How do Bob and Rhett celebrate Valentine's Day? What do they get for each other? Their shared beloved?
Valentines! Omg I forgot that was coming up soon 💕🌸I think I got a little bit carried away with this one 😔
Rhett
Rhett's a bit of a blank canvas when it comes to Valentine's Day. The closest he's come to celebrating the holiday was back in elementary school when his momma bought him a pack of Valentine's cards for an event his teacher was hosting.
He didn't even think about it until y'all were standing in a checkout lane together, and you noticed one of the employees putting out a Valentine's chocolate display.
You haven't the slightest clue about it, but the only reason you manage to beat him to paying for your items is because he's in the middle of a cold sweat.
And here he thought he wouldn't have a problem with remembering all of the important dates and holidays. What the hell does he even get you? He thought the animatronic duck was cute, but you wrinkled your nose at it the moment it started singing and dancing...
The initial idea is that he'll pick up something every time he runs into town for errands. He'll gather up a bunch of small stuff until he figures out what the 'big' thing should be.
A little plushie that reminds him of you, another of your favorite animal, the candies he remembers you saying you enjoyed, a bag of chips you were munching on during his most recent rodeo. He gets bored waiting for his dad to show up and welds a small flower out of bolts and screws. It turns into a bouquet.
By the time he realizes that taking you to dinner and a movie is probably the safest option, he's got a hoard of gifts stashed away in the passenger seat of his truck. The worst part? They no longer fit into the little red basket he bought.
At first, you're thinking that Rhett's way of celebrating Valentines Day is a little bit more cliche than you'd anticipated.
He takes you out to your favorite restaurant, surprises you with a little stuffed animal on the way to the movies. There's a small basket of candies waiting for you when you get home and a little bouquet of wildflowers that he spent the whole morning collecting.
Up until you mosey into the kitchen the next morning, half awake and poking at the coffee he made before he headed off to work, you think that the celebrations are over and done with.
And then you open the cabinet to find a pink plush elephant looking back at you. Because what you didn't know is that while you were sleeping, Rhett scattered all of your remaining gifts around the house.
There's a box of chocolates on the couch. His welded flowers are resting below the television and take you thirty minutes to notice. He's slipped a bag of handmade hard candies into your chair in the kitchen, there's another stuffed animal in the bathroom sink. A keychain hangs from the door hinge, and a fluffy blanket lurks in the closet.
It just becomes a habit of his. Every Valentine's Day, he takes you out for a cliche night plucked straight out of the movies, and every morning, you wake up to a scavenger hunt that gradually becomes more intricate over time.
And maybe you do occasionally miss a gift and rediscover it months down the road, like the box of candy that remained hidden behind the bowls until mid-May. But hey, that's just part of the fun!
Bob
Bobby, for as intelligent and forward-thinking as he might be, is severely under-prepared.
For months, he's been looking at the date on the calendar and telling himself that, yeah, he's got this under control! It can't be that difficult to celebrate a holiday as simple as Valentine's Day.
...come to find out, that's easier said than done.
Everything he thinks of is either fully booked or it's something he knows that you won't enjoy. There's a carnival in town with a bunch of Valentine-themed games, but it's also ridiculously cold outside, and he's not about to freeze you half to death in the name of a romantic holiday.
Your car breaks down and winds up in the shop with a steep repair bill. Bob knows what he'll do; he can take you out to dinner and surprise you by revealing he's fully paid it off and gotten you those new tires you've been needing!
...and then you call him one afternoon, excited to report that the repair shop mixed up a few customers and that your bill was significantly smaller. You already paid it off and just need him to take you to pick it up.
There's a pair of shoes that you mentioned you really liked. The day before he plans to go and buy them for you, you find a coupon and buy them yourself.
He finds a figurine from your favorite TV show, then realizes you've had the same figurine on the shelf this whole time. He starts planning a mini-vacation; your coworker goes on maternity leave earlier than planned, and work is so understaffed that they can't approve any time off until she returns.
He plans to buy you the videogame you were talking about; you buy it for yourself. He spends an afternoon looking for a new kitchenware set because you're down to two remaining bowls; your friend gives you the set she's had for years and never opened.
Why are you so damn independent?
And then he comes up with an idea. He goes through his camera roll and prints his favorite pictures he's taken with you. Both the ones of you together and the pictures that he's quietly taken while you weren't paying attention. On the back of each one, he writes a memory of what was happening when it was taken and hangs it from a pink braised string with a tiny clothespin.
Problem is, he braided the string too long and doesn't have enough pictures. So he adds to it by picking up a disposable camera and taking pictures of all the things that remind him of you. A butterfly that landed on his boot, a cat whose spot looked like the first letter of your name, a restaurant you both hated, the sunrise from the backseat of an F/A-18 because you once asked him how it looked from so high in the sky.
On the way to a casual dinner reservation on Valentine's Day, Bob runs back into the apartment because he 'forgot' his wallet. What you don't know is that he's hanging his string of memories from the ceiling, using command hooks that he installed while you were in the shower.
Like Rhett, he tricks you into believing that dinner and the stuffed animal in the passenger seat are the celebrations. Until you walk through the front door, you haven't the slightest clue that they're just the beginning 💕
Both
Together? These two turn it into a game, and you're just as in on it as they are. It's hard for a holiday to be complicated or boring when it's just a lighthearted game that's going on between the three of you.
That being said, their methods of celebrating are about the same as they are when they're separate. Rhett enjoys collecting a bunch of small things to tack onto a casual, intimate night out, and Bob loves to create something meaningful that will be remembered.
Thing is, nobody is allowed to know what the other is planning.
You walk into the house after running errands and catch sight of Bob scurrying around and rushing to hide his arts and crafts project before you can catch a glimpse of it.
Rhett slinks around the house like a damn feral cat with something fluffy trapped in the front of his work jacket. What is it? You and Bob have no idea, but while he's walking up the stairs, a box of candy hearts falls out of his pocket and explodes like sugary confetti.
Because there are three of you, everyone has to decide beforehand on how celebratory meals are going to work. Do you want to do just one big dinner? Should all three of you collaborate on that, or should one person be in charge of it? What about scheduling three dinner reservations across February? Or what if, instead of just dinner, you each take breakfast, lunch, or dinner and make it a full day of celebratory meals? The possibilities are endless.
Rhett always finds a way to weld together some stray nails, bolts, and chunks of scrap metal into a small airplane. He always uses the same format, places the same pieces into the same old places, but each plane always manages to look a little bit different once Bob puts it up on the shelf with the other ones.
Bobby, on the other hand, goes out of his way to use Cecelia's recipes and makes the raspberry jam and cherry pies Rhett grew up eating. They're the one thing he always talks about missing, and over time, Bob has been able to convince Cecelia to share those top-secret recipes with him.
Notably, with these two, it's only a matter of time before someone suggests going out late one night and buying a bunch of candy and cheap Valentine's-themed trinkets that will inevitably wind up on its respective holiday stash.
Chocolate? Hard candy? Heart-shaped cookies with red and pink icing that are a dollar more and taste exactly the same as the ones sitting right next to them. Boxes of limited edition flavors of candies that all three of you hate but convince yourselves will be better this time.
And then there are the themed recipes that Bob finds and convinces you and Rhett will definitely be worth making in the end: sugar cookies, strawberry cheesecake parfaits, chocolate bark, and those microwave mug cakes that always look incredible on the package but come out looking like crimes against society...
