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creepling · 3 years

Text

anything could happen (irl!quackity x reader)

pairing: irl!quackity x genderneutral!reader

word count: 2,805

summary: the reader is roomates with karl jacobs, and he is beginning to be concerned about the reader. when karl invites the reader to hang out with him and his friends, the reader is hesitant. however, they end up having a very deep conversation with alex.

tw: swearing, use of alcohol (mild), some angst, ends with fluff!!

alternative link: ao3.

I sneaked into the apartment as best as I could. I knew if I made one faint sound, the living room light would switch on and a very judgemental Karl would be sitting on his fancy couch (that he spent way too much money on) shaking his head and tutting at me like a disapproving mother.

And behold, that's exactly what came next when I dropped my boots too hard onto the ground when slipping them off. Only the lamp next to the couch flicked on. Karl paying mind to the electricity bill, I suppose.

"Have a nice night? Or should I say, very early morning?" God, he sounded angry. It took a ton of pressure to make Karl angry, making him impatient was like putting pressure on hard metal. And yet, my lifestyle really rubbed Karl the wrong way.

"Damn, you really stayed up late for me?" I tried to joke off, plopping myself onto Karl's fancy couch. His tongue rolled along the inside of his cheek, his arms crossed, he couldn't even look me in the eye. Instead he just muttered, "No, I just finished streaming."

After a very awkward pause, Karl finally spoke.

"Why do you do it?"

"Do what?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"I used to think maybe you were seeing someone, y'know like just the one person. Then I caught on it's more than just one person. You go out a drive with a different person every weekend, whether that be to hook up with them or just hang out."

"And what's up with that?" I asked, a little irritated. "Geez, Karl, I know we're different when it comes to relationships. But everyone is different— why can't you respect that about me?"

"It's not—" Karl said, a little to loudly, getting annoyed. He must've felt like I wasn't listening to him. He eventually lowered his voice and continued. "It's not the acts themselves that bother me. It's that you do these things, and you're never satisfied. You still hang out with people that you don't even like— you always come back and tell me how toxic they are. And then you hook up with people and say how it wasn't enjoyable. I just want you to be happy, and seeing you do things that make you feel unsatisfied worries me."

Karl could not have explained it better, his words perfectly summed up my feelings in the past few years. Ever since I had to get back up on my feet after hard times, being able to live as a roommate with Karl; have a roof over my head. Sometimes I just put myself in uncomfortable situations because I feel like I am not good enough.

"I understand, Karl. I honestly do. But— it's all I have. I have no one else to depend on." My eyes, like Karl's moments before, could not bare to look at him.

"You have me, (Y/N). You can hang out with me and my friends." At this moment, Karl had a tint of a smile on his face and he placed his hand on my drooped shoulder.

I could not contain the scoff that left my lips. "Me and your friends are so different from each other. I barely know anything about video games or Minecraft or streaming. I've talked to your friends before and I never know what to say to them."

"There's more to us than just our jobs, (Y/N)" Karl said, a small chuckle leaving his lips. "And what the hell are you talking about! My friends think you're so cool and always ask about you! I mean, I remember you and Alex—"

"I barely know Alex! We literally shared one laugh together because I knew the meme he referenced." I said, a smile plastered on my dumb face. Maybe I was smiling because deep down, I was beginning to remember how fun Karl's friends were. To be honest, I always felt a little jealous when I would hear Karl and his friends belly laugh on a stream. These dumb-asses were literally being paid to hang out with each other. Meanwhile, I busted my ass for a minimum wage and hung out with people that never see me as a priority. Maybe one day Karl's rich Youtube friend would give me money to do some stupid challenge.

"I'm not gonna lie, out of all my friends, Alex is the one who asks about you the most. At first he would do it to tease me— making sex jokes about you and us. But when he eventually met you, he asked genuine questions about you. Like the other day, he asked me out of the blew about if you went to college or worked a job."

I definitely did not admit it to Karl, but I actually found that flattering. Yeah, maybe I thought Alex was a little too loud on Karl's streams and I would have to cover my head with a pillow to try sleep at night. However, when I met him for that short moment when Karl's friends came to the house, he was genuinely a very funny guy. I remembered we were the same age, he was Mexican and studying law. If he remembered anything about me, I have no idea.

When I couldn't hide my smile of flattery, Karl looked at me and smiled back. He got up from the couch, about to turn off the light, but stopped himself and turned back. "Hey, instead of going out with your shitty friends next weekend, you should stay here. I'm inviting some of my friends to hang out. I think it would be cool if you joined us." Karl said without hesitation, leaving his words as an open thought.

"I'll think about it." Was all I could say, which was enough to make Karl smile, then wish me a goodnight. When I got into my room and crashed onto the bed, I left the invitation in my mind to think about until the next week.

It was finally the weekend again, after a long weekday of working I sat at my desk after putting on some casual clothes. Sometimes, I just liked to get ready in case last minute plans popped up. I still had the idea of hanging out with Karl and his friends in my mind. Yet, I began to feel nervous. I do not know why, but being surrounded by new faces always made me tense. I count myself as a pretty confident person, but there was something about Karl's friends that intimidated me. Maybe it was their crude humour or 'fame' status that made me feel iffy. Either way, I sat there, looking at my wall blankly, hearing the faint noises of Karl arranging the living room for his friends arriving. As a fumbled with by sleeves and chilled out to music, my bedroom door flew open and a really happy Karl stood there.

"So? Are you joining us tonight?" He asked, anticipating a positive response.

"I don't know, Karl." I lightly groaned, the nerves still having a hold on me.

"C'mon, (Y/N). It's nothing too big. Some of the guys are having beers, which I know you enjoy." Karl winked playfully.

I barked out a laugh when I heard his words. "You always say I have an alcohol problem!"

"Exactly! Let your alcoholism be the reason you hang out with us!" Karl was trying to drag me out the room at this point.

"Piss off!" I laughed, feebly slapping Karl.

"Please . . . They really want to meet you again!" Karl dragged me into the living room. Then, a sharp knock came from the door. "Too late! They're already here!"

Admittedly, it was awkward at first. The group immediately wanted to play video games, which I guessed was going to happen. I respectively sat on the couch and watched them play as if I was just watching a movie. I smiled throughout, watching them bicker and yell at each other through competitive spirit. The energy was chaotic, but enjoyable. It was a different environment I was use to, it was more relaxed, but still had the fun aspects I chase for. For the first time in a while, I felt like I could act like myself; the chill version of me. I was not afraid of being judged or talked down to. The nerves that consumed me hours before slipped away effortlessly.

The few bottles of beer I had throughout the night had gotten to my head eventually, my heavy eyes were opening and closing as I snuggled up to the edge of the couch. I checked my phone now and then, scrolling through social media. By this point, some of the group had fallen asleep from drunkenness, or went home. The string of people left were beginning to wind down; Karl offered spare pillows and blankets for the ones who wanted to crash. From the silence I assumed everyone, even Karl himself, were drifting off to sleep. Until I heard a voice acknowledge me.

"Not going to sleep?"

It was Alex. I realized once I looked up, seeing he was exiting the kitchen with another drink, with one beer in his other hand that he was beckoning to me. I took it, mumbling a thanks, my eyes trailing towards him as he took a seat next to me.

"I'm used to staying up late at the weekends, so my body clock is all over the place." I confessed, smirking down at my beer bottle before taking a light sip.

"At least you aren't a light-weight like most of these idiots." Alex joked, looking around the room at his friends. "I suspected we would play more games, but I think people couldn't hack anymore. It's a shame though, I felt like we didn't include you too much."

It was considerate for Alex to say that, but I chuckled dismissively. "I didn't feel left out, don't worry. I enjoyed the company. I needed a chill night like this one."

Alex smiled at that, and immediately looked down when he did, but it was still contagious enough to make me smile. For a short moment I took in his appearance. He hadn't changed much from the last time I saw him. Still wore a beanie that took up 90% of his head, no matter the weather.

"I don't know if Karl mentioned but—" Alex began, suddenly becoming bashful. "I bought the beers for you, as a kind of present. I remembered you drinking them the last time we were over."

"Oh my God— Karl didn't say to me . . ." I said. "That's so thoughtful of you, thank you so much."

He really did that? Considering we were just acquaintances, I did not expect that. I had drank them throughout the next, since they were my favourite. He remembered something so miniscule about me. I then added, "You didn't have to do that."

Alex was biting the bottom half of his lip before he said, "I mean— I wanted to get you a little something. We all did— really. We always feel bad coming over here and never having the time to get to know you. This is your house just as much it is Karl's."

I scoffed after taking a swig of my drink. "It's more Karl's house than mine. He's the one that lives in it. I'm always working or out hanging out with people. The only time I'm ever here is when I'm sleeping or eating. In fact, this is the first night in I have had in months."

"What do you do then if you're barely in the house?" Alex asked.

I became a little tense. Remembering Karl's chat last week made me realise how useless my life was. Karl was right, the things I do and the people I hang out with do not benefit me in a positive way. My 'friends' haven't even texted me today to ask why I'm not hanging out with them. I truly never had anyone that cared for me. I sure haven't had anyone do something as small as buying me my favourite beers. I shook my head and muttered, "Nothing interesting . . ."

My face must have exposed my sadness, as Alex had a look of concern on his face. To ease the tension, I looked over to him and twitched a smile. However, I don't think it convinced him. God, I hate worrying people.

"I know we barely know each other yet. But— If there's something on your mind, you can always talk to me about it."

Normally I dread hearing words like that, but looking at Alex and how calm he seemed to be around me convinced me I could trust him in that moment. Before I realized, I was spilling my train of thought all over the atmosphere. I told Alex about my 'friends'; how I feel like they never give a shit about me. I confessed that I am unhappy with my life, that I feel like I am wasting my time and potential. I admitted my distain for making Karl worried about my wellbeing every time I came back to the apartment. Lastly, I affirmed that tonight was the first time I felt happy among another's company in a very long time. How I felt content, knowing no one would judge me or think I was taking up space. I thanked him again and again, knowing that his act of service was little to him, but absolutely gigantic to me.

"What you and your friends did tonight, no one has ever done to me in a long time. It was so miniscule, I know, but it's more than I have ever experienced. For once, the kindness felt genuine. Is it wrong to think like that?" My eyes looked at Alex, desperate for reassurance.

"Absolutely not, (Y/N)." Alex shook his head. "From what you have told me, you have every right to feel the way you're feeling. Not gonna lie— your friends sound like dicks."

"They are dicks!" I laughed out, wiping the loose tears from my eyes. "And I am sick of being associated with them! From here on out, they are not my friends anymore." I turned my whole body to face Alex at this point, my sudden movement alerting his attention. "If you don't mind, can I count you, Karl— everyone else— as my new friends?"

The smile that emerged from Alex's face warmed my chest. "You don't need to ask, (Y/N)" He said, "We already counted you as our friend."

The happiness that swelled in my chest consumed me in that moment, and it stimulated me to enrobe Alex into a hug. His body was tense from my sudden touch, yet he relaxed easily into my body and his arms moulded into my touch. The fragrance clinging to his sweater engulfed my nose, making me nuzzle deeper into his shoulder. Alex chuckled and the vibrations tickled me, making me scoff out a laugh.

We met each other's gaze as we pulled away from the embrace; analysing the tint of blush on his cheeks, tracing to the bridge of his nose. He ruffled the hair on top of my head, making me laugh and nudge him playfully. Our instant smiles welcoming the space between us.

"So . . . got anymore tired yet?" Alex asked, raising a brow.

I shook my head and slowly looked around the room. Clocking the console lying on the coffee table, I grabbed it and my fingers began to awkwardly fumble with the joystick.

"First step of becoming friends, should be you teaching me how to be a pro-gamer." I joked, giving him a playful smirk.

He rolled his eyes, cringing as he grabbed the other remote. "It's not for the faint hearted," He joked along, "I think you'll get the hang of it, though."

For the rest of the night, into the early morning, we played games. We laughed our asses off, had mini arguments; stirring some of the others out of their slumber when Alex couldn't contain the volume of his voice.

Anything could happen, I realized. If I seek positivity, I will eventually find it. Thankfully, I was able to admit — I discovered it already.

TAGLIST / if you would like to join my taglist, click here !

#quackity x reader #irl!quackity x reader #quackity x you #quackity x y/n #gender neutral reader #quackity x gn!reader #quackity imagine #quackity fanfic #mcyt fanfic #mcyt imagine #mcyt x reader #youtuber imagine #quackity angst #quackity fluff

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lovemesomerobobois · 3 years

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Okay!!!!!! I know your getting a lot of mtmte, buttttttt could we get a little Drabble or whatever and mega finding out his Human s/o was a miner? Kinda like that last one just..... not like the last one?!?!? Idk I think the differences would be really cool (ya know, getting to choose being a miner, being willing, getting paid more) sooo... yeah!

Sooo they're on Earth for this one, idk why, Rodimus wanted to take a pitstop I guess and lets say something happened so they’ve been there while. I know this doesn’t do your idea justice, but I hope it is at least a little in the ballpark. I am also very very very sorry that i took so long to answer! When Megatron realized how he felt about you, he worried he was crossing a line. For a human and a Cybertronian to be. . . romantically involved seemed dangerous to him, yet he was drawn to the companionship you weren’t shy to offer. Maybe your openness towards him made you less organic and more his close equal. It was strange, when you showed up to the ship coated in filth, he was too busy checking you for injuries to be disgusted. “Sorry for the mess,” you said. “I didn’t get a chance to shower after work. We were blowing fuses and one of the tunnels collapsed so—” Megatron’s optics snapped up to your face, so intense you stopped in the middle of your sentence. He stared at you, or right through you; It was hard to tell. “What’s wrong?” you asked, voice nothing but a hush. He backed off, where he was knelt to your level he now stood, towering over, looking down at the speck of you. “Are you forced to mine?” he asked, rage lowering his tone. “What? No, not at all.” You tried to crane your neck to see his face, but he wasn’t looking at you anymore. “I mean, my gramps and my father were both miners so I guess it’s sort of in the family. But I’m not forced. I could do anything else if I wanted, you know.” Megatron hunched a bit to see your face. “Are the conditions not horrific?” You frowned. “They used to be, way back when, before all the tech. Before, yeah it was bad, still is in some regions, but here I get paid triple the minimum wage, health care, all that. If anyone’s hurt, they get airlifted out to the closest hospital. Last time someone was seriously injured like that was when I first started: A big rig fell and crushed a guy.” His expression was finally starting to loosen up as he understood. You were no slave, and you probably never would be. Strange, how such a young race could have gone through all the stages of social and economic evolution that took Cybertron centuries. Why? “Hey.” You awkwardly patted his leg, trying to be comforting but still uncertain. “Did something happen?” Megatron tried to smile but it was more a distracted grimace. He waited so long to answer that you weren’t sure he would. “Before the war, I was nothing but hardware in a mine. The horrors that I witnessed. . .” He cleared his throat and carefully picked you up. “It was what spurred me to revolt.” You saw the pain in his optics, a shadow of the memories that still haunted him, and reached out to caress the side of his face. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “Why should I have? These things are of the past and I do not wish to relive them. Although. . .” He closed his optics and held you close to his face. “I would much rather spend my time in the moment, with you. After you’ve bathed.”

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seaweedbrain404 · 3 years

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Wolfstar Au: A Guide to Parenting, Friendships and Heartache (pt1)

read the rest on ao3

Still, he felt it wasn’t fair to him, they had been married nearly a year but had been dating for years and years beforehand. It wasn’t fair to him or Anna’s parents because all three, Anna and his parents were dead. Remus, Marie and Edward were forced to navigate some sort of way to raise the baby by themselves. Of course, it should’ve been all Remus but Marie and Edward were just too nice. He felt they had a sense of duty or maybe a love for their grandson that made them do it.

Either way, they were suffocating. Always up in Remus’ business and he felt horrible for thinking that because without them, the past few years would’ve been hell. Now, Teddy was six years old and Remus needed to get the hell out of the small town that was nestled in the back-arse of nowhere in Wales. Sure, he would certainly miss the beautiful scenery and his job at the local chipper but it was time for a change. That time was now.

Remus picked a cheap apartment somewhere in Liverpool, bid his in-laws goodbye and packed up shop. One of the reasons that Remus chose Liverpool is because he had to drop out of college to help support Teddy and now he was considering going back to actually get a degree. It didn’t escape him that he still had Teddy to think of but he couldn’t just stay on a job that just paid minimum wage and kept them threading above the poverty line for the rest of his life. It was now or never.

It was all these things Remus was thinking about one night, months after they had arrived. He had gotten a job but he hadn’t started night school like he’d wanted to. Teddy was tucked away, asleep in bed when Remus made his fourth cup of tea that evening.

He knew he needed to hire a babysitter. The thing was, he wasn’t sure who to trust with Teddy. Besides, it wasn’t like he had sufficient funds to hire anyone until now. Earlier that day he put a notice on the board downstairs, hoping that if he had to trust someone then it would be someone from this building.

The clock showed 2:30am when Remus finally retired to bed, checking in on Teddy before doing so.

The next morning, the school run was as normal as ever. Teddy was in Year 1 and was getting on exceptionally well, despite having moved school just under halfway through the year. Remus was glad about this, at least he hadn’t unintentionally messed his kid up.

“Daddy?” Teddy asked through a mouthful of toast that morning.

Remus looked up from his tea, ready to give his son full attention.

“Can I have a friend over?”

“A friend?”

“Yeah, his name is Harry and he’s really good at Lego”

Remus thought for a moment before responding, Teddy having a friend over seemed like a good idea, especially since this was the first time he’d ever heard Teddy mentioning anything about a friend. “Well, I don’t see why not but I’ll have to talk to Harry’s mummy or daddy first, okay?”

“Okay” Teddy grinned at him, wolfing down the rest of his toast.

“Daddy, why do I have to wear this?” The 6-year-old grimaced as Remus helped him do the buttons on his coat.

“Because, in school you have to wear a uniform”

“But whyyyyy” Teddy took Remus’ hand as they walked out of the flat, waiting patiently as Remus locked the door behind them.

Remus just smiled and shrugged.

Teddy didn’t let the silence linger for long as the two walked down the street towards the school. “Daddy, why don’t we have a car?”

God, it was moments like these Remus wished social class didn’t exist because how do you explain to a 6-year-old that the reason they don’t have a car is because Remus works a minimum wage job, having to support himself and a small child.

“I don’t really like cars” He said instead.

Teddy cocked his head to the side, looking up at his father. “Why not?”

“They’re too noisy and they make the air bad”

“Oh, I guess it’s okay to not have a car then”

Remus let out a light laugh, never a dull moment with Teddy.

“Harry said I could go over to his as well, that’s why I asked if he could come over too” the small boy said, in reference to their conversation over breakfast.

“Mmm… we’ll see, I still have to talk to his mummy or daddy”

“Yeah- oh look!” Teddy stopped dead in his tracks at the school gates, pointing to a boy about his age with dark hair and round glasses. “That’s Harry daddy, I have to go!”

“Wait- do I not get a hug and a kiss before school?” Remus crouched down, eye level to Teddy.

“Oh, sorry I nearly forgot” Teddy turned around and hugged his dad tightly. Remus gave him a kiss on the forehead before letting him. “Bye daddy!” He called, already running off.

Remus watched Teddy run up to the boy he pointed at earlier and tackle him with a hug, which was eagerly returned. He had a small smile on his face when he felt someone tap his shoulder.

“Are you Teddy’s dad?” He was face to face with a red haired woman with green eyes, she had a kind smile on her face as she held out her hand.

Remus shook it. “Yeah, yes I am”

The woman smiled wider. “Brilliant! I’m Lily Potter, Harry’s mum- Harry has been going on about Teddy for ages”

Remus didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t realised he’d be known as ‘Teddy’s dad’ instead of Remus. It was a surreal moment before he realised he hadn’t introduced himself. “Remus Lupin, Teddy mentioned something about a playdate?”

“Oh yes, would you like my number?” Lily asked and kept talking as Remus produced his phone from his pocket. “We can work out the time later but how does Saturday sound? I don’t usually work weekends so any day is okay for me” she handed Remus back his phone, shrugging a little.

“Thank you… I’ll get back to you on that one, Saturday should be fine” He smiled and waved a little, walking backwards before turning around.

Remus felt a little lighter as we walked into work that morning. He worked in a small bookshop with very flexible hours and shitty pay so it was both a curse and a blessing. The owner even let him bring Teddy in during the weekends and after school if he wasn’t finished his shift. Teddy liked the picture books and the ones with dinosaurs the most.

About halfway through the shift, Remus’ phone rang. At first he thought maybe it was from the school and something horrible had happened but then he saw the number onscreen; it wasn’t saved so it couldn’t be the school.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Remus Lupin?”

“Um- yeah”

“Cool, cool…. listen, I saw your notice downstairs and I’m wondering if the babysitting position is still available?”

So that’s what this was about. Remus hadn’t expected anyone to respond so quickly and eagerly. “Oh! yes, yeah it is”

“Great, I’d love to take it so”

“Okay um, thank you Mr….”

“Sirius Black, I live just across the hall…. I can start whenever”

“Right, oh, can I get back to you? I’m not sure what day I’ll need it but it’ll only be once a week and then we can talk fares then too”

“Sounds brilliant, cheers”

“Cheers” Remus replied, then heard the other man hang up.

“Ooooo…. you look cheery after that, who was it?” His coworker, Alice, gave him a wink.

“I got a sitter sorted for Teddy so I can do night classes”

“Oh! that’s lovely dearie” She pulled Remus into a quick tight hug. Somehow Alice Longbottom always seemed to hug him. In fact, she always seemed to hug anyone she was half familiar with.

The rest of the shift went blissfully even when Remus went to collect Teddy and brought him back to the shop to finish off the last few hours of his shift.

“Daddy, did you talk to Harry’s mummy?” He asked suddenly.

“I did” Remus answered, sorting through some of the front shelves. He looked over at Teddy, who was sitting on top of the counter besides the till. Alice had put him up there, despite Remus telling her to just leave him sit on the floor.

“Annnnnd?”

“She said Saturday and I said Saturday was okay”

“Yay!” Teddy jumped off the counter, which considering the fact the counter was a lot taller than him and he was 6-years-old was enough to give Remus a small heart attack and scold him.

“Teddy! you can’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself” He chided the child who had wrapped himself securely around his father’s leg.

“But I didn’t hurt myself”

It was too hard trying to argue with a child and Remus resorted to shaking his head. “I know but you might, I’m just worried” He said, bending down and picking him up.

“Why are you worried?” Teddy asked, taking Remus’ face between his small hands.

“I’m your dad, that’s my job” He said before blowing a raspberry into Teddy’s stomach which made the boy giggle and squeal with joy, and putting him back down. “Now, let me finish this so we can get home starfish, okay?”

“Okay” Teddy nodded in agreement, starting off towards his favourite picture books.

Remus continued filling the shelves when he heard Alice speak next to him. “You’re a good dad, y’know Remus”

Remus smiled slightly. “I try my best”

“I just hope Frank will be too, I’m thinking of having a baby with him” She confessed, smiling a little madly.

“I’m sure Frank will be great, he sounds lovely from what I’ve heard”

The rest of Remus’ shift flew by and soon, the father and son duo were walking down the street again.

“What’s for dinner?”

“I was thinking pasta”

“Are you going to try and make the one with the weird green sauce again daddy?”

“Pesto, and no, I know you like the red sauce”

“That’s okay then”

A brief silence settled between them before one of them broke it and this time it was Remus.

“Teddy?”

“Yeah, daddy?” The small boy looked up at Remus, putting a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.

“How do you feel about a babysitter?” Remus asked cautiously.

Teddy seemed to think about this for a moment. “Why would I need a babysitter? I have you”

Remus smiled a little at that. “I want to go back to school- grown up school, college, and I’d go late so a really nice man will come mind you for a couple hours and put you to bed and then when you wake up in the morning… I’ll be home again”

Teddy was quiet for a long time again. A bit too long for Remus’ liking but eventually he nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s okay”

So, just like that, Remus and Teddy walked home the rest of the way with Teddy telling him everything that had happened in school that day.

Once they returned home, Remus started on dinner and Teddy did his homework at the kitchen table. All was well. Bathtime then bedtime rolled around quickly and soon Remus was the only one awake.

He turned on his laptop and started browsing night classes. It was still early enough in the school year for him to join. He wanted to find a course that took place once a week and would teach what he wanted. It took a while and once he found it, he realised it would take him far longer to complete his degree than he initially thought. That didn’t deter him though because he sent a text to Sirius Black, asking if Thursday worked for him. Thankfully, the response was very enthusiastic.

Wednesday went by like a flash. The pair got up, had breakfast and when Remus dropped Teddy to school, he spoke with Lily again. They arranged a time for Saturday and then Remus was off to work again.

“Remus?”

He looked up from the till and gave Alice a small smile. “What’s up?”

Alice looked a bit sheepish, fidgeting with her one of her rings. “Would you and Teddy like to come for dinner sometime?”

Remus opened his mouth to answer but Alice cut him off.

“It’s just that, Teddy’s so good and Frank is thrilled about the idea of a baby but he says he’s really scared and I thought maybe if you two came for dinner, you could talk to him and maybe he could see how wonderful Teddy is”

“Oh-“ Remus paused, scratching the side of his neck. “Yeah, I guess we could… I mean- I don’t see why not, Teddy adores you so I’m sure he’ll behave”

Alice smiled widely, pulling him into another one of those tight hugs. “Thank you Remus! I don’t know what I’d do without you”

The rest of the shift passed quietly, not many people came to the bookshop and so when it was time to pick Teddy up, Alice told Remus to just go home.

“If I need anything, I’ll call you” She reassured him, pushing him towards the door.

“Alright, alright, I’ll see you tomorrow”

#marauders #the marauders #remus lupin #teddy lupin #lily evans #harry potter #marauders au #marauders fic #hp marauders #modern marauders #marauders fanfiction #wolfstar au #background jily

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northwest-writing · 4 years

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This Week’s Numbers: A Short Play

Four coworkers sit in the breakroom at their minimum wage retail job. TIM, twenty-two, is sitting up in his seat at the breakroom table, shaking his left leg and holding a cup of coffee with both hands. EMILY, nineteen, is leaning slightly back in her chair, looking at her phone. MATT, thirty, leans over the table, writing something down on a piece of paper. KEVIN, thirty-eight, is leaning way back in a chair with his feet up on the table and his hat over his eyes. TIM stares up at the clock.

TIM

D’you guys know if anyone’s ever thought of fixing that clock on the wall?

EMILY

Still looking at her phone

What clock?

MATT

I didn’t even realize it was broken.

TIM

Yeah it’s like always four fifteen? (Beat) Could you imagine if it was always four fifteen?

KEVIN

I tried asking the old store manager about it once. He just said “why do you care about the clock in the break room?” and he had a point so I stopped worrying about it.

There is a silence as TIM stares at KEVIN

TIM

I sort of feel like that story’s not true and you just want me to stop talking before the team meeting.

KEVIN

It’s seven AM, Tim.

EMILY

Yeah, Tim, it’s like seven AM.

TIM

I know what time it is I just--

Enter KATE, twenty five years old, in a good mood one would find inappropriate for a retail employee

KATE

Okay, it’s Monday! You guys ready?

TIM

For the meeting?

KATE

She gets very close to TIM’s face, forcing him to lean back

Tim, look me in my eyes. I’m the store manager. I hate this store just as much as you do, I just get paid ten extra cents an hour to do it. (Straightens back up) NO! I want to know (digging into her jacket pocket) if you guys are ready...for this she holds up a lottery ticket.

Everyone perks up except for MATT, who is still focused on what he is writing down. Even KEVIN moves his hat back to reveal his eyes.

EMILY

Oh shit that’s right it’s Monday!

KATE

That’s right,

as she speaks, she removes her jacket, tosses it onto the table, and begins arranging a chair backwards at the head of the room

which can only mean two things: I am required to hold a team member meeting or I will lose my job, and I bought a new lottery ticket.

KEVIN

Three things.

KATE

And a pack of cigarettes for Kevin

she pulls a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and tosses them to KEVIN who catches them effortlessly.

Matthew, whatcha workin’ on?

MATT

I’m writing to my penpal who’s stationed overseas.

KATE

Well put him on hold. This is important.

EMILY laughs quietly

MATT

Hey, would it be cool if I went first this week? I had a really good one last week and--

EMILY

Maybe you should’ve shown up…

KATE

To EMILY Dude--

EMILY

It took us like an hour to close on Tuesday night.

MATT

It was in the schedule--

TIM

He has gotten up and fixed himself a second cup of coffee since he last spoke

(timidly to EMILY) Well maybe if you had actually--

KATE

The airing! Of grievances will take place after the ceremony...or preferably after you’ve stopped giving a shit about them all together. Beat Aaaaaanyway

she climbs up onto the chair she previously set up

I would like everyone’s attention. *ahem* Oh yeah, everyone clocked in right?

TIM EMILY

Oh shit Oh yeah

Begins to leave the room she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her ID card

Hang on one sec Wait, Tim--

TIM looks back, takes EMILY’s ID card, and exits.

All sit silently as they wait for TIM to come back from swiping their cards.

TIM enters and sits down as he hands EMILY her ID card.

KATE

*ahem* Thank you all for joining me today. According to physics, (a collective sigh) there are two major forms of energy: kinetic energy and potential energy. I hold here in my hand one of the greatest sources of potential energy that money can buy from a Seven Eleven. Now, the rules are very simple: everyone will have their chance to tell us what they would do if this were somehow, miraculously, a winning ticket. We will then vote on who has the best version of what one might call The American Dream and then the winner gets riches beyond their wildest dreams and also they get to pick the numbers for next weeks ticket. We will begin this week by hearing from our dear Matthew. Matthew, you have the floor.

She steps down from her makeshift podium and applauds softly, prompting the rest of the room to follow suit as MATT steps up.

MATT

Alright, so pretty much there’s these like buildings in Germany that were built during World War Two that were designed to be these totally indestructible bunkers that couldn’t be blown up, and so now they’re just still there, because you can’t tear them down no matter what you do. Then the other day I went to clean the men’s room (a noticeable shudder from everyone in the room) and some guy had literally shit like all over the wall. Like he had just fuckin’ exploded. So while I’m in there cleaning it up and just wishing I was dead, I thought that’s what I’d do. I’d fill this room floor to ceiling with that indestructible German concrete and turn the whole thing into a big fossil. So that hundreds of years from now when we’re all dead and gone and this whole store has rotted away to nothing, that guy’s fuckin shit stain would be frozen in carbonite forever, like the Han Fuckin’ Solo of shit.

This speech is met with rousing applause as MATT takes a few small bows and steps down.

KATE

I love it! Very colorful, Matt.

EMILY steps up next.

EMILY

(To MATT) That’s kickass by the way. Alright um, ok so Friday, or I think it was Saturday. Yeah so Sat-- no I didn’t work Saturday. It was Friday anyway FRIDAY I was driving into work and I was stopped at that light that’s like right by Taco Bell, and when I went to go, my car started making that noise again. I’ve shown you guys all the noise right?

TIM

I thought you said it stopped making the noise?

EMILY

Yeah because I kicked my hood really hard that one time and it stopped for like two weeks but it’s back now!

KATE

Wait what’s the noise? I haven’t heard it.

EMILY

It’s like a...(she thinks for a second then begins making the most ridiculous sound. Get creative.) or kind of like a (she makes a variation on the first sound. Kevin is laughing hysterically.) It happens every time I like rev the engine or drive with the windows down or like go about forty miles an hour. I think it’s just like a thing. But anyway I was like oh if I won I would totally pay to fix my car right? But then I was like well why would I pay to fix a 2003 Honda Accord that used to be owned by like a heroin dealer and sounds like it was dragged out of a river when I could just buy a whole ‘nother car? Duh. But anyway now I have this like shitty car I don’t know what to do with. What am I gonna do with it? So then I thought I’d hire a bunch of guys to like take the whole thing apart piece by piece...and then put it back together in Todd’s office.

MATT

What if it was in his living room?

EMILY

Oh my god yeah! Yeah and the best part is, it still makes the sound.

The room breaks into applause. As she steps down

Thank you. Thank you.

KATE

Taking it straight to the district manager. Very cool. Very senior prank. I like it. A tough act to follow. Tim, uh, last week…

TIM

(Getting up from his chair) No no, this one’s not as long.

KATE

(As TIM steps onto the chair) Ok cool.

TIM

(Looking at a note in his phone) Ok. I’m not exactly sure if this is like illegal or not but... (shrugs)

uh so I would fake my own death.

EMILY

Oh shit.

TIM

I didn’t really think through like where I would disappear to but I would disappear like super mysteriously. Don’t worry I wouldn’t make any of you guys look guilty and I’d make sure to disappear on like a night when everyone’s busy so you’d all have an alibi. THEN like a year later, after most of the “oh where’s Tim?” has sorta worn off, I’d start sending postcards to the store.

MATT

Oooooh shiiiit.

TIM

They’d all be from different places. Yellowstone, Dubai, the Eiffel Tower, fuckin’...Des Moines. And they’d each have like one letter on them. And over the course of like five years this collection of postcards would build up and detectives would be like trying to unscramble the letters to figure out where I went. But here’s the best part: they wouldn’t spell out anything. They’re just letters. It’s a goose chase.

KATE

OH SHIT!

TIM

Yeaaaah oh shit.

Everyone passionately applauds as TIM steps off the chair and sits back down

Catch me in Barbados or something sipping on a coconut, just writing ‘E’ on the back of a picture of a palm tree.

KATE

Alright. Kevin?

KEVIN

(From his chair) Just like every week. I’d keep all the money and stay working here so all of you’d have to think about the fact that I’m the one sittin’ on it.

TIM

Bummer, Kev.

KATE

I’m confident one week that’ll be the winner. Don’t ever change, Kevin. Beat. She starts to rise Well. If that’s everyone--

MATT

What if we actually won?

KATE

Well we just talked about that. (She points at MATT) Han Solo of shit (points at EMILY) Casa Del Car (points at TIM) Unsolved Mysteries--

MATT

Yeah but I mean what if we really won.

EMILY

Well then whoever we voted--

MATT

Well but that’s stupid.

KATE

Matt--

MATT

I just keep thinking lately like, it’s stupid that whoever has the time to come up with the cleverest way to quit their job gets to have the money if we won.

KATE

Matt, that’s not the point of--

MATT

I think we should give it to whoever deserves it the most...and I think I should get it.

TIM

It’s not--

MATT

No, I’m the best employee here. Like I really come in and do good at my job every day, and I don’t think I’ve ever been recognized for it!

KATE

Matt, it’s not a bonus. It’s just a game.

EMILY

Yeah, besides, you wouldn’t deserve it the most anyway.

TIM

Jeez!

EMILY

What? Matt’s thirty years old and he’s never acted like he’s wanted to do anything besides work here. I actually have a future. If I had the money, I could actually go to nursing school.

KATE

(Making a feeble attempt to reign things in) Ok, this is--

TIM

You wanna go to nursing school?

EMILY

I’ve told you that like twenty times!

TIM inhales to respond

KATE

Tim, please.

TIM decides not to speak

EMILY

Oh come on! Why don’t you ever stick up for yourself!

TIM

Ok fine! I will stick up for myself! I think you’re a bitch! (EMILY gasps) I think you’re bad at your job and you’re a bad friend. (She gasps again) And I think you’d be a bad nurse.

KEVIN

I think I should get the money.

KATE

Oh my god (She crosses her arms and puts one hand over her face)

KEVIN

I smoke like four packs a day. What if I got lung cancer?

EMILY

I bet that’s the first time you’ve ever asked yourself that question.

KEVIN

Hey!

The room erupts into overlapping arguments. Actors should ad lib their own grievances. KATE is irritated but knows yelling will only add to the ruckus. She thinks for a moment, then walks over to the light switch and starts rapidly flipping the lights off and on. The employees become confused and slowly cease their arguing. They all look at KATE.

KATE

God, I knew that would work. You’re all like a bunch of birds! Listen, there’s a woman that comes into this store every day. Her name is Donna. You’ve all rung her up. Her brother had a stroke and he’s in the hospital and they’re not sure if he’s gonna be alright and she doesn’t know how she’s gonna pay the medical bills. And you know what? If this ticket won the lottery, we still wouldn’t give the money to her. Because she doesn’t deserve it.

EMILY

What the fuck, Kate?

MATT

So you think you deserve it?

KATE

NO! Of course I don’t deserve it. And neither do you!

MATT

So who does?

KATE

Nobody! It’s the lottery! Nobody deserves to win the lottery. It shouldn’t exist at all, just like none of us should have to be here every day. The whole system is rigged against us. This is just a dumb game I made up so that we could all survive. Once a week. Once a week we all remind ourselves that if we really wanted to change our lives we could. And then for the rest of the week we can all earn a paycheck not doing it.

There is a long pause as everyone considers KATE’s statement.

EMILY

(Hesitantly) So it’s...like an office holiday party?

KATE

Yeah it's. Yeah.

Beat

TIM

You guys know the guy who comes in every Tuesday and buys a lampshade? And then the next week he brings it back in so he can exchange it for a different lampshade? And he just does that like over and over again every week? Roger? Beat. (He starts to smile. Starting to laugh on the next line) I think he deserves it.

Everyone begins to laugh slightly

KATE

(Laughing still) Why him?

TIM

(Laughing more) I don’t know he just needs something. That guy’s not ok.

The laughter builds with each line

EMILY

(Laughing) What about that guy that always comes in asking if we have any copies of that one Adam Sandler movie?

MATT

(Laughing) Oh Click!

TIM

(Near tears at this point) He gets so mad when we say no!

EMILY

(Struggling to breathe) I think we should give it to him.

KATE

You mean the guy or Adam Sandler?

Everyone is beside themselves with laughter by this point, completely unable to continue for several moments. Banging fists on the table, clapping, etc. KEVIN laughs like an old prospector. Finally everyone settles down enough to continue the meeting.

KATE

Ok…we still need to...we still need to vote.

EMILY

Tim.

MATT

Tim.

KEVIN

Tim.

TIM

(Giggling slightly) Roger.

Everyone lets out one last small laugh.

KATE

Alright. Looks like Tim has it.

She applauds gently and everyone else follows suit.

Emily can you look up the numbers for last week.

EMILY

She has already taken out her phone to look up the numbers

I’m on it.

KATE

Everyone!

She gestures like she is conducting an orchestra to begin, then digs into her pocket and pulls out a different lottery ticket.

Everyone drums on the table, stopping when EMILY begins reading off the numbers. KATE looks at the ticket from last week.

EMILY

Fourteen! Forty-Seven! Fifty-Four!

Everyone looks at KATE who is maintaining a flawless poker face

Fifty-Five! Sixty-Eight! Twenty-Five!

They continue to look expectantly at KATE. Beat. KATE’s face turns to amazement.

KATE

Wow...(Beat) Not a single one.

Blackout

END OF PLAY.

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moveslikebuckywrites · 5 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Good Omens (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Beelzebub (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Ligur (Good Omens), Gabriel (Good Omens), Sandalphon (Good Omens), Original Characters Additional Tags: is it a coffeeshop au if it's not an au?, the long suffering silence of your local barista, also don't forget to tip your baristas

Summary: In which three well-meaning but underpaid Baristas are subject to the tensions of the (unknown to them) demons and angels that work in Broadgate Tower.

It's no worse than any of their other regular customers.

_____

This is for a weekly prompt fill over in @ladyoutlier‘s Ineffable Outlier’s discord!

It’s a super fun time over there, y’all should come check it out!

_____

Broadgate Tower was, at the outset, an altogether normal office building.

There were real estate offices, sales offices, legal offices, offices that did some sort of business that even the people working there weren’t sure about; any office you could think of.

Like most office buildings in the 21st century, there was a coffee shop in the lobby. Hard to handle the daily grind of the corporate sector without a boost of caffeine. Office workers of all kinds would flock to the little shop every day, in their smart three-piece suits and overly-expensive shoes, for their much-needed fix.

Yes, most of the workers in the Broadgate Tower were very well-paid corporate entities. Not so much the baristas in the coffeeshop.

When you work for the minimum wage, you get used to certain things. You get used to being treated like you’re not entirely human. You get used to hearing things that normal people with manners would never say to anyone they actually gave a toss about.

Demands to see the manager over the inability to make a drink that they don’t even carry the ingredients for (what exactly is supposed to be in a Pokemon Go Frappuccino? We still don’t know, really. This isn’t a bloody Starbucks.)

Flash bastard suck-ups who really want to be the CEOs of their company loudly complaining into their phones about the wait times (what, exactly, did they expect when tower staffing would only budget for three baristas during rush hour?).

Screaming over lattes being 5 degrees too cold, then about them being 5 degrees too hot after being remade (the machines are automatic, both drinks were the exact same).

The same individuals, after having their drink remade three times, saying things like “See, it’s not so hard, is it? You’re just making coffee after all!” while laughing shrilly, covering their mouths with their hands to show off their overly expensive French manicures.

“Whatever ‘hell’ actually is,” said one barista, after a particularly crazy morning rush, “It can’t possibly be worse than that.”

“Just wait, Rose, you’ll get used to it,” Kristy, the shift lead, added as she tried to unearth the condiment bar from the seemingly endless pile of sugar and sugar substitutes that had buried it, “It’s only your first day, and you’re doing great.”

“They really need to get us a fourth morning shift,” said Jisel, the last of the three, currently grinding coffee to replenish what the morning stampede had obliterated, “It’s bad enough to deal with the rush, worse when they show up.”

“When who shows up?” asked Rose, “I thought that was the bulk of it?”

“The ‘gangs’,” Kristy said sarcastically, “Bit of an odd bunch; seem to absolutely hate each other. Never can figure out what their offices do, but it always feels like a bomb is gonna go off when they come in the morning.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Rose’s eyes widened, “can it?”

“The tension is the worst,” Jisel groaned as she set up the coffee baskets to brew, “like they’re waiting for a war to come or something.”

“One group works on the top floor,” Kristy said as she scooped out more sugar into the dispensers, “Those are the ones that wear all beige and gray. The other work in the basement, wear all black and some of them stink. Upstairs is all fake smiles and downstairs is all depression, it’s quite odd.”

“And don’t get me started on their manners,” Jisel pressed the ‘brew’ button on the machines and turned her attention to the pastries, “One of them, some American asshole with purple contacts, always calling our food ‘gross matter’. Like, buddy, it’s not my fault this is what corporate sends us.”

“Oh! Or the baldie, always staring! Shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that leering, creeps me right out!” Kristy suppressed a shiver of fear at the thought of the bastard.

“Isn’t he the one with the grills in his teeth?” Jisel winced at the thought, “What does he think he’s a millennial or something? He’s not fooling anyone, he’s gotta be at least 45! Or even the short one, with the fly hat!”

“What, like, a cool hat?” asked Rose.

“No, like, a literal house fly but it’s a hat on their actual head,” Jisel said waving the pastry tongs about, “They wanted to fire me for wearing a necklace one day and this one gets to wear a hat that looks like a housefly?”

“Come on now, you know they don’t work for tower staffing,” Kristy had given up at this point and taken position at one of the tables to watch whatever shit was on the tele currently, “Whatever company it is must be pretty lenient.”

“Dunno how lenient you can be when the best place you could rent out is a basement. All the ones that wear black work in the basement.” Jisel poked at a stale scone with the tongs, “Seems ever so dreary.”

“’Cept for the one with the sunglasses, he’s always good for a joke.” This whole job was a joke. A sense of humor had always been something Kristy could appreciate, even if most of their customers couldn’t.

“Yeah, when he’s here. Usually just the rest of the lot though,” The scone continued to be regarded with disdain before being unceremoniously tossed in the garbage and replaced with a fresher one,

“What about the professor looking fellow from the upstairs group?”

“The fuddy-duddy?” Kristy asked, wrinkling her nose and flipping through the channels. Rose had taken to cleaning the same tabletops she’d already cleaned.

“That’s not very nice,” The tongs hand moved on to poking at one of the unfortunate looking breakfast sandwiches, “He always leaves good tips!”

“S’pose that’s true; day always seems to go better after he visits.”

“Still haven’t figured out how we seem to have marshmallows when he’s here,” Jisel said, “We don’t usually have them do we?”

“Probably best not to question it.” Kristy, out of everyone, had been there the longest and had seen the majority of the strangeness the ‘gangs’ (as the baristas all called them) could be. Sometimes things happened when they were around and if you thought too hard on it, you’d find yourself with an upset stomach or a migraine.

This was how it was with coffee shops. Part of the business. Marshmallows existed when the fuddy duddy was around, and that was that.

“Um, ‘scuse me,” Rose piped up from where she was cleaning the same table a third time, “Did it get colder in here?”

“Ah,” Kristy stood to take back her position behind the bar, tossing the remote on a table, “They’re here.”

It was only three of them today (a blessing, if you believed that sort of thing) but it would have to be the worst possible three. She knew their names, of course. You didn’t work in the same place this long and not learn customer names. Beelzebub, Hastur, and Ligur. Weird names, but a coffee is a coffee.

The first, hot chocolate with cinnamon - extra whipped cream.

The second, black coffee with two shots of espresso.

The third always changed his order with the season. Sometimes she could swear his eyes changed color, too. She thought to her old worn out glasses and thought how nice it must be to afford contacts, much less color ones.

“Finally! I might spare your deaths for another day,” the one known as Ligur said, “It appears you’ve all come to your senses and deigned to bring my preferred drink back. I’ll have the pumpkin spice.” He said this with a snarl, making it sound eviller and foreboding than any overly-sweet sugar-drenched latte should. Which was difficult, because around here “Pumpkin Spice” was a four-letter word. Jisel punched the order into the till with the complete indifference one can only gain by working in the customer service industry.

Rose looked like she might jump out of her skin from her position by the oven, and Kristy couldn’t really blame her. There was a certain aura that came with the basement workers; doom and gloom was the best way to describe it. The fact that the one seemed to have a reptilian hand sticking out from under his blonde hair didn’t help.

Best to ignore that.

Also best to ignore the beady eyes boring holes through her as she filled half of the large cup with whipped cream for the weird fly-hat person. Did they even blink?

“Cinnamon if you pleazzzz.” Beelzebub said with a buzz and obvious disdain, poking a straw into the lid that was clearly not for straws. Kristy turned her attention to the espresso shots running for the black coffee. She was sure that she very much did not see the person offer the straw to their hat and most certainly did not see the hat actually drink from it.

She had gotten very good at not seeing things.

The other two joined the first at the hand-off plane, both grumbling.

“I don’t see how you drink that blessed shit,” said the one called Hastur, “You know that Crowley got a commendation for it1.” He said the name ‘Crowley’ the same way one might say ‘toenail fungus’.

“It’s awful.” Said Ligur who, for today, seemed to have settled on a highlighter-yellow for his color contacts.

“Oh,” said the other, “Well that’s alright then.”

They often spoke like this. Backwards, in Kristy’s mind.

“Um,” Rose piped up from her position as Kristy added the swirl of whip cream to the pumpkin-only-in-name latte, “Now it feels warmer in here?”

“Nah, it’s cuz you’re by the oven,” Jisel said.

Kristy declined to comment; she already knew they were coming. She’d had lots of days seeing the tension flooding into the depressing group in front of her.

Sure enough, in walked the upstairs department. All four smiling so wide as if there was something just behind their teeth trying to claw its way out.

She knew all the names but one. The tall American never ordered, only complained. Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon were the other three.

They all got the same thing. Americanos. No room, no cream, no sugar.

The small person in the fly hat stared at the American. The American stared back at them.

“Ah, Beelzebub,” the man said, clasping his hands in front of him, stooping down slightly to address who they knew as Beelz, “What an absolute pleasure to run into you again.” He said ‘pleasure’ the same way one might say ‘mandatory monthly torture meetings’.

“Gabriel,” fly-hat replied, looking altogether taller than they had a few moments ago, “Not too bzzzy being self-righteouzzz elzzewhere?”

It always astounded the baristas how they could so easily talk down to another who had a good three feet of height on them. Impressive, to say the least.

The tension in the room was palpable. Like being stuck in pea soup. Like being on a knife edge. Like any moment something was going to snap, and they’d have to run to the phone and call in the police for the inevitable brawl that would definitely probably break out today.

But that was just a typical Friday afternoon at any other time of the day, so Kristy went on with making the Americanos.

The two individuals stared at each other for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. Jisel didn’t speak. Kristy didn’t speak. Rose, well, tried not to speak but definitely whimpered from her little corner of the back bar.

First days were always overwhelming.

And then, as it had transpired every other day, fly-hat broke the eye contact and began walking past the American, head held high. Defiant. Them and the other two would walk out the door, the upstairs people would leave shortly after, and the rest of the day would proceed along as it always does.

This time, fly-hat stopped.

“You are aware,” they said, pure anger palpable even to the baristas behind the bar, “It izz only five more dayz. We are The Fallen, and we will rizze from the ashezz.”

“Whatever helps you make it through the day, Beelzy,” the American said mockingly. Kristy saw fly-hat bristle at this nickname, “We all know the greater good will triumph in the end.”

And with that, the downstairs people left. The upstairs people were given their drinks. They smiled their fake smiles; they didn’t leave a tip2. The baristas stared after them, as they always do, still not sure what to make of it. Even after five years, Kristy’s never figured it out.

"What do you think they meant by that, Kristy?" Jisel asked, "Five days until what?"

"No idea, probably just some corporate garbage, like it always is."

The beeping of the coffee timer kicked them out of their stupor and back to business at hand. Nothing new really, world keeps spinning on as it always does.

______

1 – Crowley had been quite proud of his influence in the creation of the phenomenon known as the “Pumpkin Spice Latte”. An entire pumpkin based beverage without a bit of pumpkin in it, just the spices usually associated with it. It had been a big hit and he’d received a commendation from it on the sheer amount of vanity and addiction it had produced. This of course backfired on him when Aziraphale had proclaimed them to be “quite scrummy indeed”.

2 – Sandalphon, however, did entreat them to “Climb every mountain and ford every stream”, which did little more than confuse the baristas.

#good omens #my fic #beelzebub #gabriel #hastur #ligur #ask me about working at starbucks #ask me about how much I hate pumpkin spice latte season

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katy-l-wood · 5 years

Text

Alright, gonna get a little politicy here for a second. Nothing too heavy, just an examination of the ridiculous mental gymnastics republicans are capable of.

I come from a family of Trump supporters. Some of them support him for really stupid reasons (said reasons being he shook their hand in a security line and Hillary didn’t) while others agree with general republican policy and just kinda followed along. I’ve debated with many of them on a variety of issues over the years, and had some success on at least convincing them of a few things.

But anyways. This weekend I was chatting with one of my aunts about tons of random stuff from family drama to personal drama to politics. She is pro-Trump and during this conversation repeatedly went into all the “well we can’t be giving people handouts” and “raising taxes to pay for everyone else’s healthcare is evil” nonsense. Whatever. I wasn’t in the mood for a big debate when were surrounded by four feet of snow doing its very best to prevent us from leaving.

HOWEVER. The conversation then turned to my job. Now, as some of my followers are probably aware I work at Home Depot. Been there about a year now and I’ve worked in two different positions and four different stores. I’ve also worked three other retail jobs over the years, so I’ve got a decent lay of the land when it comes to what retail is like and what Home Depot itself is like.

I love Home Depot.

Yeah, it has its flaws, but it is still the BEST retail job I have ever had. They pay starting above minimum wage (still not a living wage, which is one of my biggest issues, but it is still above minimum). They actually give raises on a regular schedule and they give bonuses all the time based on good customer service or whatever (all those little badges you see on rings hanging from their aprons? Those are connected to bonuses) plus twice a year bonuses for EVERYONE based on how well the store has been doing and how long each employee has been there. They also move people to full time and promote people from within ALL THE TIME. It is really easy to move up in Home Depot. They’re also, somewhat ironically given how much heavy moving is required, one of the most supportive stores when it comes to disability. Can’t walk? Cool, work in one of our departments with a desk. Break your foot? Cool, we’ll find you something else to do for a few months so you can keep working without hurting yourself more. Need to take a month off to check into a mental health clinic? Cool, take care of yourself and let us know when you’ll be back. They provide limited benefits, sick days, and PAID TIME OFF even to part time employees (PTO is only earned after a year, but still). ALSO. They have a thing called the Homer Fund that employees can all donate $5 (or more) of their paycheck to. This fund is used to help employees going through a hard time. People who’ve lost their houses, need to take care of sick loved ones, been kicked out, etc. Just have to ask and the store will help support them while they get back on their feet. And it’s not always big stuff. Recently a co-worker had her roommate skip out a week before rent was due, so the store put out a box and by the end of the week we’d collected enough to cover the other half of her rent. They also schedule three weeks out so you can, ya know, plan your life.

There’s some other good stuff, but those are the big things. Basically, what Home Depot does is respect their employees and supports them. And ya know what a lot of what they basically do is, especially the Homer Fund? It’s pretty damn socialist.

Now. Back to my republican, don’t give people handouts aunt. I tell her all of this and her response is:

“Now THAT is what America is supposed to be!”

EXACTLY. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. SUPPORTING ONE ANOTHER DESPITE ISSUES AND DIFFERENCES AND HELPING ONE ANOTHER SUCCEED. NOT LEAVING PEOPLE TO DIE IN THE GUTTER BECAUSE THEY CAN’T AFFORD INSULIN.

Just. The mental cringing republicans do when they hear words like “socialism” and “universal healthcare” is so exhausting because a lot of them don’t have problems with the CONCEPTS, they’ve just got a Pavlovian anger response to those words and phrases because of the news shoving it down their throats that it is all so evil and world ending. Which I did already know, but it was just so blatant in this conversation that I really didn’t know how to respond.

#Politics

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knightowl725 · 4 years

Photo

Healing in a Graveyard, Ch. 5

Fandom: Critical Role

A continuation of my work for Fjorclay Week 2020′s modern au prompt. Thank you to everyone reading, leaving kudos, and commenting. Every comment adds 10 years to my unending lifespan, which will be used as irresponsibly as possible.

And yes, I’m intentionally making the cover art that chaotic. I know two things about graphic design, and one of them is that I shouldn’t be doing it.

Read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828932/chapters/57440155

It took more legwork than their usual meal to eat their breakfast feast outdoors. At first, they tried moving the table out. But getting the long rectangle through the angled kitchen, then the cramped entry room proved too challenging. Instead, they laid out blankets and rugs and towels to set the food on.

While Caduceus began bringing out food, Fjord explained what had happened to the rest of the Nein. If he had expected shock or teasing, or even them questioning his sanity, he was surprised yet again that morning. His friends broke out in a joyous celebration.

“Does this mean you are going to stay, Fjord?” Jester asked, and the group went silent with bated breaths.

“I, uh, I don’t know just yet,” Fjord confessed. “I need to find work, and see if Caduceus would let me stay here.”

He remembered he needed to text Calliope, or had he texted already?

“But you want to stay,” Beau said. “If that all works out, you’re going to stay? And definitely not go back to Avantika?”

He took a deep breath. “Right.”

Jester leapt to her feet, arms up as she screamed, “Thank the Traveler!”

Caleb gently pulled her back to the ground by the skirt of her dress. “I think you’re thanking the wrong god.”

“Fine, the Wildmother can have this one,” she said with a sigh.

“We can go get your things today,” Yasha offered. “Do they have any...club activities?”

Beau coughed out a “cult” in her not-subtle way.

“We usually… They usually do some, uh, worship in the afternoon. Around 3.”

“Perfect,” Nott said eagerly. “We can break in while they’re out!”

“What? No!”

“Did you ever lock that window when I came to get you?” Beau asked. When Fjord shrugged, she said, “If you left it unlocked, maybe no one noticed and we can just get in that way. Easy peasy.”

“Breaking and entering is illegal.”

“Yeah, if you get caught,” Nott retorted.

“3 o’clock you said?” Caleb asked innocently. Fjord just looked at him.

Caduceus joined them with the last of their food, and they ate beneath the blossoming tree. The falling petals got into their food and drinks, which quickly became a contest of who could catch the most petals from the air. As breakfast came to close, the Nein leapt about, making personal piles of bright petals while Caleb counted.

They took photos, both for themselves and for Caduceus to share with his family.

When Fjord made his way back to his room, Caduceus followed to take a look at his plant.

“Huh, what do you know,” he said in an impressed tone, picking up the plant and admiring it from different angles. “Not supposed to do that overnight.”

“Another blessing, I suppose?”

“Another sign, yes.” To Caduceus, they were one in the same.

Fjord went over to his bed to pick up his phone. Not cracked, which was always a relief. But there was a message.

Don’t care about resumes, just come by the gym sometime and we can talk. Any day’s good. Hours on site. Arborexemplar.com

“Everything okay?” Caduceus asked.

“Yeah, of course. Calliope got back to me about the job. Asked me to come by sometime,” Fjord said, quickly looking up the gym’s site. It was open most of the day. “I’m going to go by now, I think.”

“Good plan. Tell her I said hello,” Caduceus said, gently putting the plant back. “You’ve been taking good care of it, by the way.”

“Just doing what you said.”

He only smiled, ambling out of his room so Fjord could get his things together and leave.

Calliope was… intense. She bore the same intimidating height, same symbolic earpiece - if coupled with other piercings - and same pink hair. But she was more muscled, more intense, and more, well. Fjord didn’t want to call Caduceus odd per se, but his sister was definitely not the same tier of eccentric.

“You’re Fjord?” she asked when he walked into the Arbor Exemplar.

It was about thirty minutes’ walk from the Blooming Grove, but from his poking around his map app, it was closer to campus in parts. There was even one of the smaller campus libraries close by.

The gym was part indoors but mostly an outdoor gym. There were trees, vines, and plant life everywhere, as natural as the Grove and even wilder-looking with it nestled right between more traditional city buildings. As if Calliope had tried to cram the same amount of nature The Grove had across its territory into a much smaller space.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

She stepped around from the front desk, wearing a teal sports bra and matching leggings. Her long, pink hair was braided back tightly. “Let me show you around. We can walk and talk.”

He followed her around the maze of a gym as she pointed out supply closets and rooms or sections dedicated to specific classes and types of workout. The more high-end equipment was kept indoors, but most of the gym relied on less technology/based forms of exercise. Sparring areas, ropes and tires, weights and dance, and even an open-to-the-air yoga studio on the roof.

“We’re open rain or shine,” she said. “Working out in the rain is a different experience, and something we’re known for. Staying connected with nature is our M.O. It’s what sets up apart, but more importantly--”

He nodded. “The Wildmother.”

“Right. Caduceus said you knew a little about Her.”

“I’m learning,” was all he said for a moment. Then he added a quiet, “Hoping to learn more.”

She looked at him. “Well, this is a good place to learn. The Clays, we worship Her in different ways these days. You’ve seen how Caduceus does it, but now you can see how someone actually cool does.”

Fjord smiled at her sibling jab. “I’ve enjoyed learning from Caduceus.”

“Yeah, he’s just weird,” she said with a shrug. “And getting weirder. But what I really need from you is to man the desk. We have our hours, but I don’t really care who works when so long as someone is there. You need to get with Reani, our current receptionist, to figure out the schedule. I’ve got a few instructors too, to help cover the desk sometimes. Not feasible just for two students, so they can fill in some gaps. Reani knows the drill.”

“Are you offering me the job?” he asked.

She led him back to the front desk, where he made note of who he assumed to be Reani. The young woman smiled at him, but was busy on the phone.

Calliope shifted around the desk for a moment, then found a scrawled list. “Okay, here’s the pay and our perks. We got some good deals through a family friend, but also my dad’s a general physician at a little clinic outside of town, so if you go to him he’ll see you for cheap.”

“Okay,” said Fjord, overwhelmed as he looked at the handwritten list.

“You can take classes here or exercise for free when you’re not working. I don’t care as long as you don’t damage anything. You gotta respect the Wildmother, but you don’t have to worship Her. Just don’t be an ass about it. Let me know if you have questions. I need to fill the spot sooner than later, so if you can let me know by Tuesday, that works.”

“Yes, of course,” he said. She turned slightly away, a clear indication she was done. He said one last, “Thank you for your time,” before he went back into the street.

Looking at the time, he saw it was only just now hitting the afternoon. He had some schoolwork to manage, so he decided to test out just how far the nearest library was.

After finishing up his work and mapping out the routes he’d need to take from the gym to various classes, Fjord packed up and headed home. As he walked back towards the Xhorhaus, he felt a bubble of excitement well up inside him. He got to make his own schedule, to a degree. The gym itself seemed nice, if a weird concept. The job couldn’t be harder than the cafe, and he could use it for free.

Plus, benefits. He glanced at the notes again. It looked pretty basic, but it was something.

His eye was drawn back to the pay. He’d done some research on the walk over to see what receptionists were paid for part time work in the area. He’d been certain not to expect even that much, as it was a good amount over his minimum wage rates at the cafe - no tips. But here, he’d make substantially more than at the cafe, and right within the range of what seemed fair for the area.

It was too good to be true, right? This whole day had to be a dream. He would wake up any minute in his bed at The Champions’ house, and none of this would be real. Or he’d do something stupid and wreck the whole thing.

Today was supposed to be his last day in the Xhorhaus. And as certain as he was that this whole thing was about to slip through his fingers, he held on anyway.

And if he was going to hold on, he needed to talk to Caduceus.

On the way back, he wondered how best to handle severing ties with The Champions. The mature thing, it seemed, was to tell them face to face. Or at least text Avantika since he'd been booted from the group chat.

But he didn't want to talk to them ever again. Especially not Avantika. She was manipulative and calculating, and he wasn't sure how well he would stand against her. He’d told her the day Beau brought him to the Xhorhaus that he’d be back Sunday. Today. She’d be calling sooner than later. He had to do something.

The idea of talking to any of them even through text was too much. He took the coward's way out maybe, but he blocked every number from The Champion he had. Blocked their social media, their numbers, their emails. No contact. Hopefully.

It felt like freedom, but freedom tinged in anxiety. Still, there was a skip in his step as he bound up the porch steps into the house.

“Caduceus!” he called as he stepped inside.

“Fjord!” came a shout from the kitchen, matching his energetic tone.

Fjord let the door fall closed behind him and headed for the kitchen. As he pulled back the curtain, he was hit by a wave of warmth and mixed scents. He caught the smell of baking bread in there and took a deep breath.

“What are you doing?” Fjord asked, almost laughing at the sight before him.

Caduceus had every possible surface in the kitchen covered in plates, cutting boards, mixing bowls, and piles of ingredients - prepped and not. He stood before the stove. There were several pots pans before him, each actively cooking. His apron had turned a dusty purple from the layer of flour that coated it in splotches. He’d taken off his nice robe and rolled up his sleeves past the elbows. He twisted to smile at Fjord, eyes alight and a strike of flour across his cheek.

“Hullo Fjord,” he said, perhaps the cheeriest Fjord had seen him yet.

“Are we expecting an army?” Fjord asked, stepping further into the kitchen.

Caduceus laughed. “Watch this pot for me, will you?”

Fjord took his place at the stove, slowly stirring at some kind of soup. Caduceus wrapped the handle of a copper pan in a small towel and lifted it away, flicking off that burner with his free hand. The thick, pale sauce within it looked to contain some tomatoes and was speckled with spices and herbs. Caduceus poured it over a pair of tupperwares containing rice and what looked like meat, but was probably tofu.

Fjord saw an assembly line of other containers, pairs of matched meals in mismatched tupperware left open for their final touches. A few laid empty, waiting to be filled in kind.

Caduceus set the pan back on the off stove, sealing those completed meals and stacking them on top of each other. He turned and set them on another counter beside another set of sealed meals.

“What are you doing?” Fjord asked. “Meal prep for a month?”

Caduceus grinned at him, taking back his place at the stove. Fjord stepped aside, about to step back completely before Caduceus offered him a spoon holding some of the soup he’d been stirring.

“What do you think?”

Fjord accepted the spoon and took a cautious sip. Hot, of course, but clearly Caduceus’s take on a tomato soup. “It’s amazing!”

“Good, good,” Caduceus said. “I can never get it quite like Auntie makes it, but this should suffice.”

“For what, exactly?” Fjord asked for the third time.

“Here, hold this.”

Any attempts at discerning what Caduceus was doing were sidestepped with a cheery determination. Resigned, Fjord helped him finish what was easily two week’s worth of meals. Then, Caduceus wrote out dates on little sticky notes, firmly taping them to each container.

When he was done, all the meals were neatly stacked and clumped together, labeled, and the sink was overrun was dishes.

“Need to clean up,” Caduceus said to himself.

“I’ll help you if you tell me what this is all for,” Fjord said.

Caduceus finally faced him. “I’m not going to send you off without a few decent meals.”

“A few--” Fjord’s mind caught up with his mouth, and he said, “This is for me?”

“If you’re going back to that awful house, then I’m going to make sure you live another few weeks, at least,” Caduceus said firmly. “You were so gaunt and thin when you got here that you could have been part of the Clays, but a few good meals and you were a different man! So you’ll take this, and tell all your terrible friends that it’s completely vegan so they won’t touch it, and you’ll be okay until you get settled in a new job, I hope.”

Fjord’s stomach sank. Caduceus hadn’t been there when he told the group he wanted to stay. He’d gone and done all this work, cheerful as anything, to send him off. He seemed happy about it.

“This is...so thoughtful of you,” Fjord managed.

Caduceus, smiling proudly at his work, lost that smile. “Fjord? Is something wrong? I know you’d probably like more than vegan food, but I was afraid I’d only give you food poisoning if I tried to cook meat. I’m not saying you can’t eat it - it’s perfectly natural, but I’ve made sure to include a lot of protein, so--”

“No, it’s perfect, Caduceus,” Fjord said. “But, ah, thank you for the clarification on the meat thing. I hadn’t thought to ask yet if that was a tenant of the Wildmother.”

“We don’t really eat meat or dairy, the Clays that is. But She doesn’t have any issue with it, that I’m aware of. Animals eat animals. It’s just how we were raised. Calliope tried it once, got awful sick from it. Said it felt like eating leather.”

“I imagine it would,” Fjord said with a little laugh.

“If that’s not the issue then, what is?” Caduceus asked kindly. Fjord should have known better than to think he’d effectively distracted him.

He tried to gather his thoughts, but nothing seemed to connect. “I was hoping to talk to you…”

The front door opened. With all the cooking fans off, they could just hear it. Both men glanced towards the curtain instinctively. Silence. No one in the Nein entered that quietly.

Fjord took a step towards the entry room, but Caduceus stopped him by putting out a hand. His brows furrowed as he stared at the curtain. Without looking from that point, he shifted his head towards Fjord and put a finger to his lips. Quiet.

“Check upstairs for ‘im,” said a deep, male voice.

His heart began to race. Fjord knew this man. To Caduceus he mouthed, “Champion”. Caduceus nodded, and his face set into a darkened expression.

Someone headed up the stairs. Just one person, from the sound of it. A second, the speaker, began sifting about the entry room. Every step he took closer to the kitchen ramped up Fjord’s heartbeat until he was certain it was audible.

Why were they here?

No, that was obvious. It had to do with him. He’d been foolish to think he could block some numbers and be free. Even if he hadn’t taken the final step with The Champions, he belonged to them.

Leaving wasn’t an option. And now Caduceus was in danger.

#my writing #critical role #fjorclay #teahaw #multi-chapter

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this-is-freeridge · 4 years

Text

The Air Between Us

Chapter Twelve: Mari takes a chance on Trey.

Warning: this fic deals with dark themes, including but not limited to teen pregnancy, rape, drug abuse, murder, abortion, underage drinking and underage sex. Read at your own risk.

Find all other chapters here.

Read the new and improved (and more regularly updated) version here!

After the first night on the couch, Mari had decided to temporarily renounce the idea of a good night’s sleep. Curled into the foetal position just to fit, she tossed and turned all night. She wished she could blame the lumpy cushions or the light that streamed in from the blinds, but every time she closed her eyes she saw Oscar and she knew that was the source of her problem.

Desperate for a distraction she threw herself into working, waking earlier and coming home much later. There were two silver linings to this newfound work ethic: the first, money. Though the guy that owned this place didn’t care what happened to the store, or what hours she worked, he did believe in somewhat fair pay for fair work. She may still be earning only two cents above minimum wage, but he paid her for every hour that she worked. The way she was going at the moment, that was stacking up and soon enough she could start looking for a new, permanent, place to live.

The second thing was Ruben. Surprisingly, now that she was spending more time away from home, she was also spending more time with her father. They shared small talk over black coffee and toast in the mornings and late-night discussions after a long day of work. It was nice in a way that made Mari feel comfortable and safe.

School had started up again and it was, admittedly, a little quiet and a little lonely without Trey there. She killed time the same way she usually did, with trashy magazines and horoscopes, but this time she didn’t creep onto Cesar’s Instagram, yearning for just one glance at that gorgeous face. Mari feared her she wouldn’t be able to recover if she were to do that to herself.

At least she had Mario. He had called her during his free period and for that, Mari was eternally grateful. She told him about what’d happened; about Oscar and Trey and Cesar and Monse. She told him how she begged Spooky to accept her heart and instead, he broke it.

She had imagined that she would feel better after talking about it, that she would feel lighter and that breathing would no longer be so hard. But none of that happened and it was just as bad as before, only now someone else knew about it. More than anything, she wished Mario were here. He would convince her that everything is going to turn out alright. She needed that reassurance right now because that light at the end of the tunnel was starting to dim.

“Hey,” Trey called as he entered the store and made his way behind the counter.

Checking the clock, Mari realised how late in the afternoon it was already. It was seemingly harder to keep track of time lately; she was losing hours of her life in various states of disassociation. If she was being honest, it was starting to scare her.

“Hey,” she offered a smile, but it was weak and if he looked hard enough he would see right through it. “How was school?”

At her question, Trey crinkled his nose. “When you say that, I feel like you’re my mother, and that’s definitely not how I want to think of you,”

Mari let out an almost genuine laugh. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry,”

Trey smiled and grabbed an empty box, heading into the aisles to sort the expired goods. Mari was about to return to her horoscope (she had been reading something about a fresh start for emotions and self-worth, and now more than ever she needed to believe things would change) when the doorbell buzzed and a pair of light giggles filled the air. Smiling, she set her magazine aside. She knew those voices.

“Monse,” Mari called, grabbing their attention, “Olivia, what are you guys doing here?”

Mari was always happy to see Monse. They got along well and the younger girl seemed to appreciate having backup when Ruby was being, however accidentally, a little insensitive - something that was occurring more and more since Monse decided to stay friends with Cesar. Things weren’t completely mended between them, any of them, but Mari was happy to see them try. It was more than she could say for her situation.

When Olivia moved in a couple of days ago, after things with Oscar had fallen apart and right around the time Abuelita’s room got fixed, Mari had been more than a little resentful. All the time she had spent trying to earn enough brownie points to worm herself into Geny’s good graces and she had almost nothing to show for it, yet this girl was welcomed with open arms. Mari had a door slammed in her face and Olivia got all her favourite meals cooked for her.

Mari had just had her heartbroken. She had just lost the person who was her solace, her only escape from this daytime soap that was her life, and she couldn’t even feel sorry for herself anymore because this girl had it worse.

It wasn’t until, on Olivia’s first night there, Mari returned home at almost midnight and found the younger girl curled on her bed and holding a picture frame for dear life. At that exact moment, Mari dropped all misplaced anger and held Olivia as she talked about her parents and cried herself to sleep. It made her heart hurt, hearing the stories Olivia had to tell. Mari hadn’t grown up with loving parents and she thought that’d been the worst thing in the world, now she realised it may have been worse to have had it and lost it.

Aside from that night, they hadn’t had much time to get to know each other. But they were sharing a room now and Olivia seemed nice, not to mention Ruby and Monse seemed to like her, so Mari wasn’t worried.

“Monse is showing me around the neighbourhood,” Olivia said with a warm smile as they made their way over, “so we thought we’d stop by and see you!”

“Yeah,” Monse agreed with a smile that was almost too wide, even for her, “and get snacks. But, mostly you!”

“It’s cool,” Mari laughed, “I’m sure I can hook you up with some snacks,”

“What do you recommend?” Olivia asked, placing both elbows on the counter.

Mari raised an eyebrow. “I may have some potato chips and chocolate bars that hit their ‘best before’ a couple of days ago. They’re going to the trash unless you guys want them?”

Olivia laughed happily. “Sounds perfect!”

“I’m not sure what I have out back,” Mari said, “but Trey is checking the shelves now so you might find something with him,”

“Great!” Monse suddenly exclaimed, a little too eagerly. “I’ll go check out back with Mari. Olivia, do you wanna have a look out here?”

“Uh, sure,” she agreed warily and headed out to Trey.

Mari frowned at Monse’s strange behaviour but let the girl follow her nevertheless. Monse was silent as they made their way through to the storeroom.

“So, Trey, huh?” Monse finally spoke as Mari started sifting through boxes. “I haven’t seen him around before. Is he new to Freeridge?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mari replied. “His family just moved here from some place called Brentwood. He’s a junior so you probably don’t see him around school,”

“Brentwood? What’s a kid from rich, white, suburbia doing working in Freeridge?” Monse said, folding her arms across her chest and them unfolding them. Her fidgeting was starting to make Mari nervous.

“Monse, as happy as I am to see you, you’re acting weird. What’s going on?”

Monse huffed a sigh and dropped her arms to her sides, a pained expression on her face.

“First of all, I want to preface this by saying that I don’t understand why you’re friends with him. He’s sleazy, obnoxious and he just went to prison for drug possession! I get that you probably think he’s cute but the bad boy thing only works out in movies. His life isn’t safe and you shouldn’t get mixed up in it, I just really don’t know what you see in him. I mean you’re sensible, Mari, I-”

“Monse!” Mari snapped again. She felt bad for losing her temper, but the last thing she wanted right now was a lecture on all the reasons she shouldn’t be with Oscar. “I’m sorry, you’re kinda losing me,”

Monse sighed again, but she seemed less pent up this time. This time, she seemed almost nervous.

“I need you to talk to Spooky,”

Mari froze. Did she hear that right?

“What?”

“I need you to talk to Spooky, about Cesar. Jamal and Ruby and me, we’re trying to get Cesar out of the Santos and the only way we can do that is to reason with Spooky. They won’t let me do it because I’m too confrontational, and Jamal is...well, Jamal. So that only leaves Ruby. And don’t get me wrong, the boy can talk, but I don’t think he’s right for this. He seems to have a soft spot for you, do you think you could try?”

Mari bit the inside of her lip. She wanted to help Cesar, she knew how much he didn’t want to be in this life, but she couldn’t do it. Seeing Oscar, trying to convince him to let Cesar out was the last thing she wanted to do and, given how things went down the last time they spoke, Mari wasn’t so sure Oscar would listen to her anyway.

“I’m sorry Monse, but I don’t think I can,”

A cocktail of anger and disappointment flickered behind Monse’s dark eyes, so Mari continued before she got the wrong idea. “Spooky and I aren’t on speaking terms right now. As much as I wish I could help, I think that if I were to do this, it’d do more harm than good,”

Monse softened. “Oh. I’m sorry, I know you guys were close,”

Mari could only nod in response to her words. They were close, and now they weren’t anything. What was there to say?

“Ruby said you’ve been working a lot, he’s getting kinda worried. Is that why?”

Mari almost laughed. The list of reasons she had to bury herself with work was ever-growing.

She ran away from home to be with her dad and was no closer to him than she was before. Her mother was trying to get her back, yet refused to leave her shitty boyfriend. Mario, the only person to make her feel truly at home in this family and the only one she could talk to about Oscar, was gone. She trusted someone with everything she had left and he used her up and broke her heart. It was safe to say, Mari thought, that her life was on a steady decline and she was struggling to see past tomorrow.

“A little, I guess,” she didn’t want to get into it right now. In fact, she wanted to keep pretending that she was fine because she would be, eventually. “Oh, here, I’ve found the candy bars,”

Eager to get out of the conversation, Mari all but threw the food at Monse and shoved her out of the storeroom. Monse and Olivia left soon after that, and Mari was grateful for her ability to read the room. The moment the girls, or more specifically, Monse, was gone, Mari found herself breathing a sigh of relief. All she wanted to do was move on from Oscar, forget everything she thought he meant to her, and that was a lot easier said than done.

Mari was starting to wonder if coming to Freeridge was the best decision, though it wasn’t as though she had much of a choice, to begin with.

“Hey, Trey,” Mari called to the boy who was already making his way over, something Monse said earlier had lingered in her mind. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he flashed a lopsided grin and leaned across the counter toward her, “but only if I can ask you something in return,”

“Deal,” Mari returned with a sweet but halfhearted smile. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. “What are you doing in Freeridge? I mean, you’re from Brentwood, right? I hear that’s a pretty nice place,”

Trey blanched, looking almost afraid to answer.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he said, though he was avoiding looking directly at her, something Mari noticed was extremely out of character for the boy. “My dad had to relocate, for work,”

“What do your parents do?”

“My dad’s in finance. He’s an investor for some big company,”

“And your mom?”

“Uh, events. Like functions and parties and stuff,” he answered, though Mari didn’t miss his hesitation. She didn’t dwell on it though, as that charming, boisterous smile was plastered back on. “My turn,”

Mari nodded and smiled, “shoot,”

“Will you go on a date with me?”

Mari’s stomach dropped. How did she not see that coming? And how could she let him down easy when he was smiling at her like that? It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she wasn’t over Oscar and she didn’t want to lead him on.

“Look, Trey,” she started, “you’re really sweet, but I-”

“Wait! Before you keep going, if this is about that guy with the tattoos and the cool car who looks like he’s in a gang-”

“He is in a gang,”

“Oh - well, that’s beside my point,” Trey shook his head to clear his thoughts, his mop of blond hair falling into his eyes and making him look like a stray pup. “My point is, he clearly isn’t making you happy. I see you every single day, alright? Every day.

“And even though you try to hide it, I see how sad you look and I know it’s because of him. I know because ever since he turned up here, you haven’t mentioned him and every single day it’s like you lose a part of your spark.

“I don’t know what happened between you guys, and quite frankly, I don’t think I want to know. All I’m asking is for a chance to make you happy,” his was pleading, hands clasped together and cheeks red and Mari’s resolve was cracking. “Just one date,”

The corner of Mari’s lips twitched, almost into a smile.

“Just one date?” She repeated, making sure that’s all he was asking because she couldn’t give him much else.

Trey’s hopeful grin widened and he nodded. “And if you aren’t into it we can pretend it didn’t happen,”

If there was one thing Mari had to appreciate it was his honesty. He was putting it all out there for her, laying it on the line. That was a scary thing to do, a dark cloud of potential rejection constantly looming. Mari knew how bad it hurt when that hopeful bubble bursts, so she would throw him a bone.

“Okay,” she agreed, and the way Trey’s eyes lit up almost made her heart flutter. Almost. “One date. I’ll text you my address, pick me up at seven,”

. : ♱ : .

At promptly six-fifty, a beat-up Ford pickup truck parked across the street. Trey sat in the car, waiting patiently, counting down the minutes until it was exactly seven before he crossed the street and knocked on the door of the Martinez house.

“I got it!” Mari called, but Ruby was already at the door.

Mari groaned. This was not the first impression she had been hoping for.

Ever since he had arrived home from school today, Ruby had been down; pouting non-stop and making belittling comments about himself. For a while, he refused to tell her what was wrong. Olivia had said that Monse said it was because he wanted his own room, so Olivia had tried to give it back, but Mari knew better.

So she confronted him about the real problem - his meeting with Spooky. And then, Ruby told her that Cesar had been promoted, all because of him. Fury flooded her veins. How could Oscar do that to him? He knew Cesar wanted out and yet he trapped him in the life anyway.

“Um, hello?” Ruby’s voice brought Mari back to the present.

Right, she thought, I’m going on a date.

She needed to stop thinking about Oscar.

“Hi,” Trey replied. He was smiling but he was jittery and Mari could tell from where she stood on the sidelines that his nerves were getting the best of him. If she were being honest, she kind of liked that he was nervous. “I’m uh, here to pick up Mari,”

“Oh,”

They each stood there, for a moment. Ruby said nothing and Trey didn’t know what to say. What was the correct etiquette in these situations?

So, he said, dumbly, “you don’t talk much,”

Ruby shook his head. “Bad things happen when I talk. Oh, there’s Mari,”

And then he walked away.

Mari made her way over, plastering on a smile as she came into view.

“Hey, Mari,” he greeted, almost sighing with relief at the sight of her. “You look beautiful,”

The white sundress with pink flowers, that Olivia had insisted she borrow, felt foreign on her. Her legs felt exposed and the fabric felt too light and she almost changed into jeans and a t-shirt one hundred times. But she would be lying if she said she didn’t like the way Trey was looking at her, so she put her insecurities aside.

“So, where are we going?” She asked as they crossed the street to his car. He opened the passenger door for her and helped her in, using one hand to hold her dress down and clasp her hand in the other. It was nice, sweet.

“There’s a diner just on the outskirts of town that I heard is okay,” he said, starting the car, “I thought we could have dinner there,”

“That sounds great, I-”

“Oh, I love this song!” Trey announced as some top-forties song came on the radio. He turned the volume up to max and sung along as he drove, only stopping to scream over the music, “do you know it?”

Mari only offered a polite smile and shook her head. Trey continued singing. Crossing her arms, she leaned back in the chair and did her best to enjoy the ride.

The diner they arrived at was small, maybe enough space for twenty people at best, with a couple of booths on either side and a group of round tables in the middle. I was cramped, but the large windows and white-and-beige colour scheme made it seem bigger than it was. The paint was chipping on the walls, and the rood was water damaged, but the furniture and floors looked newly renovated.

Taking her hand, Mari let Trey lead her to one of the booths. A waitress came around to take their orders, but Trey paid her little mind as he told Mari about a comic he had been reading, his hands gesturing animatedly.

Mari couldn’t help but relish in the way he made her feel - the way he looked at her like she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, the way he ignored everything else in favour of speaking only to her. He made her feel warm inside. Slowly but surely he would help rebuild her confidence, but was that enough of a reason for her to stay with him?

Maybe not, she couldn’t help but think. Maybe she was enjoying this for all the wrong reasons, all the selfish reasons, because she sure as hell wasn’t as passionate about him as he was about her. And you need that to make a relationship work, right?

And then, just when Mari was beginning to suspect it wasn’t possible anymore, he made her laugh. It was a stupid dad-like joke that came completely out of the blue, and Mari laughed. It bubbled up in her chest, a light feeling like when you swallow soft drink too quickly, and before she knew it her head was thrown back and she was laughing, and it was real.

That was until, against all odds, Spooky walked in, two Santos in tow. He met her eye as he walked past but was quick to avert his gaze. She couldn’t bring herself to do the same though, like staring at the sun she couldn’t look away no matter how much it hurt.

The Santos sat in a booth across the diner. They were loud and they were smoking and the other two had already started cat-calling the waitress. Spooky laughed.

The shred of happiness she’d been feeling before sizzled away until it was replaced almost solely by anger. Anger for Cesar, for Ruby, for herself, even for Trey - because he knew he couldn’t compete, judging by the disheartened look on his face.

“Shit, Mari, I’m sorry,” the teen said, as though he could’ve done anything to prevent this. “We can leave if you want?”

Through sheer force of will, she managed to peel her eyes away from the cholo.

“No, we can stay,” she said, eyebrows knitting together, “but um, I know this sounds bad, but would you mind if I just go and talk to him?”

Trey licked his lips and his gaze flickered away, just for a second. “Uh, yeah, sure, go ahead,”

With a muttered “thanks,” Mari was already striding towards Spooky.

She didn’t wait for him to notice her and she didn’t say anything to the other cholos as she sat down in the booth before him, arms folded across her chest.

Spooky took a long drag of his cigar, dark eyes trained on hers as though he was challenging her.

With a groan, he released the smoke and fell back as though he couldn’t be bothered doing this right now.

“Give us a minute,” he told the Santos. Mari hadn’t realised until right now exactly how much she had missed that deep voice. Once they were gone, he continued, “you look nice,” he glanced over at Trey, “happy,”

Mari’s frown deepened. Happy? How could Oscar miss something that even Trey could see - she was far from happy.

But she wasn’t about to fall into his trap. She wasn’t going to say that she missed him or that she wasn’t happy without him. She wouldn’t say that she needed him, no matter how true it was.

Instead, she said, “how could you do that to Cesar?”

“What are you talking about, hyna?” He shook his head and rolled his eyes. Mari knew that look - it’s the look he gives girls at parties that he isn’t interested in or Santos that ask him dumb questions. Mari never thought she would be on the receiving end of it.

“Cesar running for the Santos!” She clarified, voice escalating. The more he treated her as though she wasn’t worth his time, the rage inside her only intensified because she knew better. Actions spoke louder than words did, and his actions had told Mari long ago that she was worth every second. She just needed to remember that.

“Oh, that. You can thank your brother for that,”

“Don’t put this on Ruby!” She snapped. Oscar almost flinched at her sudden reaction. “You made this choice for Cesar, don’t use Ruby as a way to avoid feeling guilty,”

“You think you know me?!” Oscar screamed, slamming a hand down on the table so hard that Mari jumped back in her seat. “You don’t. So how about you fuck off and deal with your own messed up family instead of worrying about mine?”

Her vision blurred with tears. Her chest was tight. Her throat closed up until she couldn’t breathe.

Everything he knew about her she had told him in confidence and now he was using that against her. Maybe he was right, she really didn’t know him.

Without a word she stood from the table and rushed out of the diner. It wasn’t until she collapsed on the sidewalk, the curb hot against her legs, that she let herself cry.

“Mari!” Trey’s voice came from behind her. Within a minute he was crouched beside her and pulling her into him. His arms were thin and wiry and nothing like the arms she was used to, which was probably a good thing right now.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out, wiping frantically at her face, “I shouldn’t have spoken to him. I ruined everything,”

From the corner of her eye, she noticed Spooky and the others heading out to his car. He caught her gaze, and maybe she was being hopeful, but his eyes glimmered with something akin to regret. Still, he kept walking.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Trey said, “I got our food to-go, so how about we go? Just for the afternoon, we can leave Freeridge and have a picnic somewhere,”

Somehow, she managed a smile through sobs. He was persistent, that’s for sure, but it was endearing. Maybe, if she just let herself accept what Trey was trying to give, things could get better.

Maybe he was her light at the end of the tunnel.

Taglist: @robinsdolan @lostgirl219@kseniainneverland @ravengreystone@weediskindabad @moistdollerbills @javoqetal@kenzie44469 @goddessate@blackdepressoexpresso @classyputa @babygirl-htx @wonderlandlovelove @cacapoodlepoo @agent-femmefatale @elliesshitofablog@daydreamer0307 @lucyfuh @harduy @elizabeth-santana-98 @lonelyyblues

Boy, it’s been a hot minute. Honestly I just keep forgetting to update tumblr (and AO3) when I update wattpad oops. Please drop a comment if you like it!

#on my block #Oscar diaz #Oscar diaz imagine #on my block fanfic #spooky #spooky diaz #Oscar spooky diaz #becky g

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lovemesomesurveys · 6 years

Text

Did you talk to anybody taller than you today?: Everyone, besides small children, are taller than me. Have you seen “A Cinderella Story” w/ Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray?: Yep, many times. What is your favorite brand of chap stick?: ESO or EOS I always forget the order, but yeah that one. Have you ever been to New Brunswick in the summer?: Nope. I’ve never been there at all. Have you ever been to Florida in the spring?: I’ve never been there at all either.

Have you ever been to Vancouver in the winter?: ^^^^^ Have you ever been to Boston in the fall?: ^^^^^ Have you ever been to St. Louis or St. Paul?: Nope. Have you ever been to both in the same 11-day period?: Have you ever driven down a red dirt road?: No.

Do you think horses could run faster on the road or through fields?: Fields, probably. Why do you feel this way?: I just do. Is it past 6 AM?: No, it’s 12:27AM. Is it past 6 PM?: Yes. Are you wearing shoes?: No. Describe the worst time you’ve ever been shocked.: Hmm. I don’t know what I’d say was the worst time. Have you ever been shocked when a cashier was handing you change?: Yes. Have you ever had spicy sweet chilli doritos?: I have. What’s the longest song title you can think of?: Just about any one of Fallout Boy’s songs. And the shortest?: Freebird. Have you ever went to sleep after the sun came up?: Many times. Were you scared of Y2K?: Yeah, even though I was pretty young. Are you scared of Y2K12?: Nothing came of that either. LOL, can you type 2012 in roman numerals?: No. Which button on your cell phone did you last press?: I It was probably the home button. Who did you last call?: My mom.

How long was the conversation?: Just a few minutes. Do you enjoy stepping on ants?: No. What state is nearest to you?: Arizona. What city larger than yours is nearest to you?: Los Angeles.

What country is nearest to you?: Mexico.

What town smaller than yours is nearest to you?: Hmm.

Does the color purple remind of you of anything or anyone?: It’s my mom’s favorite color. Also, Prince’s song “Purple Rain” and the movie, “The Color Purple.”

Did you talk to your bf/gf last night?: Single.

Can you honestly tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi?: Yes.

Do you wish Pepsi never existed?: I don’t care that it does. I just think Coke is better.

Do you think love is the most beautiful thing in the world?: Sure.

What do you want thrown at your wedding?: You assume that I will get married. Or that I even want to.

Do you plan on getting married in the near future?: Noooo.

Have you ever been to: Timbuktu, Mali: Alberquerque, NM: Avondale, AZ: Evansville, IN: Evansville, IL: St. Petersburg, FL: Richmond, VA: Vancouver, BC: Chihuahua, Chihuahua: Memphis, Tennessee: Portland, ME: Portland, OR: Springfield, PA: Indiana, PA: Eerie, PA: Eerie, IN: Lake Erie: The Pacific Ocean: The Indian Ocean: India: South Africa: Peoria, AZ: Peoria, IL: Flagstaff, AZ: Huntington Beach, CA: West Hollywood, CA: New York, New York: Toronto, ON: Henderson, NV: Henderson, KY: Indonesia: Dubai, UAE: Cincinatti, OH: Newport, KY: Newport Beach, VA: Virginia Beach, VA: Washington, D.C.: Puerto Rico: The largest city in your state/province/etc: The largest city in your country: The largest city on your continent: The largest city in the world (Tokyo): The largest city in your county/parish/etc: The largest city in every state/province/territory/etc boarding yours: The largest city in every country boarding yours: The largest city on every continent: Nunavut: Spain: Dawson City, YK: Dawson Creek, BC: Do you eat quiche?: It’s been years, but yeah I like it.

Do you eat Butterfingers weekly?: Uh no. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had one.

Do you read the newspaper more often than once every 2 weeks?: I don’t read the newspaper, I read the news online or watch it on TV.

With what color toothbrush did you last brush your teeth?: White and blue.

Do you bathe your dog?: Not me personally, but yes we do.

Does it have a collar?: Yes she does. She has a cute collar and ID tag.

How long were you last sleeping?: I took a 2 hour nap yesterday. I haven’t slept since then, yet. I’m really tired, though.

Have you ever played “Dungeon Explorer: Warrios of Ancient Arts”?: No.

What brand PS2 controller do you think is best?: I don’t know anything about that stuff.

Do you like Keith Urban?: I like a song or two.

Have you ever been to urbandictionary.com?: Yeah.

Do you have a porch swing?: We don’t even have a porch.

Is that a good thing?: I don’t see why it would be a good or bad thing if we did.

When did you last feed goldfish (whether they were yours or not)?: Not since my own when I was a kid. What is the last sweet thing you ate?: The strawberry milkshake I had.

Spicy?: I can’t have spicy food anymore. :(

Salty?: The soy sauce I dipped pot stickers in yesterday.

What is the last dream you remember having?: Something random and weird as usual.

Do you know anybody whose language you speak better than they do English?: No.

What’s your favorite pokemon?: I liked Jigglypuff.

What’s your favorite pokemon game?: Never played any of them.

Is anything good on TV right now?: I doubt it seeing how it’s almost 1AM.

Have you ever worn a blue hat?: Possibly.

What about a sweater and a sweat shirt at the same time?: No. I’ve worn a hoodie and a jacket or a sweatshirt and a jacket at the same time, though.

What’s your area code?: Nah.

How many area codes would you recognize?: Not many.

Do you know where sponges grow?: In the ocean.

Have you ever read “Where the Red Fern Grows”?: Yeah, in 5th grade.

Who is the author?: I don’t recall.

Do you like suspensful books?: Yes.

What about scary ones?: I like mystery and psychological thrillers.

Can you name every hamster you’ve ever had?: I had two when I was a kid, but I don’t recall their names.

What’s the last building you were in that had more than 4 floors?: Not sure.

How far away is it from your house?:

Did you drive there?:

Have you ever driven to Utah? No. Have you ever been to OK, TX, NM, and AZ in one day?: No.

Do you like road trips?: Depends.

Isn’t it awkward when someone mentions they just lost a loved one?: Only because I never want to say. There’s nothing you can really say. I’m also not good with comforting others.

How do you react?: I express my condolences but other than that I’m just like awkwardly there not knowing what to do or say.

Have you ever been to a funeral and everyone else seemed more sad than you?: It wasn’t something I paid attention to. There wasn’t like a who’s sadder than who thing going on. It was just a sad, rough day for everyone.

Do you even like scary movies?: Some.

Do you have a bus pass?: Nope. No need for one.

Do you take a bus daily?: I don’t take the bus at all anymore. I used to have to sometimes while I was still in school, but those days are over.

Do you know anyone named Roger?: No.

Is he older or younger than you?:

What’s the age difference in the youngest and oldest people you’ve dated?: One year.

If I told you that answer was 8 years for me, would you believe it?: I don’t have a reason not to.

Do you answer your own surveys?: I don’t make any.

Do you like go-gurt?: Wow, I haven’t had one in yearssss. I liked the strawberry banana ones.

Have you ever eaten something, and the food stayed on your hands forever?: No...

Is that worse or better than it staying on your breath?: I’ve never had that problem.

What did you last drink that was brown?: Diet Coke.

When did you last deficate?: Ew why do you wanna know that.

When did you last suffocate?: Never.

When did you last relocate?: As in moved to another house or something? Five years ago.

When did you last perspirate?: It’s freakin’ hot here, so it’s not such a rare occurrence. Ugh, I hate summer.

Who did you last irritate?: My family, I’m sure.

Who (or what) did you last imitate?: I don’t know.

What (if anything) did you last irrigate?: Not sure.

Do you think it’s annoying or cool when I rhyme questions like that?: I didn’t care, sorry.

Do you watch pro wrestling?: Nope.

Why or why not?: Not my thing.

What are your plans for the next March 11?: Uh I have no idea. That’s a long ways away.

How many days do you think it snowed where you live in the last 365 days?: It doesn’t snow in my city, unfortunately.

Is your birthday less than 8 months from now?: Yeah, it’s next month.

Will you wake me up when September ends?: Nah I’ll probably forget cause I’ll be asleep, too.

I have been to 28 US states. Am I beating you?: Yep, by a long shot.

Do you like yarn?: I don’t have anything against it.

Do you enjoy my geography questions?: They’re whatever. It’d be more interesting if I actually traveled.

What is the last thing you used a brush on?: My hair.

Who was your best friend from your high school while you were there?: Amanda.

Do you have any pants you’d be embarassed for your friends to know about?: No.

When did you last stand up?: Never.

Did I just make you realize how long you’ve been doing this survey?: Nope.

Have you ever shopped for 2 hours at Dollar General?: No.

Do you think that’s crazy that I witnessed someone do that today?: I don’t care lol.

Have you ever dated a teenager?: When I myself was one as well, yes.

Were you popular in high school?: Hahah nope. That was perfectly fine with me, though.

Does your city have a Poplar Street?: I think it does.

Do you know what a poplar is?: Yes.

Do you like lemons?: No.

What color are your eyes?: Dark brown.

Got any plans for July 24, 2009?: Well we’re in 2018 now and I have no idea what I did on that day 9 years ago. This July 24th I don’t have any plans as of now, but that’s 4 days away from my birthday.

What about July 24, 2012?: I don’t know, man.

Or do you think minimum wage doesn’t need to be $9.65?: It’s $11 here, I believe.

Do you think the raise in minimum wage is partly why our economy is ruined?: Not getting into that right now.

Did you watch your favorite television show today?: One of.

Did you listen to your favorite song today?: I haven’t listened to any music so far today.

Did you play your favorite video game today?: I’ll be playing The Sims 4 soon.

I don’t know how many pairs of shoes I own! Do you?: Like 6.

I have about 4. Do you have them organized?: They’re just in my closet.

So when did you last go to the zoo?: A couple years ago.

Have you ever filmed a movie?: For a class project in high school. A very, very crappy one.

In the zoo?: Filmed a movie in the zoo? No.

Who is your favorite teacher from high school?: I had a history teacher my sophomore year named Mr. Coffey who was really cool.

What’s under your bed?: Nothing.

Do you think money should be green?: I’m used to that.

Do you have children?: Noooo.

How much did you pay for your last meal?: Like 5 or 6 bucks, I think.

What’s the longest period of time you’ve had a goldfish?: I had fish for a few years as a kid.

Would you rather go bowling in the spring or summer?: I don’t care to go at all, but why would the season matter for something like that?

Do you like lazar tag?: Never been.

What about miniature golf?: Never been.

Have you ever been to a casino in Canada?: Nope.

Have you ever been to Bear Lake in Saskatchewan?: No.

Do you have any t-shirts you’ve owned for 7 ½ years that still fit you?: How specific, but yes. Some older than that.

Do you know how it feels to be heartbroken?: I do.

Is your house currently on fire?: Uh, no. I wouldn’t just be here chillin’ taking this survey... Do you like ramen noodles?: Yep.

How far away is the nearest fire station?: Pretty close by.

Is your dog a real barker?: Nah. She barks if someone knocks, sometimes when she’s in a playful mood, or when she wants something. It’s not excessive. Our neighbor’s dogs on the other hand....

Could you see yourself with short hair?: I had short hair for years.

Can bad hair alone make someone unattractive?: I hate when my hair looks really bad, which it always does now. Have you ever eaten bad spinach?: I don’t believe so.

Have you ever had banana nut cheerios?: No.

How do you know how to spell Mississippi?: I just do.

#personal #text #survey #surveys #long survey

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jamiebongwater · 4 years

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Pretty Sure This Is America

Somewhere in America today a single middle-aged man who works in the financial sector parked somewhere to scarf down a quick lunch while skimming the news of the day. He was confronted by headline after headline telling of a polarized public and a mosaic of disparate, fractured Americas struggling to understand one another, and he wondered aloud to himself what the source of this confusion could be. “It sure seems like things used to be simpler,” he thought, “I would like to think we could just sit down and find a solution that works for everyone. I know one thing for sure though, I never would have thought to complain as much as this generation when I was younger.” He was feeding from a wrapper with a Taco Bell logo on it, and gave no thought to the place his lunch was made as he pondered the current state of the country he called home. Where were all these dissatisfied people he kept hearing about, and what were their lives really like? At this moment the man could not recall the faces of any of the working class people he had spoken to that day, even though they had made his breakfast, lunch, and coffee, and washed his car.

I recently took a gig at Jimmy John’s in an even smaller town just North of Coeur d’ Alene. I am planning to relocate to Las Vegas in about 1.5 months to make some real music, money, and art -related moves, and I need some extra money saved for the move. I am working five days a week as a cook at a downtown restaurant right now, which I like, but it’s just not enough money to fund my immediate endeavors. I decided to bite the bullet and get yet another retarded corporate job to fill out my schedule. I mean, I applied to some pretty cool places, but due to the time frame I basically had no choice but to take the first thing that came my way. This place didn’t even interview me.

ring ring

“Hello?” “Hey yeah I do need someone for mornings on Wednesday and Thursday. So just come in at 10, we’ll have a shirt for you and stuff. But there’s two training videos you have to watch, they’re like two and a half hours each-” “Wait a minute, I’m sorry- who is this?” “Sorry, my bad. This is Justin from Jimmy John’s.” “Oh, good to hear from you!” “Yeah, we just had someone leave and I’m actually tryna bring on two new people. So, you can come on down really anytime between now and then and watch those videos. I know it’s shitty but you get a sandwich for doing it and you also get paid so...” “Yeah man, sounds great. At the latest I’ll be by at 7:30am on Wednesday.” “Haha. Alright buddy.”

click When I got there Wednesday morning Justin looked tired and his face was red and puffy. “I’ve been out sick for two days, man. Today was the first day I had to wake up to an alarm clock again. Fucking sucked. Anyway, let’s get you set up with this video.” He wasted no time pulling out a Samsung tablet and setting it up on the table, where I watched my new owner personally explain how to uphold the Jimmy John’s brand for over 145 minutes. I was full of coffee and broke up my piss breaks to make the video go by faster. In every city there is a working-class underbelly composed of various spheres of fast-food workers, dishwashers and cooks, low-rent security guards, parking attendants, and other people working in marginalized industries, barely or not quite making ends meet while at the same time trying to get to a better stage in their lives. In different cities these circles overlap and mix to different degrees, but combined this working-class, service-industry group often comprises the largest single sector of the economy by number of employees. In Coeur d’ Alene the service industry contingent is particularly diverse, lively, and tight-knit. You’ve got some local cooks and bartenders who have been at it forever, some hardcore burnout kids from the surrounding areas, inexperienced waiters and pretty 19-year old servers who are more likely to be middle class, from out-of-state, and/or attending classes at NIC, literally anyone who had a kid at an economically disadvantageous time and just needs a steady job, and my favorite, the rotating cast of misfits, cluess 18-year-olds, tweakers, and lost souls who staff our local fast-food restaurants, chain stores, and corporate entities with the absolute laxest hiring standards and highest turnover. I’ve been embedded with this cohort since moving to Coeur d’ Alene, and I’ve had the chance to interact with people from across the spectrum. While I mostly try to work slightly higher-wage, less-corporate line cook jobs, work is somewhat spotty in this town and I’ve ended up working whack ass places both on accident and out of desperation. In turn, many of my friends work for Hagadone Hospitality, the owner of the massive resort I refer to as Dracula’s Castle, and my long time girlfriend Katie was a manager at McDonald’s. My point being, I’ve been taking notes. Inside, Jimmy John’s was a sterile, mechanized assembly line for the conversion of offsite manufactured product into end-sale revenue, with the elimination of individual thought, habit, and work style as an incidental byproduct of the corporate auditing process. In this regard it was pretty similar to Subway, Domino’s, Jamba Juice, or any one of these interchangeable corporate-shell companies that make up at least half of the world’s food economy now. Remember that people in America’s towns and inner cities live and die in these chain stores, feeding their children with paychecks stamped with beaming logos. I don’t take this corporate homogenization lightly. Our work is our life. Don’t let them take it from you. College dropout who prepared for an economy that wasn’t there, Retiree returning to work because his savings wasn’t enough, inner-city single mother who just doesn’t have a better way to fund the upbringing of her child...

If you step outside today in most populous areas of the United States the world looks rather shitty. There’s a McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Carl’s Jr. on every block, at least one, and people are rushing between working shitty jobs and spending their money on shitty things. A person’s life is made up of their time, money, and actions. The world we inhabit is made up of human lives. When jobs are shitty, lives are shitty. Working-class life in Coeur d’ Alene is in some ways a microcosm of the dystopian future that I fear may soon await most of the country. The inequities would be almost comical if it weren’t causing palpable suffering to thousands of people every day and stifling untold human potential.

The huge influx of outside money necessitates a massive service industry, but the work is highly seasonal. People at the bottom, most often the people born and raised in the area, are reduced to fighting over scraps; rents are relatively high and no establishment pays more than they absolutely have to, especially since Idaho’s minimum wage of $7.25 sets the bar pretty low. Middle management positions that offer some tentative financial security are a far off dream for most, and those who attain them are forced to guard their status to the point of assholery, bullying subordinates into submission and withholding valuable knowledge. The huge amount of property tax revenue enables the right wing government to fund a massive police force. The town’s drug subcultures remain extant, but are kept in check by a police and court system that actively preys on the underclass for revenue and to justify their salaries. This is the American Police State 101: There are more than enough businesses paying more than enough taxes, so the availability of public funds isn’t an issue. What these businesses require, however, is an endless supply of cheap labor, and the police fill this need by maintaining a permanently marginalized population of people who are not housing secure, people of color, people with substance abuse issues, and anyone who has to miss work because of court appearances or fail a background check. These people, who society blames for their own problems, are continually re-arrested for suffering from the afflictions of poverty and thereby kept in a state of economic desperation. All in all, ordinary working brothers and sisters are largely prevented from sharing in the leisure opportunities and scenic beauty of Coeur d’ Alene that bourgeoisie tourists from around the world come to enjoy, all because of the false promises of economic justice that are so pervasive across the United States. I will give you a specific example. I have what would be considered a pretty good job for this area and I make $12.50 an hour. Extrapolated to one year, that’s $26,000. However, I made barely over $18,000 last year, I know because I just did my taxes. That’s like $1,500 a month. Rent on an apartment like mine is $1,000, though in my case I was splitting it with somebody. And in reality I worked over 5 jobs, some of them weird tip jobs like delivery driving, and never knew quite how much money was coming in. Needless to say nearly all of it was sucked up by bills, paying to fix shit on my car, and court expenses. These are the harsh realities of working class life in America. Jobs like Jimmy John's shouldn't exist as we currently know them. If a college kid or a single mother needs to get an entry-level job at a place like Jack in the Box or Wal-Mart because they have limited options and need to fund important things in their lives because they are adults, then they can be paid $15 a goddamn fucking hour or some kind of meaningful indexed minimum wage that enables them to actually do those things. Like eat, for instance, or acquire further training. If prices go up on prepared foods and service industry-based luxuries- fuck, it astounds me that people talk like that would be the worst thing imaginable. Have you seen our cities? This country has become an absolute corporate shitscape. These dumb corporate jobs, these cheap simulations of luxury, there needs to be less of them, they need to pay their employees better, they should probably be a little more expensive, and they need to provide at least a hope of a better future for everyone involved. Why anyone would oppose accomplishing that through legislation is beyond me. These companies have become the most profitable firms in human history off the labor and hard-earned money of ordinary Americans, and they have only used their profits to further decimate the working class. Money has to stay circulating for the economy to work. It moves upstream through consumer spending, and it moves downstream through paychecks. Right now the paychecks aren't big enough to keep the whole population in a state of healthy economic activity. Capitalists aren't going to start paying out more on their own. It's their job to protect their bottom line. The people need to use a combination of collective bargaining and legislation to protect their interests and to force more money out of the corporate machine. Because our government is now owned by corporations through legalized bribery, this will necessarily entail rooting out corruption from the Federal level down and making the bribery of representatives illegal. Not an easy task, but nothing worthwhile is. What are you gonna do, sit on your ass? How pathetic would that be. A sandwich maker at a chain sandwich shop could easily have a dignified existence. It doesn't have to be a terrible job. Make sandwiches, whatever, talk to people, get paid. As long as you have some sense of autonomy at the workplace, you have a chance to be good at what you do, you feel the people around you want you to succeed, and it enables you to actually live your life, there's nothing wrong with that. One could easily design the job at Jimmy John's so that it doesn't suck. But it would necessarily cost Jimmy John's more money. They wouldn't be able to schedule 8 grown ass men per day to work four hour shifts and weird split shifts, not train them at all, make them sign mandatory arbitration clauses so they can't sue or organize, make them pay for their own meals, no benefits,... your life emanates from your job. If your job sucks, your life sucks. Some conservatives will tell you that that's the point of Capitalism. Life has to suck so that you are motivated to make it not suck; in other words, the economy makes you work to achieve a dignified existence and your work fuels the economy. I happen to think this model is asinine and outdated. Healthy humans are largely self-motivated and they like to do work and make money. These corporations are not helping to train healthy, hard-working humans with these entry level jobs, they are wasting people's time in dead-end positions, systematically devaluing the labor of the working class. People can tell when they are being fucked over and treated as if they are expendable, and they don’t respond well to it. When your life sucks due to a lack of funds and you can't connect the dots, you can't pay a security deposit, you can't fix your car, you can't go back to school even though you want to, that's wasted human potential. Time, work, effort, and creativity are the things that our world is made of. Right now the corporate machine is devouring human life and shitting it into the ocean, and nobody is even saying anything about it. The great lie sold to the working class by the elite in this country is that the market forces of Capitalism will naturally and necessarily create the perfect meritocracy and by extension the perfect civil society. This lie is projected to the individual as "Work hard for your masters and you will be recognized and rewarded with your very own piece of the wealthiest society in human history." It's a perfect swindle, designed to make ordinary people identify with wealth that they don't have. Workers compete for their place in the paycheck stream by putting on appearances and throwing each other under the bus instead of actually working, managers are forced to cut labor costs and encourage high turnover instead of training and motivating existing employees, executives outsource, subcontract, and issue ever-more demanding corporate standards without regard to human life or dignity, and everybody blames the person immediately below or above them for the shitty state of things. THERE ARE BETTER MODELS. Social science has come a long way. THERE ARE THINGS THAT CAN BE DONE. I know what some of those things are but not all of them. I am not a scientist, I am a writer. My main job is to point out how full of shit everyone is. But there are people developing kickass solutions to the things that are making human life suck, and you need to listen to those people. The only people who are definitely wrong are the ones saying that the current system is fine and we don't need to do anything, or worse, that giving more money and power to the corporations is the answer. The corporations, as long as they have the unrestricted freedom to do so, will always find creative ways to staff their buildings that are cheaper than hiring and developing long-term employees who are paid a good salary. The corporations created this backassward world of ours, now the people will have to do something to change it. A simple place to start would be taking seriously the notion that everyone who has a full time job deserves at least an economy-class ticket to a decent life that offers some degree of choice and autonomy. Say, enough income to comfortably rent an apartment, stock the fridge, and finance a preowned car. You could accomplish this by creating a good federal minimum wage that is indexed against housing costs, alongside a robust social safety net and other worker protections such as standardizing work contracts so that employees who desire full-time employment or consistent hours have some guarantee that their expectations will be fulfilled. That's not really a lot to ask. All the modern western democracies do this, even ones that do dumb shit all the time like Great Britain and Australia. Can we be smarter than Australia, the country that elected Tony Abbott? I guess time will tell.

I hope things get better for the working people of Coeur d’ Alene, and I plan to come back to this area for Barter Faire and shit next year. But I’m not going to spend the rest of my life fighting the impossible uphill battle that it would be to try to bring socioeconomic justice to North Idaho. I hate cops. I hate cops hate cops hate cops. I haaaate cooooops. I’m getting the fuck out of here. I need to get out while I’m ahead and try to make some real money somewhere else. I leave on Saturday. The Desert Cruiser is fully outfitted. See you on the other side.

JAMIE

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dustbunnyvent · 4 years

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And to address 'talking about you'

Yeah, I do.

When people ask me how you're doing, I tell them

She's struggling with school but she's killing it. I'm worried about the state of her mental health but I think she's going to pull through fine and have all this hard work paid off. I wish she'd go easier on herself and eat a little more, sleep a little better, so on.

Or when we talk about something and you say or do something hilarious and endearing. Or when we go try something new. Or when we all hang out in a group and you, yourself, introduce information to us in a collective.

If I have genuinely forgotten something that was told to me in confidence that I then proceeded to blurt out to people you never wanted to know about you, then that is on me and I deserve the criticism I get. I have no recollection of doing anything like that in the last /year/, because it /was/ something we talked about back then. My lack of understanding and subsequent (albeit unintended) lack of respect for how you prefer your privacy to work was a valid problem and when we talked it out it felt settled. Resolved. I never doubted our dynamic from that point on and look where that got me. I've lost all context as to what is "acceptable" to talk about. Your degree? Classes? Things your parents say? Things that happen at work? The laptop you bought this year? How badly you want to move out? There are things that are obviously private and there are things that honestly would only need to be hidden if you were in goddamn witness protection and with nothing but "I know you talk about me" to go off of I can't give myself any real context.

As dramatic and pretentious as I find the "burn it all" approach, it's all that feels right in this situation. Your name is staying out of my mouth, for good. About everything. Even experiences we shared with two, three, or ten other people, I am burying them all along with the disgusting little piece of self-indulgent hope I have that this /is/ temporary, that we're just cooling off and a talk and subsequent resolution is on the horizon. Those kinds of hopes beat on pathetic people like me, the kind who feel as though they're squandering the scraps of happiness life throws at them, believing they don't really deserve them.

Even if you want to talk, I don't know if I want to listen.

In just three days an entire year of friendship has been tossed into the fucking maelstrom and I'm /tired/. I'm twenty-five, I'm working myself to death for high minimum wage in the middle of a pandemic nobody with any power is taking seriously. I have to sit and convince myself /once a fucking week/ that I couldn't end it all, couldn't inflict the kind of suffering on my family and friends that would happen if I jumped in front of a train today. I can't keep sifting through every fucking memory I have and wondering how much of it was a lie, how much of it was you being /afraid/ of me and feeding me versions of stories and events because it was easier for you to do that then just be honest with me. I can't put myself through friendships where I need to analyze every goddamn interaction between us under a microscope because you won't be straight to my face.

You're like this for a reason. /I'm/ like this for a reason. We are products of our collective upbringings, experiences, and traumas, and nobody can be faulted for fucking up or being broken because of it. But not all broken people are any good for each other; sometimes you make whole families out of your friends because of or despite their own rap sheet of pain but other times you just exist at odds. Maybe the person I am in 2020 just doesn't fit you. Maybe I'm not capable of being the friend you wanted, or the one you were expecting, or maybe hoping I'd just become on my own.

I don't know. I don't know if I want to try again to find out even if you walk back into my story tomorrow instead of in three months or six or another year. I don't even know if I can trust myself to give up when it's long since been obvious.

I hate that my brain is like this.

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thelandscapingemployeetrap · 4 years

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Do You Have Self-Limiting BELIEFS Landscaping Business MOTIVATIONAL Mindset Talk Keith Kalfas

In today’s episode, we will talk about finances, and how does keeping finances to yourself affects and hurts your business. You don’t waste money if you get some help manage your finances, in fact, it helps you know where your money is going, or to see if you’re making a progress. Listen to this podcast and I will tell you how…

What you are about to hear:

00:03 - List down all your plans, strategize. There’s nothing wrong listing all your dreams and slowly put them into action.

2:37 - Regardless of what you use, what you have, what you own. Those are not important, what matters is the message you bring out there to the world. The importance you do, that will make a change.

6:27 - Start to look, and check your finances, it will not hurt to hire an accountant to do the PNL for you. The harm is when you thought you’re doing great with your finances and it turns out that you’re losing them.

8:01 - Hiring an accountant is not a waste of money, you will do this to save capital. So you could track where all your money is going to. Cool stuff is, they will provide you a PNL report each month so you could learn what’s going on with your business, your profit margins, and the amount of revenue coming in.

13:34 - Don’t let fear control you. Think outside the box, don’t be afraid to expand. Hire someone if you need help. If that will help your business to expand. Plan, List, and then Execute my friend.

18:00 - Help will start from within, you need a mentor to guide you. Get yourself a mentor, who could be your coach and a friend.

21:34 - Consistency is the best practice, It’s a healthy balance. Make it a rule of thumb to yourself.

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The Transcript :

Intro

Welcome to the Untrapped Podcast where we're motivated and inspired about success, small business, and personal development. And now Keith Kalfas.

List down all your plans, strategize. There’s nothing wrong listing all your dreams and slowly put them into action.