#im kind of the main person in the nsbu tag right. it’s fine?

[starstruckodysseys]

tweet tweet —

>> reese’s oc insert jamboree

completed, 876 words

or: the actually canon compliant nsbu ep1 moment that i wrote at like 1am and is actually the peak of my writing. kind of iconic tbh

“that’s— you said birds?” lanie asks, even though she really doesn’t want to know the answer.

this guy — persimmon. barsimmeon. something like that. she truly does not care — grins, and it’s scraggly and creepy and she would like to go home, now, actually? “gobbled them up,” he repeats, which, yeah, okay, sure. whatever. who gives a shit at this point.

she feels more fear in this moment than she has in her entire life, knows it’s plain and evident on her face, and she shifts closer to wendell because she truly does not know what’s happening right now and she needs some form of comfort. he doesn’t look better than she does, but he rests a hand over hers and it’s better than nothing.

“okay,” she says slowly. “birds don’t… have saliva. how the fuck are the seeds sticking to the tape?”

cinnamon guy — who is twelve hundred american dollars in debt to their store, by the way, why are they not more worried about this? — turns like a fucking haunted doll might, looks out the window. usha makes a noise lanie absolutely cannot unpack right now or else she will lose her goddamn mind.

“wouldn’t you like to know?” he says, and lanie shrinks away because no, actually, she doesn’t, as much as that answer terrifies her.

usha says something vaguely affirmative, but it’s drowned out by paula shouting “absolutely not!” which, yeah, that’s the right answer. lanie drops her head onto wendell’s shoulder and ignores the way he tenses at that, mostly because he relaxes almost immediately after.

“i want to go home,” she mutters, even though she got here twenty minutes ago, and he laughs.

“birds… don’t have saliva?” liv asks hesitantly, like she doesn’t quite believe it.

lanie huffs, stands up properly as she throws her hands in the air. “i don’t know, it sounded right! i dropped out of college!”

dang snorts, and jesus fuck, she doesn’t need this right now. “yeah, right before you could take bird anatomy?”

“i’m going to throw all of us into the fucking ocean.”

“oh, i remember when the oceans formed,” usha says warmly, like she’s remembering some fond occasion and not saying the most insane thing anyone has ever said.

simmer-for-ten-minutes turns to her, a look in his eyes that has lanie absolutely downright horrified, but she’s leaning against the checkout counter and there’s nowhere to go, so she stands and watches even as every fiber of her being screams at her to leave. she doesn’t know what expression’s on her face. she thinks she might have unlocked a new emotion at some point in this interaction.

“lanie,” wendell says, just above a whisper, “please tell me this isn’t unlocking anything in you right now.”

okay, bad expression then. “hey, wendell? i have never been less turned on in my life.”

russell laughs, cuts himself off like that’ll hide the fact he’s praying on her downfall or whatever. she resists the urge to glare at him, mostly because whatever facial journey wendell’s going on right now is far more entertaining. she still feels like her fight or flight response hasn’t settled down, but she’ll deal with that… later. probably. maybe if this guy leaves the store her heart will return to a normal rhythm.

“okay,” wendell says, and it only sounds a little like he’s having a heart attack. “should i, like, do something with that information?”

lanie blinks, stares at him, because surely she misheard that. surely this conversation isn’t happening to her at her job where she works.

“huh?” she asks, and damn, she should’ve stayed in theater in high school, they’d appreciate the way she keeps the desperation mostly out of her voice. “what?”

the room has gone deathly quiet, which has historically never meant anything good for them. she doesn’t look around the room, doesn’t dare to, but someone snickers and she’s pretty sure it’s liv, and she makes a mental note of that. she doesn’t know what she plans to do with it, but she’ll have it.

“i don’t— i panicked?” wendell says, and his lack of conviction is a little worrying. “i, uh. people don’t usually listen to me. when i talk.”

lanie closes her eyes for far longer than is probably socially acceptable. “okay, depressing, we’ll focus on that later. can we go back to—” she remembers what they were talking about before and falters. “um. never mind. anything but that, actually.”

usha gasps, somewhere between disappointed and excited, which is a wild combination for anyone except usha. “we should hear him out, at least!”

“yeah, lanie,” russell says with a shit-eating grin, which is a little hypocritical, if you ask her, considering he’s still holding onto paula and liv. “don’t you want to support usha?”

lanie briefly considers bashing her head against a wall. it’s not worth the concussion, she decides, and settles for playing out her little scenarios of how she’s going to murder her coworkers one of these days.

“remember when we were all talking shit about dave and his stupid fucking snake pants?” she mutters, leaning against the counter in despair. “good times.”

wendell pats her on the back comfortingly, even though she can see he’s trying not to laugh. “it’s been like, ten minutes.”

“good times.”