author's note:
there's a reason for this one. hahaha really
idk when i wrote this because it's been chilling on my google drive since august maybe. recycling an earlier story link, don't mind me.
posted on ffn: 22 december 2015. title from fob's "kids aren't alright."
merry birthday to the birthday bee (thenextfolchart). she's so adult-y.
in the end (i'd do it all again)
[-]
"Hello, house," the newest homeowner of Number Eighteen Hogsmeade Drive says. Marlene pours herself a celebratory glass of rosé and surveys her space. It's a cute little cookie-cutter cottage with the same brick and trim as every other house in a five-square-kilometre radius. But this one, with its spacious kitchen and well-established front garden that had completely won Marlene over during her househunt, is all hers.
She slowly sips her wine and savours the feeling of being an adult. It's deliciously magical.
Clicking noises of doggy toenails on the hardwood floor alerts Marlene to her black Labrador's entrance into the main living area. Marlene sets her glass down - onto a coaster, of course, because rings are so undignified and juvenile - and scoops her dog into her arms.
"Snuffles, you big baby, what am I going to do with you?" she coos as she nuzzles him.
He licks her cheek and wags his tail excitedly in response. They awkwardly flop onto the couch since he's too heavy for Marlene to lift and carry properly. Snuffles wiggles about as he gets comfortable and settles into her lap like he did when he was a puppy; now that he is three years old, however, he doesn't quite fit like he used to.
"Do you like our new home?" Marlene asks as she scratches behind his floppy ears. "There's so much space for you to run around and shit everywhere and chase squirrels to your heart's content since we actually have trees in the back garden, now! We're living the high life, aren't we, Snuffles?"
He barks and bumps the palm of her hands with the top of his head, which is his signal for her to pet him.
"Spoiled brat," she murmurs affectionately to Snuffles as she obliges his request.
Petting sessions are at least one hour ordeals, so she gets comfortable on the couch. The telly hasn't been unpacked and the wifi isn't up-to-speed, which leaves Marlene unplugged from electronic devices. This is a rare occurrence, and Marlene quickly realises that she misses the peaceful quiet of just being human. Her fingers stroke through Snuffles' dark fur in a soothing, repetitive motion. The stress of moving and changing jobs fades away in tandem with the sunset outside her windows.
"It feels odd to be a homeowner," Marlene muses. "After our years of backpacking through Europe after graduation and then doing that freelance work that had me jet-setting all over the globe... But this feels right, Snuffles. Permanence and commitment aren't something we're used to, but that was the old us. The new me is going to have a 9-to-5 schedule and deal with adult responsibilities like bills and insurance. God, I'm going to be twenty-six next month. Don't you think it's time for me to finally grow up?"
Snuffles, of course, does not reply. As she continues to cuddle him, Marlene laughs quietly for half-expecting a response from him. Suddenly, a loud fart punctuates the silence. Snuffles scrambles up from Marlene's lap and looks around wildly for someone to accuse for the disturbance even though he was the culprit.
"Jesus, Snuffles." Marlene gags and waves the air in front of her nose. "What the hell have you been eating?" She prays he doesn't let another one rip when she pushes down on his rump so he'll jump off the couch. "Come on; down you go. It's time for you to try shitting in tall cotton and explore the large toilet-y garden paradise you have at your paws."
Marlene grabs a torch and guides Snuffles out the sliding glass doors and into the slightly muggy July night. He runs in circles around her, yips a couple of times, and then takes off in search of a place to leave her poopy presents. She settles down onto a patio chair and shakes her head at his antics. "You're lucky I love you!" she shouts after him.
The sound of crickets is all she gets in reply. Marlene isn't worried, however. Snuffles is quite the stealthy squirrel-chaser. She settles herself into the patio chair and stares up at the sky. The stars are kind of hard to see tonight since her house interior lights outshine everything in their vicinity. She should get up and turn them off, but to be honest, she's kind of scared to spend her first night in her new house alone in the darkness.
So much for being an adult, Marlene scoffs at herself.
Loud drunken cheers chorus up from the house on her right. She can't see much of the party palace because of a hedge in between their gardens, but the bass is reverberating like the aftershocks of an earthquake. The cricket symphony is abruptly cut off when a shriek of hard rock and electric guitars wail out of some of the windows at her neighbour's place. More laughter follows, and then the music is muffled; Marlene assumes someone with a shred of common sense decided to close the windows. For a second, she imagines herself going over there and inviting herself into her hot neighbour's house. God, it would be so much fun. She's totally into a daydream of making out with her handsome-as-hell neighbour before she forces herself to return to reality.
"Just because he helped you move boxes into your house doesn't mean he likes you," Marlene says aloud.
"I like you," a voice slurs out in the dark.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Marlene screams and nearly falls out of her chair. She clicks on her torch and shines it over every square centimetre of her garden. "Who's there? Show yourself!"
A flicker of movement over by the hedge catches her eye. She creeps towards it. The torch doesn't highlight anything unusual going on in her garden until she literally stumbles across a guy who is lying in the middle of her grass and petting her dog.
"What the fuck?" she curses as she trips and falls down beside the stranger. Marlene scrambles backwards away from him as fast as she can and points her torch directly at his face. "Who are you?"
The stranger squints and tries to cover his face. His hand-eye coordination is severely lacking, though, and he ends up smacking his face a couple of times. Snuffles woofs in protest and bumps the stranger's hands as he asks permission to be petted again. "I like you," he repeats, and Marlene realises a beat too late that he is talking to Snuffles and not to her.
"Traitor," Marlene hisses at Snuffles, but she's not really mad at her dog. The fat blob of fur is unwaveringly loyal to anyone who feeds or pets him. She turns up the brightness on her torch and continues to interrogate the trespasser in her garden. "I said, who the fuck are you? And what the hell are you doing?"
He stops trying to cover his eyes and simply squints blearily at her. "You're really pretty," he says after a moment.
"Who. Are. You?"
"I'm Sherioush," the stranger insists.
"Yeah, fucker, I am too," Marlene replies. "Now, if you don't tell me what the hell you're doing drunker than a skunk in my garden at, like, two in the morning, I'm gonna - "
"Dogs are great," he interrupts her. He is still patting Snuffles on the head. If dogs could smirk, Marlene would bet her brand-new shiny house that her dog is wearing the canine equivalent of a smirk on his face at that moment. The stranger nods like a bobblehead for a couple seconds. Then, he promptly throws up in the grass at Marlene's feet.
Marlene stares in horror at the projectile vomit that is now pooling in the grass. "What the fuck!" she whisper-screams at him. God, she can feel her stomach churning and her throat tightening reflexively at the sight and smell of his vomit.
"You make me nervoush," he slurs back with a startling amount of honesty. "And I'm so fucking pissed."
He continues to pat Snuffles. Marlene doesn't know what to do: she's mad and irritated at him for interrupting her lovely first night living in Number Eighteen Hogsmeade Drive and she's disgusted with his behaviour and she's fighting down the urge to laugh hysterically at the mess - no pun intended - they've gotten themselves into and she's also sympathetic because he really is quite the picture of pity as he lies drunk off his ass near a congealing puddle of his own vomit and petting her traitorous attention-seeking dog.
"Let's get you cleaned up," is what Marlene says instead.
He blinks owlishly at her but allows himself to be directed into her house. A quarter of an hour later, he is passed out and lying on her couch. Snuffles has made himself at home on the stranger's stomach. Marlene stares at the two, still unable to process the night's events so far. She pardons herself to the kitchen so she can make tea and regain some semblance of normality.
Because damn if she's wrong, but she's pretty sure it is her fuck-hot neighbour whom she was earlier fantasizing about snogging that is passed out on her couch.
God dammit. Now, every time when she sees his lips, her mind replays the vomit debacle instead of the fantasy snog. Talk about a total turn-off.
Marlene places a blanket over him and drops a bucket on the floor in case he can't make it to the bathroom in the middle of the night for another repeat vomit performance. From inside her house, she can faintly make out the sounds of the party still raging next door - it seems that the loss of their host hasn't put a damper on their celebratory spirits.
"All right, Snuffles, time for bed. It looks like our own party of two is over thanks to Mr Vomit Comet." She moves to pick the black Lab up and bring him over to the master bedroom, but he whines in protest and stays firmly stuck to his curled up position on her neighbour's stomach.
"Seriously?" she huffs at him.
Snuffles doesn't budge a centimetre.
"Fine, fine," Marlene says and backs away with her arms raised in surrender. "Just remember that I'm the one who feeds you. And takes you out on walks. And squirrel-chasing."
Predictably, his ears perk up with every single one of his favourite words.
"Nope," she tells Snuffles, and his face droops. "You're on my shit list, buddy. At least for an hour, you are." Marlene even sticks her tongue out at her dog to prove that she means it.
Snuffles whines and gives her his best puppy dog face. Marlene is strong, however, and barely resists giving in to him. She goes into her bedroom, gets ready for bed, and spends the rest of the night wondering how the hell her attempt at being an adult ended up with her babysitting her drunk next door neighbour.
[-]
based on the tumblr prompt: 'i met you last night when you were drunkenly patting my dog in my backyard at 3 in the morning and when i asked you what the hell you were doing you slurred something about dogs being great and then you threw up on my feet and then fifteen minutes later you were passed out on my couch so that's why you're here right now also what the fuck is your name and why were you patting a dog in a stranger's backyard in the middle of the night' au
it made a lot of sense to me at the time.