Chapter Text
The sun doesn’t seem to rise. Instead, the sky blooms from black to a thick gray like wet newspaper. Windows are nothing more than drums for water to beat against in rain like this and the percussion won't let Trip get any more sleep. They check their phone once more, rubbing at the wavy scar on their right eyelid, and groan.
Ten in the morning. They didn’t even manage to get a nap’s worth of rest in more than five whole hours. Once they were awake, they were awake for the day. It’s one of their many usually-good habits that, right now, can bite them. Luckily it didn’t thunder last night, or else Trip would have gotten even less sleep.
Not wanting to entertain the dread rattling through them anymore, Trip decides to focus on the cracked phone screen in front of them. They are trying to decipher the graphs and jargon crammed into a poorly designed weather blog. From what they can tell, the next three days are going to steadily get worse and worse until the storm peaks on the forth, which on the site is marked with an extra large jpeg hazard symbol next to a cartoon thundercloud. If they’re reading the pictograms of clipart smiley and frowny faces correctly, then after that it should lighten up and level out into slightly less rain until about a week from today when it stops.
Another groan escapes their throat as the effort of learning the website’s own personal language catches up to them. Why didn’t they ever save a bookmark of that one newsletter that Eight uses with the radar and clean, neatly written paragraphs? They just clicked on the first link that showed up on their search for “weather,” was that so grave an offense?
Trip groans a third time. Maybe distracting yourself from bad weather with a bad weather site is a bad idea. Coffee sounds good. They scoot off the bed, and after standing up, realize they’re hungry. Ravenous, actually. With a defeated sigh, they confine themself to having to figure out what to have for breakfast.
Deciding what to eat always seemed to be a chore for Trip, so much so that they’ve taken to only buying a handful of the same microwave meals and protein bars every time they go to the store. Eating has always been just something you had to do or die for the green inkling - oil and gas to keep the machine running. It was something in Trip’s life that stood in stark contrast to their friends. Craig is always preaching the benefits of good home cooking and how “you gotta feed the soul, too, squiddo!” Callie and Marie both squabbled over snacks both off and on air, to an extent that whenever one of their friends hears them fighting, it was assumed to be about what brand of chips makes the best kelp flavor or something like that.
Back in the apartment they shared with Acacia and Eight, those two would have similar chats on snacks and street food, though not nearly as heated. It was the same passion and assertion, but whereas the Squid Sisters would argue, the agents would discuss - not combatantly but expressively. Trip remembers times when they were all on the couch with some cart racer or party video game and Acacia would give verbose sermons on the stalls at a carnival or festival and the details of how they fried their tempura or rolled their fried ice with such fervor that they had to pause whatever they were playing to let her gesture with their hands or catch her breath. Eight would tell stories of the new foods she had tried recently, which was most of the food she tried that wasn’t octarian. She would wrap prose around her recollections like an obituary of the things she ate, mourning the meals that had to end. Trip could swear they saw tears prick the corners of Eight’s eyes one time when she lamented the loss of “the most gorgeous pancake the ever graced a plate.”
If both Caci and Eight ate the same thing together, it would become a dual-lead seminar, with every detail imaginable from texture to subtle tasting notes to appearance and smell and everything else given to the odd one out - Trip.
They were more a listener, they guessed.
It wasn’t always about food, of course. They can vividly imagine all the ways Acacia would flail her arms and curl their fingers trying to articulate the feeling evoked by the movement in a new video game about being a green glob flying through a dark and gloomy poorly-textured castle, or the look on Eight’s face as she waxed poetically about an indie-pop aggressive deathhypersynth Chirpy Chips cover album she just listened to for three hours, or how both of them became utterly engrossed in a philosophical diatribe that started with Trip commenting that the handle to the microwave fell off.
Trip sets up the small electric burner on the small kitchen island. It and a clean but worn kettle was left in the rented space’s cabinet, which they were eternally grateful for, even if it wasn’t a drip coffeemaker. They would much rather have to buy instant coffee than suffer the financial gutpunch of having to buy a chain restaurant coffee every day. They smile as they put the water on to boil, thinking about the one time they were in the thick of their friend’s discussions, when Trip said as much to their roommates’ faces and watched them contort into disbelief and horror.
“Are you serious?! I get not wanting to spend too much but like- !”
“Captain, you must be joking. Instant coffee? Over a handmade latte? A cafe-quality cappuccino?! ”
“Even if its not like, an artisan coffee, like a cheap-o fast-food place has to make one totally better than that astronaut freezedry stuff!”
For once, they dug their heels in for their stance. Trip defended themself from the almost pleading arguments the other two gave, giving them a response more than “its a personal preference” like they usually did when probed.
Trip frowns as they take a seat on a lifted chair by the countertop. They take out their phone as they measure out a teaspoon of brown powder into a mug.
“I should call them,” they say to themself, pouring hot water into their cup, “What’s wrong with me?”
They really want those talks again. They want to listen to and watch and soak in the ridiculous and profound things they did and said alike. They would run out of fingers, toes, and tentacles to count on with how many times they laid in bed the whole time they’ve stayed in the Splatlands, just staring at their names behind the spiderwebbed glass of their screen, just thinking about what to say. What do you say? How do you talk to someone you used to talk to every day in person you haven’t seen or spoken to in a month?
They don’t want burden either Eight or Caci by interupting whatever they’re doing just for a dumb phonecall or text. They want to just walk into a room and see them - off in their own world, Eight’s tentacles twisting as she concentrated on fixing some nondescript mechanism for an Ammo Knights customer while Caci leaned on her, back to back, and frantically scribbled the answer to an equation in a messy notebook. Trip wants to wake up on the couch and see the other two haphazardly spread out and snoring, the credits to a forgotten movie rolling on the t.v. with sappy orchestra music.
They wants to get breakfast together, walk down alleys together, work out patrol schedules together, break up some kids’ fight together, loiter around a construction zone together, run from security together. They want Caci to pester them and Eight to egg her on and for the both of them to ruthlessly bug them. They wanted to have the two of them run Trip up the walls until they eventually snapped, leaving the pair either with their tails between their legs or a pair of snickering messes. Trip wanted to chase Caci around the square with a sandal again, wanted to climb a fence trying to get Eight to delete an embarrassing photo again, wanted to fight both of them off with a wooden spoon to get them to stop eating raw cake batter until there wouldn’t be enough for a baked cake again.
Cake, hm. Don’t they have a slice of spongecake in the fridge?
Trip stands up and walks a pace to the fridge, and sure enough there was a piece of cake in there. They take it out and peel the parchment off either side of the slice.
They think of how strange it is. Trip was never the bakery type. They never used to eat before noon at all, but lately they have been grabbing sweets to go with their morning coffee. Not just plain things either - every time they pass some bakeshop or patissier with displays of fruits and cream frostings and decorative chocolate swirls they can't help themself but grab one or two for tomorrow morning.
Weirdest of all, it went against Trip’s ethos that stopped them from buying better coffee or even basic luxuries. As they pop a candied strawberry into their mouth, some light whipped cream carried off the top of the treat mixing with the red juice and crunchy coating, they mull over what could have changed when a knock on the door snaps them out of it.
They wash the sweet and tart flavor down with their bitter hot drink and walk up to the front door.
Checking the peephole, Triple nearly drops the mug.
___
PrimaRolla: mar are you still mad at me
Marie: Yes but thats not why I haven't been talking to you. I've been getting us some better coats for the weather.
PrimaRolla: we have coats n stuff tho
Marie: Yes but the ones that will block the most rain are heavy and I'm not going to sit in my own sweat all night, especially if I wind up chasing a pursenapper or something.
PrimaRolla: oh are we supposed to be doing that kind of stuff bc i mightve seen someone pickpocket a dude
Marie: Waht
Marie: WhAT.
Marie: CHASE THEM
PrimaRolla: i dunno where they went it was like an hour ago
Marie: Are you saying that you, Agent 1 of the Squidbeak Splatoon, have just been WATCHING people do petty crimes?
PrimaRolla: LOOK
Marie: WHAT
PrimeRola: NOT ALL OF US HAVE THE PTIENCE TO SWOOP OVER HIGHRISES TO STOP SHOPLIFTERS N STUFF
Marie: WHY DID YOU THINK WE DID PATROLS. TO PROTECT THE CITY AND ALL THAT
PrimaRolla: I THOUGHT THAT JUST MEANF LIKE THE ZAPFISH AND LIKE MAJOR INFASTRUCTURE
Marie: PLEASE BE JOKING
PrimaRolla: i am lol, i got him
Marie: YOU
Marie: Wait what
Marie: Got who?
PrimaRolla: the pickpocket, i got him. i was actually stalking him all morning and i just got him after my first message
Marie: why
PrimaRolla: it is my right to make you angry for no reason :)
PrimaRolla: mar?
PrimaRolla: ok im guessing ur actually ignoring me but if ur atill seeing these messeges i wanted to ask if its over reaching to send Pearl an image of a pigeon out of nowhere