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getsojaded · 1 year

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downtown lovers i — it won’t always be like this || calum hood

a/n: ok so. i originally wrote this out of my ass while listening to inhaler (shout-out inhalersos fans) and as i kept writing i decided to make this like an open series where i just write abt little downtown adventures and honestly i don’t know how this is gonna play out LMFAO cause it’s like not exactly a series but at the same time it kind of is??? like those stand alone books that you don’t have to read in order to understand but you still can for the experience???? dude idk what im saying anymore just roll w it i hope u guys like it

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the cool, evening breeze of downtown seattle brushed against melanie's legs as she stood in the queue of the music venue alongside many others, waiting until the doors opened for the band that would be performing that night, inhaler.

she switched between scrolling through different apps on her phone and eavesdropping on various conversations made by people surrounding her, hearing "i'm so excited to see josh jenkinson!" one too many times, trying to find ways to make the time pass a little bit faster.

this was her first concert that she'd be attending alone, and needless to say, the social anxiety was catching up to her. she'd been so used to having at least one friend accompany her to the hundreds of concerts she'd gone to, and she was under the impression that she wouldn't be attending this one alone...

until her friend cancelled last minute on her. which, was bummed her out an extreme amount.

however, the show was the next day and she absolutely did not want to scramble around on twitter and instagram, trying to find people who would want to buy her ticket last minute. so here she was, standing alone in a crowd of grouped-together people. and god, was she feeling anxious.

lost in her own intrusive thoughts, she even failed to realize that the man lining up behind here in the queue was alone as well.

she turned to her side, leaning her back against the brick wall of the venue and closing her eyes, taking a deep sigh as an attempt to calm herself down.

"hey, you okay?" a deep, accent-laced voice filled her ears. her eyes opened and she looked to her left side, making eye contact with a tall, tan skinned man. her eyes quickly scanned him, immediately noticing how fucking attractive he was. dark, curly hair that was on the verge of forming a mullet, a black supreme tee-shirt that exposed his multiple tattoos on his arms and accentuated his muscles, straight black leg dress pants and black docs. with a leather jacket in one hand, his phone and an unlit cigarette in the other.

god, he was hot. really fucking hot.

"oh yeah, i'm alright. just getting tired, 's all," she responds, trying to sound as collected as possible. "you're lookin' a little stressed there, love." he responds, assuming that the rosy shade appearing on her cheeks was from the cold air and not the use of his pet name, to which that assumption was flat out wrong.

"i'm okay. was just a bad choice of footwear for a concert. did it to myself," she fibs, letting out a light laugh as he takes notice of her black boots, then analyzing the rest of her outfit. a basic, black silk dress that was underneath an oversized leather jacket. "at least you look beautiful," he tells her. "you here alone?"

"thank you," she sheepishly smiles up at him. "yeah, i'm here alone, my first one, too."

"ahh, that's why you're lookin' so shaken up." he replies, letting out a light laugh. "don't worry, going to these by yourself are a piece of cake. definitely needs some getting used to, but afterwards it feels like nothin'." he reassures her, reaching in his jacket pocket for a lighter. "what's your name?"

"my name is melanie, and yours?"

"beautiful name for a beautiful girl. i'm calum."

"pretty name for a pretty boy. by the way, are you always this flirty?" she asks him, resulting in light chuckles from the both of them. "no, not always. only when pretty girls are lined up alone in front of me for inhaler." he says, melanie rolling her eyes and smiling in response.

"well, calum, i'm not lining up alone anymore. i'm lining up with you, now." she states, a big grin appearing on calum's face afterwards. "glad to be waiting with you."

they're standing in line for a little over 45 minutes, the conversation flowing exceptionally easily as they got to know each other. melanie's found out that he had also been in a band for a brief amount of time when he was younger, ultimately deciding to part ways but staying best friends with his bandmates. calum found out that melanie had just moved to the city as a result of a new job opportunity, originally living on the east coast just a few months before. with all the free time on calum's hands, he decided to spend some time in the city, having always admired how beautiful it is, yet never having enough time to adventure around it while he was around on tour.

"you're gonna have to play me some songs of yours, wanna compare you to bobby now," she jokes around at that last bit, referring to inhaler's bassist, robert keating, after finding out that calum was the bassist in his band as well. "i'd rock his shit, just saying." he responds, melanie laughing at his sudden defensiveness.

more giggles and continuing of conversations let the time pass by so much quicker than melanie had felt that they did before, and the next thing you know, the pair were standing beside each other while the general admission crowd were waiting for the anticipated band to come out.

despite choosing comfort and deciding not to camp out for long hours outside of the venue for the show, they had still made it to the second row on bobby's side of the stage. "looks like i'll be comparing you two for the entirety of the show," melanie giggles, calum nudging her slightly in response to her joke, "shut up. i'm showing you our songs the minute we get out of this place."

next thing you know, the lights dim and the four band members appear on stage, instruments, opening the show with it won't always be like this. the crowd roars and cheers, singing along to the band in front of them, hands waving around and feet jumping in all sorts of directions.

though melanie has some extra height with her uncomfortable leather boots on, her petite hight is on her bad side today, coming to the realization that she can't see very much due to the tall people standing in front of her.

halfway during the second song, calum takes notice of the way she's attempting to crane her neck up, still having a smile on her face as she enjoys the show. he breaks the touch barrier between them, softly grabbing her by the waist. melanie jumps slightly at the initial touch, but then loosens up at the realization of calum gesturing her to stand in front of him so that she could see better. it would benefit her anyways, and since cal was at least a foot taller than her, it wouldn't affect him that much – at all, really.

calum’s hands don’t leave melanie’s sides for the entirety of the concert. and as they’re exiting the venue and walking down the crowded streets at midnight, his arm is still wrapped around her as they stroll together.

“you know, you made this concert a lot more enjoyable,” she says softly, smiling up at the tall man beside her. “glad to hear. the exact same goes for you as well.” calum responds. “are you doing anything now?”

“if i would, i still wouldn’t be walking with you to no destination in particular,” she giggles, turning to him and stopping them from walking. “why? what did you have in mind?”

“i’m not entirely sure if this is too forward considering we met maybe 3 hours ago,” he starts, grinning. “but i’d love to get to know you better. preferably not in a concert queue. if you were willing to, would you wanna grab a drink or two with me?”

“hmmm, i’m gonna have to think about it,” melanie puts her hand on her chin, walking away from a calum with his jaw to the ground, laughing as he chases after her.

once he’s within reach of her shoulders, he turns her around, big smiles planted on both their faces.

“yes calum. i’d love to spend more time with you.”

#5 seconds of summer #5sos imagine #ashton irwin #ashton irwin imagine #calum hood #calum hood imagine #luke hemmings #michael clifford #michael clifford imagine #5sos #calum hood angst #calum hood fluff #calum hood smut

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babaleshy · 3 years

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Something I May Need to Stop Doing...

I'll be venting in this post, but this is about the desire to move out of a desperate want for change right now even though such a move is not meant to be.

On occasion, I go onto zillow's website and check out houses around Pittsburgh out of curiosity just to see what houses are going for what price in what kind of condition. I've noticed something incredibly enticing: there are some houses going for under $100,000 and are technically livable. It's just got flaking/chipping paint, may need new rugs, and other general clean-ups. The only "major" thing I wanna do to any of these houses falling under this criteria is the fact that I feel more comfortable with a tin roof.

These houses that I find are within city limits, most of these houses I've shown an interest in are close to sidewalks. This means if I were to move into one of these houses, then I'd have a chance to properly commute!

Ah, but why exactly am I making this post? What is it that I'm venting about? And what did I mean earlier when I said "not meant to be?"

Back in 2014 (autumn, specifically), my husband and I had to move out of our apartment in downtown Pittsburgh to my parents' farm in Ohio. Two reasons made us do this: one was the skyrocketing rent prices when HUD sold our building, causing rent to go from $539/mo to $720/mo. My husband worked at a casino, and was making $10/hr, so when rent prices went up like mad, we really began to struggle to survive. The other thing was bedbugs. The building manager laughed at our discomfort and said, "What do you expect me to do about it? Where would everyone go for the building to be treated?" Like, you're a shit manager if you haven't come up with those contingency plans.

Paying $720/mo for a bedbug-infested apartment (bedbugs are fucking hard to get rid of) and living in a constant state of itchy breakout made us decide it was time to move in with my parents. Because we literally could not afford to live anywhere else, and our student loan debt fucked up our credit scores, so we couldn't even get a house (and we were looking for one at the time!).

We used to think living on this farm was temporary until reality set in, that there is absolutely no possible way for us to make it on our own now. My husband has ADHD and anxiety and is still struggling to practice to get his driver's license (it's hard when my dad is a major source of my husband's stress; my dad's an asshole and gets worse by the year), and I'm Autistic, so I can't hold down a regular job, and nothing else is hiring.

In terms of getting a job for me at all, either I'd have to go to school for my special interest for the job (ecology, entomology, and/or paleontology) or I'd rather work in a library.

Welp, college is far too expensive for me to pay out of pocket, and my already existing student loan debt is barring me from getting any sort of financial aid to go back to school at all. As far as the library is concerned? Remember when I said my husband is currently struggling to practice for his license? (He doesn't get much practice because my dad is a stressful asshole that makes my husband have a horrible headache and anxiety after he drives). We have 2 vehicles, one my mom uses to get to work, and the other my dad uses to take my husband to work as well as do errands in like grocery shopping and shit like that.

I can't get a ride.

Can't ride a bicycle, either. It's definitely not safe (I live in America, if you couldn't tell). My parents' farm is deep within one of the back roads with one of the properties on this road being an oil rig. The oil workers drive like assholes, not caring what animal they hit, speeding through here. There are dirtbikes and four-wheelers that speed through here, too. There's no room for 2 vehicles to pass one another, and nothing but pure fucking hill the moment you step off the side of the road. I literally cannot bike here.

But let's pretend I got onto one of the main roads on either end of our road. It's even worse! And STILL no room for bicyclists! This goes for fucking miles until you reach a residential area! Except for a nearby little village-town that has the closest library branch. It's the village my husband grew up in, but there's a lot of sketchy turns, corners, and again, no room for bicycles. This includes main roads.

With all this in mind, I actually considered the possibility of moving to that village, because the village itself is actually safe enough to bike ride in. The problem is: I'm not guaranteed to get a job at the library at all. I tried getting a job as a library clerk at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, got interviewed and everything, and didn't get the job for whatever reason. In fact, I'm not guaranteed a job at all at any library branch, regardless of the neighborhood. So moving to such an area depending on the chance of being hired there is not worth it.

Such a village is actually rather unfriendly, and that goes for a lot of communities here on this side of Ohio. You'd think this was one of the southern states from its people and what flags they fly.

So why not Pittsburgh? Why not move there if we could?

Well, I thought about it. It has all the perks I could expect such as public transportation, somewhat safer bicycling areas to commute to school and work, and more importantly: THINGS TO DO.

Living in the middle of nowhere blows when you want to, on your own without relying on someone to drive you, go and do something, such as buying fabric or art supplies for future projects, or going to the library, or anything, really! Yeah, I do want to garden, but I don't have the means to do that on a damn farm (long, frustrating story that made me stop believing my parents' promises).

Not to mention, I still have friends in Pittsburgh, If I wanna see them, they don't have to drive an hour and 45 minutes (and that's if they have a car) to visit. I got 2 friends here in the area, and they're busy with their work's demanding schedules. When we do hang out, Cards Against Humanity, Uno, and D&D can only do so much until it gets old and boring and you wanna do something else that isn't hanging out at a dead mall. There is truly nothing to do here. Pittsburgh has the museums, libraries, parks, and far more interesting establishments to lurk in.

So again: why not Pittsburgh?

Because that city has changed and is still changing compared to when I was last there. My regular watering hole (The Beehive) is no more. There are neighborhoods being gentrified (meaning I'm not guaranteed to keep my home even if I pay it off). Businesses are closing, meaning people will be losing their jobs, and some of the other places hiring (like libraries) are not guaranteed to hire me, especially when I haven't had a job since 2010.

There's also my cat to consider; she gets stressed at the sound of a lawn-mower (I don't blame her). She wouldn't be able to handle the sounds of the city. Unless we found a place not too close to downtown, such a move is a no-go.

I've daydreamed about living in Pittsburgh again. I'm homesick for Pittsburgh. I've realized only recently that that city was my home. Not this farm, not even the house I grew up in. I felt like a person who didn't have to rely on people for rides and such. It's the only place where I've truly lived on my own and enjoyed it.

I've actually considered moving out of this country and found that even more impossible. No matter which country you pick, no matter what language you learn, not only do you have to pay for your things to be shipped, for your plane ticket for a one-way trip, or whatever you need to become a citizen there, you still have to pay at least $2,000 to revoke your American citizenship or else you will be forced to pay American taxes despite never setting foot on American soil ever again.

Thanks to capitalism, America has made it fucking impossible for the average person to leave for good. If you are born here, you are financially enslaved here unless you're wealthy enough to leave.

So... What's the plan?

Well, for now: not much. The pandemic has set plans back a bit, but my parents have a lien on the house thanks to my private student loans my mom was bullied and forced into co-signing for. She... I guess?... is almost done paying them off? I don't know. My parents don't like communicating need-to-know info with me and then get mad when I don't absorb it through osmosis. Once the lien is taken off the house, mom wants to move north to be near her sister, and she said she'll try finding a farm for sale near Kent State so it'll be an easier commute (be it by bicycle or by car). My intention is to enroll there to be able to get a job as an ecologist (focus in entomology, specializing in arachnology) with a minor in paleontology.

Once I've gotten that all taken care of (as well as my husband going back to school for what he wants), we move to the pacific northwest, mainly just north of Seattle somewhere.

I hate Ohio. I hate running into people I've gone to school with that I try to avoid (more like I see them, but they don't recognize me? At least I hope not?). I hate this place so much. I hate this climate, being near people I don't want just randomly showing the fuck up. And what's the use of living near family when they don't want to bother visiting you? I hate hearing my mom tell me so-and-so that I obviously want nothing to do with told her to tell me they said hi. I'm tired of fearing I'll run into someone that abused me in the past because now they're back in the fucking area again apparently.

I've got my fingers crossed that something is gonna give and college to some level (community college?) will be free for residents or something. It'll give me a chance to go back to school for something close to what I wanna do so I can maybe get a job? Completing something at a community college would at least make it easier for me to get enrolled at a university.

My husband and I picked Seattle (or close to Seattle) for its climate. It's (usually) not blistering hot every goddamn year, and it's not horribly cold thanks to the mountain range (I'm quite cold-intolerant). We both enjoy overcast weather and rain. We'd rather take our chances with volcanoes than earthquakes or hurricanes in areas where these things are guaranteed to happen yet nobody ruling these areas wants to invest in infrastructure that helps stand a chance against them. Seattle also has a nice combination of city and wilderness side-by-side. Not much of that with Pittsburgh.

If I was forced to only move to Pittsburgh and no other city, I wouldn't mind, especially since I'm more familiar with Pittsburgh than I am with anything in my current local area (because I had to travel on foot instead of relying on a car to get to places!). Fuck, my mom wouldn't even let me do anything by myself out of the yard when we lived in the village I grew up in because she was a paranoid fuck and by the time I JUST STARTED gaining independence for having a bike and bicycling to the post office everyday, we moved to this farm.

Oh, this isn't a roof over my head I should be thankful for. My parents got screwed. Our water is full of iron and calcium that no filter can fix, so we constantly have plumbing problems, the post and internet connections are questionable at best, we get ant infestations from 2 species EVERY YEAR, all for a farm my mom wanted for horses she always wanted and eventually got but has little next to no energy to spend the time she wants with them and she refuses to admit her age has a lot to do with it on top of her working so she sits in the living room on THREE DIFFERENT DEVICES sucking up bandwidth to religiously watch every fucking livestream of a country singer she likes (and complains if she's missing it for any reason!), scroll through Facebook, and play a fucking shitty app game!

Our internet out here? The physical equipment is outdated (copper wires instead of fiber-optic cables) because the fucking company doesn't wanna spend the money to upgrade it.

So instead, we're stuck here, with my husband losing his sanity bit by bit by the day at his shitty retail job (every other available job offering would be worse in this area) and I sit here and hope that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I could start gardening soon.

I miss Pittsburgh. I really do. But despite all of its benefits it would give me and my husband if we moved back, I don't think it will happen.

In the off-chance that we don't move north, that my dad's assholery intensifies and he decides to remain here (he has to legally agree to sell this house in order for my mom to move north; dad's reasons keep fucking changing), Pittsburgh is a nice back-up plan. Pitt University actually has the major I'd want to go back to school for, as well as what my husband wants to go back to school for, and we'd already be familiar with the city and what to expect of it. However, we're aiming higher, and hoping to move to the pacific northwest, instead.

But I think to avoid losing my sanity, I should stop daydreaming about a future that may never be.

Fingers crossed!

#rant #ramble #vent #I wanna move so bad but can't

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