seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Colombia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Lebanon
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Switzerland
seen from China
I made this for @averageace
🥂
calicia under the cut for ashlee <3 i wrote this in ten minutes in public, but idk. I love ashlee a lot and she deserves nice things
Chris shows up with his duffel bag and the room he sleeps smells like wet cardboard.
“Sorry,” Madison says, smiling at Travis, his arm around her shoulder. “A little bit of a roof leak. But Nick is staying at a friend’s for the week, and I changed the sheets.”
“He’ll be fine,” Travis says, cheerful. “What’s a thing between brothers?”
Alicia is leaning her shoulder against the hallway wall. “I would change the sheets again,” she says, pitched low just for his ears and bored sounding.
Travis whispers something into Maddie’s ear and they both giggle, practically scampering down the hall into the master bedroom. Chris watches them go.
“Lasagna in the oven,” Alicia informs him. “Don’t burn it in the microwave.” Her door clicks shut behind her.
Chris looks at his duffel bag, resting on the floor by his sneakered feet. “Okay,” he says to no one.
++
Nick’s room smells like cologne and cheap deodorant. Chris drops his bag on the floor and lies on his back on Nick’s bed.
He wakes up in the middle of the night and can hear the springs creaking in the room next to him. It drives him out to the kitchen and he watches the microwave plate rotate in the black room, the tiny light just enough to mesmerize as he waits for the blinking numbers to count down to zero.
He turns around with the plate balanced in his fingers and starts violently, the fork clattering to the floor and hot tomato sauce burning through his shirt. He yelps, his heart racing.
“They’re loud,” Alicia says, barefoot and mussed hair and stifling a yawn against the inside of her wrist. She swoops the plate out of his hands. “Your shirt is dirty.”
Chris rips a paper towel off the roll and wipes at himself, glowering. “You scared me.”
Alicia settles in a kitchen nook chair, long bare legs folded up underneath her, tiny shorts disappearing under the hem of a men’s cut t-shirt that’s much too big for her. “Mm,” she acknowledges, and licks sauce off her thumb.
Chris hovers uncertainly between the fridge and the table. “That was mine.”
“Mm,” Alicia agrees. She smirks at him.
Chris lets the moment drag, thinking. He goes into the freezer and finds ice cream behind the flash frozen bag of mixed vegetables and chicken thighs. Gets a spoon out of the drawer and offers it to her.
Alicia narrows her eyes. Then her smirk eases into something softer, something that matches her pajamas and her scrubbed clean face and the little bit of sleep gunk in the corner of her lips. She accepts his trade and he settles across from her and eats his lasagna while she licks vanilla bean ice cream from a teaspoon and watches him, curious.
She finished before he does, seemingly deciding she’s bored. She stands up, abrupt, and then leaves. At first Chris thinks she’s gone to the bathroom, but the minutes go by and she doesn’t return, the container melting onto the table. He leaves the dishes in the sink and falls asleep on the sofa.
++
They wave goodbye from the front door. Maddie tells them to have fun at their summer program while Travis stores the suitcases in the trunk of the car. Travis pulls him aside and tells him to man up and look after his sister.
“Not my sister,” Chris mutters, then lowers his gaze when his father stares him down.
They wave goodbye.
“There’s no summer program,” Alicia says, watching the car grow small and smaller before it turns a corner and disappears.
Chris blinks. “What are we supposed to do?”
Alicia shrugs. “Whatever the fuck you want. Nick will probably come back at some point for money and food. Maybe laundry, if it’s a good week.”
“Oh,” Chris says, for lack of anything else to say.
“Yup.” Alicia flashes a smile at him. She hikes a bag over her shoulder and walks down the front steps towards the bus stop on the corner. “Don’t do anything Nick would do.”
++
Chris lies on his back on Nick’s bed and stares at the ceiling. He plays a game on his phone. Finds a bag of chips in the bedside table and chomps his way through them and leaves the crumbs on the sheets. Takes a nap. Turns on the television and lets his brain zone out
Alicia comes home at two in the morning. He listens to her spend four minutes getting her key in the lock and giggling to herself before she spills into the house, tripping over the edge of the rug and laid out on the hardwood floor, dissolved into peals of laughter.
Chris goes over and locks the front door. He offers her his hand up and she scoffs, smacking it aside. “What’d you even do all day?” she asks, only the littlest bit slurred.
“Television.”
“Lame.” Alicia crawls over to the edge of the couch, slow and wavering and Chris follows. She pulls herself up and stretches out. A sit com blares on the screen. “Lame,” she decrees again.
“That’s my spot.”
Alicia sticks her tongue out
Chris lifts her legs, causing her to yelp in surprise, and sits before settling her legs into his lap. She grumbles for a moment, then sighs, head lolling against the cushions. “Did Nick come by?”
“No.” Her face almost crumples, then forcibly smoothes out. She snorts.
“Typical.”
She’s asleep within the hour and Chris thinks he should carry her to bed or at least get a blanket and leave her to rest but instead he slouches down, her warm weight in his lap and the soft rasp of her breathing. He resigns himself to a neckache in the morning and closes his eyes.
++
“I’m bored,” Alicia announces at dinnertime. “What are you doing?”
“Mac and cheese.”
She comes up, bumping against his shoulder, and peers into the pot. “Enough for two?”
“If you think you can keep it down.”
She pulls a face at him. “Hangover has passed, thanks.”
Chris shrugs. “There’s enough.”
She kisses his cheek. “Thanks, baby brother.” She wanders off to the couch before he can figure out how to respond, heat rising in his face and his rabbit quick heart.
++
Chris wakes up when the window creaks. He shoots upright and slaps the bedside light on and Nick yells, one leg slung over the sill. “Jesus Christ!”
“What are you doing,” Chris demands, glowering.
“What are you doing,” Nick snaps, “it’s my fucking room.”
“There’s a front fucking door,” Chris retorts.
“Whatever.” Nick climbs in and snaps the window shut. “The other room?”
“Roof,” Chris responds, short and still annoyed at being woken so suddenly and with a scare.
“Sucks,” Nick says, not sounding even a little genuine.
Chris folds his arms. “I’m not moving.”
“I don’t care,” Nick says, cheerful, and leaves the room.
Chris blinks. He stops just short of pressing her ear against the wall, straining to hear:
The creak of Alicia’s door, the click of it shutting, and then the barest rumble of low low murmur of voices.
He waits for a long time but never hears anything else.
++
Nick is gone by the time Chris hauls himself out of bed. Alicia is eating ice cream viciously and glowering at the television; there’s a fresh hickey under her jaw. He sits next to her and they stare blankly at soap operas. She goes on, determined and methodical, until it’s all gone, then stares into the empty carton.
“I’m going to throw up,” she says eventually.
Chris can’t think of a single thing to say. She leaves and he hears her in the bathroom, retching.
++
He wakes up because Alicia is crawling across him in the middle of the night. “It’s genetic,” he muses, after he realizes he’s not being attacked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but probably.” Alicia makes a noise of triumph. She stands and then looks at him, head tilted. “You wanna get high?”
Chris blinks, his eyes adjusting slow to the dark. “Yeah,” he says, “okay.”
++
They smoke on the back porch steps. Alicia mutters about how dirty the pipe is and takes the first hit.
Chris coughs after the first draw, his lungs loudly and emphatically protesting. She laughs at him and he takes another long drag just to prove he can.
The high is soft and sweet and sings sweet inside him. He feels loose limbed and slumped and when he breathes his body tingles. He grins at her and lets smoke tip out between his lips.
++
She’s in his lap. He doesn’t know when it happened but she’s pinching his nose shut and her eyes are crossed and she misses the first time she tries it, landing a sloppy kiss to the corner of his chin, the smoke escaping.
“Hold on,” she says, when he snorts in laughter.
She gets it right the second time, and he opens his mouth to her automatically. Inhales when she exhales and some of it does go up his nose, burning and too hot. She licks at his teeth before pulling away.
“Nick’s gonna be pissed,” she muses.
He cracks her beer open for her. “Do you care?”
She looks at him. A streetlight falls half over her face and her toes wiggle in her socks. She’s wearing a sweatshirt Chris saw in Nick’s closet three days ago. “No,” she says, and clinks their beers together.
• NOVITA' di BOHEMIA •
✅ Set 6 calici Sophia ml.490
👉 a solo € 24,90
🔗 https://www.sarticasalinghi.it/shop/set-6-calici-sophia-490-ml/
• OFFERTA TRASPARENZE -40% •
✅ Tazze e calidi di ROYAL NORFOLK
👉 A partire da € 0,90
🔗 https://www.sarticasalinghi.it/tag-prodotto/off-trasp/
