#phonecalls

(You are welcome to reblog with more. Encouraged, even.)

No response. No comment.

I text "well everyone says I never communicate, but if I talk about ants ya'll don't care."

And this makes mom call me!

ON THE PHONE

😫

Criminal Minds, Gen rating

Emily Prentiss

Also available on AO3

Emily yawned as she opened the fridge. It was late, and she was tired, but most of all… she was famished. And her fridge was depressingly bare. She pulled out a tupperware box with leftovers, but gagged as she saw the greyish green fuzz that grew inside. Without hesitation, she tossed the box in the garbage. The milk had clearly gone off and she didn’t trust the orange juice anymore either. Other than that, all she had was a single carrot. She took a dejected bite as she fished her phone out of her pocket.

“Hey,” she said as soon as her call was picked up, “I’m starving. Wanna go grab something?” Emily took another bite of her sad carrot as she listened to the response, “Oh… right, I forgot.” She chewed slowly, “No, don’t worry about it, of course you want to be with Will. Yeah, no, really. Don’t worry. Okay, see ya tomorrow.” 

Pulling a face, she took another bite of the carrot and dialed her phone again. “Hey – yeah,” Emily smiled, “Well don’t let me stop you. Go get the girl, Morgan. Good luck.” 

She hadn’t even swallowed her carrot before she dialed the phone again, “Hey there!” The phone buzzed with excited exclamations, “Do I what? No,” Emily laughed, “I’m not calling to see if you have tickets to the historically accurate reenactment of James Garfield’s death. Yeah, I’m sure. You have fun, though.” She frowned. 

Bringing up the carrot she gave it a sad look. “Even you’re starting to look like decent company,” she muttered. 

Her thumb raced over the buttons before she brought the phone back to her ear. She opened her mouth to speak when the phone got picked up but found herself unable to get a word in edgewise before Garcia hung up on her. “Ok-ay…” Emily said slowly, “The world of online gaming is competitive, I guess.” 

Almost desperate now, she dialed again, “Hey – Haley! No, there’s no case, I just – yeah, okay, I’ll let him sleep, then.” She didn’t even have to hang up herself. 

Emily let out a deep sigh before dialing one last time. “Gideon! I was wondering, would you like to grab a bite to eat?” She waved her carrot around as she listened to his answer, “No, it’s just… I just got home, and all I found was this sad little carrot. It doesn’t even taste good.” She resisted the urge to apologize to the carrot as she took in Gideon’s reply. “Yeah, I guess I could just order a pizza…” Emily conceded. A moment later, her eyes sparkled, “Really? That would be great, Gideon. I just – yeah, gimme like two minutes to grab my stuff and – oh, of course, yeah, I’ll wait for you here. Thank you so much for picking me up. I know I’m probably too tired to drive.” She listened intently to his words for a minute or so, “Greek food sounds amazing. Yes, I do promise I won’t talk about work. Thank you so much, Gideon. I just… I just really needed a friend tonight.” The voice on the other end captivated her for another few moments, “Yes, I’ll text you the address. Thank you for being there for me tonight.” 

They are simply hard. They are even harder in languages which you are less comfortable in. I have been learning Norwegian for nearly 5 years. I have used it as my professional language for over 4 years. Today was the first time I felt not embarrassed to be making a phone call in Norwegian. 

No context, no lipreading, no eye contact, poor quality speakers and microphone, background noises are all reasons which make this endeavour harder. 

Going to try conducting phonecalls with the confidence of Carrillo