Doreen & Julian: Roof Top Drunk

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Doreen finds Julian on the roof, hung over and passed out. She wakes him up, helps him hose down and tells him boys are stupid. All in the name of friendship.

Doreen was on the roof with Monkey Joe. It was easy to get up here and climbing and running around was second nature. Doreen showed no fear of edges or of wires or piping and moved on the roof like anyone else would walk around the ground. Generally when she was up here it was because she was in transit between trees or enjoying some jumping. But right now an odd scent was bothering her.

It was Julian…but with liquor. She detested the smell of liquor, as it reminded her of Daddy now. And how his mood was always sour whenever he came by or before he left.

Doreen found him passed out and her nose scrunched. “Julian…” she said, tapping him with her foot. “Wake up. You smell gross and stupid.”

'Oooh, my head,' Julian stirred slightly, "Huh?"

His eyes fluttered open, only to shut as he winced from the harsh daylight. "Oh, man...," he stretched, "What happened last night?"

“I dunno. You smell like booze, Julian,” Doreen said simply. She was not impressed by that at all. “Why were you drinking?”

Opening his eyes and squinting at Doreen, Julian cocked his head slightly, "Doreen? What are you doing in my room?"

“You’re on the roof,” Doreen said, “And you’re hung-over.”

"The roof...?" his eyes opened a little wider, looking around. Suddenly he was very, very high up. Grasping for any sort of support he found himself flailing off the couch, "OH!" He landed on the cold surface of the flier's platform, hearing the sound of a bottle as it rolled beneath the couch. "The fuck...?"

“Don’t ask me, I wasn’t the one drinking on the roof,” Doreen said, mostly devoid of pity. She didn’t like alcohol or the effect that it had on people or the smell. Monkey Joe was making clicking noises, stating he didn’t like the drink smell either.

The clicking sound was splitting his head in two, "Monkey Joe," he groaned, "could you please shut up." Eyes closed again, he slowly lifted himself back onto the damp couch. "So...okay, ow." His head hurt and his stomach felt like it has processing toxic waste. "I'm on the roof, I'm hung over...so I was probably drinking yesterday...what was yesterday? What is today?"

“Sunday,” Doreen said, “You smell worse than my Dad,” she said, looking down at him, “I was just up running around and then I smelled you.”

To be compared unfavorably to any aspect of Doreen's father turned Julian's stomach. Not enough to make him vomit, which it felt like he desperately needed to do, but enough to make him clutch his belly. "Sunday..." he sniffled, "oh gods, now I remember." The previous couple days came flooding back. The kiss on the balcony. Angel walking in. Her turning him away. At least Callie wasn't mad at him anymore. "Fuck, I'm such an ass."

“No, you’re just hung-over. Why were you drinking and why are you up here?” Doreen asked, her nose crinkled as she looked over at him. “You really need a bath or something. Ugh… I hate that smell!”

A wif of what Doreen was talking about hit Julian nostrils, then a thought hit him. "Oh damn, if you can smell me...there's no way I'm sneaking in by Kyle or any of the other ferals." He looked around the platform, his head still ringing from the brilliant light of day. A plan began to form as he remembered why he'd been drinking in the first place. "Okay. Okay, can you meet me down on the lawn?" He stood up and headed for the edge of the platform.

“Julian, anyone could smell you right now,” Doreen said and shook her head, “Sure, I’ll meet you down there,” Doreen said, taking a few steps back and then taking a running leap off the roof. It was a long way down, but not far enough to break her bones, she was built to take it. And she loved the feeling of the jump. She might not have been able to fly, but it was the next best thing.

“I’m on the lawn!”

Seconds later, Julian's "Ahhh!" trailed her, followed by his body bouncing off the damp ground, leaving a human shaped indentation in the green turf.

Doreen’s eyes widened and she ran over, “Julian! You can’t jump off the roof, you’re not built to take it! Are you okay!? Do you need me to get one of the doctors?”

Slowly, his thumb popped up into the 'I'm okay' sign. "Ugh, okay, note to self, hangover dampens telekinesis." The shield he'd tossed up hadn't appeared until the last second, leaving him more than a little aware of how close to dying he'd just been. Julian sat up and looked at Doreen, "Help me up?"

Doreen pulled him up easily. The small girl had more muscle than she normally let on, “You shouldn’t have done that! You could’ve been flattened. I can take hitting the ground from that high up. You can’t!”

"Telekinetic shields are a wonderful thing, Dori," Julian smiled and picked some grass from his teeth. "That's the fortieth time I've done that...I think. Anyway, okay...now for step two of my master plan to get clean." He started in the direction of the pool.

Doreen watched him go in that direction and traded a look with Monkey Joe, “That’s not going to work. It’s only going to make you smell like both chlorine and booze.”

Stopping in mid step, Julian spun around- his master plan blown. "Oh. Well, do you have a better idea?"

“You’ll need to change your clothes and wash somewhere with soap. Since you don’t do it all the time it shouldn’t be too hard,” Doreen said with a shrug. “If you end up doing it all the time it seeps into your clothes and it doesn’t come out of your skin.

It was an unpleasant thought, "Doreen, have you ever known me to drink before?" It irked him that she was treating him this way- after all, he was not her father.

“No, I’m just saying what happens,” Doreen said. Daddy didn’t used to drink either, alcohol was a touchy subject with her. “You haven’t, so you just have to ditch your clothes and use some soap. Trust me.”

"That seems easy enough." The fact that his room was closer from the platform than the north lawn suddenly dawned on him. "Okay, drinking may, in fact, impair judgment. Any thoughts on how I can get past any sniffers inside?"

Doreen shrugged, “I’d just climb. I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry you up there though.”

"And I'm not much of a climber," with a sigh he resigned himself to the only course of action that seemed left open to him. Then another idea dawned on him. "Okay...so, let's say you were to go inside and get my soap...and there's a hose behind the garage...I could spray myself down and come back inside without anyone being any the wiser, right?"

Doreen’s nose wrinkled and she took a step back, “As long as I don’t have to be the one to hose you down,” Doreen said. Friends or not, that was going a bit too far. “Wait here,” she said with a sigh and went inside. He was getting the girliest, frilliest soap she could possibly think of.

Julian headed to the back of the garage, turning on the hose and stripping down to his boxers. The water was cold, but he gave himself a quick rinse anyway, the shock sending a surge of much needed adrenaline into his system and purging some of the toxins.

A bar of soft rose soap hit him in the back of the head. Followed by lavender cream and something that smelled cinnamon rolls. “I have more if you need it!” The voice suddenly sounded very cheerful as it was followed by a bomb in the form of strawberry scented body wash. “You’ll need clean clothes too.”

Shutting the water off, Julian worked up a lather with the sweet smelling body wash- wondering for a moment where she'd gotten it. "Okay, so I'll need new clothes...unless I had a towel and had just gone for a swim. Which may mean I do need to take a dip." His mind was starting to make his head hurt again. "Ow."

“You should’ve thought about that when you had me go inside. I’m not going to go get your clothes,” Doreen said simply. “You don’t smell as bad anymore, just like hosewater now.”

He picked up the hose and turned on the water again, pausing before he handed it to Doreen. "Here, give me a quick spray then. I just need to get clean enough to go inside- so hosewater scent will have to do."

She was not looking away from him and reached for the hose, “Fine, just turn around. Why were you drinking anyway?”

"Um..." he had to think for a moment to remember what had been mixed into the bottle- which he'd also have to dispose of. "Captain Morgan and Coke'a'Cola- which was not as good as I thought it'd be." The first cold spray of water hit him, making him yelp. "Careful where you're spraying that."

“I’m not looking at you right now,” Doreen said and kept randomly spraying the hose, “And that sounds disgusting.”

"It really was," satisfied with being rinsed off, Julian moved to take the hose back. "Do I smell okay now?"

Doreen turned around so she didn’t get an eyeful of anything and to take a bit off of the smell. She shrugged, “Now you smell like someone who washed themselves off with a hose after sleeping on the roof.”

"Wonder why that might be?" Julian said with a smile, toweling off his legs and putting his jeans back on. "You okay?" he could tell she was aggravated by the situation, but she hadn't run off to tell anyone yet, so that was good.

“I’m fine. You shouldn’t have been drinking,” Doreen said firmly.

He paused, slinging his shirt over his shoulders, "You're absolutely right." He took a few steps towards her, templing his fingers together. "Believe me, I'm paying for it in here," he said with a wince and a finger coming up to his temple.

“Well, at least you aren’t screaming at everyone,” Doreen said.

"Your dad did that?" he cocked his head slightly in concern.

“Mostly at me and mom,” Doreen said with a shrug, “Then he moved out.”

This wasn't how he would have preferred Doreen to know, "I'm not your dad, Dori and I'm not going to drink like that again...it was...yesterday...just a bad day."

“I know you’re not. You don’t smell like scotch,” Doreen said with a shrug. It wasn’t a topic she was overly keen on discussing, “What happened?”

It wasn't a topic he was overly keen to discuss either, but he owed her that much. "I think Angel broke up with me."

“What? Why? Because you didn’t take her to prom?” Doreen asked, shocked.

"Taking Esme was her idea actually. Well, technically it was Manuel's, but she told me to do it, so...no." He didn't want to have to play back through the past forty-eight hours, but he didn't really have anyone else to talk to. "Esme kissed me on prom night...Angel walked in and saw us. She's not talking to me right now."

Doreen rolled her eyes, “That was really stupid, I mean, I’m sure we can fix it. But it was still really stupid.”

"I didn't say I kissed her back! I didn't want to kiss her..." he hesitated, "I think." Wincing as his head hurt worse than ever Julian dropped to the grassy ground. "Fuck my life."

“Did you push her away? If you didn’t you kinda did kiss her,” Doreen said, ignoring the swearing.

He wanted to tell her that he would have, that Esme had overpowered his will and forced him into it. But Julian felt terrible about the entire incident and deep down he knew part of himself was attracted to Esme. "No...I guess...no."

“Argh! Boys are dumb,” Doreen shook her head, “This is going to be hard, you know.”

"Dude, you know what, she's better off without me," Julian stood up, mussing his hair with his already damp shirt. His face shifted from hung-over to crestfallen.

“Yeah right. Why don’t you try apologizing first and we’ll go from there,” Doreen said with a shrug, “At least you don’t smell so much like booze anymore. Where did you get it anyway?”

'She'll kill you if you snitch,' "Would you believe I don't remember?" Julian frowned and fell back against the grass. "I don't think apologizing is going to help Doreen. I already tried it and she didn't much care to hear it."

Doreen let out a sigh, an older sister sigh that sounded ludicrous with how high her voice was and how tiny she seemed, “I really don’t want to get you in trouble, but the drinking was wrong. And maybe you just have to try anyway. People say they’re sorry a lot when they don’t mean it. Maybe you need to say it with your actions instead.”

It was at that moment he realized how much he really liked Angelica. "Yeah, maybe...worth a shot at least, right? And don't worry, Dori...I'm not gunna drink again...at least not like that- a little is okay, right?"

“I guess so. I won’t touch the stuff at all. And yeah, it is worth a shot. You’re not going to know if you don’t try,” Doreen said.

He stood up, sniffling and holding back tears. He wasn't going to wuss out now- not in front of Doreen. "Okay, I'll see what I can do...and if it doesn't work out, I think Inez is still interested." Julian gave a cocky smile. They started toward the smoker's porch, but before the got there, Julian put a hand on her shoulder and spun her toward him. "Hey, Dee...we cool?"

Doreen smiled, “Yeah. I’m sorry. I just really don’t like that smell. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you,” she said.

Julian returned the smile and offered her a hug, "You're pretty awesome, you know that Dori? Thank you."

Doreen took the hug, figuring a friend who spent the night on the roof needed a bit of love. It was why she hadn’t left him there even as the smell of alcohol razed every hair on her tail, “It’s okay. I mean, you’d help me out if I was in a spot, right? We’re friends. It’s what friends do.”