[color=gray][h3][sup][sup]The alarm went off. Sunny convulsed and jittered. Her arm darted wildly towards the blaring clock. Like a spooked cat, she flopped rigidly upright, breathing heavily, and instinctively tried to steady herself, as if she’d planned it all along. Her bleary blinks waned and tensed fingers digging nails into the blanket waned. She never asked for a snooze’s worth of extra sleep, but with the alarm, she needed about as much time to get her wits together. Especially after a night on the hard couch cushions.

She threw out a swift huff, then pushed off the couch like she was trying to escape it. Linger on the bad, after all, and things started to get thundery. And that meant she’d need something to take the edge off. And [i]that[/i] meant cloudy skies. But she couldn’t let herself get too cloudy. Getting all warm and foggy for a little while in the mornings and evenings was fine, but if she got cloudy, she couldn’t show the kids the sun as well. Can’t have sunshine through a bunch of clouds, no matter how lovely they still were to drift through.

She clamored up the stairs and scurried to the sink. Water, water, ice-cold water on a face still pulsing with freshly-awakened energy. The water needed to be colder. No, hot. No, cold. What? She rubbed her eyes and scrambled around in the mirror. She frenetically plucked out tweezers and chased imaginary strays across her face as the water droplets wept away. Finally, she caught something wrong that was real, something she could snag. A nose hair, this time. She tugged the rip-cord and sneezed. She struggled with chasing nonsense for a bit longer before shoving  the tweezers to the sink and tearing herself away to move on.

With manic attempts at multitasking, she stumbled through her morning routine, fighting the jitters with clumsy attempts at overstimulating it away. Until she found herself gazing longingly past her own reflection towards her own closed door. Her heart thumped in her ears. It still did after all these years of half-hearted sobriety. Her toothbrush sat lazily in her mouth, half-lathered as she white-knuckled the sink and intermittently gnawed instead of brushing. Her wants kept thundering and whaling on her dreams. She knew better. She needed to kickstart her vibes somehow. But she couldn’t do this. Did she have time for an alternative?

The clock in the bathroom—what did it say? She squinted to read. She hummed as she counted the ticks, losing count twice as she wandered off to wonder where she’d left her watch this time. Intense focus on something frustratingly simple drew her hands back to the handle and got her idly brushing. But the clock! That lovely clock! It told her what she wanted. She had time. She hadn’t gotten a good wakeup with Genn—wait, Cherry? She wanted to be Cherry, right? Whyever s—Well, the bright side of that evil old alarm was that there was time to strangle out the jitters in a healthier way. 

She spun anxiously and idly and ran the water and dumped in bubbles and got halfway ready before snapping to the doorknob. [i]Decency, Sunny! Decency![/i] She closed and locked the bathroom door. And remembered at the last moment to drop her increasingly mangled toothbrush. Choking to death was no way to go. No, when she got too old, she’d do something quick and sensible, not in the tub with the toothbrush.

Morbid. So morbid. Happy thoughts. 

Then the warm water kissed her skin. It was better to sprint towards Nirvana with someone else. But rarely did she get to share the journey while also enjoying a warm bath. Count your blessings, and all. Becoming one with oneself was silly, really, but in a warm bath with some good-smelling soap, it could be a treat. This fog was free, available, and its heaviest glory cleared fast enough to invite it responsibly.

The shower rained steam towards her as she chased warmer rainbows and heavier fog. She pushed and massaged, pressed, pulled, caressed, and desperately mashed at every point of stimulus. Her troubles smoothed and invited more wonder. Straining reality trickled away into shaking fantasy. In her mind’s eye, she ran for a perfect dream. She pushed faster and nimbler as it came into view. The features and build were always different. So too were the voices. All were pulled from the pages of obscure memories, made vivid by the constant—by the only thing that mattered—by what made it an electrifying fantasy. Her fingers and mind sprung at once. The smile, the smile on his face, whoever he happened to be, was flaming with animal want. But the eyes, they were human and warm. And they stayed. Even as the want turned to satisfaction, a beast sated, those eyes stayed with her and they stayed wanting her. It was a special treat that she adored so deeply she drove herself to hallucinate it many times. A cum-soaked cuddle turned romantic. Perversion turned to affection.

Love. True and genuine. The kind that kept
the heart pounding excitedly even after the body was done. The kind that held the soul even tighter than his hands. She grasped and lurched after it, heavily aspiring, heavily respiring. She pushed herself harder. Joints begged for mercy. The face melted. The dreams melted. Pink. Red. Blue. Flashes. White-hot overstimulation. Halting pushes and desperate grasps for more heights. Impatient and fleeting grasps through the impenetrable light. She stumbled towards it again and again, past the love and the imaginary one who’d stay. Past wildest dreams and impossible fantasies back into the light. Like a moth to a flame, she lunged and jerked back despite her drive towards her electric dream, refusing to accept her muscles’ attempts to tell her they were burning up and could go no more.

Until finally, the pain got sharp. She sputtered and wheezed. She slumped into the tub and weakly pawed at just one more gluttonous jump after heaven. The heavy fog settled over her. The hot mist and tepid water pulled her down. She lay there, eyes closed, trying to peer past the  electric-spotted curtains on the inside of her eyes for that last face she’d conjured. She’d never see it again. She’d never hear or understand what this immaculate spectre would’ve told her as he dragged his hand along her bare stomach while they basked in the afterglow. But she’d glow bright enough to pretend she could. It was gibberish. She used the only folds in her brain not ironed out by lightning to strain to listen for it. 

Her grip loosened and faded. She graciously let go. She got to choose here, to go at her own speed. And so she let the colors drift away into the pattering calm of the shower’s warm rain. She was still now. Her skin was prickling as waves of warm peace flowed from within and without across her surface and through her spine. Until that quieted too.

She slowly rose from her sprawl in the depths of the fog. She washed herself of the daze and prepared to start her day.

And as she floated down to the kitchen and looked around, she decided. Today would be a good day for everyone. She’d make it be a good day. Everyone would have a good day, even if she had to force it to be a good day. A lazy sigh escaped her parched mouth. Discounts, discounts, discounts. She’d buy what she needed now, and claw back some loyal clients with discounts out the wazoo. It was time for holiday discounts and holiday treats. Everyone knew it. She’d fix everything just like she fixed herself. It would all work out.

For today’s fixes, Sunny knew just where to start, and who to start with. She forgot her tea in the microwave as she bustled off.

Her soft knock at the door was met with silence. Nobody was awake yet—she knew that—but habit and courtesy didn’t need to be ignored just for that. But of course, matrons of the house got to come in anyway. So she meandered to the side of the bed and gently rubbed Fi’s shoulder. The teenager groaned and mumbled. Sunny patiently coaxed her into a vague consciousness with little, careful touches and promises of what awaited. Fi’s eyes fluttered awake. “Really? Why?” 

“Just ‘cuz. Been a big week, y’know? ‘Sides, I like treatin’ you guys. You’re always treatin’ me, just bein’ yourselves.” Sunny nudged Fi again, this time with a closed fist.

Fi cracked the ghost of a smile and stretched. She curled her fingers into Sunny’s hand and plucked out her upfront treats. She sat up and took them with water. She eventually dripped out of bed and half-tiptoed half-lurched for the closet. Sunny retreated to conclude her morning routine, punctuated by the soft echo of [i]A Prairie Home Morning Show[/i] from down the hallway. When she was ready, Fi took the initiative to hurry Sunny along and get her out the door while a song was on, lest they get stuck as Sunny hung on Garrison Keillor as if she got more than half the jokes. 

As the two walked in silence, Fi slowly settled into the reality that Sunny indeed had no occasion. It was, so it seemed, genuinely one of those times where she woke up on the side of the crowd-pleasing side of the bed. It wasn’t a check-in or a need for help. They were just walking out early while everything was fresh. So Fi picked up a bit of that pep in Sunny’s step. Like the old days. Sunny snuck glances at her and grinned. If all went right, she’d see real joy in every eye today. A much nicer treat than donuts indeed.

McGinty’s Donuts weren’t the most popular place in the neighborhood by any measure. There was a case to be made that it didn’t deserve to be. The cops all knew old Mrs. McGinty & Junior had been skimping on the fillings since Mr. McGinty passed. Their coffee had never been anyone’s first choice. And why they offered bagels at all, few could say. Mr. McGinty had developed his taste for them in Montréal, and every out-of-towner who picked one up complained bitterly. Sunny had seen Junior take a punch on behalf of his father over it. The bagels were often stale, too, especially these days. 

But that dingy little shop nestled between a gas station and a decrepit old realtor’s office had earned a genuine affection from some repeat customers. Sunny, for her part, hardly cared much where she sourced the donuts she’d only ever end up fully eating a half of. As long as she could lick the icing off the other half and everyone’s sweet tooths were sated, she was happy. For Fi, though, it was the only shop she cared for. They had a powdered donut with fig jam that she liked enough to look past the fact there wasn’t much of it, yes, but what got her looking forward to going was something more human.

Junior’s wife was always singing back there while she worked. She spoke with a familiar sort of drawl, and she smiled a smile that felt so familiar. Like a shadow of a memory trying not to be forgotten. They’d not shared much in the way of major conversation, but she always addressed Fi in particular as “Baby.” She usually hid in the back, but for Fi, she came out and served her. At first, in more optimistic days, Fi had tried to return with Sunny if only to test the feeling. Why this familiarity hung around, she could never quite figure. But these days, she didn’t really care to interrogate it. Comfort didn’t need a how or a why. 

So Fi always ordered now. She’d learned what everyone liked. She looked forward to the occasion they went here. And when they did, Fi got a taste of a home she’d only the vaguest notions of. With chemical help, she could let her load fade into the vagueries of time for a bit. She wasn’t home, but if she closed her eyes and smelled the fresh donuts and listened for a song, she could imagine what that might have felt like. 

And Sunny, standing back and watching flickers of life bloom back into someone whose role in her life she could never have articulated, saw something just as precious. She needed to help herself cheer up at first, but once she got going, she could start lifting others up. And no matter how small it was, if she could wring some smiles out of stones, the glow she had to manually jump-start would keep floating along. This was what she could do. She couldn’t choose where anyone started from, and nobody had a say in where they were going, but she could fill the whole way with roses to smell. And maybe one day, they’d learn to glow bright enough to grow their own roses too. 

Just gotta find the right way to put on some rose-tinted glasses. That’s all there is to it.[/sup][/sup][/h3][/color]