Daisy Chains || Ranboo (SLOW UPDATES)

26 || Amie

 Late at night, two weeks into the loneliness, Amie orders herself Pad Thai over the phone and then gets in the shower down the hall from her room, where she turns the water to nearly scalding hot, over the hot-water marker on the heat dial. She loves the water so hot it almost burns, she loves the smell of rose-water shampoo. Her happiest place right now might just be under a shower head.

It is here in the steam, with dripping hair, covered in soapy suds; that she doesn't feel like Amie Norwood, the girl left behind. Or even Amie Norwood, who loves her very best friend who will never love her back.

She's just Amie Norwood, owner of luxury bathing products.

Well after Amie's fingers have pruned up in the cooling water, she dries herself off, puts on her softest cozy black sweatpants, and pulls her hair away from her face into a sopping bun; padding past her siblings' room and to the kitchen just in time for the delivery man to make his way to her door with the takeout.

She sits in the den with the plastic container, just trying to watch Outer Banks and fighting the urge to call Reese to get a "good night". Amie attempts to zone out, she wants to make her brain do something, anything, other than think about streaming or school or Reese. But once her food is gone, she realizes the effort is futile. she might as well do her homework.

Sitting down at the wooden living room desk to do her math, she pores over a calculus textbook in confusion. Reese had always helped her with her pre-calc homework.

Reese had sat at this desk the first time he'd stayed over, he'd slept on the couch across the room where she'd just been sitting without a thought to it.

They'd once cuddled in blankets on the floor that is now covered by a new ugly blue ottoman, brought to the house by Joel as a gift.

In Amie's view, it's a very sad gift.

She takes a deep breath, scratching out an answer that had taken her twenty minutes, and beginning to rewrite the complicated equation. When she's finished with her math she writes the final conclusion to an essay not due for three weeks.

Amie exits Google Docs to check her homework schedule and sees her reflection in the dark laptop screen, eyes dim and tired. Her hair is falling out of its bun, it's been getting so long it's cumbersome, especially to brush. She makes a mental note to set up a haircut with Chelsea, her friend from the salon downtown. Maybe she'll chop off all her hair into a bob like Casey from the show 'Atypical'.

Wait, that would look really cool.

She eyes her phone, the one refrain from Mr. Loverman stuck deep in her brain yet again. Maybe she's letting this whole thing get too in her head, reading too far into any lyric that seems remotely relatable.

I'm reeling in // my brain again // before it can get back to you,

Oh what am I // s'posed to do // without you?

I'm Mr. Loverman // and I miss my lover, man.

I'm Mr. Loverman- // and I miss my lover.

This whole thing is exhausting. Not to mention, it's 10 PM and Amie had stayed up most of the previous night after a nightmare. Suddenly her phone rings, and she scrambles to pick up the call from Reese.

"Hey, Honey," his tired voice echoes through the phone line, echoes through satellites panning it from across a continent and an ocean. "What's popping?"

He seems like that one father that tries too hard.

Amie could cry hearing his voice. Maybe it seems melodramatic but her throat tightens a bit to think of the distance between them. Just a few months ago, meeting the Ranboo was just a dream, wishful thinking that happened to come true. Now he's a crucial part of her life, and if anything were to happen to him-

"Amie?"

She snaps back out of her head. "Yeah! I'm here, sorry. How're you?"

"I'm good, just woke up from a dream for no reason." His voice shows it clearly: the groggy monotone quiet to avoid waking his housemates. "What are you doing?"

Amie yawns, pushing herself back in the chair and examining her dark blue nails. "Doing all my homework early so I can stream with you on Saturday."

"What am I missing?" He questions, the noise of his blankets shifting on the bed coming through the phone.

She groans, "Ugh, you little shit, don't remind me," as she's scrolling through her emails to the due-date schedule. "Pre-calc problems, an essay on water bears, some history sheets on the Cold War. Nothing fun."

"Well, want to hear what I'm doing?"

"Noo..." she mumbles into her hands in defeat. "Yes."

He chuckles, his voice rough and sleepy. "Going to a skate park to film a vlog of some sort, learning to rollerblade or something dumb. I bet you're really good at rollerblading. Anyways," Reese waxes on about how frustrating it is to be kicked out of Toby's MCC team again, and Dream SMP lore, and something mysterious about private guitar lessons with Wilbur.

It's interesting to hear about how his life is fun, not just monotonous schoolwork and goofy failed attempts to formulate lore ideas with Clay and Sam regarding the prison.

A noise emanates from her mom's room, not a lewd one but Joel's voice, and it seems to be the beginning of an argument. Amie goes still, curiously straining her ears and removing the phone from her cheek in time to catch Joel's next line.

"Cait, babe, you know he's not doing his job. Let him go, he can work somewhere else."

"But he needs the money, he doesn't have another job, he has a family."

"Reid can figure out something else, okay? We can't afford to pay him if it doesn't benefit us at all. We have a family to feed as well," Joel's voice rapidly escalates in the argument.

"No, Joel, we can give him another chance!"

"God damn it, Caitlynn Norwood. Why do you want him around? Does he benefit you in another special way?"

She can hear her mother taking offense. "Oh, my god... Joel, can you hear yourself? The man has been on break for a week. He'll be back, you know it. We can more than afford to pay what we are, you know he's being a dick in the office to begin with; but his life is hard, let him stay for goodness sakes."

The phone starts to slip from Amie's loose fingers, reminding her that Reese is still on the call. "Shit. Sorry!"

Reese is very concerned, having picked up on the stress in the house. "What's going on? I hear them almost yelling."

"Oh, it's nothing, just some employee misbehaving and they're arguing about firing him or not. It's kind of entertaining, in a dark way."

"Okay, if you say so." He yawns through his hand. "I should probably go to sleep, it's three in the morning here. Also, so should you."

They agree on that much, and Amie ignores the rest of the argument between the adults, putting Reese on speakerphone and eventually falling asleep on the call.

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