“Um.”

Memo headed for the mac n’ cheese aisle, basket in hand. Someone had knocked a display of cereals over and the little pieces crunched underneath.

“I will definitely check.”

He ducked down the international aisle, first, prepared to fight some suckers for these noodles.

“What kind of ramen?” he asked, switching the phone to his basket hand to swipe two boxes of roast chicken flavor off the shelf. That seemed a safe bet.

“I’m gonna have to climb this shelf for fancy flavors…”

Curse his height.

⚰︎ we don't stop

Alexei Ivanov

“Okay,” he said, grabbing a fistfull of standard flavor packages and added them to his basket. He popped the phone on mute and held it back to load the picture, then blinked helpfully at it.

Unmuting the phone, he stuck it between his ear and shoulder.

“Honey,” he said, voice half a laugh, “I’m at the PokeMart. Not the asian food store. Also, it’s a hellscape out here.” He licked his lips as he lifted onto his tiptoes to scan the top shelf-- as best he could-- then grunted, and said, “But I’ll do what I can.”

What he could ended up being multiple jumps and boxing out a small child but he managed to grab a couple bags of what looked close enough to the image that Alex sent. They didn't have flames on them so hopefully they weren't seafood or spicy.

“No, you don’t need to pay me. Just make me more macarons,” he said, rounding the corner into ketchup, mustard, cans, and boxes and--

“Sweet lord.”

It was chaos.

Hooking his elbow on the inside of his basket, he held it up and away form himself, like a shield. But he was also short, so he could duck, bob, and weave around the larger bodies, snagging boxes that looked vaguely reminiscent of mac n’cheese and stuffing them in his basket.

“I will if I survive the mac n’ cheese aisle.”

⚰︎ we don't stop

Alexei Ivanov

“Physically, I’m fine,” he says cheerly into his phone, dodging around two crashed motorized scooters so he can make his way back to the main drag and head towards the rear of the store where the baking supplies are. “Emotionally I don’t know if my pride can live with fighting children for mac n’ cheese, but all things in time, huh?”

Someone dropped a gallon of milk on the ground and it exploded everywhere. He tries to avoid stepping into it, while also looking for what Alex has requested.

Of course the yeast is on the top fucking shelf.

“I think there’s a box-- way the hell back there,” he’s more or less narrating out loud because he has to stick his arm through the basket handles (he doesn’t dare put it down), shove the phone against his shoulder again, and physically climb up the shelving, smacking at the top level until he feels the cardboard of the box of yeast crush between his hand. He drags it forward and pushes it in the basket.

“Regular flour or almond flour?” he asks, just as an older woman cuts him off while he’s heading for the AP kind. “Permission to use force against the elderly, commander.”

It’s mostly a joke but she glares at him anyway.

⚰︎ we don't stop

Alexei Ivanov

“Hey, you don’t have to tell me twice about having fun with mac n' cheese,” he said, sneaking around the grumpy old lady to try and get a snag at a bag of flour. “I like the ones with the unicorn noodles.”

But try as he might, for all she was old and hunched and gray, she was a force to be reckoned with-- her and her cart and her heavy-looking purse.

“Um, yes, I can try and get noodles-- hey!” she swatted at his hand when he made his move, glaring at him again.

Alex’s laughter over the phone was like magic, but the old lady was still piling flour into her cart and fending Memo off at every turn. But there was a flash of gold from a ring on her hand, and that gave Memo an idea.

“Hold on, dear,” he said, loudly and with emphasis, before muting his end of the line and tucking the phone against his shoulder. “Hey, can I have-- one bag, at least, please? It’s for--,” he put on his most pained, brow-beaten expression. “--it’s for my wife, and I’ll be in trouble if I don’t come home with one. You know what it’s like!”

The old lady regarded him with narrowed eyes, liver spots and gray hair radiating malice, before shifting her cart over and allowing him to take two bags of flour from her hoard.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Memo said, dropping the loot in his basket and departing. The almond flour was less of a hot commodity so he grabbed two packages of that, too, before rounding the end of the aisle and trekking back towards pastas and international.

“Mission complete, captain,” he radioed, unmuting his end of the phone. “I just had to tell her we were married and you were my long-suffering baking enthused wife. What kinda noodles do you want?”

⚰︎ memo fights an old lady

Alexei Ivanov

Alex’s explosion on the other end of the line warbled off in a burst of static, but Memo was grinning from ear to ear.

“I told her the flour was for my wife and she’d be mad if I didn’t come home with it, and whaddya know, it worked.”

He was running out of room in his basket, playing nonperishable Tetris, shoving blue boxes of various shaped and colored noodles where they’d fit. His arm was starting to hurt.

“Kay, I got a couple varieties. Is there anything else you can think of before I brave the chaos of the checkout line?”

He narrowly avoided two teenagers running amok with spray paint, drawing black and blue lines on tumbled boxes of cereal and ripped bags of chips.

⚰︎ memo fights an old lady

Alexei Ivanov

He caught the irritation at the tail end of Alex’s statement and wondered, briefly, if he’d overstepped. It had worked, but at what cost.

“I mean, you’re not my wife, obviously,” he said, trying to explain his reasoning and, hopefully, elucidate away the tension, “but I had to do something short of physical violence to get your flour. You should’ve seen this woman. She was an Amazon. A hunched, wrinkly Amazon.”

He muscled his way into a self-checkout line, scanning everything quickly and putting it immediately back in his basket so as not to lose it.

But he couldn’t help himself after Alex told him to get out of there and grab a Teleport back to the Sanctuary:

“Yes, dear.”

⚰︎ local man shoots self in foot, story at 11

Alexei Ivanov