I have a prompt! Michael and Alex trying to solve a problem together. Any problem!
*If you wanted, you could certainly consider this a missing scene from Falling Like the Stars, though you don’t have to read that to understand this*
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“That’s not how you do it,” Alex argues, rubbing his face in frustration and doing his damndest not to just step in and do it himself.
“I am literally reading the directions,” Michael says, clearly frustrated as well. “And I build and fix shit for a living. It shouldn’t be this hard.”
He shakes his head and holds his hand out. He can’t watch Michael fumble with this anymore. It cannot possibly be as hard as he’s making it look. Michael snorts. “Fine, here.”
Micheal hands over the pieces and sits back against the wall, an amused smirk on his face, crossed arms, daring him to do better.
“So it clearly says that these two holes line up and you put the screw in there,” Alex says, narrating his moves as he goes through them. Only, once the screw is all the way in, the pieces fall right apart. “The fuck?”
Michael cracks up laughing. Through his laughter he just barely gets out, “Oh yeah, it clearly says.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, glaring down at the two pieces of wood that aren’t sticking together like the directions clearly say they should be.
“I’m just highly amused that you thought you could get the thing to work when I couldn’t,” Michael says with a fond roll of his eyes.
“Fuck off,” Alex says with a laugh. “Last week you tried to help me install the nanny cam as if electronics are your area of expertise.”
Michael bites his lips to keep from laughing as he shrugs. Alex tosses the pieces of wood aside and moves to sit next to Michael.
“It really shouldn’t be this hard to build a crib. Fortified military bases have gone up easier,” Alex complains, leaning his weight against Michael who rests his head on top of Alex’s.
“Fuck Isobel and this bougie crib,” he says. “I’m building the damn thing myself like I said I was going to before I let her get all in my head about safety regulations. As if I’d build anything that could collapse. There’s no way this crappy thing is safe.”
Alex reaches out to place his hand on Michael’s knee and smiles when Michael intertwines their fingers together.
“We’ve got this right?” Alex asks.
“What?”
“Parenting,” he clarifies, looking around the half finished nursery. Their little girl is due in a few short weeks and Alex has been stressed about their ever growing to-do list that keeps getting longer, worried they won’t finish everything before the baby comes.
“Yes Alex,” Michael says, not a hint of doubt in his voice. “Our inability to put some crap furniture together isn’t an indication of our parenting skills. It’s an indication that we need to stop listening to Isobel like she knows shit.”
Alex nods. He’s probably right. “The crib you build will be better anyways.”
“Damn straight.”
prompt me here
