Shaberu-chan: Heyooooo~ :3 Nice to meetcha ;D I'm Shaberu-chan, and this is my first story! (Well, on this account, anyway XD) I'll keep this short, but I hope you enjoy this Laven! ^-^ Alright, someone do the disclaimer. Allen? Why don't you do the honors?
Allen: *sighs* Shaberu-chan doesn't own DGM -_-
Allen let out a small grunt of effort as he picked up the white plastic laundry basket and propped it against his hip. He looked down at the almost overflowing contents and sighed in relief that this was the last load. He'd been doing laundry all day, and dear god, he was tired! How the bloody hell had the dirty clothes situation gotten this bad? He'd only been living in this apartment for two months!
…
Granted, without Cross around to hound him nonstop about keeping the place clean (As to "not upset the ladies," he'd say. Allen wanted to scoff. If the bastard cared so much about pleasing women with a tidy household, he shouldn't create such a huge mess in the first place! Or he should at least do some of the cleaning himself. Ha, like that'd ever happen!), Allen had slacked off a little in his sanitary habits. Not that his place was absolutely disgusting by any means, of course, but he definitely didn't put as much blood, sweat, and tears into it as he used to. Because of this, a thin layer of dust had already begun to accumulate on his furniture as well as the few belongings that still remained unpacked due to lack of space—Allen really needed to start investing in a new shelf at some point—and his laundry had remained undone the entire duration of his occupancy in the apartment he'd moved into after graduation. Hell, the clothes would still be piling up if it weren't for the fact that he had quite literally run out of clothing!
Allen shuddered slightly at the feeling of his sweaty turtleneck against his chest. Why did this have to be his last shirt? Despite the top notch AC he had going at full blast, he was absolutely roasting in the late August heat. He thanked his lucky stars that Summer would be over in less than a month. Moving into a cheap apartment right smack in the middle of June with little more than a fan to cool him had been torture. He was lucky he had enough graduation money leftover to afford his kickass air conditioner while he searched for a job! But even with the progressively less broiling temperatures of the approaching month of September and the almighty AC, Allen couldn't argue that having no clean long sleeved shirts less heavy than a goddamn turtleneck was just godawful. Hence the reason he was now staggering toward the three steps at the end of the hall with a laundry basket jam packed with dark clothes propped more or less comfortably against his hip.
Once Allen reached the small set off descending steps, he put the majority of his weight against the wall and felt around with his foot for the first wooden stair. He needed to be extra careful going down these. He couldn't even imagine what was going through the contractor's head when he decided to place a tiny staircase to get from the side of the apartment containing his living room, kitchen, and bedroom to the hallway containing the bathroom, closet, and laundry room. Not only was it completely unnecessary to have the smaller half of the place three feet lower than the rest, but the damn stairs were also freaking dangerous! They were hard to spot, first off, because the pattern of the wood basically blended the upper and lower floor levels together to the naked eye unless you paid close enough attention to notice the small differences in the sizing of the tiles from level to level. This made the stairs frighteningly easy to miss, so easy that Allen must have tripped down them at least a hundred times before it finally became etched in his brain to pay closer attention to his footing around the area. Secondly, even when he did make sure to watch his step, the fact that said stairs were made of wood made them rather slippery, especially to people like Allen who preferred to keep socks on whenever temperature made bearable. The eighteen-year-old had basically grown accustomed to having an array of brown and purple dotting his shins and forearms at this point from how much he slipped both up and down the steps. Combining this with the fact that he was currently carrying a large basket of clothing that not only gave him weight-related lifting troubles but also obscured his line of vision looking down at the steps, Allen was all but holding his breath in trying to make his way down without disaster.
At last Allen's foot brushed against the top of the first step, and he gingerly placed his weight on it one foot after the other until he was standing upright. He was already just about breaking a sweat in concentration. Two more to go, he thought as he readjusted his and the basket's weight against the wall and repeated his touch-and-feel test on the next step down. By the time he got there, he was sweating either from effort or heat or a combination of both. His arms ached from the weight of his clothing, and his hip definitely had a mark of imprint on it by now. His breath was coming out in small pants at this point. "Come on, Allen, just one more..." he whispered to himself as he readjusted again and prepared to take the last step, this one without touching and feeling as he was now stepping onto the flat ground rather than a narrow step.
What a mistake that was.
Allen yelped in alarm as he came crashing down hard onto the wooden floor, his laundry basket promptly going flying and spilling its crumpled contents everywhere. The boy groaned as he sat up, brushing a lock or two of semi-long white hair from his eyes. What the hell just happened? Did I slip...?, he wondered, slowly looking back at the staircase from which he'd just tripped.
"TIMCANPY!" Allen shouted at the top of his lungs in anger as he looked back at the golden-coated cat he'd just tripped over. Said feline regarded the enraged male disinterestedly, staring up at him without the slightest semblance of guilt. Allen ignored the small aches in his limbs as he stood up and picked the cat up from under his armpits as gently as he could despite his anger. "Tim, what have I told you about laying right at the bottom of the stairs? I can't see you when you do that!" Allen scolded, already beginning to simmer down. Timcanpy just blinked at him boredly and opened his jaws in a big, tired yawn. Allen chuckled slightly, bringing the cat in to hold him against his chest. "Oh, I can't stay mad at you, Tim," he said, giving his golden fur a few pets before holding him out again. "Although, I can't say I'm pleased that I'm going to have to pick up all of my clothes again." Timcanpy just blinked again without care for the teenage boy's irritated tone, and Allen set him back down on the ground. "Go find somewhere else to sleep," the whitette ordered, shooing the cat away from the stairs before turning to face the hot mess that was the dark clothing that had practically exploded down the hall. He sighed. Great.
After five or so minutes of picking up garments from miscellaneous places (How exactly had his dark gray button up managed to make its way all the way up to hang from the corner of the bathroom door frame? The doors in this apartment were rather tall. Well, either that, or Allen was rather small... But he'd never admit that. It was definitely the doorways. Yeah.), Allen wasted no time making his way to the last door on the left to switch out his laundry, replacing the crumbled darks in his basket with a load of clean, dry lights fresh from the drier. Once he finished adjusting the settings on the washer and drier, the boy set the much lighter (Thank god) basket against his hips and hurried back down the hall and up the stairs (This time taking care to step over Timcanpy, who, much to Allen's displeasure, was right back to snoring at the bottom of the steps) before heading to his room. He set the basket down with a huff and leaned back against the wall with his head tilted as far back as it would go. That entire ordeal had been ridiculously exhausting.
Allen was panting heavily at this point and pulled back the collar of his turtleneck in an attempt to relieve some of the baking heat trapped under the thick cloth. Christ, it was hot! Between the heat of the garment and the stress of falling flat on his face, the boy was sweating profusely. I should probably change clothes... he thought to himself absentmindedly before the heat that was slowly roasting him alive brought the idea to full seriousness. Allen pushed himself off the wall and kneeled down next to the basket of unfolded lights before beginning to dig through them for a less heavy shirt. At last, he pulled a light blue Jaws T-shirt he'd gotten cheap at Walmart from the basket. His eyes rolled to look up at the white ceiling in thought for a moment. Was he going to be seeing anyone today? After determining that he wasn't expecting any visitors and that he had enough food at home that he wouldn't be needing to leave the house again that day, he came to the conclusion that it should be fine and pulled the bulky turtleneck up over his head. He sighed in relief at the feeling of the lighter, cleaner cloth of the Jaws shirt against his skin before chucking the sweaty turtleneck to some random spot on the floor where it wouldn't be seen nor thought about until Allen did his laundry again in another couple months.
Now that the discomfort of the godforsaken turtleneck was gone, Allen nudged his laundry basket into the corner with his foot, deciding to deal with putting his clothes away later, and flopped down onto the bed with a sigh of relief. This was the first time in awhile he'd worn short sleeves, and it felt really nice. He couldn't do this very often, so it was quite the treat to him. His gray eyes traveled to look down at his uncovered left arm, which was essentially a gathering of red mounds of uneven flesh that was quite nauseating to look at to anyone who hadn't become immune from staring at it for ten years of their life. He moved and stretched the limb, enjoying the feeling of the AC-cooled air against the red flesh. Due to his need to keep the deformity hidden from the world (God knows it wouldn't be pretty if the public had this to add to the list of oddities that made up its opinion of him), Allen didn't get to let it air out like this often. He had to admit, it felt really good to wear a T-short once and awhile, which was basically the only reason he hadn't already thrown out the few tees he had.
Allen let the unique arm fall back to his side and glanced at the time on his phone. 4:37PM. So he'd been at laundry for almost five hours, huh ? That was the longest he'd spent on a chore since he moved here. Between enrolling for his morning community college classes, going to said classes 5 days a week, working his part-time job at a local restaurant called "The Pretzel Cafe," and taking care of the basic necessities such as grocery shopping and feeding his cat, Allen hardly had time for tedious housework. The small things like the dishes, of course, he'd kept up with, but he only got one completely free day a week, and unless circumstance made absolutely necessary, he didn't want to waste it on chores like he was today. This downtime was precious to him. It was not something he'd spend on boring stuff. Instead, he spent the majority of it blogging.
Allen, as much as he hated to say considering how much he wished his free time went to something more productive (like eating), was quite the blogger. Somewhere around his Junior year of high school, one of his old friends had introduced him to the social media site Tumblr, and needless to say, that was a mistake. The damn website, while starting as nothing more than a hobby, now basically consumed his entire life. If not for his tolerance against embarrassment on account of being the weirdo of his peer group his entire life (Stark white hair and a weird scar on your face tends to attract a lot of attention, most of which is less than friendly), this obsession would have been the shame of his existence. However, as it stood, Allen was in a new place, had left behind his few high school friends at home, and as he wasn't the most appealing individual to the public eye, he didn't have much else to do but blog.
Unlike Allen himself, said blog wasn't exactly the most eye catching of things. With a plain black and white background and a profile picture of a silver mask on a white cape (As one may imagine, Allen disliked taking pictures of himself), the blog was hard to give a specific description to besides the word "neat." The teen reblogged a variety of things, ranging from photographs he found pleasant to the eye to moderately humorous text posts as well as a few pictures he'd taken himself, but while said posts made for a pleasant, orderly layout, they did little to attract attention to the blog. Of course, Allen didn't mind this too much. After all, having been nothing but singled out in real life for the majority of his public schooling, being regarded as "normal" was quite a pleasant change. However, even Allen wouldn't have minded a bit of online popularity, and well, to put it bluntly, he was less than satisfied with only 23 followers after two years of blogging. Nevertheless, he still funneled a great deal of time and effort into his account, xXcrown-clownXx, and he held a great deal of pride in the, though unpopular, pleasant results.
Suddenly, a knock on the front door pulled Allen from his thoughts. He sat up in alarm, his heart beginning the pound. Who was that? Allen had already checked his mental schedule, and knew for a fact that he wasn't expecting any company today. What could it... He gulped. Could that be...? he began to wonder in slight panic before shaking his head and forcing himself to calm down. "No, it isn't," he said to himself out loud before standing up. He seriously needed to break this habit of freaking out whenever there was an unexpected guest. He was weird enough as it is without some freaky panic disorder that came to life every time someone knocked on the stupid door. It wasn't them. It'd been years since they'd paid him a visit, and even if they were by some unlikely chance looking for him again, he'd moved and left no trace of his whereabouts (For more than one reason, one of those being escaping the paper trail of debt given to him by his more or less psychotic guardian of ten years, Marian Cross). There was no way they could find him even if they wanted to. It was over.
However, confirming that they weren't the ones pounding on Allen's door didn't answer the question of who was, so Allen called, "Coming!" in a loud voice and quickly threw on a hoodie and a pair of white gloves from atop his dresser before half-jogging to the front door. He stood on his toes to peer through the peep hole in the door to find a man in a brown UPS uniform waiting rather impatiently on the other side. A sigh of relief escaped Allen's lips as the last thought of them returning slipped his mind, and he opened the door.
"Can I help you?" Allen asked the UPS guy politely with a falsely cheerful smile. He liked to keep up a rather pleasant mask for the outside world. Made things easier, you know? However, said man didn't return the gesture but rather gave Allen a suspicious glance over, staring specifically at the head of snowy white hair and the matching gloves. The object of this scrutinizing gaze bit back his irritation at being so shamelessly ogled at and continued smiling.
"You Allen Walker?" the man finally said when he finished his visual critique of Allen's appearance. The whitette nodded, his facial expression still locked in it's pleasant position, and the UPS guy handed him a clipboard with a document attached to it. "Sign here."
"What's this?" Allen asked, finally allowing his smile to change into a look of curiosity.
The man rolled his eyes. "I don't know, I just deliver the stuff! You want it or not?" Forcing himself not to outwardly express his annoyance at the man's rudeness towards him, Allen picked up the pen lodged in the clip of the clipboard and signed the paper quickly before handing it back with as little malice as he could muster. The UPS guy gave Allen a cardboard box before turning and storming off without even saying goodbye.
"Who shoved an entire pool cue up his ass?" Allen muttered under his breath as soon as the man was out of sight before closing the door and turning his attention to the package in hand. "I wonder what this is?" he pondered to himself only to be met with a loud Mrow in reply. The boy glanced over to see Timcanpy lying on the small couch. The golden-furred cat was staring at Allen expectantly, and he chuckled. "I'm opening it, Tim, I'm opening it!"
After removing the sweatshirt and gloves and throwing them onto the couch, Allen grabbed a steak knife from the kitchen (He hadn't unpacked his scissors yet, and he couldn't even begin to imagine which box they might be in) and cut open the tape for putting it back where it came from. Hey, he wasn't gonna wash that thing over this! Way too much effort. The boy then returned to living room, where Timcanpy still waited staring up at Allen with obvious curiosity, and sat down next to the feline. He pulled open the box to find an object wrapped thickly in bubblewrap and wasted no time tearing the cushiony shell away to reveal a black glass vase with an intricate silver rose cross decal on it. Oh, I remember now!, Allen thought, smiling down at the thing. He'd ordered the vase for, like, $5 off eBay a few weeks back. He'd thought it'd be a nice (and cheap) decoration for his side table, and he guessed he must have just forgotten he'd ordered it. The teen shoved the bubblewrap back into the box and gently tossed it across the room (Wow, he was procrastinating a lot today...) before reaching over Timcanpy to place the vase on the side table. He smiled at how pleasant it looked there for a moment before giving Tim a pointed look. "Do not break it." The cat looked about as offended as a feline could look and hopped off the couch before stalking out of the living room indignantly. Allen once again turned his attention to the vase and hummed. This would make a good picture for my blog... he thought, biting the inside of his cheek absentmindedly. He pulled his phone out from his back pocket and took a quick picture of the vase on the side table before standing up and walking back to his bedroom.
After flopping down on his bed once more, Allen opened up a photo-editing app he'd grown to particularly like and applied a few filters to the photo of his vase until he deemed it to be aesthetically pleasing enough and then opened up his mobile Tumblr app to make a new post. "New vase. Hope the cat doesn't break it XD" he captioned before adding a couple of hashtags and posting the thing. Allen locked his phone and set it down on the bed. I guess I'll finish my laundry while I wait, he thought to himself before standing back up and walking toward his abandoned laundry basket, leaving the phone behind on the bed. He'd check on it later.
Allen spent an hour or so finishing up his laundry. After folding the (now wrinkled) clean clothes, he carefully returned to the laundry room to retrieve the next dry basket of clothing and put the last load in the drier, already deciding that he'd deal with it tomorrow. He returned to his room to fold and put away the far less wrinkled dry clothing and made a quick visit to the kitchen for a snack of a Little Debbie's cupcake (Thank god for cheap, easy sweets he didn't have to cook!) before at last returning to his bed to eagerly check on how his Tumblr post did.
Allen's heart dropped in disappointment. An entire hour, and he'd only gotten two likes.
A long sigh escaped his lips, and he stared up at the ceiling. He really did put a lot of effort into his blog. Why was it that he was still so unpopular? What was it that his blog was missing, that thing that would really make his two years of hard work and more or less healthy obsession pay off? Other blogs do just fine... he thought a little bitterly, now mindlessly scrolling through his dash. 6,397 notes on one post. 592 on another. Even a whopping 1,037,435 on yet another! What did these have that he didn't? They didn't post anything much different than he did. What did they have that was so special?
Grudgingly, he reblogged the post with 6,397 notes. It was a picture of a cute strawberry shortcake. Even when jealous, he really liked strawberry shortcake.
Suddenly, Allen's notifications lit up. He clicked on them to find he had a direct message from fr13nd-0r-f0u.
fr13nd-0r-f0u: heyyy clownie ;)
Allen chuckled at the silly nickname his friend had given him. fr13nd-0r-f0u was an Internet friend of his he'd made a few months back. She was one of his few followers, and they mostly connected through a mutual love of unique weaponry and Twenty One Pilots. When Tumblr came out with its direct messaging system, they really hit it off.
xXcrown-clownXx: Hi f0u c:
fr13nd-0r-f0u: I like ur vase. Very emo. Suits you ;P
xXcrown-clownXx: Hahaha you're a riot -_-
fr13nd-0r-f0u: aww don't be like that, shortstack! Where's the clownie I know? :'c /3
xXcrown-clownXx: I'M NOT THAT SHORT!
fr13nd-0r-f0u: there he is ;)
xXcrown-clownXx: Done picking on me yet?
fr13nd-0r-f0u: almost. u do anything fun today?
xXcrown-clownXx: If you count laundry as fun...
fr13nd-0r-f0u: I most certainly do NOT.
xXcrown-clownXx: Well that about sums it up. Oh, and I got tripped by Tim down the stairs.
fr13nd-0r-f0u: AGAIN?!
xXcrown-clownXx: That's Tim for you XD
fr13nd-0r-f0u: I swear that cat is gonna make u hit ur head on something someday. Then ull be even SHORTER! :0
xXcrown-clownXx: Oh yes. So funny. Many laughs -_-
fr13nd-0r-f0u: ur smiling and u know it
She had him there.
xXcrown-clownXx: Is that all? XD
fr13nd-0r-f0u: yea, pretty much. I just came 2 make sure ur not being all emo about the whole 2 notes on ur vase thing.
xXcrown-clownXx: How did you know? o_0
fr13nd-0r-f0u: magic~ *wink*
xXcrown-clownXx: Of course. I shouldn't even be surprised XP
fr13nd-0r-f0u: damn str8~ ;) well I gtg. Baka-Bak's riding my ass about using his work computer 4 tumblr again *rolls eyes* see ya, clownie~! ;P
xXcrown-clownXx: Bye, f0u XD
Allen chuckled at the conversation, in a considerably better mood now. f0u always knew how to cheer him up.
Without much else to do, Allen spent the next hour at least scrolling down his dash and reblogging a post here and there. He wasn't paying much attention to any of it—until he came across a certain post, that is. It wasn't anything special, just a funny little comic about a couple playing MarioKart for the Wii. The girl beat the guy, but even though he was frustrated from losing, he kissed her cheek and she started blushing like mad. Allen smiled at it. He thought it was cute.
Allen pulled up a blank text post and started typing.
Now, he never was really one for romance and all of that. After all, he was gay. He would've been lucky enough to find a girlfriend with how unappealing his odd appearance was, but a boyfriend? It was just about impossible, so Allen had never really had high hopes in terms of romance. Because of this, he really had no idea what fueled the text post. The cute comic just inspired him, he guessed. Whatever it was he ended up posting it.
"I just want someone who will play Mariokart with me and kiss my cheek even when I kick their butt."
He stared at the text he'd just posted wondering if he should delete it before shaking his head and locking his phone. Eh, whatever. It's not like I have a lot of followers anyway, he thought. Worst case scenario, f0u will poke fun at me for it. Allen shook his head again and got up to eat dinner. He didn't do much else that night, but by the time he went to bed, he'd already forgotten about the silly text post.
He was in for one hell of a surprise the next morning.
Shaberu-chan: Yayyyyy first chapter completed! :3 Sorry to all you Lavi fangirls who were expecting to see Lavi in this chapter! ^-^;;; This is mostly just exposition. Lavi shows up in the next one though (Chapter 2 is currently about 1/3-1/2 done, I'd say?). Anyway, stay tuned~ ;D Anything to say, Allen?
Allen: *eating a donut* Nah :T You've made me pretty lazy in this story, so I don't really feel like commenting. Though I can't say I'm necessarily pleased about getting tripped by a cat -_- *glaaare*
Shaberu-chan: *sweat drop* Eheh... 0v0;;; Well, anyway, while I'm here, I should probably give some credits. This story is inspired by the stories "Blogging" by Forever the Uke and "First Impressions" by Elvira Rayne. Go check them out! :3 In fact, I make references to Vira-chan throughout the thing XD For example, Fou's username "fr13nd-0r-f0u"? Yep, that's a reference to her (that you guys don't understand yet).
Elvira Rayne: *covers my mouth* SHUSH DON'T TELL THEM THAT! 0^0
Shaberu-chan: *licks her hand*
Elvira Rayne: *jumps back* EUGH YUCK *sulks in the corner* Nasty... e^e
Shaberu-chan: *chuckles* Anyway, please R&R and let me know what you think! :3 'Til next time! ^-^