want to move in together. And, I have seen that sort of thing happen before so it’s not just a cliche about femmes having too many feelings, but that’s beside the point,” she explained. “Just find your way between having fun in the moment in being careful. That’s the most anyone can do, right? And the good news is that these days there probably are a lot more resources for you right now. Just just have to give yourself time to look for them! Ooh, you should see if the VA will pay for you to go to UMWC! You can get a minor in gay studies. But—besides the point! Just, do the thing I said before, and you’ll probably be fine.”

Remmy couldn’t quite place the look on Morgan’s face, but it was definitely one they’d seen before. Tilting their head, they listened intently to her talk. She sure could talk an ear off, that was for sure. It kinda made Remmy smile. “After only two dates!?” they said, exasperated. “Geez...I don’t think I could ever do that. As much as I like people…” a shrug, chin tucked into their shoulder in a shy gesture. “Oh, I-- I’m not smart enough for that. I barely graduated high school. It’s sorta why I went into the military, you know? I didn’t really have any other options… But, um-- thanks for the vote of confidence. It um...means a lot.”

“Okay, so, maybe a slight exaggeration,” Morgan confessed. “But you get the idea. Two girls who met in my masters program did go from zero to living together in a week, though. But, you should really think about college! Maybe take some online community classes. You can learn, Remmy. You’re worth taking a chance on at least, right?”

“Wow, that’s…” Remmy shook their head, “I can’t even fathom that. Maybe it’s just me, though. I try not to judge people though. If that’s what they wanna do…” They looked over at Morgan, smiling a little brighter now. The day had had a rough start, and even though they still had so many questions about what they were and how to deal with it, they felt okay. They knew they’d be okay if there were people like Morgan in their life. “I guess I could look into it...a sort of friend offered me a job at his garage if I could get the schooling. Not sure I wanna be a mechanic, though. Too close to following in my dad’s footsteps.” They made a decision, then, nodding. “Whatever does happen, I’m gonna figure this out for you, Morgan. You’ve helped me so much, it’s the least I could do.”

“Oh, don’t,” Morgan said dryly. The words had slipped loose before she could think better. Maybe it was the cold was finally getting to her head. Maybe Remmy was making her melt around the edges, guilting her with all their sad young puppy eyes, their earnestness, their energy. For someone who’d seen a battle zone, Remmy was relentless, even optimistic, at least about the world; about other people. “Let’s just watch some Grey’s, we have time for that right?” she said, shrugging it off like she was only talking about their situation here and now, like she wasn’t afraid the universe would hear them and pull on just that one thread to fuck with her, unraveling what little she’d managed to scrounge together here.

Remmy’s face twisted a moment. That wasn’t the reply they’d been expecting. Sure, they didn’t know what they’d expected Morgan to say, but it wasn’t that. Still...Remmy couldn’t just leave her when she was sick like this, and all she wanted to do was watch some TV with a friend. Remmy could give her that. The chest wasn’t going anywhere, anyway. They could go check it out tomorrow, later at night, when everyone else was tucked in bed and they were lying awake staring at the grey ceiling of their apartment. “Yeah…” they said, sitting back down and settling back against Morgan, shoulder to shoulder. “We’ve got time for that.”

#chatzy #chatzy: morgan #morgan #intro to queer #a much needed talk

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