Slice of Life

The following are the events of a completely unremarkable day in the trio’s apartment. It is not meant to be a story as much as it is a peek into their status quo, for your reference and enjoyment. 

Please - Step into their home and get to know them. You are welcome.

…Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak~!

Muffin Knight was rudely awakened by the tell-tale creak of a door announcing the fact that someone was trying to open it quietly, and the harsh glare of the living room’s light suddenly filtering through her drapes and making her scowl. 

“Read the signs, for fuck’s sake!” she shouted hoarsely, sending a pillow flying in the general direction of her door. She couldn’t tell if she’d hit or not, but the hissed curse followed immediately by a whispered ‘sorry’ and the equally-loud creak of her door closing again told her that the message had at least gotten through. 

With a grunt and a grumble, Muffin rolled over, glaring evilly at the clock at her bedside that had the audacity to report the time of 6:46 in the morning, and tried to close her eyes to get back to sleep just as the shower in the bathroom beside her bedroom sputtered to life. She groaned again, reaching behind her for her other pillow to cover her ears with, but was immediately reminded that she’d just launched it clear across her bedroom in a fit of sleep-roused rage.

…fuck… I guess I’m fuckin’ up now…

Whoever had roused her in search of the bathroom at least had the good sense to be quick and make tracks about it, as in the time it took for Muffin to slowly flop-roll her way off her bed, pull on just enough clothes to qualify as an outfit if you squinted, and clip in her ponytail extension for the day, they had already finished showering. Muffin just barely had time to overhear some muffled, hasty, and seemingly reluctant conversation coming from the living room before the front door opened and shut, and she finally worked up the will to emerge from her room. 

The living room, which her bedroom door opened directly into, was a mess. Pillows and loose clothes, some of which unfamiliar enough to apparently have belonged to the early-morning escapee and left behind in their rush, littered the carpeted floor underfoot. Her green eyes dragged lazily over the half-naked figure sprawled out across the messy couch island, up and across the coffee table with used but empty cocktail glasses sitting coasterless and heavily-condensating, and finally landing on a heavily-freckled face staring back at her with an amused expression from the open-fronted kitchen. 

“Morning, dude,” April Cloverleigh snorted, approaching to lick her thumb and push down a cowlick that was sticking up from Muffin’s bedhead, “Who needs alarm clocks, huh?”

Muffin took a moment to blink some of the sleepy blear out of her eyes, scanning over her roommate slowly, something starting to dully nag in her mind. It took her a lot longer to pin it down today, but in fairness, she wasn’t exactly operating at one hundred percent.

“Teal eyes today?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at April.

“I’m experimenting. Do you think they work?” the freckled girl nodded, leaning and fluttering her eyelashes to accentuate her now sky-coloured eyes. 

“...mmm… maybe not this with this hair colour,” Muffin shook her head slowly with a smile, reaching up to brush a tuft of unwashed hair out of her eyes. April just hummed in thought and blinked her eyes, visibly flirting with the idea of heterochromia for the day, before finally settling on her usual violet gaze. Letting out a little hum of resolved satisfaction, April smiled and held out her arms to the brunette in an offer of embrace.

Muffin just let out a long, suffering groan and buried her forehead lazily in the freckled girl’s shoulder, “...they never read the signs… why did we bother making the signs if they never read the signs…?”

“To be fair, it is dark in here when you’re trying to sneak out unnoticed,” April hummed, casting an amused glance at the oh-so-very-clear ‘Hookups: This one’s the shower bathroom’ sign taped on the door just beside Muffin’s bedroom. Muffin just sighed, smacked her lips at her morning breath, and cast a slightly-more-awake glance back out at the scene that was the living room. 

“Another runner, huh,” Muffin sighed, shaking her head at the gently-breathing form on the couch, shoulders slowly beginning to stir.

“Yup,” April nodded, striding over and stepping over a discarded set of boxers to adjust the blanketing over the sleeping girl’s shoulders, “Tried very hard to skedaddle before anybody was awake. I was halfway through breakfast, I caught his ass on the way out the door.”

Muffin blinked blearily, wiping the sleep from her eyes to finally focus. April was dressed up for the day, much in contrast to her own still-groggy half-attire. Not only that, her makeup was already pristine, and her long hair was fixed up to perfection already. 

“Never mind me, what are you doing up so early?” she asked, stepping into the kitchen and flipping the switch to boil the coffee machine, “You look halfway out the door yourself.”

“I’m meeting Wuxy,” April sighed, clearly a little sleep-deprived herself, folding her arms, “She woke me up three hours ago with a call, apparently she booked me a very time-sensitive gig. I know today was supposed to be a lie-in day for us, but…”

“Plenty of time to watch bad movies some other day,” Muffin shook her head and bumped the freckled girl’s shoulder with her own, earning her a smile and a peck on the cheek that finally started to wake her up a bit. As the coffee machine boiling started to audibly hiss, the figure on the couch finally stirred, and a frizzy, messy flop of auburn hair peeked groggily up over the back of the couch at the pair. 

“Rise and shine,” Muffin chuckled dryly as Roxy Rook’s bleary golden eyes glanced tiredly around the room, unphasedly taking in the sight of the mess she’d clearly left behind the night prior.

“...mmmgh… morning…” Roxy’s sleep-growly voice reverberated lowly, “...mmmph… where’s…?”

“He had to dash,” April responded breezily, before casting a surreptitiously derisive glance at Muffin, who returned it with a sardonic scoff and a roll of her eyes. Oblivious, Roxy just shrugged, stepping groggily off the couch and stretching with an obnoxious yawn, either unaware or uncaring of her sudden stark nudity. Muffin and April shared another dry glance at that, but said nothing as their friend plucked up a shirt from the ground with her foot. Roxy sniffed it once, grimaced slightly, then sniffed it again, shrugged, and pulled it on over her head inside-out. 

“Did you guys get a chance to meet him?” she asked at last, striding over to join the pair at the kitchen island, leaning on the counter leisurely, “I wanted to have a chance to introduce you, but we got sidetracked last night, and I guess something came up this morning… his name’s–”

“Not important enough to remember yet,” Muffin cut in abruptly, pouring herself a tall mug’s worth of coffee and throwing it back black, “...ugh… mmf, well, Rox, I mean, we’ve met a lot of guys in the past little while. Kinda gets hard to keep track, y’know?”

“We’d be delighted to meet your partner once they, erm…” April began, clearly flinching as she searched for gentler words, “...better establish themselves in your life?”

Roxy just blinked at that.

“...once they last a little more than three weeks,” Muffin smiled flatly, to which April just rolled her head back in defeat and grunted her affirmation.

Roxy smiled at that, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and her gaze flickered off to the side for just a moment as the corners of her mouth drooped. She was quick to realize, however, that both of the other girls had immediately noticed this, and even quicker to redirect into swiping the coffee jug out of Muffin’s hands and taking a swig straight from the spout.

“So!” She exclaimed, “Lazy day for you both today, yeah? Wanna hit the couch? Play something, watch something, order out? I think there were some coupon books that showed up in the mail a few weeks ago…”

“Actually…” April winced, running an arm under her bouncy duotone hair for emphasis, “Gonna have to rain check, dude. I gotta head out for the day.”

Roxy visibly deflated at that, “Aw, what? But I thought you didn’t have to go anywhere until Wednesday!”

“Last-minute call,” The ginger shrugged, “And besides, after all the beating-feet my agent does to get me stuff like this, I can’t say no.”

“What’s the gig, anyway?” Muffin inquired, reclaiming the coffee jug from Roxy to start preparing another mug for April, “This some early movie shoot that needs hot extras or something?”

“Nah, it’s a model shoot. New designer bikini line or something, hence why this…” April held up a small strawberry yogurt cup for emphasis, “...is the extent of my brekkie for the day. The price we pay for beauty, ladies.”

Roxy, whose lower lip had been puffed out and pouting, suddenly perked up, “Oh, that’s… cool! Are you gonna get to keep the pictures?”

April’s eyes sparkled, and she stifled a snort behind her hand, “Ha, I can probably get some raw copies to take home, but obviously they’re gonna be edited and filtered to hell in the magazine or adverts or whatever they get used in. Of course, if you wanna see me in something skimpy that bad, you could just come along and model with me, you know.”

Muffin’s eyebrows lilted in amusement as Roxy’s expression somehow morphed into an equal-parts mix of fluster and dread, as the auburnette quickly held her hands up in defence, “O-oh, no thanks! I think, uhm… I think there’s some, uh… stuff I need to… do?”

Roxy’s eyes flitted to Muffin, wide and cloying, to which she just cocked a brow and smirked.

“Yeah, she needs to find the bottom of her Shorts feed,” Muffin nodded along sardonically, “She’s been searching for it for over a year now, remember?”

Roxy’s shoulders deflated, her expression flattened, and she made a noise not altogether unlike a squeaky toy bitten by a dog. 

“Come on, dude, it might be fun!” April implored, grabbing the auburnette by the wrist and getting her smiling face a touch too close to hers, “It’ll be a chill shoot, trust me, I’ve worked with this company before. I have a lot of connections you could meet, and maybe you might even enjoy it!”

“A-ah… well, I… er…” Roxy stammered, recoiling from April’s insistent proximity with a dusting of terrified red on her cheeks, “I’d… I’d love, erm… but, uh… hey, hey! Look at this mess! All over the floor! I can’t just leave all this like this, that would be, uh… disrespectful! To you! So I can’t! E-er… right…?”

April’s formerly enthusiastic expression flattened out into a dull, withering stare, her grip on Roxy’s wrist unflinching even as the other girl seemed to wilt under her violet glare. Muffin, on the other hand, idly preparing the coffee in her hands to what she knew was April’s preference, suddenly perked up. 

“Wait, today’s Saturday, right?” she asked, spinning on her heel and drawing both of her roommates’ eyes to her, “Saturday the first?”

“Uh… yes?” April blinked, “But what– oh. Ohhhh, no. No, no, no, gods damn it, the fucking–”

“-Landlord is coming~!” Roxy exclaimed in sudden delight, springing free of April’s death grip and just about twirling on her tippy toes, “The first Saturday of the month! The landlord comes by to check up every first Saturday of the month! And there’s so much cleaning to do, Muffin can’t possibly do this all by herself!”

Roxy continued to spew out excited nonsense as she fled from the room on lightened feet, beginning to pluck up her own discarded clothes from around the couch in the living room and quickly scarpering out of view. April sighed and shook her head, massaging the ridge of her nose and leaning back against the kitchen island, head low. 

“Oh the bright side,” Muffin noted with a soft smile, sidling up beside her partner and bumping their hips together affectionately, “I’ve never seen her this excited about cleaning.”

“...you could absolutely do the cleaning yourself, though,” April grunted, “And she knows this.”

“Yup. I sure could, and she sure does.”

April just sighed again, and Muffin took the lull as a chance to finally slide her coffee into her hands. The freckled girl glanced down at it, practically white from cream and oversweetened to shit, just how she liked it. Her disgruntled moue pulled into a soft smile, and she took an appreciative sip while returning Muffin’s hip bump with one of her own. 

“Besides, can you imagine her in your industry?” The brunette couldn’t resist the chance to crack, “There would be a fresh wheedly-voiced white guy lamenting their breakups every month, and fuck knows the Tangle doesn’t need any more of that shit.”

April’s second sip of her coffee spluttered into a laugh, “Oh, be nice to the wheedly-voiced men of the music industry. Some of those songs are about me, by the way, and I’m pretty sure you must have at least one.”

“Indeed,” Muffin nodded solemnly, “‘twas a dig at all of our expenses. I’m an artist.”

“Scattershot isn’t like you. Your attacks are normally so much more bespoke.”

“It’s seven in the fucking morning, and for whatever reason, I seem to be awake. I’m off my game, cut me some slack.”

April laughed again, and Muffin smiled softly at the sound, tilting her head to the side to allow the ginger to plant her cheek affectionately against her shoulder. The pair were silent for a short while, but their moment was cut off by the straining sound of their shower sputtering to life again in the next room. So much for cleaning, it seemed. 

“I am going to work that bitch to the bone,” Muffin said through a gritted, twitchy smirk.

“You better,” April nodded, finally pushing herself up off the island and plucking her purse from a nearby chair, “I gotta go. Make sure you bring up the west wall in my room when the landlord comes by, yeah? Thing’s been flickering in and out of space for days, and the raw vacuum of the void makes me break out.”

Muffin grimaced softly, “Right… you know he doesn’t really like me as much as you, right?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” April teased, wiggling her eyebrows, before leaning in to plant a goodbye peck on Muffin’s lips, “See you when I get back, shouldn’t be later than five-ish. We need anything I can pick up on the way home?”

“Not pressingly, but do get pizza,” the brunette smirked, “By the time you get home, I’ll make sure Rox has earned it.”

“What a very threatening way to spoil someone,” April rolled her eyes, practically gliding away and out the door, “Peace out, homes.”

Muffin just returned a nonchalant peace sign, watching as the freckled girl stepped out into the Terminus that lay just beyond their front step and out beyond into the Tangle. A small pang in her chest told her that her wanderlust must be acting up; thinking about it, it had been a little while since the last time she’d had an adventure of her own. 

With a sigh and a rub to her heavy eyelids, Muffin shook her head to clear it. She kicked off the island and felt her lips tug into a tight smirk, hearing the sound of the steamy shower still running through the wall. 

She probably still had something like forty-five minutes until the auburnette was finally done in there. And she couldn’t help but wonder what sorts of messes she could make in that time. 

~

In the end, it was actually damn near seven in the evening before April’s high-soled boots finally once again set down on the apartment’s front step. She sighed, running a hand over her face and feeling her makeup beginning to slough off after the long day of posing under glaring fluorescents. It wasn’t a problem of her talent, she’d managed to satisfy every fresh direction and pose on the first or second try; rather the opposite, in fact, the designer on set had appreciated her so much that he’d managed to squeeze another entire catalogue’s worth of shooting into the 10-hour shift maximum her union allotted her. It was good money, and she was happy enough to do it in the moment, but now that she was finally home and the aches and complaints from her stiff joints were finally starting to catch up with her, she found herself cursing her own inability to say no. 

The door didn’t squeak when she opened it this time. Her eyebrow twitched at the realization, stepping through into the entranceway. 

“Holy,” April remarked aloud, face squinting up at the sudden scent of cleaning product emanating throughout the entire apartment, “It smells like somebody cleaned up a crime scene in here.”

“Hey!” Muffin’s voice from the living room drew her attention, and she turned to find the brunette curled up in the corner of the couch island, Scribe journal open in her cross-legged lap and pen in hand, scribbling idly. Roxy was there too, but instead sprawled out like a dead body, face-down and firmly planted in a well-defined sofa crease. The sight of the open pizza box on the couch beside them both brought with it the sudden, urgent reminder that April had only eaten a single yogurt cup all day, and she quickly tossed her purse aside and joined her friends, thankful for the chance to take her weight off her legs at last. 

“Shit, I totally forgot you told me to get some,” April sighed, leaning back and just about melting into the back of the couch as Muffin scooched over to lean up against her, “Sorry I’m late, crazy day…”

“It’s alright,” Muffin laughed, “We had some very fun one-on-one time, didn’t we, Roxy~?”

The only reply from the apparently-conscious Roxy to that was a long, tormented groan, muffled into the plush cushioning beneath her where her face remained planted. Muffin responded by reaching over to plant a self-satisfied and unmistakably patronizing pat on her back, which prompted Roxy to at last flop over onto her back and stare dead-eyed up at the ceiling. 

“...She made me wash the walls… all of them…” she groaned dully, lips forming into a pout and staring pleadingly up at April.

“I didn’t ‘make you’ do anything,” Muffin cracked a smirk, “As I recall, you were so worried about this place being unkept when the landlord came by that you very graciously volunteered your time to getting it clean. Riiiiiight?”

Roxy just let out a doglike whine at that. It was always rather unclear to what extent she was just playing this sort of thing up to look cute intentionally, but that uncertainty didn’t stop April from laughing affectionately and stroking a few strands of messy hair out of Roxy’s face, a gesture that the auburnette took immediately as a cue to roll over and rest her head eagerly in April’s lap to be petted. 

“Thanks, dudes,” April smiled, retrieving a slice of pizza with her free hand and finally setting to silencing her growling stomach, “Mmmpfhh… diff I mish anhyfingh elsh?”

“Not really,” Muffin giggled at the ginger’s full-mouthed slurring, “Just cleaned up, landlord got the laws of reality patched up and working again… then you were late, so we just ordered the ‘za ourselves early… oh, and that guy from this morning cancelled he and Roxy’s next date, soooo…”

“...ah,” April sighed, glancing down at the auburnette in her lap, whose face had gone distant. She paused in her idle stroking to give an affirming squeeze to her shoulder, before turning back to Muffin. 

“Today was pretty nuts for me…” she began, reaching into her pocket with a soft smile, “...but there is one thing that I didn’t forget to bring home…”

Roxy’s eyes shot open all of a sudden as April extracted a small handful of photographs from her jeans. Her arm shot out, grasping and eager, but April was quicker, her arm suddenly stretching upwards towards the ceiling and taking the photos out of reach. 

“Aw, come on!” Roxy exclaimed, hand still outstretched towards the sky in a feeble attempt at snagging them out of April’s grasp, “Lemme see, lemme see! It’s the pics from your shoot, right? The bikinis one? Come on, I wanna see!”

“Well, that’s gross,” Muffin scowled up at the sight of April’s elongated arm, before shaking her head with a wry chuckle, “If it helps, I would say she’s earned it, today. I even managed to get her to scrub out the shower, I think she can have a few thirst traps as a treat, no?”

April’s eyes twinkled mischievously at that, “Are you sure you don’t just wanna see them too, Muff~?”

Muffin met her gaze with a wink and a sly smile, “Who’s to say? Don’t you trust me?”

“Only about as far as I can throw you.”

“I bet you could throw me pretty far, actually.”

“Yeah, I bet you’d like me to, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve already lost track of what this innuendo is supposed to mean.”

“I don’t think it was ever actually supposed to mean anything to begin with. Do you wanna see my tits in skimpy bikinis, or not?”

“It legitimately offends me that you feel the need to ask.”

“Would you two stop flirting already!?” Roxy groaned, suddenly reminding the other two of her presence and clearly not having stopped trying to reach the photos the entire time. The girls shared a smile and a wink, before April finally gave in, spreading the collection out in front of her and allowing the others to both sidle up beside her.

After about 20 minutes of picking through some favourites had been chosen and flirtily autographed and given away, April unable to resist the chance to tease as Muffin slowly and theatrically slid a particularly close-up bust shot into her pocket. Roxy seemed to have perked up as well, her eyes now shining with contentment, but she didn’t budge from her comfortable place on April’s lap. 

“You guys wanna watch something?” Muffin broke the cozy silence, leaning back against April’s shoulder with her scribe notebook in her lap, “We’d have to go into my room, but…”

“Mmph,” Roxy huffed nonverbally, but her reluctance to move was made clear by the way she wrapped her arms around April’s hips and nuzzled more insistently into her lap, making the ginger girl giggle.

“It’s fine, we can use my laptop,” April laughed, and gestured to Muffin to retrieve her bag. The brunette waved her hand idly, clearly not really wanting to stir either, and the chair that April had deposited her bag onto earlier slid across the carpet to get within arm’s reach. She plucked her laptop from the top zipper and turned it on, setting it a few feet in front of herself.

Roxy, in the end, won the habitual rock-paper-scissors battle to decide who got to choose the evening’s entertainment, which made it only more ironically entertaining when she started snoring only fifteen minutes into Nobody 2. The other two girls exchanged an affectionate, if exasperated, glance, and Muffin reached over to close out of the movie and shut the laptop down with her toes.

“You’re getting bored again, aren’t you?” April asked, politely. There was no accusation in her voice, just the kind curiosity of someone who knew another all too well.

Muffin seemed to take a moment to consider, staring off into space, before responding, “...less so bored than antsy. It’s been a while since I had myself a good adventure.”

“Seven months, now, is it?” the freckled girl asked, “Are you running low on stories?”

“No,” Muffin shook her head, “I’m pretty well-stocked, still… my last outing was in a world with a really fast relative time stream, I managed to live about twenty years there while only being gone here for a couple weeks.”

April cracked a wry smile, “You know it’s such bullshit that you still call yourself in your twenties, right? Experientially, what are you, now? In your triple digits yet?”

“Hey, my aging is tied to your time stream, remember,” Muffin shot back, “I only age as fast as you do, that was a bitch to set up.”

“Yeah, yeah…” 

A blanket of stillness fell over the world again, each of the girls still awake just feeling their eyelids grow heavy as they listened to the other two breathe. Muffin gently set her book aside and turned to her side, leaning her head on her partner’s shoulder and meeting her gaze again.

“However long you’re gone for, just be back on time, yeah?” April finally said, leaning up to press a kiss into Muffin’s hair, “You are not leaving me with this one to take care of all by myself.”

“Oh, you like taking care of her,” Muffin shot back.

“You have both stockholmed me into enjoying taking care of you. Somebody around here has to have their shit together.”

“Some more bold than me would call you whipped.”

“Say that again with that look in your eyes, and I’ll show you which one of us is whipped, babygirl.”

Muffin made a coy meowing noise in response to that, and just nuzzled herself further into April’s shoulder, her eyes slowly drifting shut. As April quickly came to realize that she was suddenly not only the only one awake, but also the apparent pillow for both of her friends and partners, she simply sighed and resigned herself to her fate. She leaned back, one arm around Muffin and the other slowly petting Roxy’s sleeping form on her lap, and she finally gave into the fatigue in her mind.

Muffin dreamed of adventure. Roxy dreamed of connection. And April dreamed of nothing more than them.

-END-

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