UD: Baggage
Characters: Chris Hartley, Josh Washington, Ashley Brown Rating: T (Language) Word count: 5,506 Summary: For Chris, Josh, and Ashley, moving day is a lot like an episode of It’s Always Sunny: There’s chaos, there’s laughter, there’s yelling, Danny DeVito’s there…wait. What was that last one again? Author’s note: Well hey! This is my part of an art trade with the fantastic @lunchador! She asked for these three dorks moving in together and realizing, uh, well, they have a lot of junk to cram into one spot, and how on EARTH could I resist that??? —
It was right around the fifth trip up the stairs that all the leasing agent’s talk about “health benefits” and “keeping the blood pumping” was so much horseshit. As he stumbled under the weight of the box in his arms and the pack on his back, Chris felt himself a man dying of thirst in a desert—oh what he’d give to turn his head to the side and see even the barest glimpse of an elevator oasis shimmering in the distance, to step into one of those beautiful air-conditioned closets and revel in their claustrophobia and bad pseudo-jazz.
But those were the dreams of a foolish man. A foolish, foolish man who’d just co-signed a lease for an apartment on the fourth fucking floor of a complex with exterior stairs and nary so much as a ramp in sight.
“I want to die!” he announced upon crossing the threshold. He’d meant for it to be a victorious cry: Honey, I’m home! It had come out as more of a wheeze.
From somewhere deeper in the apartment, Josh’s voice rang out clear as ever. “Yeah, get in line. Some of us were here first.”
Queenie has so kindly finished her part of the trade first and I knew the second there was mention of Danny Devito that she knew exactly the level of chaotic energy I wanted from this trio of friends crammed in the same quarters.