#fell into a baggage cart and somehow ended up in storage

[verfound]

MINIFIC: Oct. 23: Day 14: Mushroom (MLB, Lukanette, DLM AU)

For a brief moment – like the teeny tiniest of moments – I was considering the logistics of  getting Mason to France and really having fun with ‘mushrooms’.  It would have been very easy, actually, but…I couldn’t do that to Luka.  I already stuck him with Dingo.  😂

For @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers October Minific Challenge 2023.

Read on Ao3

To Feel Alive Again: Ch14: Mushroom

“…I’m hungry,” Marinette said about halfway through the second movie.  They had both agreed horror was…probably not the best option, and they had abandoned the DVDs to find something on a streaming service.  He hadn’t really complained when she’d pulled up Finding Nemo.  She hadn’t really crawled off of him yet, either, though her head was now resting on his shoulder instead of hiding in his chest.  She hadn’t said anything about it yet, though, so he wasn’t going to, either.  She peeked up at him, and he tried not to notice the way she was biting on her lip.  “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” he said.  “You brought popcorn, right?”

“I’m hungry,” she said.  “For food, not snacks.  Want a pizza?  I’ll buy.”

His nose wrinkled.

“I’m not a big fan of pizza,” he said.  Her eyebrows rose.

“Seriously?  Everybody loves pizza,” she said.  He chuckled and tugged on a pigtail.  He wasn’t sure when his arm had moved around her shoulders, or when he’d started playing with her hair, but she hadn’t asked him to stop, so…

“I used to deliver pizzas,” he said.  “When I was a kid.  It was a lifetime ago, and I actually loved that job, but it turned me off pizza for life.”

“My papa used to make the best pizzas,” she said, sighing.  “He grew his own toppings and everything.  There was one summer he went a bit crazy and grew like fifteen different types of mushrooms.  I don’t think I ate mushrooms for a year after that, but it was a pretty good pizza.”

“…ew,” Luka said, his nose wrinkling again.  “I hate mushrooms.”

“Seriously?” she laughed, and he shrugged.

“They grow in shit,” he said.  She laughed harder.

“Most things do,” she said.  “It’s called fertilizer and it’s really good for plants.”

“It’s called bacteria and it stinks,” he said.  She rolled her eyes and pushed away from him.  He tried to tell himself he didn’t miss her weight and warmth against him.

“Ok, then, monsieur,” she said, lifting her arms above her head in a stretch.  “What would you have me order, then?”

“…your ma’s Chinese, right?” he asked.  She nodded, but she looked confused.  “Any good Chinese places you won’t be personally offended by?”

She snorted and reached for her phone, pulling up a delivery app.

“Only if you order the crab Rangoon,” she snorted, looking up from phone.  “That’s not Chinese, Luka.”

“Ok, ok,” he laughed, stretching himself before pushing himself up from the couch.  “I need to hit the bathroom.  Order what you want.  Just, please, no mushrooms if you get pizza.”

He was down the hall and about to close the door on the bathroom when she called after him, and he almost smiled at the teasing note in her voice.

“Ok, no mushrooms – how do you feel about bananas?”

[fractalfractures]

A little over three weeks ago, I left to spend the holidays with my family in the US. I’d had a weekend and a couple of days of vacation before the trip and had spent a lot of that time cleaning and working on things around the house -- getting the table cleared off, reorganizing the appliances on the kitchen counter to make better use of the space, wiping it spotless, hanging things up (or trying to, until all of the adhesive hooks fell down; you can’t use nails on tiled concrete walls), etc. I left a list of things around the house that he could work on if there was time but there were only two things that I really wanted:

- water the plants so they don’t die before I get back

- clean up after yourself so things are in a similar condition to how I left them, INCLUDING WASHING THE DISHES. He refuses to ever wash dishes barring exceptional circumstances, and after almost two years of being the sole person responsible for all the dishes (and the counters and the table and the floors) I was starting to really burn out on it. This was to be a vacation from washing the dishes.

So I went to my mom’s house, and it wasn’t the kind of vacation that you spend doing fun things. After a couple of days of settling in and unwrapping all the packages that had arrived for me and going shopping and testing out my new ereader, it was full time prepping for other guests and for my sister’s wedding, with a half-day break to celebrate Christmas on the 26th (there was too much work to do the 25th, and my mom couldn’t afford groceries to cook a nice evening meal for everyone invited, so brunch the next day it was). After the wedding things were much more relaxed but between spending time with family, sorting through the stuff my mom had wanted me to (meaning hours spent scanning photos), last-minute shopping, and becoming super-depressed and constantly tired, and getting asked to start packing days early, I didn’t end up getting to go out and do anything social. Like, immediately after the wedding I was focused on things I had to do at home and suddenly I had literally two evenings left that I could go out, and couldn’t find anything to do in such a short time frame.

My mom apologized a lot for how much of a mess the house was in and while that was something that had bothered me a lot in the past, all I could think about was how little I cared after having to work so hard to make myself ignore all the things that bothered me in my own house, and how incredibly nice it was to not be the person responsible for dealing with it. For a large part of my stay I had a bed, a long shelf between it and the wall, and a corner where I stacked all my suitcases to leave the rest of the floor space for the other person sleeping in the room, and that was basically my entire footprint. And there was always something edible in the kitchen even if just peanuts, bread and goat milk, and even though I never ended up having time to cook I could usually mooch off of someone else who did, and often when I left dishes in or near the sink to wash later they’d just disappear! like magic! SO NICE AND RELAXING.

Conversations with my husband went a long these lines: we both complained about how much we missed each other, but he told me to not worry about how he was doing without me and ordered me to forget about him, go out, meet sexy people, and enjoy myself. He seems to think that satisfying my need for relationships is as simple as driving downtown, walking into a club, and hooking up with a stranger or something. And he talked about the friends who’d come to visit him, and showed me a picture of a mountain of dishes and joked about how I’d have to clean them all for them, and when I told him that he’d better not have a single dirty dish when I get home or I’d cry, joke-complained about his evil wife making him wash dishes. Other times he complained about having to spend his free time doing loads and loads of laundry, and how dirty his friends had made things and how he’d spilled a soft drink on the bed. And more mutual I miss yous. And me complaining about the suitcase full of ridiculous things he’d let his friends order for me to bring back without asking or even warning me about them. (Packing was a nightmare and required taking advantage of both my grandparents’ full luggage allowance as well as my own. Cause he also bought himself things like a bass guitar and two shinai and really heavy motorcycle parts. Two of the suitcases wound up technically overweight but thankfully the airline let it slide.) And me asking if there’d be food to eat when I got home hungry and him saying no, he had ice cream and some plums but all the fruit and vegetables were gone and he hadn’t had time to buy more.

So anyway, I got home last Wednesday and conversation on the way home included exchanges along the lines of: “I can’t believe you let your friends order so much stuff! Do you know what we had to do to bring the bass guitar?” “The bass guitar was for me.” “...” “And come on, it wasn’t that much stuff.” “Next time we should set a limit of one item per person.” “Don’t be like that! And stop making me feel bad about making Grandma have to push so many suitcases.” (She’d had the less loaded of the two baggage carts.) “How come all you do is complain and criticize? You just got here and the first thing you do is complain.” He also told me that, sadly, the house was a mess because he hadn’t had time to clean things since he’d been working overtime and also doing chores like paying half of the property tax since he didn’t have enough money for all of it. Also, he’d washed SO MUCH laundry for me, like 12 loads! I was confused, because I had done all my own laundry before leaving, and he told me he washed the stuff I’d taken out of the suitcases to use them -- which had been clean and in storage -- because it stank.

So here’s the heart of my post: the situation when I got home was this:

- the plants all looked really sad, even the cranberry hibiscus that I’d never had trouble with. He said it was because with the crazy rainy weather that we’d been having when it’s supposed to be dry, they’d gotten too much water. He’d watered them that very day AND it had rained.

- the living room table and furniture were cluttered with stuff even before we opened the suitcases. He then proceeded to take out stuff and finish covering the table in junk.

- the kitchen sink had dirty dishes stacked next to it, including like 8 cups.

- the kitchen counter had a bunch of random stuff scattered on it, including condiments like barbecue sauce that I guess he had time to go buy.

- Yes, he had covered over the back patio like I didn’t want him to (it needs more airflow, not less, and our bedroom’s only window opens onto it so this is kind of important). I didn’t go out to see what else he had changed because I figured it’d only upset me more. At least there wasn’t any more surprise remodeling (which tends to go like this: I get home from work on Saturday exhausted and he’s proud of how he’s spent the whole day working, and the floor is filthy and surprise! Now the shower isn’t working anymore because the changes being made to it were only done halfway).

- the bed was unmade, and linens were in a pile on the floor with the attached apartment’s mixed in. I was like “What are the renter’s sheets doing here?” and he was like “Oh, are those hers?” because I guess he can’t tell the difference between stretchy twin sheets and the smooth double sheets in a different color that we’ve been sleeping on for the last year, and yeah, he’d washed hers along with ours for whatever reason. She came last weekend, and he’d done a great job showing her around and taking her shopping and stuff as well as I guess doing laundry for her but somehow there “wasn’t time” for him to take the money she had ready for us and hand her a receipt. This after a previous renter we let stay here without paying even half of his first payment never gave us the rest like he’d promised and trashed the place so bad it reeked of rotting dead duck for a month afterward.

I had to argue hard to get him to wait to fuck until there was a fitted sheet on the bed. Then he dragged it out for AGES even though I was exhausted and limp a little ways in. And then it’s freaking 1 AM and I need to shower, eat (haven’t had a meal since breakfast), and go to bed as quickly as possible and the bed doesn’t even have sheets and pillowcases yet.

- I went to take a shower and found out that the reason showers at my mom’s house had felt so strangely refreshing is that ours is terrible. You have to crane your body at an unnatural angle to keep from hitting the door while you’re under the water, there’s hardly any pressure, it doesn’t get very warm even on the hottest setting (a new development), the floor was dirty with weird linty stuff and the drain cover had at some point been clogged with slime/hair, and instead of wiping it off he’d put it aside where it had dried and gotten super hard. And the bathroom mat was brown with dirt, and the storage bin on the back of the toilet was filthy, and as usual the toilet bowl smelled so terrible it made me want to gag.

- And yay, he’d cooked some fake meat for me! Except ... there’s absolutely no space on the table to put my tiny plate (which is ugly, ridiculously heavy stoneware that he bought without asking me even though we already had much more practical plates in that size) nor desks or any other kind of surface except the kitchen counter. I ask about the one chair we own that’s tall enough to use there and it’s outside somewhere, because according to him that’s where it belongs. So I hunt around to find a chair not covered with stuff. Then I get the meat from the microwave, where I’d had it heat for probably too long, and instead of burning hot it’s still cold, because stoneware. Also my fingers are sticky and there’s no napkins anywhere in the house and I ask where the kitchen rag is and he tells me there are no rags except the dirty cleaning rags outside. And after I finish I’m still hungry, so I look in the fridge again and oh boy, lentils covered with mold! Which makes me not trust any other leftovers, although on reflection those are probably the ones that were already getting old before I left.

- And then after helping him make the bed, I still had to finish unpacking necessities (pills, sleeping mask, etc) so I could finally sleep.

- And then I lay awake listening to my husband unpack things because his friends could not possible wait ONE DAY for us to finish sorting through our 5 suitcases to collect all the stuff I’d brought for them.

The next day, after I was done crying and biting myself ...

- I found more moldy/rotten food in the fridge.

- In the middle of the day I checked the plant bed, and found that it was bone dry for the first couple of inches. Which means loose dust, since I’d weeded just before I left.

- The missing chair was in the back patio, left where the leaks my husband had complained about the previous night were dripping directly on the unfinished wood.

- The exercise bike that had been in the living room was also there under a leak. I scooted it over, but there still remains the problem that since it’s out back in an enclosed patio with a transparent roof, I can basically only use it now when it’s raining unless I want to be super masochistic and also get sunburned.

- The clothing I had removed from suitcases was in the bag where I had left it, looking suspiciously like he hadn’t touched it. The big pile of unfolded washed stuff included these things of mine: two shirts, a nightshirt, a pair of capris, one pair of underwear, a bra, some socks. The clothes I used the day/night before leaving. I don’t even know how to bring this one up without sounding like I’m either belittling his intelligence or accusing him of lying.

- The lone almost-finished roll of toilet paper in the bathroom wasn’t the only one we had left. We still had most of a giant bag, he just hadn’t bothered to bring more into the bathroom even though we usually keep like 20 rolls stacked under the sink. The shower didn’t have enough shampoo to wash my hair, and the body wash was basically out as well.

-After getting the kitchen and bathroom usable, I headed toward the corner of the bookshelf that I use as a standing desk for my computer. On the way, I noticed there was zero space on the bookshelf for the handful of my books I’d brought back.

- I expected to find my desk covered with a thick layer of dust but he was also using it to store the drone he got somewhere, and the set of foam pieces I stand on had completely disappeared from the house. I brought some in from outside this morning, to use while I write this post, and they were wet underneath and smelled bad.

- Husband wasn’t available to make a supermarket run in the evening, after I discovered the missing shampoo, because soon after he got home the friend he’d invited over to fix a computer for arrived, and they spent the entire evening together. I was in bed before they finished. After I moved the huge pile of clothes, since that’s where he decided to put it so the guest room was presentable.

Just ... when you invite a friend to stay at your house, there are basic things you do for them. At minimum, you make sure they can shower, eat/drink, and sleep. The other thing I absolutely need for daily life is a place to use my computer. And fucking none of this was available for me, and any mention of that gets “Relax! Take it easy! Stop stressing!” instead of an apology.

Anyway, this isn’t just something I can vent about and everything’s fine. This is the kind of hurt and anger that need to be dealt with. I know you can’t let it fester in relationships you care about, but how the fuck do I express it? I already have the problem that half the time I ask him to do anything around the house, I can’t say it without sounding accusatory and like criticism, completely breaking the rule that you should always compliment your partner several times as much as you criticize them. I mean, he’s already upset with me for being so negative and critical since coming home.

I can think of I-statements, of course, but I’m pretty sure his reply would boil down to, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I can’t do anything about it. You should go to therapy to deal with your pathological obsession with having everything clean all the time.”