Featuring Sonny and Amanda. Inspired by @mrbarbacarisi - read her post here. 

Sonny feels guilty. There had been a moment, last night, just as they were saying goodnight, when Sonny nearly almost, at least thought about leaning in just a little bit further and- yeah, okay, kissing Amanda.

He remembers wondering what it would be like, if maybe it might feel nice.

He had never thought of her that way. He’d obviously noticed she was pretty, but… they weren’t like that. He was more into brunettes, anyway. And he honestly couldn’t see himself with her. He had just felt close to her last night and he’d wondered, just for a fleeting moment.

In the light of day, he could recognize his own lapse of judgment and was glad that they’d both pulled away when they did. He was set to ignore the whole thing and hopefully they could both forget about it soon enough.

Then he saw Buck leave Amanda’s motel room. He hadn’t expected that. It’s fine, he’d told himself. It was fine. He still felt awkward though.

He still feels awkward now. And he’d been acting it, so much so that Amanda had found it necessary to give him a talking-to, and he feels bad.

He decides to step out to buy some coffee for the whole squad from the good place, even though it requires a slightly longer walk. He makes sure Amanda gets her shot of caramel that she gets when she feels like indulging a little.

“Hey,” he says quietly, setting the coffee cup on Amanda’s desk.

“Oh, hey, thanks,” she says, with a wary glance towards him.

“Listen, Amanda, about… what you said before.”

She turns towards him, ready to defend herself again.

“I’m sorry. About last night.”

“Oh.” Amanda reaches for her coffee.

“I was outta line. I’ve been kind of a mess lately, you know, ‘cause of the whole Aria thing. And- And everything else. And I was drunk. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he blathers earnestly.

“It’s fine, Sonny.”

“And I wasn’t judging you, about… y’know.”

“Good,” Amanda says with a tiny smile.

“And,” he continues, apparently unable to leave it at that, lowering his voice, “I’m sorry I almost tried to kiss you. I didn’t mean that, you know? I don’t- And I know you don’t- It would be so weird-”

“We’re fine, Sonny,” Amanda assures, genuine despite her desperate bid to shut Sonny up.

“Great. And-”

Amanda sighs. She really should know by now that the silent treatment from Sonny always ends with all the pent-up words being let out at once.

“I’m sorry for acting weird? It’s just, I feel really bad about making it awkward and I didn’t know what to say, and-”

“I think you’ve said plenty,” Amanda says, patting Sonny on the arm.

Sonny nods, mouth turned up sheepishly in a half-smile. “We’re good?” he confirms.

„There is an open spot in our therapy-schedule right now”

“Huh?” Metatron turned to look at the nurse tapping a pen against the tablet in her hand. They seemed to scroll through other information until their gaze went to Metatron himself who towelled his hair. His physical check-up done.

“… what do you mean?” He asked, because this was rather abrupt.

So recently I’ve done some research into the impact trees have on our day to day lives and I would just like to pass on some of this knowledge to you guys and save all of you the time it took me to find it all! For the sake of posts, I’m just going to list 2 benefits.

1. Trees are economically good!

Something many people may or may not know is that having trees on your property increase that lot’s real estate value. Why? Well, trees provide shade and in the summer months and these trees can shade houses, reducing air conditioning bills by keeping the house cool. The only drawback to this is that you either have to buy a lot that already has trees on it for immediate results, which could be expensive as trees increase the value, or you could plant trees that surround your house and invest time and water into the saplings and wait for them to grow tall and old. While this latter option may take a few decades, you will be benefitted by having trees that will shade your house in the sweltering summer months. This also promotes people who are contemplating to cut down trees to do not do it! Keep the tree up and figure out ways to mitigate whatever problems they might be causing. However, this isn’t always practical and sometimes the tree has to go.

2. Trees are healthy

Well of course trees are healthy! All they consume is straight CO2 and nutrient water! Yes, I supposed by human standards trees are healthy, but that’s not what I meant. Trees keep HUMANS healthy.

All land plants share a similar leaf anatomy: the leaves have holes in them, called stomata, that are much like our lungs. The stomata take in gases and put them into the plant where they get stored and used by the plant. You know, like carbon dioxide or oxygen. These are used and stored in trees are cellulose in the trunk and in several other forms. Here’s a cute little visual;

While these stomata take in CO2, they can’t decide what they take in and what they don’t, so they take in any gas particle that is can get. This includes air pollution.

Where are you going with this? Good question and I’m getting there! So now that you know that trees are nonspecific with the gases they take in, you can now figure out that they not only store carbon dioxide but also all of the other gases too! This means that trees take up harmful air pollutants, like carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, and store them in their trunks. Trees clean the air of pollution! 

I watched them sit there, huddling. Crying. Hugging.

The human, Raphael told me it’s  named Gabrielle, asked if Matia was okay several times, snuggling closer and generally patting each other up and down. As if they forgot they did it a few seconds ago.

Ah well. They had been looking for one another for a while.