Procrastination is my friend

[scribal_goddess]

fireflowersimscame up with a lovely, feel-good valentines fic group here, and because this amused me more than the fourteen dates I need to know by tomorrow afternoon, or my Econ chapter on supply and demand, you get a Valentines-ish fic. If you want something else specific, prompt me, becaue I just wrote this one for my own amusement.

I warn you, it came out as an absolutely pointless snapshot of what the single population of my neighborhood does while in college.
Name: The Lonely Hearts Club
Characters: Aranel, Bastian, Elirand, Lydia
Set: The College Years (Aranel, Rean, Bastian and Amadeus are seniors, the twins and Achenar are Juniors, Ana and Lydia are Freshmen.)
Summary: Being single on Valentines Day is what you make of it.
Word count: 1,707

Friday nights were almost always pizza and a movie during the winter. Besides the fact that nobody really wanted to go out into the freezing cold, there just wasn’t as much to do in Edison, the little town outside of SSU, when it was less than 40 degrees out. Besides, for the four greek-house members who were in for the night, the normal uses of these winter activities would have been an annoying reminder, to say the least.

“I have no idea why it bothers you so much that you’re single on Valentines Day, Elirand,” Ara said as she tried to read the menu for Chinese take-out under a layer of crossings out, stars, circles, and in one case the words “never again” written over one of the dishes. “You’re a fortune sim. You care about big piles of cash, not romance, or true love, or settling down to raise a family, or even dating.”

“And you’re a shallow popularity sim who has absolutely no tact,” Elirand replied from the couch, where he was moodily channel-surfing. “You don’t have to deal with your sister and your best friend going out to be all lovey-dovey when you’ve just been dumped.”

“I can top that,” Lydia said from her usual chair. “Walk in on your best friend making out with your lab partner.”

“Oh, so that’s who Ana’s out with tonight?” Aranel asked, her head rocketing up from the menu so fast that she almost concussed herself on the coffee table. “I might not have to break that one’s kneecaps.”

“Sadly, no,” Lydia replied, grimacing. “Better him than the new guy, though neither of them are good enough for her.”

Aranel groaned. “… I hate having a romance baby sister.”

“Well, now you know how I must feel,” Elirand told her.

“Calla is your twin, which is not the same thing, and she’s a knowledge sim. And I’m in line ahead of you for breaking Achenar’s kneecaps, because he’s my little brother and I get to make sure he doesn’t screw up the best chance of his life, not you.”

The door slammed. “Now this is a hostile environment for a holiday,” Bastian said as he took off his coat. “I thought we were all celebrating singles-awareness day in the fine tradition of broke college students everywhere.”

Aranel grinned. “Oh, you bet. Action movies until Lydia falls asleep, Chineese that’s destined to be cold before we finish eating it, and absolutely no pink hearts or teddy bears. You’re late, by the way.”

“Sorry about that, the snow’s really holding up traffic and Amadeus spilled coffee on himself exactly two seconds before we were going to leave.”

“He’s that nervous about their first Valentines day?” Aranel asked. “Oh, speaking of which – REAN!” she yelled up the stairs, “YOUR DATE IS HERE! Hey, Amadeus,” she added as the blonde elf made it through the front door, “Don’t keep him out too late, because I am not waiting up for every lovestruck couple in this Greek house.”

“Shut up, Ara,” Rean said as he descended the stairs. “Don’t you have a serial-dating sister to worry about now?”

“Nope. I’ve got two,” she said cheerfully, and Rean threw one of his gloves at her as he started putting on his coat.

“Seriously,” Elirand complained to the world in general, “Why is it that whenever I’m attracted to a hot blonde, she’s either taken or not interested?”

“I used to have the same problem,” Rean told him, with only a slight twitch of the lips, “Every time I saw a hot blonde, it would be just my luck that he was straight.”

“Take your ‘hot blonde’ and get out of here before I throw up from all the sappiness in here, Rean,” Aranel told him.

“Can do,” Rean replied, then, turning to his boyfriend, asked, “You brought your skates, right?”

The door closed behind them, and then it was only the four singles in the house.

“So…” Lydia said into the silence, “We have Star Wars, the Bourne Ultimatum, Inception… actually, nothing that we haven’t watched two or three times already this year.”

Everyone looked at Elirand accusingly.

“… It was my turn to rent more movies, wasn’t it?” he asked, somewhat shamefaced.

Bastian just laughed. “Someone should videotape you all. You could be a sitcom.”

“Otherwise known as ‘comedy it’s impossible to sit through,’” Aranel replied. “Well, at least we can order the Chinese now. Who wants Lo Mein? Okay, Lydia always gets Mu Shu…”

“Not tonight,” Lydia replied. “I’m not really that hungry.”

“Me either,” Elirand said, finally tossing the remote across the room. “Why is everything on TV some sappy love story tonight?”

“Tough crowd tonight?” Bastian asked Aranel in an undertone.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Aranel replied, “I came straight home to the house of doom and gloom after history and the highlight of my night so far has been trying to figure out which of the upperclassman frat-boys I’m going to have to kneecap tomorrow for making out with my little sister.”

“I knew there were some benefits to being an only child.”

Aranel made a face at him and grumbled something about ‘practically jailbait.’ At this point, Bastian looked out at the other two occupants of the room, who were clearly deep into a Valentines Day sulk, and decided that it was high time to intervene.

“All right, if we don’t have any movies, who wants to play Monopoly?” he asked.

“That takes forever,” Lydia said from where she was curled up in her chair. Elirand, however, looked up when the word ‘Monopoly,’ was mentioned.

“Is this another cheap trick to tease me about being a fortune sim?” he asked, although he didn’t sound quite as cranky as he had before.

“Of course not. The fact that you cheer up at the prospect of playing with fake money is a complete coincidence,” Aranel said with a straight face. “Get your ass off that couch and play monopoly with us, because I’m going to charge you all obscene amounts of money for landing on Park place. You too, Lydia. And I’m hungry, so order up now because you’ll want it in a couple hours anyway.”

With a minimum of prodding, the Friday night ritual got underway, and it seemed that Elirand and Lydia both cheered up a little when they had something to think about besides having been left behind. Elirand insisted on being the banker, and they had some fun tipping the Chinese take-out guy in quarters – fun that was slightly mitigated when he complained that if they were going to tip him in change, they could at least have sent the ‘hot little redhead,’ out to give him his tip. Bastian and Elirand had to shut the door in his face before Aranel figured out whether she was offended that the delivery guy had been checking out her baby sister or the fact that he didn’t consider her hot. She cheered up when she found an opportunity to steal some of Bastian’s Mongolian beef.

“That’s not fair,” he complained, dropping the shoe in its proper place, “You could at least wait until I wasn’t being sent to jail without passing go before robbing me blind.”

“Takers keepers,” Aranel replied with a wink, popping the Mongolian beef into her mouth. “If you want to trade, though, I’ll give you Ventnor Avenue and a hundred bucks for St. James’ place.”

“Giving you a complete pink monopoly? I think not.”

“One more run through Elirand’s Marvin Gardens is going to finish you off, Bastian. Join me and we can swindle the unscrupulous fortune sim blind.”

“Hey! I’m right here, you know.”

“If those two are in an alliance, I call being allies with you, Elirand,” Lydia said. “And if we’re allies, can you not put a hotel on Marvin Gardens yet?”

“Seven hundred bucks, Ventnor Avenue, and your promise not to start building houses in the pink district for two more turns, Ara.” Bastian said. “Oh, and a piece of sesame chicken. That’s my final offer.”

“You can’t bargain with food,” Elirand protested.

“One more turn, four hundred bucks,” Aranel said, ignoring him. “And yes, you may.”

“Fine,” Bastian said, reaching across her with his chopsticks, “though I think it’s me you’re swindling blind.”

“Great,” Lydia said, as Aranel landed on Free Parking and gleefully collected the taxes for the past fifteen turns, “There goes my plan. Hey, Bastian, you have money, want to buy my get out of jail free card?”

“Since I’m not spending money while I’m in there, no.”

Lydia coughed up her money for landing on States Avenue to Elirand, who rolled double sixes and promptly bought Pensylvania Avenue. Landing on go while skipping over Bastian’s best piece of property, Park Place, made his smile even more smug.

“Why does no one ever buy Baltic Avenue?” Lydia wondered out loud.

“Because it’s a shack,” Elirand replied with his mouth full. “Your turn, Bastian.”

“Okay, no doubles. We’ll stick with no doubles,” Bastian said, then when his dice turned up a three, “your turn, Aranel.”

Despite his best efforts, he was out four turns later, when he rolled double sixes to land on a railroad, then immediately had to pay nine hundred dollars for landing on Virginia Avenue, where Elirand had already constructed a hotel. It took another three turns for Aranel to buy up Park place, by which time Lydia was stretched out using one of the couch cushions as a pillow as Elirand and Aranel faced each other across the board with their piles of cash. It was almost ten thirty and the Chinese food, as predicted, was cold.

When Achenar and Calla walked back in through the front door, they found them still lying on the floor, with Elirand sprawled out on the rug, Lydia holding a couch pillow like a teddy bear, and Aranel and Bastian leaning against the couch with Aranel’s head resting on Bastian’s shoulder, all asleep. Three very flat liter bottles of soda surrounded the little tableau.

“Well, it looks like they had a good night after all,” Calla said, before they began the process of waking everybody up so that they could actually sleep in their own beds.