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“Come on, Holtzy,” you laughed as your girlfriend looked at you hopefully. “There’s no way we need to buy a humongous barrell of cheesy puffs.”
“It’s economical, (Y/N),” Holtzmann said, leaning on the end of the grocery cart to hold back your attempts to move on to the cereal aisle. “Portable and mess-free Pringles for field calls, humongous barrell of cheesy puffs for the lab. And just think what we could do with that jar!”
“Collect ectoplasm and rig it above a door to slime Erin?” you guessed. “I’m not sure I want to hear that lecture.”
“Not what I was thinking, but also a top-notch option.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Storage,” Holtzmann said innocently, yanking down her glasses to look you straight in the eye.
“Sure you were.” Ever since you and Holtzmann had made the big leap to move in together, your life had gotten about thirty times more interesting--and chaotic. The apartment had been instantly overrun with her equipment and inventions, and you’d both done some major adjustments to accommodate each other’s quirks and habits, but it was beyond worth it to get to spend as many hours of the day as possible with your best friend and, you suspected, the love of your life. This held true even when she was putting out a concerted effort to make the contents of your grocery cart as eclectic and bizarre as possible.
“I do love the ectoplasm prank, but the timing would have to be flawless,” Holtzmann continued. “Not sure how long the stuff’ll stick around in good condition, but we couldn’t do it too soon after a bust or the element of surprise would be completely blown. Maybe if we froze it?”
“We’re not sliming anybody,” you said. Holtzmann rolled her eyes at you with a smile (you thought you caught her mouthing “for now”) and you couldn’t help but grin back. “Can you hand me the list?”
Holtzmann fished around in her coverall pockets and pulled out the crumpled grocery list, which was written on the back of some used graph paper. You thanked her and scanned it quickly. “We still have to get bread, cereal, and everything from the refrigerated section,” you said. “Let’s keep moving.”
“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Holtzmann said, removing herself from the end of your cart. As if it had been decided, she grabbed not one, but two bulk cheesy puff jars and dropped them in the cart, right on top of your fruits and veggies.
“HOLTZ! Come on!”
“I just remembered, I should have one for our kitchen and one for the lab,” Holtzmann said with a smirk. “Won’t have to carry it back and forth that way.”
Knowing you were fighting a losing battle to protect your grocery bill and your girlfriend’s eating habits, you said, “How about you get one for now, and the next time you come home late I make you midnight breakfast so you don’t feel the need to live off of this stuff?”
Holtzmann feigned deep thought. Despite your halfhearted argument, you couldn’t help but notice the adorable way her nose crinkled up when she pulled that face. “Mmmmm...deal,” she said finally, “but that midnight breakfast might turn out to be more of a 3 AM breakfast.”
You groaned but conceded, and Holtzmann put back the extra cheesy puffs. “Goodbye, my almost lover-- goodbye, my hopeless dream,” she sang, caressing the jar tenderly.
“You’re going to make the jar in the cart jealous,” you said dryly.
“Wait ‘til they find out about you, ya stick in the mud,” Holtzmann said, pecking you on the cheek as she commandeered the cart. She turned the cart around the corner with reckless speed and, discovering an empty aisle, whooped with delight and hopped up to cart-surf her way down. You laughed and pursued on foot, grabbing cereal and peanut butter off the shelves at top speed as you passed. She stopped to let you deposit these items in the cart.
“Maybe I should soup one of these things up,” Holtzmann said, patting the cart’s handle. “Add an engine, more stable platform for standing, throw in a proton cannon...oh, and get some WD-40 on the wheels. I swear they design these things to sound like Hell’s hamster wheel.”
“Wouldn’t that be as clunky as what you had before you made the packs?” you asked, easily slipping into the familiar role of sounding board for Holtzmann’s budding ideas as you walked the cart to the next aisle.
“On the surface, yes,” she said. You could tell her brain was going a thousand miles an hour, even as she casually grooved to the song on the store radio. “But since I’ve made the guns so compact, a larger device could be that much more powerful. Take that capability, add steering and an engine, and we’ve got ourselves a real war horse. Obviously I’d need to make the frame out of a stronger alloy, something that could take the kickback…(Y/N), look! Jell-O cups are on sale!”
You laughed and pulled a face. “Do you even like Jell-O?” You quickly realized that was a silly question--you knew Holtzmann would eat just about anything you put in front of her as long as it was quick.
“I mean, it is kind of gross, as far as snack foods go. But don’t you think we could use the green kind for that slime prank?”
You had created a monster. Why not roll with it? “Sure,” you said, a smile spreading across your face, “but we’d have to buy a lot to fill the jar, and the texture isn't quite right. How about we make our own slime?”
Holtzmann beamed at you and pointed for emphasis. “Corn starch and food coloring.”
“Race you to the baking aisle?”
“Oh, you are...hold on, which one is that again?” Too late--you’d already torn off, so Holtzmann hopped back on the cart to pursue you, to the amusement and dismay of nearby shoppers. Among your peals of laughter, you wondered how long it would take before you two were kicked out of the grocery store. Again.