At around 11:00 one night in June, Andrew lay awake in his bed. The lamp on his nightstand was on, and his phone in his hand, and the door closed and windows open. He had just finished masturbating, and was just about to turn out the lights and sleep. The only thing bothering him was the heat and humidity that he suffered from nearly every night during the summer.
Anger's temper was just as fiery in Headquarters. The six emotions had fans on and air conditioning at the max. Disgust was drinking a glass of water.
"GAH!" Anger growled. "This heat is killing us! Just look at this!" He pointed to one indicator on the big screen. "Just look at how high the discomfort levels are! God I hate summer!"
"Eh, you and me both, brother," Disgust replied.
"Yeah, this is why we love winter so much," Sadness said. "It's so much better to be cold and to get all snug under the covers than to sweat to death in this heat."
Anger continued to grumble. "Mom and Laura are always saying how much they hate winter! Always complaining about it! Always saying they want summer to come! No more snow! Well, they got what they wanted! I hope they're happy!"
After a few minutes, Logic spoke up. "You know, a lot of times when we were young, Mom and Laura suggested opening the door along with the windows to keep the air flowing."
"Open the door?" Fear repeated, obvious fear in his tone.
"Come on Fear," Joy said. "We are twenty years old. We're not afraid of the dark anymore! I mean what's going to get us? Ghosts? Vampires? Murderers? Animatronics? We all know none of that is real!"
"Well actually, there's still the occasional sleep paralysis episodes," Sadness added, reminding him.
Joy rolled his eyes. "Okay, but aside from that. And we haven't had one of those in months anyway."
"Well it's not just that," Fear said. "We're so use to having the door closed, giving ourselves privacy, closing ourselves off from the rest of the house and the family. Opening the door is letting all that in."
"Look bub," Anger growled at him, "Would you rather toss and turn in this oven we call a bedroom, or step outside the comfort zone and get more comfortable?"
"Well, uh, well-"
"Let's just give it a try," Joy suggested, already imputing the commands on the keyboard for Andrew to get out of bed and close the door. "We can always close it again if we don't like it."
Andrew opened the door. Because the rest of the family was asleep by now, the rest of the house was dark. The only light was a very faint blue one coming from the fridge and the dishwasher in the kitchen.
In the morning, Andrew found that he had slept very well and very comfortably with the door open. He did not need to sleep under his covers either, just hugged them for a little comfort, like one may hug a teddy bear.
"Hey, does it bother anybody that we actually followed Mom and Laura's advice?" Anger asked in the morning.
Everybody shook their heads and replied "nope" and "not really" in chatters.
"Besides," Joy added. "They made that suggestion years ago, so it feels somewhat like we made the decision on our own accord."
Author's Note: One of my reviewers has suggested that I make the emotions all male since Andrew is male. Beforehand, I had a lot of thoughts on that matter. At first I found writing these one shots easier by keeping the emotions the same gender as Riley's. I do remember in the trailer we see the mom's emotions are all female and all the dad's are male, but then you have Riley having both boy and girl emotions. That kind of confused me. I can think of two reasons why they made it like that; one, because Riley is sort of a tomboy and has boyish characteristics, or two, since she's still a kid and when she gets older she'll develop female emotions (though the second reasoning is less likely I suspect). But talking it over with that one reviewer made me realize that it would make more sense to make the emotions all male. And so I've decided that from here on in, that's what I'll do.