"Whatever I get her, it has to be perfect," Robin said as she, Fletcher and Kacie stood in the gift shop, admiring all the trinkets and other various zoo related items for purchase; she picked up a small, glass Giraffe and examined it, then exhaled, "all this stuff is so...kitschy. And not in the quirky kind of way. In the 'I bought it at a zoo gift shop' kind of way."
"Yeah, well these are your options," Fletcher said, biting into the half wrapped taco he had in his hand. He, Robin and Kacie had walked down the street to a small taco cart and purchased lunch before coming back to the gift shop and perusing. Kacie pushed some lettuce between her lips and cleared her throat.
"You know, I could help you do something," Kacie said, "I have a lot of skills. We could always buy something here and then screw with it to make it unique."
"Why are you even doing this, aren't you two already, like, a thing?" Fletcher asked, sipping the soda he and Kacie were sharing, clutched in his other hand.
"I mean, kind of, but I wanna make it official official, you know?" Robin said.
"Women, always needing clarification," Fletcher said, smirking, making it apparent he was joking.
"I just need her to know that, yeah, what we have currently is lovely but I want her to officially be my girlfriend, I need a label," Robin said, "...Kacie, what kind of skills do you?"
"What kinda skills you need?" she asked, grinning.
***
Harvey, Casper and Nelly were sitting in the employee lounge while Harvey put his sandwich back together after applying his condiments. He then took it to the table and seated himself beside Casper, across from Nelly, who was eating a burger she'd ordered in.
"Why do you wait until now to put your condiments on?" Casper asked, eating from his ramen cup.
"Because if you put it on at the start of the day in preparation for lunch, by the time lunch rolls around, it all soaks in and is no longer fresh," Harvey said and Casper nodded, his eyes widened a bit.
"Yeah, that makes sense," he said.
"Does it though?" Nelly asked, making Harvey look up at her; she tossed her hair and added, "I mean, you could just put 'em on, then stuff it in the fridge so it retains its coldness and doesn't do that. You don't have to wait."
"Hey, you're not the sandwich master here, okay?" Harvey said, biting into it as the door to the lounge opened and Doug walked inside, causing everyone to shout in surprise. Doug stood there and looked around, hands on his hips, then exhaled.
"Welp, doesn't look like much has changed here lately," he said.
"When did you..." Nelly asked, grinning, approaching him, "you didn't even tell me you were coming back yet!"
"Well, to be fair, this was a sudden decision. I was actually scheduled to come back next week, but Arthur told me that today would be just fine. Says he's feeling much better, doesn't need me around the house as much now," Doug said, "so what's been goin' on since I left?"
Harvey and Nelly - Harvey chewing his sandwich as she sipped her coffee - exchanged a look.
"Not much," they said in unison.
***
Robin was sitting on a child sized chair shaped like a rhino when Kacie sat beside her in one shaped like a hippo. Fletcher was off across the store looking at books about bird watching. Kacie glanced over at Robin, who had the most exasperated look on her face, and for a brief moment, their eyes connected. Robin sighed and buried her face in her hands, presumably to hide her frustration.
"I'm probably not the best at giving dating advice, considering I've had maybe two previous relationships in my life, but in my experience, what you get someone doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that you got them something to begin with," Kacie said.
"Yeah, yeah, 'it's the thought that counts', I know, but still, that feels lazy. I want her to know that I took a lot of time, put in a lot of effort, and not because I want the recognition, that could mean less to me, but because I want her to know that she means that much to me that I'd be willing to do so," Robin said, "I've never..."
Robin chewed her lip and sighed again.
"...I've never felt like this before. Whenever I dated someone in the past, and admittedly I've only ever dated men, I never went out of my way to make them feel special to me. To make it seem like I was thinking of them or caring about them deeply. That isn't to say we wouldn't do things. Like, for our birthdays, for example, we always did nice stuff for eachother. But this is so different. I want to make her happy every. single. day. I want her to realize, every waking moment that passes, she is loved more than the moment that came before it. It's like...it's like my heart is a hostage and I don't know how to deal with it."
Kacie smiled, reached over and patted Robin on the leg.
"How about this," she said, "how about you get two animal plushes, animals she likes the most, and then give them to me so I can do something with them. Trust me, it'll be unique, and nobody else will have anything like it."
Robin looked over at Kacie and smiled weakly.
"Why are you so interested in helping me?" she asked, half laughing.
"Because, until a few weeks ago," Kacie replied, "I also thought I wasn't really worthy of being loved, and from what you've told me about this girl, and what I've noticed firsthand, she seems to kind of suffer from that too. So, if I can help someone prove to someone else who felt the way I did realize they're wrong, then that's a win in my book."
Robin looked towards Fletcher, who was now acting out a little puppet show with animal hand puppets for younger kids across the store, making them laugh. She smiled and nodded, looking back at Kacie.
"He's surprisingly good, isn't he?" Robin asked.
"He really is," Kacie agreed, "and...I think that's what matters. Seeing the worth in people who either can't see it in themselves, or have been told there isn't any. A lot of people think Fletcher is a goof, an idiot, a jerk, but he isn't any of those things. I mean he's kinda goofy, but, hah. But the thing is, he didn't internalize any of that. Sounds like this girl might've."
Robin nodded, remembering the stories Sophie had told her last week about growing up, about how her mother had spoken to her in regards to her mental disabilities. Robin sighed, stood back up and walked over to the plush shelf, gathering two she knew she'd love, and handing them to Kacie, who smiled upon receiving them.
"Let's go get you a girlfriend," Kacie said, grinning.
***
Nelly and Doug were walking through the zoo - seeing as Doug had just returned on a whim, sooner than he'd been anticipated, he didn't really have a schedule yet, so Nelly thought she'd just walk around with him for the afternoon - near the endangered animal section. They stopped at a certain kind of tiger and looked into the encasement, Nelly still sipping from her coffee as Doug shook his head.
"I'm still worried that he needs me at home," Doug said, "how can I be so good at taking care of animals and so bad at taking care of people?"
"Because they're not the same, Doug, you...you do realize that, right?" Nelly asked, the both of them chuckling as she continued, "like, caring for people is so much harder. Animals are base. That isn't to say they lack intelligence, but it all comes down to, essentially, base instincts. What to eat today. Where to sleep today. Is it safe here for me. A Kangaroo likely never wondered if its love interest was cheating on them, for example. Humans are messy. Complicated. Honestly, relationships, platonic or otherwise, are generally too hard and not worth the effort."
"Jeez Nelly, what happened while I was gone," Doug asked, making her laugh again.
"I'm just tellin' it like it is, that's all," Nelly responded, shrugging, "people are hard to deal with. More often than not they'll disappoint you. How do you do it, Doug? How do you trust that it's okay to love someone?"
"You just do," Doug said, "I don't know, you just do it. It's a conscious decision, but it's one you make every day. You tell yourself 'this person loves me and I deserve that', and some days that's harder to believe than others, but hopefully whoever you're with will continually prove you wrong even on the worst of days."
Nelly smiled and sipped her coffee. Doug had always been her go to for relationship advice, and she appreciated having him back. She patted him on the back as they kept looking at the tiger.
"I'm glad yer back, I missed ya," she said.
"You're not just sayin' that?" Doug asked and Nelly laughed.
"No, I'm actually not just saying that," Nelly said, resting her head on his arm, "I really am glad you're back."
Doug had been gone for months at this point. After his husband, Arthur, had been diagnosed with a serious medical issue, Doug had to take a large amount of time off to help care for him, something that Nelly allowed him to do while keeping his job and still retaining a paycheck. Being the one in charge of the zoo, she was able to do that, so long as she doctored his time cards accordingly. Thankfully for Doug, Nelly was always willing to do the right thing for the right people.
Unless the person was her, of course.
***
Sophie hadn't had the best day.
In fact, she'd had a pretty lousy one. She'd had to clean up multiple instances of vomit, had a drink thrown on her by a 2 year old and then, to top it all off, had been expecting to get a pay raise and been declined yet again. So yeah, it was safe to say Sophie was feeling, more or less, like shit today. Now sitting in the janitorial closet near the Hyena exhibit, she found that hiding was in her best interest. She was leaning against the wall, her legs pulled up to her chest as she read a kids book she'd brought from the library about bats, when the door suddenly opened. Light spilled in, and she put one arm across her face, squinting to see Robin enter, shutting the door behind her.
"Figured I'd find you here," Robin said as she sat cross legged in front of Sophie, a small plastic bag by her side.
"...how did you know?" she replied.
"Cause you weren't in any of your other usual spots, and I know you like to come here when you're not feeling good," Robin said, and Sophie blushed.
"You sure do know me now, don't you," she said.
"I'd like to think that every day there's something new about you I could learn," Robin remarked, making Sophie blush; Robin then cleared her throat and added, "listen, um...there's something I wanna talk to you about. About us. Whatever, like, us is. You know I like you, like, a lot. I know you like me a lot. I know that, for me, these kinds of feelings are new and scary, in a way, and that for you they're also kind the same. Um...that being said, I also know that when I find something that matters to me, I do everything within my power to keep it. I want to keep this. I want to keep...you."
Sophie smiled. Her heart lifted a bit. Maybe today wouldn't be so bad after all.
"And," Robin continued, swallowing nervously, "uh...I guess I...I've never done any big, like, declaration of feelings, and I think it's cause, until you, I didn't have anyone who warranted it. Most of the people I dated - well, actually all of the people I dated - were men, and I never felt attached enough, emotionally, to want to do that for them. But you..."
Robin raised her eyes to meet Sophie's, and saw her smiling at her, which made Robin blush, made her knees weak, her heart beat faster.
"...god...you...you are someone worth doing that for. You're worth doing everything for. Things that scare me don't scare me when I think about doing them for you, and...and I want this to be official," Robin continued, "I want us to be official. If you'll let that, if you want that too. I got you something."
Robin reached down to the bag beside her, picked it up and handed it across to Sophie. Sophie took it, curious, and opened it, reaching inside. She then pulled out a turtle and a giraffe stitched together in a sort of Frankenstein's monster way; the turtle body was still in tact, but i had the head of the giraffe coming out of the shell, along with the tail out the back. Sophie's eyes widened, and she put a hand to her mouth.
"...nobody's ever done anything like this for me," she whimpered.
"Good, cause that means I get to be the first," Robin replied, "so...will you be my girlfriend?"
Sophie looked back at the plush, and then, clutching it to her chest, she got on her hands and knees and crawled closer to Robin, kissing her. Robin happily kissed her back, giggling, as Sophie rested her forehead on Robin's and nodded.
"Nothing would make me happier," Sophie said, before curling up in a ball between Robin's legs, squeezing the plush to her chest and resting her head on Robin's stomach. Robin reached down and gently stroked Sophie's hair, as Sophie whispered, "thank you. I had a really bad day."
"Well, that's what girlfriends are for," Robin remarked, "making bad days better."
"Well then, I have a pretty great girlfriend," Sophie said, making Robin smile.
***
Harvey was driving home, but the entire time, his mind was on Nelly.
He hated himself. He loved Nelly, but he hated himself. He should stop and pick up dinner, he thought. Anything to make things less conspicious about his late arrival. So he did. He stopped and he got fried chicken from a restaurant, and then he got home. He walked in through the back kitchen door, as he always did, to find his wife, Maria, sitting at the table, scrapbooking. She looked up at Harvey and smiled at him, and he forcefully smiled back at her as he placed the bag from the chicken restaurant down on the nearby counter. He then stood behind his wife, hands on her shoulders, and watched her do her hobby.
"What's the theme of this one?" he asked.
"This one's theme is 'mothers I wish I had growing up'," Maria said, making Harvey laugh.
"That's extremely specific," he said.
"Well I have specific issues that need to be address," Maria replied, the both of them laughing as he kissed the top of her head. Harvey walked to the nearby standup mirror and started removing his uniform, wearing a basic shirt and his shorts underneath, while he could hear Maria rustling in the chicken bag in the kitchen, and he sighed. He wished he could be an animal.
Preferably one that mates for life.
"Yeah, well these are your options," Fletcher said, biting into the half wrapped taco he had in his hand. He, Robin and Kacie had walked down the street to a small taco cart and purchased lunch before coming back to the gift shop and perusing. Kacie pushed some lettuce between her lips and cleared her throat.
"You know, I could help you do something," Kacie said, "I have a lot of skills. We could always buy something here and then screw with it to make it unique."
"Why are you even doing this, aren't you two already, like, a thing?" Fletcher asked, sipping the soda he and Kacie were sharing, clutched in his other hand.
"I mean, kind of, but I wanna make it official official, you know?" Robin said.
"Women, always needing clarification," Fletcher said, smirking, making it apparent he was joking.
"I just need her to know that, yeah, what we have currently is lovely but I want her to officially be my girlfriend, I need a label," Robin said, "...Kacie, what kind of skills do you?"
"What kinda skills you need?" she asked, grinning.
***
Harvey, Casper and Nelly were sitting in the employee lounge while Harvey put his sandwich back together after applying his condiments. He then took it to the table and seated himself beside Casper, across from Nelly, who was eating a burger she'd ordered in.
"Why do you wait until now to put your condiments on?" Casper asked, eating from his ramen cup.
"Because if you put it on at the start of the day in preparation for lunch, by the time lunch rolls around, it all soaks in and is no longer fresh," Harvey said and Casper nodded, his eyes widened a bit.
"Yeah, that makes sense," he said.
"Does it though?" Nelly asked, making Harvey look up at her; she tossed her hair and added, "I mean, you could just put 'em on, then stuff it in the fridge so it retains its coldness and doesn't do that. You don't have to wait."
"Hey, you're not the sandwich master here, okay?" Harvey said, biting into it as the door to the lounge opened and Doug walked inside, causing everyone to shout in surprise. Doug stood there and looked around, hands on his hips, then exhaled.
"Welp, doesn't look like much has changed here lately," he said.
"When did you..." Nelly asked, grinning, approaching him, "you didn't even tell me you were coming back yet!"
"Well, to be fair, this was a sudden decision. I was actually scheduled to come back next week, but Arthur told me that today would be just fine. Says he's feeling much better, doesn't need me around the house as much now," Doug said, "so what's been goin' on since I left?"
Harvey and Nelly - Harvey chewing his sandwich as she sipped her coffee - exchanged a look.
"Not much," they said in unison.
***
Robin was sitting on a child sized chair shaped like a rhino when Kacie sat beside her in one shaped like a hippo. Fletcher was off across the store looking at books about bird watching. Kacie glanced over at Robin, who had the most exasperated look on her face, and for a brief moment, their eyes connected. Robin sighed and buried her face in her hands, presumably to hide her frustration.
"I'm probably not the best at giving dating advice, considering I've had maybe two previous relationships in my life, but in my experience, what you get someone doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that you got them something to begin with," Kacie said.
"Yeah, yeah, 'it's the thought that counts', I know, but still, that feels lazy. I want her to know that I took a lot of time, put in a lot of effort, and not because I want the recognition, that could mean less to me, but because I want her to know that she means that much to me that I'd be willing to do so," Robin said, "I've never..."
Robin chewed her lip and sighed again.
"...I've never felt like this before. Whenever I dated someone in the past, and admittedly I've only ever dated men, I never went out of my way to make them feel special to me. To make it seem like I was thinking of them or caring about them deeply. That isn't to say we wouldn't do things. Like, for our birthdays, for example, we always did nice stuff for eachother. But this is so different. I want to make her happy every. single. day. I want her to realize, every waking moment that passes, she is loved more than the moment that came before it. It's like...it's like my heart is a hostage and I don't know how to deal with it."
Kacie smiled, reached over and patted Robin on the leg.
"How about this," she said, "how about you get two animal plushes, animals she likes the most, and then give them to me so I can do something with them. Trust me, it'll be unique, and nobody else will have anything like it."
Robin looked over at Kacie and smiled weakly.
"Why are you so interested in helping me?" she asked, half laughing.
"Because, until a few weeks ago," Kacie replied, "I also thought I wasn't really worthy of being loved, and from what you've told me about this girl, and what I've noticed firsthand, she seems to kind of suffer from that too. So, if I can help someone prove to someone else who felt the way I did realize they're wrong, then that's a win in my book."
Robin looked towards Fletcher, who was now acting out a little puppet show with animal hand puppets for younger kids across the store, making them laugh. She smiled and nodded, looking back at Kacie.
"He's surprisingly good, isn't he?" Robin asked.
"He really is," Kacie agreed, "and...I think that's what matters. Seeing the worth in people who either can't see it in themselves, or have been told there isn't any. A lot of people think Fletcher is a goof, an idiot, a jerk, but he isn't any of those things. I mean he's kinda goofy, but, hah. But the thing is, he didn't internalize any of that. Sounds like this girl might've."
Robin nodded, remembering the stories Sophie had told her last week about growing up, about how her mother had spoken to her in regards to her mental disabilities. Robin sighed, stood back up and walked over to the plush shelf, gathering two she knew she'd love, and handing them to Kacie, who smiled upon receiving them.
"Let's go get you a girlfriend," Kacie said, grinning.
***
Nelly and Doug were walking through the zoo - seeing as Doug had just returned on a whim, sooner than he'd been anticipated, he didn't really have a schedule yet, so Nelly thought she'd just walk around with him for the afternoon - near the endangered animal section. They stopped at a certain kind of tiger and looked into the encasement, Nelly still sipping from her coffee as Doug shook his head.
"I'm still worried that he needs me at home," Doug said, "how can I be so good at taking care of animals and so bad at taking care of people?"
"Because they're not the same, Doug, you...you do realize that, right?" Nelly asked, the both of them chuckling as she continued, "like, caring for people is so much harder. Animals are base. That isn't to say they lack intelligence, but it all comes down to, essentially, base instincts. What to eat today. Where to sleep today. Is it safe here for me. A Kangaroo likely never wondered if its love interest was cheating on them, for example. Humans are messy. Complicated. Honestly, relationships, platonic or otherwise, are generally too hard and not worth the effort."
"Jeez Nelly, what happened while I was gone," Doug asked, making her laugh again.
"I'm just tellin' it like it is, that's all," Nelly responded, shrugging, "people are hard to deal with. More often than not they'll disappoint you. How do you do it, Doug? How do you trust that it's okay to love someone?"
"You just do," Doug said, "I don't know, you just do it. It's a conscious decision, but it's one you make every day. You tell yourself 'this person loves me and I deserve that', and some days that's harder to believe than others, but hopefully whoever you're with will continually prove you wrong even on the worst of days."
Nelly smiled and sipped her coffee. Doug had always been her go to for relationship advice, and she appreciated having him back. She patted him on the back as they kept looking at the tiger.
"I'm glad yer back, I missed ya," she said.
"You're not just sayin' that?" Doug asked and Nelly laughed.
"No, I'm actually not just saying that," Nelly said, resting her head on his arm, "I really am glad you're back."
Doug had been gone for months at this point. After his husband, Arthur, had been diagnosed with a serious medical issue, Doug had to take a large amount of time off to help care for him, something that Nelly allowed him to do while keeping his job and still retaining a paycheck. Being the one in charge of the zoo, she was able to do that, so long as she doctored his time cards accordingly. Thankfully for Doug, Nelly was always willing to do the right thing for the right people.
Unless the person was her, of course.
***
Sophie hadn't had the best day.
In fact, she'd had a pretty lousy one. She'd had to clean up multiple instances of vomit, had a drink thrown on her by a 2 year old and then, to top it all off, had been expecting to get a pay raise and been declined yet again. So yeah, it was safe to say Sophie was feeling, more or less, like shit today. Now sitting in the janitorial closet near the Hyena exhibit, she found that hiding was in her best interest. She was leaning against the wall, her legs pulled up to her chest as she read a kids book she'd brought from the library about bats, when the door suddenly opened. Light spilled in, and she put one arm across her face, squinting to see Robin enter, shutting the door behind her.
"Figured I'd find you here," Robin said as she sat cross legged in front of Sophie, a small plastic bag by her side.
"...how did you know?" she replied.
"Cause you weren't in any of your other usual spots, and I know you like to come here when you're not feeling good," Robin said, and Sophie blushed.
"You sure do know me now, don't you," she said.
"I'd like to think that every day there's something new about you I could learn," Robin remarked, making Sophie blush; Robin then cleared her throat and added, "listen, um...there's something I wanna talk to you about. About us. Whatever, like, us is. You know I like you, like, a lot. I know you like me a lot. I know that, for me, these kinds of feelings are new and scary, in a way, and that for you they're also kind the same. Um...that being said, I also know that when I find something that matters to me, I do everything within my power to keep it. I want to keep this. I want to keep...you."
Sophie smiled. Her heart lifted a bit. Maybe today wouldn't be so bad after all.
"And," Robin continued, swallowing nervously, "uh...I guess I...I've never done any big, like, declaration of feelings, and I think it's cause, until you, I didn't have anyone who warranted it. Most of the people I dated - well, actually all of the people I dated - were men, and I never felt attached enough, emotionally, to want to do that for them. But you..."
Robin raised her eyes to meet Sophie's, and saw her smiling at her, which made Robin blush, made her knees weak, her heart beat faster.
"...god...you...you are someone worth doing that for. You're worth doing everything for. Things that scare me don't scare me when I think about doing them for you, and...and I want this to be official," Robin continued, "I want us to be official. If you'll let that, if you want that too. I got you something."
Robin reached down to the bag beside her, picked it up and handed it across to Sophie. Sophie took it, curious, and opened it, reaching inside. She then pulled out a turtle and a giraffe stitched together in a sort of Frankenstein's monster way; the turtle body was still in tact, but i had the head of the giraffe coming out of the shell, along with the tail out the back. Sophie's eyes widened, and she put a hand to her mouth.
"...nobody's ever done anything like this for me," she whimpered.
"Good, cause that means I get to be the first," Robin replied, "so...will you be my girlfriend?"
Sophie looked back at the plush, and then, clutching it to her chest, she got on her hands and knees and crawled closer to Robin, kissing her. Robin happily kissed her back, giggling, as Sophie rested her forehead on Robin's and nodded.
"Nothing would make me happier," Sophie said, before curling up in a ball between Robin's legs, squeezing the plush to her chest and resting her head on Robin's stomach. Robin reached down and gently stroked Sophie's hair, as Sophie whispered, "thank you. I had a really bad day."
"Well, that's what girlfriends are for," Robin remarked, "making bad days better."
"Well then, I have a pretty great girlfriend," Sophie said, making Robin smile.
***
Harvey was driving home, but the entire time, his mind was on Nelly.
He hated himself. He loved Nelly, but he hated himself. He should stop and pick up dinner, he thought. Anything to make things less conspicious about his late arrival. So he did. He stopped and he got fried chicken from a restaurant, and then he got home. He walked in through the back kitchen door, as he always did, to find his wife, Maria, sitting at the table, scrapbooking. She looked up at Harvey and smiled at him, and he forcefully smiled back at her as he placed the bag from the chicken restaurant down on the nearby counter. He then stood behind his wife, hands on her shoulders, and watched her do her hobby.
"What's the theme of this one?" he asked.
"This one's theme is 'mothers I wish I had growing up'," Maria said, making Harvey laugh.
"That's extremely specific," he said.
"Well I have specific issues that need to be address," Maria replied, the both of them laughing as he kissed the top of her head. Harvey walked to the nearby standup mirror and started removing his uniform, wearing a basic shirt and his shorts underneath, while he could hear Maria rustling in the chicken bag in the kitchen, and he sighed. He wished he could be an animal.
Preferably one that mates for life.