“ I love these lips, ” she giggles into chandler’s mouth. rumpled sheets are bunched around their naked bodies, though the last round was hours ago, when the sun hadn’t yet risen. now, birds tweet their good mornings, and distantly, a man sings. it’s all so weird and so strange and, honestly? so, so charming. there is nowhere else kathy would rather be. “ you don’t have to go in to work, do you? tell them you have your period. no, tell them you have morning sickness. that’ll do it. ”
the one where once you meet your soulmate, it’s physically uncomfortable to be apart from them for too long.
being physically close to people is easy for lake. she thrives off of it, craves the touch, the intimacy, all that comes with the concept of corporeal intimacy. BUT only for a moment. she doesn’t like to stick to one person; she jumps from one to the other with ease, always fleeting before physical can turn into something more sentimental. and she doesn’t mind doing that– it’s easy for her, this touch-and-go kind of superficial affection. and then she moved into an apartment in new york, and then she met chandler, and he fucked everything up.
her parents had been soulmates, her father had told her when she was little; though he had always told her out of spite, as a way to blame her (you took my soulmate from me). they could never be too far from each other, not without it feeling wrong, like an itch on their backs they couldn’t scratch. her father was almost obsessed with her mother, and lake had always thought she probably liked it; she liked the control she had on him, on her brother. would lake have been the same?
all in all, lake thought soulmates were bullshit, and she wanted no part in it.
but she meets chandler. he’s lanky and awkward and adorably charming and she shamelessly flirts with him, relishes in making him stutter and flush. it’s fun, and she decides she likes her new neighbor, and she’s content... until she leaves. when it starts, she barely notices it. it’s a small kink in her neck, an itch on the back of her hand, a tiny headache that comes and goes in an instant. but they visit each other often, whether it’s because she ran out of milk and is too lazy to walk to the store or because you have to see this new movie, it’s fucking nuts!-- and she can only go for so long before noticing that her aches and pains wear away when she’s with him.
the day it clicks for her, she’s at his apartment on a saturday night, eating takeout food that she ordered too much of. throughout the week, she had been fostering a migraine that only got worse, no matter how many pills she took, no matter how much she rested. and then, the moment chandler opens the door, it vanishes. she talks with him and laughs and flirts, like she usually does, but when she closes the door to her apartment behind her, she PANICS.
she doesn’t want this. she doesn’t want to feel that pull that her father talked about. GOD, no. and yes, her adoptive parents felt that pull towards each other, and it was sweet and beautiful and admirable, but that doesn’t erase years of trauma. that doesn’t make her fear it any less, doesn’t make the anxiety settle within her. nonetheless, she does what she would with any fear: she toys with it, skirts around the lines until they become too blurred for her to notice. she’s a bit of a masochist, she thinks. sometimes, she’ll see how long she can go, how much discomfort she can endure; other times, she’ll give in, she’ll show up at his apartment with some stupid reasoning behind it. they never talk about it, and she doesn’t know if he feels it too, the urge to be closer to one another. she’s heard of that-- people whose soulmate doesn’t belong to them. she thinks she’d be happier if that were the case.
she sets limits for herself, though. she won’t spend more than a certain amount of hours with him, they won’t go on dates, she won’t sleep at his apartment nor him at hers. small little rules that keep her in check, even when she constantly flirts with danger.
then one night, she invites him over, because there’s a horror movie she really wants to watch but she doesn’t want to watch it alone (okay, her excuse are becoming less and less believable, but something is better than nothing). they eat popcorn and she drops her head to his shoulder and they spend more time laughing at the movie than actually being scared of it. time passes, and their eyelids grow tired, and they fall asleep.
it’s the best goddamn sleep she’s had in YEARS.
she wakes up at 2 am with her head on his chest, her legs tangled with his, and one of his arms draped loosely around her while the other hangs off the side of the couch. she groans softly, reaching towards the ground and retrieving her phone. she sees the time, her eyes widen, and she starts patting at chandler’s chest. he stirs awake, his words slurring together as he tries to stop her hand.
“get up, babe-- fuck, uh, chandler, we fell asleep.” she mumbled, getting off him. he squints his eyes up at her, sleep still hanging heavily on his eyes.
“huh?” is his brilliant response. she nudges his legs until they slide off the couch, and he whines in protest.
“we fell asleep during the movie.” she rubs at her eyes. “you should go home.”
that seems to make him wake up faster, and he sits up, fixing the glasses that had been resting lopsided on the bridge of his nose. “go home?”
“yeah.”
“oh.” he sits there, staring at her, face screwed tightly, like he’s thinking too hard about something. “what time is it?”
“too late for you to be here.” she cocks her head with a smile, even though all she’d thinking is please leave please leave please leave.
“i mean, debatable. it could just be too early.”
she snickers despite herself. “your jokes are shit when you’re sleepy.”
he puts a hand to his heart, drops his head against the back of the couch. “say what you really feel.”
she smiles to hide her panicking on the inside and slips a hand underneath his head, lifting it back up. “you need to go.” she thinks she feels him leaning into her hand, and quickly takes it back. her smile falters.
“i mean, i can just-- uh, can i just, you know, stay here? i’ll leave in the morning. like i was never here.” he says, and pats her couch affectionately after a few seconds. “-- you have an extremely comfy couch.” she knows, as a matter of fact, that she doesn’t. her couch is bought off craigslist, and it’s weird and lumpy.
“no.” she says, pursing her lips and standing up, making her way to the entrance. “you need to go.” chandler follows behind her eventually, albeit very reluctantly.
“i’ll literally sneak off, lake. my lankiness does lend itself to me being really stealthy--”
“chandler.” she turns to him, looks him in the eyes, feels so fucking at peace right now, and she hates it. “you need to go.”
“... are you sure it wouldn’t be better for me to stay?” there’s something in the way he says it, the way his eyes search hers, the borderline desperation of it all; this was the best sleep he’s gotten too. it makes her take a step back. he feels it. she knows he does. fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck. she was leaning so heavily on him not feeling a thing-- on her just quietly pining after him, and at some point, one or the other would move away, and they’d lose contact, and she’d get high on migraine pills for the rest of her days. but he feels the same FUCKING thing.
“i’m sure.” is what she settles on, with a tight-knit smile and a cock of her head. casual, careless, indifferent. he stares at her for a moment.
“come on, out you go.” she playfully pushes him out, grinning lazily at him. there’s another part of her brain going please stay please stay please stay. she shuts it out.
“your migraine, the one you told me about. uh, is it, you know, gone?” he tries to be casual about it, but she’s almost always been able to catch those small bits of nervousness that plague his movements and words. do you feel what i feel? is what he means to say.
but he wouldn’t know, would he? that she’s a terrific liar. “nah, it’s still pounding, but i’ll deal with it.” not at all. what she means to say is: i am so scared of what having you in my life will do to us. i am so scared of you falling in love with me. i am so scared of becoming my mother.
his shoulders droop, the smile on his face stutters until it looks almost pained. he nods, wishes her a goodnight, and leaves. she dry-swallows two pills and tries to sleep. sleep doesn’t come.
she’d just gotten up from the couch, where she had had her feet draped over chandler’s lap and was sharing a bag of chips with him. there’s this small twitch of her brows, a slight furrow, though she balances it with a smile that slides easily onto her lips.
it’s not that the words catch her off guard, per se. she’s aware chandler has somewhat of a crush on her (at least, she ASSUMES so by the way he reacts to her flirty jabs-- he stammers, he gets flustered--), and she thinks it’s cute, and she might play into it consciously every now and then. but she keeps her DISTANCE from people... maybe not physically but emotionally, to a certain extent. so she chuckles, tucks her hands into her back pockets and sways slightly.
“hm-- maybe next time.” she decides with a tilt of her head, then she leans forward and down towards him, pressing a kiss to his cheek, playing into it. “see ya, neighbor.” she mumbles, pulling back with a coy smile and giving a small salute before leaving.
AUSTIN was one of the neighbor kids who lived close to Aunt Janet. He was cool, played forward in soccer, and didn’t want anything to do with the Crain kids. His parents were divorced by for the most part he used that to his advantage instead of allowing it to be a deterrent. He was apart of the popular crowd but would be polite if he saw.the kids in the hallway. Nell’s junior year of high school they had the same gym period. Gym was arguably Nell’s worst subject and it was absolute torture to have to run a mile on a Monday when she didn’t get any sleep the night before. There was a particular Friday when they were supposed to pay dodgeball and Nell had a bad night prior. She looked like hell with dark circles under her eyes, and it had been crying the period before. And he noticed. He didn’t say anything but rubbed the back of his neck and picked Nell first. Which caused the other team to snicker. However when she wast the last player standing on her team and her fallen teammates cheered her on sidelines. She CAUGHT the ball, and suddenly they were all back in the game, and they won. Nell never talked about it, but years later she thanked him. They’re friends on facebook and Nell often will wish him happy birthday. It was a small impact, but a meaningful one.
‘ whenever she asks me for the latin names of any of our plants, i just give her the names of rappers. ’
parks & rec starters / accepting !
To anyone else, the notion that rappers’ names could pass for the latin names of plants would most likely be utterly ridiculous. After all, how many plants could there possibly be that make use of the quantifier ‘lil’? But Jim personally knew at least a handful of people this idea would work on. Dependent, of course, on if Dwight decided to spoil his fun by being a killjoy. If it weren’t for him, it would be a hilarious prank to pull on someone— like Michael. But where Michael was, one would usually find Dwight. ❝ That is genius, actually. I might have to— can I borrow that? You think it would work on things other than plants? ❞ Lips pressed together, pondering the prospect. ❝ We’ve got a know-it-all farmer who would definitely call me out for not knowing the real scientific names of plants. ❞ Shoulders shrugged, lips quirking in a show of confusion. ❝ Like they’re something everyone is just supposed to know. ❞
❝ what i don’t understand is how you can be so nonchalant in this situation. ❞
YEAH, UM, THIS WAS DEFINITELY HER FAULT. His and hers if she’s being honest. He shouldn’t have followed her like some CREEP ( cough, concerned friend ) and she shouldn’t have looked so good, sneaking into the abandoned ( ha, sure! ) compound. Fast-forward twenty minutes and they’re both hanging upside down over a boiling, bubbling vat of Scooby knows what!
“ Kind of a cliche, don’t you think? ” Daphne had the nerve to say. Which explains why now she has to wrestle with a sweaty, disgusting rag of cloth in her mouth. Her lipstick is definitely smudged, and as if that weren’t bad enough, there was a definite chance they were going to DIE here.
Definite… but not certain.
What happened next might have been a scene from a movie. Except in real life there were no stunt doubles. No do overs. Just one chance to get this right. Daphne prayed she’d get this right.
Her body swung, pendulum-like. Her heart swayed with it, clanging into every corner of her throat as if to say, HELLO! REMEMBER ME?
Don’t you worry, Chandler. She’d get you both out there. Daphne had to.
