#i’ve locked tumblr on my laptop but i might check in on mobile every now and then but for now see you later!!

[luvrodite]

going 2 be logging out for the most part until after finals !! i’ll prob still be around but if i miss any notifs that’s why!!

[ironmandeficiency]

that’s not a shirt

pairing: marcus pike / reader

word count: 1584

summary: marcus comes home from work & finds the strangest thing in the laundry.

a/n: for @autumnleaves1991-blog and her wednesday writing challenge! writing domestic marcus pike is my therapy. unbeta’d and posted from mobile (honestly my laptop is becoming less convenient to post from even tho posting fic on tumblr is literally the reason i bought it last year)

three long, miserable weeks. that’s how long marcus has been out of town for a case that had him jetting all across the country, far away from you and your comfortable bed. he’s almost never at the apartment he pays rent for every month. most of his clothes and his favorite pillow are at your place, and the small quilt his grandmother sewed decades ago is draped over the back of your couch. in everything but name, he lived with you.

when he entered your apartment with his key, he took note of the fact you weren’t there and got set to cleaning up a bit. work leaves you exhausted more often than not and he doesn’t want to leave everything undone for you to worry about when you get home.

upon first glance, he could see the laundry was half done. a heaping load of clean clothes was in the hamper in front of the dryer and there were wet clothes in the open washer. when he looked further, there was also a load in the dryer, which told him that you stayed up late to get things done then fell asleep on the couch waiting for the dryer to finish. with a fond smile, he started the dryer for a few minutes to get wrinkles out of what’s in there. when those are done, he can get what’s in the hamper unwrinkled and hung and folded.

dinner was next on the to-do list. something nourishing to welcome you home after a long day but simple enough to do while catching up the clothes: spaghetti. there’s something about his mom’s recipe for the sauce that makes his spaghetti absolutely heavenly — your words, not his — and he can’t wait to see your reaction to having marcus home two days earlier than planned along with his best dish.

in the time it takes him to get the sauce cooking and the water boiling on the stove, the dryer announces that it’s finished with the first load. he hums as he folds the bath towels and dish rags without a care in the world, making the trip to stow them in the bathroom cabinet with a spring to his step.

checks the sauce for flavor and consistency before putting the second load of wrinkled clothes in the dryer, finding it needs just a smidge more rosemary before it can be left to simmer. picks another sprig from the plant you keep on the windowsill and cuts the leaves very fine before sprinkling them in with a flick of his wrist.

satisfied with his efforts, he turns back to the laundry. he dutifully empties the lint filter (you’re adamant on emptying it after every load and the trait passed onto him) before he begins to grab things to toss into the dryer. about a third of the way through the basket, his hand grabbed onto something weirdly solid and plump.

“mroww!”

last marcus checked, shirts don’t make noises like that. he tore his gaze from the inside of the dryer to the hamper to find a grey and white kitten lounging in the hamper. the little thing was nudging his hand with their head, clearly wanting the attention of the man slowly depleting its bed. he was perplexed. you didn’t have a cat when he was last here, but there was one seeming to be perfectly content in making itself at home in your apartment.

“where did you come from?” he knew the cat wasn’t going to give him a coherent answer but he felt the need to voice his confusion anyway. the first thing to do now: check to see if it’s male or female. it’s a female, looks to be about three months old and is perfectly content with being handled by marcus.

marcus can’t recall the last time he had a pet. with him being too busy with work, he never thought it would be fair to a pet to have an owner constantly gone. he didn’t have enough stability in the past with where he lived and didn’t want to only be a half ass pet parent. the past several months, however, have been nothing but stable. not counting the seldom out of town cases, he goes to work in the morning and comes home to you in the evening, and he rinses and repeats as needed. maybe this kitten is the perfect prelude to taking the next big step in his relationship with you.

for now though, marcus doesn’t let himself get carried away with his daydreams about living with you full time. he’s got laundry to finish and dinner to cook, and now he has a sous chef to accompany him. he holds the kitten to his chest, scratching her chin with a hooked finger and melting at the way she looks up as if telling him to keep going. “alright sweet girl, let’s finish up dinner.” a soft “mrrow!” is her reply and it makes marcus huff a quiet laugh.

dinner is completed with marcus using one less hand than normal, his sous chef being fabulous company. the few times he had to use both hands, his feline friend perched on his shoulder (which he thought was the best thing ever) and waited to be held again. however this cat got here, marcus didn’t know; the one thing he did know is that it wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

the front door was unlocked when you came home and you knew with absolute certainty that you locked it before you left. your walmart bags filled with cat supplies were immediately dropped to the hallway floor as you began to inspect your front door and the area around it. marcus taught you how to spot the basic signs of forced entry (like the protective sweetheart he is) and when none of them were there, you cautiously entered your apartment, mace in hand.

the adrenaline washed away when you spotted your loving boyfriend in the kitchen, gently bobbing his head along to whatever music he had playing. one hand was stirring a pot on the stove while the other was plenty preoccupied with the kitten. shit, you forgot to warn him about the kitten before he got home!

this was the last thing you thought would be here to greet you, but it was a very welcome sight; the feline was finicky and marcus wasn’t due home for another few days, a double whammy. “i see you’ve met the kitten.” you’re honestly just thankful he didn’t get upset about the little thing. neither of you have talked about pets or whatever your living situation is becoming, so the way he seems so taken with the kitten is a sign pointing in a great direction.

when he hears your voice, marcus visibly lights up. “hi honey!” the hand with the spoon immediately drops the wooden utensil into the pot and waves at you happily. “this is my sous chef, say hello, pasta!” he grabs one of her little paws and waves it at you before resuming his stirring, a beaming smile on his face.

did he really just name the cat pasta? and how in the world is she so calm with him right now?

you found the kitten, now known as pasta, huddled in a cardboard box beside a gas station dumpster headed home from work. she was mewling her little head off back there and you were lucky enough to hear her. taking her and her box, your list of things to do was thrown out the window as you rushed her to the vet. they cleaned her up real good and schedule her vaccinations, and sent you home with a list of supplies to buy and advice on how to take care of the little thing.

she was pissed at you after the vet trip. didn’t let you pet or hold her unless she was in the mood for it and if you tried to pick her up otherwise, she would scatter and give you a glare from a safe distance away. but here was marcus holding her like a baby, and the little brat was eating it up! to be fair, you were the same way with marcus when he was being affectionate so you didn’t completely blame her.

“why pasta?” you knew that cats were more likely than dogs to have strange names. you just didn’t think your boyfriend would be the type to give a cat a name like pasta. at that rate, you might as well name a dog goose and call it a day.

he smiles at the furball, giving her a few affectionate pets while he talks. “i was cooking spaghetti when i found her in the laundry hamper, and then i noticed a little spot right on her hip that looks like penne. i couldn’t choose between the two so i went for the middle ground. is that okay with you? or did she have another-”

“marcus, i love it.” and you really do; that sentimental dork just made you love the name pasta with nothing but two sentences. “and honestly, i’ve just been rotating between baby girl, squeak toy, and dumbass since i found her the day before yesterday.”

he scratches pasta under her chin as he laughs at the thought of you calling his sous chef a dumbass. “pasta is not a dumbass! you tell ‘em sweetheart, tell them how smart you are!”

“mroww!”

“see? she’ll be the next einstein.”

marcus pike taglist: @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @obirain @themarcusmoreno @catsnkooks @torradoza @stardustsunrisekisses @darthadeline @max--phillips @jedi-mando @darklingveracruz @andysficrecs @pedropasscals @qhbr2013 @seasonschange-butpeopledont @greeneyedblondie44 @princess76179 @kaermorons @lv7867 @whovianwar @purelypascal

[sxlverswan]

♡ sparrow’s recommended resources

Hi, everyone. Here’s a roundup of tools and other resources I use when writing, plus a few more complementary recommendations. I thought my mutuals might appreciate these! Feel free to bookmark or reblog this post.

on the laptop

Grammarly → A grammar checker that works in real time, available as an extension for Chrome. While you draft or use an online editor, Grammarly reads your text and searches for grammar mistakes. Just look at the bottom left corner of your workspace and check the Grammarly bubble. If no typos are found, it stays green. If there are mistakes, it becomes red. Clicking on this bubble directs you to extra features available in premium, but Grammarly underlines in red words it cannot comprehend so you can spot typos with ease. It cannot tell context, so it might point out things that are not mistakes, but since I use it, I don’t have to spend so much time revising what I write and that’s a fact.

Noisli  → A distraction-free writing environment that includes a pomodoro technique extension for Chrome. On the website, you can create combos of natural sounds and control their intensity; on the extension, you can set a timer to your combos. To me, the one con with this editor has to do with the colourful background. It’s in constant change, moving to the next colour in a fade that can be paused, but which is still tiring to the eyes. However, Noisli compensates with a great pro my former editor didn’t have — it performs auto-saves, meaning you won’t lose your writing even if your computer (or the draft saving) has a mishap. You can even log off for the day and continue working on your text the next.

Post archiver, part of the New XKit → I’ve started using this extension in XKit just now but already couldn’t be happier it exists. Once you refresh, you can save posts directly from the dash to an archive where you can even keep posts categorised. For rp purposes, it seems to me this is a better alternative to using likes for bookmarking or cluttering your drafts with the same purpose in mind. This way, you can have a fictional location for all those posts you haven’t gotten to yet.

SessionBox → An essential Chrome extension if, like me, you have several accounts to switch between. Instead of having to log out/login every time, you can store your login data in different sessions and open them from the extension button. Meaning? You can open multiple dashboards at the same time and navigate between them as tabs. Fair warning, though — unless you want to pay for the premium version, keep a backup of your data elsewhere. It has happened to me a couple of times, opening Chrome after a bad shut down, and finding my SessionBox data lost! Only premium users can easily recover their data. But this is still a great extension!

Stylish + UserStyles → A library of CSS that overrides the official choices from a number of websites. I use it exclusively for Tumblr and started out with this light theme, which makes scrolling the blue bearable. Recently, I made this one overlap with it. Lastly, because I, as a graphic-maker, also suffered with the sizing changes Tumblr made a couple of years ago, I also use this style to restore things to their glorious normality.

Word Counter Plus → An extension for Chrome that provides you with some helpful stats if you like to control how much you write. Highlight the text you want to check, right-click it and choose the extension for word count, character count, average word length and longest word length. (Mine’s 17. Gotta learn bigger words!)

on the go

Monospace → A clean writing editor for your phone/tablet. Rather than folders, Monospace uses a hashtag system to organise your drabbles. These can be nested, too, meaning you can categorise in different ways. With the free version, you can choose between a dark and a light theme and export your text as plain or markdown to other apps. With the pro version, you can also synchronise with Drive. I use the pro version but honestly, little is gained from it, as you can still format your text in the free version and bypass the synch by going the long export route.

MultipleAccounts → An app that allows you to open a secondary login to an app you have installed. In other words, you can the official app with one account and emulate it with MultipleAccounts to use another one at the same time. The success of this app depends on what app you wish to emulate but Tumblr’s given me no trouble yet. This parallel account takes a couple of seconds to load but a worse con is the fact notifications might get delayed or not work (when compared to the official Tumblr app). Still a nicer way to browse another dash than using the browser.

Tide → A mindfulness app that includes a background natural sounds inserted in a pomodoro technique. I’m a fan of these productivity tools, in case you haven’t noticed.

other utilities

Export Layers to Files → A Photoshop script that saves layers as files for you, faster and with more quality than the inbuilt option. It’s the fastest way to save icons! I used it only a couple of times, so I don’t remember how, but there’s a way for you to save your icons with a colouring instead of them being plain.

OneTab → An extension for Chrome (and Firefox) that keeps a multitude of tabs a click away. It’s even more useful if you find yourself opening the same websites every time you start your browser. Open your websites of always and hit the extension button. The tabs will be stored in a list which can be restored individually or at once. This list can be locked so you can restore the same list every day! Several lists can be stored and locked, which is useful if you’re in the process of doing some extensive research to help in your writing.

Pocket → Pocket’s available for both the desktop and mobile, which is why it appears in this section of the list. As the name suggests, it works as a virtual folder (or pocket) where you store articles, thought for those who want to read previously saved news on the go. Articles you save to pocket can be tagged, recommended or archived and appear in a standardised way. I use mine to store scientific articles rather than as a companion to writing, but it can be used as a library for topics you’re working on. It includes an extension so you can easily add a wepage to your Pocket.

RPThreadTracker → Everyone already knows and uses this tool but I couldn’t leave it out. I admit I do not rely on it as much as my friends do because I prefer to keep a manual track of the replies or starters I owe but this is a personal preference that doesn’t take any merit off the RPThreadTracker. The name is pretty much self-explanatory. In an environment similar to a WP dashboard, you can curate a list of rp threads, quickly see if there are new replies from your partners and more.