LOU MONEY

Sophia had gone to a grocery store very late at night to buy that tea powder she was in love with. This time she decided to let her dog home since it would be very quick. At the grocery store, while deciding if she should try a new flavor or go for the same one, she spotted someone a few feet away from her. “Hey, have you ever tried this one?” She showed them the package with vanilla flavor. “Do you think it could be better than the apple one?”

Louie looked up from his armful of energy drinks with tired eyes, about as well-versed in teas as he was in quantum physics, but he squinted over the little package all the same. He didn’t know anything about tea but vanilla or apple was something he figured he could have an honest opinion about. “I mean, apple tea kinda sounds shitty,” he admitted, leaving off the part where all tea sounded shitty. “I haven’t tried it but you totally should. Or grab a cranberry Red Bull, ‘cause I mean... Red Bull.”

James can’t help but slither through the streets of New York. He set his eyes on a new exciting place he could enjoy for the day. He felt as a certain body was accidentally pushed next to him, he quickly observed the mystery body next to him and chuckled “ Well if you want me to hold your hand just say so, but bobbing on people is no way mate” he mused, teasingly. 

Louie’s eyes went wide, and he tried to laugh off whatever the hell was happening as he took a big old step to the side to put some distance between the two of them. “Oh no, dude, sorry ‘bout that though.” New York was a weird place top to bottom, and he felt like he’d hit the jackpot for today. “Got all kind of sidetracked, bigger and better things, y’know?”

“New Year’s Resolution’s are bullshit,” Donald said. “Most people keep up on them for like three weeks and then quit.” He dog eared the page of his book he was on and set it on the table beside him. “Not your mom though. She always saw things through to the end. I don’t know how. She was kind of like a super woman that way.” Donald stretched his arms out. “Cut back on nicotine and alcohol and be nicer to Daisy.” Though that was still a sore subject. “It’s a stupid birthday list,” he grumbled. “Probably. Barnes and Noble probably has that kind of shit.”

Louie smiled, a bittersweet upward twitch at the corners of his lips. There were always a lot of stories, a lot of sentimental moments when the holidays rolled around. In the aftermath of last year, Louie figured that might have been why he'd been such a mess. This year was quieter, but that wasn't a bad thing. "Well whoever she passed that down to, it's dormant in there somewhere," he joked. "Pretty solid list," he then affirmed, trying to adapt any of Donald's to his own list, but that wasn't getting him far. "Ew, okay, but I don't wanna read about how to make a resolution, this should be easy. C'mon, any ideas? What do I gotta fix?"

When Louie flipped open his notebook, it wasn’t even for anything decent. He didn’t know why it was on his desk when he hadn’t done anything productive for ages, but he knew that he’d stashed some polaroids in there somewhere and figured now was as good a time as ever to find out where those were and give them a home. He felt bad for how little he’d been doing, was way on the low side of things for a while, and he figured even setting a box aside for pictures was doing something. When the little piece of paper fell out, a slightly different shade of white from the paper of his notebook, he figured he’d left a note someone passed in there, something like that. What he saw instead was chilling.

He didn’t know what was happening at first, read a note in handwriting that wasn’t his and couldn’t imagine what he would have saved this from or why. Then he read it again: a command. Then, a third time, with all the weight of what he’d heard on the news and all of the terror that came with it, and the third time was what left him shaking. Choose them for what? And only one?

Stomach still turning, he let out a laugh. Maybe this was real, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this was another stupid fucking prank, and not a totally stupid one at that. No, this one was pretty good, and he didn’t know whose it was, but this was maybe brilliant, even if his hands wouldn’t stop shaking for the possibility of it being real.

Smiling to himself, he scribbled out his response, shaking his head and bringing out to the kitchen table, slamming it down and grabbing his house key to walk the feeling off if nothing else; maybe he’d pound the pavement or whatever people said, find something to do.

@louduck

Daisy was normally the person Donald went to when it was time for an intervention with one of the triplets. She could be a bit more patient with them, and the boys were all very stubborn so it wasn't a surprise she was knocking gently on Louie's door and entering after he didn't say anything. "Lou, sweet boy, what's got you stuck in your room? Donald told me it's been a few days."

Louie looked up, startled by the door opening out of the corner or his eye. His headphones were still firmly covering his ears when she walked in; at first he just waved politely and offered a little smile, shouting, “Hey Daisy,” a little louder than was necessary over the music blasting through his headphones. But then she was actually coming inside, and fuck, he wasn’t ready for whatever this was going to be. He lifted the headphones off of his ears and raised a brow. “What’s going on?” Then when the explanation came, he couldn’t be totally surprised, he guessed. “Just working on some stuff,” he lied without a second thought, nodding towards his computer, exiting out of a good seven questionable tabs and an incognito window before leaning back.

Terk sat across from whoever was already occupying her favorite spot at her favorite smoothie shop and greeted them with a little nod. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t need to. No one sat at Terk’s spot without wanting something. “What? Me. Nah, i got nothing going on tonight. Why? Is there a cool party that needs me to give it life? Because we both know cool parties are bullshit until I’m there. So…give me the deets.”

“Honestly, I’m here from... a friend. Kind of.” Louie wasn’t feeling too hot, was absolutely not ready for any of this, but at the same time, he felt like he kind of had to be. After all, he was embarking on adulthood, finally able to do all kinds of shit that he had never really wanted to but was probably supposed to, and after the last proper party he had been to, it was probably best to do any further parties right and far, far away from the things and the people that had fucked it up for him the first time. As far as the grapevine went, the answer to those problems was Terk. “So yeah, kind of. Got a function that I’m involved with happening this weekend, and I hear those sorts of things can’t fail so long as you’re there. So what’ll it take for you to show up?”

Louie was in a weird, weird spot. Maybe some of it was nostalgia, even though that would really suck because he’d hated high school and everything that had come with it. Maybe it was just sheer and utter panic, his birthday looming on the horizon, realizing he wasn’t sure what the hell he wanted from life, or maybe he was just realizing how much time he hadn’t spent with other people his age since everything went down. It felt like it was time to fix that. He hadn’t planned on it being with Michael Darling to begin with, but there was no reason not to hang with him, so he did, hitting the shops along the mean streets of the city under the summer sun.

“Dude, honestly, can we grab a bite then?” he asked, stomach having been grumbling angrily for the better part of the last hour. “What’s good around here?”

“Old is maybe pushing it, it’s just the hype factor dulled down a little between season five and the beginning half of season six. Then they really amped it up and pack everything else at the end of season six and the recent seasons.” Matt justified. “I’ve read the books while the earlier seasons were airing just to look for accuracies, but now I just watch the show.”

“I mean, the show’s, like, going further than the books now, isn’t it?” He was really asking; he wasn’t totally sure that that was the case, but he was pretty sure he’d seen it scrolling through Twitter. The only things he knew about Game of Thrones he knew from Twitter, honestly, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. “So what d’you think about where it’s goin’? Who’s getting the throne or whatever?”

“Has anyone asked themselves, ‘Now what?’ Now that Game of Thrones is ending in a few weeks?”

"Like, I probably would, but that show got old like three years ago honestly," Louie stated boldly. Sometimes you just had to stir the pot. And it wasn't like he was wrong to have an opinion, right? "At this point you've either read the shit or you haven't."

“Okay, Donald, stay calm it’s just thirty. It’s not death or the end of the world,” Donald said softly to himself as he looked through the happy birthday messages on his Facebook timeline. 

Thirty? Shit. Louie peeked back at the card in his hands. It hadn’t had a specific age on it or anything; he tended to think those were tacky. He’d opted out of the balloons because he wasn’t totally positive that he was right about the age, and he sure as heck hadn’t thought thirty, so Louie was grateful for that now. “Hey, you’re not dead yet,” he joked, handing him his card. “Present’s gonna have to wait for the party.”

drunk voicemails;; from here, @misscendrillon

“oh SHIT OH FUCK. Fuck, fucking give it back you stupid fuck. Is it on?! Is the – not is it on, is the fucking… Are you on a fucking call or no? God, fuck you, dude. Fuck you…”

“He-hello?”

“Dude, don’t talk to her.”

“Dude, I don’t think she’s on.”

“Fuck, thank fuck. Thank fuck! Give me back my fucking phone then, shitdick.”

“…”

drunk texts;; from here , @raspywaddler

louie: im so fucnking shiiiiwastey

“I am currently researching for my PhD thesis.” Jane said, matter of factly as always. “Which is really just an extension of my field work. It’s on inter-species relationships in primates.”

Louie frowned. She didn't mean... Of course she didn't mean that, right? Logically, he hoped, she didn't mean anything that involved humans. Were humans still considered primates? He didn't want to ask, even if his face had already given him away, so he nodded, very warily now. "Oh, right, right... Cool." He swallowed. "So when you say inter-species, you mean like... What, exactly?"

Billy had one or four bottles of beer for now. He didn’t want to think about the game that was approaching for at least a few hours. He still would have practice in the next day, but it was too late to go back now. Tired of all of those cards games, that he didn’t know how to play properly, Billy saw a game of snooker. “Hey!” He turned to the person next to him. “Do you wanna play? We can make a bet… For money… Or a challenge?” The boy grinned while raising a brow.

The absolute last place that Louie should have been was the party. He knew that. Logically, and from experience, he knew just how far south this could go if he was caught, but he hadn’t taken an Uber on Donald’s card this time, and he wasn’t even sure if he’d be going to this one. New Year’s Eve was different, was an actual full-fledged holiday, and St. Patrick’s Day was... St. Patrick’s Day. Either way, the sheer chaos of the party was probably enough to hide him from anybody looking for him this time. Nothing stuffy like the one for the New Year that he’d attended. “Yeah... yeah, sure,” Louie beamed, already on the wrong side of tipsy from a flask he’d brought from home, and too, too ready to win big, He should probably have been worried about gambling, but if nothing else it’d be good to get it out of his own system before he went off to college or was living on his own. “Money walks, but you’ve got my interest. What kind of challenge?”

“Not assigned, exactly, though some of them are for research.” Jane laughed, brushing off the language in a way that would have made some of her old teachers despair of her. “Some of them are still things I’m reading for fun though.”

“Oh, yeah,” Louie smiled, shrugged. He was just glad he didn’t have someone else yelling at him; there had been enough of that lately. School was getting to that point in the year again. “What are you researching? Or, like, why are you researching anything?” He guessed it was probably for work, but he didn’t know what people actually did research for work.

“A hockey game. I’m a hockey player.”

“Oh,” Louie frowned. “Oh. That’s- okay. That makes more sense. I was really, really confused and worried, and I was trying to come up with convincing excuses to leave.” A light chuckle passed his lips. “You must be a heck of a hockey player.”