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rainbowfic2016-02-20 06:43 pm
greenling) wrote in rainbowfic2016-02-20 06:43 pm
Angel Cake #2, Rose #5, Side A #9
Name: Greenling
Story: AfR/AGT
Colors: Angel Cake #2 (Messenger), Rose #5 (You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.), Side A #9 (All the strangers came today And it looks as though they're here to stay → Oh! You Pretty Things (Hunky Dory))
Supplies and Styles: Novelty Beads (Image), Graffiti (I believe this counts for the non-romantic love thing?)
Word Count: 2,022
Rating: PG
Warnings: Alcohol, related fantasy things, and panic attacks.
Summary: Ain't no party like an unseelie party 'cause an unseelie party don't stop until at least two people are flipping out and somebody's gotta steal a car to get home.
Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
Shay woke up to a lot of screaming. She lurched towards it on instinct, fighting the heaving of her stomach, landing on something squeaky that rolled.
Jessica, said her brain. Jessica is screaming.
She sat up as quickly as her limbs could respond and focused past the harsh light. Hung over, on a roof, surrounded by colorful foam noodles, Jessica's ass flailing in the air, her front half over the edge. Shay launched onto her feet and tossed herself over the pool noodles, snatching the back of her covenmate's jacket and yanking her away from the edge. Both of them landed in a heap. Seconds later, Shay's dinner landed to her right on a pile of noodles. The sun was a concert speaker made of light blaring right next to her face.
Jessica was still screaming, but quieter, somehow at normal conversational volume. She was safe. Probably had been before, really, but that was then. Shay focused on breathing evenly and kicking her metabolism from both directions towards an even, functional level. The screaming died down until it became a burbling mess.
"How..." Jessica choked out. The burbles started sounding like laughter. "How are we on a roof?"
Shay pushed her hair back over her shoulder, working herself around to the same question.
*
Jackie was getting really close to swallowing her pride and asking Kevin to cook breakfast. The fridge seemed to be completely full of game meat, cake, leftover pizza, cheap soda, and things she didn't want to look too close at. She could've sworn there'd been stew left from the other night, or at least one of Latoya's vegan things. Latoya was in the dining room with Kevin, playing cards, not even a little buzzed. Jackie resented her.
She decided on the last slice of devil's food cake and a bottle of Sprite and went to curl up in a soft chair near the table. Describe living room.
Kevin turned to smile at her and took the effort to say "Hey," so she took the effort to smile back. It didn't reach her eyes, but the attempt was there.
"Good night last night, eh girl?"
And then Latoya had to start with that, smirking over her cards. Jackie bit back her first reply.
"It was something." Her throat felt sticky and raspy, so it came out largely inflectionless. She took a swig from the bottle. "You ever participated?"
That hit a nerve. Latoya played a card and lay her hand down face-down. Jackie took another long drink.
"A solstice is the ceremony, not the drinking and partying afterward. Don't be smart."
The smile hit Jackie's eyes, though it'd long since left her lips. "Shay seems to think the party is part of the ceremony."
Kevin did something to the cards on the table; Latoya flipped her braids back over her chair and picked up her hand again. "Our morri is talented, showing off is good for her. Your beau didn't do too bad either."
Kevin grunted. "Don't bring me in."
"Yeah, and he's not my 'beau', thanks." Jackie squirmed a little in her seat- mostly to keep the bottle of Sprite from falling off as she gingerly tucked into the cake. It was way too sweet. The Sprite was way too sweet too. Somehow together they tasted pretty amazing; she considered how out of it she would have to be to take a bite and a drink at the same time.
"Where is Shay?" Kevin asked.
Latoya gave Jackie a look. Jackie looked right back.
"She was dancing with you," Latoya said.
"She was with you and Jessica when I went to bed."
"No, I was speaking to the commoner when you left."
"Well I don't know where she is," Jackie pronounced through a mouthful of cake.
"Hrm." Latoya frowned deeply and turned her attention back to her cards.
*
Morning light never penetrated the room Rowan fell asleep in. Sie only woke up when hir stomach started to growl louder than the shadows in hir dreams. It was weird to wake up so completely unaware of where sie was and then... know. The smell of sidhe magic underlay everything, dark and soft, and beyond that was the fading awareness of familiar people. It was chilly, probably because sie was stripped down to pants and socks and laying over the covers on someone else's bed.
Whose bed and why, sie had less of an idea. The room was dark as pitch except for a tiny halo of light under a closed door. Sie reached out for it, physically as well as spiritually, and asked it to fill hir perception of the room. It felt reluctant; sie threaded hir will slowly and carefully through the space under the door, visualizing a carpet of light weaving itself. First out of the darkness came the form of a dresser, burdened with clothes, then a full-length mirror shoved into the opposite corner. Sie beamed the light in hir head off that and the whole thing came into view. The room was a big cluttered mess, like someone had stuffed half a house into one room. There was a circle of chairs in one corner, of which one seemed reachable, all piled with boxes; there were shelves stacked on top of bookshelves holding huge books and small picture frames and plastic carrying-cases of colored pencils; the bed itself was covered in dresses and men's polos and rolls of fabric, and the closet door was ajar, wedged between a shelf and the pile of boxes inside. The walls were painted like a forest of dark trees reaching up to a starry night sky, and covered in art prints and vintage photos, mostly of women in fancy clothes. Sie recognized Coco Chanel.
Rowan slid wobblishly to hir feet and went for the real lightswitch. The forest-and-sky disappeared, but the rest of it was more or less the same. No question whose room it was. Many questions how sie got into Jaymie's room. Sie frowned.
Memories of the night before were swirly and weird; the ritual blended in with the party, and the food, and the amazing feelings of connection. Sie started gathering clothes and sorting priorities and memories. Hir shirt was folded inside out and stuffed into one shoe, and after a minute sie found hir binder twisted around in the blankets. Sie smelled gross, needed a drink of water, and hir hair desperately needed brushing. There was a bathroom nearby, sie remembered; there was a big bathroom on the second floor. Wash off, then figure out if you kissed somebody, then face the day.
Rowan peeked out and, seeing the bathroom door was cracked open, walked straight in. A cloud of steam greeted hir- and Jaymie in a bathrobe, sitting on the edge of the bathtub.
They stared at each other awkwardly.
Jaymie's hand zipped up to cover his eyes. Rowan suddenly remembered sie was topless and brought the ball of clothes up to hir chest. "Oh, sorry..." Right. Sie walked in on someone, said the awake part of hir brain. Time to take a step back, leave the room-
"Hold on. Why was I in your room?" tumbled out of hir mouth.
"Ah..." Jaymie's voice was different from the night before, in a way sie couldn't quite describe. Jaymie kept doing that, being hard to pin down. "Uh, I don't know, I wasn't in my room. I woke up here."
Rowan knew the conversation wasn't going to go well, but that couldn't stop hir mouth. Jaymie was officially the host, Jaymie had been the one who mixed the alchemy junk. Neither of them moved. "Do... you remember anything about what happened last night? Any reason why I would've been in your room? I'm just saying, I'm a little weirded out-"
Jaymie stood up suddenly. He clutched his robe together with one hand and started moving things around with the other, scooting towels and bottles around like he was looking for something. His movements were tense and erratic; he knocked over a small pile of stuff and scrambled to put them back. Rowan felt frozen in place.
"Do you-"
"No. I don't. I-" He stopped, leaning with one hand against the tile wall, staring at it. "I."
The room was uncomfortably cold. Rowan hesitated, then took a step closer, keeping her eyes on Jaymie's face. "Are you-"
"D- d- on't remember," the first letter sputtered out in a protracted series. "Anything." He slid down to a seat in the floor, still staring blankly at the wall. Rowan decided it was an appropriate time to start freaking out. Sie tore hir eyes off him and towards the door; someone else. Someone else would know what was going on here.
*
Jessica finally stopped laughing after her second bottle of ginger ale. That was after they found out the door to the roof they'd woke up on was locked and Shay had to Spider-Woman down to a top-floor window, break into an apartment, sneak past two naked people sleeping on a couch to break back out, and walk a quarter mile half-carrying Jessica with her nose in Shay's shoulder until they found a public place to stop.
That was... thirty, forty minutes total? Now they were sitting on the sidewalk outside a BP and watching cars go by in the early morning like a Sheryl Crow song.
Shay leaned her head back against the outer wall, saw tobacco-spit stains in her peripheral vision, and leaned forward again.
"The shit I do for you people," she said in a tired voice.
Jessica snorted, rubbing her bare arms and staring out into the sunlight. "You want thanks? We're two towns over, and do you know where the damn car is? Or whether we even got here in one?"
Shay raised an eyebrow, flashing Jessica a severe glare. "You blame that on me?"
"I know your stuff, Shay. I can still taste it."
"That was the newbie's stuff. I'm not responsible for his obvious talent or lack of discretion in pairing choices."
"Uh-huh. So you got a plan to get us home?"
She allowed herself a sigh. "Well, we have no money, and we have to presume we have no car." Jessica nodded. "We can't ask the fam for help or we'll be laughed at for months, minimum." Another nod. "Best option, we exercise our rights as Knights of the Court, carjack some poor fuck and come back with presents so we can claim this was intentional."
Jessica turned and gave her a look. "Any ideas from your non-sociopath personalities?"
"Well if you want to walk-" Shay's jacket pocket started beeping. "Oh hey, I have my phone."
The number said Kevin, which she took a second to recognize as Jackie's boy-thing. She hit the Accept button and decided on a neutral tone. "Hello?"
"Hi. Where are you?" His voice was tense, or as tense as he got.
"Uh..." Stall for time, said her brain. "Out with Jessica, why?"
"You need to get here, something's going on with Jaymie."
Her lips pressed into a line. "Why are you calling me? If something's happening, why isn't Latoya or Jackie calling me?"
She heard his breath. "Latoya can't find her phone, Jackie's eating. Please come back."
"Why?"
There was silence, then noise in the background. The next voice she heard was Jackie's.
"Oh my god- Shay?"
Her mood immediately improved. "Yes, dear?"
"Shay, come home, please, Jaymie's having some kind of reaction or episode or something and the seelie's freaking out and I don't know." Shay tensed. It wasn't quite frantic, but it was definitely pleading.
"Ah. Okay." Shay stood up. Jessica looked over, clearly paying attention now. "One question, just- is the car there?"
"What?" The sound of walking on hardwood floors, then curtains. "Uhm... yeah? Where are you?"
"Okay, no problem, be there as soon as we can!" Shay said cheerily, then hung up. Jessica gave her a troubled look.
"What's happening?"
"Plan A. Let's see if we can find something fast with a seat warmer."
"Right..." Jessica put the cap back on her ginger ale and stood up to follow.
Story: AfR/AGT
Colors: Angel Cake #2 (Messenger), Rose #5 (You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.), Side A #9 (All the strangers came today And it looks as though they're here to stay → Oh! You Pretty Things (Hunky Dory))
Supplies and Styles: Novelty Beads (Image), Graffiti (I believe this counts for the non-romantic love thing?)
Word Count: 2,022
Rating: PG
Warnings: Alcohol, related fantasy things, and panic attacks.
Summary: Ain't no party like an unseelie party 'cause an unseelie party don't stop until at least two people are flipping out and somebody's gotta steal a car to get home.
Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
Shay woke up to a lot of screaming. She lurched towards it on instinct, fighting the heaving of her stomach, landing on something squeaky that rolled.
Jessica, said her brain. Jessica is screaming.
She sat up as quickly as her limbs could respond and focused past the harsh light. Hung over, on a roof, surrounded by colorful foam noodles, Jessica's ass flailing in the air, her front half over the edge. Shay launched onto her feet and tossed herself over the pool noodles, snatching the back of her covenmate's jacket and yanking her away from the edge. Both of them landed in a heap. Seconds later, Shay's dinner landed to her right on a pile of noodles. The sun was a concert speaker made of light blaring right next to her face.
Jessica was still screaming, but quieter, somehow at normal conversational volume. She was safe. Probably had been before, really, but that was then. Shay focused on breathing evenly and kicking her metabolism from both directions towards an even, functional level. The screaming died down until it became a burbling mess.
"How..." Jessica choked out. The burbles started sounding like laughter. "How are we on a roof?"
Shay pushed her hair back over her shoulder, working herself around to the same question.
*
Jackie was getting really close to swallowing her pride and asking Kevin to cook breakfast. The fridge seemed to be completely full of game meat, cake, leftover pizza, cheap soda, and things she didn't want to look too close at. She could've sworn there'd been stew left from the other night, or at least one of Latoya's vegan things. Latoya was in the dining room with Kevin, playing cards, not even a little buzzed. Jackie resented her.
She decided on the last slice of devil's food cake and a bottle of Sprite and went to curl up in a soft chair near the table. Describe living room.
Kevin turned to smile at her and took the effort to say "Hey," so she took the effort to smile back. It didn't reach her eyes, but the attempt was there.
"Good night last night, eh girl?"
And then Latoya had to start with that, smirking over her cards. Jackie bit back her first reply.
"It was something." Her throat felt sticky and raspy, so it came out largely inflectionless. She took a swig from the bottle. "You ever participated?"
That hit a nerve. Latoya played a card and lay her hand down face-down. Jackie took another long drink.
"A solstice is the ceremony, not the drinking and partying afterward. Don't be smart."
The smile hit Jackie's eyes, though it'd long since left her lips. "Shay seems to think the party is part of the ceremony."
Kevin did something to the cards on the table; Latoya flipped her braids back over her chair and picked up her hand again. "Our morri is talented, showing off is good for her. Your beau didn't do too bad either."
Kevin grunted. "Don't bring me in."
"Yeah, and he's not my 'beau', thanks." Jackie squirmed a little in her seat- mostly to keep the bottle of Sprite from falling off as she gingerly tucked into the cake. It was way too sweet. The Sprite was way too sweet too. Somehow together they tasted pretty amazing; she considered how out of it she would have to be to take a bite and a drink at the same time.
"Where is Shay?" Kevin asked.
Latoya gave Jackie a look. Jackie looked right back.
"She was dancing with you," Latoya said.
"She was with you and Jessica when I went to bed."
"No, I was speaking to the commoner when you left."
"Well I don't know where she is," Jackie pronounced through a mouthful of cake.
"Hrm." Latoya frowned deeply and turned her attention back to her cards.
*
Morning light never penetrated the room Rowan fell asleep in. Sie only woke up when hir stomach started to growl louder than the shadows in hir dreams. It was weird to wake up so completely unaware of where sie was and then... know. The smell of sidhe magic underlay everything, dark and soft, and beyond that was the fading awareness of familiar people. It was chilly, probably because sie was stripped down to pants and socks and laying over the covers on someone else's bed.
Whose bed and why, sie had less of an idea. The room was dark as pitch except for a tiny halo of light under a closed door. Sie reached out for it, physically as well as spiritually, and asked it to fill hir perception of the room. It felt reluctant; sie threaded hir will slowly and carefully through the space under the door, visualizing a carpet of light weaving itself. First out of the darkness came the form of a dresser, burdened with clothes, then a full-length mirror shoved into the opposite corner. Sie beamed the light in hir head off that and the whole thing came into view. The room was a big cluttered mess, like someone had stuffed half a house into one room. There was a circle of chairs in one corner, of which one seemed reachable, all piled with boxes; there were shelves stacked on top of bookshelves holding huge books and small picture frames and plastic carrying-cases of colored pencils; the bed itself was covered in dresses and men's polos and rolls of fabric, and the closet door was ajar, wedged between a shelf and the pile of boxes inside. The walls were painted like a forest of dark trees reaching up to a starry night sky, and covered in art prints and vintage photos, mostly of women in fancy clothes. Sie recognized Coco Chanel.
Rowan slid wobblishly to hir feet and went for the real lightswitch. The forest-and-sky disappeared, but the rest of it was more or less the same. No question whose room it was. Many questions how sie got into Jaymie's room. Sie frowned.
Memories of the night before were swirly and weird; the ritual blended in with the party, and the food, and the amazing feelings of connection. Sie started gathering clothes and sorting priorities and memories. Hir shirt was folded inside out and stuffed into one shoe, and after a minute sie found hir binder twisted around in the blankets. Sie smelled gross, needed a drink of water, and hir hair desperately needed brushing. There was a bathroom nearby, sie remembered; there was a big bathroom on the second floor. Wash off, then figure out if you kissed somebody, then face the day.
Rowan peeked out and, seeing the bathroom door was cracked open, walked straight in. A cloud of steam greeted hir- and Jaymie in a bathrobe, sitting on the edge of the bathtub.
They stared at each other awkwardly.
Jaymie's hand zipped up to cover his eyes. Rowan suddenly remembered sie was topless and brought the ball of clothes up to hir chest. "Oh, sorry..." Right. Sie walked in on someone, said the awake part of hir brain. Time to take a step back, leave the room-
"Hold on. Why was I in your room?" tumbled out of hir mouth.
"Ah..." Jaymie's voice was different from the night before, in a way sie couldn't quite describe. Jaymie kept doing that, being hard to pin down. "Uh, I don't know, I wasn't in my room. I woke up here."
Rowan knew the conversation wasn't going to go well, but that couldn't stop hir mouth. Jaymie was officially the host, Jaymie had been the one who mixed the alchemy junk. Neither of them moved. "Do... you remember anything about what happened last night? Any reason why I would've been in your room? I'm just saying, I'm a little weirded out-"
Jaymie stood up suddenly. He clutched his robe together with one hand and started moving things around with the other, scooting towels and bottles around like he was looking for something. His movements were tense and erratic; he knocked over a small pile of stuff and scrambled to put them back. Rowan felt frozen in place.
"Do you-"
"No. I don't. I-" He stopped, leaning with one hand against the tile wall, staring at it. "I."
The room was uncomfortably cold. Rowan hesitated, then took a step closer, keeping her eyes on Jaymie's face. "Are you-"
"D- d- on't remember," the first letter sputtered out in a protracted series. "Anything." He slid down to a seat in the floor, still staring blankly at the wall. Rowan decided it was an appropriate time to start freaking out. Sie tore hir eyes off him and towards the door; someone else. Someone else would know what was going on here.
*
Jessica finally stopped laughing after her second bottle of ginger ale. That was after they found out the door to the roof they'd woke up on was locked and Shay had to Spider-Woman down to a top-floor window, break into an apartment, sneak past two naked people sleeping on a couch to break back out, and walk a quarter mile half-carrying Jessica with her nose in Shay's shoulder until they found a public place to stop.
That was... thirty, forty minutes total? Now they were sitting on the sidewalk outside a BP and watching cars go by in the early morning like a Sheryl Crow song.
Shay leaned her head back against the outer wall, saw tobacco-spit stains in her peripheral vision, and leaned forward again.
"The shit I do for you people," she said in a tired voice.
Jessica snorted, rubbing her bare arms and staring out into the sunlight. "You want thanks? We're two towns over, and do you know where the damn car is? Or whether we even got here in one?"
Shay raised an eyebrow, flashing Jessica a severe glare. "You blame that on me?"
"I know your stuff, Shay. I can still taste it."
"That was the newbie's stuff. I'm not responsible for his obvious talent or lack of discretion in pairing choices."
"Uh-huh. So you got a plan to get us home?"
She allowed herself a sigh. "Well, we have no money, and we have to presume we have no car." Jessica nodded. "We can't ask the fam for help or we'll be laughed at for months, minimum." Another nod. "Best option, we exercise our rights as Knights of the Court, carjack some poor fuck and come back with presents so we can claim this was intentional."
Jessica turned and gave her a look. "Any ideas from your non-sociopath personalities?"
"Well if you want to walk-" Shay's jacket pocket started beeping. "Oh hey, I have my phone."
The number said Kevin, which she took a second to recognize as Jackie's boy-thing. She hit the Accept button and decided on a neutral tone. "Hello?"
"Hi. Where are you?" His voice was tense, or as tense as he got.
"Uh..." Stall for time, said her brain. "Out with Jessica, why?"
"You need to get here, something's going on with Jaymie."
Her lips pressed into a line. "Why are you calling me? If something's happening, why isn't Latoya or Jackie calling me?"
She heard his breath. "Latoya can't find her phone, Jackie's eating. Please come back."
"Why?"
There was silence, then noise in the background. The next voice she heard was Jackie's.
"Oh my god- Shay?"
Her mood immediately improved. "Yes, dear?"
"Shay, come home, please, Jaymie's having some kind of reaction or episode or something and the seelie's freaking out and I don't know." Shay tensed. It wasn't quite frantic, but it was definitely pleading.
"Ah. Okay." Shay stood up. Jessica looked over, clearly paying attention now. "One question, just- is the car there?"
"What?" The sound of walking on hardwood floors, then curtains. "Uhm... yeah? Where are you?"
"Okay, no problem, be there as soon as we can!" Shay said cheerily, then hung up. Jessica gave her a troubled look.
"What's happening?"
"Plan A. Let's see if we can find something fast with a seat warmer."
"Right..." Jessica put the cap back on her ginger ale and stood up to follow.
no subject
no subject
It was probably fun when it started, though! Thanks for reading. :3
no subject
Oh GOOD, Plan A. Good luck, guys.
no subject
Thanks for reading!