WE'RE PRETTY & SICK , (tagged: ged)

Ged leaned precariously over the edge of the cliff. His arm was hooked over the edge of the barricade, his hand still holding a nearly empty beer can in its grasp, while his body angled nearly 45 degrees over the sharp drop off. He didn’t aim his gaze downward at the deadly drop, but instead up at the stars overhead. “See? There’s another one,” he jerked his head at the sky, then looked back at the girl leaning against the barricade.

“Whoops! Missed it again,” she giggled. She tried to take a drink of her beer and nearly fell over. Laughter filled the night air as she approached hysterics. Ged added a chuckle or two of his own, and returned his eyes to the sky. He heard the girl’s voice behind him again. “Point it out next time. I wanna see a shooting star!” she giggled.

His back was turned towards her, so even if she was aware of her surroundings, the sudden seriousness of Ged’s expression was hidden from the girl’s view. When he turned towards her, however, the light smile had taken up its rightful place on his face. He pulled himself back up on the barricade and hung over the edge of the barrier. He gently tapped the girl on the head with his beer.

“You’re really drunk,” he commented. She just burst into peels of laughter again. Ged sighed. He had hoped she would last longer. Hysterical drunks were no fun. “C’mon, let’s get you back to your friends.” The redhead swung his leg over the barricade and stayed there for a moment, teetering on the edge of a hundred foot drop, then swung his other leg across to land lightly on solid ground once again. He swayed where he stood, and drained the last of his beer. It no longer burned going down. He was hitting the good buzz, and it was about time. Everyone else seemed to be two feet over that line already—they didn’t know how to stretch the buzz out so they could last the whole night. There was still several hours of quality partying left by Ged’s measure.

He dropped the empty can on the ground. He had no choice but to litter, as he bent down and wrapped his only arm around the girl’s waist. Ged managed to get her up and steer her back towards the crowd of people still going strong several yards back from the cliff edge. She was of almost no help. She laughed at everything, a high pitched, keening laughter that sliced straight to his eardrum. But Ged kept his composure until he located the girl’s friends. They were slightly more sober than the girl whose name Ged had already forgotten, so Ged left her with them, made his excuses, and went looking for something new with which to amuse himself.

He nodded and smiled at those who were sober enough to recognize his brightly colored hair in the flickering light, but he didn’t stop until he reached the makeshift bar. Digging through one of the coolers brought a hidden treasure to Ged’s hand. It was a beer, of course, but of a brand a few steps up from the normal cheap party piss, probably hidden at the bottom of the cooler by an upper classman who didn’t want to share his stash. Ged gladly appropriated his prize and walked away, using his teeth to pop the tab. He probably made the local dentist roll in his grave, but Ged didn’t care. When sober, he could manage opening a can, or even a bottle, with one hand, but he’d passed that mark about an hour and two beers ago.

The voice caught him mid swig. Ged turned his eyes towards the voice as he swallowed, and found himself looking at a chin. This wasn’t a new occurrence for the somewhat shorter-than-normal teenager, so he merely looked up at the source of the accented words. Persephone stared back at him, and Ged blinked sharply. A model quality face with white blond hair set on top of a slender body built out of incredibly long lines was his first impression. Then the light shifted, throwing unhealthily sharp angles and planes into stark shadows against the night. A perfect Persephone, deathly beauty.

Then Ged blinked, and realized the apparition in front of him was talking. He floated along with the accent for several words, then realized said words were aimed at him. He drew himself away from the foreign sound of her voice and caught the last bit. What was his name? Why was Persephone asking him that?

The light shifted again, and Ged suddenly recognized the face. He smirked. Persphone. Hah. “Gerard,” he said, drawing out the soft syllables, leaving off the much harsher ones of his last name. He wondered why he had used his full name. He disliked the name, thought it was pretentious. Persephone likely wouldn't remember it in the morning, so Ged let it slide. He waved his occupied hand, and took another swig of the beer. The red zippered jacket was big enough it hid the true scrawniness of his build, and better yet, it was baggy enough it looked like he just had his right hand in his pocket, not that it wasn’t there at all. Faded skinny jeans and scuffed sneakers completed the casual look. Ged knew that after the first hour, no one would be sober enough to care what he was wearing, and it was cold up here on the cliff. He bet Persephone wished she had sacrificed looks for comfort.

He watched her blow smoke rings with just a touch of jealousy, watching her handle a cigarette in one hand, her beer in the other. “Talented,” Ged commented, sending his mind out to call up the barest hint of a breeze that touched the smoke rings and wafted them closer so he could get a better look. “Got any other tricks? Cause I’m bored as shit and would love to see ‘em,” he asked. His own accent, much less refined than her British tones, made him wince. Sometimes he could lessen the backwoods drawl, but with a handful of beers running through his body, the West Virginia mountains rang loud and clear in every slurred word.

Ged chuckled at the much drunker girl. “We’re in class together, Rowena,” he told the girl. Exactly which class in specific escaped him, oh well. Classes were stupid. This was a party, and Rowena looked like she was definitely in the party mood. He could remember a few details about her. She was his age and not one of the incredibly tall 15 year olds he saw around sometimes. The fact that she was about his age didn’t make Ged feel any better about being so much shorter than a girl. Sure, he guessed she was pretty enough, but the height made him feel like a little kid.

He laughed outright when the table collapsed under Rowena. She didn’t seem to notice Ged’s disdain or mocking tone. That was the good thing about drunks, he thought, they rarely noticed when he made fun of them. He could laugh out loud instead of keeping it mostly in his head. Ged didn’t move to give Rowena a hand up. His beer was much more important to him. She didn’t seem too disappointed in his lack of chivalry, and blamed the table in a way that made Ged laugh again. Foreigners, fucking hilarious.

Ged took another drink of his beer while he mulled over the fact that technically, he was also a foreigner in Canada. The redhead dismissed the thought with a shrug. He was an outsider anywhere he went, and he was used to being judged for his accent. At least Rowena could understand him. Then again, they said the gods of the dead could speak any language a living or dead person could speak. White trash would be easy enough for Persephone.

“Bet you’re still a better model than me. And I suck at drawing. Unless it’s finger paint. I’m a damn good finger painter-er,” Ged said proudly. Most of the self-pity usually associated with his disability was buried under the alcohol, keeping him in a genuine good mood instead of dipping down into self-consciousness. “You ain’t a windy girl, so it’d be best to stay up here with me,” Ged continued, motioning to the cliff in question with his drink, "I ain't gonna catch you." Wind elementals apparently couldn’t fly (to Ged’s eternal disappointment—his fear of flying only extended to flying metal death traps, aka planes), but the comment still made sense to Ged, and it probably worked for the drunker Rowena.

“You’re doing an awful good job at being drunk,” Ged offered to Rowena helpfully. She had it going on: the sway, the slur (though that might just be the Brit in her), the memory, even the random changes in conversational topics. And she wasn’t puking, making out with random people, and could even still stand up straight without falling over. He’d excuse her for the table—that obviously wasn’t her fault.

It took Ged a long moment to realize what Rowena was referring to. Was she asking him if he was gay? Then he remembered the British had a different kind of fag you put in your mouth. “Sure, you offering?” he asked. He was a social smoker, and usually just held it in his hand and let it burn up for the sake of having something to do with his hand so he didn’t stand out among a group of smokers. However, sometimes he indulged a bit more. The nicotine offered a nice rush when he needed it.

Man, Rowena was d-r-u-n-k drunk. Ged was almost jealous. She was skating the line between drunk and not-too-drunk that Ged had a hard time finding sometimes. He wanted to forget, but he couldn’t get so drunk he couldn’t take care of himself. He’d stolen enough wallets off of drunks (sometimes when he was a few sheets to the wind himself) to want to avoid putting himself in that position. Right now? Ged still remembered far too much for his liking, although it was a fairly good day by his measure, so he could deal with remembering. His fingertips tingled slightly, all ten of them, but at least they didn’t hurt. Alcohol was his favorite form of pain relief because it brought a measure of fun along with it.

“Yeah, sure, perfectly safe,” Ged declared, “You’re too tall to drag off, an’ I hear your sister is a bitch. Or were you the bitchy one. Can’t remember.” He shrugged, completely unconcerned with the fact that he couldn’t remember that specific detail. Ged took a moment to enjoy the amusement over the fact that he and Rowena could obviously still understand each other. The language of drunk was universal.

Rowena once again almost pitched herself onto the ground. Once again, Ged made no move to catch her. Too much trouble. “Dunno. You’ve been here longer. You tell me if they get rid of bad students over the cliff. Convenient thing to have,” Ged commented as she regained her balance. He slurped up another measure of alcohol. He’d drained the can faster than he’d meant to, probably because it tasted better than the pig piss his first few had been (though it also might be those earlier beers dulling his taste buds).

“Thank ya’ ma’m,” Ged said happily. He carefully leaned forward and, while still holding the beer can in his hand, managed to extract a cigarette from the package. He held it between his pointer and middle finger and asked, “Mind if I borrow a light?” He didn’t wait for an answer before holding the end of the cig to the lit end of Rowena’s. It took several tries to line them up properly, and once he did Ged carefully leaned forward to puff the end to make sure it caught. “Perfect,” Ged said in triumph, taking a long drag off the smoke.

Carefully concentrating so he drunk from the can in his hand and inhaled the cigarette and not the other way around, Ged started on a story. “Y’know, they could just leave the bodies out here. Do a sky burial. Some commumm-people do that. Chop up their dead and leave ‘em for the birds to eat up. It’s because of the soil. Too many rocks or something,” Ged rambled. It wasn’t his best technique by far. Oh well, alcohol made his stories ten times better. He blew out a stream of smoke, the night wind blowing it into swirling shapes before it dissipated.

The redhead abruptly noticed Rowena’s shaking hands. He blinked, then looked up at the tall girl. “You cold? Let’s get you something stronger than that ass juice,” Ged chuckled, waving his very full hand at Rowena’s drink, “I bet they have sometin’ good hidden somewhere.”

Ged would have snapped his fingers if he had any to spare, so instead he clucked his tongue and said, “I knew you were too nice to be the bitchy one.” True, he didn’t know a thing about Rowena, but he’d noticed most students gave her a fairly wide berth. She probably wasn’t the nicest person, and even though Ged thought she looked like a goddess, Persephone wasn’t the most personable of goddesses to be compared to. The mere fact that Rowena was alone at a party like this spoke volumes about her social situation. Idly, Ged wondered what his solo status at the party said of his situation, but then he decided that he didn’t give a fuck. He was having fun, and now he was with Rowena. She was exciting enough for the current moment.

“I ain’t gonna find out,” Ged said, leaning over the barrier as well. He tipped the can in his hand and let a small amount of the beer splash out down the cliff and presumably into the water below. “For the fishies,” the redhead informed Rowena, “Bet it’s boring down there. Wonder if the fish ever watch the water people get undressed in their dorm. Or when they fuck. Don’t think I could do it with a fish grinning down at me.” Of course Ged had already been into the water dorms. He wasn’t a huge fan of all the water bearing down on top of his head, but being underwater was kind of like being underground, and Ged wouldn’t be a miner’s son if he didn’t appreciate the magnitude of constructing underwater dorm rooms. He could appreciate the rooms, even if he didn’t think he would enjoy living there.

“I ain’t mental. ‘m special,” Ged grinned up at her, every bit a devilish little imp. He watched Rowena throw her half full beer at the barrier, and almost dropped his own when he tried to catch it. “That’s a waste,” he pointed out, watching the spilling liquid with a pout, “You coulda drunk that. Hell, I’d have drunk that.” With that declaration, he wandered over to the coolers, avoiding other drunk and/or stoned students with the grace that came with being quite drunk. Ged frowned at the can and cig in his hand, then down at the cooler. With a look of supreme concentration on his face, he managed to balance on one foot and flip open the lid to the cooler with his other. He flashed Ro a triumphant grin, then placed his can on the ground and the cigarette in his mouth as he bent over to root through the crappy beers with his now-free hand. Nothing. Ged went to move onto the next cooler, but then he noticed something. Underneath one of the rickety tables whose strength Rowena had recently tested, a very familiar glint caught Ged’s eye. He pulled a clear bottle that shone amber in the dull light from underneath a few discarded six pack boxes.

“In Soviet Russia, the drink drinks you!” Ged said triumphantly. He laughed a little at the extremely bad joke, and held the half-finished bottle out to Rowena. “Now this will warm you right up!” Why else would the Russians drink it? Another saying floated across Ged’s mind. Liquor before beer never fear, beer before liquor, never sicker. Oh well.

“C’mon Persephone, let’s get you warmed up,” Ged said, “Sit down so I can stop looking up your nose.” He used his foot to flip the lid back onto the cooler and waved the bottle at the makeshift chair. After handing the bottle to Rowena, Ged hesitated before taking a seat himself. He thought he remembered something that said alcohol actually made you colder, but the specifics escaped him for the moment. Still, it made him pause.

The redhead tapped the ash from his cigarette and stuck it back into his mouth before fumbling with the zipper of his many sizes too big black hoodie. It slipped from his right shoulder easy enough, but in his tipsy state getting his left arm out of the sleeve took a bit more fumbling and finagling. After a few seconds, he held the jacket out to Rowena. “Can’t have a pretty girl shiver into nothing on me, can I?” Ged said cheekily. He didn’t want Rowena to leave because she was cold, at least not before they got a chance to try a bit of that vodka. The long sleeved shirt he wore didn’t hide his missing arm nearly as well as the jacket, but Ged seemed uncharacteristically unaware of that fact.

Ged half remembered the theory behind elemental inheritance. Your element was connected to your personality in the most basic sense. Ged wasn’t sure how that worked; all he knew was that he felt connected to the wind in an indescribable way. He could imagine being connected to the earth that way, and probably even fire or water, but his imagination was based on comparing those elements to his experience with wind. He couldn’t separate himself from his element.

“I dunno. Why would you want to? I mean, it’s you,” Ged pointed at Rowena, “Whatever you are, of course.” He didn’t know what Ro was, and he didn’t really care. She wasn’t wind.

Her words brought up another point that stuck in the back of Ged’s mind for perusal once he wasn’t quite so drunk. Elements were based on personality, not genetics, so why did some people believe they were better because of their ‘bloodline?’ Even the purest of thunder bloodlines could easily throw an earth or water. Ged knew his own mother was wind, but he could have been fire if things turned out differently. It went with his red hair better than the purple color the school assigned to wind. Personality was a combination of nature, nurture, and other random shit no one could figure out. Could a parent hate their child just because their personalities didn’t mesh? Ged wasn’t one to be nostalgic, but he knew that though he and his father were complete opposites, they were still family at the end of it all.

The thought of the past made Ged raise his neglected beer to his lips and drain the rest all at once. He crumpled the can, tossed it in the general direction of the discarded cardboard beer cases (maybe someone would be sober enough to recycle), and reached out for the vodka bottle, just in time to watch Rowena tumble right off the makeshift seat.

“Well,” was all Ged had to say for several seconds. He’d seen people pass out, and had done so himself often enough, but he wasn’t used to someone doing it so…clichéd. Rowena’s fall was right out of a romantic comedy. Ged eyed the fallen girl with the seriousness teenagers usually reserved for algebra, then finally bent and picked up the open vodka bottle. Much of it had spilled out, but some dormant drunken instinct of Ro’s had saved a large portion of it. Ged located the cap and held the bottle between his knees to twist the cap back on. Only then did he turn to the passed out girl.

“Ro,” he said, poking her shoulder with the bottle, “Rooooooo. Persephone? C’mon Rowena, wakey wakey eggs and bakey.” No response. Ged looked around. “Who do you belong to,” he muttered to himself. No one seemed willing to come forward to claim Rowena, probably because the pair of them were separated from the rest of the falling over drunk students. Well, now what to do…Ged might not possess much empathy (or empathy at all) but he was born and raised a country boy, and a country boy couldn’t leave a girl lying on the cold ground. She still had his jacket, after all, and who knew what the slobs at the party would do to her (and his jacket). So Ged stuffed the vodka bottle in the pocket of the jacket he’d loaned Rowena, and set about picking the girl up. With one arm and a good amount of alcohol in his system, it was far from Ged’s most graceful of moments, especially since he was trying to not grab anything that would get him slapped if Ro happened to wake up.

How could a girl as tall as Rowena weigh so little? Ged had noticed how thin her face and legs were, but she weighed even less than he’d expected, and her sharp bones cut into the shoulder he had thrown her own. He made a note to make sure she ate more. He didn’t want to carry her if her hips elbows were going to leave bruises where they knocked into his back.

Eventually Rowena roused slightly, and managed to walk a little with Ged’s arm around her waist. It was a welcome relief, as Ged’s arm tired quickly. They still had to stop quite a bit. Ged aimed for the Wind tower for lack of a better place to go, and Rowena followed willingly in her half-unconscious state. The stairs were a party in themselves, especially since Ged couldn’t help but giggle every time they bounced off a wall or nearly tripped back down the winding flights. Later, looking back on the hazy memory, Ged would be amazed they didn’t kill themselves on the way back, as well as how they somehow didn’t stop halfway back to the room and decide to sleep there. The lure of an actual bed drew Ged onward.

Ged kept up a wandering conversation for most of the way back, explaining the Persephone myth to Rowena, then branching out to various other stories of the Greek pantheon, including how Aeolus used to be one of his favorite gods because he controlled the wind and schooled Odysseus in the Odyssey. Used to be his favorite was past tense because after Sex Ed, Ged couldn't read the name without giggling in a very school-boy manner because of the similarity of Aeolus with a part of the female anatomy. Near the end, however, he grew silent, though his conversation partner likely didn't notice. His joints ached, cutting through the alcoholic fog.

The redhead propped Rowena against the wall next to his dorm door and fiddled for the key with a hand that shook slightly. Luckily Pyson wasn’t home for whatever reason, and Ged managed to heave Rowena onto his bed without too much trouble.

“Stay there,” he told her unnecessarily, and wobbled across the room to fetch his trash can. He wasn’t sure how Ro handled her drink, besides not very well, judging from her passed out condition. Ged did not want to spend his hangover cleaning up someone else’s mess. His charitable nature only extended so far.

Collapsing into his desk chair, Ged eyed the girl on his bed. Tonight hadn’t turned out like he’d expected. Sure, the party had been entertaining, especially once he found Persephone, and he had wanted to end the night with a teenage Greek goddess in his bed…but the night had skipped a few steps that Ged would have preferred it hadn’t. He pouted, then walked back over to Ro, retrieving the vodka bottle that had miraculously made it back to the room unscathed (despite falling out of the pocket and down two flights of stairs on the way). If he had to crash on the floor, he needed to be quite a bit drunker than he already was. Knocking back a long swallow, Ged made a face. Drinking alone was no fun, but the night was going to hurt.

When the sun rose and Rowena awoke, she would see Ged sleeping on the dorm floor a few feet away (out of range of projectile vomit), sweatshirt acting as a blanket, his backpack the pillow, just like he had for many, many nights over the last year and a half. The vodka bottle stood nearly empty on the desk across the room, keeping watch over the two sleeping teens.

The vodka was the only reason Ged got any sleep that night. There was a reason he preferred the hard liquor when he just wanted to forget. It knocked him right out once he’d drunk enough. Still, Ged was a fairly light sleeper most of the time, and the sun streaming in through the window began rousing him from his Russian coma long before Rowena awoke. The glorious sound of her puking brought Ged to full consciousness, a fact he immediately regretted.

Everything hurt. His head hurt. His shoulders hurt. His hips hurt, especially where the hard floor bore into the bone. Floors always seemed to radiate cold upwards, digging deep and finding every single bone Ged had broken, every joint he’d sprained or twisted in some way. His eyeballs ached. The only relief? His right arm didn’t hurt any more than usual. Everything else clambered to overcome the phantom pain that came and went. Still, it was little enough of a relief, and Ged dreaded working the knots that had formed in his abused muscles, the stress of carrying the girl all the way back from the cliff only compounded by sleeping on the floor. Truthfully? The aches and pains were nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. Ged had felt worse, much worse. A dorm floor was fairly comfortable compared to other surfaces he’d slept on.

Ged slowly rolled over onto his back, off of his left side. His left arm was asleep. Again, nothing unusual. No matter how many times it happened before, Ged had to concentrate to quell the tiny bit of panic in the back of his head that searched frantically for feeling in his one remaining arm. His fingers made slight noises as they moved under the jacket that still lay draped over Ged like a blanket, and he listened to those slight sounds as a distraction from the sounds of puke hitting the bottom of the trash can.

He squinted at the girl-Rowena? Was he remembering that correctly?-between light-lashed lids. Ged’s own stomach rebelled in sympathy, but he fought it back. Food was important, even if he didn’t exactly have much left in his stomach by the time the morning came. It helped that he was still prone on the ground. The floor didn’t buck and heave as much when he was laying on it.

‘Fuck you?’ the sarcastic voice at the back of Ged’s voice whispered in response to Rowena’s words. If only his night had ended that well. She poked him when he was distracted, catching him unaware and leaving his bad side open. Ged immediately shied away from the intrusion into his vulnerable right side as if she had poked him with a red hot poker instead of her toe. His body protested at the violent movement, and Ged couldn’t help but let a gasp slip between gritted teeth. He screwed his eyes together and let a litany of curses roll around his head until the knots in his muscles relaxed enough he judged he could move again.

“’s not spiked,” Ged muttered. He could feel his hand through the pins and needles radiating from shoulder to fingertips, the pain itself a mere annoyance compared to everything else he felt, and judged it time to attempt to sit up. Ged set his elbow against the ground and clenched his abdominal muscles to add the extra push needed to lever himself up with one arm. One swift movement, though moving slower would have saved pain, Ged doubted he would have made it up if he’d gone slow. The room spun as blood rushed away from his pounding head, and Ged kept his eyes focused on the jacket that had slipped off his body as he sat up and now lay in his lap. Things slowly realigned, the roaring subsiding from his ears, and his stomach returning to the general vicinity where it was supposed to be instead of caught in the back of his throat.

Swallowing roughly, Ged continued in the same low, rough voice as before. “Wish it was spiked. Then I’d still be asleep,” he grumbled. He brought his hand up to tug the collar of the t-shirt he still wore from the night before over so he could start massaging knots out of his shoulder. With his bad side facing Rowena, there was no way she could miss the lack of any sort of arm emerging from the end of the short sleeve, though she might miss the assortment of scars peppering his good arm, and the one stretching along his collarbone, now in view thanks to him moving the shirt out of the way.

“You sleep well?” Ged glanced at Rowena, completely unreactive to the accusation that he’d drugged her.