Moving Day had arrived, and Ash was at the new apartment, waiting for the furniture to be delivered while Lucas was back at his mom’s apartment, packing up his things and loading them into his mom’s car. The cable guy had already been by to hook up the TV and internet, and she had loaded a small u-haul the previous night with her things from the storage unit. It was, in fact, sitting outside, locked. She felt like she should be helping Lucas, but someone needed to be there for the delivery people, and they were running behind. While she waited, she went through the place and looked the rooms over.
It had been decided that her gaming room would be the one closest to the living room, with her bedroom next to it, and Luca’s room across from hers. She’d given him the mast suite since she was taking up two whole rooms by herself. She’d just finished touring the apartment again when there was a knock at the door – finally, the delivery people had arrived. She let them in, and instructed them on what went where, and made sure that anything that needed to be assembled was before they left, since they had paid for that service. As they were leaving, Lucas was heading in with the first load of things he’d loaded into his mom’s car.
“Are they arriving or leaving?” he asked as he headed towards their door.
“Leaving. I double-checked everything – we’re good.” she said cheerfully. “Let me go grab a load and help.” she offered.
Lucas shook his head. “No, I can take care of my things, and the stuff we bought ahead of time. You work on unloading that u-haul. I’m guessing it’s going to take a while to set up your game room.”
“True…” she said, trailing off as she thought. “Well, do we want to order some food so we can have eats while we work?”
“Sounds good.” Lucas admitted. He let out a slow breath after she turned to her phone to start scrolling for something that sounded good to eat, and continued to take boxes into his room, grateful that their place was on the ground level.
For her part, Ash had ordered Greek for something different, and then went to work on the u-haul, being very careful of the belongings on that truck and bringing them in. As she carried things in, she knew Lucas had been right to send her to unpack it – she was very finicky about her gear, and it was possible she might unintentionally snap at him if he mishandled something.
Lucas, meanwhile, wasn’t worried so much about getting his things situated, as he was about Michael. He knew Michael was doing much, much better after the blood infusion that Donovan had given him, but he couldn’t help but worry something this bad would happen again – or maybe worse. He had done the best he could for his part, he thought. He had been there to support Michael, laid out his concerns, and didn’t see that there was much more he could do.
He was trying to be the supportive boyfriend, and had managed, with help from Chris, to convince Michael that if he wanted to keep proving himself to the vampires, that he should make an effort to train on his own time as well, by maybe joining a gym and getting a trainer so he could be sure he was doing the right exercises. Lucas sighed to himself…truthfully he had kind of taken the cowards way out by leaving a text to that effect, and just hoped he had balanced support and encouragement just enough to that Michael would do what he needed to do in order to hopefully not get so hurt next time.
They took breaks in between loads to snag bites of the food Ash had ordered, but all in all they worked swiftly. As there wasn’t much, they were done bringing things into the house by mid-afternoon. At that point, they returned the u-haul as well as Ash’s rental and make a minor grocery trip before heading back. They’d only gotten enough to get through that evening and the following afternoon, deciding to just get anything else they wanted or needed later, or possible even delivered.
Once at their new place, they helped each other set up their bedrooms so that there would be places to sleep later, then split up and unpacked according to what they either wanted to unpack or felt was most important. For Ash, that was getting her game room set up. For Lucas, it was doing more practical things, like setting up the kitchen and bathrooms. By the time they took a break for dinner, Lucas had decided he was done for the day, having gotten a lot done. Ash, however, was determined to get everything about her gaming room done perfect, so she took a couple slices of the dinner pizza with her and went back to work.
Lucas sighed a little and sent some texts to let people know moving had gone successfully – one to Michael, one to his mother, and one to Donovan.
