drunk to an 80s groove

Keaton shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers, Avocado. And I’m definitely begging at this point.” Maybe Keaton was a little bit blind to any actual potential soulmates, because they were liking among the romantics, for fear of falling for someone that would then break his heart but… that wasn’t the point. Messing around with an unreliable, unattached stranger like Trevor was painless and, frankly, easier. “If someone ate those, they’d only be doing you a favor,” Keaton commented, his mouth full, while watching Nicky write her name into the styrofoam. “Oh fuck, yeah, he does.” Keaton then ran across the room to the window in their shared living room, which he threw open and hung his torso out of. “Fuck you, Trevor!” Keaton didn’t even wait to figure out if he’d heard, nor did he care about the consequences. Instead, he returned to the kitchen. “I’d hook up with him again, given the opportunity.” Keaton shrugged, completing their pancake masterpieces and sliding a plate across the counter to her. “Snails or rabbits, doesn’t matter. As long as they’re marginally better than Trevor’s flavorless, uninspired blobs.”

“Oh, please. You’re hardly a beggar. In this house alone you have at least 3 people you could get without begging at all. And that’s just in this house. You on Bumble or Tinder you could get all sorts of dates.” She rolled her eyes at him. Her brows knitted together as he ran out of the room to the window, but at his shouting, she laughed and started decorating the rabbits with m&m’s for eyes, “You tell him,” she said as he re-entered the kitchen. She stepped away from the pancakes, they were his initial masterpiece so he should have final call. She sat on the barstool, “Alfred is not a name to moan, Kiwi. Don’t go back to an Alfred, even for a hookup.” She said as she took the plate from him, “They’d have to be pretty bleak to not be better than Trevor’s.” She leaned across the counter, standing practically on the top of the stool and reached for a fork from their drying rack. The romantics’ kitchen could be a bit of a clusterfuck at times, but Seb’s recent organization efforts had paid off so far. She took a bite and nodded, “Yes. Much better than Trevor’s uninspired blobs.” 

Keaton shrugged. “Shame. He could’ve been my soulmate. Now my eternal loneliness is your fault. It has nothing to do with all my flaws, it’s all on you.” Keaton stuck a fork through the top of her postmated pancakes. He wrinkled his nose as he took a bite from it. “Tastes like something you’d find at a Golden Corral. Been in a hot case, more accurately a luke-warm case, for four hours too long. But, it’s just good enough to feed to your kid’s soccer team after an all-day tournament. Barely. And only because everywhere else is closed.” Keaton waved it off, tossing the discarded pancake, fork and all, back into the styrofoam it came from. “Trevor is an okay name, not that it matters. I dated this guy named Albert once- awful name, right? He was a terrible person, treated me like trash, but he was hot. And… great in bed.” Keaton didn’t even stop long enough to acknowledge how clearly misplaced his priorities were. He often, accidentally, made it abundantly clear that commitment was something he avoided. “M&M’s are fine, James is slacking on keeping that drawer stocked up.” Keaton pulled the whipped cream and chocolate syrup from the refrigerator, and squinted at his poor attempt at bunnies as he turned back around. “They’re rabbits.” To emphasize his point, and to try to repair his failed pancake art, he added a whipped cream tail to a few.

“Your soulmate needs to be someone infinitely cooler and more reliable than Trevor from Postmates, or else what’s the point?” Nicky teased with a roll of her eyes. At his critique of her pancakes she nodded, “Wow, such an accurate description.” She sighed and abandoned them for now, scratching her name into the styrofoam container and shoving them in the fridge. Maybe she’d eat them later if she had the munchies and was desperate. She returned to the barstool as Keaton mused on the importance of names, “Trevor sounds like the kind of  douchebag who tells girls sex doesn’t feel as good with condoms and claims his pull out game is hella good.” She pointed at him, “Tell me I’m wrong,” she dared. She shrugged at his description of Albert, “Blinded by good looks and better sex... We’ve all been there, Kiwi.” She sighed wistfully. Her current dry spell was thoroughly unfortunate but she didn’t meet many queer ladies filming bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteens. She tossed the M&Ms his way and watched as he tried to fix the pancakes, “Oh. Okay the tail helps. I can buy them as rabbits now.”

✭ • → a defeated sigh tumbled past parted lips as sonny fell back into the pillows in a cloud of smoke and honeyed curls , sun - freckled nose scrunching at her reply . thursday ? shit , maybe he needed to invest in a calendar . his own job provided him little help when it came to keeping track of days  ⁠— he created his own , sporadic hours to suit his ever - changing mood , and it wasn’t like his social media activity abode by any sort of set schedule . ( it was a wonder he could even maintain  ⁠—  let alone monetize  ⁠—  such an inconsistent online presence , but the stoner somehow managed to draw an audience in spite of the evenings like these that his phone spent buried under dirty socks and hoodies . )  her offer elicited a shake of his head and he waved it off with a vague , languid wave of his hand .  

           ❝  it’s nothin’ ,  ❞ he insisted , not a lie so much as a h a l f - t r u t h . he didn’t lie to nicky , but sometimes he didn’t quite feel like bogging her down with the weight of his loaded mind , particularly not when she already had enough on her plate . more often than not , just her company was enough to ease the burden , a fact that he never would’ve believed if you’d told him ten years prior but that held up with surprising stability now .  ❝  just been kinda in my head most of the day , y’know ? thinking about w e i r d shit .  ❞ the way he said the word , crossing his eyes a bit and giving his head a shake , it was just as easy  —  if not easier  —  to believe he’d been thinking about aliens or black holes and not his own indecipherable emotions .  a shrug wrinkled the sheets beneath his shoulders as he turned his gaze back to his best friend .  ❝  i just need somethin’ to occupy my brain , y’know what i mean ? netflix is prob’ly just as good as anything else. or  —  tell me about the kids y’worked with today , the little adolescent demon bastards . what were they gettin’ up to that was so awful ? do i gotta dig out my old high school hoodie and beat down some teenagers ? ❞

nothing. she didn’t believe him for one second. “sonny, c’mon. it’s me. feel free to expand... what kind of weird shit? like aliens or hurting your own feelings?” nicky said as she plopped down on her bed and plucked the joint from his hand, taking a hit before giving it back and staring at the ceiling. she scoffed, “it’s a sweet offer, but i don’t need you to get your ass kicked by some teenagers. i also don’t feel like having to fight teenagers because they kicked your ass.” she turned to face him. “they were just spoiled little shits. i didn’t have any huge issues, just got chewed out for not getting the birthday girl’s good angles. as if it matters. she kept bragging about how her daddy is gonna get her a nose job anyway so it’ll look completely different in a year.”

Media Inspo Moodboard {7/?}

✭ • → NICKY

✭ • → perhaps to anyone else , the situation might have been a fair few steps beyond boundaries , how casually the stoner had chosen to sprawl out on the sheets of a bed that most certainly did not belong to him ; shoes off , curls mussed against a mound of pillows ( one or two that he’d brought from his own room after discovering that hers just weren’t enough ) and a freshly sparked joint twirling absently between surprisingly nimble fingers as he awaited his best friend’s arrival home . he’d been antsy for hours now , agitated in a way he couldn’t exactly put into words , a way that manifested not in his mood but in his m i n d , in spite of all his best efforts to quell it .  he’d fallen down a hole early this afternoon , possibly the worst of them  — an accidental stroll down a digital memory lane in search of a throwback thursday , a trip propelling him further into the past than he typically dared to venture until suddenly he was staring at pixelated snapshots from  — what was it ,  nine , ten years ago ? truthfully , he didn’t care to recall . his cellphone likely still sat in a precarious perch on the edge of his laundry basket where , after a moment of staring , it had been abruptly tossed . he hadn’t looked at it since at least noon . 

          the distinct click of a doorknob turning pulled a hazy mind from its wandering reverie and sonny sat up at once , folding lengthy limbs beneath him on nicky’s mattress and fixing dark irises on the door frame as she stepped through .  ❝  we should do something tonight ,  ❞ sonny suggested  in an exhale of smoke before she could even acknowledge his presence , holding out the joint to her in an offer .  ❝  something totally fuckin’ crazy , i’unno what , but  — what day is it again ? tuesday , wednesday ?  ❞ teeth scraped thoughtfully against his lower lip, digging into soft flesh .   ❝  fuck it , it doesn’t matter . time is a man-made social construct and we don’t have to abide by it . what sounds like a good ass vibe to nicky lloyd right now ? don’t hold back , either , i’m game for anything . ❞ ( @nickyxlloyd )

After a long day of videotaping some brat’s sweet sixteen party, Nicky was beat. She sat on the train and pulled her humidity wrecked hair up in a scrunchie. Her headphones weren’t connected to nothing, she just didn’t want to small talk with any of the people around her. When she heard the conductor announce her stop, she pulled her backpack up from between her feet and slung it over her shoulder and stood up. She headed towards home. She arrived and dug into the pockets of her backpack for her key, fumbling with it and putting it in the lock. The door opened and she headed upstairs. 

She said hi to a couple of people hanging out in the living room common area as she made her way to her room. As she opened the door she sighed and hung her backpack on the Command hook on her wall she held her hand up in a peace sign at Sonny. She pulled her t-shirt off, not caring that her best friend was on her bed, and swapped it out for a tank top. As Sonny started speaking she razed an eyebrow, “It’s Thursday, Son. What’s under your skin tonight? We can talk it through, but I worked today with the worst teenagers I’ve ver met and I gotta work again tomorrow, so I don’t have the energy to do something totally fuckin’ crazy. I was hoping to just chill. I just wanted to come home, grab some chips, and watch Netflix and smoke on the roof.” 

Keaton wasn’t a fantastic cook, that was Cooper’s forte. But, he had always been decent enough to get himself by. Nothing he made was pretty either, as foretold by the vaguely snail shaped pancakes that he had intended to be rabbits. “I think we have whipped cream, some chocolate syrup, definitely sprinkles. Check the candy drawer, we might have some reese’s or something-”

“Hey! If you think Trevor is worthy and objectively attractive invite him to join us.” Keaton called after her, unsure if she had even heard him before leaving. By the time she had returned, his pancakes were ready and plated. With a few of each variety for each, along with a plate of extras for any romantic that was drawn in by the smell of cooking. “Well? Did you tell him how desperately single I am?”

Nicky set her tardy pancakes onto the counter and shook her head, “It didn’t come up between me grabbing the bag and slamming the door in his face.” She flipped the box open to see cold, mediocre pancakes and sighed. “Keaton. You deserve someone better than an incompetent Postmate named Trevor.” She wrinkled her nose at the name, “Homeboy doesn’t deserve anything remotely good in his life based upon my brief time dealing with him.” She abandoned her place and headed into the kitchen to rifle through the candy drawer. Some might say it was childish, really, for a house of adults to have a designated candy drawer, but honestly, with this group it was necessary. “I found M&Ms?” She said as she pulled a bag from the drawer and plopped them on the counter near where he was making pancakes. “Are you going for some sort of escargot inspired pancake aesthetic?” She half teased and half genuinely asked.

Media Inspo Moodboard {6/?}

Pancakes were one of the many reasonably easy meals that he learned to cook at a fairly young age, as a means of keeping himself from endless nights of rumbling stomachs. Keaton started pouring various ingredients into a mixing bowl, with the intention to split the one bowl into three. One with chocolate chips, one with blueberries, and one for whatever nonsense the two of them would decide to put in. Probably something like gummy bears, oreos and weed knowing them. “Our damn pancakes, Nicky.”

Nicky watched as Keaton began cooking the pancakes. She remembered him doing so on nights where he’d slept over with her at her dad’s place. She was so impressed when she was in high school that her friend could cook like that. “Let’s get some cool toppings and we can put them on mine when they get here too.” Her phone dinged and she looked at it. She held it out so Keaton could see the updated map.

Keaton grinned, while also pulling ingredients from the cabinet and sloppily piling them onto the countertop beside him. “Dammit, Avocado, just let me make us some pancakes. Alright?” Keaton insisted, albeit jokingly. “Only because I know you didn’t order enough for us both, anyway.”

Nicky couldn’t deny the accuracy of the last statement, so she made a sweeping motion with her arms before she stepped around the counter so Keaton could have run of the kitchen, “By all means, make your damn pancakes,” she said as she settled onto a barstool and set her phone down on the counter, waiting for it to ding.

Media Inspo Moodboard {5/?}

Media Inspo Moodboard {4/?}

“I think you need to start ordering before it reaches this level of hunger,” she tells Nicky, reclined in the chair, bare legs sprawled over one arm as she closes her book. It was getting exhausting trying to read it without her glasses anyway “Have a snack, you’re not you when you’re hungry. Instead you’re an arsonist,” she commentated on Nicky’s own words, a look of amusement on her face.

“Well, they usually get it here before I reach arsonist level,” Nicky huffed as she followed Dylan’s advice and began rifling through the kitchen cupboards for a snack. “I should be on a snicker’s commercial honestly. They need me as a cautionary tale.” She pulled a bag of almonds from the cupboard and walked over to where Dylan sat in the armchair. She took a handful and tossed them into her mouth before extending the bag to the other girl in offering, “Whatcha reading?” 

Keaton had been sitting on the countertop, the back of his head resting on the cabinet behind him. It had been a long night, and his overall mood was far from positive. He shrugged. “If you’re willing to go through all the effort to find him and light a fire you may as well just pick up your pancakes and save yourself the potential prison time.” He then shifted to open the cupboards nearby. “We can just make pancakes, too.”

Nicky rolled her eyes, “It’s a figure of speech, you nerd,” she said with a smile, “I just wish there was a way to give Trevor some external motivation.” She watched as Keaton started digging in the cupboards, “But, Kiwi I already paid for these pancakes to cure my hangover. It’s the principle. I deserve them. Trevor is keeping me from my destiny.”