Danny this is an emergency!
It was 8 PM on a Saturday night and Danny Castellano was not in the mood to answer text messages, especially text messages from his overly dramatic coworker.
Daniel Castellano you answer me right now this is not a drill!
He squinted at the phone, thinking for a minute or so on whether or not he truly wanted to reply.
Is this like that time you couldn't find your left shoe and called the FBI?
Danny chuckled, hitting send to the text. Mindy was constantly overreacting to things, and he was constantly having to calm her down before she turned it into a national security issue.
Those were really expensive shoes... But no. My power is out.
That's it? That's your emergency?
Yes! Please come fix it. It's your duty as a man and also as my friend.
I'm a doctor, Mindy, not an electrician.
Please Danny? I need you.
Fine. I'll be there soon. Don't touch anything.
I'm sitting in the dark I don't think there's much to touch.
It only took him ten minutes to get to her place. He was a quick walk away, which he hadn't decided if that was annoying or great. He loved Mindy to death, but the fact that she basically had 24/7 access to him caused frustration on more than one occasion. When he got to her door he knocked three times before backing away and shoving his hands in his pockets. On the other side of the door he heard a few slams and a "what the hell where did THIS come from?!" followed shortly by a door unlocking.
"Oh, Hey Danny. Fancy seeing you here." Mindy smiled at him. She looked annoyingly cute in her button up pink Cinderella flannel PJ's and fuzzy house shoes. A flashlight was in her hand, lighting the way.
"You just texted me to come over like fifteen minutes ago." He said flatly, closing the door behind him. Danny followed Mindy closely to the kitchen, where she had some sort of giant industrial camping light perched on the counter. He laughed when he saw it, looking at her. "Where did you even get one of these? And why do you need it?"
She pushed her hair out of her face, her hands crossing over her chest. "You never know when you're going to need a light. Especially after Hurricane Sandy. Have you seriously not started to prepare for a situation like that?!"
Danny stared at her for a second, his eyebrows raising a bit, "We didn't even lose power on this side of town."
"But we could've Daniel, we could've."
A smile crept across his face thinking about all the planning she probably did after the hurricane. "How did you manage this." He pointed up at the lights that were off. Danny knew that when Mindy was involved there had to be an outrageous story.
"Honestly I have no idea. It happened when I was plugging in my electronics before bed." She grabbed the flashlight off the table and started walking towards her bedroom, figuring that Danny would just follow her (he did). Mindy made her way to her bedside table where the source of the problem was. She had a power strip plugged into the outlet with five chargers and another power strip plugged into it. Attached to the extra power strip were six more plugs. Danny had never in his life needed that many plugs, and he couldn't imagine why Mindy would either.
"Good lord."
Mindy smiled at him, looking down at her amazing life hack of getting more plugs. "Amazing isn't it. I needed to plug in everything and keep it all within reach of my bed, and I always find a way." He shook his head, quickly unplugging the main power strip from the wall. "This is actually a death trap, Mindy. What were you thinking!? You can't have this much power all coming from one place.."
"How else am I going to keep up with everything?!"
"What the hell is all of this even connected to?"
Mindy bent down, pointing to each plug. "Well this is my cell phone charger, that one is for my laptop, this is the Ipad, my kindle, my Ihome, and then this leads to the other power strip which has my lamp, my heating pad, my vaporizer, my 3DS charger for when I want to play Barbie Dream Design, this thing which I actually dont know what it does... and Finally my electric blanket. For when I want to feel like there's someone's extra body heat in my bed." She smiled at Danny, who looked at her with a blank face. For a doctor sometimes she wasn't the brightest.
"That's a lot of electronics. Who even uses that many electronics."
Mindy sat the power strips back on the floor, "Well, Danny, Obviously I do." He let out a grunt before moving on. "Where's your power box?"
The question was met with a puzzling look from Mindy. "The what?"
A sigh, he seriously couldn't believe that this was even a thing that was happening. "Power box. You know, with the switches in it? I Can reset it maybe..."
"Oh. That really ugly thing that was on my wall? It's in my livingroom." She started walking off before he could say anything else. Naturally he followed her, stepping over random items that were scattered across the floor. When they got to the electric box he couldn't believe his eyes. She had bedazzled it and taped a picture of some random little girl on the door of it. "What the hell." He stood there taking it all in. This was such a Mindy thing to do. If he had that instawhatever app on his phone this would be something he'd definitely be posting.
"It was hideous. So I bedazzled it and then put a picture of my favourite member of One Direction on it." She put her hand over her heart, sighing, "Harry is so dreamy."
Danny couldn't take his eyes off of the sight infront of him. "You mean that's a boy?" She nodded, almost offended by his question. "Yes Danny. He looks nothing like a girl. He just has really high cheek bones and beautifully curly hair. Please stop judging him, grandpa." He shook his head, opening the box.
Truthfully he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. When the power went out at their place when he was a kid he usually just had his neighbor fix it. This was a foreign concept for him. "I really don't know what to do."
"What do you mean you don't know what to do?" Mindy frowned, contemplating just pushing some buttons to reset it herself. "I mean I'm a doctor, not an electrician... Cant your landlord come and fix it?"
She shook her head, "No. He's out of town. Should be back tomorrow evening."
Danny smiled at her, a teasing look in his eye. "So why dont you just take a break from electricity. It could be relaxing."
A hand was shot up in his face, her head shook violently. "No way. uh-uh. That is not happening. I need my electronics. I can't even have running water, Danny. I can't survive without flushing my toilet and charging my phone! I am not from the eighteen hundreds! This is Manhattan, not a third world country."
Danny ran his hand through his hair, sighing as the words came through his lips. "You can stay at my place tonight if you want. With minimal conversation and a proper bedtime."
Mindy threw her arms around his neck, hugging him quickly. She pulled away from the hug before Danny even had time to reciprocate. "I'll go grab some things!"
Five minutes later Mindy came out of her room with a duffle bag big enough to fit a weeks worth of clothes in. "You know it's only one night right?" She laughed softly, "Oh Danny. You have no idea how many things go into making me look flawless every day. Here take this, I actually have a pie in the fridge that I really don't want to spoil so I'm going to go grab that real quick."
"What about your perishables?"
"Yeah no, I'm only really worried about the pie. Everything else is replaceable but this was homemade so."
Once the pie was in her possession she was ready to head out. Danny picked up her ten thousand pound bag, threw it over his shoulder and made his way out the door with Mindy (and pie) close behind him.
This was going to be an interesting night.
He had finally put a limit on talking. There was only so much one person could take of constant jabbering and he was at his limit. She had literally talked the entire walk back to his apartment, the elevator ride up and then she sat and talked to him for another fifteen minutes before finally he had told her that he needed a little quiet time. Danny loved quiet time, it was his favorite part of the night. As rewarding as his job was (and it was really rewarding) he just needed a little time away from his coworkers, crying babies, and hormonal mothers. His weekends generally consisted of laying in his bed and watching the nature or history channel.
"Hey Danny," Mindy walked into his bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm super bored right now and I know you said that you needed a little alone time, but I figure you'll get alone time when you're dead one day, hopefully a really long time from now, but sometimes you never know I mean. you are getting up there in age..." - "I'm in my thirties" - "late thirties, but still. I think we should spend this time to get to know eachother a little bit better. Did I see monopoly on your bookshelf?"
"We're not playing monopoly."
"Fine. We wont play monopoly, but we can still keep eachother company, right?"
Danny sighed, scooting over so that there was room for her at the top of the bed. He figured maybe he could find some really awesome movie and that would occupy her time. "Climb in."
Mindy clapped her hands together, a grin creeping over her face. "This is going to be awesome Danny Castellano, you are so not going to regret this!" She climbed into the bed, sliding under the covers as she did so. Danny looked at her out of the corners of his eye. He truly couldn't believe that she was the first woman to get into his bed after he and Eyepatch broke up. It was a weird feeling to have another person in the bed again. The immediate warmth of another human occupying the same space as him was something that he couldn't figure out if he liked or hated. He and Mindy had grown pretty close over the last few months, especially after the whole Josh incident. He hated to admit it, but she was quickly becoming his closest friend.
He kind of liked her, he guessed, but he'd be the last to admit it.
"So what are we going to watch." Mindy looked up from sending a text, her eyes meeting with his for a moment before he turned away to look at the television. "Dont know. There's a really cool documentary on the Alamo playing on the History Channel right now. I was thinking about getting a nice cup of tea and watching that."
There was an over exaggerated snoring noise from the other side of the bed. Mindy had pretended like she had fallen asleep. "Oh sorry. I just got so bored that I literally fell asleep for a second. I don't want to learn about some stupid event that happened in like the fifteen-hundreds. Why don't we find a nice romantic comedy! I think 27 Dresses is playing on Lifetime tonight. That movie is so perfect! Ugh I so wish I could have a life like Katherine's."
"Wait," Danny squinted his eyes, holding back a laugh. "You do know what the Alamo is right?"
"Yeah sure. Some old famous dudes signed some really important papers over the sale of like. Oklahoma or something." She shrugged, her attention going back to her cell phone for a second.
" The Battle of the Alamo was a pivotal event in the Texas revolution." He dead-panned, his eyes trained on her. "After a thirteen day siege, Mexican troops launched an assult on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio Texas. Literally everyone who fought for Texas were killed. And it wasn't the fifteen-hundreds it was 1854. Did you go to school?"
Mindy held her hand up at him, "I am a doctor, Danny. I very obviously went to school."
He chuckled, nudging her playfully, "could've fooled me." Mindy nudged him back as she reached for the remote, changing it to Lifetime. "Because of your boring history lesson we missed the opening! I can totally quote it during the next commercial break if you'd like. I have that opening monologue down pat. Memorizing Romantic Films should actually be on my resume. I'm practically a professional."
Danny shook his head as he leaned farther into the bed. "It's fine, really. I think I can figure out what happens." He didn't want to admit to her that he had actually already seen the movie and knew what the opening part was as well. "Not as interesting as the Alamo Documentary but I guess this will have to do."
Mindy smiled at him as she turned to her side, propping her head up with a pillow. "Ugh. That James Marsden is so dreamy. I swear, real men don't look like him, no offense."
"Please. I'm just as hunky as James Marsden."
"Nope."
"Okay."
"Okay."
The movie was over and both of them were still awake. Not only that, but Mindy was bored again. Danny had now realized why she needed so many electronics beside her bed to keep her entertained at night, and at this exact moment he had really wished he had a 3DS to keep her company so that he could catch some beauty sleep.
"Hey Danny, what's your wifi password? I brought my Ipad so that I could play candy crush. I was actually wondering if you could download it to your phone so that you could send me some lives..." He handed her his cell phone, smiling, "have at it. The wifi password is christina4029"
Mindy glared at him for a second before smacking him on the arm. "What?! Why is your wifi password your ex wife's name!? That's actually really unhealthy Danny, I knew you still harbored feelings for her but someone's name as your password is a big deal!"
Danny grabbed his arm where he had just been assaulted, rubbing it. "first off, Ow. Second off, I don't know how to change it. If you can figure it out be my guest."
That was like a personal invitation to change his passcode to whatever she wanted it to be. With a few clicks of a button she had pulled up the wifi settings and typed in a new passcode. "Done."
He shot up from the bed, grabbing the Ipad out of her hands to look at it. "What?! I've been trying to figure out how to do that for like a year, what are you some kind of tech wizard?!"
Mindy put her hand on her chest, smiling at him. "I am so flattered that you compared me to Hermione Granger, I am a tech wizard."
"Hermione who?"
"Doesn't matter. Your new password is Mindyismybestfriend23" She grabbed the Ipad out of his hands and closed out the settings before he had a chance to change it.
"That's not what I would've chosen. You didn't ask me what I wanted to change it to." He frowned, trying to grab the Ipad out of her hands unsuccessfully. "It's a really great password Danny. I also think I just started a wifi fight with some rando in your building too. So that's exciting!"
He furrowed his eyebrows, turning to look at her even more. "What are you talking about?"
"Well. Someone's wifi name was set as 'Miley Cyrus' Strip Club', I changed yours to 'Leave Miley Alone' and now 'Miley Cyrus' Strip Club' is 'Miley has STDS'. Which is probably so untrue. She seems like a one man kind of woman, and Liam Hemsworth is totally clean I'm assuming. Also it's STI's now..."
"What does that mean? My wifi has a name?"
"It was Belkin but that's boring."
"I never named it Belkin?"
"That's the company that made the router."
"Router?"
"Oh geeze. You know all about the Alamo but not about the internet? The internet box."
Danny let out an audible 'Oh', then reached over to grab the Ipad. "I think it's time for bed." He put the Ipad on his side of the bed (his side? When did one side become hers and the other his?) and turned off his lamp.
"I'm not really-" "goodnight Mindy."
She laughed softly, then leaned over to cut her own light out. "Goodnight Danny. Thank you for being my unconventional hero."
He smiled a smile that was hidden in the darkness, "anytime."