Possession Night, part two

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

Marie and Lorna drink and talk. And drink. Because emo-muppet does a shot. Oh yes, and Marie forces Haller to join in on the fun.


Marie picked up the half-empty pitcher of sangria on the table, refilling both her glass and Lorna's. "Just when you think things around here can't get any weirder...except wait, Ah never think that, because Ah always know that they will."

Lorna snorted and lifted her glasses, "To meeting face to face the voices in your head. Always an experience necessitating decades if not centuries of therapy." She had more than one reason to drink tonight but since they were there for David, that seemed like the most appropriate toast. That may have been the two previous glasses of sangria talking.

"Hear hear," Marie said before tipping back her glass. "Though Ah have no interest in remeeting some of the voices in my head," she added as she set the glass down.

"Pretty much, yeah. Malice...not a fun girl, actually. Kind of Harley Quinn." Lorna drank deeply. "And as I've met some of the voices in your head, I so have to agree. Others I want to meet just for the fun of erasing them from existence." She made a face, "Good X-Men aren't supposed to say things like that."

"Then neither of us are particularly good," Marie said before downing the remaining half glass of sangria she'd been holding. "The team needs balance anyways. A little evil, a little insanity, it's good for morale."

Lorna thought about that while she considered the deep crimson of the sangria. She shrugged, "Yeah. Makes the good ones seem good...er. Gooder. What's that word? That means more good?"

Marie wrinkled her brow as she reached for the sangria pitcher again, splashing some of the liquid on the table as she refilled her glass. "Goodest?" she guessed. "Or better! That's the one." Marie all but beamed as she said the word. She looked from her glass to Lorna and cocked her head "Wait...are you being an emo-muppet? Because then you have to take a shot."

"Better," Lorna repeated deliberately, over-enunciating to avoid slurring it. "Am not being an emo-muppet. My best friend just went Blaaargh, I deserve a mope."

"Nope. No moping! That's part of emo-muppetry. If finding Ah wasn't who Ah thought Ah was and a blind precog had a weird interest in me wasn't a good enough reason to mope, neither is this." Looking around, she flagged down the rather busy looking waitress. "Maggie, we need shots. Ah need one, she needs," Marie paused to scrutinize her green haired companion, "probably three by the time you get back. Heck, just bring the bottle. Rum should be good."

Lorna winced, "Ew." She sipped at her sangria, "I did a shot when I got here you know. I like my liver. It's been good to me and you're trying to murder it."

"Emo-muppet does a shot," Marie recited, holding her right hand up in the air before giggling. "Plus, what's a liver really good for anyways? You gotta use it, make sure it's still working."

"I hate that rule. What idiot came up with that rule?" The waitress returned with four shots, sliding them onto the table with a practiced flick of her wrist. Lorna gave the honey colored liquid a dubious eye. "Okay, I'll do one shot. But just one. Then we'll talk about boys."

Marie picked up one of the shot glasses, waiting for Lorna to do the same, before holding it high in the air. "To helping others be gooder by being...not gooder." She giggled, some of liquid in her glass splashing out. "And to boys. Especially cute ones."

Lorna tapped her glass against Marie's then tossed back the shot and whimpered, grabbing for her sangria to wash the taste out. "Euch, I hate rum,” she complained. "So, speaking of cute boys, what's with you and the Mountie? Friends, good friends or," she raised an eyebrow, "really good friends?"

Marie tossed back her shot, making a face at the taste as she set down the glass. "Um...friends that are dating?" she said. "It's so weird...'cuz it's Garrison. But," a huge smile spread across her face. "it's Garrison."

Lorna paused, trying to think of something nice to say about her friend's new boyfriend. "He's...slightly less irritating when we're teaching than usual?" Well and hot. But that was obvious to anyone with eyes. Possibly even to blind people. "You look happy." That was more genuine, because Marie did and that in and of itself was enough to earn Garrison points in Lorna's book. Maybe she'd even stop mentally referring to him as KiKi.

"KiKi," Marie repeated, oblivious to the fact that Lorna's hadn't intended to speak her muttered words. "Ah kinda like that. Maybe that's what Ah'll say the next time he calls me Beullah." She reached out for one of the other shot glasses, taking it without really thinking about it.

Lorna blushed. "You weren't supposed to hear that. Uh, yeah, I think it's kinda fun and cute, right? Chipper." She drained the rest of her sangria to cool the blood in her face and to give her mouth something else to do other than carelessly betraying her.

"Maybe Ah'm a telepath again and Ah 'heard' it instead of hearing it," Marie said with a shrug. "'sok, Ah won't tell Kiki you call him that. It'll be our little secret." The fact that Marie wasn't, and hadn't been, whispering probably wasn't doing much to reassure Lorna.

At least he wasn't here. Lorna glared anyway. "Only in my head. Not out loud. He's bigger than me. ...I need water. Water is needed. Do you need water?" Despite the fact that it looked and sounded like a lame dodge, it was entirely the product of Lorna's inability to focus on anything. She stood and nearly fell over her chair. She laughed. "I should get water."

"Ah could take 'im," Marie said, her words slurring together. "Water. Yes, water is the sacred liquid that keeps away the evil hangover god." She cocked her head, laughing lightly at Lorna's struggle to gain an upright position. "Laughing with you, not at you. Maybe."

Next time, Lorna thought muzzily, feeling like she'd made this vow before, next time she would not wear heels drinking. "Meanie. Do the last shot." Carefully, through clever use of clinging to the chair, she achieved something like balance. "Okay. Getting water. Back soon. Yes."

"Yessum," Marie said, obediently reaching out to take the final full shot glass and toss it back. As she watched Lorna stumble her way to the bar for water, she blearily wondered why they hadn't just had the waitress bring them water. Then she realized it would've been a lot less humorous.

Lorna reappeared several minutes later with two mostly full glasses of water and a damp spot on the top of her dress. "Betsy and Jean are by the bar. I'm scared." She giggled and tumbled back into her chair again. "Water?"

"Water!" Marie repeated, eagerly reaching out for the cup and gulping down a rather large sip. "Maybe they are coming up with new and nefarious ways to be...uh...tall. And psychic."

"Crazy and evil?" Lorna asked from within her water glass then raised her head, "but I guess that's everyone here, right? We should kick him out for not being part of the cool kids club."

"Him who?" Marie asked, a look of confusion on her face. "You mean Kiki?" She then drained the rest of her waterglass.

"No no. Nathan. He didn't go evil. He just had ghosts. Sure they were creepy but they weren't evil. They were helpful and nice and saving his assish. Should be thrown out. Not one of us." Lorna sipped her water, looked confused and switched to her sangria again, apparently having already assumed she'd done so.

Marie blinked slowly before nodding. "Yeah," she agreed, though she didn't quite know what she was agreeing to as she got distracted by Haller walking by. "Hey....you. What's your face. Who are you today? The one with the beer! Come here!" she called out, accompanied by frantic waving.

Jim paused, his glass halfway to his lips. A desperate glance to either side revealed no possibility of shielding from a very drunk, very friendly, and very strong Marie. He gave up. "It's Jim again," the telepath replied, secure in the knowledge that if his ribs snapped in an overenthusiastic hug Betsy could avenge his death.

Lorna grinned and reached out, just barely missing over balancing and falling out of her chair altogether. She caught his free hand instead and tugged him closer. "We think we should throw Nate out. He only had nice ghosts."

"Jemail was nice," Jim protested. The part of him that was David and inherently honest added, "In a way."

"I meant Jack," Lorna patted his hand like he was Davey and not Jim--though really, since this was Lorna and she was very drunk, it was doubtful that she even had a clue about the difference.

"Yes, Jack's a meanie," Marie said sagely. "So you count." She leaned back in her chair, grinning at him. "Plus, how could we throw you out? You inspired possession night! We should do this more often. The drinking and bonding part, not the possession part."

"I thought it was SOP. Have a bad mission, go to Harry's. Friend gets injured, go to Harry's. Get a bad papercut, go to Harry's. Or therapy. But booze has to happen first." Jim looked at his beer with some trepidation. "I'm afraid to get drunk. If the headvoices come out we could break the zoning laws."

Lorna's eyes narrowed, "I think that sounds like emo-muppetry. Don't you think it sounds like emo-muppetry, Marie?" Looking around, she located a waitress, "Peggie...no, Maggie! We need three shots! Of...something. What'd you make me do...rum? Rum!"

"Rum! There is never too much rum. Only too little," Marie said, the waitress rolling her eyes slightly as she took the order. "You," she said turning to Haller and poking him. "Are on your way to winning the emo-muppet award of the evening. First rule of possession night is, um, drink more. So," she paused as the waitress set the shots down on the table, "you have a lot of catching up to do."

Jim was about to demur, then saw what, despite all logic to the contrary, appeared to be his girlfriend engaging in an enthusiastic waltz with a mercenary. There was twirling. Of the mercenary.

The telepath stared for a moment, then pinched the bridge of his nose as his brain attempt to reorganize reality to assimilate this.

"Okay, let's try rum."


And with talk of emo-muppets, let’s cut over to where Jean and Nate are playing with their food before they get serious and make toasts to the past.

It was a useful way of measuring one's level of inebriation, Nathan reflected, pretzels dancing in interlocking spirals above his hand. He was managing to keep them steady, if not overly so.

"See, you're showing off, is what you're doing," Jean said, sliding into the booth opposite him. "It's the telekinetic's version of going 'neener, neener, I'm more sober than you are'." Although, since Jean also wasn't quite that drunk, yet, she reached out and wrapped her mind around one of the pretzels dancing in the middle of his spiral and, when he released it, had it trace the pattern as she worked it out. Then she ate it, just to be perverse.

Nathan rolled his eyes at her. "Making fun of my dancing pretzels? My dancing pretzels are the height of performance art."

"I am making fun of your dancing pretzels. You're very astute." She was at that funny stage of drunkenness where she used big words to prove that she still could and thus wasn't drunk.

"You know me. I am edumacated and all." Nathan let the pretzels sink back to the bowl, and refilled his glass from the bottle of tequila. "So. Enjoying this celebration of our various dysfunctions?"

"Apparently we're operating under the same rules as Girls' Night Out, and the emo-muppets have to do a shot, so even if the answer was 'no', the correct answer is 'yes'." Jean leaned her head on her hand, eyeing his tequila bottle. "But, I think, the answer is probably actually yes anyways. Catharsis or something. Good for the soul. So's vodka."

"Tequila is better." Nathan downed what was in his glass and refilled it again. He was making excellent headway on the bottle. "You know, no one's ever asked me why I have this thing about tequila."

"Tequila is vile and requires mixers," Jean replied, "and I'm seriously considering the wisdom of this but, ok, I'll bite." She leaned forward, aiming to look concerned and caring, even though her eyes weren't a hundred percent on the focusing thing. "Nate, I've got to ask." Her voice was a hushed whisper. "What's with the tequila?"

He leaned forward as well. "I said no one had asked," he whispered right back. "I didn't say I was planning to share." He leaned back, a tiny smirk playing on his lips. "And anyway, it doesn't need mixers. Whoever's been telling you that's been mis-educating you."

Jean stuck her tongue out at him. "I am not misinformed, nor miseducated. I have made my own, empirical studies on the matter and tequila is vile. Plus it leaves you with a worse hangover unless it's really expensive. And while I was doing my studies we could very rarely afford the expensive stuff. Also, the compromising situations always seem so much worse when there's been tequila involved."

"Askani used to tell me that tequila was vile, too," Nathan said, apparently casual. "We won't discuss what they drank in her time. She explained it to me once. Ew."

"The faux casual doesn't work on me, Nate." Jean cocked her head at him. "Plus there have been too many screwdrivers for me to make with the polite ignoring. Particularly on a night celebrating our evil sides. Well, not yours." She sighed. "I miss her, too, you know. Not the same, we weren't nearly as close, but..."

"I don't even dream about her anymore." The comment was inaudible, almost. He refilled his glass, his hand perfectly steady. "I saw her in Smichov, did I ever tell you that? Well, didn't see her, per se. Hallucinated her."

"You didn't, no. Do you want to talk about... well, any of it?"

He shrugged again with his good shoulder. "Not much to talk about. I was in a burning building, having... uh, difficulties. I saw her in the flames, telling me to get moving. Typical subconscious kick in the ass," he said carelessly. "It wasn't really her. She's gone."

"Didn't just mean Smichov, you know. I mean, you don't fit in tonight more than I don't fit in tonight, and me not fitting in ended up with me having a heart-to-heart with Betsy, of all people. Or the closest thing we could manage. So, I repeat, do you want to talk about any of it?"

"With Betsy? Oh, to have been a fly on that wall." Nathan raised his glass. "To my dear departed father. Has it really been a year?"

Jean raised the glass she'd been carrying around and realized it was empty. "Damn. Well, the man would have been a waste of good liquor. Half a second..." She waved to the waitress who nodded to her. "If it has, it's been a very, very long one."

"Hasn't it just?" Nathan drawled. "Though I must say, you're come out the year far better than you started, all things considered."

"Well, if we're going by a year from today, then you'd better freaking believe it."

"And a year from now, you'll be even farther from it all," Nathan said somewhat distantly. "You think anniversaries feel less heavy, the more the years go by?"

"Yes." She sighed. "Well, assuming you can stop adding new anniversaries on top of the old ones. May's never going to be an easy month for me, I think." Oh, good, here was her new drink.

Nathan downed his. "Anti-anniversaries, that's what we need. To celebrate a day when nothing's happened at all. Sound like a plan?"

"Do we have days when nothing's happened at all? I mean, individually, sure, maybe. Between us?" Jean waved a hand somewhat wildly to take in the collected crazies, both there at Harry's and back at the mansion.

"I bet you we could find one," Nathan persisted stubbornly. "And one's all it would take. It has symbolic value. Just like my tequila."

Jean eyed him, taking a drink from her glass. "See, you can't just say things like that about the tequila and not explain. 'S against the rules."

Nathan eyed her right back, then cracked a smile that was somehow more natural. "The first alcohol I ever drank," he said. "Believe it or not."

"Ahhhh." Jean leaned back, cradling the screwdriver. "And how old were you?"

"Seventeen. I had two days in Mexico City after an operation, before I had to report back in. My first... leave, I guess you'd call it." The smile grew. "Just two days. It felt like a whole lifetime. And there was a lot of tequila."

Jean laughed, some of her relief at the solidity of his smile bleeding into her amusement. "And yet you're still willing to drink the stuff. Must have been quite an experience."

"I was an obnoxious little destructive brat of a seventeen year-old. There was a very nice bar that was probably never the same thereafter."

"Man, am I ever glad that my seventeen year-old self and your seventeen year-old self never met. Although, I'd have been, um, ten when you were seventeen. Which would also have been scary."

Nathan just smiled and refilled his glass. "~To our younger selves,~" he said in Askani, raising it again. "Wouldn't they be shocked and appalled to see us now."

Wanda and Marie amaze the bar with their singing talents. Ok, maybe amaze is the wrong word…the important thing is that they are loud and have the perfect song choice to bring Haller in at the chorus.

There was always that moment during drunkenness, that sharp point of clarity when realization set in on how drunk someone really was. At this point in her life, Wanda had found only two acceptable solutions to that moment: stop drinking and buy a coffee or keep drinking until the moment died.

She finished off her drink and very carefully put the glass down, waving the waitress over. One finger held up before pointing down at her drink and while she waited, she started to hum under her breath.

Marie blinked as she saw Wanda order another drink and carefully held up one gloved finger as well, mimicking the older woman's motion. As Wanda started to hum, Marie squinted her eyes, as if doing so would help her hear better. A wide grin split her face and she clapped her hands together, proudly proclaiming "Ah know that one!"

"You do?" Wanda broken out into a grin and broke out into a louder hum. Marie had looked like she couldn't really hear the first time, so louder was better. Louder was always better. "It is a good song, one of the best for...situations like this, yes?"

"It's the one...with the words...and the melody," Marie said before trying to hum along with Wanda. She beamed when she managed to get a couple of the notes right, smiling proudly. "See? Told you Ah knew it."

"Yes, we like the words and the melody, yes we do. And drinking!" She broke out into a few lines, swaying in her seat a bit. "We should sing! Every celebration has singing, does it not? There was one time, in Germany, that singing kept me from jail...or did it get me nearly arrested..."

Marie cocked her head to one side, somehow managing to almost tip herself over. "Maybe both?" she suggested.

"Possibly," Wanda admitted, grinning as she watched Marie right herself. "Shall we stun everyone with our singing cap--capab...our singing. Just our singing."

Marie grinned, rising unsteadily to her feet and glancing around the bar. "Our voices will stun and amaze them. We gotta make sure to be loud so everyone can hear though."

She tapped herself on the chest and grinned. "Think we have a pair of healthy lungs, don't we?" Wanda asked, managing to get to her feet without too much trouble. Taking a deep breath, she nearly snorted before belting out, " I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind, there was something so pleasant about that place."

Marie joined in heartily, adding some hand motions to go with the lyrics. "There was something so pleasant about that place. Even your emotions had an echo in so much space.

" And when you're out there, without care, yeah, I was out of touch but it wasn't because I didn't know enough. I just knew too much," Wanda belted, one hand holding onto her pint of beer as if her life depended on it while the other one kept her from falling over.

"Does that make me crazy? Does that make me craaaazy? Does that make me crazy?" Marie thumped down into her seat as she lost balance, continuing to sing. "Possibly," Marie belted out through her giggles, pulling herself back into a standing position.

Spinning in a circle, Wanda nearly toppled over. "Probably!" she sang with a grin at the other woman. There were amused snorts of laughter from the people around them, which fed into the desire to keep singing. "And I hope that you are having the time of your life, but think twice, that's my only advice!"

"Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are," Marie crooned, slipping out of her shoes and making her way around the table to stand by Wanda. "Ha ha ha bless your soul. You really think you're in control?" she sang out, spreading her arms wide and joining in with a twirl of her own. An evil twinkle lit her eye as she spotted a certain tall somebody and she reached out to tug at Wanda's arm and pull her in his direction. "Well, Ah think you're craaaaaazy!!!!!!!"

Wanda's eyes lit up and she chortled an evil chortle. That certain tall somebody had been staring at them during the song and now that they were staring at him...as carefully as they could, they headed over to him, still singing, "I think you're crazy, I think you're crazy," she sang, trying not to laugh as they got closer to their target, pointing at him, "Just like me!"

There was, Jim realized as he blushed furiously under the weight of the women's combined attention, only one thing to do in this situation. The telepath pushed himself out of his chair, lay both hands very intentionally on the tabletop, and in an unabashedly erratic tenor launched into the last verse. "My heroes had the heart . . ."

When you were being serenaded by two drunk women in front of your friends in the middle of a bar, embracing the inner sixteen year old girl and her lack of any shame whatsoever was just common sense.

And I can die when I'm done.