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queenofbaws · 2 years

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Hey Queenie! Happy, fluffy prompts for NYE you say?🧐 You know I'm gonna shamelessly use your generosity to push the Laura/Max agenda, right? I've gotta say, I like the look of prompt No.1 on that OTP NYE prompt list (about the resolutions) and Oneliner No. 9 (NYE proposal)... Pick whichever you like better (or find a way to combine them if you dare😈) - Most importantly: have fun with it! I hope you have a great time over the holidays and throroughly enjoy the last week of 2022!💕

“Am I going to sound like a total Grinch if I say I’m glad we’re not going the party route this year?” Laura asked as she stretched out on the couch, her fuzzy pjs rumpled and her hair still messy with sleep despite the afternoon sun filtering in through the apartment’s blinds. “It just takes so much pressure off, not having to drive to and from someone else’s place in the dark, not having to make small-talk with a million people…not having to put on pants,” she added with a laugh, the sound turning into a groan when Silas, their not-so-puppy-sized Labrador pup hopped up onto the couch to lie right on top of her.

“Doesn’t make you sound like a Grinch at all, hun,” Max said, the size of the apartment making it so he barely had to raise his voice for her to hear him from the bedroom. “Buuut mostly that’s just because the Grinch really only cared about Christmas. You could be a new Grinch, though! One that, uh…shoot, okay, hang on, how would you go about ruining an entire village’s New Year’s Eve?”

She scratched Silas’s big, floppy ears as she thought on it. “I could…replace all the confetti with glitter.” From the bedroom, she heard Max pull in a scandalized gasp, and that had her laughing all over again. “That’s more of a long game, though. It’d probably be really pretty in the moment, it’d just take them until the next ice age to clean up after. If I really wanted to ruin the night itself, I could…um…ooh, sneak into all their little Who-Houses and block New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on all their tvs.”

“Don’t even joke about that – I heard they got Ariana Grande this year.”

“Oh, can’t miss that,” Laura kidded, craning her head back to watch him as he joined her in the living room. “Whatcha got there?” she asked when she spotted the piece of loose-leaf Max was looking down at, his fingers absently folding and unfolding it along a middle crease.

He didn’t look up from it, but his mouth turned up in a smile all the same. “Right, like I’m going spill my New Year’s secrets to the Grunch.”

“I…okay, hang on. No.”

“It’s a no on the Grunch?”

“It’s a no on the Grunch. Can we try another vowel, maybe? Like…how do we feel about the Granch? Hold on, no, that one’s…also bad. The…Gronch?”

“The Grench is probably easier to rhyme stuff with. For the song. Wrench, bench, drench, silen…ch…?”

“Grench it is.” Laura gave Silas one last hearty ear-scratch then wriggled out from under him, standing and stretching as she joined Max. She set her chin on his shoulder, but before she could get even the sneakiest peek at what was on the paper, he folded it shut tight and angled it away from her.

“What did I just say? Go Grench up someone else’s stuff.” He leaned in to press a kiss to the bridge of her nose before laughing, unfolding the wrinkled paper again. “This is…incredibly embarrassing, but…I was going through my drawers just now and I think, uh…I think I found last year’s list of New Year’s resolutions. Or this one’s? The ones I thought I’d do this year, let’s put it this way.”

“Uh oh.”

“I mean, okay, it’s not…it’s not that bad,” he said, his defensiveness purely for show. “Look, I definitely did this one! So I can cross that off, no prob! Do you have a pen? Here, let me find a pen…”

Laura snatched the paper away from him as she felt him move, and by the time she’d straightened it out in her own hands and interpreted the worst of his scribbly chickenscratch, she could hear him rummaging around in the kitchenette’s junk drawer. “Well one thing’s for sure,” she snickered under her breath, “cursive wasn’t a priority this year.”

One, read the sheet, Learn Spanish. Two, Work out more. Three, Train Silas. Four, Less fast food, more homecooked meals. And then, perplexingly, Five, DO THE THING!!!

Laura flipped the sheet over a couple times, just to make sure there weren’t any other surprises written on the other side. She turned as Max came back, pen in hand, but when he went to grab the list from her, she held it out of reach as he had a moment ago. “I’m sorry, which one of these do you think you did?” she teased, leaning further and further back the more he reached out towards her. “Cuz I gotta be honest, Max, I…don’t think any of these happened.”

“And that’s why you’re the Grench.” He made another swipe for the list, and when Laura ducked out of the way, tongue stuck out, he turned to the dog lazing on the couch. “Okay, you’re gonna make me pull out the big guns, huh? That’s fine. Silas! Sic her!” Max pointed an accusatory finger towards her as he gave the command, and Silas did perk his ears up…for all of a second. Then he went back to lying down, his tail thumping against a throw pillow. “C’mon, boy, we talked about this…”

With the brattiest grin she could manage, Laura held the list back out to Max, giving her fingers a teasing flourish when he grabbed it up. “Well, I guess we know which one you didn’t do…”

“All right, all right, perhaps I overestimated some of the intensive guard dog training we’ve been doing all year.”

“Uh huh.”

“Every single day.”

“Okay.”

“We wait until you’re at work or asleep, and then all bets are off.” He laughed, crossing something off the list before shaking his head down at it again. “Hey, since I totally didn’t judge you for sounding like the Grunch earlier – ”

“Grench,” she corrected, probably a little too quickly, given how awful the name was to begin with.

“ – am I going to sound like a total sap if I tell you I’m actually kind of…I dunno, disappointed that I didn’t do this stuff? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know pretty much everyone drops their resolutions like a hot box of rocks after February or whatever, but…it’s still sort of a bummer.” He glanced her way again, and that time she wasn’t so sure his defensiveness was of the joking variety. “That’s probably dumb, huh?”

She blew a raspberry as she tied her hair back out of her face, peering back down at the list with him. “What? No way! There’s nothing dumb about it, babe – feel your feelings.” Her eyes slowly moved down the list once more, and as she tucked herself against his side, his arm instinctively wrapping around her to bring her closer, a plan began to hatch.

Something resembling a plan, anyway.

“You know what?” she asked, jabbing a finger at the list. “This is what we’re going to do today.”

“What?”

“Yeah…yeah! We don’t have a party to go to, we don’t have people expecting us to show up and be social, so…yeah! Let’s resolve some resolutions!”

Max brightened at that, giving her waist a squeeze. “And the Grench’s heart grew three sizes that day…I’ll save this New Year’s, the Whos in Whoville all heard her say…”

It was with a playful shove that she slid out of his grasp, rolling her eyes and flapping her hand like a sock puppet. “Put some shoes on, I think I know how we can kill a couple birds with one stone,” she said over her shoulder as she headed for the bedroom, trying to decide which of her jackets would best hide her pjs. “Oh, but hey,” Laura added, pulling open one of the dresser drawers to rummage for a pair of socks. “What’s ‘The Thing?’”

“Uh?”

“The…The Thing!” she said again, rolling her eyes at herself that time. “On the list! Number five said ‘Do The Thing.’”

“Yeah?”

“Sooo,” she drew the word out as she pulled her socks on. “What is it? The Thing? That’s what you crossed off just now, wasn’t it?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’ve got no idea.”

She walked back out of the bedroom to find Max lacing his snow boots, and all she could do was sigh. “You don’t know? It was on the list!”

“Well yeah, but I mean…I think you’ll agree, it wasn’t particularly, uh, descriptive.” He flashed her a sheepish grin when he caught the look on her face, the one that was only pretending to be exasperated. “Look, whatever it is, or was, I think it’s pretty safe to assume I probably did it. Right?”

The jingle of his leash had Silas bounding after them. Laura bent to clip it to his collar, shaking her head the whole time. “For sure. For sure.”

---

To his credit, Max hadn’t complained once during the outing to the pet store. Those bags of dog food weren’t exactly light, but he’d handled them like a champ, even when their detour down the squeaky toy aisle lasted longer than expected. The grocery store, however, turned out to be a different story.

“When my arms fall off, please promise me you’ll tell my mom I lost them doing something heroic,” he grunted, wincing as Laura put yet another two-liter of soda into the handbasket he was holding. “Or, I don’t know, super masculine at least. Like…oh, like arm wrestling a lumberjack.”

“Oh, hi Mrs. Brinly. Yeah, the arm thing. It’s…kind of hard to explain. So we were buying pancake mix, you know, like you do, and there was only one box left. Max went for it at the same time as this huge, rugged, beardy guy wearing flannel, and wouldn’t you know it, next thing I know, they’re arm wrestling on a crate of flour.”

“Geez, you’re good at that. Too good.”

“Why thank you!” To even him out, she placed a bottle of juice in the other handbasket, wrinkling her nose up in a mischievous grin as she got a good look at everything they’d picked up so far. “That’s probably enough for a New Year’s in, don’t you think? We got the drinks, we got snacks, we got…”

“An anvil…”

“An anvil,” she agreed. “Aaand…all the fixings for, say it with me, a good old-fashioned homecooked meal. Instead of fast food. Between that and all this heavy lifting, I think you’ve totally earned two more checkmarks on that resolution list.”

Max didn’t need to be told twice – the instant ‘That’s probably enough’ had come out of her mouth, he’d turned on his heel, making for the cash registers. There was a hot second there were he wobbled with the weight of the baskets, but he caught himself just as quickly, shooting her a look that made it very clear he was awfully proud of his own resilience. “Totally.”

“Totally!”

“This is more working out than I remember doing last year.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she joked, snagging a big box of Christmas tree-shaped chocolates from the discount rack. She’d had every intention of carrying it herself – really! – but Max made a dramatic ‘ahem’ sound and attempted to lift one of the baskets, so she wedged it in there to appease him. “And let’s be real, most people are definitely ordering pizza or something tonight, so us having a nice sit-down dinner? That’s gotta count.”

“Gotta,” he agreed. “Now, I’ll be the first to tell you I don’t really see how we’re going to swing the rest of the list, but…”

“Now who’s being all Grenchy?” She watched him struggle to lift the baskets up to the checkout counter for all of five seconds before she took pity on him and his overtaxed arms, scootching close to begin pulling each item out one by one to put on the cashier’s conveyor belt. “Don’t sweat it,” she said with a peck to his cheek. “I’m resolved to resolve these resolutions.”

“How resolute of you.”

She laughed when he set the empty baskets down and dramatically began rubbing his biceps, his relief brought to an abrupt end as she teased, “Can’t wait to see you carry this stuff all the way back to the car.”

---

There was a certain sort of joy that came with hearing your very grown-up boyfriend following very closely along with Dora the Explorer. She wasn’t sure it was a sort of joy she had a name for, exactly, only that it more or less had the same effect of getting the giggles in an important class – if she didn’t pour all of her focus into something else, it was too easy to collapse into delighted laughter. Already her stomach hurt, and it’d only been one episode!

“Sounds like you’re making good progress in there!” she called into the kitchen, taking it upon herself to pick up the resolution list from the side table where it’d been left, crossing out numbers two and four.

“Gracias,” Max called back over the sound of a singing map and the sizzle of cooking chicken. “Which is Spanish for thank you.”

“You don’t say.” Laura stood back up and ambled to join him in the kitchen, walking up and wrapping her arms around him from behind. “Smells good,” she said, stealing a quick finger-scoop of mashed potatoes. “Have you figured out how to say ‘smells good’ in Spanish yet?”

“No,” Max pretended to sigh, flipping a piece of chicken and stepping back into her as he dodged a small spatter of oil. “Which, if you were wondering, is Spanish for ‘no.’”

“Amazing.”

“Right? I really feel like I’m expanding my horizons here.”

“You know, I was thinking about it just now, and didn’t you take, like…three years of Spanish back in high school? Why do I remember you taking Spanish in high school?”

“Uh, that would be because I took three years of Spanish back in high school. I just had…other priorities.”

“Wow. Artful way to say you didn’t pay attention.”

“Thank you! Er, gracias. It’s nowhere near as good as your lumberjack story, but it gets the job done. Can you pass me the pepper, maybe?”

She groaned into the back of his shirt as though letting go of him was a physical pain, resisting for as long as she could. “Si,” she laughed, dropping her arms from his middle and turning to look around until she spotted the pepper shaker on the countertop. “Which, just fyi – ”

“I know what ‘si’ means, Laura.”

“Are you sure?”

“Si. Which is Spanish for ‘duh.’”

“Oh, is it?”

“Mhm. It is.”

“Learn something new every day.” After she handed him the pepper, she turned back around again, looking down at Silas as he lay in the doorway, his head on his paws and his big, dark eyes melting her heart with that puppy-dog begging he was just so good at. “I sure hope you have ideas for how you’re gonna train this one to do anything before the year’s out in a few hours, because I’ve got nothing.”

Seeming to sense he was about to get attention – or, even better, some of that chicken – Silas lifted his head up, his tail giving a tentative wag. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a smart lil’ guy…if anything, he was maybe a little too smart, since he always seemed to know exactly how to get his way with the least effort possible. It’d been sheer dumb luck that’d gotten him to walk on a leash; everything else was pretty much a no-go, from the simplest tricks to basic obedience. The idea of teaching him to do…well, much of anything before the clock struck midnight wasn’t just far-fetched, it was almost ridiculous!

Max hardly seemed daunted, though. Maybe crossing everything else off his resolution list had inflated his confidence. “Oh, c’mon, it can’t be that hard,” he said, very, very pointedly ignoring the look she gave him in response to that. “Right, bud? You’re trainable, aren’t you?”

Silas’s tail thumped a little louder against the floor.

“See? He’s down.”

“He’s down with that chicken, that’s what he is.”

“And that’s all we need! Now, watch and learn…” He cut off a sliver of chicken and checked to see whether it was cooked. It must’ve been, because he blew on it a couple times to cool it off, then held it up where Silas could see it. “Okay, you ready for game time, boy?” Max asked, grinning Laura’s way when Silas got up onto his feet, not just his tail but his entire back end wagging back and forth at the promise of sweet, sweet chicken. “How about…sit! Sit! I, uh…no? Okay, uh…paw?” He held his other hand, the one not holding the chicken, out towards him, wiggling his fingers. “Shake?”

Laura couldn’t help but grin right back, folding her arms across her chest as she watched the spectacle. Not that ‘spectacle’ was the right word. ‘Spectacle’ sort of suggested something was happening – anything. That wasn’t really the case.

“Roll over?” Max tried, his voice taking on a plaintive tone. “Uh…speak? Speak! Um…” Again, he shot a look towards her, his grin significantly more sheepish now. Something must’ve occurred to him then, because she swore she could almost see the cartoonish lightbulb appear over his head. “Okay, boy, how about this? Just stand there. Don’t do anything else. Stay! Stay.”

They paused for a beat, the two of them, just watching to see what Silas would do.

And when he did absolutely nothing, Max tossed him the piece of chicken and beamed. “Good boy! There, see? Totally trainable.”

“I can’t believe I doubted you. You know, maybe this year one of your resolutions should be building us some shelves for all the dog show trophies he’s definitely going to win.”

“Maybe it should,” he laughed. “But hey, could you do me one more favor and get some plates down? It’s definitely that I need to flip this chicken again, by the way. Has nothing to do with my arms feeling like wet spaghetti noodles. Because they don’t. At all.”

She hummed in agreement, stopping to pet Silas’s head before reaching up to the cupboard where they kept the plates. “You should workout less next year, while we’re drafting new resolutions. Give yourself a break, you know? You really pushed yourself this year.”

“Tell me about it.”

---

It was crazy how quickly the day had flown by. Laura felt like it’d only been a minute ago that she’d been lazing on the couch with the sun on her face, but as they sat surfing channels while waiting for Ariana Grande’s much-anticipated New Year’s performance, the world outside their blinds was pitch black except for a few fat snowflakes drifting by every so often.

She stretched her arms out with a groan of exertion, then snuggled back against Max’s side, tucking her feet underneath the blanket they kept draped over the couch’s arm. “So, whaddya think?” she asked as they breezed past the millionth commercial for the millionth gym to be played in the past three minutes. “Who had a better change of heart – me or the Grinch?”

“Hmm,” Max hummed, the arm draped around her shoulders moving just enough that he could curl a piece of her hair around his finger. “The Grinch.”

“Um, excuse me?” Playfully, she pushed his hand away, angling herself to stare him down. “Explain yourself.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. I worked some crazy New Year’s miracles today! Or, some crazy New Year’s technicalities, anyway. Which are pretty much the same thing, honestly.”

“Okay, fair, fair.” Without her cuddling up beside him, Max laced his fingers behind his head and rested back against them. “But…to be totally fair…look at it this way. The Grinch? Brought Christmas to a whole town.”

“After stealing it from them,” she pointed out. “In the dead of night. And like, lying to a child. And eating all their Who-hash. Whatever that is.”

He acted as though he hadn’t heard her, his gaze taking on a distant cast, as though he were really thinking about the comparison. “You, on the other hand, I will admit, definitely saved my year by helping me cross off almost all my resolutions, but – ”

“Wait,” Laura said, sitting up a little bit straighter. “Waitwaitwait. Almost? What’s this almost?” When he didn’t immediately answer, she threw her arms out to her sides. “We crossed everything off your list, Max!”

His eyes snapped back to her, his expression one of abject doubt. “Uh. Okay, only, weee…didn’t.”

“We did! I…we did!” Only now he had her doubting herself, too. One by one, Laura raised her fingers, counting resolutions off on them. “You worked out more, sort of. And you taught Silas a trick, sort of. You learned Spanish…sort of. And we had a homecooked meal instead of fast food! Oh, and you did The Thing, I guess. Probably. Whatever that was.”

“Whatever that was,” he agreed. “But hun, that’s only five.”

She rolled her eyes to him, searching his face for any sign he was kidding around. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t, but…but that couldn’t be right! It’d been a minute since she’d looked at his list, sure, so it was possible that she was forgetting something, and yet…

Instead of arguing with him, she untangled herself from the blanket and walked over to the side table where they’d left the list. She picked it up and scanned it again, and while Max’s handwriting was just as terrible as it had been that morning, no matter how many times she read over it or flipped it to its other side, there were only the same five resolutions.

“Max,” she sighed, turning back towards him with the list in her hands. “Babe, there’s only fi – ” Only Max wasn’t on the couch anymore; he must’ve gotten up when she had, because he was standing right in front of her, that same sheepish smile on his face as he plucked the list from her hands and folded it over, sliding it into his own back pocket.

“Okay, actually, I sort of fibbed a little,” he said, and something about his tone, or how quickly he was talking, or something, gave her heart a tiny flutter. “There weren’t six. There were just five, like you said. Buuut…uh, I crossed one off sort of, um, let’s say prematurely? So I kind of…need your help with that one too. Since you’ve been helping me with the others all day.”

“Oookay,” she said slowly. “I…wait, is this about ‘Do The Thing?’ You liar! I knew something was off when you were all ‘Oh, I probably did it!’ There was no way you forgot what it was! I should’ve…” Her words ran dry, though, as Max took her hand in his and, with the other, brought out a small box from the pocket where he’d stashed his resolution list.

“It…is about ‘Do The Thing,’” Max admitted. “Except, like I said, I sort of…need your help on this one, so…” Squeezing her hand tighter, he used the index finger of his other hand to lever the box open, revealing the ring nestled inside. “Do you wanna…do the thing? With me? If it’s, y’know…not too cliché to propose on New Year’s Eve?”

She didn’t even need to think about it.

Laura grabbed Max’s face in both her hands, pulling him into an exuberant kiss he gladly returned. “Yes!” she laughed, grinning so hard her cheeks began to hurt. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Let’s do the thing – let’s do the thing!” And just like that, he slid the ring onto her finger, she pulled him into another kiss, and on the tv behind them a crowd cheered as the clock rolled over to midnight, the new year starting off precisely how it was meant to.

#the quarry #lauramax #laura kearney #max brinly #theartofdreaming1 #queenie writes supermassive #new year prompts #ohohohOOOOO is that a CHALLENGE i spy????? well well well...how can a girl say no to a dare like that ;P hehehehehehehe #i am only TOO happy to further the lauramax agenda 😈#i hope youre enjoying the holiday season too!!! :D happy ALMOST new year!!!!

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