He hated being the first one to text until he watched you fumbled a text in person
(A modern au headcanon!)
Muriel never liked to text when he needed someone for anything. Sometimes he needed them to ask a question or he needed an item for a project.
Sometimes he misses people and wants to text them first.
Even though it's limited to Asra, Inanna (yes she texts), Faust (and her too), Nadia, and you. Sometimes, very rarely, does he ever text Julian. Portia is not a problem, they have a meme relationship where they only text each other cat or gardening memes (very, very rarely)
But the moment he types out a text, he cringes. "How are you?" No. His thumb hovers over the backspace. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. It sounds too forward. "Wyd?" sounds rude. "I miss you." Hell no. He's reserved that for you. And that one time he accidentally sent that to Asra - the thought heats his cheeks with embarrassment. At least Asra was a good sport about it.
That changed when he saw you text. You wanted to reach out, to say hello, to say you missed them.
"No that sounds too simple." you say.
"Maybe try how are you, or a picture of something?" he says
"We're not close like that."
"Do you need to be close to say those things?"
"Well, it depends. I dunno! Maybe... Maybe I just have cold feet?"
Your fingers furiously tap your phone. Each sentence you write is never finished, obliterated by your thumb aggressively hammering the back space.
You give up. You drop your phone to your nose. A phone facepalm that masks the frustrated embarrassment rising to your cheeks.
When you're not watching, Muriel softens at you. You text just like him.
Or perhaps, does everyone struggle with this too?
He knows the feeling too well, so much that his heart might rip out of his chest to hug you tight. Poor you.
But that doesn't happen. Instead, he places a gentle hand on your back. His weight is a familiar comfort. You lean into his side, half-cuddling him.
"Maybe I just won't text for now." you sigh.
He frowns.
If that were him on the other line, he would want you to text him.
His face lights up, it dawns on him. Is this what it's like to be on the other line too?
Eventually, you figure it out. It wouldn't be for a few days that Muriel catches a glimpse of this when you left your phone open in the bathroom.
'Pssst. Long time no talk. Wanna hang? :3c ' you texted.
The exchange between you and this person is warm, even though it took a week for them to reply. They chirp back a hello, a meeting is made, and a distant friendship is rekindled.
Perhaps, he could have the same thing happen to him too?
Later, you borrow Muriel's phone to search something up. His 2015 android phone doesn't have anything besides the bare essentials, a browser, a stock phone video game, and a calculator. His contacts are labeled with the person's last name unless they are close to him
Suddenly, 'Devorak' pops up.
'Gotcha, wanna head out with me and Asra to pick it up?'
Muriel comes out of the bathroom.
"Hey, Julian's asking if you want to meet up with him and Asra for something?"
"Oh." he looks surprised. He didn't think Julian would reply, or even invite him for anything, "Yeah, sure. Tell him I'll go."
You bite back a smile. Muriel sees your attempt. He deadpans, betrayed by a small smile and pink cheeks. Don't tease. Just let him have this, just once.
And you do. You text Julian back as Muriel with your heart full. You can't help but feel happy for him.
I realized that I can be both a good and bad texter. If you’re a close friend who gets my sense of humor or tells me how your day went, I’ll answer in a heartbeat. But with others, it will take 3-5 business days to get a reply.
I feel like at least 13% of texting is stressing too much over wording then finally pressing send and chucking your phone across the room so you can pretend it never happened
When you send someone a text message so long your phone cuts you off for using too many characters and they just reply back with something like “don’t worry about it.”
Like, hey, did you see the novel I sent you? I am 918 characters passed worried about it.
The houses as texting styles Slytherin Uses punctuation to convey moodiness; ei. Passive aggressively uses periods, exclamation points to show enthusiasm and warmth. Commas are common, they like conveying whole thoughts accurately Ravenclaw Punctuation all the time, uses emojis after gauging how friendly the relationship is. Was never a huge fan of the chatspeak (brb, imo, etc.) will use, but not excessively Hufflepuff Uses emojis often to make sure the recipient reads the message correctly, almost never punctuates the end of texts but will send "!" on its own if the situation calls for it Gryffindor Caps lock. A lot. Is the type to just string emojis one after another like a psychopath. loves group texts because everyone's there at once
I'm really frustrated with a small problem because I'm role playing with this one person who: 1. Isn't that good with spelling or grammar and their frst language is English because I personally know them. 2. Trying to control what my characters do. 3. Isn't really "writing" roleplaying. It's more like: Name: speech *action.* Only I go above that and use full sentences in the action area. 4. Has essentially put me into smut role play when I'm not comfortable with it. It's even worse than when I first talked and role played with them. Like I'm just cringing sometimes and I'm also frustrated. And they want to write and draw a manga that they want to help out with but no??? And they try to force me into drawing things when they could just draw those things themself. I don't draw those things anymore because no. I'm just frustrated. Sorry for vaguing. This isn't anyone on Tumblr so.
