#hey whatup i have a whole back story for chloe chow

[pongpalace]

@chowderweek | day one: full moon

Lunar Photography |  [ao3]

Chris is in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil. He has the throw blanket from the couch around his shoulders, ready to bring upstairs with him, and is considering grabbing the “outside” blanket from the hall closet to sit on, knowing from experience how quickly the shingles on the roof sap body warmth from your ass. It may only be October, but the air is cold as soon as the sun goes down, and Chris plans on being outside while the sun goes down. It’s kinda essential.

The kettle whistles so Chris takes it off the heat. He looks at the mug with the tea bag he’d been planning on using, looks at the time, and knows he made a miscalculation. By the time he gets back upstairs and comfortable, the tea will probably be cold and drinking hot tea is mostly how Chris deals with the cold. He puts the kettle back on the burner, ignores the soft whistle that comes from it, and goes to look for a go-cup of some sort. He knows that his is still in his school bag, half full of the mocha he’d made this morning, and doesn’t think anyone else leaves theirs in the kitchen but is proved wrong when he catches sight of a blue and white go-cup drying upside down. Beggars can’t be choosers and at least it doesn’t have a Ducks’ logo.

“Wicks, can I borrow your go-cup?” Chris shouts in the general direction of the door, already pulling it from the drying rack. He’s like, 95% sure the answer will be yes so he puts the tea bag from the mug into the cup. He pauses before pouring the water over, until he hears a muffled, “go for it, bro!” from the attic and he tips the kettle. He’s a little overzealous in his pouring as he loses the string that makes the tea bag easy to get out in the process, but that’s a problem for later.

Chris lets the tea steep while he goes to dig out the blanket. The hall closet is a mess, there’s a slip’n’slide hanging between someone’s winter clothes, but Chris’s able to kick around the loose pucks to find the blanket. He tosses it towards the stairs goes back into the kitchen. 

The tea isn’t quite the colour he wants, so he grabs paper towel and a clean spoon from the drawer. He’ll let the tea finish steeping upstairs. He twists the matching Toronto blue lid on, and makes sure the throw is tied securely around his shoulders. The last thing he wants is a repeat of last week’s incident when Nursey tripped up the stairs while carrying a fresh cup of coffee.

At the bottom of the stairs, Chris puts the spoon in his mouth and tucks the paper towel under his chin to grab the outside blanket. He drags it up the stairs, concentrating more on the paper towel roll that’s trying to escape, no matter how tightly he tucks his chin to his chest. He manages to make it into his room with minimal casualties (the towel roll has been bent completely out of shape, there’s no saving it) and sets the go-cup on his desk. He opens his laptop, shaking the mouse to wake it up, and pulls up Skype. While Chris waits for the application to sign him on, he untwists the lid and, finally seeing a colour with actual flavour, takes the spoon from his mouth so he can fish out the teabag and set it on some paper towel so he doesn’t make a mess.

He gets the teabag out and twists the lid on tightly, before taking off the screen of the window. It’s chilly so he’s glad he brought up two extra blankets. Still, he puts a hoodie on over the Samwell long sleeve he’s been wearing since getting home from classes. He shoves the outside blanket out the window first, follows it out to lay it out on the flat part of the roof. His laptop, tea, and the mooncakes his parents sent earlier in the week go next, placed far enough out that he won’t step on them when he follows them out. Before he does though, he wraps his Sharks blanket around his shoulder, like how Caitlin wears her giant plaid scarf that could probably fit two people, and then the throw from downstairs goes around his chest like a strapless dress. He shuts the big light off so he can see better once he's outside.

Chris wiggles out the window, and carefully sits with his back against the Haus. He opens Skype once his computer wakes up and clicks over to the first name on his contact list. His dad answers quickly, like he always does, but before they can say more than hi, the tablet gets taken by someone.

“Is it clear there, Chris?” Chloe says, holding the screen so Chris isn’t looking up her nose like he was his dad's.

“Oh hi Chloe, I’m good thanks for asking, how’s high school treating you?” Chris says to his younger sister. She huffs and rolls her eyes, which tells Chris a lot about how she’s probably treating high school.

“It’s fine Chris, c’mon lemme see.”

“Don’t you have a full moon over there?”

Chloe huffs again. “I told you, it’s been cloudy all day, Christopher, I’m not sure I’ll see anything here.”

Chris sticks his tongue out at her, but does as she asks and places the laptop so the camera is facing away from the Haus and out over the street.

The harvest moon sits high in the sky, almost directly over the LAX house, so Chris tilts the camera so he’s not an accessory to his little sister looking in their windows or something, and thinks that he’s gotten a pretty good shot of the moon.

“Can you zoom on this thing?” Chloe asks. "Like, make it look better?"

Apparently not.

“Hey, you’re getting double the full moon here, no complaining,” Chris grumbles, but runs his fingers over the trackpad to see if he can zoom. He doesn’t think it does anything, but Chloe stops complaining, so he sits back and watches the clouds roll over the moon like he does with Chloe every year.

She starts making noise about where exactly it is in the sky so she can compare it to what she might see in three hours when the sun’s gone down on the west coast and Chris responds by loudly slurping his tea where he knows the mic will best pick it up because his little sister is a nerd and he’s a big brother.

“You’re so gross Chris,” Chloe says, but she’s in the process of sticking the camera in her mouth to gross him out so she really doesn’t have a leg to stand on, Chris thinks.

The tablet gets taken back by their dad before Chris can guess what Chloe had for dinner and then passed around to all the relatives that have gathered together. Some of them shout into the mic to apparently make up for the distance between Chris and his family, other’s position the camera just so all Chris can see is their chins or noses. He answers the same questions over and over again, but it’s comforting rather than annoying to answer, knowing that they care enough to ask about his classes and Caitlin and his teammates, even when he’s on the opposite coast.

Once Chris has spoken to what feels like the entirety of both sides of his extended family that lives in California, he’s passed to his mother for the standard long goodbye. He successfully convinces her, three aunts and an uncle that he’s eating enough, and promises to call her tomorrow.

It’s quiet when Chris finally hangs up and closes his laptop. It’s bright still though, from the moon, but now that Chris isn’t talking to anyone, he feels the chill of the night so he rolls to his knees to go in. He moves slowly to shake out the stiffness from the wind and sitting in one position for so long.

He dumps the blankets from downstairs near his door and steps over them on his downstairs to wash the borrowed go-cup. He’s halfway down the stairs when he realizes what he did, but really doesn’t care enough to go back to get them, so just goes into the kitchen to do the dishes. It’s quiet in the Haus too, early enough in the semester and season that everyone has regular sleep schedules. Chris leaves the go-cup drying where he found it, and then goes to get ready for bed. He sends his nightly kiss emoji to Caitlin, glad that she doesn’t reply because she has morning practice, and gets comfortable in his bed.

Just as Chris is double checking his alarm is set, a snap from Chloe pops up. He switches apps and taps on the red square to load the picture. 

It’s a picture of the full moon, taken on Chloe’s camera and then transferred to her phone so she can show off on snapchat. It’s definitely not clear in California, though the moon is bright and stands out against the wisps of cloud it hadn’t cleared. Chris screenshots immediately and then switches apps again to keep looking at it. It brings back more memories of sitting under the moon every year with his family, and he’ll only admit it if pressed like, really hard, but that’s probably because Chloe’s really good at astrophotography. He saves the photo in his album called, home.

A snapchat messages pops up from Chloe: lol, nerd

Chris snorts and types back: double full moon ftw

Chloe replies with a selfie except her face has been blocked by the full moon emoji with the caption triple moon [peace sign emoji].

Chris screenshots that one too.

(For blackmail purposes.)