The host raised an eyebrow, peering over the top of his glasses at her, “For one?”
April resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably under his gaze, eyes flicking over to the packed-with-couples dining room. She brought her eyes back to him after a moment and nodded, “Yep.”
She didn’t miss the annoyance that flashed across his face as he stepped out from behind the podium, “This way.”
She followed him through the dining room, using all her strength to keep her eyes on the back of his head and tried not to focus on the fact each happy couple stopped their chattering as she made her way past their tables.
It’s just a day on the calendar. She forced herself to take in a deep breath in a failed attempt to calm herself as he finally stopped at a table close to the back, gesturing for her to sit.
She gave him a polite smile as she slid into the chair, placing her purse down on the seat beside her, “Thank-you.”
The host grunted, practically frisbeeing the menu at her before walking away.
Wow, okay. April picked the menu up from the table, flicking it open. She raised the menu higher than necessary to read, cheeks burning red as she felt the eyes from the other patrons boring holes into her face.
Stop it. You have just as much right to be here as they do.
“Oof!” Gabriel sagged against the back of his chair, lowering his pants to under his stomach, “That was amazing, Sammich!”
Sam chuckled as he raised an eyebrow, “You ate it so fast, did you even taste it?”
“Of course!” Gabriel reached over to grab the giant’s hand, stifling a burp, “It was delicious. Thank-you, Sammich.”
Sam rolled his eyes as the angel leaned in to kiss the back of his hand, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Sam shook his hand out from his grasp, before clapping his hands together, “You ready for dessert, or do you need a few to digest?”
“Pfft, please,” Gabriel waved a dismissive hand as he sat back up, “My dessert stomach isn’t full!”
“Dessert stomach?”
Gabriel blinked innocently at his boyfriend, “What? It’s an angel thing.” Before Sam had a chance to remind him he wasn’t one anymore, he clapped his own hands, now-hungry eyes giving the table a once over, slight frown pulling at the corner of his mouth, “Where is it?”
Sam resisted his urge to shake his head as he stood up from the table, “Yeah, like I was gonna ruin the surprise by putting it on the table.”
He made his way into the kitchen, carefully picking the cake up off the island. He couldn’t help but smile as he started the short walk back to the dining room, this is gonna be the best Valentine’s present he’s ever gotten.
The angel narrowly avoided smacking his head on the top of the oven at the call. He sucked his teeth in annoyance before carefully taking the heart-shaped cake out, closing the door with his foot. He set the cake down and took off his oven mitts, brows furrowing at the upset tone, what could be wrong? I haven’t done anything yet!
The angel braced himself as he made his way out of the kitchen door. He stopped a few feet away as he spotted the giant, who was standing in the middle of the living room, “Yes, Sammich?”
“What the hell is this?”
Gabriel’s eyes followed the pointed finger, jaw dropping as his eyes landed on a plastic kiddie pool that was filled with chocolate. He closed his mouth after a moment and groaned in annoyance, “No, no, no!” He shook his head and walked a few steps away, pulling out his cell phone, “I specifically said I wanted the chocolate fountain!”
“The… what? Wait,” Sam’s brows pulled together in confusion and he finally turned away from the object to face his husband, “You’re saying you… ordered this?”
“No, I didn’t order that. Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Gabriel shook his head again, as he pressed the phone to his ear, impatiently tapping his foot as it rang, “Gale assured me she had everything handled. I should’ve known not to trust her. People who’s names start with a G are not reliable.” At the scoff he held up a hand, “I obviously don’t count.”
“Right.”
Gabriel let out another annoyed huff as Gale’s voicemail message started playing. He snapped his cell closed, using more force than necessary to shove it back into his pocket, “Of course she’s not answering now. Hey, whaddya think if I dropped by her office, angel-style?” The shorter man started walking in circles as he started formulating his plan, “She can ignore my calls as she wants, but if I’m standing there right in front of her, she’ll have to help me, right? Besides, if she doesn’t I can always just fling her into-”
“Whoa, Gabriel!” Sam took a few steps forward, catching his husband by the shoulders. Once his eyes were fixated on his face, he let out a semi-nervous chuckle, “Why did you want a chocolate fountain?”
“Um, hello!” Gabriel got up on his tiptoes and lightly knocked on the giant’s head, “Earth to Sammich! It’s Valentine’s Day!”
Sam swatted his hand away, “Uh, no it’s not.”
“Sammich, please,” Gabriel held up a hand and gave the ex-hunter a knowing look, “You really think I wouldn’t know when Valentine’s is? Come on.”
“You track Valentine’s like kids track Santa, I know. And we always have a great time celebrating… including this year.” At the confused look, Sam pulled his cell from his pocket, holding it out so he could see the screen, “It’s March.”
“What?” Gabriel grabbed for the phone, mouth falling open in surprise, “No, t-this can’t be right.” He shook his head as his expression changed from surprise to sadness, “I-I missed Valentine’s?”
“You didn’t miss anything.” Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he re-pocketed his phone, “We already celebrated. Spag-Lovi’s, a sunset walk on the beach…” Sam let his voice trail off as he saw the unchanged expression, “You really don’t remember that?”
Gabriel was shaking his head before the giant finished his question, “It sounds familiar, but…” He raised semi-worried eyes to his love, “We’ve done those things a thousand times! How am I supposed to remember which years were what?”
Sam eyed him for a moment, “You better not be fucking with me.”
His eyes went big at that, and his jaw dropped back open, “I’d never joke about Valentine’s!”
“Okay, well,” Sam let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair, “I guess I’ll call Dean in the morning, see if Cas is having a similar memory issue.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow at that, “Morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not now?”
Sam was unable to hold back his smirk any longer as he scooped the angel off the ground, walking him the few feet over to the pool of chocolate. He stopped once he reached the edge, before holding the angel out, giving him a wink, “We have some celebrating to do.”
It seemed that even just the word of him spending time with Dean was enough to start the rumour mill.
Not that he blamed them – Cas could hardly believe he was at the notorious Dean Winchester’s house himself. His reputation wasn’t based on nothing, after all. Girls would giggle about their sleepless sleepover weekend’s every Monday at their locker’s, much too loudly for them to be trying to keep it secret. Hell, even the foreign exchange student who hadn’t yet learned English knew about Dean’s reputation.
Cas shook his head, doing his best to dispel his thoughts, and focused instead on the movie. If Dean did try to make a move, he could always tell him he wasn’t comfortable with doing anything.
I post new short stories every 2 weeks, have 100+ just waiting to be read, and the best part? You can read them all (including not-yet-posted stories) for just $10!
“Are you sure about this?” Dean looks hesitant as he undoes his belt.
“Oh yeah,” You give him a thousand-watt smile and lay yourself back on the bed, before tying the t-shirt over your eyes as a makeshift blindfold.
“Alright,” you hear him sigh before feeling the bed dip as he kneels over you, sliding the belt around your wrists.
You let out a low breath as the cool metal of the buckle slides up your arms, stopping only once it’s resting against the butt of your thumbs. You can’t help the goose bumps that break out across your skin as you feel him lean down over you, lips just a hair above the skin of your neck. His familiar warmth and scent envelope you, and you can’t help but notice how much more intense things seem when you can’t see what he’s doing.
In the next instant his warmth is gone, and you feel the bed rise as he presumably gets up. You frown, and slowly move your legs around, frown deepening as you don’t make contact.
“Oh come on… don’t tell me you’re gonna leave me here? That’s just rude.”
His low chuckle sends a shiver up your spine as his warmth returns, “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”
You feel something drip onto your stomach, and you can’t help but flinch at it’s coldness, “Jesus! What the hell is that?”
He replies in the form of licking whatever it is off you, tongue strangely rough, and you’re briefly reminded of your cat.
His tongue disappears again and you huff, “Now what?”
“I think I heard something downstairs.”
You shake your head, “Very funny, Dean. If you didn’t want to do this, we didn’t hav-”
“Dean?”
“Shit!”
Sams’ voice calls from down the stairs, and the next instant you hear Dean thudding around the room, presumably to pull on some clothes.
Dean jumped off the couch and surveyed the living room, what the hell…, he frowned as he confirmed he was alone, “H-hello?”
Why are you so jumpy?
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up at hearing the voice again and turned the T.V off, just in case. He listened for a moment and when he didn’t hear anything he let out a nervous chuckle and sat back down, don’t psyche yourself out, Winchester.
Don’t… don’t you remember?
He surveyed the room again, “Okay, this isn’t funny, alright?”
How don’t you remember?
Dean got up from the couch cautiously, “S-Sam?” Remember? What the hell am I supposed to remember?
He couldn’t help but tense as he was only greeted with silence. He rubbed at his temples, I must finally be losing it.
You’re not losing it, Dean.
“Where are you?” He crossed the room to check the kitchen.
Dean, relax. I’m not in the house.
Empty… shit. “How do you know my name?” Wait… Dean froze as the words sunk in, you’re not in the house? Then how the hell can I hear you? No, you know what? The blonde started toward the stairs, I don’t care. Guess this is what old age does.
You’re not that old, Dean.
He locked the bathroom door behind him and leaned against the sink, still doesn’t explain why I can hear some dude I don’t know talk to me who apparently isn’t here.
That’s… hard to explain.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror, is this really what I’m doing now? Conversing with the voices?
There’s only one of me.
Dean snorted and shook his head, of course, my mistake… he let out a breath and splashed some water on his face, why couldn’t I at least hear a chick? That woulda been way more entertaining.
I’m not just a random voice, Dean! Do you really not remember?
… and now I’ve offended him, great, the blonde sighed and exited the bathroom, heading over to his bedroom before flopping down on his bed.
I can explain, if you like. It’s just… hard. You’re gonna have to trust me.
Trust you? I don’t even know you!
Maybe you’ll remember if you see me in person.
You’re just a voice in my head, how am I supposed to-
You’re home, right?
Dean sat up and looked around the room, “Ugh… yeah.”
He heard a thud from downstairs and got up off the bed, before creeping over to the steps. He peered over the railing and saw a man standing in his living room. What the…? He pulled the gun out from the back of his pants and ran down the steps.
The man squinted his eyes as he spotted the gun and tilted his head to the side.
“Who are you? How’d you get in here?”
“Where did you get a gun from?”
Dean blinked absently, his hand faltering as he heard the voice that was in his head come from the man in front of him. What the hell? “H-how did you do that?”
The raven-haired man looked around the room in confusion, “Do what?”
The blonde let out a nervous chuckle and ran his free hand through his hair, “So… what? You’re some sort of ventriloquist?”
“That’s… that’s not what that is.”
“Okay, fine, whatever. You need to leave.”
“Dean-”
“Look,” he tucked his gun back into his pants and took a few steps forward, “I don’t know who you are, or how you got in here, but you’ve gotta leave.”
The man squinted his eyes again and bit his bottom lip, “You… you really don’t recognize me? … At all?”
Dean looked the man up and down and shook his head, “Trust me, I think I’d remember meeting some trench-coated-blue-tied-sex-haired dude.”
With Valentine’s Day being tomorrow, I thought what better food review then a chocolate bar?
Whether you’re celebrating V-Day with a special someone, hanging with your friends, or flying solo, there’s no reason why you can’t indulge yourself with one of the best vegan chocolate bars I’ve tried.
One of the best/surprising things about this bar is that it’s made with rice milk. Why is that surprising? Well, usually, when something is made with rice milk, it has a certain taste about it, where you can tell it was made with rice milk. This bar, however, doesn’t have that taste much at all. Especially if you’re eating it by itself (instead of binging on a bunch of different vegan chocolates) you can hardly tell it has the ‘rice milk’ taste. It just tastes like… well, chocolate.
Another great thing about this bar is that it’s not bitter at all. Maybe it’s just me, but before discovering vegan chocolate, pretty much the only chocolate I could eat was the Lindt Excellence chocolates, and let me tell you, those are super dark chocolates. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s hard to enjoy more then one or two squares when something is that bitter.
Feeling like you need to chug water after eating chocolate is never a good thing. I’m just not a fan of extremely bitter chocolate. I’d prefer to leave that to my once-in-a-blue-moon coffee.
This bar also comes in a half decent size. I don’t know if you saw my Go Max Go Foods review, but let me tell you, as much as I love their Twilight bar, it’s so small! I know it’s the size of a regular non-vegan Mars/Snickers, etc. bar, but it’s so good, why can’t it be bigger? Maybe they do it on purpose so you buy more, or maybe they just don’t think someone would eat a bigger bar? (They’re wrong, I would totally eat a giant Twilight bar)
This bar is a half decent size, it’s about the size of the Lidnt Excellence bars. I also like that this bar is wider then it is thick – since this is their classic, there’s nothing fancy like caramel or nougat – it doesn’t need to be thick. As much as I love chocolate, biting into a solid thick piece of chocolate isn’t all that fun.
Since it’s the classic bar, I feel like there isn’t all that much I can review for it, other then it tastes pretty good, and doesn’t have any bells or whistles (like the aforementioned caramel or nougat), so if you’re someone who likes chocolate but not all that other stuff, this would be a good place to start. iChoc does make other bars with some ‘extra’ stuff in them (like their Choco Cookie bar has bits of cookie), but I’ll be reviewing those later.
The last thing about this bar I want to say is that it’s somewhat easier to find then the Go Max Go Foods bars. For Go Max, I had to go to a specifically vegan grocery store (like Good Rebel), but for the iChoc bars, I’ve seen them at Healthy Planet, and Foodland. It seems that stores that have a bigger vegan selection might have them (although I haven’t specifically checked Loblaws or Metro). That’s another bonus, I like being able to do my shopping all in one place, and unfortunately all the specialty vegan stores in Toronto are on the opposite side of the city I live in, so it’s a treat to find the vegan things I need in a non-vegan grocer (that’s not 50min away).
I’m not entirely sure if there’s Foodlands or Healthy Planets outside of Canada, but I would say, if you’re looking for the iChoc bars your best bet would be to go to either a specialty vegan store, or the grocer closest to you that has the biggest selection of vegan foods. And I think you could order them online, too.
Hope you all had an awesome holiday break, and are ready to get back into the swing of things.
Posting will continue on with it’s regular schedule. (TAFs every other Friday [next fic Feb. 22nd, etc.], articles every other Monday [Feb.11th, 25th, etc.] , and Product Reviews every 13th of the month)
This is this years’ Valentine’s Day fic. Hope you enjoy the Valentine’s holiday whether you’re with that special someone, a group of friends, or are rockin’ stag.
This fic was inspired by the song Rewrite The Stars from The Greatest Showman. Specifically the lyric: It’s up to you, and it’s up to me, no one can tell us what we get to be.
“Fuck!” She ended the call and slammed the counter.
“Uh, is everything okay?”
The voice from behind her made her jump, heart beating faster as she saw it was him, please, not today. He leaned down on the counter, a smidge too close for someone who was just a ‘friend’.
“I’m fine, I mean… I can handle it,” she shoved her phone back into her pocket and did her best not to squirm under his gaze.
“I know you better then that,” he brushed his hand against her arm, dropping his voice, “You need a place to stay, don’t you?”
She took a breath and slid her arm away, “You know I can’t let you do that.”
“Says who?”
“Pfft,” she gestured broadly to the rows of desks outside the small kitchenette, “Take your pick.”
