back nextDirt had graveyard with Amber. As soon as she saw his face, she seemed to know something was wrong. "Are you okay?" she asked, touching Dirt's arm lightly.
Dirt sighed. "It's nothing," he said bitterly. Amber rolled her eyes.
"Come on. Brian told me what happened, I know you're not okay..." Dirt groaned.
"Well whatever. I need to clean the toilet, probably," he said, and retreated to the bathroom with cleaning supplies. He thought that at least working could get his mind off of things, but Amber just brought it up right away. Dirt wished he could just stay in bed getting stoned all day, but he really needed the money after all the weed he'd just stocked up on.
Dirt took his time cleaning the bathroom so he could spend more time alone, but he ended up having to rush the last bit because somebody needed to use it. So he walked around the store and straightened everything on the shelves, trying to devote all of his brain power to his tasks so he wouldn't think about anything he didn't want to.
On his break, Dirt grabbed a packet of nutter butters off the shelf and ate them outside, resisting the urge to check his phone like he usually did on break. He went back inside before his break was technically over, because he didn't really trust where his thoughts might go if he got to be alone with them for another minute.
"Do you wanna get something to eat after work?" Amber asked, "My treat!"
"No, thanks," Dirt replied, monotone.
Amber paused. "..Are you sure?" she asked again, her tone of voice sounding worried.
"Amber, I'm fine. You don't need to worry about me," Dirt said.
"It's nothing like that! I just wanna thank you for covering my shift, dude!" Amber tried to convince him. Dirt sighed.
"....Fine," he conceded finally, with a sigh. It's not like he was in any place to turn down free food anyways.
"Sweet," Amber smiled.
Dirt put his bike in Amber's trunk before they drove off together. She drove him to a little sandwich shop a few blocks away, telling him it was her favorite place to eat. Dirt and Amber hadn't really hung out outside of work since after the whole Salem incident, and Dirt felt that the air between them was different, somehow. Like he wasn't sure how he should act when he was around her anymore.
After they sat down with their little metal trays, Dirt immediately took a fucking jackhammer to the ice and said, "Do you think I did anything wrong?" his voice angry but pleading.
Amber paused, staring at Dirt with wide eyes. "I.... I don't know, dude."
Dirt immediately had to jump to his own defense. "I said what I knew Patrick wanted me to say to get out of a situation that could have put Salem at danger!" he complained.
"I get that," Amber nodded. "I'm just not really involved, so like... I don't wanna be like.. taking sides or anything..."
"Yeah... I guess that makes sense......" Dirt said, a little disappointed, because if Amber wasn't taking sides, it meant she wasn't on his side..
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Amber asked.
"I've been trying not to think about it too much," Dirt sighed.
Amber nodded sagely, "Totally get that, dude."
"This is a good sandwich," Dirt admitted.
"Heeelll yeeaaah brotheerrrrr," Amber cheered, giving Dirt a fist bump.
When Dirt got home, Salem was literally sitting right next to the door, waiting for him. "Where were you!!!!" he asked, annoyed, as he stood to follow Dirt.
"Amber got me breakfast," Dirt told him.
"I was messaging you!!!!!!" Salem whined, "You didn't answer!!!"
"What?" Dirt asked, confused.
"Check your phone!!!" Dirt pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had several tumblr notifications saying someone had private messaged him.
"You're on tumblr now?" he scoffed, opening the app. He had over 200 messages from a user named catboizx3. It was all Salem spamming 'where r u' and 'hurry up' and similar messages over and over again. "Oh my god..." Dirt said, somewhat in awe of just how many individual texts Salem had sent him. "I wasn't looking at my phone," he explained. "And by the way, as someone who looks at tumblr more than any other website, you should not be on tumblr."
"What!" Salem exclaimed, "Fuck you! I found other catpeople on there!" Dirt snorted, holding back a laugh. "WHAT??? They're all very nice and sexy also!" he crossed his arms.
"Dude I am sorry to burst your bubble, but most if not all people claiming to be catpeople on tumblr are not being serious... Like, it's just a thing they do for fun."
"What do you mean?" Salem tilted his head.
"Ah, jeez," Dirt sighed, running his hand down his face, and in doing so, removing his mask as he walked to his bedroom, not responding to Salem.
"What do you mean it's just a thing they do for fun?" Salem repeated.
Again, Dirt sighed. "Like... eeeuuuughhh.... How the fuck do I explain this..." Dirt thought for a moment. It's not like he was highly invested in the fucking tumblr catperson community. He only vaguely knew about it from what few posts made it onto his dash. "Well... for some people it's like a... like a kinning thing. Oh god. How do I explain THAT..." Dirt sat on his bed and put his head in his hands. "It's like... They feel so connected with cats... in their.. soul, or whatever, that they say that they are one and sometimes dress up like them or whatever? Um... also could just be a furry thing. Like people that like to dress up as anthropomorphized animals for fun? Jesus you probably don't know what that is, either." This whole time, Salem was just staring at Dirt, listening to him ramble, not really understanding anything he was saying.
"Antho....promorfized?"
Dirt snorted. "Anthropomorphized. It just means depicting an animal as walking on two legs, and like, having human intelligence and shit," he explained, the line from the Zootopia trailer unwittingly echoing in his head. 'Animals in Zootopia are anthropomorphic. That is just a big fancy word that means they walk around on two feet. And they do NOT go to work nude... Thank you....' Would it ever leave? No. Definitely not. "Anyways. What I'm saying is, they're probably just pretending to be catpeople and aren't actually real ones, like you."
"Oh," Salem said, sounding genuinely disappointed. "Well irregardless, it is still a funny little app where I can look at lots of cool images."
"Okay. Don't blame me when you get brain rot," Dirt teased.
"Oh puh-lease! My brain was rotted straight out the pussy!" Salem declared, as if he was bragging about it. Dirt got a real kick out of that, but only did a little chuckle because he hurt inside. :( "Um! Do you want some weed? I rolled up some joints!!" Salem exclaimed excitedly, kneading on the bed next to Dirt.
"Sure," Dirt answered, flopping backwards on his bed as Salem silently moved to Dirt's desk drawer and took out the Teen Titans lunch box. He opened it and handed Dirt a joint and a lighter. Dirt took the joint and Looked at it—admired the craftsmanship. It was as if it was made with one of those automatic joint rollers but he didn't have one of those. "What's up with this?" Dirt asked, holding the joint in a way that nobody ever holds a joint.
"What?"
"How are you so good at rolling joints?" he clarified.
"I told you I dunno!" Salem shrugged. "Are you gonna light it up, or what??"
After his joint was finished, Dirt was feeling a lot better. And also sleepy. He changed into his pajamas as Salem finished the joint he'd rolled for himself, and then they both got under the covers together, Salem laying half his body across Dirt's torso. But it wasn't uncomfortable. Dirt fell asleep quickly, and remembered no dreams.
When he awoke, he realized he'd never even put on his blindfold, yet he'd gotten several good hours of sleep! Salem was gone, but his spot was still warm, and Dirt could hear that the TV was on, and that Sarah and Salem were out there together.
Dirt got out of bed, making some downright concerning noises as he stretched out his arms and back. He groggily stumbled into the living room. "Good Morning sunshine," Sarah teased as Dirt walked through his door like a zombie. "There's coffee. You might need to microwave it, though," she told him.
"Ay. You're not supposed to be drinking coffee in the afternoon," Dirt scolded Sarah grumpily.
"I have a project that needs to be done tonight and I cannot afford to take a nap!" Sarah shot back in defense. Dirt playfully rolled his eyes with a scoff as he walked into the kitchen, poured himself a mug of said coffee, and threw it in the microwave. Dirt glanced at the TV and realized that more Binging with Babish was on. Dirt thought it was pretty amusing that Salem happened to get like, really into that youtube channel. Like, with so much content on youtube, but he still chose a guy making food from movies and tv shows that Salem probably had never even seen before? Whatever floated his boated!
Dirt made himself some instant grits, but he was still out of bacon. So he sat down on the end of the couch with his pathetic plate of grits and a mug of reheated black coffee. "I need to go grocery shopping," he lamented.
"SHOPPING CAN I COME?" Salem yelled.
"Haha.. They don't have clothes, dude, it's just for food," Dirt said.
"I LOVE food!" Salem exclaimed.
"Awwwww you can be his little helper!" Sarah cheered, petting Salem on the head, making him purr.
"Yeah! I can be helper!" Salem said excitedly.
"Okay, I guess," Dirt shrugged with a little bit of a chuckle.
As Dirt and Salem left the house and walked over to Dirt's bike, Salem asked, "Can I ride on your pegs?" which Dirt processed very incorrectly at first, but quickly realized what was actually said.
"Uhhh.. I dunno it's kinda dangerous... You're much safer in the basket," he said.
"Pleeeeaaaaase!!!" Salem begged, "It looks sooooo much fun!"
"Wait, where did you even see someone riding on bike pegs??"
"When you and Brian would come home on your bike and I'd watch you through the window," Salem said casually.
"Ah. Right..." Dirt sighed as he hoisted himself onto his bike seat.
"Oh. Sorry..." Salem frowned, looking down at his feet.
"Huh? What for?"
"For bringing him up... You sounded sad..." Salem explained.
"Oh. It's fine. I'm over him," Dirt lied.
"....Okay......." Salem said slowly, sensing the lie. "Um. Well can I ride on the pegs??" he asked again.
Dirt sighed and thought about it.. "I'd be more comfortable if you just sat in the basket, dude, I mean its a little windy out already and you could get knocked down, or your hat could fly off, or—"
"Okay! Jeez!! I'll sit in the freakin' basket!" Salem conceded, then transformed and hopped up into the basket affixed to Dirt's bike.
Dirt gratefully pet Salem's head, giving him a quick little massage behind the ears. "Listen, maybe soon we can do some short practice runs with you riding on my pegs, okay? So you can get used to it," he offered. Salem let out a cute little chirp and nuzzles his cheek against the handlebars. "Hehe.. Okay. Let's go," Dirt said as he did the gay little bike-walk you always gotta do to like get out of the grassy part of the yard before you can actually start to pedal.
When they got to the store, Dirt locked his bike up on the rack, and Salem jumped out, transforming as he hit the ground. "Alright," Dirt said, "Listen, there's gonna be a lot of stuff in there that you're gonna think looks really tasty and you're really gonna want, but we don't have very much money, so we can only buy what we really need, okay?"
"Mhmm!" Salem nodded, oblivious, as the two of them walked through the sliding doors. Dirt grabbed a cart and wiped it down with the little disinfectant wipe thingie, and then, without even saying anything, Salem immediately started dragging Dirt towards the deli, driven by the smell of meat...
"Salem.. no, we don't need anything from over here, come on," Dirt said, yanking Salem's hand. Salem reluctantly followed Dirt to the bread aisle. Dirt stood there, examining the different kinds of breads, squinting at them, picking up a loaf to inspect it and then putting it back on the shelf.
"Uuuggghhhh just PICK one!" Salem groaned impatiently.
"Hey! You're the one who wanted to come with me so bad!" Dirt argued. Salem groaned again, and jumped into the main part of the shopping cart, which startled Dirt at first, but it was like so natural for him to be in there that he couldn't bring himself to protest. Salem sat criss-cross, and slouched over, in the cart as Dirt threw in the various items he needed, usually hitting Salem with them on the way. He just playfully hissed and batted at the different food items that rained upon him.
Along the way, unbeknownst to Dirt, Salem had been grabbing things off the shelves that he found appetizing and put them into the cart along with the rest of the stuff. Eventually, Dirt took notice, though. "Hey! Where'd all this shit come from?"
"I got it!" Salem chirped, an innocent smile on his face.
"Dude, I told you, I don't have very much money! I can't afford all of this stuff..."
"Don't worry about it," Salem said with a wink as he reached into his pocket. What. He pulled out a wallet that had a spongebob meme on it that he must have gotten from hot topic, opened it up, and pulled out a little pink card.
"What???" Dirt questioned, just confused out of his mind. "Where did you get that?? Does it even have money on it??"
"Eighty dollars!" Salem nodded proudly.
"HOW???" Dirt shouted, a bit too loud, considering they were just standing in the frozen foods aisle at the Aldi's.
"Well Sarah gave me her old iPod touch that she wasn't using anymore, and i figured out how to get money into this app called venmo and they send you a card that has all your money on it and you can use it to buy things eye are ell!" Salem casually explained.
"I... Wh... But where did you get the money???"
"Oh, it's just tips," Salem said with a smile. "That my fans give me," he clarified.
"Your.. fans.... okay. We'll talk about this later." Dirt sighed, taking in his current situation. Is my catboy a camboy? Cat..cam....boy.. there's a joke in there somewhere... "Alright. Just.. Separate your stuff from mine and we can check out separately, I guess."
"Okay!" Salem chirped happily, putting his wallet back into his pocket, and he started to separate his things from Dirt's, as he was told. Dirt sighed again before pushing his cart to the next place he needed to be.
When they got to checkout, Dirt placed all his items neatly on the conveyer belt and put a little plastic separator bar thingie behind them, where Salem sort of just threw all of his stuff up there, kind of scattered out, as most of it was little snack foods with colorful packaging that he'd been drawn to.
Once all of their stuff was bagged, they went back out to Dirt's bike, and Dirt placed the bag of Salem's stuff in his basket next to where he'd already sat down in cat form. He hung his bags from his handlebars, and pedaled back home. Salem lied in the basket with his paws over his bag, making sure it was protected from any elements... He meowed when they passed people that were walking on the sidewalk.