Bad Weather Blues - (Original, M)

[Garnet]

This started as a small brain demon and then metamorphosized. Here is a snarky flame-elemental monster dialing back through his past relationships, suffering through some weather imbalances, and reflecting on how good he actually has it now. If you're not familiar with this dude, uhhh IDK. Read my past drabbles for reference.

---

 

Normally, he'd power through shit like this, but this winter has been abnormally harsh and they're barely a couple of months in. Global warming his scorching ass, it's cold and has been snowing steadily since Wednesday, stacking up the centimeters of powdery run-off until Abe can see only a thick, blurry white from beneath the sheen of quiet misery that has filmed his eyes. That malaise too, like the snow, has settled in softly at first. By the time he's realized how much a menace this drag will be, it's far too late.

Seriously, though, he should think about overwintering in Guatemala. 

The texts pile up on his phone even faster than the drifts outside. He should have turned off his notifications hours ago, but guilt holds the impulse at bay. 

Finally, when the latest ping jerks him out of a half-doze with a stinging, miniature weight of annoyance, Abe clears his throat and pulls his phone towards him. He doesn't bother to read through all of the texts and snapchats and push notifications for god knows what else in detail. He skim for the important shit, which is sparing but present, and then navigates to the one contact who he's going to trust an awful fucking lot to just get shit handled until the snow and his brain fog has begun to taper off.

"Hey. Can you manage shop for a day or two, until this clears? Not feeling good."
Sent 9:02 AM

There, not an easy admission, but an admission nonetheless. 

He puts his face back down into his limp, flattened pillow, shivering at its coolness, and shuts his eyes against the muffled brightness of the snow trying to seep through the windows. Fortunately, Casey is either up for a rare, early-for-him morning, or just hasn't slept from the night before. Either way, his reply comes pinging in within ten cheerful minutes. It's one of the few visceral, palpable times he's felt real relief for the dullahan rather than just suspicious, guarded gratitude while he tries to work out his family friend's grander schemes. Because they're there, he's sure of it, just...

"weather got you down? no worries fella, better you than me. rest up."
Sent 9:08 AM

With a soft, muffled groan, Abe turns his phone to silent and reburies himself in a mound of pillows, blanket, and a little dog named Bee who seems happy to not have to abandon her bedtime snuggle companion yet. 

Thank fuck for all of that. He wouldn't describe Casey as sympathetic, and definitely not empathetic. Still, he gets it -- knowledge gleaned from experience. Abe has precious few memories of the reaper from his childhood, a fact that he's mostly grateful for lest it strain the already weird parameters of their current relationship. If he looks back, and strains to cherry pick however, he has a distinct recollection of a few incidents that would have stuck in Casey's mind as well. Of a week of bad snowstorms and intermittent power outages, when at the end of it his chronically cheerful and even-tempered father had blown a fuse over something so minor, and laid the fuck into the dullahan with a crankiness that had made even his mother raise en eyebrow. Abe recalls feeling an odd sense of justification with his father's ire at the time, because yeah, in what universe was it fair that he'd had a week off from school and couldn't even enjoy it due to being pale and bedbound himself, slogging through the downsides of being a fire elemental enveloped in all the miseries of a frigid Canadian winter. Screw anyone that wasn't rightfully pissed off about it.

Had his mother ever suffered something similar? He can't exactly piece it out, especially with forever having the ocean at her beck and call here in Queensport, but it seems likely, it seems a special kind of torture to keep her landlocked up it Fort Gaden, it seems...

Something.

While he picks at the idea with slackening focus, Abe shoves an arm over his head and drifts slowly back out to a fuzzy, uncomfortable sleep.

---

Gaia's apartment has big, pictured skylights that make up a good section of her sloping cathedral ceiling. In the summer and spring, they let in all of these beautiful, streaming rays, and both Abe and all of the plants she tends in their trailing pots and hanging baskets make all the best use of this sun-soaked healing space. It's like a greenhouse in her bedroom. He has no idea what she pays for the place, but since her parents are fucking loaded it doesn't really bear thinking about. He just enjoys the occasional, lazy afternoon dozing in her bedsheets, soaking up the heat and good vibes. 

Except when was the last time he had a lazy anything? He can't recall his last day off. Three weeks ago, or four? Usually it's not something that Abe minds, having his nose to the grindstone, but when it's been raining for almost a week straight on top of it, he starts to lose his edge, his energy, and his temper.

Gaia has managed to lure him to her place for the night for some of her (terrifically bad, but he'll never tell her) vegan stew, which at least sounded like a comforting thing until he'd tasted it. Not so much. He'd felt too exhausted and drained to make it back to East Central that night, and for once he's got a morning clear of responsibilities unless Casey brings in something hot. Maybe Casey will be nice to him. Maybe Gaia will leave him alone to sleep. Maybe that downpour drilling down on the skylight can stop feeling like it's driving down needles into his whole aching brain and soul.

And look, he doesn't mind a warm spring rain. It's refreshing, it's cleansing, but this one has been long, icy, and unpleasant. It's overstayed his welcome and Abe just wants to have his head under the pillows, sulking and recalcitrant, until it's gone for good.

Life has never been so easy, though, because his girlfriend also has the day off, and comes flinging herself back into bed with him once she's wrapped up her yoga or meditations or whatever the fuck pre-noon routine she has worked out for herself. 

Abe grunts as Gaia flops down beside him, atop the covers but with a snaking golden hand gliding up over his blanket-burrito'd shape.

"It's almost eleven, sleepyhead. Are you going to spend all day in bed?"

Abe groans softly in response. This thing they have going is nothing too serious -- at least, he doesn't think it is. Gaia's lifestyle is nowhere even close to his own, and usually that ends up being okay. She's... really into the whole monster thing, and its hard to keep her down, so that's been getting them along. Abe, however, can't always (or most of the time) share her bubbling personality, and especially not in this weather, when his head is throbbing this much with any little noise or motion. 

"That's the plan," he mumbles into the bedsheets, his voice feeling drawn. Sometimes these bouts of elemental unbalancing feel thick and heavy, like a headcold that coasts up out of nowhere and is gone just as quickly. Sometimes it's a bit like the flu, especially in these spring deluges that leave everything feeling watery and washed out for days. Others, it feels like the teetering cusp of a migraine that is really going to try his moorings if Gaia keeps jabbing him playfully in the shoulder.

"That's a waste, come on! We've got all day. Let's go do something."

"Gai," he moans, and tries to retreat deeper under the covers. He knows she's going to keep at this, and he's already debating if he has the strength or wits about him to stumble down to the bus station and catch a ride back to the shop. Just leave his car here, until the rain lets up, and his mood is something other than depression and anger teething at the edges of frustration. "Js'lemme sleep. Please." 

It's a low croak, but of course it doesn't dissuade her. Gaia is used to getting what she wants, even if her approach seems sweet and demure. She manages to steal an edge of the covers and whisks them abruptly back, exposing the huddled, woozy comma of him curled up on himself in flannel pants and nothing more. He twists up for a shivering, reactive shudder, then sits up abruptly, unfurling, when she sneaks a playful hand over his side.

"What the fuck," he barks out, hoarse with a stab of pain for the sudden movement, the ache of his limbs uncurling from their cramped clench. Even the dim, watery light of the rainy flat is suddenly sharp in his eyes, as throbbing discomfort lances from front to back in his skull like a searing line. "Can you just leave me alone for five fucking minutes without..." The pain has settled in his sinuses, like the shock from eating something too cold, too fast. It settles under his eyes, converges in between, until with sudden alarm Abe takes a shaking breath and hovers a hand in place. Oh, no, come on, not that...

"I..." He can't get the rest out, but even in her shocked hurt Gaia seems to recognize the squinted line of his eyes and folded brow. She scrambles back off the bed, fists clenched, just before Abe doubles over himself, into the cup of one hand.

"-- hh'ESSZSCH-shue!"

Not one of his loudest or most enthusiastically purged sneezes, by any means, but holy fuck does it hurt. His head feels like the clench of some awful vice for a few blinding white seconds afterwards, as he issues a weak, follow-up wheeze that he doesn't even hear, over the pound of his own blood fuck fuck fuck these bad weather moods.

"... hah-ESSHHHSh-uh! Christ." 

When the throb begins to subside, and he pries his eyes finally open to attempt another go at human contact, Abe by shameful degrees processes what's happened. Sneezing out a spitting stream of fire is unfortunately nothing new to him, but he's put off to register that his poor, oblivious, but well-meaning girlfriend's sheets have blackened in several other places where the flame has leapt off his body, or out of his hands. The back of his neck feels clammy, and his eyes are watering, and it's all made so much worse when he meets Gaia's expression.

All told, she's pretty accepting of the fire thing, and actively accepts or even enthuses that he's a thirteen foot demon crammed into a tough guy package. That's all fine and good, but when there's a lick of genuine, true fear in her face, his heart drops out through his ribcage.

"I... fuck. I'm... really fuckin' sorry, babe," he mutters into the smudge of one hand that pinches a thumb and forefinger tight around the bridge of his nose, trying to force back some of the pulse that wants to push his temper again, in spite of the pall of guilt. "Didn't mean to snap at you, just... out of sorts today." It's the best explanation he can give without getting into the nitty gritty of it, which he's definitely not in the mood for. Already, the moment has swept him out to some lonely, Other-ing kind of sea. He brushes a remorseful hand over the burned patches in her bedding. "And I'll... get you some new sheets." 

Gaia's expression clears after a moment. She pulls her giddy, peace-and-love facade back over herself, brushes the long, burnished ripples of hair back over her shoulders, and plants both hands to her hips. "It's cool! We all have bad days. And... don't worry about the sheets." Abe is still casting her a sad, hangdog look when he opens his eyes, so she blows out a sigh and steps forward. There is care now in how she bends down to plant a kiss between his eyes, but he can feel a different, bridled emotion there too that he doesn't quite trust but maybe understands. "I'll get you some Belladonna, we'll try again in a few hours, okay? Sleep it off, mister big cranky scary ifrit."

It's meant to be a friendly jab to lighten the mood, he thinks, and Abe forces a smile for it. It's quick to fade, though, when he lays back down and hears her move off to the kitchenette, and all of her bullshit bottles of homeopathic homebrews that he'll swallow down anyway, because it makes her happy. He gazes up at the skylights, at the deluge washing down over them and blurring out the iron-grey sky, then closes his eyes. The rain can't last forever.

---

He's a little bit pissed off that this fuzzy, cotton batting feeling that's settled into the back of his nose and throat is so far almost indistinguishable from the few days of snowfall they've had, or a genuine, run-of-the-mill winter headcold. If it's the weather, then it's still pretty mild, and he might still make it out with just a day or two of sniffling annoyances, tired coughs muffled into his arm and the pull of general malaise seeping out between his joints and muscles.

God, he hopes so. A real cold is going to be a pain in his fucking ass for at least a week, and the flurries are due to stop by Friday. 

That, and his germaphobe girlfriend is going to be way more high-tension than normal if it's not something he can pass off as a glitch of his fiery spirit feeling the oppression of his chosen climate. Or... incidental climate, he should say. Maybe his body would rather New Mexico to Canada, but it is what it is and this is where he's chosen to build his life.

Fortunately, he is at least feeling pretty confident that the squalls are to blame by the time he's navigated the steadily-more-treacherous city streets to Harper's place, that evening. Sometimes, he thinks she has even less in common with him than Gaia did. The woman is way out of his league in the brains department and the having-her-life together department -- shrewd and calculating, high-maintenance and high-precision. She does like his cooking and so far is the only human who's even come close to matching his sky-high sex drive, though,  so hell. That's worth some emotional missteps when it comes to handling his hot knot of bridled emotions. Or his colds.

Besides, it's really not so bad yet, apart from that sinking sense of bone-deep exhaustion, and a stuffy feeling that's escalated to a dull, scratchy prickle in his nose and throat, but doesn't seem to be gaining momentum with the usual landslide momentum of his viruses. Probably maybe, he can even completely ignore it, not mention it, woo her with his yakhanit batata and the night will go fine.

Which, in the end, is a really dumb assumption, because Harper? Still way too smart for him. He gets as far as greeting her with a soft, throated "hey" when she comes to the door, leans down to peck her a kiss, but she's already turning her head just enough that the kiss glances gently off her jaw rather than her cheek or mouth. 

Bee, who he almost always brings along to the party these days, goes charging ahead with less reservation than any of the two-legged company. Harper's pomeranian, Maisie, comes streaking out to greet her lanky guest in a chocolate and toffee whirl of freshly groomed fur.

Abe hates to admit it, sometimes, because it seems a bit silly, but that's not a bad common point of their otherwise, sometimes-stilted relationship either. The dogs? Girlfriends for life. How could either of them break up that bond? 

"Hey," Harper returns slightly, but with a frown fixed between her sculpted brows. She steps back to permit Abe a slouching entrance, but calls him out almost on the spot, as he wrangles the thermal food bag through the door. "You look a little worse for wear. Everything okay?"

"Thanks, love you too," Abe replies, flat and sarcastic, but Harper doesn't rise to the bait. She just cocks her head, and folds her arms loosely.

"Aaand your voice is all deep and scratchy. Are you coming down with something?"

She's like a laser-guided fucking missile sometimes, he could swear. He shuffles around the kitchen with just about a year's worth of familiarity, clearing his throat softly as he retrieves one of her larger pots and unlatches the transport container from the stew. It has cooled a little in transport, but won't need more then ten or fifteen on the stovetop to begin bubbling its fragrance out into the whole apartment. He is sort of counting on the distraction. 

"Uh, I don't think so," he admits with a soft, damning sniff that he can't help, and doesn't think about until after Harper's expression has deepened. God damn, his whole body just hurts in the middling-to-annoying way, his head feels dizzy and slow, and why is the universe just denying him a quiet night in with his girlfriend? He keeps the pita in their tinfoil as he unpacks them from the bag. Not homemade, because who has that kind of time? Fuck baking. 

"Ninety-nine percent sure it's just a weather thing," he croaks softly, as he preheats her oven, then taps a curled knuckle lightly against his chest for emphasis, indicated a throbbing, luminescent heart that she's seen but a few times. Unlike Gaia, Harper is careful to erect very clear boundaries around his glamour and his lack thereof, and Abe is still figuring out which is the better approach. Both feel a bit weird, maybe insincere. He doesn't know. "A little bit off, but I doubt it's catching. Hasn't changed in a couple of days, so..."

Sooo maybe please don't ghost him all evening?

Harper's expression is reserved, and he wants to feel bad about that. But she's still clearly trying, too, because she takes a couple of mincing steps forward, leans forward, and kisses his shoulder. "Okay," she says, simply, and then, "It smells good." 

A peace offering. He accepts it, and it lasts them almost through the eventual, greedy consumption of their dinner. Even Harper can't look wholly poised when chasing soft bread through the thick, home-cooked stew that she clearly loves, and Abe feels a little bit light-headed to see some of her hair has come undone, and glasses been set aside. This is a hands-on meal. 

It lasts until he gets up, with one of her fancy bread baskets that she never fills with her own bakes, to fetch more pita warming in the oven. He makes it halfway there, his sinuses a little warm and stinging from the steam of the meal, but hesitates halfway when that dull pressure suddenly and unwelcome escalates to a stickling thorn high in the back of his nose. Oh... shit...

He only has time for that thought, before his eyes crease shut into hard, dark lines and he crushes a hasty wrist up as a breakwater. It's sudden, so it won't be huge, but he still...

"H'ESSCCHH-uh!" 

Flame pours out in a rippling golden wave over his hand, then dissipates on the air. It never scorches his skin, just misses his more friable sleeve. Abe stands a moment, tickling and snarling, before wrenching sidelong into a harder, more definitive release.

"... HAH-EHRSHH-shue!" 

This one is brighter, briefly lights up the kitchen and dimmed living room -- romantic, if not for his fucking uncontrollable plunges towards snow-doomed unwellness. He sniffs pathetically, and detours to meekly run his hands under the sink tap. Catching or not, she'll chew his ass out otherwise.

"Abe."

Homecooked meal and happy dogs or not, Harper's voice is distinctly unhappy from the table, and he flinches like a dog himself, duly kicked.

"Sorry. It snuck up."

"... I know," Harper answers after a tense pause, but by now she's risen and trailed him to the kitchen, her own emotion as equally catching as his. Abe might think it ironic, if they didn't come from such drastically different spectrums. "...if you're going to be doing that..."

That she says, without menace, but the phrasing is still enough to drive his eyes to the floor, heady with unease and isolation. That because he can barely control himself. That because of course Harper doesn't want her things or herself burned. That because he can't guarantee it, and doesn't even know who to blame it on. Himself, the winter, the fucking universe? 

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if it's viral or elemental if he's going to be threatening to scorch up her living room until the sun comes back around. He rubs his wrists, feels dumb.

"... I cad go back."

Harper sighs. "Don't be stupid." He flinches, he hopes not externally, but soldiers on. "The roads are awful. Just... maybe I'll make up the couch tonight? And until then, just warn me when..." Her hand makes a reassuring pass up and down his spine, soft, but Abe can read between the lines still well enough. When you're about to very specifically not be human.

Well, their relationship has been all about compromise so far, and going forward...

"Yeah," he sighs, sniffs, and brushes the short, tight sleeve of his tee gruffly to the shape of his nose. "I'll... try."

It's the best they can do.

---

Nate is kind of a harder partner to pin down, and comes at an odd time in Abe's life. He's slept with a few guys, but rarely more than a few brief, one or two-night flings, and it's getting weird to make room for someone who may or may not be a Thing in his timeline.

It's only going on a month or two, anyway, and he's been regrettably... off his game since it started.

The coldest fucking night of the year, on record for the past fifty, and Abe is shivering on the guy's door-stoop, trying to manage a cigarette. It seems beyond reason that a Hedley Kow should be less susceptible to the frigid, subzero temperatures than a fucking ifrit, but Nate looks comfortable in his shabby layers of sweatshirts and switchbacks and poorly-done tattoos, knees tucked up languidly beneath his bony arms. He smirks at Abe.

"You want to go up?"

"Fff-f-fuck off," Abe shivers. This is insane. His pilot light has always burned brilliant and strong, in spite of whatever the world or his own body has to offer him. But he's been sick for a while, outside of this current cold-snap malady, and it feels like one more, frustrating annoyance to heap on a few weeks' worth of sniffly noses and sharp tempers in light of the fluctuant winter. More than he should heap on Nate, too, although it's tempting. 

He met the vicious, grinning little fae at a car show a few weeks ago, and hasn't been able to shake him since. Isn't sure he wants to, despite the enormous, neon-warning sign that comes packaged with their kind, courtesy of Casey.

Abe wrenches in a sudden breath, maybe tickled by the cold, or the smoke. That seems unlikely. He's been smoking since he was fourteen, and still runs two or three miles every morning, just to burn off his own excess. But god damn if he doesn't buckle up, crumpling his features to sneeze at nothing and discharges with shoulders shaking.

"--h'AASCCHH'uh! ...uh, fu--hh... EGHZZSSH-ue!" It blackens the plain, scrubby grass of Nate's shared back yard, and itches wildly in the aftermath. Abe shoves an angry hand against his nose, snuffling. The fae puffs idly on his own smoke for a bit, then reaches out to thump Abe's arm. He can't tell if he's annoyed or comforted by the brotherly gesture. 

"Bless you, poor bastard. I swear, if y'want a pick-me-up..."

Abe drops his face quietly into his palms, and groans to himself. If it isn't fucking one thing...

---

He jerks awake some time around 3 PM, and is at once haunted and guilty with himself for having slept so long. Sure, maybe he needed it, arguably, but there are shifts to be run and tasks to keep atop of and... aaand...

Something's stirred him out of his dozing, resigned gloom. It takes the ifrit a hot moment to sort out his surroundings. When he does, however, it's to register a few presences and absences -- ones that hadn't been there when he'd drifted off. Bee is gone, regrettably, but so is most of the light. It's dim and quiet in his room, but also hot. Wonderfully, encouragingly hot. It takes a few blinks before his wobbly brain sorts out that someone has unearthed a space heater from one of his closets, and pointed it dead center at his slouch on the bed. He reaches out to test the dry, scorching heat, and shudders out a grateful sigh.

It's only another few seconds before he registers the plate of still-steaming food and drink on the nightstand beside the bed. That, too, is impressive. If not because that Mikkel tried to cook at all, but because his current boyfriend sometimes cools a bowl of oatmeal between the kitchen and the couch, depending. The steam still wafts slowly off the simple plate of rye toast and scrambled eggs, however, and Abe's congestion hasn't settled in hard enough to omit the faint tang of hunger that curls up through his chest.

He sits up, snuffles, pulls the plate into his lap and wolfs it eagerly down while the protein is hot, and the accompanying cup of tea is still sweet and warm. The egg is underseasoned, the toast is overdone, but he doesn't care a fucking lick until it's polished off to crumbs. 

There are little to no interruptions beyond this, besides the faintly muffled sounds of someone dicking with his PS4 outside the bedroom. Has Casey called in back-up, or did Mikkel come of his own accord? He has no idea, but he lulls into the white noise for a while. 

He has fuzzy recollections of the past summer, when he'd purchased an air conditioner for the first time in his life, and installed it in the bedroom. On the worst, darkest and hottest, most sweltering nights of the year he'd tugged a sweater onto Bee and sent her into the blast freezer just to keep his wilting, winter boyfriend company through the hump of bad, seasonal ills. He'd napped in the living room, feeling revitalized by the heat wave. 

Now, at once, he's awake and sniffling. 

Give a little, get a little, right?

It takes another hour or two before he comes fully around, leaving off his shuddering in front of the space heater until he trusts his own, internal fire to keep him going. Then he's grateful for the passive attention, licks a last taste of honey from the mug, and pulls on a worn sweatshirt before he cares to venture into the living room and make his peace with the temperature, and the world.

Winter can't be all bad, and eventually he might even find his balance.

Edited April 4, 2018 by Garblin

[Owlinatree]

I responded elsewhere, but I'm about to respond again, because

1. You might be making me like cold!fic, and I'm not sure how to feel about it

2. This fic read like honey, which might not make sense, but 

18 hours ago, Garblin said:

He puts his face back down into his limp, flattened pillow, shivering at its coolness, and shuts his eyes against the muffled brightness of the snow trying to seep through the windows.

this is such a Mood omg -- it's not just dry description, it's NUANCED because Abe feels like the snow is attacking him so the description reflects that and I'm super nerdily excited at the prose of this whole thing, but I will get that out of the way with one main flail right here *gestures jazzily*

18 hours ago, Garblin said:

It's like a greenhouse in her bedroom.

 

18 hours ago, Garblin said:

She's... really into the whole monster thing, and its hard to keep her down, so that's been getting them along.

This reminds me of how when Jen called herself a monster groupie, Abe was kinda world-weary, like "you have no idea the groupies I've weathered." It's also really goddamn sad because the fetishization (not the good kind, lol) that accompanies being "exotic" is demeaning as all hell. This bit had me sending vibes to abe to leave the situation asap 

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

"-- hh'ESSZSCH-shue!"

Not one of his loudest or most enthusiastically purged sneezes, by any means, but holy fuck does it hurt. His head feels like the clench of some awful vice for a few blinding white seconds afterwards, as he issues a weak, follow-up wheeze that he doesn't even hear, over the pound of his own blood fuck fuck fuck these bad weather moods.

"... hah-ESSHHHSh-uh! Christ." 

what's a typed way to express a kind of pleased humming? because that's what I'd like to put here

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

Already, the moment has swept him out to some lonely, Other-ing kind of sea.

shoot what's a way to type a displeased, empathetic kind of humming? because that's what the pleased stuff morphed into 

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

she's already turning her head just enough that the kiss glances gently off her jaw rather than her cheek or mouth. 

Would ifrit viruses even be transmittable to humans?

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

Sooo maybe please don't ghost him all evening?

this is all the worse when juxtaposed with Bee and Maisie's exuberant love

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

Harper sighs. "Don't be stupid." He flinches, he hopes not externally, but soldiers on. "The roads are awful. Just... maybe I'll make up the couch tonight? And until then, just warn me when..." Her hand makes a reassuring pass up and down his spine, soft, but Abe can read between the lines still well enough. When you're about to very specifically not be human.

 again. tbh I am struck by the parallels between monster-dom in this universe and belonging to certain other marginalized identities in the real world (but I won't make this connection on this forum, lol)

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

"--h'AASCCHH'uh! ...uh, fu--hh... EGHZZSSH-ue!" It blackens the plain, scrubby grass of Nate's shared back yard, and itches wildly in the aftermath. Abe shoves an angry hand against his nose, snuffling. The fae puffs idly on his own smoke for a bit, then reaches out to thump Abe's arm. He can't tell if he's annoyed or comforted by the brotherly gesture. 

these are so NICE jeez! 

19 hours ago, Garblin said:

On the worst, darkest and hottest, most sweltering nights of the year he'd tugged a sweater onto Bee and sent her into the blast freezer just to keep his wilting, winter boyfriend company through the hump of bad, seasonal ills.

a be-sweatered Bee is the best Bee!

OK this has taken far too long, so I'm going to end it here, but I will always encourage Abe content! I was going to say "especially when it's this substantive" but honestly I love all of it equally .

Thank you! <3 

[AngelEyes]

This is adorable! Love the layout of reminisces.

[starpollen]

I love Abe  can I have one?