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shireness-says · 4 years

Text

skating in circles (with no way to stop)

Summary: Anne Elliot likes her life just the way it is. The last thing she needs is her handsome, charming, professional hockey player ex... something to show up during lockdown and prove just how wrong she is about that. ~7.9K. Rated T for language. Also on AO3.

~~~~~

A/N: For @welllpthisishappening, who is going a little stir-crazy during the NHL break. Also because it is absolutely her fault I ever thought “What would a hockey-flavored Persuasion AU look like?”

Special thanks to @snidgetsafan for her beta skills. Any mistakes, hockey-type or otherwise, are absolutely my own.

Tagging the potentially interested parties: @profdanglaisstuff, @thisonesatellite, @ohmightydevviepuu, @thejollyroger-writer, @snowbellewells.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

~~~~~

Social distancing almost doesn’t seem so bad in weather like this, the snow outside Anne’s window falling in huge flakes more furiously each second. Weather like this is designed for staying inside, curled up in an armchair with a cup of tea and a soft knitted afghan. It’s almost enough to soothe the little voice in her head that chides her for not working; there’s genuinely little for Anne to do from home as a school nurse, beyond writing and filing the reports she usually puts off until the end of the year, but that doesn’t stop her from feeling guilty at not doing more. Even if she isn’t expected to. Even if she is actually supposed to bunker down.

It’s been odd, adjusting to a life of jigsaw puzzles and overly involved embroidery projects and all the books she swore she’d read two years ago and never did. Hell, she’s even taken up online archiving projects after an old friend from school sent her a link, just for something to do. Her social life hasn’t particularly suffered; she’s a transplant to this town, anyways, drawn back by the memories of one beautiful, peaceful year, only really meeting with folks from work or her old roommate, and infrequently at that. Every few days, she’ll go through the motions of calling her sister Mary just so the younger woman can chatter away about all her own complaints; truthfully, that’s all the socializing she can handle. Anne has always kept to herself, and usually even likes it; the only difference now is that it’s by governor’s decree, not by her own introverted preferences.

Way out here, it’s not surprising that the power eventually goes out; it’s not uncommon, when the snow gets too heavy on the power lines in heavy storms like this. This is exactly why she has a generator - it’s all but a necessity when you’re living here year-round. Sure enough, the generator roars to life a moment later - an auditory nuisance, for sure, but a necessary one when you like such things as central electric heating and wifi and refrigerated items not spoiling.

The crunch of snow under tires outside her little cottage is more surprising, however, especially under the circumstances. She hasn’t ordered takeout, or grocery delivery; there’s no reason anyone should be pulling up to her house, especially in this weather. Peeking out the window reveals the kind of SUV only people with money buy, and the last person in the world she ever expected to see climbing out of it; she’d almost think it a hallucination brought on by isolation, if she hadn’t already seen him from a distance at the grocery store, earlier in the week.

Anne barely has a chance to pull herself together before the knock at the door sounds, bouncing off the walls of her little house. Opening the door reveals Frederick Wentworth, the dream she put away nigh on nine years ago, standing on her stoop in a ridiculous hat and a peacoat that’s not remotely suited to the practicalities of winter in rural New Hampshire.

“Believe me, I hate this just as much, if not more, than you do,” he begins, plowing forward before Anne can even remember to reassure him that it’s not true, “but my power’s out, and I need your help.”

As it turns out, Frederick - her handsome, charming, professional hockey player ex… something - is all that’s required to upset any equilibrium the snow might have brought.

———

Frederick Wentworth hadn’t intended to return to Kellynch, New Hampshire. Then again, he hadn’t intended to be sitting out indefinitely with the rest of the league because of the current pandemic.

New York just feels odd like this, the tourists all gone, the streets practically empty. Fred has never credited himself as one of those maniacs who claim that New York is the only city in the world, and there’s nothing like it; he’d been happy in a small town, and he’ll be happy in a different city if the worst happens and he ends up traded. That’s the way these things work. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t formed opinions over the last years about how this city is supposed to feel, and it sure as hell ain’t this.

So he gets in his car, arranges for a rental house, and drives up to Kellynch. If nothing else, he hopes it will be easier to look outside in a place he’d expect to see barely a soul even under the best conditions. Nothing ever happens in Kellynch, after all; maybe that will include the virus too.

(Well, that’s a lie. Exactly two things have ever happened to Kellynch, and he’s one of them. The other… if they’re very, very lucky, they’ll never have to deal with egotistical directors and their ilk again. Even pretty, quiet brunettes aren’t worth that trouble; in fact, sometimes, they make things worse.)

The irony to all this is that usually, Frederick craves a little bit of solitude. He spends essentially his entire life around the same group of guys, at practice and in games and especially on the road, when he’s got to share a hotel room to boot. Hell, he even lived with them for years, sharing an apartment with Harville and Benwick. A man can be forgiven for wanting some time to himself.

And he’d gotten it, at least for a while. Harvey had met his now-wife and moved out, and now Benwick’s got a girlfriend who giggles and his own place to giggle with her in or whatever. Fred can finally come home and just collapse in the closest thing to silence one ever gets in New York, and truthfully, he’s been enjoying every moment of it.

There’s a difference, though, in solitude on your own terms and solitude on others’ terms, and Frederick can’t help but feel lonely as he remembers that in the middle of all this, his friends and teammates are cozied up with those they love, and he’s all by himself in the empty apartment he once yearned for. In Kellynch, at least, it’s a solitude of his own making; his parents are long gone, Sophie out in Virginia with her husband, and for the most part, he hasn’t talked to his old school friends in years. There won’t be this constant awareness of all the people he can’t see if there’s no one about that he’d want to.

Maybe he ought to try dating again, he thinks as he drives. Obviously, there’s nothing to be done in the moment, what with social distancing and impending stay-at-home orders, but maybe later. Maybe Harvey’s wife has friends he’d like - he’s always liked Amelia and her steady personality and good-natured humor, so unlike Benwick’s high-maintenance Louisa and her ear-piercing squeals. Her friends have got to be similar, and Amelia would probably even be kind enough not to make him sound completely desperate.

It’s not that he hasn’t found anyone interested in the past years; he’s got a decent face, after all, and a better paycheck. But the thing about that face and that paycheck is that it’s hard to trust that any woman is interested in him, him alone, the person he is without all that. It’s not a great way to live, but it’s hard to move past.

There’s also the matter of the pretty quiet brunette who came to Kellynch when he was 16, seized his heart, and never really gave it back. Walter Eliot may have been an asshole - every cliche of the self-absorbed Hollywood director, convinced that their town was “quaint” and “just what he needed” to spark inspiration while demanding kowtowing and wrecking havoc wherever he went - but his daughter, Anne, had been of a different mold altogether. He’d met her at the annual Fourth of July parade, of all places. It was obvious she hadn’t intended to be noticed; indeed, she’d blushed and done her best to fade into the background while her father and older sister had made some kind of scene that Frederick can’t honestly remember anymore. He’d been too intrigued - and later, enchanted - by Anne to pay much attention to the rest of the fiasco she’d called a family.

She’d probably felt then the same as he feels about people now - some strange boy coming up to her out of nowhere with mini-donuts, someone she’s never met but undoubtedly knows her and her family, stuck wondering if he was interested in her or all the rest of it. But it had always been her; she’d initially been fascinating just in the contrast, but as he’d talked to her Fred had gotten to see her sense of humor and her brilliant mind and caring heart, and been smitten with the whole package.

That was, until she’d ended things between them, insisting that they’d never work across such a long distance, that she didn’t want to try. Maybe they’d only had 8 months, but he’d been all in, with all the conviction of youth that this was it for them, in some kind star-crossed true love way. She was the first thing, besides his family, that he’d loved more than hockey; truthfully, he still hasn’t found anything or anyone else to match that. It’s hard to move on from that kind of heartbreak. Maybe it’s finally time he tried.

The house he’s rented proves to be up a winding, hilly road lined with pine trees stretching in every direction. The seclusion is its own kind of calming - exactly what he needs, when the rest of the world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket. There’s something about being alone amongst the trees that feels comforting in a way that being alone in the city can never touch - almost like a hug. Or something else less weird-sounding. English was never his thing. The house itself is just a little two-bedroom cottage, but that’s more than enough space for just him. What’s more important is that there’s a TV and WiFi and plenty of blankets to bunker down with for however long this lasts.

What he doesn’t expect is to see Anne Eliot - the same Anne Eliot who he thought had left Kellynch for good, who’d broken his heart - at the supermarket like any other local, presumably looking to stock up on supplies just like he is. He doesn’t think she spots him - Frederick ducks into another aisle as soon as he spots her - but just the briefest sight of her sets his heart beating faster in a way that he doesn’t really want to examine closer.

(It would be ridiculous to still have feelings for her after all this time, even if that’s sure what it seems like.)

He tells himself that it’s just a fluke; that they won’t run into each other again; that they can avoid each other without any problems, given the situation. He is wrong on all counts. The cottage sits at the top of a hill, and on days where the fog hasn’t settled around the tops of the trees, he can see just a peek of a few houses and driveways down below.

And just who should he happen to see wrestling with her trash bin one evening, but the woman herself?

(Some higher power really has it in for him, he’s certain of it.)

Still, they don’t call it social distancing for nothing. It’s easy to avoid the people you don’t want to see when you don’t even leave your house. He naps a lot and catches up on Netflix and even attempts a puzzle that he finds in the hall closet (though it just winds up abandoned on the dining table).

In eight years, though, he’d forgotten about the weather up here. It’s late March, technically spring; the worst of the snow should be over. Should be over isn’t the same as is over, though, and he’d forgotten about the late-March snowstorms that pop up more years than not. They’d had them in Minnesota, too; the locals there had always joked it was because of the college basketball tournament. Well, the NCAA tournament may have been cancelled, but the weather sure didn’t get that memo, as the flakes start falling huge, heavy, and fast just outside the windows, almost pretty in a way that’s only possible when you know you don’t have to go outside in the storm.

Fate has other ideas, though. At least, Frederick has to believe it’s fate, otherwise this is all a cruel, cruel trick, and he doesn’t like to think about what he might have done to deserve that. Where he’s going with this is that the power goes out, knocking out the heat and the lights, as well as all those systems he’d been so thankful for until now. There’s a fireplace, but he hadn’t planned for this, and there’s not enough logs and he doesn’t know where or how to chop more and as much of his life as he spends at an ice rink he is not prepared to spend the night in these kind of temperatures without heat and —

— and when he looks out his window, he can just see a hint of light from Anne’s house, just hear the hum of a generator.

And he really doesn’t have any option at all but to throw himself on the mercy of the last woman he wants to see.

———

Anne’s house is neat, from what Frederick can see - small, but cozy, with everything obviously in its very particular place. It reminds him of her, in a way, or at least the her he remembers - quietly comforting and well turned out. It’s exactly what he expected, somehow - just the kind of house he’d expect her to inhabit.

The woman herself, on the other hand, looks tired - vastly different than what he remembered. Anne is worn down, somehow, in a way that makes her look older than she is. Frederick supposes that’s what happens when she’s undoubtedly been carrying her family members in the way she always has; it would exhaust anyone, especially under pandemic circumstances.

“Nice place,” he comments as Anne leads him towards a promised spare bedroom once he’s retrieved his bag - more out of an effort to fill the empty space than anything. Anne was always quiet, but this is just unnerving in its discomfort. They’d always been able to talk, or at least exist contentedly in the quiet; this is the opposite of all that.

“Thanks,” she replies. “I like it.” Just the kind of response a person makes when they don’t know what the hell else to say.

And maybe that’s what makes Fred dive straight into topics they should politely ignore - the absolute blandness of everything else they could say.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” he tells her foolishly.

“In my own home, during quarantine?” She says it with a slight smile and the tone of voice she’s always used to hide her sense of humor, and suddenly Frederick is hit with a powerful wave of nostalgia.

“No, here. Kellynch here.”

The amusement flits away just as quickly as it had appeared, the smile turning polite and wooden. Another look he vividly remembers. “I didn’t plan to come back, either,” she tells him softly, “but I like it here. I got out of school and there was a position open and… it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I’m a school nurse,” she clarifies. “Over at the elementary.”

And that… fits, in a way he should have realized. She’d talked about going into nursing way back when, back when they were still practically kids, but this makes a lot more sense than trying to imagine Anne in some busy hospital. More tender, more stable.

“I bet you’re great at that.”

“Thanks. I like it. You’re… good at your job, too,” she finishes awkwardly.

(Even if the words are halting, uncomfortable, they send a little thrill through Frederick’s veins. Does that mean she’s watched, sometime in these past couple of years? They’re decidedly out of Rangers country and New York broadcasting range, way up here, but there are ways around that and she’d said…

Had she watched? For him?)

“Just doing my best,” he replies, just as uncomfortably. What a pair they make now.

“I don’t know if you’ve eaten already, but I was about to make up some dinner,” Anne tells him - an abrupt, but welcome, change of subject. “I’d be happy to do up another serving if you like.”

“That’d be great, thanks.” He has no idea what kind of meal he’s committed to, but who the fuck cares; right now, it’s a way to get a moment to collect himself.

“I’ll see you in a little bit then.”

(If he’s not mistaken, Anne flees the room with just as much relief as he feels watching her go.)

(Kellynch was supposed to be his getaway, his haven - but right now, all it seems like is a terrible mistake as Frederick wonders what the fuck kind of situation he’s gotten himself into.)

———

Dinner isn’t exactly an illustrious start to this whole thing, to say the least. Anne stresses about every step of making spaghetti - spaghetti, for goodness sakes, jarred sauce and boxed noodles, nothing a normal person could possibly find a way to stress about - only to realize as soon as they sit down that this is what they really should have worried about: what in the world two people who have unwillingly been forced into the same space have to discuss.

(“How’s your family?” he asks at one point - probably a subtle dig, if he’s remembering the same uncomfortable dinner that she is, in which her father had done his best to treat Frederick like an utter idiot. Fred had always thought she’d let them walk all over her, anyways - an accusation that isn’t far off.

“Mary is fine. She just got engaged to a lawyer,” Anne relates as neutrally as she can. “I don’t much talk with Walter or Elizabeth anymore.” There’s a variety of reasons for that - especially their tendency to never listen to a single word she’s ever said in her life and making snide comments about how she’d rather live in some backwoods nowhere than in someplace with civilization like LA or New York - but the memory of the way they’d treated Frederick, and everyone else not like them had contributed too. “And your sister?” That’s a safer topic; Sophie and Anne had liked each other.

“She’s good. She lives down in Virginia now - her husband’s some big shot in the Navy.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”)

(And that had been the end of that feeble attempt at discussion.)

Anne thinks a lot that night about what she must have done to deserve this. Clearly, something terrible in some past life to have earned this particular variety of torment. Frederick is everything she remembered, only colder - not that she can blame him. After what she did, all those years ago, the way she broke them… she’s more than earned it.

Still. She can be strong, Anne tells herself. She can remain detached, and collected, and unaffected by his presence. She’s had years of practice, after all, pretending that she still isn’t carrying a torch.

(It was always a foolish idea to watch him play online - but then again, she’s always been a fool.)

It’s a little harder to keep up that calm facade, however, when Frederick is walking out of the bathroom in the morning with nothing more than sweatpants and wet hair. God, but he’s handsome, between that face and that wonderful smile and the fit frame he must be displaying just to taunt her, like a reminder of all she rejected. Naturally. It’s no more than she deserves. Her relief is near palpable when he emerges from the spare room in another bright blue t-shirt.

It gets easier as the hours pass and one day bleeds into another. It’s not Frederick’s fault that she’s so shaken by his very presence, and he really is trying to be a good houseguest. He picks up after himself and helps with the dishes and doesn’t argue with whatever she puts on TV. It could be worse.

Still, she can’t help but feel like everything from their past sits between them, unspoken, in every interaction. It’s the elephant in the room, the loudly unspoken words in every little mundane interaction they share. They can reach a point where they’re able to converse without the overt distrust and borderline hostility of where they started this, but comfort is too much to ask.

(Does he feel it too - the pressure of all the what-might-have-beens, pressing down upon them? Or is she the only one that’s haunted?)

She can do this - survive Frederick’s presence when every moment is a reminder of all she threw away. But that doesn’t mean it won’t just crush and kill her.

———

Frederick finds that he doesn’t mind being cooped up with Anne, likes it much more than he anticipated or planned. It’s not that they do much of anything - there’s limits in a small cottage like hers - but the companionship is nice. As it turns out, he was maybe lonelier than he’d wanted to admit. Even the stupid jigsaw puzzles go easier in her company; she’s got a system of sorting that Fred never would have had the patience to implement.

Really, Anne is better equipped, literally and emotionally, for this whole isolation situation. Frederick has always needed to be out and active and doing, little planning involved; Anne, on the other hand, has all the supplies she needs, and the temperament for these kinds of quiet, time-wasting tasks to boot. It’s so entirely in character; he should probably have guessed. Then again, he was trying very hard not to think of Anne until he was forced to show up at her door, practically begging for shelter.

Anne, of course, has plenty of firewood, unlike him, stacked neatly under a tarp at the side of her garage where it’s protected from the elements. She lives here year-round, after all; unlike his own dumb ass, she obviously remembers that it’s not uncommon to receive snow all the way through March and into April, and planned accordingly. Her central heating works fine, obviously, but there’s something about this weather that calls for a roaring fire. Plus, retrieving the firewood gives Frederick a chance to think away from Anne and all her distraction.

He’s not sure what he expected of her - tears? Begging? Apologies? The kind of aloofness the rest of her family has so perfected? None of that is Anne; she’s always been too accepting of her circumstances, even to her own detriment. Once upon a time, Frederick had viewed that tendency with a kind of fond exasperation, had wanted to help her understand that she deserved more than she had always settled for; now it just makes him sad, and angry. She should feel more than this, should be angry or distraught or anything now that he’s here.

He should be paying more attention to the task at hand than the woman in the other room, unfortunately, as the end of a twig clipped off a log slices the skin of his palm as he deposits his load by the hearth, causing Frederick to hiss in surprise at the mild pain. It’s not a deep cut, or hurt that badly - he plays a contact sport for a living, for fuck’s sake, this is nothing - but he can already see blood starting to bead. After making sure the logs are stacked as best as he can one handed, Fred quickly crosses to the kitchen sink to rinse it out. Anne finds him moments later as he examines his hand for splinters.

“Are you alright?” she asks, that soft voice filled with the kind of concern that sends a pang through his heart.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just scratched myself on one of the logs. No biggie.”

Still, Anne pulls his hand closer to examine the little cut herself - gently enough that he could easily pull away, but somehow, too tenderly for him to ever want to. This is her life now, Frederick realizes suddenly - scrapes and bruises and doubtless all other kinds of minor playground injuries that need more tenderness than true care. School nurse, after all.

“I’ll get you something for that.”

“Oh, you don’t have to —” but it’s too late; Anne is already walking down the hall with her determined pace, disappearing into the bathroom. Resistance is futile, or something. Faintly, he hears the squeal of a cabinet hinge before Anne pads back into sight in her stockinged feet, carrying something he can’t quite make out clutched in her hand.

“Just a bit of neosporin,” she explains, tugging his hand back towards her to apply the cream before peeling open the wrapper of a band-aid - the skin-toned butterfly kind.

He nods towards the little adhesive. “What, no fun prints? I’m appalled.”

“Left all my princesses and superheroes back in my office at school,” she smiles back. “You’ll just have to make do, I suppose.”

“I guess I’ll make it, somehow.”

(When she smiles, the ridiculous urge to ask her to kiss it better pops into his head with an ease that nearly frightens him. With a care that would impress even her, he shoves it back down.)

———

It gets easier to share the same space as the days drag on - to learn to expect another person in her space, to expect that other person to be him. It would be overstating the matter to say that she’s not affected by him anymore; indeed, Anne is almost painfully aware of his presence at every moment. But she can prepare to face it when she’s come to expect him, and that feels like a victory all its own. She is braced and ready, long since versed in ignoring and minimizing those feelings that still linger from so long ago. Frederick’s physical presence in her space is a complicating factor, but certainly one that she can overcome.

If she can ignore the way her heart aches, it’s almost kind of nice, having him around. They fall into a pattern of meals and Netflix and quietly finding their own distraction in between. It’s the kind of mundane existence she could almost dream of sharing with him if she was foolish enough to entertain those thoughts.

(She can’t afford to be such a fool - not when it’s only a matter of time until the snow stops and the roads clear and he leaves once again. She likes her life as it is, and that will have to be enough.)

It’s probably inevitable that, on the fourth night, when the snow has finally let up but the temperatures have turned bitter and icy, they find themselves huddled up next to the fireplace with a strong drink apiece. Frederick sips on a glass of the nice whiskey Anne keeps in the back of a cabinet for occasions that call for a little something stronger, barely kissed with enough soda to call it a mixed drink; Anne, at least, pours the same stuff into a whole cup of tea. She’s never been much for liquor, especially straight, but there are occasions that call for it, and being cooped up with a man she never expected to see again is certainly one of them.

“What are the fucking odds?” Frederick declares after his second glass. “I come out here, trying to get away, and I find you. What are the odds.”

“Well, the last couple of years, I’d say pretty good. Since I live here and all.” He’s kind of cute like this - drunk and verbose. It’s something she never had a chance to see, before.

“Oh. Yeah. That.” He takes another swig. “Still. What are the odds that I came back while you’re here?”

“It’s a mystery, I guess.” Maybe it’s the last few days; more likely, it’s the drink. Whatever the case, Anne finds herself telling Frederick something she should never admit. “I’m glad you’re here,” she tells him softly. “I… missed you.”

He tenses up at the words; not the reaction she expected, honestly. A feeling of dread starts to bloom in her stomach instead. “Really,” he comments, utterly flat.

“Well… yes. Is that so hard to believe?”

“A little bit,” he tells her bluntly. “Especially since you’re the one that wanted me gone in the first place.”

“It was for the best.” For him, that is; this was never about her, anyways.

“Was it now?” His laugh is bitter, utterly devoid of joy.

“Frederick…”

“I just want to know what the hell is going on here,” Frederick demands, a liquored slur rounding out his consonants. “Because I’ve been here for days, and I can’t get my feet underneath me where you’re concerned. You sit there with that sad smile and you say it’s for the best and yet you don’t seem happy. And I don’t fucking get it. You’re the one who wanted to break up, but you don’t seem happy that we did.”

“I wasn’t,” Anne admits softly. “I’m not.”

“Then why? Because I’ve been trying to figure it out for nearly nine years, and all I’ve ever figured out is that you must not have felt anything. And after a week spent here, I don’t know that that’s true. So tell me, why?”

“I did it for you!” Anne finally bursts out, more a plea that a shout. “And I know that sounds like a lie and an excuse, but that’s why. We were so young, but God, I loved you. And you loved me, so much that you were about to throw away your chance at everything, ready to find some lesser school near Kellynch rather than taking Minnesota’s offer just so we’d be closer to each other. And I wanted it too - God, Frederick, you don’t know how much I wanted it, how close I was to letting you do that, because I wanted that too. I wanted you close. I loved you.

“But then… it wasn’t even some big game, but you wanted me there, so I went. And you looked alive out there on the ice, throwing insults and elbows and grinning like a maniac. I realized… that’s who you were supposed to be. I couldn’t hold you back from that, just to keep you close to me. Minnesota was your path to the kind of career that would last. How could I ask you to throw away your future?”

“Why didn’t you just say that? We could have figured something out. Done the long distance thing, I don’t know.”

“And you would have been hopelessly distracted from the start. Your mind would have been halfway across the country when you needed to be focusing on hockey and classes and everything else.”

He doesn’t have any response to that, not that Anne expected one. Frederick has never been great at admitting to things he doesn’t like.

“It was never because I didn’t care enough, because I didn’t love you,” she finishes softly. “I did it because I could see everything you could be, and I love - I loved you too much to let you waste that.” God, Anne hopes he didn’t hear that slip of the tongue, even if it’s true. “We were seventeen, Frederick. Kids. There was so much still ahead for you. I couldn’t be the reason you hindered your own dream, or even let it slip away. And you made it, didn’t you? You’ve reached that dream. No matter what I wanted for myself… I had to. For you, so you could have this.”

“I wanted you more than any dream.” Frederick has practically collapsed in on himself in the armchair, the very same one Anne was occupying when he’d showed up and shattered her quiet little world. It seems almost fitting that he sit there while she does the same.

There’s no words for this; nothing that could make it better. Telling him I wanted that too won’t fix what’s already been done, even if she wishes that was the case, even if that’s true. “Frederick…” she finally whispers for lack of anything else to say.

It’s too late, though - though that’s not quite the right phrase, not when it was already too late before this conversation even started, before he even showed up at her door in the snow. Now is just when he pries himself out of her armchair, standing with a finality that’s impossible to miss. “I’m tired, Anne,” he tells her. Anne doesn’t think she imagines an extra level of meaning to his words. “Goodnight.”

There’s nothing left to say - and no use saying it to an empty room anyways as she hears the spare bedroom door click shut down the hall.

There’s no changing the past, but not enough words to explain it either.

———

The next morning, the roads are finally clear, and Frederick can go back up the road to his own cottage. Anne watches silently as Frederick emerges from the guest bedroom, his duffle bag in hand. The silence only becomes more tense as they stare at each other, the luggage a physical barrier between them, both blessed and cursed.

“I suppose I should thank you,” Frederick finally says, breaking the silence.

Anne shakes her head. “It was nothing. Basic kindness. You don’t need to thank me.”

(Can he see the way this pains her? Read the plea in her eyes - for forgiveness, for understanding?)

After another beat of silence, Frederick finally nods decisively, turning towards the door. “Take care, Anne.”

“You too, Frederick.” It feels final; it feels like a farewell, of a permanent kind.

And then, with a last soft click of the door, he’s gone.

And Anne is left to herself again.

———

He should feel peace, now that he’s back in his own space, away from Anne and every memory that she’s dredged up.

He doesn’t.

Because now, back alone in the little house at the top of the hill, Frederick once again has to face the particular kind of loneliness that comes with knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way.

What it all circles back to is this: he should feel smug. After all, this is everything he’d wished for in his most bitter moments over the years: Anne, all alone, with no real support system, just living a quiet little life of little note and, to all appearances, little true happiness.

But it doesn’t feel good - not even remotely. How has he suffered? Sure, he hasn’t had her, but he got drafted, went to a top rate school, wound up playing hockey for a living in the NHL. By any measure, it’s a damn good life - all while Anne has been left to become the shell of herself he found four days ago.

And that shouldn’t be his problem. Technically, you could argue that she brought this upon herself; dug a hole of her own making. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel… sad, he supposes, to see what she’s resigned herself to. Maybe a little guilty, even.

And still, he can’t help but feel like there’s questions left unanswered. They’d talked plenty about the past, how they’d felt and why they’d acted the way they had, but that hadn’t touched on where they stand now. If there’s one thing he’s learned in these last few days, it’s that his own feelings aren’t nearly as dormant as he’s tried to convince himself all these years. If there’s any chance Anne might still feel the same… well, he owes it to them both to find out.

This chapter of their history doesn’t seem quite finished yet, and Frederick knows exactly what he has to do.

———

This time, she should have expected the knock on the door - social distancing be damned.

It’s been three days since the storm’s finally stopped - three days since snowplows had cleared everything out, three days since Frederick had left, back to his own little house up the road.

She’d been content by herself for so long - happy with her plants and her books and all the little hobbies that take up her time in the evenings and weekends. Anne had even found a new kind of solitary contentment in the pandemic, discovering tasks to give her days purpose and goals. Frederick was here for a matter of days, not even a week; it’s absurd to think he could change any of that.

And yet somehow, he has.

Because Anne had been… content by herself for so long - not happy, per se, but satisfied - but the house feels empty now without him. Even when they’d barely talked, or were in separate rooms, he’d been there, the energy of another person making the whole house feel full. She’d grown used to him, she supposes; allowed herself to remember, for once, all the reasons she had loved him, and all the dreams she once had had of what a life together could have been like .

She chose this life - here, in Kellynch, by herself. But for the first time in the only place that’s ever really been hers, she feels not just alone, but lonely. As much as she’s always claimed to like her life, just as it is, there’s no denying that the past days have illuminated all the ways that she’s been lying to herself. She tries to pass the time the same way she always has, but it’s just not the same; she even calls Mary at one point, hoping her sister’s dour moods might be an efficient distraction, but Mary is even more snippy than usual. It’s been days since Anne last called, and her sister feels an outsized outrage about the so-called abandonment; truthfully, Anne hadn’t even noticed it had been a week since her last call. Moreover, she finds that she doesn’t really care about Mary’s bad mood the way she always has, doesn’t feel the need to fix it or blame herself for the outburst. It’s easier just to hang up the phone.

(Maybe this is the first step in moving on: accepting that you deserve more than you’ve ever settled for. That doesn’t stop the yearning; moving on isn’t the work of a couple days, especially when the man himself has only just exited her life again, and is staying just up the road.)

As if she’s summoned him, tires crunch on the drive outside, heralding his reappearance. It isn’t right, the way her heart lurches with happiness and hope and excitement when she peeks out the window to once again see his SUV, once again see him climbing out in that ridiculous blue hat and shuffle to her front door without once slipping on her icy walk. There’s a sense of déjà vu as Anne draws a deep breath before she opens the door. There’s only so many times she can go through this, be subjected to such a blast from the past, before it will eventually break her. And yet, like a fool, she keeps opening the door.

“Can we talk?” Frederick asks. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets and his shoulders are hunched inwards, but there’s a look in his eyes that Anne is afraid to name.

(It almost looks tender - almost looks like hope - but it will hurt far worse to be proved wrong if she allows herself to believe that.)

“Of course,” Anne says softly, stepping aside just enough to let him in. It touches a special little bit of her heart to see the way that Frederick carefully knocks the snow off his boots at the threshold as he pulls his hat off his head, trying his best not to track anything in to her rug and floors. It’s such a simple little thing, but it’s care for her home - and, in a way, care for her. More than she ever expected again from Frederick Wentworth.

“Anne…” he begins, reaching out a hand for her, but she quickly takes a step back. Touch will be too much, too permanent a memory if this is the end.

“I think we ought to keep a bit of distance,” she explains at his odd look.

If anything, that only serves to confuse him further, his brow crinkling up in that endearing way she remembers. “We already spent days together. I think social distancing is kind of a lost cause, at least where we’re concerned.”

Anne shakes her head. “It’s not about the virus.”

She can see the moment it hits him, just exactly what she means by distance, as he physically flinches with the realization. She can also see the moment he decides to plow forwards anyways with whatever he came to say.

“I’ve been thinking, these last couple of days,” he tells her, “and I’ve had a lot of time to consider things. Everything you said and did, the other night and way back when. And I realized… I did a lot of talking about what I wanted, and what I felt. And in the middle of all that shouting, I never asked about what you wanted, or want, or how you felt. And you never told me, because that’s what you’re used to - people not caring enough to ask. That’s on me, and I’m sorry. But —” he swallows heavily, as if he’s forcing down the nerves he evidently feels — “but I’m asking now. I want to know what our break-up meant to you. Because the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to believe you did all this because you didn’t care.”

Anne fights the urge to turn away from Frederick; he deserves that much, after everything. Meeting his eyes is too much to ask, however, and she fixes her gaze instead just over his right shoulder, crossing her arms over her body protectively. “I loved you,” she tells him quietly. “I knew what I had to do, but I loved you. I hated every word that came out of my mouth.” Anne smiles sadly. “You weren’t the only one who wanted. You were the first person - the only person to look at me and see something wonderful and worthwhile, and it killed me to throw that away. I’ve had to live with that ever since.”

“And now?”

Anne turns pleading eyes upon him, sure that every emotion is now splashed across her face and too distraught to care. How dare he do this? How dare he make her speak this into existence if he’s only about to crush it all? “Don’t make me say it,” she begs.

“Please, Anne.” His voice is nearly as desperate - and that’s, ultimately, what breaks her, leaving the words to spill forth almost without her permission.

“And now… that doesn’t go away, you know. A love as big as that. You got to go be this success story, doubtless had all kinds of… distractions over the years, but when you have a quiet little life like mine, you don’t forget. It doesn’t go away. There’s a large part of my heart that is still yours - probably always will be - and I have to find a way to deal with that.”

“You still love me?”

Anne nods, whispering her response. “I do.”

She suddenly feels his hand trail down her arm, causing Anne to jerk abruptly to meet his eyes again. “Well that’s lucky,” he smiles down at her, achingly gentle, “because I haven’t forgotten either.”

Even as Anne’s heart lurches with hope, she shakes her head. “Don’t tease, Frederick. Don’t be that cruel.”

“I’m not,” he assures her, twining their fingers together. “Because you’re right, I’ve tried to distract myself, but… you have no idea just how unforgettable you are, Anne. How could anyone ever compare? And I tried so hard for so long to move on, to hate you, but I never could. You were a little spark in my heart that I could never quite stamp out. And now…” Frederick pauses as if to gather his breath, squeezing her hand as he does so. “And now, I hope I won’t have to.”

“You’d want that? You’d want to…” Even with new-found hope singing through her veins, Anne still hesitates to finish the sentence. This all feels like a wonderful dream; she’d hate to wake up and discover that’s all it was.

“To try again?” he finishes. “Yeah. Yeah, I want that. The real question is… do you?”

And she does, she wants that so terribly much, so badly that it aches, even as she hesitates. How could he want that, after everything she’s done? When their separation was her fault in the first place?

“I don’t deserve you,” Anne murmurs into the miniscule space between them, caving to the urge to brush his hair back from his face. It makes him smile, just a little bit, just a twitch of his lips, but that more than anything else sends a flood of peace rushing through her soul.

“I think we deserve each other,” Frederick tells her in return, his voice almost unbearably soft. “I believe that, and somehow, I’m going to make you believe that too. We deserve this, Annie.”

And he kisses her, like he wants to, like he’s thought about it just as much as she has. His lips are soft against hers - just like she remembers, all those years ago - but there’s a surety to his hands now that wasn’t there before, in the way he pulls at her waist to bring her closer and his fingers thread through her hair with purpose. There’d been a handful of ill-advised attempts at dating in the past eight years, but nothing ever came close to this joyful swooping sensation in her stomach or the feelings of safety and love and home. That’s something only he can manage; something that only exists between the two of them.

Her hands find their way to his chest as the kiss deepens, becomes more passionate, heads adjusting their position to allow tongues to tentatively begin to prod and search. Anne had known the difference 8 years had made on Frederick’s body, had seen with her own two eyes the way he’d filled out with more muscle, but feeling it is something else altogether, even through his shirt where his coat gaps open. It’s a reminder that they’re not the same - they’re older and more mature and have experienced different things than they had at 17. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, change can be good; it’s brought them here, together, at what otherwise feels like the end of the world.

Even as they break apart - to get a breath of air, to process what just happened - Frederick continues to stroke his thumb across the round of her cheek, like he can’t bear to stop touching her. It warms her heart in a whole new way, like it’s proof that he meant every word he told her - as if she needs any more after that kiss. It would be easy to let herself get swept away on that little touch, perhaps into another wonderful kiss, but Anne forces herself to meet his eyes.

“Stay.” It’s more than a question, but less than a demand - a plea, the dearest wish of her heart that she’s never admitted, now given voice.

“For as long as you want me, Annie.” His voice is tender and husky as he smiles down at her. “Because I really don’t want to ever leave you again.”

And that’s awfully lucky, as Anne doesn’t ever intend to let him go again.

#Persuasion #Persuasion ff #Jane Austen ff #Anne Elliot x Frederick Wentworth #Modern AU #my writing #skating in circles (with no way to stop)

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thecassadilla · 4 years

Text

Written in the Stars - Chapter 2

Word Count: 3,574/AO3

Pairing: Kristanna

Love During Lockdown series: Serendipity (Prologue) | Chapter 1

Summary: Figuring out how to go on an in-person date during a time of social distancing would be a challenge for anyone. Luckily, it comes easy to Anna and Kristoff, who find a creative way to spend some time with each other amidst a pandemic.

Author’s Note: Hi everyone. I hope you’re all doing okay. I debated for a really long time on whether or not I should post today. The world has been very dark the past few days, and I didn’t want to take away from anything important that is happening. I ultimately decided to post because some of you may be using fanfiction as an escape right now and I didn’t want to deprive anyone of what little distraction you may feel while reading this. I don’t know. Thank you for all the love you’ve given me, I appreciate all of you. Stay safe. I hope you enjoy this.

As they pulled up to the unusually long drive-through line, Kristoff turned to face her. “What do you want?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a sucker for chicken nuggets,” she smiled.

“How many do you want?”

“The meal, I guess. I think it comes with ten pieces? I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in forever,” she explained.

“What type of drink?”

“Sprite,” she answered, confidently.

When it was finally their turn to order, he rolled down the window and relayed the order to the cashier. While he did so, she dug through her purse for her wallet. Once they pulled forward, she tried to hand him the cash.

“What’s this?” He asked, looking down at the money in her hand.

“It’s for the food,” she said, moving it closer to him.

He playfully pushed her hand away. “Nice try, but this is on me. And the real date will be on me, too.”

“So what is this, then?” She teased playfully.

His cheeks turned bright red. “If, um...I don’t -”

“Don’t worry, I’m only teasing,” she assured him, a huge smile plastered across her face. “Of course this is a date. A real date.”

He huffed out a nervous laugh. “Right. Yeah. I just didn’t want to jump the gun and assume that, just in case you...”

She rested a hand on his arm. “Just so you know, I was hoping that you felt the same way - that this was a date. An unconventional one, sure, but honestly, I think this is the best date I’ve ever been on.”

“Me too,” he smiled, the blush starting to fade. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

Just then, the car in front of them moved forward, and they were able to move up to the first window. He handed the cashier his credit card as Anna slid the cash back in her bag.

“So, I hope you like ice cream,” Anna said as soon as he closed the window.

“I do, why?”

“Because we’re going to Dairy Queen after this and I’m treating you to ice cream.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are we now? Last I checked, I was the driver.”

“Well, I’m the passenger, and that’s an order, not a request.” She tried her best to sound stern, raising her index finger and wagging it at him.

He rolled his eyes, but his lips were curved upwards. “You’re bossy.”

“I know,” she smiled sweetly. “I’m serious, though. Dessert is on me.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “If you insist.”

“Thanks,” she laughed. “I’m really good at getting what I want.”

“I can see that,” he chuckled. “Look at how easily you persuaded me to go to Dairy Queen.”

“Oh, you barely even put up a fight!”

The car in front of them pulled forward again, and they finally arrived at the pick up window. The employee handed Kristoff the drinks first, which he placed in the cupholders, followed by the bag of food. He handed it to Anna, and pulled out of the drive-through, driving to a spot in a secluded area of the parking lot. He parked the car, and she began to dig through the bag.

“Here’s your burger,” she said, handing him the box. “Do you want me to leave your fries in the bag?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

She pulled her own fries out of the bag and balanced them between her legs. She took out her box of chicken nuggets, and then folded the bag down and placed it on the seat next to her. “Do you want some hand sanitizer?”

“Yes, please.”

She reached into her purse and grabbed the bottle, and then squeezed a dollop into his waiting hands before squeezing some into her own. After rubbing her hands together she reached for a fry.

“So, Kristoff,” she said, around a mouthful. “What were you like as a kid?”

“Hmm,” he hummed. “I was really shy. Very lonely, didn’t have many friends. But I really loved being outside, and I spent a lot of time hiking, when I was old enough. What were you like?”

“I was pretty wild,” she giggled. “I had a lot of energy and I hated sitting still. I think I made my parents want to pull their hair out sometimes. I didn’t really have a lot of friends, either, and the other kids bullied me.”

He frowned. “People really suck.”

“Tell me about it - I literally think I’ve heard every joke about redheads. I think it made me stronger, though? I developed really thick skin, and words don’t hurt me anymore, unless they come from someone I care about.”

He chewed for a moment before responding. “It’s good that you don’t let petty stuff bother you.”

“Not to go bringing up an ex on the first date, but I dated this really awful guy once and it kind of crushed my self-esteem. He loved to put me down, and made me feel like I was nothing. As horrible as it was, getting out of that relationship really helped me understand my self-worth. It took a long time to get where I am today.”

He didn’t answer right away, but rather stared at her in awe.

“Sorry, I hope I didn’t kill the mood or anything. I shouldn’t have brought it up, I just -”

“No,” he cut her off. “Don’t be sorry, you didn’t ruin anything. I’m really glad you shared that with me, and I’m glad that you can see past all of his bullshit.” He was debating telling her about what happened with Ryder intentionally sending the food to her apartment. He wasn’t sure if it would come across as endearing or creepy, but nonetheless, he wanted her to know the truth; especially because it made him a little angry that someone would treat her poorly. He wanted her to know that he thought highly of her from the moment they met, as presumptuous as that was, because she was honest enough to return his groceries.

“Thank you,” she grinned. “I was with him for a long time, too - almost a year. I still can’t believe that I put up with it for so long.”

“Sometimes we don’t realize that people are bad for us until it’s too late,” he explained. “It isn’t like it was your fault that you didn’t realize sooner. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

“Yeah?”

He took a bite of his burger and spoke around the mouthful. “Oh, yeah. I have plenty of stories to share, and I’m sure you do, too.”

“I have enough stories to write a book - between ex-friends and ex-boyfriends. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for some people to be decent human beings.”

“I just don’t think they realize that they’re treating someone badly. Maybe it’s how they were raised? I dunno,” he shrugged, and took another bite.

“I guess you’re right - I’d like to believe most people have good intentions, though. I don’t know if that’s optimistic or naive, but I’d rather believe that than believe everyone is out to hurt someone.”

“I don’t think it’s naive. Maybe they don’t realize they’re doing it? Isn’t there a famous phrase - ‘everyone is the hero in their own story?’”

“Something like that. Or maybe more people need to be honest with themselves when they do hurt someone. But what do I know?”

“Speaking of honesty, can I tell you something?” Now or never, he decided.

“Sure,” she nodded, taking a bite out of a chicken nugget.

“So, I’m sure you remember last week, when you brought my roommate’s delivery down to us?”

“Of course.”

“Well,” he said, his cheeks starting to turn bright crimson. “That wasn’t exactly an accident.”

“What do you mean?”

“My roommate deliberately sent the food to your apartment, so you’d have an excuse to come downstairs and talk to me.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “And this is the part where it kind of gets a little embarrassing - he did it because I wouldn’t stop talking about you.”

“Stop,” she smiled, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth.

“I know that probably sounds really creepy, but I swear I didn’t know he was doing it. Ryder - he’s kind of unorthodox when it comes to stuff like that, and I told him it really wasn’t fair to drag you out of your apartment when the world is going through...all of this.” He gestured wildly around him, alluding to the pandemic.

“He’s a really good wingman,” she simpered, dropping her hand from her face. “Can I make a confession?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“For that entire month, I kept wishing that either my stuff would go to you or your stuff would be delivered to me so I had an excuse to see you again.”

“No way,” he laughed.

“Swear to God,” she insisted. “It kind of makes me wish that I’d thought of your roommate’s idea, like, three weeks sooner - what an ingenious plan.”

“The reason I brought it up was because you mentioned your shitty ex and people picking on you, and I wanted you to know that even though I literally didn’t know you, I really wanted to know you. You were honest and decent enough to return my groceries, when some other person might’ve just kept them. I literally couldn’t stop thinking about you - or talking about you, apparently.”

“My life would’ve been easier if I had someone to talk to about you,” she giggled. “I couldn’t get you out of my head either, and I briefly mentioned you to one of my friends over text, which helped a little, but I couldn’t talk to my sister about it - she would’ve flipped out!”

“Why?”

She rolled her eyes. “She can be a bit of a control freak. It’s always ‘Anna, you shouldn’t do that’ or ‘Anna, you can’t rush into things.’ She probably would’ve said ‘Anna, you know nothing about him - he’s a stranger,’ as if literally everyone we know wasn’t a stranger at some point in our lives. Also, I think relationships and intimacy freak her out a little - as far as I know, she’s never dated anyone. Or if she has, she’s never mentioned it to me.”

“Huh.”

“So yeah, if I would’ve said ‘hey Elsa, I have a crush on the gorgeous guy who lives downstairs but I don’t even know his name,’ I don’t think it would’ve gone over well.”

He blushed at her revelation. “What did she say when you told her you were going out with me today?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell her,” she responded, nonchalantly. “She was sleeping when I left, so I just sent her a text that I was going out for a while. I didn’t say where I was going or who I was going to be with.”

“Smart,” he nodded, drawing his lower lip between his teeth.

She shrugged, popping a french fry into her mouth. “I have no regrets. It actually worked out perfectly; she hates that I have to leave the apartment to get the mail everyday and that’s unavoidable, so she definitely would’ve had a conniption fit if she knew I was leaving for the day, with someone else.”

“Are you going to tell her where you went? Or that you were with me?”

“I haven’t decided yet. She doesn't even know that I gave you my phone number, or that I’ve been talking to you, or anything.”

“I’m really glad you even offered me your number in the first place - which is literally the only reason why we’re here.”

“I offered you my number in lieu of a handshake,” she smirked. “Which I still owe you, by the way.”

He picked up his drink and took a sip. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“I was definitely going to give you my number regardless, I just wanted to play it cool.”

“If I remember correctly, I was the one who stopped you from leaving and asked for your name.”

She scoffed. “You thought, after all that, that I was really going to leave without telling you my name or giving you my number? I would’ve left the food in front of your door and ding-dong ditched you if I wasn’t interested.”

“Have you ever looked in a mirror? You’re completely out of my league.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Are you serious?!”

“You’re easily the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen, in my entire life.”

“Now you’re just bluffing.”

“I’m telling the truth,” he said, his voice overcome with sincerity. He looked her dead in the eye. “I swear, I really didn’t think you would be interested in me.”

She smirked and shook her head. “Oh, honey, you were so, so wrong.”

He paused briefly before speaking again. “You know, I’ve been thinking about the circumstances that we met under, and it’s really unusual.”

“We literally only met because our deliveries were sent to each other’s apartments by mistake.”

“What are the odds of something like that happening twice, though?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, raising an eyebrow. “Are you insinuating that it was fate for us to meet?”

“It’s just weird that the same thing happened twice, to the exact same people. During a time when people are supposed to be staying away from each other, nonetheless.”

“The reason why I asked is because I believe in fate,” she replied confidently. “They say lightning never strikes the same place twice - but in this case, it did. I don’t know what that necessarily means, but I’d like to believe that it’s a good omen.”

An awkward silence took over; the only noise to be heard was the sound of the engine running and the air conditioning forcefully pushing through the vents.

“I’m done,” he said after a few moments, finally breaking the silence. “Do you want to go straight to get ice cream? Or should we keep driving for a while?”

“It’s up to you,” she shrugged, tossing her garbage into the now-empty bag.

“I guess we could sit here for another few minutes, and then head over in that direction,” he stated, adding his trash to the bag as well. “So, tell me; do you prefer dogs or cats?”

“I would say that I am generally an animal lover, but if I had to pick, I would pick dogs. I love cats, too, but there’s just something about coming home and being greeted by a dog who missed you as much as you missed them.”

“Totally agree,” he nodded. “I’ve never had a dog, but I’ve always wanted one.”

She furrowed her eyebrows together. “You know our apartment complex allows dogs, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s such a big responsibility. I mean, now would probably be the best time because I’m literally home all day, but I’d have to talk to my roommate about it and do a lot of research.”

“I had a dog when I was a little girl,” she smiled, relishing the memory. “Every time I came home from school, he would be sitting by the front door, waiting to jump on me and give me kisses. He was my best friend when I didn’t have anyone else. I miss him a lot.”

“Why don’t you get a dog?” He asked.

She shook her head. “My roommate - the one who may or may not be coming back - is allergic. She wouldn’t even entertain the idea of one of those hypoallergenic dogs, either. But at the end of the day, her comfort in her home is more important than my wanting a dog.”

“That’s fair,” he sighed. He was very seriously starting to contemplate the possibility of getting a dog; logistically, it would be doable, if Ryder agreed. “You’re dangerous, you know.”

She laughed. “I know, but why?”

“Because now I’m thinking about getting a dog. You planted a seed in my head.”

“You were the one who asked me the question!”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who mentioned that our apartment allows dogs. And when I get home later, I think I’m going to ask my roommate how he feels about dogs,” he said, confidently.

“If you do decide to get a dog, I’d love to meet him or her.”

“Hell, you can come with me to pick it out,” he responded, but quickly clarified. “If you wanted to.”

“I’d love that,” she said, her face lighting up. “Just be prepared, I’ll want to pet all of the dogs.”

He chuckled. “I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, though. For all I know, my roommate hates dogs or something.”

“He’d have to be a cruel person to hate dogs for no reason,” she pointed out.

“I mean, I don’t think he does. He’s really chill, actually. Sometimes he gets on my nerves, but most of the time, he minds his own business and we get along really well.”

“I had a really good relationship with my roommates, too. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but my lease is ending in August, and if my roommate doesn’t come back, then I may have to move out.”

His eyes widened with concern. “Why?”

“I can’t afford to live in a three bedroom apartment by myself,” she answered matter-of-factly. “It’s fine for now, but long-term? It’s not going to work.”

“Oh shit,” he muttered. “It would really suck if you had to move out.”

“I know,” she frowned. “And I could always look for roommates on Facebook, or by asking around. That’s how I found this apartment - through a friend of a friend. But I had a bad experience with a roommate back when I dormed, and I’m afraid of repeating that.”

“What happened?”

“She was just...awful. She wouldn’t clean up after herself, there was always a pile of dishes in the sink that I’m pretty sure she expected me to do, and she was always bringing over people without telling me first. You don’t even want to know what I would walk in on.”

“That’s really awful, I’m sorry you had to live with a person like that. Dorms are the worst.”

She sighed. “It’s okay, I only lived with her for the first two semesters. My next roommate was a lot better, but I’m still worried that if I let a stranger move in, it’ll be a repeat of freshman year.”

“Hopefully you’ll find someone that’s a good fit,” he replied, though he was worried about what would happen if she was forced to leave.

“I really hope so, I like living here. It’s so close to school, and there are so many things to do in this area.” She wanted to add ‘and you’re here,’ but she didn’t want to jump the gun. Whatever it was, it was still too new, and she didn’t know what was going to happen between the two of them. Sure, they'd already talked about going on other dates in the future, and they both seemed to be on the same page about a lot of things, but it still felt like it was entirely too soon to say something like that.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, this is a pretty nice area. It would really be a shame if you had to move somewhere else.”

“I literally don’t even know where I would go. And if I can’t find an affordable one bedroom apartment, then I’ll still have to worry about the roommate situation.”

“I know it’s impossible, but try not to worry about it,” he assured her. “May literally just started yesterday, so you’ve got some time to figure things out. We won’t let you be forced to go back to New York, or be homeless, or something.”

“We?”

“My roommate and I. Or his sister; she’s awesome, and would take you in without batting an eye, but she lives an hour away so that really wouldn’t help you. Or I could ask one of my friends, I’m sure -”

She reached out and put her hand on his arm, dragging him back from his rambling. “I have friends, you know,” she laughed. “Thank you, though. I really appreciate you looking out for me. I just don’t want to impose on anyone.”

“I doubt you’d be imposing on anyone,” he said, firmly. What he wanted to tell her was that he also lived in a three-bedroom unit, and there was a spare, unoccupied bedroom. The only thing holding him back was that it was the first date and you can’t ask someone you’re “seeing” to move in with you that quickly - it was too forward, and a little creepy.

“It’s a lot to ask. ‘Hey, I have nowhere to go and need a place to stay, but I have an entire apartment’s worth of furniture and stuff that I have to bring with me.’ Not exactly a good selling point.”

“You can always put some stuff in a storage unit.”

She narrowed her eyes, her lips curling upward into a smirk. “Stop trying to use logic on me.”

“Sorry.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I just...would hate to see you leave.”

“Me too,” she sighed. “I don’t want to leave.”

He pursed his lips, and they were both quiet for a moment. He glanced over at Anna, and noticed that she was staring at her lap, her expression sullen. “What do you say we head over to Dairy Queen now?”

“That would be wonderful,” she answered, a small smile reappearing on her face.

#kristanna #kristanna fanfic #anna #kristoff bjorgman #frozen #frozen fic #my brain is turning to mush and i literally can't even focus anymore so i'm sorry if this sucks #my writing

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caleblewis94 · 4 years

Text

Preview: The Door To Infinity

Puck was now a forty-two-year-old man who still hadn’t learned his last name due to a grease stain from a slice of pizza obscuring the name on his birth certificate in the no-good year of 1978. Why couldn’t his mother or one of his eleven older siblings have told him somewhere during these last 4.2 decades, you ask? Why because they had all died in an oxygen tank explosion that had completely obliterated the house before the Fire Department could even arrive, of course. What else could have possibly happened? Puck’s mother whose name was literally Mother, and who had once been a nun before she was banned for playing Elton John on the church organ, could actually be called Mother Mother, the mother of Puck, because as the saying goes: once a mother, always a mother. That sure is a mouthful, thank God she’s dead.

Mother returned home from the hospital bringing with her a cart of portable oxygen bottles for her own mother, Mother the first, who suffered from COPD which was exacerbated by the pre-existing condition of being apt to not listen to advice or heed warnings. Upon the delivery of oxygen bottles, Mother Mother the mother of Puck finally thought to cut the umbilical cord. The wailing mucus membrane with the fat, pudgy face of a forty-two-year-old man on the disproportionately large head of a newborn had tripped her on the way up the stairs, reminding her that she had forgotten to “forget” him at the hospital. With a sigh, she cut the umbilical cord with the first thing she could find: a pair of safety scissors. The act was hilarious and took nearly fifteen minutes to complete. Afterwards, she lugged the oxygen bottles in and gave them to her ornery old witch, but minus the cool magical powers, of a mother.

Some say that a mother’s intuition can cause her to feel an impending sense of danger to her own. Perhaps this is why she went lovingly outside, cradling the slimy, writhing middle-aged newborn in her tattooed and cigarette burned arms, and ever so carefully dropped Puck into the first pile of trash she had found lying by the street, which just so happened to be a random bale of hay in a DIY manger that her neighbors had attempted to assemble after purchasing it from Ikea before growing frustrated and throwing it half-finished in the street. One can say this motherly intuition saved the baby named Puck that would one day grow up to become the man named Puck. Then again, her motherly instinct didn’t seem to apply to her other eleven comically-named children.

Mother Mother, the mother of Puck, went back inside her home. Puck no longer cried. Now he sat in the Ikea manger with his arms crossed and his lower lip jutting out. This would become his signature look which would make him quite popular, albeit for mocking purposes, with all of the former high school football stars who would form the majority of his coworkers at the glue factory in his adulthood. Moments after his mother entered the house behind him, he would hear, though he wouldn’t understand because he was a baby and everybody knows babies can’t understand words, his mother shouting at his grandmother in her obnoxious twang of a Country accent that Puck would thankfully never acquire himself.

“God Dayum, you old bat, Cain’t you read?” Mother Mother, mother of Puck shouted.

“I can read, you little skank. I’m just having me a cigarette,” Shouted Mother, mother of Mother Mother the mother of Puck.

“I’m tired of you smokin’ meemaw!” Shouted the shrill voice of one of Puck’s siblings. Judging by the whiny tone, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume it was Kyle.

“That’s too dayum bad.”

“The sign says no smoking, because it could explode if exposed to fire!” Mother Mother, mother of Puck shouted back.

“Then why hasn’t it yet?”

“Comical effect!”

In completely coincidental, and in no means embellished or made-up fashion, the entire house exploded immediately after the joke in the dialogue was wearing thin. The sound of the explosion sounded to Puck like the winner to the 1978 Darwin Awards if they were around in that terrible, no-good year of 1978. Kaboom with a capital KA.

Now, it’s reasonable to ask why Puck? Why this ugly, slimy, miniature spitting image of Donald Trump? Why did this little clump of living smegma survive in lieu of his entire family being incinerated instantly like a bunch of redneck Icaruses that flew directly into the sun because they didn’t believe the Science that said the sun can hurt you? It is because of a thing called fate. Puck wasn’t meant to die that day. For, you see, you beautiful reader, you, Puck was destined for greater things, like developing a nicotine habit he couldn’t quite kick, working in a glue factory overseeing the melting of the horses, and his destiny to die in a hilarious accident involving a shopping cart at the age of 42. As a wise man once said, so it goes.

∞

Puck, now a forty-two-year-old man full of past traumas and experiences that shaped him into the disgruntled, burned-out, and inconsiderate grump that people subconsciously hoped would drop dead, went to the supermarket. What he bought at said supermarket holds no importance whatsoever to the rest of the novel, but for the record was; 19 bushels of crab legs, 30 cans of Ragu spaghetti sauce, 20 gallons of vegetable oil, 12 cartons of increased fat milk, 8 sticks of extra-salted butter, 57 liters of Mountain Dew, 3 bottles of Coca-Cola that had been stuffed under the clearance shelf since 1958, 5 jugs of eggnog, despite it being the middle of April, two of those obnoxiously bright blue lightbulbs for some reason, and a Milkyway Lite because he was trying to watch his figure.

Puck pushed his shopping cart outside. Of course his luck would have had him picking the cart with the broken wheel, causing it to limp along like a sprinter who had torn their ACL and was desperately trying to hobble their way across the finish line. Plus, the fact that he had so much food weighing down the cart didn’t help him steer it any easier. Life was so hard for poor Puck. On his way to his car, Puck was passed by an old lady on one of those automatic shopping carts that truly highlighted the pinnacle of modern invention. The old woman was smoking three cigarettes at the same time, blowing tendrils of smoke through her nostrils like a dragon who had already expended all of his (or her) fire and couldn’t ejaculate any more. She had an oxygen tank on the back of the cart, though she wasn’t using it. Maybe she’ll need it later, Puck thought. Yes, riding an automatic shopping cart around a store for an hour sure is exhausting work.

Puck got to his car and popped the trunk, which promptly swung open much faster than normal, hitting him in the chin because even his car was tired of his shit. In the background was the sound of an explosion, but Puck thought nothing of this. He flung the groceries in the trunk and shut it back, then he promptly took the shopping and left it right there in the middle of the street, despite there being a coral only twenty feet away. It wasn’t that Puck didn’t see the coral—he did—he just decided to rebel. It was his way of sticking it to the proverbial man. Puck got in his car and drove home, the shopping cart looming menacingly in the parking lot, vowing to get revenge on the forty-two-year-old-man.

When Puck got home, he realized that he had forgotten to also purchase a diet Mountain Dew, because—how can he watch his figure without a pound of aspartame in his system?—Puck lovingly kissed his wife goodbye, and by lovingly kissed his wife goodbye, I mean he didn’t kiss her goodbye, he simply said “I forgot something, be back in ten” then left. However, he wouldn’t be back in ten. In fact, he also wouldn’t even be back at the supermarket in ten, traffic was awfully heavy for two in the afternoon on a Sunday. Also, he wouldn’t ever be back because he would be killed in a tragic, yet hilariously Shakespearean way. A way that said, maybe there is a God who occasionally involves himself in the affairs of humans to deliver righteous justice.

Puck went to the self-checkout line again, but this time at least he actually had under ten items. He hated the small talk Cashiers would make with him, especially the pretty twenty-something-year-old ladies who would make blatant attempts to flirt with him by saying things like “Good morning, sir,” “Paper or plastic?” and, worst of all, “Would you like a receipt?” The total on the screen came up to three dollars and twenty-three cents after tax. It was a bit more than he thought it had cost when he was just here half an hour ago, but he was trying to watch his figure, dammit, so he would not and could not be stopped. He paid for the bottle, and also a banana, and left, not even bothering to take the receipt that had printed from the machine.

“Have a nice day,” said a blonde and blue-eyed nineteen-year-old with a smile that conveyed anything but a genuine smile inside. It was a smile that seemed to say that this young lady was going through her own personal troubles and was having a tough time but was trying her best to be strong and kind to others. To anyone else it would be inspiring, but to Puck it was just another attempt to flirt with him. Puck, not wanting to be rude, gave her that kind of sideways smile any suburban white person would give someone they accidentally made eye contact with in public, and walked by, sidestepping a random broken piece of an oxygen bottle by the door. As he crossed the windy threshold that separates the land of groceries from the humid, suburban air of the Greater Atlanta Area, he swallowed the banana in one gulp. It was a fun party trick he had learned in college. He didn’t have to waste time chewing, and everyone loved it. Especially the random man he had accidentally made eye contact with in the process of the great swallow.

Puck walked out into the crosswalk without looking both ways, not that he needed to look both ways, there were stop signs and everybody in the United States obeys stop signs. He dropped the banana peel absentmindedly onto the ground and made his way towards his car.

As Puck approached his car, he bumped into the shopping cart he had left sitting in the street—not the corral, mind you—thirty minutes prior. The cart rolled forward towards him, ready for its vengeance. If it were alive and wielding a knife, it would totally stab Puck right in the abdomen. For far too long Puck had violated its shopping cart family’s rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of being put back in the corral. But, luckily for Puck, it wasn’t alive. It was a shopping cart. In frustration with this minor inconvenience, Puck pushed the cart further into the street with one swift kick.

“I should have used a basket,” He muttered to himself.

However, the shopping cart heard him make this remark. Or it would have heard him if it were alive and had ears or some other method for processing auditory information. And if it were alive and capable of not just processing auditory information but also understanding English, this comment would have been the last straw. The shopping cart would teach him a lesson if it were alive. Puck was so lucky it wasn’t alive.

Puck turned back to his car and fished for his keys in his pocket, except the keys weren’t there. What the hell, Puck thought. I just had them! He checked his pocket again as if he could possibly miss a keychain the size of Timbuktu, and to his utter shock, the keys hadn’t pulled a David Copperfield and magically reappeared. He turned back around to head into the store and angrily ask the poor girl behind the customer service desk if anyone had found and returned his car keys, as if she were the one herself who had misplaced them. However, before he could do so, something glimmering beneath the partially clouded sky caught his eye. His car keys lied in the bottom basket of the shopping cart that, after being kicked, scampered away before settling eighteen feet away from Puck and just a measly two feet from the corral.

You got him now, you devious shopping cart you, the corral would have thought if it were alive and capable of thought. With a long, drawn out sigh, Puck crossed the street. He removed the keys from the lower basket and glanced at the corral which was now literally not even out of his way to return the cart to. The shopping cart was already facing towards the corral like a baby reaching out for its mother. Puck didn’t even have to walk forward at all to return it, all he had to do was lightly push the cart and it would be back in its rightful place. Puck didn’t do this. Instead, he took the cart and placed it back in the middle of the street for some reason, and then went back to his car.

This would have been the final straw for the shopping cart if the shopping cart had any packets of straws left to give, never mind the rude comment about getting a basket instead. Oh, if only the shopping cart were alive and capable of inflicting punishment upon this horrible man with an even horrible-er—or, dare I say—horrible-est name. Puck? More like duck, the shopping cart would have thought, not that the cart would have any prejudices against ducks, it was just a slightly speciest saying it would have learned growing up in a family of shopping carts in the Southern states.

Suddenly, like a car that had hit a pothole at 110 miles-per-hour, causing it to flip over multiple times before flying into a tree, a car driving at 10 mph, ignoring the 5 mph speed limit sign on the wall next to the cross walk, struck the banana peel Puck had left in the middle of the street. The car going twice the speed limit, lost control and swerved to the left, ironically enough while using a blinker. The out of control car collided with the poor shopping cart with an unquenchable thirst for blood and vengeance at the devastating speed of 2 mph. Puck turned around in time to see the accident.

What, scientifically speaking, should have sent the cart forward with the same force as the weak kick Puck had given the cart minutes earlier, oddly enough launched the cart at the speed of 200 mph directly at the man who never put his carts back in the corrals where they belong. Puck didn’t even have time to realize the error of his leaving-shopping-carts-in-the-middle-of-the-street ways, before the cart flew directly into his face, causing his head to explode like the 125,452nd watermelon destroyed by the great philosopher Gallagher, splattering blood all over a man walking past who had made the foolish mistake of wearing a white t-shirt over-confidant in his ability to avoid acquiring a stain, and sparking the obsession with blood of a three-year-old who was watching the whole scene unfold through a pair of binoculars from his parents’ house across the street.

Puck, the youngest son of Mother Mother the mother of Puck, and the youngest grandson of Mother the mother of Mother Mother the mother of Puck, was dead, though his story and misadventures wouldn’t end there. It was a tragic death. Nothing that has ever happened in human history has ever been more tragic than the death of Puck on that cloudy April day in the year of whatever year this is being read in. But don’t be sad—stop crying, society says it’s not cool to cry with empathy—for there was a sign that he had read thousands of times before that read: Please put your shopping cart up, we can’t afford another fatal accident. So, if it makes you feel any better, Puck kind of deserved it.

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ft-dads-au · 5 years

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Taken By Storm

Gratsu Weekend 2020 Prompt: Storm Pairing(s): Gray x Natsu, Gray & Lyon, Rogue & Gray A Collaboration by @mdelpin and @oryu404 AO3 | FF.Net

October 7, 2020

Gray exited the grocery store surprised to see it had already turned dark in the short time he’d been inside. A pelting, cold rain had also begun to fall, making the chilly fall afternoon feel even colder. His arms were laden with paper bags containing their food for the week.

Since Lyon refused to accept any money for rent or even his legal services outside of the occasional filing fee, Gray tried to find other ways to pay him back. So every week, he made a trip to the grocery store with Aki, his two-year-old son. Lyon grumbled about it at first, but after the first few weeks, he’d recognized his protests were futile. Although Gray had a nagging suspicion that it had more to do with his friend realizing it was one of the few times he would willingly set foot outside of the apartment on his own.

This was Gray’s first time going alone, and it had been difficult. Without Aki to distract him with his chatter, he’d felt the familiar anxiety rise within him. The weight of eyes that may or may not have been focused on him made him hurry down the aisles throwing items in his cart. The sound of people whispering near the checkouts stressed him out, especially when he recognized his face on the cover of one of the magazines. It was from an interview and photoshoot he’d done months earlier for a men’s magazine. Long before he’d decided to grab Aki and make his escape. He was happy there wasn’t much of a line, desperate to get out quickly, and already considering the possibility of looking into a delivery service now that Aki had begun to attend daycare a few days a week.

He honestly loathed the idea, but his therapist had insisted that he needed to do it for Aki’s sake as well as his own. The codependency they were developing from Gray’s over-protectiveness would only hinder them moving forward. But even that short separation caused him almost incapacitating levels of anxiety. Thoughts of Siegrain showing up and taking Aki away plagued him. The first day he’d sat in the parking lot the entire time Aki was inside the community center.

He’d gotten a little bit better since then, but not much, and now that his errand was over, all he wanted was to get to that community center and bring his son home. He hastily opened the trunk of his car and dropped the bags inside, slamming it shut and rushing to the driver’s door, wanting to get out of the rain before he got any wetter.

Gray slid in and closed the door. Leaning his head back on his seat’s headrest, he closed his eyes briefly, trying to let the past forty-five minutes fade away. It took him a few minutes to register that there had been no beeps when he’d opened the door. Come to think of it, the radio hadn’t come on either. Opening his eyes again, he glanced at the displays on his car, noticing with increasing dread that they were all off.

He checked to make sure his key was in his pocket before pushing on the start button, but no matter how many times he pressed it, the outcome remained the same. His car was dead. He tried to stay calm, searching his pockets for his phone and not finding it. That alone set him off for a good five minutes. What if something had happened to Aki? They wouldn’t be able to reach him.

Calm down, both Rogue and Lyon are listed as emergency contacts. If something had happened and the daycare staff couldn’t reach you, they would have called one of them. Lyon and Rogue know where you are, they would have come to get you.

Gray repeated the words to himself, trying to do as his therapist had asked. He reminded himself that there were measures in place to handle just this type of situation, but no matter how rational it sounded, it did nothing to quiet his panic. Instead, he kept pressing the button over and over until he finally just went back out in the rain, slamming the car door as hard as he could in his frustration.

Staring at the car and not knowing what else to do, he began to take his frustrations out on it. He kicked and punched it furiously.

“START GODDAMMIT!”

“Have you tried using the key?” A slightly amused voice came from behind him, and Gray stood stock still.

No, it couldn’t be. Could it?

He turned around, and sure enough, there stood Natsu Dragneel, that ever-present and annoying grin plastered on his face. Out of all people, it just had to be him.

“Oh, good idea, I’ll try that right aw- Of course, I tried the key, you idiot!” Gray snapped, coiled up from stress and worry. “This glorified tin can just won’t fucking start. I think the battery is dead, but I can’t call Triple-A because I somehow forgot my phone, and I have to pick up Aki from daycare in 10 minutes!”

As if some higher power had decided that this was not his day, it started to rain heavier. It was coming down in buckets now, and Gray raised his head and his hands up towards the sky, “Sure! Why not?!”

“You can borrow my phone if you want,” Natsu offered with a shrug, putting up an umbrella. “See if someone else is available to pick Aki up for you. In the meantime, let me take a look at your car.”

“Why on Earth would I ever let you anywhere near my car?!” Gray spat, his tone much sharper than he meant for it to be, but he was really agitated and seeing the source of his constant confusion near him at a time like this was more than he could deal with at the moment.

He’d never admitted it to anyone, but Natsu had been the reason he’d started going to therapy. Well, not the man himself but the feelings he had evoked in him during that disastrous intervention they’d had for him in August.

Feelings he’d been trying to avoid for a long time, about his relationship with Siegrain and about himself. And now he could add his confusion about his growing attraction to Natsu to the list. That night he’d felt something for Natsu that he wasn’t quite ready to accept yet. So he’d made a point of staying away from him, only coming into contact at Dad’s Club Meetings.

Natsu sighed, running his fingers through pink locks that had darkened with the rain, “Why do you always have to make everything so difficult? You’re a dad, I’m a dad, I get it. You’re freaking out because you don’t want Aki to be alone or scared. I’d feel the same way, and that’s why you’re going to swallow your stupid pride and let me help you.”

He handed Gray his umbrella and his phone, which was a low-end smartphone, nothing like his own. It reminded him that Natsu had probably been on his way to work when he stopped and made him feel terrible for his less than grateful response.

“Thank you, “ he amended before calling his brother, thankful Rogue was in Natsu’s contacts since he couldn’t remember the number on a good day.

As the phone rang, he watched Natsu get in the driver’s seat and try to start the car, checking if he could turn on the radio or the lights. When nothing happened, he pulled the handle that opened the hood of the car so he could take a look underneath.

“Natsu?” Rogue’s voice came on the other line, and Gray breathed a sigh of relief.

“No, it’s me, Gray,” he corrected, “Listen I need-”

“Gray? What are you doing with Natsu’s phone? Is Natsu alright?!” Rogue interrupted, his voice filled with concern.

“What? Yeah, he’s fine.”

“Are you alright? Why are you calling on his phone?”

“I forgot mine. I’m at the grocery store, my car won’t start, and he found me here. Do you think you could pick Aki up for me? I’m stuck,” Gray swept a lock of wet hair out of his face, still a bit on edge as he looked across the parking lot. If there was one positive thing to say about the weather, it was that it made people hurry to their cars, not paying him any attention.

“Oh! Yeah, sure. Thankfully Sting didn’t take the car today, so I can drive there, it’s really coming down.”

“Yeah...no shit…”

The happy shrieks of the twins could be heard in the background, along with at least three different sound-producing toys. Then the sounds became less audible as Rogue moved away from them a little, muttering something about grandparents and noisy gifts. “It’s a good thing Natsu is there if you’re having issues with your car,” he mused.

“Why?”

“Uhm, cause he’s an auto mechanic.”

“Oh,” Gray felt like an even bigger idiot for being difficult, “I thought he was a bartender.”

“He’s that too, but he used to work as a mechanic in Edolas.” Rogue explained, “Shit, I gotta go. If I want to make it to the community center in time I should get the twins ready now. See you later, call me if I need to pick you up or anything. And Gray?”

“Yeah?”

“Be nice, he’s helping you out,” Rogue reminded him, hanging up before Gray could reply.

Gray sighed, knowing his brother was right. Now that he knew Aki would be taken care of by someone he trusted, he let himself relax. He turned back to his car to see that although the hood of his car was still open, Natsu was nowhere to be found. Gray finally located him, hurrying back with a large toolbox.

“Where did you get that?” Gray asked curiously.

“My car,” Natsu explained as he balanced the toolbox on the radiator, and this was where Gray realized that while he was standing under an umbrella, Natsu was utterly drenched. His usually spiky hair was matted down, while his white button-down shirt stuck to his chest, revealing the taut muscles underneath. Gray quickly looked away, not wanting to be caught staring, but the image remained in his brain, and he couldn’t deny the attraction he felt.

Still, he thought he should do something as the rain continued to come down, some of it turning to ice in the chilly October afternoon. He peered at what Natsu was looking at, but it was all just a dark mess to him.

“You might as well just sit in the car, no sense in both of us getting wet.”

“That doesn’t exactly seem fair,” Gray protested, but Natsu only waved him off.

“No offense, but you’ll only get in the way.”

Natsu removed a lantern from his toolbox, turning it on and somehow hanging it from the underside of the hood. He rolled up his sleeves, drying his hands on a small towel and donning a pair of work gloves before grabbing some gadget Gray didn’t recognize and attaching it to the battery.

“I’m going to check the battery’s charge with this multimeter, so we can get a better idea of who the likely culprit is,” Natsu informed him although it felt more like he was talking to himself.

His nose scrunched up cutely as he aimed the lantern at the tool and squinted his eyes, trying to make out the result in the poor lighting, “Well, the good news is your battery seems to be charged. Is this the first time this has happened?”

“Yeah, I bought it a few months ago, but I don’t really use it much,” Gray admitted, the car mostly sat in Lyon’s garage, it wasn’t even registered in his name.

It was just one of the many security measures Lyon insisted on to try to keep him and Aki hidden from his soon to be ex-husband for as long as possible.

Natsu nodded in acknowledgment, but it was clear his mind was elsewhere, and after waiting for a few minutes for him to say anything else, Gray decided to take his advice and go sit in the car. At this point, all he was doing was hovering. Not to mention getting distracted by thoughts he really shouldn’t be having about a clearly straight man who was not only recently widowed but also happened to be the father of one of the few kids Aki seemed to really like.

Gray had to admit Natsu seemed very comfortable working on his car, but it was more than that. Thanks to the illumination of the lantern, Gray had been able to see the expression on Natsu’s face. It was content in a way that he’d had never seen from him before.

He looked like he was actually enjoying himself, making Gray wonder why Natsu would choose to work two jobs as a bartender rather than finding what had to be a higher paying job doing something he clearly enjoyed.

It also reinforced how little he actually knew about the man. He took Natsu’s phone out of his pants pocket, the temptation to look through it overwhelming. However, the car radio suddenly came to life, making him startle enough that he almost dropped the device. The radio was soon followed by the soft glow of the instrument lights.

A light tapping on his window alerted him to Natsu’s presence at the driver’s door. The poor guy looked wetter than before if that was even possible. Gray pushed the window button, and it immediately began to lower.

“Oh good, the electric systems are back! “Natsu remarked brightly at the window’s descent, and the satisfaction in his voice was hard to miss, “Try starting the car now.”

Gray pushed the ignition button, and the car came to life, prompting him to exclaim, “You’re a genius! What was wrong?”

“Your battery connectors were corroded, I cleaned them up,” Natsu explained, “You should be good for a while, but you might want to get it checked out in case it’s a symptom of something else. You don’t want to get stuck somewhere with Aki.”

“Yeah, okay,” Gray agreed, “Oh God, you’re drenched, get in the car!”

Natsu looked down at himself and laughed even though he was shivering a little, “Nah, it’s fine. No sense in getting your car wet, you’ll never get the smell out. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m as wet as I’m going to get. Can I have my phone back? I need to call in to let them know I’ll be late.”

“Yeah, here,” Gray shoved the phone at Natsu, feeling guilty for almost being caught invading his privacy.

He watched Natsu make his phone call, and he closed the window back up to give him some privacy, but he was still able to listen, “Hey Jellal, I’m gonna be late.”

“No, everything’s fine. I just bumped into a friend who was having car trouble, and now I’m kind of drenched.”

“That full? Oh crap, I forgot all about the Happy Hour, I’m sorry. I’ll just- uhm, I’ll suck it up. Yeah, I’ll be there soon. Bye.”

Gray patted down his shirt, checking to see how wet it was. When he found it mostly dry, he unbuttoned it and quickly took it off and offered it. “Here, take mine.”

He also took out his wallet and pulled out four one thousand jewel notes to give to Natsu for fixing his car.

“Put that away, I’m not going to charge a friend in trouble,” Natsu’s eyes flashed, and Gray had the feeling that he’d managed to insult him.

“Fine, but at least take the shirt, you’re gonna catch your death, and Aki will never forgive me if he can’t play with Atlas because I made you get sick,” he reasoned, trying to salvage the situation as best he could. “Besides you’ve stained yours, you can’t show up to work like that. I’ll get it cleaned for you.”

Natsu looked down at his white shirt and cursed when he saw the state it was in, “Yeah okay, won’t you be uncomfortable with no shirt, though?”

“Nah, I’m used to it, my last job sort of required it,” Gray hedged, not wanting to disclose too much, he felt like he could trust Natsu, but he was too used to keeping things close to the vest.

Natsu burst out laughing, “Don’t tell me you were a stripper?”

Gray frowned, trying to contain his annoyance at the implication, “No, nothing like that.”

“I was just kidding,” Natsu amended with a smile, “Well, let me grab my stuff, and then I’ll change. Do you think I can leave my toolbox with you? If I go back to my car again, I’m going to be really late.”

“Yeah, sure,” Gray tried to ignore the giddy feeling in his stomach at the thought that he would see him again soon.

While Natsu collected his belongings, Gray put the shirt in the car so it wouldn’t get any wetter than it already was, and then he ran back inside the grocery store and purchased a large coffee from their cafe. He received a few strange looks at his shirtless state, but no one said anything to him.

Natsu was just closing the hood of the car when Gray came out with the hot drink. He hurried over to his car to help cover Natsu with the umbrella while he changed. Not yet aware of his presence Natsu picked up the toolbox and walked back to the driver’s side, setting it down next to him. He searched through its contents removing a small towel. He unbuttoned his soaked and dirty shirt quickly and used the towel to dry himself off as much as possible, seemingly uncaring of anyone watching. Gray stood hypnotized, his eyes following Natsu’s every move until he realized what he was doing.

He soon averted his eyes, knowing if Natsu looked up, he’d see just how flustered he was making him. The ground. Yeah, the ground was good. The expanding circles caused by raindrops landing in the puddles provided a temporary distraction. At the same time, he sheltered Natsu from the rain with the umbrella, following him as he grabbed the shirt Gray had left for him on the driver’s seat.

“Much better, thanks, Gray!” Natsu exclaimed cheerfully.

Gray had thought it was safe to look back up again, now that Natsu was wearing his shirt, but he hadn’t been prepared for the blinding smile that was on his face, or how hot Natsu would look wearing his shirt and both things hit him like a freight train.

“Yeah...no problem,” he mumbled, holding out the cup of coffee. “Uhm...for you. I didn’t know how you drink your coffee, so-” he reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulling out a handful of packets of creamer and sugar. When he gave them to Natsu, their hands touched, and Gray really shouldn’t have felt the way he did about that. Why was this happening to him now? He didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to even deal with the idea of being interested in anyone yet, let alone this potential disaster that stood in front of him.

“Can you pop the trunk so I can put the toolbox in there?”

“Just give it to me, I’ll put it on the passenger seat, I’ve got groceries in the trunk, and I don’t want Aki getting into it in the backseat.”

Natsu grunted his agreement, handing the toolbox over before teasing, “I sure hope you didn’t buy ice cream.”

“It’s October, Natsu,” Gray reminded him, “It wouldn’t melt anyway.”

Natsu’s eyes twinkled with mirth, “You really need to lighten up, dude. I know, that was a joke.”

“Oh,” Gray replied awkwardly, “Right.”

“Anyway, I gotta go, don’t want to get on Jellal’s bad side,” Natsu grabbed his umbrella from Gray, waiting until he got back in the car. “Drive safe, it’s really coming down,” he cautioned, giving a friendly wave before heading off towards Crime Sorciere.

Gray watched him walk away before realizing he hadn’t even thanked him. “Natsu!”

Natsu turned around mid-step and waited to see what Gray wanted.

“Thank you.”

Natsu nodded his head in acknowledgment, rewarding him with one last smile and a wave before turning around and continuing his walk to work.

Gray remained in the parking lot until he could no longer see him, and then he drove to Rogue’s house to pick up his son.

0-0

“How hard do you think it is to get a GED?” Gray asked Lyon later that night.

“Huh? Why would you care about that? You graduated high school ages ago.” Lyon put the legal book he’d been studying on his desk, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes before peering at Gray with interest.

“Well, I found out from Sting that Natsu can’t work as a mechanic in Magnolia cause he never finished high school,” Gray explained, squirming under Lyon’s gaze.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Lyon massaged his forehead, “You can’t afford to do this right now, Gray.”

“Do what? I just asked a simple question,” Gray groused.

“Right, how long have I known you?” Lyon snickered at him.

“Nevermind, I’ll look it up online,” Gray grumbled, typing in the search term and pointedly ignoring the question.

“Gray,” Lyon said in a softer voice, “What is this about?”

“He helped me out today, I just want to repay the favor, that’s all.”

“Do you remember that girl your sophomore year at Lamia, what was her name?”

“Oh God, do not bring her up!”

Lyon started to laugh, “You had such a raging hard-on for her you taught yourself Astronomy, to get her through her class and you into her pants. This reminds me of that.”

“Weren’t you the one who wanted me to make new friends?”

“Friends yes, crushes on handsome straight guys while in the middle of a divorce, no.”

Gray wanted to protest, but he knew it was a losing battle, Lyon knew him too well for him to get away with a lie, “It’s not like that, I mean yes I might feel something for him, but I have no intention of doing anything about it. It’s just, the guy’s killing himself working two jobs and taking care of his kids, and if he took this test and passed it, his life would improve.”

“Besides, I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel like we’re similar in some ways. We’re both stuck at a certain point in our lives. But unlike me, all Natsu has to do to get back to doing what he enjoys is pass a test. Well, four tests apparently,” he corrected after looking at the screen.” I want to help him get there, as a friend.”

Lyon snapped his fingers suddenly, “Karen Lilica, that was her name.”

“Thank you for buying him a deluxe study guide, you’re too kind,” Gray retorted as he entered Lyon’s credit card information on the online form and completing the order.

Lyon snorted good-naturedly, not upset in the slightest, “Natsu’s a good guy. If this really does help him, I’m happy to do whatever I can. Just please watch yourself, I don’t want to see either of you get hurt.”

“I told you, this is strictly platonic,” Gray complained, even though he knew it was not only pointless but also a bit of a stretch.

“I’m pretty sure your dick has no clue what that means,” Lyon noted before putting his glasses back on and returning to his book, somehow managing to dodge the pillow Gray threw at him.

0-0

Three Days later

Natsu heard a knock on his front door and hurried to look through the peephole.

Gray?

Gray Fullbuster was indeed standing outside his door, holding his toolbox in one hand and two large coffees in a cardboard holder from Magnolia Bean in the other. Aki stood next to him, holding a tote bag.

Natsu had no idea why his sort of friend was standing outside his door, but he’d been feeling kind of down after dropping Hana at school that morning, so he welcomed the company. He opened the door, beaming when Aki offered him one of his rare smiles before handing him the tote bag.

“Atlas?” Aki asked, hiding his hands behind his back and looking down at the floor.

“Come in, I’ll go get him,” Natsu beckoned them inside, closing the door behind them. Before he ever had a chance to locate his son Atlas had already made his presence known, jumping up and down and clapping happily as he recognized his friend.

Natsu and Gray wore matching dopey expressions as they watched Atlas drag Aki over to the playroom.

“Here let me take that,” Realizing that Gray was still holding the coffee and the toolbox, Natsu quickly grabbed the cardboard holder and motioned for Gray to put the toolbox down by the entrance.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here?”

He could have sworn that Gray looked nervous, which was unusual, given that generally he just seemed kind of grumpy.

“Look inside the bag,” Gray ordered, his voice sounding gruff.

Natsu led Gray to the breakfast nook that was right off the kitchen, setting the holder down carefully on the round table. “Are you hungry? There are some muffins my sister made,” he offered politely.

“Just look in the bag,” Gray repeated, and this time Natsu was sure of it. Whatever was in the bag was making his friend nervous.

“Alriiight, “he drawled. He peered inside the bag to find his shirt, which had been dry cleaned. Natsu smirked, thinking the service might have cost more than the shirt itself. Inside the bag, there was also a book.

GED Study Guide 2020 All Subjects: All Subjects Test Prep & Practice Test Questions

“What’s this?” Natsu looked down at the book in his hands, not knowing how he was supposed to react.

“Look, Sting told me about why you can’t get a job as a mechanic,” Gray confessed, “All you have to do is pass this stupid test, and you can go back to it.”

Natsu stared at Gray in dismay, “It’s not that simple, I wasn’t even good at school when I was in it.”

“You’re not going to do it alone, I’m going to help you,” Gray assured him, “I once got a girl through Astronomy, without knowing a thing about it beforehand, you’re in great hands!”

“I don’t know,” Natsu hedged, remembering how hard studying had always been for him. Half the time, the information wouldn’t stick in his head, not to mention he had a hard time sitting still.

“Natsu, you can do this, trust me,” Gray’s intensity was a little intimidating, but Natsu was beginning to get fired up by the idea. It would be nice to have a regular day job again.

“Look, the test is broken up into four subjects, and you can take each one separately. We can focus on one subject at a time, and even if you don’t pass the first time, you can keep retaking it until you do. You can do this!” Gray repeated, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him slightly.

“Okay, calm down there,” Natsu removed Gray’s arms from his shoulders, frowning at the change in the other man’s expression. Did he look hurt?

He shook the thought away, that was ridiculous. He looked down at the book again, touched that Gray had obviously put so much effort into this.

“I just cleaned your battery connectors. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“Do you enjoy being a bartender?”

“It’s okay,” Natsu shrugged, he didn’t really enjoy getting hit on constantly, but the tips were good.

“Wouldn’t you rather be working on cars? I saw the way you looked when you worked on my car man. You were happy. I’ve never seen you look like that when you tend bar. You literally have nothing to lose, unless it’s because I’m the one helping you?”

Natsu laughed, “Guilt, really?”

Gray shrugged, “Figured it was worth a try.”

Natsu sighed, “I really hope neither one of us ends up regretting this.”

“It’ll be great, and the kids can play while we work. What’s your schedule like?”

They sat at the table, sipping their coffee and exchanging schedules. Once they had agreed on what days to meet Gray became serious.

“Alright, let’s get started!” He took the book from Natsu’s hands, and determined, laid it out on the table. “Didn’t you say something about muffins?”

“You want to start now?” Natsu’s eyes widened in surprise. This was not how he’d imagined his day would go, he needed time to process everything they’d just discussed. He was slightly nervous about the idea of picking up his studies after so many years, but if all went well, he’d be able to find a job doing something that he loved. He wouldn’t have to deal with late-night shifts anymore, and he’d have more time and energy to spend with his kids.

“Yes, now, you idiot,” Gray sighed, “What subject do you want to start with? There’s Math, Science, Social Studies and Reasoning Through Language Arts.”

“They all sound impossible,” Natsu muttered under his breath before replying, “Just pick one, I doubt it will make much difference.”

“Math it is!,” Gray answered in what passed as cheerful for him, “You might need it for Science so we might as well get it done first.”

Natsu glanced into the playroom to see Atlas playing with Aki, both boys looking happy in their own little world, and wished his life were still that simple. With a sigh, he got up to grab the muffins from the kitchen, trying to muster up some enthusiasm for the torture he knew lay ahead of him.

A/N: We are very excited to finally enter into the gratsu portion of our AU. We hope to follow their relationship after the events of She Was My Home, (you don't need to read it to follow but it might help), all the way to them becoming a couple. This is the first of eight stories we hope to publish for this event. They will be posted in chronological order, rather than prompt order. We really hope you enjoy their journey!

@fuckyeahgratsu

#fairy tail #ftdadsau #gratsu #gratsuweekend2020 #ftlgbtales #fics #gray & lyon #rogue & gray #prompt: storm #natsu x gray #gray x natsu

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katjacksonbooks · 4 years

Photo

So we’re back on the “What are you polyamorous triad couples up to?” train.

The answer is sex.

Have a short, hot, mildly emotional check-in with my favorite Baker, Fire Chief and Police Chief in a town so small no one can find it on a map.

And if you’ve interested in knowing more about how these three met and fell for each other, feel free to read the Welcome to Sea Port series, all $0.99 and in Kindle Unlimited.

Bedtime Routine

Mary hated sleeping alone.

She hadn’t had to in years, and apparently, she’d been very spoiled by it, so much so that her normally warm and cozy bed seemed big and cold now that she was in it alone instead of pressed against Knox or Santos. Or both, on those nights where she ended up in the middle.

Even Cat-leen had deserted her, but Mary couldn’t blame her. Her cat had an entire late-night routine that as far as Mary could discern included snacking on her food, dumping a few of her toys into her water fountain, and sleeping in Knox’s favorite armchair. Her routine was the same, and she clearly didn’t care that Mary’s wasn’t.

Mary sighed and sat up in bed with a frown. She reached for her cell phone on her bedside table and dialed Knox.

“Shouldn’t you be sleep?” he asked instead of hello.

“Shouldn’t you be at home?”

He chuckled softly, and Mary’s back relaxed. She hadn’t even realized it was tense.

“Believe me, I’d much rather be home than sitting in this damn fire station alone,” he said with a yawn.

“No calls, right?” she asked, trying to keep the fear from making her voice shake.

“No calls, sweetheart. This is all just a precaution,” he said.

Mary had heard that last sentence from Knox and Santos so many times over the last month that the words were starting to grate on her, not for any other reason than that eventually, it wouldn’t be a precaution.

It was easy to keep herself together during the day. While Knox and Santos slept, Mary spent hours in their kitchen baking and coordinating food deliveries to houses around town. Now that the bakery was closed, she kept in contact with Bria and Charlie through Facetime. Mary and Bria had split up their baking duties. Bria was working on her bread recipes — including gluten-free, whole wheat, and soon enough, even some sprouted options — while Mary worked on the sweet treats. They were both very busy.

When Willie had first closed the non-essential shops, Mary was worried that her bakery would go under just when it was starting to flourish, but online orders had surged for a while. But as shipping had slowed, she’d shuttered online ordering to focus on local deliveries around Sea Port and in some neighboring local towns. It worked.

At first, Mary was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to find work for Charlie, but the entire food box delivery was Charlie’s idea. They’d all been on Facetime when Bria had said Sully was worried about her own business, and Charlie had asked if Sully still had coffee to sell, because her aunt was running low. Charlie had brokered that sale through text message and then added, “Hey Mary, my aunt wants to know if you can make her some pecan cinnamon rolls. She said she’ll give you her entire SSI check for a pan.”

They’d laughed, and then an entire informal economy had formed, with Charlie as the hub connecting people with groceries — she even managed to rope in the local dairy farm — and recruiting a bunch of bored out-of-school teenagers to collect the items for each boxand deliver them with as little contact as possible. She’d even gotten the mayor to divert some of the gloves and masks she’d been able to buy to the delivery kids once the town implemented stay-at-home orders. Mary had been mildly amused by how nosy Charlie was, but her business — and a bunch of others in the county — would probably ride out the pandemic based almost solely on the fact that Charlie was in literally everyone’s business all the time. Who knew!?

Mary hadn’t ever thought that she’d be living through a pandemic, and a few years ago, she’d have said — if asked this incredibly strange question — that if it happened, she wouldn’t want to be in a small town that no one could find on a map. But now that they were all living through a pandemic, and she was in a tiny dot of a small town, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

She baked all day, and she Facetimed with her friends and family all around the country, coordinating with her great-aunts, Santos’s brothers, and Marcus to make sure that everyone had someone watching over them. And even though Mary still wasn’t talking to her mother like she used to, they’d begun texting daily just to check in, and she acted as the go-between for her parents, fielding her father’s slightly panicked calls about her mother’s wellbeing and then translating them into calm text messages to discern what her mother needed; which her father then promptly either ordered or ran out to the stores to buy and deliver to her door before she even woke up.

Life was stressful, but having something to do — actually, lots of things to do — made the day-to-day of this situation easier. That was the days; the nights were an entirely different story.

There were some great things about being in a relationship with the chief of police and the fire chief. The Sea Port crime rate was mostly bored kids breaking things, breaking into places, or painting graffiti on things, especially now when they didn’t have much to do but sit in virtual classrooms. And while lots of businesses had been hit by the youths, Mary’s bakery hadn’t, and she attributed that primarily to the fact that the entire town knew she was Santos’s girlfriend.

Blessings to the town gossip mill.

And while Knox’s expertise on building codes came in handy, Mary often thought wistfully of the privilege she had to have fucked all over the town’s small firehouse. She loved everything about Knox, but holding onto the fire pole for dear life while he fucked her into a stupor was a surprisingly comforting pre-pandemic memory. Once this was all over, she promised herself that they’d do it again but with Santos this time, and that could usually chase away the blues.

But hands down, the worst part of dating two of the town’s small cadre of first responders, and the heads of their departments at that, was that the mayor only trusted them to work the most stressful shifts. So, while Mary was baking and sourcing ingredients around the town and county, Knox and Santos were usually passed out in their bed. And just when she was winding down for the day, they were showering and putting on their uniforms to head out for the night.

Mary took the smallest comfort that Knox hadn’t had many calls at night, and since there hadn’t been a reported case in Sea Port yet — knock on wood — he was mostly on hand just in case. Santos spent most of his shifts in his car, driving around town and making sure that the bored kids weren’t out causing annoying, if understandable, chaos. Meanwhile, she spent a good portion of the night bored and alone without them, and her traitorous brain started to worry, mostly about their family members and friends who were all over the country.

And she didn’t want to worry about that; she didn’t even want to think about those scenarios. She didn’t want to wonder how they’d get to them or if they could even afford to. She didn’t want to think at night. She wanted to fuck away her anxiety and then sleep like a baby who didn’t even know the word “pandemic”, but she couldn’t.

“That silence sounds like you’re worrying,” Knox said in a light tone that she knew he was affecting to keep her calm.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

“Mmmhmm. Hold on.”

Mary frowned as the line went quiet for a few seconds. She stared at her lock screen — a picture of her, Santos, and Knox under her great-aunts’ pecan trees from last Christmas. That picture seemed like a century ago.

“You there?” Knox asked.

“Where would I go?” Mary snarked.

“So you’re in a good mood,” Santos breathed.

Mary smiled at the sound of his dry sarcasm and Knox’s affable chuckle. “Shut up. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Santos breathed in a warm voice. “Just so fucking bored. The middle schoolers don’t even have the decency to be yelling at each other across the street tonight.”

“Don’t say that too loud. I’m sure those little hoodlums can hear you,” Knox said.

“I’m surprised they haven’t tried to get together in the woods,” Mary mused absentmindedly.

Santos sighed, and it was the weariest thing she’d ever heard. They heard the crackle of his radio. “Poole, can you ride out to the Freeman farm?”

“Sure, boss. Am I looking for anything in particular?” Max Poole, Santos’s newly promoted lieutenant asked.

“Yeah. These damn kids. Make sure they aren’t congregating out there.”

“Shit,” Poole breathed.

“Yeah,” Santos said.

“Sorry,” Mary whispered.

Knox burst into a laugh that made Mary’s gut clench with need, not necessarily sexual, just the desire to hear that laughter all over her skin.

“You sure you want to have kids?” Santos asked.

“A whole fucking misbehaving gang of them,” Knox said through his laughter.

“Like a basketball team, or…?” Mary asked.

“Football. Soccer,” Santos corrected.

Mary rolled her eyes, but she was smiling so hard that her eyes were closed. She yawned and settled back onto their mattress. Their bed was still empty, but she burrowed under their blankets and didn’t feel so cold.

“We should get started soon, then,” Mary hummed.

“You been talking to Ms. Pearl?” Knox asked.

“Yes,” Mary said, “but Santos’s mom is apparently working on a christening dress? It’s very frilly.”

Santos muttered under his breath. Mary’s Spanish was terrible, even though she’d been working on it now that she had a little more free time, but even she knew what “dios mio” meant.

“Well, since we’re starting, let’s start,” Knox said.

“Pretty sure we need to be together for that to work,” Santos said.

Mary could just imagine him rolling his eyes and Knox rolling his eyes in return.

“Practice makes perfect,” Knox said. “What are you wearing, sweetheart?”

Mary squinted her eyes shut in excitement. “Shorts and a t-shirt,” she said, already wriggling out of the former.

“What would you be doing if we were there?” Knox asked. His voice wasn’t warm or soothing anymore, it was hot with seduction and promise. He knew exactly what he was doing when his voice sounded like that; the way it turned them on.

“What would you want me to do?” she asked. She’d already bent her legs to plant her feet on the mattress and spread her knees wide. She was stroking her pussy, her fingers lightly tracing up one lip to circle her clit and then down the other to play at her opening.

“Santos?” Knox asked.

He grunted in response. Mary wondered if he was stroking his dick through his pants or if he’d taken himself out.

“Use your words,” Knox said. His breath had quickened, and somehow, Mary knew that alone in the firehouse, he’d dispensed with the foreplay and was probably already stroking himself like Mary was.

The line was quiet for a bit as they waited for Santos. “Get your toy,” he finally said.

Mary licked her lips and pressed a finger into her pussy to the first knuckle. “Please be more specific,” she huffed.

Knox’s laughter was thin, airy. He sounded close, and that made Mary’s breaths quicken.

“I want to be inside you,” Santos breathed.

Mary pushed another finger inside herself. “God, be more specific,” she moaned.

“I don’t need to,” Santos said. The sound of his zipper was loud through their connection.

Knox grunted.

Mary smiled at the sound of them. “So I should choose?” she teased with a tinkle of laughter.

They both grunted this time, and she laughed. She tapped at her phone screen with her free hand to put their call on speaker and then practically ripped open the closest bedside table. She sighed, only finding lube and Santos’s reading glasses.

“Wrong drawer,” she mumbled. Knox and Santos were apparently too preoccupied to answer. She rolled to the other side of the bed and pulled open the drawer to find a bullet vibe. She personally would have preferred something long and thick, but beggars can’t be picky, especially not when the sound of one of her men spitting into his hand came through the phone.

“You two better not come without me,” she warned, licking the cool metal of the bullet and then settling back onto the bed.

“Did you get a vibrator?” Santos asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah, just a bullet, though.”

Santos grunted unhappily.

“Can we stay on track, please?” Knox asked.

“Oh yeah, yeah,” she said, spreading her legs again.

Mary slid her thumb across the slide to turn the vibrator on and settled the bullet over her clit. She arched her back and moaned happily. Santos grunted again, but it was Knox’s keening moan that made her nipples hard.

“Fuck,” she breathed and shoved her fingers back into her pussy.

The room filled with the hum of Mary’s vibrator, her moans, and the slightly distorted sounds of Santos and Knox’s moans as well as the gentle rasp of their hands on their own bodies. They fucked themselves together, moaning and grunting and panting, while they thought about finally being together; dreamed about what it would be like when this was all over, and they could get back to something like normal.

“I’m close,” Knox breathed.

So was Mary, but she slowed down and took the pressure of the bullet off her clit, sliding it across her lips in gentle strokes. She moved her head closer to the phone so she could hear every scrap of sound of Knox’s orgasm. She knew Santos well enough to guess that he’d probably done the same.

And Knox did not disappoint. He never did.

His heaving breaths turned to moans as the sound of his dick fucking his fist got louder and faster, more desperate. “Fuck,” he said and then groaned long and loud.

Santos was much tamer. He always was. But as soon as Knox’s groan subsided, there was a shuffle of fabric on his end of the phone and then a series of grunts.

Mary had never stopped fucking herself with her fingers, and the wet slap of her hand against her sex was as frantic as her nerves had been just a few minutes ago.

“Now you,” Santos said, having the nerve to give her orders when he could barely speak above a whisper.

Mary might have pushed back at him, but Knox didn’t give her the room.

“You heard the man,” he ground out. “Let me hear how you’re going to come on my dick as soon as I’m home.”

Not that she needed the encouragement, but she really fucking loved when Santos got demanding and Knox talked dirty to her. She didn’t even need to move the bullet back to her clit to come. She arched her back, cried out, and then when her legs were shaking, she turned the bullet vibe all the way up to the highest setting and moved it over her clit. Her orgasm transformed from a gentle shudder to a violent shake as she gushed all over her hand.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, she was certain that one, or maybe even both Knox and Santos had grunted out another small release along with her, but she was too far gone to be sure. They were mostly quiet on the phone as Mary wrung herself out, alternating between just her fingers and then the vibrator as well to let one orgasm roll into another and then another.

Her men listened in silence as she came and came, only stopping when the batteries on her vibrator began to give out.

Mary turned over in bed, her fingers still stuffed inside her clenching pussy, and her eyes drifting closed.

She yawned, and Knox laughed, “Well, we got that part down. Next on the list is actually getting in the bed together, and then this baby-making thing can get on the way.”

Mary smiled and yawned again. “Deal. I’m tired now.”

“Good,” Santos said. “Go to sleep. We’ll be there when you wake up.”

“Leave your clothes in the mudroom,” she said, a sharp shot of panic pulling her back into consciousness.

“We know, babe. Calm down,” Knox said calmly. “Go to sleep, and maybe I’ll wake you up with my tongue.”

Mary pumped her fingers in and out of her sex and began to drift again. “I’d like that,” she remembered saying as she fell soundly to sleep.

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whatthehelltimespell · 6 years

Text

Only Time Will Tell Chapter Eight

Only Time Will Tell Chapter 8/? Chapter Summary: Ugh. just read it. This one is a doozy. Rating: Still teen, though there is brief mentions of gore

The next morning, Elizabeth woke up well rested. There had been no disturbances the night before. That had to be a good sign. Plus, the thing had never presented itself during the day, so that meant she was probably going to have a good day as well.

Today was a delivery day, which meant she and Michael would have to go to the store multiple times and take people their things. Luckily, the store already had everything bagged, so all she had to do was pick the bags up and deliver everything to its rightful place. Michael didn't have to go with her – it wasn't as if it was his job – but he didn't like her being gone for very long and on days that she worked she was usually gone for about three or four hours.

Elizabeth got up, did her morning routine that ended with her being dressed for the day, and went on out to the kitchen to make breakfast. On the way, she saw Michael on the sofa, asleep, a game controller on the floor in front of him – the TV was still on, but no sound was coming from it, so she turned it off. His feet were hanging over the arm of the sofa – he was so tall he couldn't fit comfortably on the couch and she didn't understand how he could sleep that way, but there it was.

"Michael?" she called to him, but he didn't budge. She went to him to shake him awake and he grunted, but that was it. "Michael, wake up."

This time he did, and he looked around for a few seconds as if he didn't know where he was before realizing he was in the living room.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "I played a game and must've gotten tired."

"Okay. I only woke you so I could make breakfast. Do you want anything or do you want to go back to sleep?"

Michael gave her an impish type of grin. He was learning how to be playful. "When do I not want food when you make it?"

"True." She ruffled his already sleep-rumpled hair. "Go get dressed. I work today, so . . ."

Michael got up – though not quickly – as Elizabeth went into the kitchen to start breakfast. They would be having pancakes that morning. ---------- The mood over the breakfast table that morning was much more alive than it had been the morning before. Miss Elizabeth had not been bothered overnight and she was much more energetic and happier that morning. It was infectious. Michael found that he could smile easier because she was smiling easier.

Michael had told a little fib when Miss Elizabeth had woken him up that morning. It was true that he hadn't been able to sleep right away the night before, but it wasn't because he couldn't; it was because he hadn't wanted to. He'd waited a while before getting up and going to the living room.

He'd kept an eye on the hallway in case whatever had come into the house the night before decided to come back and go after Miss Elizabeth again. He didn't know what he would have done if it had come back, but he would've done his best not to let it get to her. She made him feel safe and happy. Michael wanted to be able to do the same for her.

"Hey, so I'm going to go for my jog," she said. "I didn't get to do it yesterday because I was so tired."

"Okay." He waited because the way she'd been speaking he could tell there was something else.

"You should go through your sports stuff and find your bat. Maybe we can swing by the batting cage on the way before I have to be at work . . ."

As usual, the idea of doing something new excited Michael and he nodded enthusiastically. He'd never been to a batting cage, but he did know what one was.

"Sound okay?" she asked.

"Sounds great. Are you sure it won't make you late?"

"We'll be fine. I'll just take a short jog this morning to make up for the time."

So while Miss Elizabeth was gone he went through the bag of his sports stuff. It wasn't hard to find. The bag was right inside his closet; he hadn't moved it since he'd put it in there. He took his bat out – a wooden one – and took it with him to wait in the living room for Miss Elizabeth to come home.

He turned the TV on and watched cartoons. He would be there for a while since she would have to shower when she got back. ---------- They arrived at the batting cage around twelve-thirty and stayed for about an hour. They took turns using his bat and they started out with the slowest pitch level there was. Elizbeth hadn't actually swung a bat since her high school days – so she was about three years out of practice, but that was okay.

Michael seemed to know how to stand and position his arms to swing the bat correctly and he was fine with the speed – any speed, and they got up to the 60-mile-an-hour pitches. He missed very rarely.

"Michael, are you cheating?"

"No, Miss Elizabeth. I'm just that good." He shrugged. "If I was cheating, I wouldn't miss any of them."

"Hm. Okay."

"When I was . . . smaller . . . gramma would sometimes take me to the park and we would toss the ball back and forth, or she would throw it so I could hit it."

"That sounds nice," Elizabeth said, though she couldn't imagine Constance playing ball with anyone, not even a child.

"It was."

After playing for a while, Elizabeth got them each a hotdog and a small bag of chips for lunch. She had to head into work, so she ate while she drove. Michael fiddled with the radio, flipping through the stations until finding something he liked.

Michael stayed in the car when she got to work. Strictly speaking, he wasn't supposed to ride with her while she was on the job, but what her boss didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and as long as she did her job, she knew he really wouldn't care.

She only had four deliveries to make that day, but since she was allowed to only do one delivery at a time, she had to go back and forth from the store each time. Constance was on her list – Constance liked her deliveries done every Friday – Elizabeth would just get those last, and it would allow her to pick up a few things herself.

Most of the people Elizabeth delivered to were of the elderly variety, and they were extremely generous with tips. Elizabeth thought it had less to do with the fact that she was delivering their groceries and more to do with the fact that she was nice to them and treated them like they were people.

Even though it wasn't his job, Michael did help her with delivering the bags if there were more than a few and she appreciated the help.

Once Constance's delivery was the only one left, Elizabeth was able to go into the store and grab what she needed for her own kitchen. It was mostly canned food and a few frozen things – mac and cheese, pizza, simple things to fix, stuff that Michael could fix himself if he wanted.

She'd never really asked if he knew his way around the kitchen, cooking wise, but the way he acted she was fairly certain he probably only knew how to use the microwave.

That was okay. She would teach him. ---------- Elizabeth should've known something was wrong the minute she reached Constance's door. It was ajar. Maybe someone had closed the door without waiting for it to latch. That was possible. But Constance was not that careless.

"Ms. Langdon?"

She had the bags in her hands – there weren't that many, since she got groceries for Constance once a week – and she pushed the door fully open with her foot.

"Mallory?"

When she'd called for both of them once more and didn't get a response, unease began to fill her mind and stomach. Constance had to be home. She never missed a Friday because that was delivery day.

She stepped inside, leaving the door open behind her, and walked the small walkway that led to the living room. It took a moment to take in what she saw there because what she saw was probably the most horrific thing she'd ever seen – and she'd seen quite a bit the last few weeks.

A medium-sounding thud filled the room as the bags in her hands hit the floor when she dropped them. She felt like she couldn't move. Her body was just frozen there, eyes staring at the sight before her.

The reason nobody had answered when she'd called out was because nobody could. Both Mallory and Constance were in the living room – Constance laid out on the couch, her feet on the floor as if she'd fallen backwards, and Mallory on the floor near the kitchen entrance. Both were dead. Constance's death appeared to have been a clean one, but Mallory's had not been. There weren't blood splatters everywhere, but there was a huge puddle of blood around her body.

Both had lost all color and had a grayish-blue quality to their skin – they had obviously been dead for a while.

She should leave, she should call the cops, do something. But she didn't know what to do. Michael was in the car waiting for her to come back out. If she didn't soon, he would come in. She didn't want him seeing this, but she knew he needed to – if she told him that his grandmother was dead, he would probably want proof anyway.

But Mallory . . . she didn't want him seeing that. All that blood and – seriously, what were they going to do with her? That question was the one that filled her mind the most. She thought that maybe that was a little cold, but she'd been raised that way – to see a problem and fix it, no matter what it's making you feel.

What she felt was a kind of horror at what had obviously happened, but it wasn't like she'd known Mallory very well or even liked her that much after finding out what she'd planned to do to Michael without ever giving him a chance first.

Not for the first time, her curiosity got the better of her. She moved closer to Mallory, mostly because she wanted to see how the woman had died, where the blood was coming from, but when she reached the body, she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing.

There was a hole in the middle of her chest. It didn't compute at first, but it was as if something had been pushed through her shirt into her skin and right through. The wound was too big to have been any type of bullet Elizabeth had ever heard of.

She'd knelt beside Mallory's body, careful of the blood, and it was only now that tears threatened to fall. She didn't understand what had happened. ---------- Michael had been out in the car for a good ten minutes, just listening to the radio and waiting for Miss Elizabeth to come back out. She'd left the door open, so he hadn't thought she would take this long and he didn't really want to go in since she'd warned him against Mallory, but he was beginning to worry. She was usually in and out within a few minutes.

He turned the car off, left the keys in the ignition, and made his way up the pavement to the porch. He couldn't hear anything coming from inside the house. The silence filled him with unease, a type of unease he had never really felt until he'd met Miss Elizabeth.

He called out to her and the sound of rushed footsteps coming towards him made him feel both better and worse. She was okay, but something else obviously wasn't. Why hadn't she just said to come on in?

"Michael," she said as she rounded the corner of the walkway that led to the living room. "I –"

She had tears rolling down her cheeks. That was the first thing Michael noticed. He'd never seen her cry before and he didn't really know what to do. She's hadn't even cried the night she'd been attacked in his room, and she'd been terrified then.

"Miss Elizabeth?"

"Michael, it's . . . something happened to your grandmother."

Michael hurried past her and to the living room. To be honest, he didn't even register Mallory's body at all at first. He just took in the groceries on the floor because he almost tripped over them, and then the body of his gramma on the couch.

He grabbed his chest as pain ripped through it. She was dead. He knew death, of course, but it had never been this close, never been someone he cared for. And he did care for her, despite what she'd done.

"Gramma?"

Michael didn't know how he got there, but he was kneeling on the floor in front of his gramma in seconds. He knew she was dead, knew he wouldn't get a response, but it didn't stop him from asking for one, for her to wake up, to please wake up!

"Michael!" Miss Elizabeth was calling to him, touching his shoulders. She was right behind him.

He moved so he could see her and ended up seated on the floor. He noticed that she still had tears falling down her face, but they weren't as bad as before.

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know, Michael. A heart attack, maybe. Someone killed Mallory, maybe Constance saw it and . . . Maybe her heart just gave out, Michael."

Gramma hadn't been killed, or there wasn't any evidence that she had been.

That was when he really took in the room, and Mallory had in fact been killed. There was blood all around her. Michael had to turn his head away. It reminded him of things Miss Elizabeth wouldn't approve of.

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know that either, but there's a hole in her chest."

Michael rubbed his hands over his face and then ran his fingers through his hair, tugging more harshly than he needed to.

"What are we going to do with them?"

"We should call the cops, that's what we should do, but we can't. Mallory isn't even supposed to be here, and you've technically never been born. You weren't born in a hospital and you probably don't have a birth certificate, so no record of birth. And even if you did have one . . . you look about twelve years older than you should be. We can't bring any outsiders into this."

All of that went over Michael's head, and Miss Elizabeth seemed to be talking mostly to herself anyway, so he got up and made his way to Mallory's body. What had Miss Elizabeth meant when she'd said the girl wasn't supposed to be there? As far as he knew, Gramma had invited the girl to stay there.

He wondered if Gramma was dead now because of Mallory. Miss Elizabeth hadn't trusted her for a reason, so what if this was all the dead girl's fault? Someone had obviously wanted her dead, hence the wound in her chest, and what if that someone was still around? Were they in danger too? Was Miss Elizabeth?

What were they going to do now? ---------- Elizabeth watched as something happened as Michael was looking at Mallory's body. At first there was anger coming from him – he was shaking with it – but then fear quickly joined it. She didn't understand either emotion he was feeling.

He'd wandered over to where Malloy lay when she'd been thinking out loud. Those problems had been in the back of her mind since she'd met Michael and had found out his backstory. Mallory was from another time period – if they called the cops, the cops would have to find out who she was and then all hell would break loose when they called her parents only to find Mallory alive and well wherever she was – and the one from this time probably didn't even know anything about what was going on.

And then there was the problem of Michael having no record of ever having been born. He would literally never be able to have a normal life because of that. He'd never be able to go to school or get a job – or nothing legal anyway. It was tragic, and none of it was his fault.

Michael's body stiffened and the atmosphere around him changed. She watched as his hands curled into fists, and then . . . flames erupted in front of him, on the floor where Mallory was. Elizabeth almost fell backwards as she took a step back and hit one of Constance's legs.

All of a sudden, she just felt like she couldn't handle anything else. So much had happened in too little time, and her usually logical and methodical brain just shut down on her. And Michael had . . . caused flames to just happen.

"Michael!" she'd meant to yell, get his attention, but her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

She really didn't know if it was okay to touch him, but she had to do something, so she made her way to him and touched his back, called his name again. She got his attention, but when he turned to her it was like he wasn't there. His eyes weren't focusing on her – they were empty of everything but sadness and rage. To be honest, it scared her – it was the first time he'd ever scared her.

"Michael, you have to stop! You don't wanna hurt me! I know you don't. But if you don't stop right now, you might."

She remembered that Michael had told her that when he did things it was like something else took over and when he came back, he would always see the damage he'd done without realizing how he'd done it.

Knowing she may have been making a serious mistake, she brought her hands to his cheeks, forcing him to focus on her.

"You come back to me, right now. Whatever's making you do this, you tell it to leave you alone! Wherever you are right now, I'm not there with you and I can't be. I'm right here, so you need to come back right now."

Michael's trembling became worse as life came back into his blue eyes. He fell to his knees, as if he'd lost all strength, which he may have if his abilities were connected to his own energy. The problem was that they were too close to the fire, because that was still going, and even though it was contained at the moment it would definitely spread.

"Miss Elizabeth?" His voice was weak and sounded frightened.

She'd gone down with him and was now bringing him closer. His head had fallen against her shoulder and she held him there for a few seconds. He was back.

"I'm right here. It's okay. I'm here."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I've never –"

"It doesn't matter right now, Michael. I was able to pull you back, and we have to get out of here. We can talk about it at home."

"The fire."

Mallory's body had turned to ash, which shouldn't have been possible with normal fire – it wouldn't have been hot enough in that short amount of time.

"We have to leave it." It just came to her – it was the solution to their problem. Mallory was already a pile of ash, so when the police came – and they would because someone would notice the fire soon – they wouldn't be able to get anything out of her, hopefully. "The house . . . it'll . . . it'll make everything simpler if we just let the fire have the house."

"Gramma . . ."

She ran her fingers through his hair a few times, trying to bring comfort in this situation where comfort seemed far out of reach. She noticed that the skin was raised a little behind his right ear, right at the hairline. It felt as if he maybe had a rash or something, but she couldn't focus on that right now. She'd deal with it later.

"I'm sorry, Michael. It would be different if she could be saved, but . . . we got here too late."

She helped him stand and led him back towards the walkway that would lead them back outside. She got the groceries back in the bags as quickly as she could. The fire wasn't spreading too fast, and they couldn't leave a trace of them having been there.

It wouldn't help anyone if the police suddenly showed up at their door.

#michael langdon #mine #only time will tell #chapter eight #only time will tell chapter eight

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alyjojo · 3 years

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20 memories & isms I love about you.

1. He sent me flowers at work. Twice 🥰

2. He left work to help me fix my tire, outside my ex’s house. Never drove on a highway before that day. (no I shouldn’t have dated the guy, but that particular Gemini is the asc degree of our composite chart, he’s the reason we ever met at all, and hubby is the reason we broke up so...lesson learned)

3. He made me eat his mom’s food. Not only that but excitedly. He’d be like “mom is making hot spaghetti and you’re gonna come over and have some”...I’d say no thx 20 times but he wasn’t hearing it. Hot spaghetti day. I felt weird having someone’s mom cook for me. She probably felt weird too tbh, but he was so over the top happy about mom, food, and me, that it didn’t seem to matter and worked out fine 😆

4. He’s so forward, and bold as hell. I’m irritatingly shy and very guarded. Literally the only way he got me was because he’d act before I could really even think about it or think myself out of it. Winners mind.

5. He moved me into his moms house. I was not ok. Not not not. My pride is...well it exists, and burns like fire whenever help is given. I will never ask in all my life and idc, feels better that way. Will gladly die first. My rotors were broken though (I could write a book just about car problems fr), I needed two and it was gonna take awhile. I’d be in the city and he’d be way out there. He’s like nah. You stay. He insisted...and I stayed. Staying was not a me thing, he changed that.

6. He gave me a baby. After all of the years I didn’t have periods, needed pills to have a normal body, all of the times I talked myself out of that sort of life altogether because I clearly didn’t have the guy (ex was not a kid guy) or the working body parts to even do that, must not be for me. First time in our new apartment, boom baby.

7. First time in our slightly bigger and nicer apartment, boom baby 2. We started actually using protection after she was born. Clearly we can.

8. He worked stupidly long hours and put up with so many people that just had no fn clue, it put a strain on everything, most of all him. When he got the offer for Indy, I pushed it. And pushed it. And pushed. May as well have pushed him right out the door, we were going, because those people suck and you’ll never get the chance to be seen while you’re doing that glorified delivery guy’s job for him. We’re going. So, we did, and he got me out of this damn state. At least once.

9. He loved getting lost with me, and it was my favorite thing. Indiana is a beautiful state and I encourage anyone to get lost there, on purpose.

10. I forgot work. He caused some serious change. Everyone else lost their job, including hubby’s favorite person ever, Jonathan. Today he’s the sole survivor of a mom and pop shop, and I’m so unbelievably proud of him. The best part though, is two of the guys from work used to come see me at my new work all the time, with all their bar bitches 😆 They were my favorite people, I was always so excited to see them. Hubby tried to get them back on, and did for one of them. And when the bigger boss needed a new smaller boss bc hubby was leaving the state, hubby fought like hell for Jonathan. Like Highlander, there can only be one *sksksksksksk* They looked at a couple and hubs was like no only Jon knows the ways of the force. They hired him back, Jon has sent him some of the sweetest thank you messages...it changed his life, and hubs still loves him very much. It’s adorable.

11. Screamy baby Shmoo, she was a screamy baby, and so very beautiful. Baby Bam was like a dream, she was the perfect baby in every way. My screamy baby Shmoo was also a perfect baby, with a pitch that could break glass and sometimes she just wanted to practice for hours. Usually I got her to bed with mama snuggles & milk, singing Alison Krauss and rocking. Sometimes though, on the roughest nights, it’d be over an hour before I’d open the door with screamy baby still in a fit, and he’d take her. He’s so warm and calm, he’d win every single time, and I’d be like...zzzzz tysm ily tyty zzzz....

12. His jokes. He’s not funny (yes he is don’t tell him). He thinks he’s funny. He jokes all day every day about everything always. The girls know when dad says something to be skeptical bc he said they gotta go outside and till the land with tiny shovels, and when I roll my eyes they know he’s full of it. What’s funnier, his mom was the kind of person that took things literally always. Every time him and his goofy dad were being sarcastic, I’d have to tell her that because they’d have her believing crazy stuff. My kids share a lot of her isms, that’s one. My son absolutely does not joke, he is quite literal (so far), and I always have to scold hubby or tell lil guy nooooo he’s kidding. I don’t talk about his silliness nearly enough and I should, that’s him ❤️

13. His relationship with his mom. His mom was always on the...I wouldn’t say weaker side, but older, regular pain, on disability. He was her BABY. Her eyes lit up like Christmas when he entered the room. She loves him so so much. His sister... You know the kind, or...just imagine, probably close. He hated it. He got his job pretty young and just kept it. Always had money, always offered to help his mom, always was like IM FINE MOM. She just wanted to do for him, and he’s always been the kind of guy that wants to do for himself. And she was so funny, she’d slip $20 into the diaper bag and tell me “don’t tell him”, putting it on me. So we’d get in the car. And I’d be like there’s $20 in the diaper bag, knowing he’s gonna be pissed if he finds it (she needs it). And he’d get it, run into the house, set it on her table, and run out the door while she ran after him hollering protests 😆 Lots of other stories too. I miss her so much, I can’t even imagine how much he must.

14. His relationship with his sister, and other whirlwind people. He’s like a rock. I’ve spent lots of time with his sister, but not at once. The one day I did, I came home and my brain was so full of her bazillion ideas and impulsive let’s do this and just one thing, opposite thing, different subject, back to the subject, hey let’s do this, omg I have an idea. I love her to death but I had to sit and just...dump my brain. Ask myself for my own input bc I’d lost wtf...what were we doing again?!? Him though? Doesn’t miss a beat. No...no...no...I’ll think about it...no...no..change subject. No issue saying no. Back then I was like thank god, girl would have me on a cruise to Aruba tomorrow with costume jewelry and black face before I could even think to protest. Not him.

15. Making up. The difference between Taurus moon and Sag moon is that Taurus moon stays mad for the rest of their lives (hello...) and Sag moon wakes up in the morning like nothing happened in the history of ever. This was something that irritated me THE MOST. Don’t make me laugh, I’m pissed at you. Over the years, it became the only way we’d talk at all sometimes. Is certainly the only reason we made up, countless times. He never stopped trying to make me smile, even if I wanted nothing to do with it.

16. Acts of Service. Is not mine, which is either words time or touch and I really can’t decide which. All. He speaks a whole other language. He will let me nap, or take the kids somewhere, he will spontaneously clean or go grocery shopping, walk the dog, mow the lawn, hang out at the birthday party. It didn’t start right away, more and more as he learned my isms. He’ll make me coffee as I’m coming down the stairs. I rarely have to ever ask for any practical thing. He knows my orders for anything, recently there’s been twice that he literally read my mind before I spoke. I try to do the same for him as much as I can, because I know that’s his language and I really appreciate him.

17. Bedroom games. The man knows my body like a map, no, an Excel spreadsheet 😭, and how to get every reaction he’s looking for. He is the only man to ever satisfy my insatiable ass. He made me a whole new person in that regard. He says the same about me. Never an issue there. It’s this far down the list cuz it’s not the most important, but it’s pretty important too so there that is.

18. We share the same goals. We judge the same way, like why did they wrap this like that it looks sketchy. We parent the same. We decide the same. We critically think and weigh ideas the same. We walk the same line in the same direction. If anything he’s too negative sometimes, but that’s his own personal thing. Can’t be full of Capricorn and not lean more toward pessimism (not “realism”) sometimes I think. If it’s worth it, I’ll try to coax him to middle ground. Sometimes it’s a battle, but only if I’m really sure. Usually, he’s right, so I just let him lead.

19. When I was pregnant with my son. Initially. It was hell. His car was trashed, mine was broken and thousands of dollars to fix (this particular car in this particular year has this and what a coincidence it was particularly my problem...cars, I’m telling ya). I was two feet out the door with his shit, but his sister’s issues led to my heart. Because her kids. I love them very much, of course they can stay here and not with some strange person hell no. I cannot describe how angry I was at him. HE strapped backpacks onto his back and walked to the nearest store. Hauled so much crap in a huge backpack and just his arms. Over the course of two months. He quit drinking. He went above and beyond to do get offer or provide anything I could even imagine. More romantic then I think I’d ever seen him before. At least...it had been some time anyway. Of course...he was lying to me. The whole time. To what extent idk. Regarding the work shit, idk. Thus the question and the dream and the crazy and the...crazy 😞 Wanted to piss me off boy he got that tenfold. His actions during this time period are 💯 why I stayed. He was clearly trying like hell to prove to me he could try, and it’s more than anyone I’ve ever known has even bothered to “bother” with. I was impressed, and proud. Respect counts for a lot more than love sometimes, and at the time I respected him.

20. He’s an amazing father. There are so many stories I couldn’t possibly write them all. Our son though, he chose daddy, right from the start. Nothing like our daughters, nor any kid I’d known. He’d scream, FOR his dad. He’d only sleep on his shoulder. Hubby held this baby for hours on end. If he didn’t baby would demand it, but it was very natural to them both. Baby wanted a bottle, and hubby to give it to him. It blew my mind. Hubby got his little teammate and together they’ve changed my life and perspective in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined.

I’ve spent so long sporadically venting on here that I don’t think I’ve ever posted the sweet things. So many great memories and daily...everything...are missing, so many years and little moments. That would take forever. Its always been my frustrations, which was the purpose. This is my heart. No matter what happens, all of these things will always be true.

#I love him with all my heart

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lalunaunita · 6 years

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Millennials and Money Pt. 2: Budgets

Please don’t run away! You are tough and smart and you can do this.

Saying “I can’t live with a budget” is like saying “I can’t drive a car with a steering wheel.”

Following directly from my last post on this topic, we’ll pick up with ‘budgeting is critical’. I used to try to budget with self-help books, free online paper sheets, creating my own by tracking expenses… it was so hard. The biggest problem was that while I knew why I needed a budget (to save money), I didn’t know how a budget does that. So let’s look at the functions of a budget.

1. A budget provides information: just like information, a budget isn’t static – it evolves and changes with your needs. Think of it as a month-by-month snapshot in the flow of your financial life. But here’s the thing: you, as the photographer of this snapshot, get to set the scene. A good budget communicates the information you find relevant, according to goals you set for yourself.

2. A budget provides guidance: after sticking with it for 90 days, a budget will (I promise) help you plan and choose how you want to spend your money. Why does it take 90 days? Because almost nobody keeps an accurate tally of how many times they ordered pizza and Chinese delivery in a single month. We ALL find something surprising in our spending during those first months.

For me, it was groceries. I thought I spent a certain dollar amount each week, and was devastated to find out it was consistently more than I thought. But with a family of 4, I had to suck it up and admit that the number was not going to change – it’s a necessary expense and it’s just plain different from how cheap life was when I was single. It’s not bad that the number is higher, it just means I need to expect it and plan for it in the future.

3. A budget allows you to high-level prioritize: a budget isn’t a diet. It’s not about denial. It’s about setting priorities and picking what’s most important to you. If happy hour with your co-workers is a must for your peace and well-being, then it needs to be included. If tuition is necessary, then cut back on eating out. You get to choose; the budget is at your mercy, not the other way around.

Okay, great, but exactly how do I make my budget do these things?? There is a bit of trial and error involved, but I can help you formulate the basics so that you get the concept and rhythm down for yourself.

First, there’s nothing wrong with using a template budget – provided you know a few facts about them. 1) They will nearly always have categories you don’t need – you can just delete those right out. 2) They will nearly always be missing a category that’s important to you, and you’ll have to add it in. 3) They will not be able to help you determine the difference between a need and a want, which is very important. 4) If you have intermittent or fluctuating income, they will not help you deal with times when you have no money coming in.

Second, the easiest mistake to make is to look at your bank account and base your budget around your expenses. Sounds logical, but it’s not! Start by basing the budget around your needs, and then add in the other expenses.

Category 1 - Basic needs (i.e., you must have these in your budget):

Food/Water (Groceries) (NOT eating out, getting drinks, fast food, unnecessary sustenance) Shelter (Rent/Mortgage) Utilities (Electricity/Gas/Heat/Water) Transportation (Car/Bus/Bike/Other) Clothing (Work attire/Basic daily clothes) (NOT accessories, jewelry, purses, fancy clothes)

Some of these you can fill in right away, like rent and possibly utilities. (A little trick: some cities let you go on a plan to even out your utility payment so it’s the same each month.) The rest can be guesstimates – and guess what? It takes about 90 days to get it right, so if you only budget $200 for groceries and you’re dead wrong, just keep track of how much more you spent, so you can change the number next month. Transportation doesn’t include car loans, just what it takes to keep your car running and getting you to work/home/errands. Be real on whether you need an Uber or not – don’t put it as a need unless it really is. We are just doing the basics that keep you alive and employed right here.

Category 2 – other potential needs:

Phone/internet service Tuition Tithe

I put these here to demonstrate that not all budgets must have them, even though many do. I know that living without home internet or phone seems an impossibility, but since your life and livelihood wouldn’t necessarily depend on them (free wifi, etc.) I put them here. If you had to cancel for a month, you’d still live.

Category 3 – Debt:

Credit card Car loan Phone purchase Computer purchase Student loans Medical debt Other debt

This is the suckiest category. It’s depressing, it’s hard to get rid of. Blech. Now it’s time for the big girl pants. You can knock these out and get rid of them over time. Why did I not include debt under Needs? Because if everything fell apart and you couldn’t pay all your bills, you have to have the Needs listed above, but you don’t have to pay the debt. Debt collectors do not want you to think this way. If you get behind they will call you and basically threaten your future children, but they have no power over you. People get trapped paying debt and not taking care of their needs for these reasons: 1) Debt collection is an aggressive industry and they will do whatever it takes to guilt you into paying, 2) People worry about ruining their credit (forgetting that getting evicted/foreclosing will do worse things to your credit), 3) People who have integrity want to play fair and pay it back. I am saying yes, always pay your debt bills. But I am also saying put your needs first. If something has to slip for a month, let it be a debt, not your utilities, get me?

Category 4 – Savings:

Emergency savings Retirement savings Goal-oriented savings (like for school, car, vacation, etc.)

Dave Ramsey’s recommendation for those of us with debt is to have a little $1000 starter emergency fund, and then to stop saving until we get the debt paid off. I like this method and have used it. You can read about it on his website or in his book to get a clearer picture of why he recommends.

Category 5 – Lifestyle:

Pet expenses Eating out Movies Coffee shops Shopping Art supplies Video games Yarn

Look, I don’t know what goes into your lifestyle. I made up some categories here. These are things you choose to spend your income on, and if you don’t have enough money, you probably drop it for a while until you do. At first, this may feel the most bewildering: “It’s not the same each month; how do I plan this?” It’s okay! Just guesstimate, and keep track so you have better information going forward. You’ll probably get a ton of things wrong and overspend in the first month. The next month, you’ll realize that you have to skip trivia night because you’re visiting your parents, so you’ll feel smart for taking it off the budget. The third month, you’ll suddenly remember that Debra’s getting married on the 30th and you’ll set aside some cash to get a gift, rather than using a credit card. And boom, just like that, you are planning your finances. In my family, we have lifestyle categories specific to us and the kids, but we also always have a discussion about “specials” at the start of each month. Those are things like birthdays, parties, weddings, trips, etc. that get written in as one-time budget items. We put an upper limit dollar value on each, and then if we don’t spend it all, great. If we go over a little, we file it away under “experience” and do better the next time. At the bottom of the budget page, we even look farther out, just as a heads-up for planned trips, etc. Like, I know I’m going on vacation in July, so even though it’s only May, I have a little reminder telling me that any extra money we end up with should be tucked away for my vacation. It keeps us from spending it on sodas or other junk on impulse.

To implement your budget, set a reminder for the last 1-5 days of the month that says “Time to plan next month’s budget!!” or something. Sit down for 10 minutes with the last budget and look through the numbers. Do this before the 1st of the month! Do you only buy cat food every other month? Put a line thru or some other indicator that you don’t need it this month. Oh, are there 4 birthdays this month? Better increase the amount of gift money you put aside. Is the future a mystery and you have no idea whether someone will surprise you with an invitation to a party or event? Put “mystery spending” as a category and drop $50 in, just so you are covered. You get to decide!

Above all, don’t give up. I gave up so many times after just a single month. I never knew all those years that it takes a 90 day commitment to make this change and see results.

Hit me up with questions if you read this and are interested in starting a budget. You don’t have to give me specifics; general information will do for most questions. I would love to help.

#llu speaks #finance #budgeting #budgets #how to adult #personal

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purplesurveys · 5 years

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675

Are you more of a leader or a follower? It ultimately depends on who I’m grouped with, I guess? If I’m with a bunch of people that aren’t the type to initiate, I’m happy to volunteer to lead. But if I’m working with someone I know is capable of leading, then I’d let them take the lead. But I’d be like the second-tier leader, because I still want to keep things in control and still my way somehow haha. Do you know anyone with a profession in law? My relatives who are in the local government of our home province are all lawyers. I also have an aunt who’s a corporate lawyer; and one of my friend’s dad is both a lawyer and a law professor. Have you ever Googled yourself? When I was like 10 or 11 and curious to see what Google has of me. I generally avoid looking myself up because I did and posted embarrassing shit as a kid. Do you have a regular vacation spot, or do you always go somewhere new? We alllllways go somewhere new. We have never done a repeat vacation, or go to the same resort/hotel twice. For this reason my family has been to almost every region/province in the country, save for Mindanao haha. The one place we’ve gone to more than once is Baguio, and that’s only because we were having a trip in Sagada and needed a stopover because Sagada is way too damn far. Where were you working 10 years ago? I was 11 a decade ago, and hardly thinking of working.

... 5 years ago? Was in high school, and definitely not working. ... 1 year ago? I also wasn’t working, but I had a PR internship in 2019 which was a blast. Would you say you've had a good life so far? It hasn’t been nice to me for the most part, but the highs have been high enough and good enough for me to want to stay. What's the shortest amount of time you've had between relationships? I’ve only ever been with one person. We broke up at one point, which lasted for around seven months. As a child, what comfort foods did your parents make for you when you were sick with a cold or flu? I wasn’t made any comfort food because the adults at home were usually pretty busy. Which was ok with me, because I lose my appetite when I’m sick anyway. What's a movie series where the sequel was better than the original? Generally not a fan of series so I don’t know much about them lol. What's something you wish you could have delivered to your house? FRANKIE’S. Only Metro Manila gets Frankie’s deliveries, and it sucks. When I want to eat some for dinner at home, I have to have it delivered in school. What's your favorite art style? Whatever Monet was all about, as he’s my favorite painter. What time period is considered to be your country's 'golden age?' LMAO do we have any? Have we even reached it yet? I doubt it. The older generation would probably call the 60s and 70s our Golden Age because of the way Marcos ran the country during his first term – and to their credit, I wouldn’t doubt the economic boom we experienced, all the infra built during the time, and the fact that the Philippines was only second to Japan when it came to the richest Asian countries. But Marcos also drove the country to ruins, piled us with debt (that I’m part of paying off to this day, and that my future kids would have to pay as well), got consumed by greed, took part in corruption, killed his critics, and silenced the press by the 80s that it completely trashes the ‘Golden Age’ the Philippines went through just a decade before. He is the reason our economy eventually took one huge humiliating step backwards, and why we’re all struggling to catch up with our now-richer neighbor countries today. How many trees are there in your yard? We have a couple of big ones. What are some of your favorite ways to de-stress? Surveys, YouTube series that I like, serial killer documentaries, and Friends. Have you ever done LSD? No. What's currently on your grocery list? Nothing, really. We stocked up on everything before the city was put on lockdown so we’re doing okay right now. Are any of your coworkers currently out on maternity/paternity leave? No coworkers. And none of my school mates have kids. Would you be able to pinpoint Milwaukee on an unlabeled map? I don’t even know what region Wisconsin’s in. It’s a no-go for me. What is your favorite parody movie? The Scary Movie series is highkey the only set of parody movies I know, so I’ll just go with that. What kind of first impression do you hope others have of you? I’ve been told I seem intimidating at first, which I’m fine with lmao. Do you have a good sense of balance? Hell no. I can’t even ride a bike :( What is your least favorite ice cream flavor? Rocky road or double dutch. Does your car have heated seats? No. We barely need any kind of heater in this country. What's something that has been in your local news lately? Coronavirus, obviously. But more than the virus cases, the news has also been covering what’s been happening during and as a result of the ongoing lockdown. What's your favorite internet meme? I’m less into memes nowadays and more into Tiktok clips, honestly HAHAHA people can come up with really hilarious videos :(((( My favorite one right now is this person showing how they act when they have to walk alone at night, and it’s basically them checking their bag and saying out loud, “oh thank GOD I have a GUN in my bag...oh! Turns out I also have my KNIFE...so glad I bought my GUN and my KNIFE...hear that? My GUN and my KNIFE” lmaoooooooo might not sound so funny here but it’s just so hilarious on video. What hair length suits you the best? I love short hair on me these days. What is the strangest pizza topping you've ever eaten? I dunno, I’m pretty basic with my pizza topping preferences and am usually happy with just cheese. @justsurveys might have a better answer for this! ;) But in general though, though it doesn’t directly answer the question, I don’t like pepperoni on my pizza and always take it out. Do you live in a very racially and culturally diverse country? Not at all. We’re a homogenous group, and for the most part the diversity boils down to just the regions we’re a part of. Can you name any books or movies where all the main characters die? Hamlet? If I remember correctly? What was the last hotel you stayed at? Oh my, it’s been a while. It was somewhere in Bacoor. Do you live alone? Nope.

#survey #surveys

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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It’s Maybe Time to Make To-Go Cocktails Legal

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

To help struggling restaurants, states across the country have loosened up laws around to-go and delivery drinks — and it’s hard to imagine going back

By 3 p.m. on Saturday, when Dutch Kills’s cocktail window opened for business, there were already a half-dozen people lined up outside. The famous Queens “speakeasy” has given up the last pretense of being secret, with a bartender in a mask taking orders — martinis, Manhattans, mai tais — next to a sandwich board that asks patrons to “keep it safe and keep it moving!” There were snacks for sale, too. And for an extra $2, I could get a float of 12-year rum on my pina colada. I spent the $2, and set off on the half-hour walk home, my only concern being how to thread the straw underneath my face mask.

Two months ago, openly walking down the street with a cocktail would have been impossible, and drinking outside would have required the minor conspiracy of pouring wine into an opaque water bottle before going to the park, or brown-bagging it on the subway.

Across the country, it is largely illegal to consume alcohol in public spaces, to take a drink to-go from a restaurant or bar, or to purchase a bottle of liquor from anywhere but a liquor or grocery store. It’s a confusing system — as long as the drinking age is 21, most liquor laws are left to states and local municipalities — and mostly it boils down to having to consume alcohol in your home or on the premises of a restaurant, bar, or arena, and that walking around on the street with a beer is a big taboo.

But in order to provide restaurants and bars with a boost during the COVID-19 pandemic, many states have loosened liquor laws, allowing patrons to get cocktails or wine to-go from delivery windows, or have them delivered with their food. It seems to be working quite well, both for businesses and customers; businesses get to offload more product at a time when every penny counts, and customers get to enjoy mixologist-quality cocktails at home. And it raises the question of why the hell it hasn’t been like this the whole time.

The new, temporary liquor regulations have their own quirks and inconsistencies, but most states have made it easier to obtain alcohol: In New York and California, alcohol can be delivered or taken to-go, as long as it’s accompanied by food, and restaurants can sell whole bottles of wine and spirits. In Chicago, restaurants and bars can sell “sealed packaged goods in their original container,” like bottles of wine or cans of beer, but not pre-mixed cocktails. The same goes for Washington and Texas, though restaurants are selling “cocktail kits” so you can make your own at home. Public intoxication and public drinking laws remain, but anecdotally, there seems to be mixed enforcement. Fewer people are in public. And everyone has bigger fish to fry.

Richard Boccato, founder of Dutch Kills, was initially skeptical of booze delivery. “The takeout window came first, because the window was there, and we didn’t know what else to do,” he says. “But I wasn’t initially excited about [delivery] because of health concerns, not wanting to put myself and my staff at risk.” He also knew Dutch Kills mostly attracted locals — ”people don’t usually make the trip from fancier zip codes out to Long Island City.” However, with a bar full of cases of spirits, and the infrastructure to deliver through their ice company, he was willing to try.

Restaurants typically make about 30 percent of revenue from alcohol sales, and for bars, it’s obviously much higher. So being able to move alcohol means an extra shot (sorry) at survival. Boccato says that their cocktail packages, which include the bar’s signature ice blocks and a QR code for a Spotify playlist of their jukebox’s most popular selections, have been a hit. And on top of their take-out window and their cocktail delivery service, they also have whole bottles of specialty spirits for sale. “As far as what percentage of our regular business that has earned us, it’s an infinitesimal fraction, but considering what’s happening we can’t complain too much,” he says.

Other restaurants consider the loosened laws an incredible lifeline. “I personally love this license. I wish we could keep this license forever,” says Gina Chersevani, owner of Buffalo & Bergen in Washington, D.C., which is providing bagels and sandwiches as well as cocktails to-go. “The coolest thing in the world is to be able to pick up breakfast and bring home a Bloody Mary.” Chersevani says that alcohol sales currently account for about 20 percent of business on a busy day like Saturday, far lower than the 50/50 food to alcohol sales they were doing before the pandemic. But it helps to both keep money coming in, and to remind customers of everything they have to offer, even if they don’t feel immediately safe going out once things reopen. “Drinking in a bar is great but it’s a different option... we can provide for both of those worlds.”

Chersevani said it took a few days to figure out how to prepare cocktails both safely and in accordance with the new laws, which require alcohol orders to be sealed, and that they include at least one food item: “It’s extra steps.” She says it’s led some bars to break the rules, which she worries could ruin the opportunity to extend this license for everyone else. But she looks to life in New Orleans as a model, where open container laws allow for people to walk around with to-go cocktails, and says there’s no reason that shouldn’t work in a small, walkable city like D.C. “I don’t know if everyone is going to want to keep [these laws], but for my fast-casual business this could work really well for me in the future.”

Anyone who has ever visited the handful of towns and entertainment districts in the U.S. that allow for public consumption of alcohol (or like, Europe) has probably come back with a story of a good time. For those who consume alcohol, the freedom of being able to walk up to a kitchen window, get a sandwich and an alcoholic slushie to go, either taking it home or having a picnic with no one being the wiser is just fun. It almost seems redundant to explain — if you could walk along the river front and watch the sunset while sipping on a frosé, wouldn’t you? And if you can now, how on earth is the government going to take that back?

Chersevani’s point about small, walkable cities highlights one of the big problems: America doesn’t have many of those. What we have instead is large, drivable cities, suburban sprawl, and rural expanses over which public transportation is inaccessible, which means most people face the question of drinking or driving. Allowing cocktails and wine to-go likely ups the chances someone will enjoy their martini from their car’s cupholder, and any laws enacted would have to include provisions about curbing drunk driving.

Even New York’s Boccato does have some trepidation about a permanent switch to cocktails to-go, though. Current laws already make bartenders liable for over-serving, and it would make it harder for a bartender to track intoxication if you can get a bottle of Negronis to-go. However, he notes that the paradise described above already existed. “I grew up in New York City, drinking 40s on the subway and on the stoops and in the parks,” he says. Open container laws have never stopped people from drinking in public.

Instead, it’s always been an issue of who gets away with it. Racism and classism heavily influence who police target for public consumption — someone drinking a glass of wine on the stoop of their million-dollar Brooklyn brownstone is less likely to be called out than the people with the cooler of beers on the public beach. “It’s another racist law used almost universally against the poor, it’s usually an excuse for police to stop and investigate,” says Niki Ganong, author of The Field Guide To Drinking In America, pointing to statistics showing that, in one month in Brooklyn, 85 percent of those issued summonses for drinking in public were Latino, while just 4 percent were white. Permanently loosening open container and alcohol to-go regulations could mean equal enjoyment, and no more excuse for police harassment.

But even if open container laws remain enforced, it’s easy to see how alcohol and cocktail delivery and takeout could become a part of a new dining reality. “The cat’s out of the bag, especially in regards to delivery,” says Ganong. “The whole reason laws were loosened in the first place was to allow struggling businesses to earn some money any way they could. That’s not going to change for a long time, even after things reopen.” Restaurants are going to need all the revenue they can get, and being able to offer a cocktail in the dining room or with a take-out meal just means more options to make money. Plus, customers are used to it now. “They say that habits are formed after a month!” says Ganong.

As more states contemplate the reopening of business, expanded liquor laws would continue to provide an extra revenue option for restaurants — in Texas, where restaurants are reopening, the TABC has also ruled they can still offer booze to-go — and allow customers to continue enjoying drinks at home if they don’t feel comfortable being in crowds.

Walking home with my pina colada, getting slowly tipsy in the sun, hurt no one. I was excited that I could enjoy a drink crafted with far more care than I was capable of, especially considering I don’t own a blender. I was happy to be enjoying a sunny day outside, and to maybe pretend I was in New Orleans. But I was in Queens, and maybe soon enough it’ll stop feeling like I’m getting away with something. Maybe it’ll just feel like normal.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2ylCpFp https://ift.tt/3fwYS30

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

To help struggling restaurants, states across the country have loosened up laws around to-go and delivery drinks — and it’s hard to imagine going back

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2ylCpFp via Blogger https://ift.tt/2zgLxLe

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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commercialvansolutions · 5 years

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How to Deduct Your Vehicle Expenses

Dan, a new client, arrived at my office for his tax appointment. He had dutifully filled out the tax organizer I had mailed to him. His penmanship was like a draftsman's--perfectly aligned, square, and consistent.

I flipped to the first page of data. Dan had copied every figure from every box of his W-2 onto the organizer despite my telling him he needn't do that. Just give me the W-2; no need to do any copy work. And, like most tax pros, I prefer to work from the document itself. The numbers written onto an organizer could possibly be transposed or illegible. Hey, no problem. Lots of folks like to mark up the organizer; I just hate to see them go to all that extra work. I flipped a few more pages and found that Dan has a side business as a computer consultant. He has a home office and travels quite a bit to his clients' places of business. I turned to the home office worksheet, and lo and behold, Dan had actually prorated his mortgage interest, insurance, property taxes, and utilities between personal and business use of the home. Poor guy. Another waste of time since the tax software does that for me automatically.

When I turned to the section regarding business use of the automobile, my eyes bugged out. You'd think I'd found a black widow squashed onto the page. What I saw was something I had never seen before and have not seen since: A complete six-page mileage log detailing to the tenth of a mile every destination by date for the entire year. Beside it was listed Dan's actual expenses, including gas, vehicle registration, repairs, insurance, and auto loan interest. He listed his grand total mileage, his commuting mileage, his personal mileage, and his business mileage.

Absolutely amazing.

It is rare for a client to list his automobile expenses because most clients don't track their costs during the year. Rare for a client to even know his total mileage. But to show every expense plus attach a mileage log with so much detail wasn't just rare--it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. With any other client, even the most anal retentive of the lot, the page is usually blank. And it's typically accompanied by this conversation:

Me: So, Bob, did you use the van this past year in your mobile repair business?

Bob: Yep.

Me: So how many miles did you drive, Bob?

Bob [His head rears back and his eyes dart skyward as though the answer were inscribed on the ceiling. In fact, I think it would be great fun to take a marker and write "19,497" right up there above the client chairs.]: Uh, I don't know. Probably about the same as I did the year before. How many miles did I drive then? Whatever it was, add another thousand.

As if mileage inflation ran side by side with economic inflation. Dan was the client from heaven by comparison. All I could do was stare at the mileage log. Dan shifted in his seat and cleared his throat.

I finally picked up my jaw from the desktop and closed my mouth. Where did I put that box of gold stars? I wanted to offer Dan a job. What else do you do with someone like that? I mean, there would be no lost files, ever. Every client conversation would be documented in great detail. Every figure on a tax return would be backed up by tapes and logic and citations of tax code and photographs and schematics. He would be the perfect employee. I wouldn't have to spend years carrying on about the importance of documentation. He already got it.

It was either that or ask him what the hell is wrong with him. Find out if he was being treated for obsessive-compulsive disorder and, if so, did he remember to include a deduction for his meds?

I didn't do either. I simply prepared Dan's taxes and have enjoyed a smooth and steady business relationship with him ever since.

Naturally, Dan never got audited. So I never had the pleasure of making an IRS agent's eyes bug out the way mine did.

The funny thing is that what Dan brought me is exactly what the IRS wants. Or so then say. IRS regulations dictate that if you are using a vehicle for business purposes, you must keep a contemporaneous mileage log, which means you're supposed to mark down your mileage as it occurs. That's what Dan did. Dan and Dan alone in the entire country, in the entire universe, if in fact they have taxes on other planets.

The IRS can require us to keep logs all it wants. Just like our parents required us to make our beds and be home by ten and not hit our siblings. But let's get real. Dan is the only guy out there who does this. The rest of us don't have the time or inclination for this busywork. Like we're really going to stare at our odometers and mark down ".8" every time we have to run over to the office supply store. As small-business owners, we're spending our time changing hats and putting out fires. No time for crayons and clipboards. Sorry.

For that reason I will not lecture you about keeping a log. I know you won't do it. Even if you make it a New Year's resolution and you're gung ho, I'd bet you dollars to martinis that by January 15, you'll be off the wagon.

It's damn near impossible to keep up that good habit. Well, guess what? IRS agents are reasonable human beings and most of them agree with me---no one's going to keep a damn log. Every IRS agent I've dealt with over the past 25 years, even the most hard-boiled of the lot, the ones who have the look of disdain down pat, the perfected eye roll, the smug eyebrow raise, even they have agreed to allow reconstructed logs.

Unless you're Dan, here's what you should do: First off, even a reconstructed log needs a starting point. It's very simple. Write your beginning odometer reading in your appointment book on January 1, and in bright red, mark "odometer:" on the December 31 page so you remember to record the ending reading at year-end. Now subtract one number from the other to find out your total mileage. It looks so much more believable and accurate to see 14,823 on the tax return under total mileage than it does to see 15,000, which is a dead giveaway that the student hasn't done her homework.

Try as much as possible to note all business meetings, errands, and other business vehicle travel in your appointment book. In fact, if you can do it, track both business and personal miles for a two-week period every quarter. Keep the info in your tax file for use at year-end to determine the ratio of business versus personal use.

Provide the total mileage figure and business mileage to your tax pro.

Some people think they can get away with writing off 100 percent of their only vehicle for business. All they are doing is tempting fate. Bob is one of those. Remember him from a couple of pages ago? He's such a bad boy; he keeps no records. Here's the rest of our conversation:

Me: OK, Bob. So how much of the mileage would you say is personal?

Bob: Oh, I don't have any personal mileage at all.

Me: But Bob, you don't have another vehicle.

Bob: Oh I know. But all my miles are all business.

Me [Heavy sigh.] We go through this every year.]: But Bob, you certainly must go to the grocery store or have a girlfriend somewhere.

Bob: I do grocery shopping on the way home. And my girlfriend Susie? She does all the estimates and paperwork.

Me [eye roll]: Right. What about weekends? Don't you have 49ers season tickets?

Bob: Yep, but that's a business expense, too.

Me: OK, Bob, whatever. Fine.

Bob thinks I'm going to give him 100 percent. But he's wrong. I know that old van is not 100 percent business use. So I knock off some points when he isn't looking and figure we're pretty square with the IRS.

So what is business mileage? First of all, you cannot deduct commuting. So forget about driving from home to your primary business location or from home to your first client. An exception is if you are self-employed and have a qualified home office. Your commute would be defined as travel down the hall or through the yard to the space that serves as your office. Once you are in the office, then every destination to which you travel to carry on business is considered business mileage.

See the logic? After all, if you have a regular job, you never deduct your commuting mileage against your W-2 wages. Once you get to work, if your boss requires that you use your vehicle for business travel, mileage for which you are not reimbursed is deductible.

You may also deduct travel between jobs. If you have two employers, you can deduct the mileage for travel from job No. 1 to job No. 2. Just don't stop at home first. That will blow the deduction out of the water.

I often walk from my home office to the post office and sometimes to nearby client offices. On one such walk, I wondered how audacious it would be to write off my shoes. Maybe I'd have to keep pedometer readings in my appointment book to substantiate business use. Hey, why not? I bet, however, that my Manolo Blahniks wouldn't be considered an ordinary and necessary business expense. The IRS would likely reduce that write-off to what one would spend for a pair of hiking boots, if they allowed the deduction at all. I can hear the auditor now: "You of all people should know better."

If your vehicle is used 100 percent for business--say it's a utility truck, a dump truck, a delivery vehicle, or a second vehicle devoted to business--and there's no personal use, you must still keep a mileage log.

To determine the business-use percentage for a mixed-use vehicle, divide the business miles by the total miles driven, for example, 7,000 (business miles)/10,000 (total miles) = .70, or 70 percent.

Now that we've established the percentage of business use and the total miles and business miles driven, let's put them to use. You need to determine if you are going to use the IRS standard mileage rate or actual costs.

You cannot use the standard mileage rate if:

your business provides cars for hire (limo service, taxi, etc.);

you have a business that has five or more vehicles being operated at the same time;

you are a rural mail carrier who has a qualified reimbursement plan; or

you are using an employer-provided vehicle.

If you wish to claim actual expenses, you can deduct gasoline, repairs, and maintenance (don't forget car washes), vehicle registration fees, insurance, tires, car loan interest, lease payments, garage rent, parking, tolls, and of course depreciation, including the Section 179 deduction. Don't forget to deduct the cost of those scented Christmas trees you hang from the rearview mirror.

Fill in the proper boxes on Form 2106 or on page 2 of Schedule C to take the deduction. If you are depreciating your vehicle, include Form 4562, Depreciation. Make sure you keep all documentation concerning this deduction in your tax file in case of audit.

And if you are audited and don't have your paperwork together, don't panic. Let me show you how understanding the folks at the IRS can be. A couple of years ago a new client, Spencer, came to see me. The IRS was in the middle of auditing three years of tax returns and was considering throwing Spencer in jail for tax fraud. And believe me it had a case; the tax returns he filed were as phony as Monopoly money. My firm compiled his books and created proper tax returns and a stay-out-of-jail card.

The auditor disallowed the vehicle deduction because Spencer hadn't maintained a mileage log. I got to work and reconstructed a mileage log based on Spencer's job files and a little help from Mapquest. The results proved his vehicle expense actually exceeded the amount he had claimed. He had likely paid cash for many of his gasoline purchases but had no receipts. I was excited!

But the auditor would not acquiesce. She had the right to deny the deduction because he did not keep a contemporaneous record. I argued that most auditors understand and accept reconstructed records, even reasonable estimates. "Oh c'mon," I said, "He's a contractor. He's got a truck. I mean, duh, he's got vehicle expense. You should allow something. It's only fair."

Finally, the reason for her stubbornness was revealed. The auditor uses her own vehicle and is forced to keep a mileage log so the IRS will reimburse her. And by golly, if she has to keep a log, then everybody else has to. Well, I finally wore her down and she accepted the reconstructed log and 100 percent of the deduction.

I know I have just relieved your mind. However, I'm not going to let you rest easy. Even though my clients and I have had good experiences dealing with the IRS when it comes to vehicle expense, bear in mind that the IRS does not have to accept reconstructed logs. And in our current political climate, when more tax revenues are required to pay for ever increasing government spending, economic bailouts, wars, and such, the IRS may decide to become stricter. You may find yourself walking out of an audit with a big tax bill because you didn't keep a mileage log.

So go clean your room, quit hitting your sister, and at least mark your annual beginning and ending odometer readings in your appointment book.

Do you wan to know more details about the home delivery van and gruau refrigerated vans then please contact us and send your queries.

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ddrkirbyisq · 7 years

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Well, it could have been worse. I could have spent =more= than 2 hours thinking about the past instead of sleeping... ===== Yesterday was a really interesting day...I had a really hard time getting out of bed for some reason, and fell pretty soundly asleep during the morning train ride as well. After getting off the train the city was oddly quiet in a way that made me wonder whether there was some holiday going on that I was totally unaware of. I was feeling pretty cranky too, for some reason, imagining negative scenarios in my head, as one is prone to do when feeling grumpy. Maybe I just have some sleep to catch up on. Feedback has been coming in for our game, Raven Delivery Service, and people have been liking it! I'll try to do a post-mortem post about it, as well as just advertise it via posting in general so we can get some more plays. Aivi & surasshu are performing later this month at Fanime! What a pleasant announcement to hear -- it actually makes me quite excited to go. Steven Universe is also getting an official soundtrack release next month -- about time! More importantly, I overheard that their next original artist album has a name, "valk hollow"? That's actually more exciting than anything, as you know the main reason I'm a fan of aivisura is because of their debut album "The Black Box". I am not-so-secretly hoping that once they release their next album I will be able to do a full remix album of their works again, as I did with "Love Everlasting". That album was one of the most interesting and rewarding projects that I've undertaken as a musician and I'd love to try something like it again. Big dance is also coming up this Friday! Everyone should enter the dance contests, especially the ambi ones! Looking back at my records, here were the themes for those years, to help people remember: 2011 was Firefly 2012 was Star Wars 2013 was Last Airbender 2014 was Game of Thrones (2015 was a Little Big Dance) (2016 was a Little Big Dance) 2017 is Back to the Future (old-timers will remember some other ones, like pride and prejudance, etc) Remember, Little Big Dances do NOT count as all-nighters! (since they didn't last all night, of course) So this'll be my 7th Big Dance, but my 5th all-nighter. Hopefully it'll be fun, despite the fact that I've been shying away from people interactions lately. I was half-wondering whether I should take a page out of the past and try and compose a song real quick for big dance so that Richard could play it. But I don't think that will happen, hehe. Not ruling it out as a possibility though -- inspiration could strike at any moment! It would actually be pretty cool to start a tradition of writing a new dance song every year for Big Dance specifically. Maybe! Speaking of dance music, next month I'll be going to a ballet performance set to my Celestial Melodies album! Super interested to see how that will be, and never thought as I was writing it that my music would ever be used that way. This is also a good point for me to try to design some (long overdue) business cards. Hopefully I'll be able to use the All in a Day's Work 3 artwork, as that has become so iconic to me, but perhaps there are other options as well. I'll have to decide what urls to put on there as well -- probably ddrkirby.com and ddrkirbyisq.bandcamp.com for sure, but I should really clean up the ddrkirby.com landing page. I guess if I make a more proper landing page for ddrkirby.com I can just feature that, DDRKirby(ISQ), my name, and possibly a contact email (?) and have the landing page direct you to everything else. More work that needs to be done! Looks like a lot of designery work is in my near future... My birthday having passed now, I decided to go ahead and order a whole bunch of stuff online as I was in need/want of quite a lot of things here and there. Yesterday those shipments finally started to get to me, so I now have an anova sous vide machine, a whetstone for sharpening my knives, a jaccard meat tenderizer, a mortar & pestle, new earbuds, a car vent mount for my phone, and a zojirushi vaccuum-sealed food container. I also did a ton of grocery shopping last night, so I basically have a ton of new stuff to play around with and eat, whee! I'm pretty excited about all of the items, haha. The Risk of Rain devs are apparently working on RoR2, in 3D??? (using Unity, as of course is the trend for everyone and their mothers now) That's...cool, I guess? Of course, it's still a project early in development, so it's barely even worth thinking about when or whether they'll finish, but...I guess that's cool? It's not the most -exciting- thing because I don't think 3D is really necessary, or even a boon to the gameplay, but maybe they are just trying to take a page out of Overwatch and such games. It makes me a little sad for my pet project Zenith Fighter which I abandoned, which was aiming to be an arena-style game with platforming and RoR-style abilities, as well as a bunch of upgrades. Speaking of pet projects, Rhythm Quest is on very shaky footing now as I haven't touched it in so long. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but the fact that I'm not regularly working on it is a red flag and I wonder whether it will actually become a thing, or whether it's not actually exciting anymore. We'll see I guess, but for now I am going to remind myself that the reasonable thing to do is not to worry about it because I have other projects that are more pressing -- namely, finishing up my Sentience album, designing the business cards and redoing my landing page. Speaking of my Sentience album -- it's getting close to being complete! I'll probably aim to do one or two more songs and then package it all up for release. Very exciting to be doing another original artist album that is getting a full physical CD release, especially since this one has such a strong theme and could be called my first ever "concept album", I guess. I've been continuing to make my way through Hyper Light Drifter, which has still been great! It's cool that, just like with Shovel Knight, I feel much more well-versed in the sort of "vernacular" of its level design, and am starting to really become familiar with where to look in order to find hidden areas and secrets. I'm currently in the last of the four main "areas" (at least, that I know of!), though the game has made it very clear that even when I've beaten the boss there I will have to do quite a bit more searching and exploring. ===== I told someone recently that while many people find themselves needing to let go of their past before they can move forward, I find myself unable to move forward if I feel like I am letting something go. I've been asked before just =why= the past is so important to me and there are many reasons -- I think loss is painful, letting go is painful, I'm strongly motivated by nostalgia and memory, I would much rather stick to what I know than embrace new experiences, I value lasting connections, I genuinely want to believe that things will last, etc. -- but in the end the answer basically is just that's the way that I am and I have learned that that is the way it has to be. After many years of questioning myself and my feelings toward the past I came to a realization that even if it "slows me down", connecting with my past is ultimately something that I just have to do, out of necessity. And if I try to avoid it and break free, I would only end up circling back again and not moving anywhere at all -- because "breaking free" is something I would never want in the first place. And that is the reason that I can be so sure when I tell people I will always be here. Always and forever. ...or at least, that's what I'd like to think. After all, the girl of the stars also chose to leave her tower. The story of the star and the girl is one that is incredibly important to me because represents a central conflict in life that I must always come to terms with. The fact that "always" is not forever, and that despite my feelings and intentions, in the end I must accept that I cannot bring the past forward with me, and that I =must= by the nature of life move forward. It pained me a great deal thinking about how the girl left the tower. It still does, and always will. But it's something that I need to understand too. I think in the end, sinking deep into memory, holding traditions, treasuring artifacts, and "living in the past" are all ways of coping. Who can say where the girl is now? But no matter where she is, the tower and the star will always be an important part of her. Maybe she will be able to come back to the tower someday. Maybe she will be able to see the star again someday too. But even if she does not, it will still be in her memory, as something precious and treasured. In the same way, my friend Kiki is someone who is always on my mind when I think of the past. My relationship with her, in many ways, represents my relationship with the past, and that is a reason why it has always held such significance to me.

=====

I actually feel significantly better today. Maybe all I needed was to feel like I am paying my respects to my memory...

(More to come later.)

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charllieeldridge · 4 years

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15 Simple Money Saving Tips Anyone Can Use

Do you want to travel more? Save money to move abroad? Pay down your debt? Have a nest egg so you can start your own business?

Finding the extra cash to do so isn’t always easy. In this article, I’ll share 15 simple money-saving tips to help you keep more cash in your pocket.

We utilized all of the tips in this article when we were saving money to go traveling. In the end, we were able to save enough to set off on our year-long backpacking adventure sooner than we thought.

Here are my top picks for ways to save money this year.

First, Create a Spreadsheet

Before you can put any money away, it’s important to figure out your finances and how much money is available for you to save.

Write down your take-home earnings, and from there, subtract all of your necessary expenses — just the payments you need to make in order to get by.

This is a simple visual way to see all of your payments in one place, and realize how much extra money you have to spend on entertainment, miscellaneous, and of course, savings.

Here’s an example:

Total Monthly Income: $_________.

Monthly Payments:

Rent / Mortgage

Groceries

Cell Phone

Electricity

Water

Car Insurance

Gas

Loans

Credit Card Bill

Cable and Wi-Fi

Total Monthly Payments: $_______.

Monthly Income minus Monthly Payments = $______.

If your balance each month is in the negative, you’ll need to start making some changes, including making more money on the side, picking up an online job, consolidating your payments, and tweaking your lifestyle.

Have a look at budgeting apps such as Mint (free) and Wally (free) to help you realize your money-saving goals.

Here are 15 easy money-saving tips for you to utilize this year!

1. Say “No” To Dining Out

When it comes to money-saving tips for food, this is by far the easiest one. Have you ever added up the amount of money you spend in a day, week, or month on meals out or coffees?

If you have a Starbucks coffee each morning, that’s roughly $4 every morning.

Going out for lunch during the week will cost around $8 each time for a salad or sandwich.

Do co-workers want to grab some drinks with you after work? That’s about $6 each drink and you’ll probably be hungry after work (and after that beer), so add some finger food for about $10. Don’t forget to add tax and tip!

*One major bonus of working remotely is that you won’t have to feel guilty for saying “no” to co-workers when they ask you to go out for lunch or drinks.

Theoretically, depending on how often you grab drinks or have coffee, you could spend around $28 + tax and tip in just one day.

During the weekends, going out for dinner is what many people enjoy doing. Let’s use Earls Restaurants as an example. I’m going to showcase costs based on their menu as the chain has locations in both the USA and Canada.

For dinner, the cheapest appetizer on the menu (apart from bread and fries) is $9.50. The least expensive main dish on the menu is a margarita pizza for $10.50, followed by chicken tacos for $14. Dessert is $5.

On top of that, you’ll want a drink, which is around $5 for a beer. Cocktails are $10+.

A 3-course dinner out at Earls with a beer will cost you $30 minimum (plus tax and tip).

If you spent an evening out during the week, and one on the weekend, you’re going to spend $60+ in one week. In one month, that’s $240 total. That $240 would go much further at the grocery store.

2. Enjoy Dinner Parties

Obviously you’ll still want to have a social life, so I’m not saying give up on seeing your friends and forgo any fun. But, rather than meeting for drinks at a trendy bar, or going out for dinner, why not host a dinner party?

Between all of your friends, you could rotate who hosts each weekend.

Make the dinner party pot-luck style where everyone brings a dish to contribute to the meal. You can find some awesome recipes on Allrecipes.com.

Or, rather than everyone bringing a dish, each week it could be the host’s turn to make the meal.

Opt for an affordable one-pot style dinner (spaghetti bolognese, chicken stew, minestrone soup, beef and bean chili, etc.) or a baked dish such as lasagna, casseroles, grilled chicken with roasted potatoes…get creative!

Buying booze from the shop rather than a bar is much cheaper. Look for sales at your local liquor store and stock up on beer, wine and spirits.

Enjoying dinner and game night with friends, or drinks and appetizers is a great way to catch up and save money while doing so.

3. Save On Accommodation Costs

Accommodation eats up a massive chunk of the budget each month. But, it doesn’t have to. If you’re looking to save money on having a roof over your head, you have a few options.

If you are currently renting, consider downsizing and moving into somewhere smaller and/or more economical.

If you’re in a townhouse, move to a basement suite or a studio apartment. If you’re in a 2-bedroom, switch to a 1-bedroom. Maybe search for a cheaper neighbourhood. There are many ways to downsize your accommodation.

Rather than renting a 1 bedroom home, can you save money by joining up with someone and having a roommate in a 2-bedroom place?

If you’re comfortable living in someone’s home, consider looking for house sitting jobs. This is my best money-saving tip for accommodation.

You can house sit/pet sit all around the world, including your home city (in many cases). If you live in one of the popular housesitting destinations (England, Australia, Canada, USA) there are a lot of house sits available). You could move from place to place every couple of weeks, all within the same city.

A Luxury House Sit in Grenada

By becoming a house sitter, you’ll receive free accommodation and (in our experience) a vehicle for your use. You’ll get to live like a local for free and enjoy the company of a furry friend.

While you’re trying to save money, this is an especially good way to keep cash in the bank. For more about the house sitting company we use and highly recommend, click here.

4. Use Rewards Credit Cards

If you’re going to spend money, you may as well earn some points while you’re at it. Americans have some great credit cards that offer cash-back and rewards when you purchase groceries. But surprisingly, there are actually some pretty good credit cards for us Canadians as well.

The Blue Cash Everyday card from American Express offers 3% cash-back on grocery store purchases up to $6,000 / year.

After that, they offer 1% cash-back on groceries at supermarkets in the USA. There are other bonuses such as 2% cash-back at the gas station, 1% on other purchases and no annual fee. Click here to learn more.

Another great card is the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card. You’ll receive unlimited 4% cash-back on dining and entertainment, 2% when shopping at supermarkets, and 1% on other purchases.

You’ll also get a $500 cash bonus after you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months, and there’s no annual fee for the first month. Click here to learn more.

There are many more cards that offer savings on groceries at supermarkets in the United States. Click here to compare.

For Canadians, even though we don’t typically have the best travel credit cards available, there are a few great credit cards for food and grocery purchases.

The American Express Cobalt gives you 5 points for every dollar at grocery stores, cafes, bars, food delivery and restaurants. The points you earn can then be redeemed for travel on any airline. When it comes to food, this is a great credit card.

You’ll also get 2 points for every dollar spent on gas, travel, rideshare (Uber), taxis, but just 1 point for all other purchases.

The only downside to the card is that there’s a $10 monthly fee, and American Express isn’t accepted everywhere (but, you can use it at Safeway, Sobey’s, Whole Foods, Co-op, Metro, FoodBasics and more).

If you prefer Visa, a great card is the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite which offers 4% back on groceries and gas. 2% cashback at drugstores and recurring bill payments and 1% on other items. The $99 annual fee is waived for the first year.

Make this the year that your plastic cards start working for you.

5. Do Some Meal Prep

One of the main reasons that people opt for pricy fast food, or frozen meals is because preparing a healthy meal can take a bit of time. Consider preparing food ahead of time and have it ready to go for the whole week.

Do you drink smoothies in the morning? Pre-cut all of the fruits and vegetables and have them portioned out into containers for each day, then toss them in the freezer.

Each morning, grab out the container, add the liquid of your choice, and blend it up. Cutting up the produce is the time-consuming part. Have it ready to go and you’ll be able to eat healthier and save money by not opting to buy breakfast on the fly.

On Sundays, create meals for the whole week. When we lived in Canada, I used to do this and it saved us buying meals out when there was “nothing to eat” in the fridge.

Frozen fruit ready for the blender

The best idea is to make a large batch of food – stews, soups, chilis, and sauces freeze well – and make a variety of them so you’re never bored with eating the same food.

Or, portion out meals into containers for the week. Make a large pot of rice, add cooked chicken and a side of vegetables to each container and you’re ready to go. Change them up with various types of vegetables, and maybe mix between couscous, quinoa, pasta and rice.

Things like casseroles and lasagna also freeze well.

Having ready-made meals in the fridge and freezer will stop you from ordering in pizza, or grabbing some fast food on the way home. Making food at home is much more economical and is one of the best money-saving tips.

6. Share Your Clothes

If you have a friend who is the same size as you, this is an excellent way to enjoy two wardrobes for the price of one! It’ll save you going out and shopping for the latest items — and most likely, purchasing things you don’t actually need.

When you “have nothing to wear”, you can call up your friend and do some weekend shopping in their closet. Clothes are expensive and most of us own way too many. Rather than buying something new, consider borrowing.

But, if you must purchase an item and your friend doesn’t have something you can borrow, buy clothing at the second-hand store, opt for outlets, or check out the sales rack.

7. Ditch The Car

Depending on where you live and your lifestyle, you could quite easily sell your car and get around by foot, bike, or public transport.

For couples who own two cars, sell one of them and share the second. Cars are the biggest money guzzlers – petrol, insurance, parking and maintenance, it’s never-ending!

Sell your car and put that money towards your next trip or paying down some debt. Walking and cycling are great ways to get exercise, while public transport options are also very affordable and practical.

When it comes to the best money-saving tips, selling your car and opting for a transit pass is always at the top.

Not only will you be able to put the money from the sale of your vehicle in your bank account, but your monthly transportation budget will be very minimal going forward.

8. Cut Back On Beauty

This one applies to both women and men. While women tend to spend more money, men are starting to put an emphasis on grooming as well.

Go into your bathroom and have a look at all the products you own. Make-up, lotions, perfumes, body wash, hair styling products, beard oils, etc.

Depending on which brands you’ve purchased, if you tallied up the cost, you’ll probably find it’s quite high.

Do you actually need all of those items? Could you get by with a cheaper brand? Could you do without 5 different types of hair products and just use 1?

Cut back on your spending on body and beauty products this year and keep more cash in your pocket.

Although those items are pricey, when it comes to money-saving tips on beauty, my biggest suggestion is to limit your time at the hair salon and spa. Or better yet, don’t go at all.

For women, a simple cut is often around $50+, while colouring or highlighting your hair will easily add another $85+ to the bill. But, you also need to tip on top of that.

Each time you visit the hair salon, you’ll spend around $125 (if you have your hair coloured). Most women do this every 2 months or so, meaning you’ll spend $750 in a year on your hair.

$750 is a round trip flight from New York to Bangkok.

$750 is 15 nights of accommodation (at $50/night).

$750 is a 5-day cruise.

$750 is a lot of groceries!

If you simply must colour your hair, purchase dye from the drugstore. If you need to cut your hair, you can learn to do it yourself, have a friend come by to cut it for you or opt for a cheaper salon to get it cut — less frequently.

Cancel all pedicures, manicures, facials, and spa treatments if you want to save money this year. It’s amazing how much money you can save just by changing your beauty regime.

9. Automate Your Savings

One of the hardest things about saving money is physically transferring the money to a savings account.

A top money-saving tip is to set up automated savings. Simply contact your bank and have them set your account to transfer $X to your savings account each month (or week, or bi-weekly). Or, you can request a certain percentage be transferred into savings.

At the start of this money-saving tips blog post, I mentioned going through your finances to see how much money you have left over after paying the necessities.

Let’s say you have $300 left. You’ll probably want $100 for entertainment in the month (meals out, movies, booze, etc.) and $100 for miscellaneous (toiletries, gifts, medicine, etc.), which leaves you $100 each month that you can transfer to your savings account.

At the end of the year, you’ll have $1,200 in savings! But, if you had to manually transfer that money, odds are you would probably end up spending it instead. Automate your savings, it’s one of my best money-saving tips.

10. Use Cash (for entertainment)

Using your credit card to pay your bills, buy groceries and all other items is what I recommend. But, if you’re budgeting yourself $100 / month for entertainment, then I suggest using cash.

We personally did this when we were trying to come up with $40,000 for a year of travel, and it’s amazing how well it works.

Basically, you have $100 in your wallet (we did $50), and that’s all. No other cash in your wallet. When that $100 is gone, so is the paid entertainment for the month.

You’ll have to get creative and enjoy free entertainment such as watching movies at home, going outdoors, hiking, or having friends over for dinner and games.

Being able to actually see the cash leave your wallet (rather than just swiping your debit card) really makes you decide whether or not you truly need that item you’re about to buy. And if you only have a set amount for the month, you may decide to save it for a special night out.

Consider using cash for your entertainment budget

11. Cancel & Consolidate

Take all of your utility bills and lay them out on the table. Evaluate each of them and decide if you can cancel any of your accounts, or at least, cut back.

Do you have the best cable package? Maybe consider purchasing a Netflix subscription (or something similar) instead for $8 / month.

When it comes to your cell phone bill, do you need that much data, talk-time, texts? For Wi-Fi, can you downgrade your plan to a slower speed (but one that will still stream shows)?

Can you cancel your landline at home?

Is there a better car/life/health insurance plan you can be on?

Could you switch to a gas water heater, rather than electric?

This is one of the top money-saving tips for those of you at home who are trying to save money. Bills seem to stack up and unless you contact your provider to either get a discount or cut back on the plan you’re currently on, you’ll continue to overspend on utilities each month.

12. Cancel Your Gym Membership

This one is huge! So many people make “going to the gym” one of their New Year’s Resolutions, but, most people stop going after a couple of months.

Depending on which gym you go to, you’ll probably spend around $50 / month. And, when you sign up, oftentimes you’re locked into a year’s worth of payments.

Rather than shell out $600+ each year, start working out at home.

There are endless FREE yoga and workout classes on YouTube and Skillshare. All you need is a mat and maybe a few weights.

Rather than joining the gym so you can run on a treadmill, go for an actual run, outside. Go hiking, walking, or cycling —mall of which are free ways to get exercise.

Doing yoga at home rather than in a studio is a great way to save money

Another option is to join the local recreation center. They’re usually very affordable and you can utilize all of the amenities (swimming pool, squash courts, running tracks, etc.). Plus, many cities have parks with climbing walls, skateboard bowls, ice-skating rinks and running tracks that you can use for free.

Get fit for free this year.

13. Quit Your Habits

I’m not here to give any lectures, but if you are a smoker, vaper, gambler, or heavy drinker, it’s time to quit — or at the very least, cut back…way back. The cost of cigarettes varies depending on which state or province you live in, but on average, they are around $8 a pack.

If you smoke a pack every 2 days, that’s $1,460 that you’re literally burning away each year.

The cost of alcohol is also very high. Either quit drinking, cut back, or purchase a cheaper brand of booze. You’ll be amazed at the amount of money you will save each month. Money that can be put towards a trip, or creating a better lifestyle for yourself.

14. Give DIY Gifts

When you think about money saving tips, cutting back on gift-giving probably isn’t at the top. But, if you consider how many birthday, wedding, baby, anniversary, Christmas, or travel gifts you’ve purchased this year (and did the math), you’ll probably be surprised at how much you spent.

Rather than purchasing presents for friends and family who are celebrating, make them something. A handmade gift is much more thoughtful anyway.

Check out Pinterest for some excellent DIY gift ideas. Or, better yet, give the gift of time. Spend time together doing an activity and create memories that will last much longer than that handbag you bought.

15. Forgo Fees

This is a good one. When you’re out and need to hit up the ATM to get some cash, only go to the ATM at your bank. Each time you utilize another bank’s machine, you’ll pay a fee. Usually, it’s about $5 per withdrawal.

When you use your credit card, make sure you pay off the balance, or at the very least, the minimum amount due, or interest (at a high rate) will start accruing.

If you pay your bills late, there will be a penalty added.

If you have a chequing account with a monthly fee that’s waived if you keep “x” amount of dollars in the account, make sure you don’t go below that amount.

All of these little fees, penalties, and interest costs can really add up over a month. If you do miss a payment, or you accidentally dip below the required amount of cash in your account, contact your bank or service provider and ask them to (please) remove the fee. They usually will.

16. Bonus! Order Groceries Online

Going into the grocery store can be a pain. Not to mention, once you’re there, there are tempting items to buy — especially near the check-out counter.

These days, it’s definitely becoming more mainstream to simply purchase your groceries online and have them delivered to your door.

Not only will you save money due to impulse purchases, and on gas for your car, but ordering online is usually much cheaper than buying in-store — especially for health foods. Compare prices of items like almond butter, coconut oil, hemp hearts, nuts, beans, canned fish, etc. on websites like Amazon before going into the grocery store.

Save even more money by signing up for Thrive Market. This platform is the Whole Foods for people who aren’t rich! Organic, non-GMO, healthy foods are available at a fraction of the cost, delivered right to your house. You can even order frozen meats and seafood, and as a bonus, shipping on items over $49 is free. Click here for details.

Finally, another company which is located in both the United States and Canada is Instacart. Basically, you log-in to an app and order your groceries from the local supermarket. Personal shoppers will then collect the items on your list and you either pick them up at the store or have them delivered to you.

Same day delivery is possible, even within 1 hour. You can purchase 1 month or 1-year memberships and enjoy unlimited deliveries. Exclusive discounts are available for Instacart members. Click here for details.

Your time is valuable. Save time and money and consider ordering online. This is one of the best ways to save money on groceries.

Did These Money-Saving Tips Help?

I hope that the above 16 money-saving ideas gave you some new and useful ways to keep more money in your pocket this year. When you’re saving for a trip, wanting to work for yourself, or simply need to pay down some debt, every penny counts.

My final tip is to make a realistic goal for yourself, one that will allow you to still enjoy your life while putting money away.

If you have a whiteboard, write down how much money you want in your savings account at the end of the year. Focus on that amount, and utilize the above steps to help you realize your money-saving goal.

As always, please feel free to comment down below with your best money-saving tips, or email us with comments and suggestions.

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