save the date, pt. 2
In which Reese makes a grand escape from his own date and runs into a familiar face just in time to suffer the consequences of his actions.
☆ OCs: Reese, Mal ★ CW: Alcohol consumption, emeto/vomiting, some burping ☆ Word Count: 1679
Night in Haaywyn comes cold, clean, and dry, and Malika has never been more grateful for fresh air and working legs than she is right now, because that clinic room gets awfully stuffy. And even a girl like her has a limit for how much talk and smell of blood and guts she can withstand. So that’s how she finds herself wandering, embraced by the unfamiliar, quaint quietude of this strange little town. She had figured this would be the best time to do it, with no persistent strangers to bother her or get in her way.
Not for the first time in her life, it is apparent that Mal thought wrong.
↓ read more under the cut ! ↓
This crosses her mind for two reasons. First of all, she hadn’t accounted for the chance of running into any inebriated tavern-goers. There are not many, but there are certainly more stragglers than she’d bargained for. And secondly, she was wrong to be so naive as to think she could ever shake Reese’s incessant ass, because among the stragglers is him. He’s hobbling away and looking strangely guilty, with a rip in the side of his shirt and a trail of feathers following him.
She considers turning the other way. In fact, she really wants to. But there’s a part of her that cannot be described as anything other than masochistic as it inclines her to go up to him. She deliberates on it a moment too long, because he spots her first. Reese waves to her, stumbling along in her direction with an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Maaaaallll!”
“Oh my God,” she murmurs, shaking her head and trudging over to meet him if not just to get him to stop yelling, and calls back, “Yeah, I hear you! Yes.”
He just about falls into her arms once he reaches her, swaying dangerously. She resists the urge to reach out to him. “What the fuck happened to you?”
Of everything Reese could possibly respond to her with, the last thing Mal expects is for it to come in the form of a hiccup and a mouthful of vomit directly at her feet.
“Fuck! Oh, gross–” she takes a step back, looking heavenwards and taking a long, regrettable breath. The smell of alcohol assaults her senses and from the sheer potency of it, she realizes maybe the vomiting was not the least reasonable response for him to give. “Gods, Reese.”
He reels back in return, turning to the side and bracing against his knee with one arm, hugging himself with the other. He groans and spits and burps again, bringing up more dark liquid. And then again. And again, like a fussy baby or a–a bird. Mal huffs. Fitting.
Against all of her stronger instincts, Mal leans in and puts a hand on his back. Reese coughs and splutters, leaning some of his meager weight against her as he continues to throw up, an almost constant stream of little gags and hiccups spilling from him. A few other people, definitely no less sloshed than Reese is, peer over. They’re on the side of a path beneath a streetlight; it’s not like he chose a particularly discreet place to do this.
One person in particular looks on with a level of judgment that is definitely not warranted given that they came from the same place. Mal glares at him and flips him off.
“Hey, Reese.”
Reese whimpers. “Dude. Reese. Stop puking for a minute–fucking swallow it or something.”
Reese tries and nearly chokes. Mal swears under her breath. This guy is beyond pathetic.
She rubs his back as he burps and coughs again, and then she gives up hope that it’ll end anytime soon and accepts the potential of getting puked on as she shoves him off the path. He stumbles, so she takes his wrist and opts to drag him along with her. “Come on. Let’s get behind a–a building or a bush or something. Anywhere but here. So you can stop fucking embarrassing me.”
Reese gives her a thumbs up with the hand she’s guiding, other hand cupped over his mouth. A noise comes out of him and it sounds like he almost certainly throws up directly into that hand, but Mal chooses not to acknowledge it and carries forward. She’s almost gotten them situated between two shops, long shut down for the night, when she hears a noise from him she can’t choose not to acknowledge: a sniffle.
“What–are you crying?”
“N–hic-huuRRRPP!–no.” Reese sniffles again.
Mal drags him into the alley and pulls the hand away from his face, predictably sullied with sick and snot. He really is crying. Given the fact that he still reeks of booze, she probably shouldn’t be surprised. And it’s not that she is surprised, really. But that doesn’t mean that she has a lick of a clue what to say.
“Why are you crying now? You’re so fucking hammered.”
Reese gags emptily, spitting at the ground and whimpering. He gulps a few times, burps. And then he takes a long, shuddering breath. “Dunno. M’sorry to…embarrass you.”
Malika has spent the entirety of the time she’s known this guy berating him, insulting him, threatening him, and fully prepared to bite, and somehow that’s the comment that does it. Even worse, for some reason, hearing him actually seem hurt by her, seeing him cry like this, does something funny to her heart. Before she can come up with anything to say, he’s fully barrelling forward with an empty retch. It sounds painful, and she cringes, hand going back between his shoulderblades. “Alright. Shit, Reese.”
“Sorry.”
“Shut up.”
“O–hic!–okay.”
Mal rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t say anything further. They share the silence for a while, save for the sound of Reese’s hiccuping breaths. Malika searches around for something to say as this whole situation catches up to her and she finds herself wondering again if this is some twisted limbo fever-dream. Standing around and looking tenderly upon another person, especially by her own free will, isn’t necessarily in her nature.
Reese’s breath hitches for a second and she thinks he might start getting sick again, but he makes a sad noise and slinks away from her, sliding down the wall like he’s deflating. He puts his head in his hands. Mal wishes she was half as drunk as he is now, even after all the puking. Maybe it would give her some ease of dealing with this situation or cajole her into some spur of kindness. Maybe it would push off the urge she has to walk off and leave the sad sack here, or even greater, the feeling of obligation she feels for him and all of his persistence in looking after her. She takes a deep breath to steel herself and sinks down beside him.
“What’s going on?”
Reese sniffs. “I–I–” he makes some incoherent noise of distress, “nothing. S’nothing.”
“Bullshit. Tell me before I hurt you.”
That gets a giggle out of him. “You’re being sooo nice to me.”
“Don’t push your luck. Now why’re you like this?”
“Well…don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Who the fuck am I telling?”
“Yeah, okay.” Reese picks his head up out of his hands, crossing his arms around his knees and wrapping his wings inward and around himself like a blanket. “Well, I invited Vince out to the tavern with me tonight…for a few drinks.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me you’re in love.”
“Well, no. I mean. I don’t know, but I should probably get over it or something now, ‘cuz I kinda started blurting stuff out about how he shouldn’t like me and then I tried to go home and he’s so nice, Mal, he’s so nice–”
“Get to the point.”
“--anyway, he’s so nice but I kind of stood him up at my own date by freaking out a bit and sneaking out the bathroom window and I ripped my shirt and I told him I’d be right back and I never came back, so…”
Mal heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Sweet fuck, you’re an idiot. And dramatic.”
“I am such an idiot, Mal! And now I’m gonna be so lonely.” Reese pouts, nose all pink from the crying and the cold, and wipes at the snot running across his upper lip. “It’s a good thing you’re my friend now.”
“I wouldn’t go that far–”
“Come oooonnn, Mal. We’re friends. Face it with your sad, sorry ass that you have a friend now, cuz you probably never have in your life with that attitude…”
Mal whips around to look at him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Reese jumps, blinking at her. She pushes herself up to stand.
“You know, I could just fucking leave your sorry ass here for Vince to find you and fucking kick you–”
His eyes well up with tears all over again, and the anger starting to well up in her resolves just as fast.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Mal slaps a hand across her face and shakes her head, completely exasperated. She drags it down. Takes a good, long look at him, and it’s then that she notices he’s shivering. Even with those big bird wings wrapped around himself, he’s trembling like a leaf. “You’re cold.”
“I mean, a little…”
She heaves a long breath out and reaches out her hand. “C’mon. Get up. Go home.”
Reese makes a funny face, something akin to a pout but a little more sincere and a little more pathetic. “Are you gonna come with me?”
“No. I’m gonna leave you to fall flat on your face in the dirt and die. Now take my hand.”
He smiles, reaching up for her and wrapping long, cold fingers around the back of her knuckles. She pulls him up to stand, and he wobbles a bit, but he manages to get upright now. It’s a slight improvement from his condition earlier, but it’s an improvement nonetheless. She doesn’t let go of him as they begin the trek to the guard barracks.
“Okay. Lead the way, bird.”