Work Text:
In light of recent events, you probably should not have been so surprised that this is where you ended up.
Fucking, you were in Boston, weren't you? This is where you lived, this was your home. Your boyfriend (fiancé, that's your fiancé lying beside you in the dark in this shithole fucking apartment, you got engaged at some rest stop somewhere in backwoods fucking Pennsylvania) moves into the dorms soon and you've been scraping everything you've got from your jobs together in order to get him what he needs. Tord's financial aid, thankfully, saw the potential in his big brain and supports a lot of his out of state student costs. You haven't mentioned it, but you're already planning on a lot of night shifts and rice dinners so he can focus on school. He might have floated through your itty-bitty high school, but who knows what a real university is going to be like? It was never in your cards, that's for damn sure. Fuck, you're high. Tord's been revealing little stashes of pot, of vodka, of mead. Fuck knows where he's been getting it, but you're grateful. You're not particularly fond of pot, but you can always convince your fiancé (your fiancé!) to shotgun it to you. There's something palatable about the press of lips to yours and your lungs filling up. Both of them settle your brain out more than anything else you've found, and you've never found an easier sleep.
That was the point of tonight, you needed to sleep, he needed to sleep, you can't help him move in next week because you're working a twenty-four hour shift and your boss won’t let you swap shift so you can help out and Tord’s going to be all alone and what if something happens and--
There's a hand on your chest. "Babe. We just got you out of a panic attack, like, an hour ago. Could you like. Not." Tord wriggles his way upright and hauls your stoned body up against his chest. "Come on. In and out, we should get you in classes for this shit." There's too much smoke left in the air for you to get a full, clean breath, but you must be doing well enough because he's pulling a hand up from somewhere near your hip to stroke at your hair. It's a continuous, soothing motion.
"We can't afford that. You need like, physics books and shit." You're mumbling, you know you are, but he's laughing above you. Around you fall whispers about scholarships and loans and "we'll make it work, you and me against the world, love," and how much you're going to make it work God damn it, he's going to have to move into a dorm at least one more time and maybe we'll have the leverage to get the time off for you.
The blunt you were smoking earlier tonight is smoldering in the ash tray. It's a waste, you really should put it out better, but even turning your head out of Tord's shirt is just a little more than you're willing to do right now. Fucking hell. Tomorrow, you've got to be up and clocked in just before the sun rises (you checked, and yes, your day boss is that big of an asshole) and you won't be home again until probably this time. Who needs sleep when you're more than doubling your expenses in the next week? There's no impending doom this time, you're just tired. "If you pull some Frankenstein bullshit and drop out, I'm leaving you," you huff out, but the love of your life has passed out underneath you without this critical information. You suppose that's the best sign you're going to get to sleep, and sleep too.
You absolutely, positively cannot fucking work today. You've fucked up three orders tonight and you've only been here an hour and a half. You… think that you'll still have this job at the end of the night. To be fair, only one of the tables has said anything to you about a wrong plate, and that other table was surprisingly grateful to have received a plate of onion rings. On second thought, they were all wearing the same clothes. They were probably a sports team. Go fucking figure. Today Tord moved in and you haven't had a chance to see your phone since you left your morning job, which was in the middle of him actively moving his stuff into his building. You get off in seven hours, so you'll probably turn your phone on to a few dozen texts then. Getting through your shift is going to be a beast, and it's your new priority. Work not Tord. Table 14's out of ranch, not Tord getting acquainted with his hall-mates and he's never lived in such close proximity to so many people, he's going to be buzzing after today. It's going to be good to hear his voice.
You had talked, the two of you, about Tord coming back to the apartment you shared whenever he needed a more comfortable place to work, or when he just needed to escape the hum of the school, but you weren't expecting to come home from Wednesday services to a living room full of people. There's Tord, sitting on the floor, surrounded by papers, but the two guys on your couch are strangers. You drop your bags on the floor, leaning against the door frame, waiting for anyone to notice you. All three men are so absorbed in their work, it takes a solid minute of the wretchedly cold air filling up the house for the guy on the left to lift his head and kick Tord in the shin. "Hey, Tom, darling, dearest, sweetheart, meet my new friends!" Tord shouts as he limps his way towards you. "Edd, dude, look up for two secs, no one's going to shut down the NOAA website while you're not looking at it." Edd, you assume, has become one with the corner of your couch, and your couch has become one with his green hoodie. It's like he's trying to take up as little space as possible in order to focus on his screen. The man who kicked Tord is trying to extricate himself from what looks like far too many cords for your electric bill.
"Matt, hi, sorry, Tord said we could hide out here while there was a big event in the library?" Matt shakes your hand while carrying the bags at your feet towards the fridge. Your mother would be proud of him. "Dr. Horton dropped us with this project on hurricanes and poverty. I think? Edd, what's the project about?"
Edd finally glances up, chugging the remainder of the two liter in front of him. "Movements of economically vulnerable populations in the United States as compared to areas affected by natural disasters." He squints at you and then his eyes return to his screen. "Thanks for the place to crash."
You're vaguely horrified by the soda chugging, but you're legitimately terrified by the project description. "This is for what class now?" A chorus of "Econ" rings out from different parts of your apartment, including right behind you. There's a jaw bouncing on your shoulder and it hurts. "How was church? Did they have anything good about how you're definitely, totally, condemned to Hell?"
You really should have figured that he was going to sneak up behind you. At least he shut the door. "Mm, they went on about the submissiveness of wives. This guy had been reading some weird supplemental materials." You've been going to the Baptist church next to the theology school, where they let students heading to seminary get a feel for the pulpit. It's a friendly place, mostly, but they're still Baptist. Your mother would have strong words for the church elders. At least you're still going. She's been sticking in the back of your head as you get closer to Christmas, and you consider once again sending a real letter with the check you send her every other month. The mouth on your neck is getting closer to your ear, and you bat Tord away. “I’m assuming y’all want some kind of dinner? We’ve got groceries now, I can probably throw something together.”
Matt waves a hand towards his laptop. “Ordered in a couple pizzas. It’s the least Edd and I can do. Do you actually like pineapple on your pizza or is Tord fucking with me?” Tord finally breaks away from your back to complain that he would never lie, and that no one trusts him. You have to step over him to get to the last bag, dropping your book bag on his chest as you go. The resulting yelp has Matt looking up from the sack of rice in his hand, cocking an eyebrow. “What do you have in there, bricks? I thought you weren’t a student.” Tord slides the zip and starts pulling out your most important possessions. All of Tord’s and your identification papers, your pay stubs, the papers from renting the apartment; everything lives in those pockets. There’s a water bottle and your wallet, as well as the most important thing you picked up while you were out: a bottle of vodka. He begins rolling on the floor proclaiming his undying love for you like some kind of twat.
“Up, get up, get the fuck up,” you pull on his arms, dragging him to his feet. “I’m working my ass off so you can prove your brain is better than everyone else’s, do your damn project.” The doorbell gets him off the floor faster than you can, lanky limbs launching themselves to the table for cash and then back to the door. There’s an exchange of goods and Edd sweeps all of Tord’s shit off of your table to praise the cardboard boxes getting lowered to the table. You fetch plates out of the cabinets and sit on the floor next to Tord. It has been, God, a long time since you’ve sat with people your own age without a time limit. It’s pleasant, you decide, despite the fact you don’t know these people on your couch. “And how do you two know each other?”
Edd shrugs, “We went random in our housing and ended up with each other. We’re on the floor above Tord,” Edd explains, “but the people in our suite kind of suck so when we met in class we just started hanging around his room longer and longer.” It’s good to hear Tord hasn’t been making a total assmunch out of himself socially. The voice in the back of your head, the one that sounds like your mother and your old pastor and also a little bit like you keeps saying to deny your relationship with Tord when the conversation moves towards “real news”. Real things, like what job you have right now (definitely, definitely not ignoring Tord’s face when you talk about picked up work on the side, odd shifts down at the late-night pizza joint that end up giving you twenty-four hours of work in a row) and majors and hey, isn’t it funny that there’s three really smart dudes in this room and then Tom? Stuff like that. It’s enough. You don’t notice that the boxes have been stacked up by your trashcan and the guys returning to their work, everything is so calm.
Actually, everything is so calm that one minute you’re staring at the lamp, the next minute there’s arms under you and the bedroom door is way closer than you remember. Matt and Edd are talking softly off to your right. “You fell asleep on my laptop and I’m not even sure how you accomplished that. Good job, I guess? You’re going to bed though, let me set your alarm,“ Tord is talking into your hair, peppering little kisses here and there. You forget how great human contact is until it’s been two weeks since you’ve touched someone. It’s kind of like food, you forget that it makes you feel good until you’ve been skipping meals for a day and a half and then eat half your kitchen. Tord drops you in the center of the bed and plugs in your phone. “What time do you need it for? Hold up fingers, baby.” Five lazy fingers come up and he snorts. “All the way ‘til five? You glutton.” The phone bleeps gently. There’s a knock on the door frame just as a warm body slides in behind you, but you can’t really find it within yourself to give a shit. Tord’s chin curves up over your shoulder to exhale into your ear. You drift off as the last of his words echo through your ears: they took the engagement well. He’s still there when you wake up.
Those guys are sitting in your section. The guys. From your living room. Edd. Matt. Them. Why? Seriously. Rachel has a full load already, she’s not going to swap with you, may as well suck it up and greet them. It’s a short, brisk walk over to them to welcome, mention specials, take drink orders, and leave, but these two haunting motherfuckers seem to have other plans. What could take maybe a minute for most tables stretches out to five with these guys, but at least they get in food orders as they hold you at the edge of their table to talk about how great the other night was. You don’t know how you stood there for five minutes, you could clearly see that middle aged woman taking a dollar bill off of her table every time she snapped her fingers, but you know, it was nice to be talked to like a human being. You tend to the soccer mom, drop off the ticket for Matt and Edd, and head towards Rachel because really, no one can carry three full trays and she shouldn’t be carrying two, not with her shoulder. Work is work, and this job doesn’t give you much of a chance to sit down. Even though you pause to talk to Tord’s (and your?) friends, they’re still only there for half an hour of your shift. Going home that night feels like a blessing, if only because you don’t have work for a couple of hours and your manager sent you back home with a couple boxes of leftovers; you’re eating good tonight and tomorrow. There’s a thick packet of paperwork resting on your table; the deadline for it is coming up. Just a different kind of work, isn’t it?
May comes, and Tord comes home to you with it. There’s boxes of stuff stacked in the back corner of your living room so that you can unpack and repack them at your leisure. Your friends and your fiancé are once again spread across the couch while you throw together a stir fry to celebrate the start of summer and the start of summer internships. Edd and Matt are working in separate startups uptown while Tord has clinched a sweet 9-to-5 lab position. You’re proud of all three of them, and they’re talking about splitting the cost of an apartment after the next school year.
“Of course Tom, we’d fully expect you to come move in with us. Four splitting rent is even easier than three, even if finding a three bedroom might be tricky in this area,” Edd shrugged. “What with you two getting married and everything.”
Matt perked up for the first time, the faint aroma of instant coffee and highlighter still clinging to his hoodie. “When are you doing that? Should we be there? Does Tord have to dress up?” Tord raised one index finger delicately, opened his mouth, and faceplanted directly into your shitty shag carpeting to scream.
Dumping the stir fry out into vaguely reasonable serving sizes, you realized you didn’t know. “I don’t have an answer for any of those questions. It would be nice to have y’all there, but you’re not obligated, and we don’t have any plans thought out.” Chewing your way through a carrot, you considered again. “It’s not like there’s been time to sit down and talk it out.” You picked the way through the rest of your bowl and kicked Tord’s closer to him with every mouthful. Matt and Edd started arguing over your head over lilies for reasons you’re not entirely sure of, but your name is brought up at least once.
You’d switched your morning job, and it was quite frankly making you a hell of a lot happier. The coffee shop was friendly, you didn’t have to get up as early, and your shop donated towards causes that you care about. It’s all you could have wanted out of a job, and the pay is a hell of a lot better to boot. Kiss your ass, restaurants. Coffee shops are where it’s at.
Also, Tord and his friends spend time here when they’re not studying on your living room floor. Matt had been hanging around longer since you’ve been hired; as long as he keeps buying drinks then the kitchen manager doesn’t mind him going back to talk with everyone about everything. Marie was two seconds from just offering him a position around his classes, and you’re pretty sure Matt would take it. There was a whole different kind of mess that came with balancing your online classes with your jobs, but none of your professors minded your assignments coming in at weird hours. Your math professor had some questions, but there’s no way to explain how you relate coffee beans to calculus. It’s just a thing. It’s all beans from here boys. It’s all beans from here.
Right now there are no beans, there’s just dough for days. Your boss believes in making everything on site, but also in making sandwiches, so you’re stuck making loaves of bread this morning. Lee’s elbow-deep next to you, stirring for all her worth. It’s a yeasty bubble of confidential information, and she’s using it to her advantage. “You’re not engaged to the one who keeps stealing the butter, are you?”
Sugar. Butter. Flour. Scoff. “No, definitely no. I am moving in with him soon if you want me to slip in a good word for you.” You’re whisking a little more aggressively than strictly necessary, but who’s going to tell you to stop? Not Lee, that’s for damn sure. “Edd’s just a food hoarder, that’s who he is. We let him live so long as he pays for everything else. Matt’s labor pays for Edd’s butter, but don’t tell him.”
Lee was laughing quietly while you talked. “I see how it is now. So you’re the dad of this family and these are your belligerent teen youths?” This devolved, as most things do, and suddenly you had a full family history and a rocky relationship with both the school board and the PTA. You didn’t know why the PTA president’s name is always Martha, but her vice president is Debra and this is your universal constant. You tried not to think about Martha and her sparkly dress, Martha and the cross on her rearview, Martha and the pack of cigarettes left on your pillow with a note that just said “spend the extra dollar.” You never went to visit for the holidays. Susan needed a new E string. You and your family stumbled into Dumpling Palace and tried to eat as many dumplings as possible off the menu as you could. It was warm, it was delicious, and it was the best Christmas in your living memory. The dangling red lights still flash in front of your eyes but goddamn if it wasn’t worth every cent you boys pooled together to pay and over-tip that waiter. Lee pauses in her description of the minivan that Harmony (PTA treasurer, second term, cute bob but bad highlights, her son tries at soccer but his heart isn’t in it) drives to cut you a look. “When are you getting married anyways?”
Unlike the last time you were asked this question, you fully have an answer. You suck your teeth as you pop the third and fourth loaf pans into the oven behind you. “Fifteenth of November, if all goes well. We’re not looking for a church so the date doesn’t need to be as settled so long as it’s within our license. It just depends on when we can get someone to sit down and do the paperwork to marry us.” You’re too busy wiping down the table to start on the gluten-free bread to notice Lee tapping her arm with one stubby finger. That is a dangerous finger. That is a finger that you should not have ignored, but there you were, actively ignoring the finger. That finger stopped tapping and pointed itself at you.
“Why didn’t you tell me this was your problem? I know a guy.”
For as big as Boston feels like most days, it seems like everybody knows the same few guys. Namely, Tord knows Lee’s guy. Intimately. He greets you like an old friend, Tord’s freshman year roommate, and gets right down to business. Jon is a short, no-nonsense man with a baby face. You take a liking to him almost immediately. He gets the particulars of your ceremony, the location, and how to navigate your licensing in the space of an hour and then helps you with the house hunting project you’ve taken on in your spare time. You know it isn’t important until spring semester, but it never hurts to start getting a jump on it early. Jon programs himself into your phone before he leaves and then whisks away as fast as he was there. He’s… one of the most interesting people you’ve met from Tord’s life at college. You knock out a couple little assignments for classes leaning against Tord shoulder as he critiques everything you do. He makes you lunch and you hold hands on top of the table in the safety of your own apartment before emerging for separate storms that you cannot protect each other from.
There’s an erratic thumping sound next to your ear that you don’t remember being there when you fell asleep. You’re no expert, but you really hope that’s not your gas line about to blow on you. It takes you a few moments, but your creeping hand starts recognizing denim, skin, and scratchy hair. Opening your eyes only shows you a flat expanse of black fabric smushed into your nose until you work up the willpower to look up. Tord lays back on your bed with one foot on the floor despite the fact he was not there last night and you don’t remember him coming in. Did he text you? The act of wiggling out of the arm wrapped oh-so-securely around your middle wakes him up enough to start staring at you through heavily hooded eyes. “You don’t have work, relax.” He blows air out over your hair and each individual muscle in your back relaxes. You think you could name them if you thought hard enough. There’s a reason you don’t have work, but you don’t remember it yet. Coffee. You need coffee.
“Coffee. Mouth. Please?” Tacking the please onto the end feels like a safe way to hedge your bets to caffeination. Like magic, you’re being pulled upright and a paper cup is being pressed into your hand. It tastes like pumpkin pie and brisk air, hot like you just picked it up off the counter. “When did you pick this up? It hasn’t been microwaved.”
Tord picks at the blanket over you. “Made it. Right before I left this morning.” The stench of burnt coffee beans suddenly is all the stronger, and you have just enough presence of mind to put the cup down before sniffing your way into his neck. “Before I left my job, where I work. I work there. Everything should be right, I’ve been making hundreds of those.” You consider only briefly falling back asleep so that everything goes right when you wake up, but you still don’t know why you don’t have work today, so that works out dandy. “Are you going to say anything or not?”
You elect instead to press deeper into the crook of his elbow and take a deeper sip of your coffee. It is, in fact, very good. You make a similar one at the shop, but the pumpkin syrup in this one has a spice that yours doesn’t. “You have a job and I don’t have work today. Why don’t I have work today and when did you get a job?” He did ask you to say something, right?
It hits you, very suddenly, that this is your wedding day.
You sort of, kind of, wish your mother was around to watch you lift your pressed and primped husband up in your arms as you kissed him at your wedding. Instead, Matt wore the best damned groomsmaid’s dress he could find and bawled.
You’re lying in bed that night, your husband as one with your shitty mattress pad. This night is the only honeymoon you’re going to have until Tord finishes graduate school, whenever that is. Instead of the copious sex your friends seemed to think you were going to have, as suggested by the condom-and-lube-packet quilt they left on your bed, you’re just talking.
“I haven’t been helping. You’ve been working for the past two years, and my work study only helps so much. I mean, you’re still sending money to your mother, and that cuts into your budgeting.” Tord won’t look you in the eyes. There’s stacks of bills in front of you, fives tens ones twenties and they’re not yours. Or, you guess, they are yours now. You’re married to the man who earned them all. “I started asking around. There was a guy who came to one of my math classes, started talking about the tutoring center offering credit hours for pretty minimal work. I walked over after class and signed up. A couple of the people who came, they started wanting my help pretty regularly, so I offered to take on off-hours tutoring for pay. Math’s hard, y’know?”
He’s eyeing you, waiting to see how you’ll react. He could have tutored everyone in your high school, and his grades have been fine. It’s been manageable for him to pull this off without talking to you. “What’s the catch, Tord.”
Tord, haltingly, weaves the story of a tutoring job gone wrong. The girl wanted to fuck after they finished up physics, and Tord had to call Edd under the back cover of his textbook to get Matt to pick him up from her dorm. He talks about reading every campus flyer to pick up twenty bucks moving furniture. Sold meal swipes, compiled study guides for sale, making pickups and drop-offs. The one guy who only paid him in weed that Tord turned around and sold at a markup. The guy in Matt’s sociology class who swore up and down he was straight and then tried to pay Tord to fuck him. “I turned that guy down, by the way. I have boundaries. Weird shit, fine, but not sex. Not when I’m engaged to you.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“You would have said no. You would keep me from taking care of you like you take care of me. And I can’t have that.”
In January, you and Jon find a house that the four of you will be able to share. Really, Lee finds you an apartment, the one right below hers, but Jon is the one who helps you sort through the paperwork and make sure that you’ll be able to afford it on the combined work money and stipends from the school. Meal plans and dorm housing is a huge chunk of change you’ll be grateful to have in your pocket. Matt steamrolls in at the start of final contract signings and negotiates for appliances to be replaced and the right to paint the walls. You’re not sure why this is the thing that he’s gone so gung ho about, but you’re sure it will come up later.
In February, Tord delves deeper into his exams. It feels like every week he has a midterm. This semester is much harder than the previous three, so you see less and less of him. It only hurts a lot. You traded rings and you filed your taxes differently this year but you haven’t changed your name, you don’t really live together yet. Tord does his best with calling you at odd hours when you know he’s only a few blocks away. You’re ok. You send your mom a check and a note that says “Following God’s word. Jeremiah 29:11.” In two years, she has not mailed you back. You keep waiting.
In March, you start packing between shifts. You’re no longer working from five in the morning to three the next morning, but from six in the morning to eight thirty at night. Tord isn’t hiding his money anymore, so your bank account has been out of the red for a while now and you’re building a savings against all odds. It’s nice.
In April, you start studying for your exams in earnest. You’re only in two classes, but it’s enough to keep you busy. Marie hired Matt for the summer, and you think he’s going to stick around through next school year. He seems more at peace sorting through the accounting books for the shop or analyzing sales for different items than he has doing any of his homework, even the readings he claims bring him deep satisfaction with the life he chose for himself. You’re not even really sure what his major is, but he sure does read a lot. Most of your things are packed up and you’re so incredibly excited to get things started with this next chapter in your life.
In May, you and Tord and Matt and Edd move into your apartment. Exams are, predictable, incredibly stressful for everyone, and you have second thoughts about this whole “getting your degree” thing. Tord has to work for his exams now, not quite the super-genius he was in high school anymore. Balancing work and school and looking over his shoulder for his dad, constantly, wears down his performance. He’s doing fantastic though. He’s doing more than fantastic, and you love him.
In June, you’re taking summer classes, and the reversal between you taking classes and Tord “house husbanding” is hysterical. Still, there are days where it feels like your two bedroom is too small, too suffocating. There are days you can see the bills stacked up on the counter (not that you pay them with paper, they’re paid online, but they get sent in the mail anyways) and you know that they’re paid before they even get to the mailbox and you know that the charge isn’t sitting on a credit card but goddamn does it get your heart rate up every time. Every time you see the counter from the apartment you lived in while Tord was spending his first semester in college, and every time you just barely keep yourself from sobbing in your bed like you used to, when Tord wouldn’t pick up the phone (or was in class or it was too late at night and he needed the sleep).
You go for a walk to deal with it.
Boston can be a really wonderful place. You’ve been here for two years now, and you still don’t know a lot about the city that you call home. You don’t have a lot of spare pocket money, but you like to take these walks and find somewhere you’ve never been and try whatever it is that they think is special. You will end up drinking a lot of froo-froo beverages and over-the-top pastries, you see that in your future. It’s not too bad of a future to look towards.