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tampered2007-07-20 10:31 pm
glock30.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-07-20 10:31 pm
Log; Complete
When; July 20 - night ; Daemon Day
Rating; PG-13 for drunk times (like you didn't see that one coming), language, cheese, and possible animal cruelty
Characters; Kitty & Fayecrossing timezones until the end.
Summary; How many drunk daemons does it take to filter the Fountain?
Log;
In the long run, Faye would probably end up deciding that this was one of her less than brilliant schemes. She’d had plenty of them in her long history of conning and gambling and bounty hunting, but there was a distinct finesse to this one that put all her previous ideas to shame. It could’ve been the fact that this was The City, so it liked being called, and, after all, Faye had never been privileged enough to have a physical manifestation of her soul either digging its annoying little claws into her shoulder or circling her head like it was waiting for the perfect opportunity to drop a bomb on her forehead.
Well. It had been. Up until about an hour ago. When Faye decided that, in order for this scheme to work, she needed to be piss drunk. Which she was. Piss drunk, that is. Probably more piss drunk than she had been since that day with the eggs however long ago, not that she kept tabs on days she woke up with Kitty Jones and the urge to vomit since, really, the complications from that coupling were just too disturbing to think about.
But, back to the daemon, which was, sad to say, belly up on the sidewalk in front of her. Still feeling a bit awkward around it, the only thing Faye could really do was come to a stop—a bit difficult since the process of Faye Valentine stopping while drunk was something like a freight train trying to completely halt after going however fast it was freight trains went. After she stumbled to a speed that was enough for balance, she touched the bird’s wing with the toe of her boot. Looking at Kitty with glassy eyes and a feeling that she was looking at something beyond Kitty, Faye asked, “Is it dead?”
As if to answer her question, however, the little thing on the sidewalk suddenly shuddered like it had just seen the worst of all pornographic images and flew up again, poking little holes into Faye’s tweed jacket and fluttering its wings annoyingly against her hat. She turned back to Kitty with a scowl that kind of felt like she might be missing her upper lip and the bottom of her nose, saying, “Did I say it could-should do that, Jonesy?”
--
Kitty was a little occupied at the moment. Her eyes were fixed on her own daemon - or as she had come to amicably call it, her big, sodding cat - which had shown up early that morning and followed her ever since, with less subtlety than the worst of stalkers. Like most City residents it had stayed fixed in its form, a cougar, but as she looked at it now she was convinced it was beginning to turn a little green. What's more, it was swaying from side-to-side. That could be put down to Kitty's blurred vision, of course, but add to that the fact that the creature's purr now sounded less like a motor engine and more like a broken motor engine... and it was obvious the cat was drunk.
Bugger. Weren't there laws against this sort of thing?
She reassured herself that those kinds of laws didn't apply in the City - and anyway, it wasn't an animal, it was a soul - and turned round to see that Faye's magpie had fallen over. Again.
"No. No, you didn't say it could. Sure you didn't," she reassured her friend in a somewhat-slurred manner, blinking slowly as the bird flapped its wings haphazardly. Meanwhile, the cougar staggered and almost fell over itself in the corner of her eye. Luckily the City square wasn't too busy at the moment with bystanders who might try and interfere. "That," she raised a slightly wobbling finger to gesture at the bird, "is a fragrant-- flagrant -- flout of discipline."
Again, she blinked. Kitty knew she should be relishing this experience, as it had been so long since she'd done anything like it, but relishing was one of the things that was beyond her now. Along with 'articulate speech' and 'coherent thought streams'. The many varied and miraculous affects of inebriation were indeed a sight to behold.
She tugged at Faye's arm like some kind of petulant child. "Now, listen, this is a great song! Listen!" ...Nothing followed the 'listen' for a few moments, because Kitty was struggling to remember the words. Eventually she took in a deep breath... and immediately regretted it, as the sudden intake of somewhat-chilly night air tickled the back of her throat, making her cough. She paused, shaking her head, and tried again.
"It was on the good ship Venus, by Christ you should have seen us..."
--
Faye’s brain was still trying to sort through the bird on her shoulder, the fact that she had just nearly tripped over Kitty’s stupid animal, and what Kitty was saying to her. Something about perfume? She answered her in her mind: ‘Why, yes, my perfume is nice, isn’t it’—but her mouth was unable to form the words until she realized just what it was that Kitty was doing, saying, trying to say.
It became obvious after a few seconds that Kitty was trying to sing, though it really just sounded like someone with a severe amount of cotton balls shoved in their mouth was trying to moan with concern. To Faye’s ears, it sounded something like, “On raaar rip reenus, byyyy bliiiist oo rould aaaaabe eeen sss.” And Faye was sure that was a language she’d never heard, drunk, sober, or otherwise.
For a moment she considered asking the bird on her shoulder, the bird that was ruining her favorite jacket, but then she remember that she had just now decided she wasn’t speaking to it. For ruining her jacket. And for making her bend down to pick her fine-feathered friend up off of the sidewalk before he was squished by passers-by, thereby smiting out both their bright little lights.
She adjusted her hat and gave Kitty that same wobbly look, grabbing onto the other girl’s arm as she felt the world start to tilt like a carnival ride. Stupid carnivals. She wanted some cotton candy. Did the City have that? It should. She shook her head and brought herself back to zero, accidentally knocking Maggie when she brought her hand up to rub her eyes. The bird took off, having nearly fallen asleep on her shoulder and startled upon being woken, making some sort of noise at her that sounded like cursing.
When it came back down, it sat on her head, trying to ruin her hat. Faye ignored it, squeezing Kitty’s arm and shaking it a bit ridiculously, “That’s not singing! Sounds like you’re, you’re… swim-swimming.” This gave her pause. She could see the fountain from where they were standing, all flashing, polychromatic lights and colors, decidedly spectacular to her hazy brain for now, though she had a feeling it wouldn’t be so great after a while. She shook her head again, getting back to the subject at hand. “Sing’t raight and then let’s get in the fountain.”
--
"The figurehead was a whore in bed, and the mast was a mammoth—" And just before half the City could be enlightened as to exactly the type of craftsmanship that had gone into the ship in question, Faye interrupted her. "What?" Swimming? Where was the water? Was there a flood? Kitty found herself looking around her frantically, and then squinting up at the sky to check there weren't any clouds on the horizon. Faye sounded like she had no idea of what she was talking about. Kitty, having no concept of the whole pot-kettle analogy, shook her head in disappointment and sighed affectionately - that Valentine was a sweet girl, if not too bright.
She ducked a bit as the bird flapped around, and was glad that her own animal didn't have the power of flight. That'd be weird. Imagine if cats could fly... "Mice'd be wiped out," she muttered under her breath, not realising or caring that she was actually speaking her mind. Kitty always spoke her mind, obviously, though not usually to such a literal degree.
"The captain of this lugger," she attempted to sing again as they staggered in the direction of some big, flashing lights - which always a good decision when picking where to walk, unless you were on your deathbed. "He was a dirty bugger..."
Kitty lost her place, her tongue stumbling over the next line just as she stumbled over a stone on the pavement that probably didn't even exit. To steady herself she grabbed Faye by the shoulder, and noticed her big-dog-or-cat-whatever thing was reeling too, a little behind them. Whoops. She tried to stand up straight, using Faye for support. She meant to say 'sorry', but it probably came out as 'worry', or even 'lorry', neither of which conveyed quite the same message she had originally intended.
"If there's singing, there should be dancing," she decided the best course of action now was for the conversation to go down a completely different route, and so she grabbed Faye's arms, starting to spin round and round. "It's like a party. With a bird and a cat and a fountain and a lorry and a..."
--
Kitty was saying something--as per usual—and Faye wasn’t paying any attention—as per usual. Something about mice, apparently, which made Faye look away even quicker, her head nearly banging into Maggie’s beak and poking her very own eye out in the process, as the bird had settled again on her shoulder, this time a bit more careful of tweed and talons in general.
But Faye had little time to ponder over Kitty’s most recent stroke of not-exactly-genius as the other girl opened her big, fat mouth again and started singing. Far be it from Faye to be surprised anymore when it came to Kitty Jones, she whipped her head back around to look at her. Kitty didn’t exactly have a bad voice, per se. No, not bad at all. It was more like… a choir of angels had had their vocal chords ripped out and replaced with motorbikes that wailed whenever they passed Go.
Worst of all, now Kitty was grabbing onto her—no, now Kitty was swinging her around. Despite the skirt, Faye was not a rag doll of Kitty’s childhood days gone past. “If there’s gonna be dancining,” Faye slurred, listening and feeling Maggie take off for his own safety, not that he could fly straight, “then I’d like’a par-ner that want—will not spin me like’a top. ‘M not a spinner.”
And Faye wasn’t a spinner. Faye liked to dance, sure. She liked to dance when she didn’t see three Kitty’s—her worst nightmare—in front of her face, spinning too. She liked to dance when she didn’t have a bird yelling at her and a big cat—dog?—yelling at Kitty and so much noise. And… hello sweet, sweet pavement.
Except the pavement never came, one arm thrown around Kitty’s neck for Faye to brace herself, the other hand clutched in Kitty’s shirt so she didn’t fall forward anymore. Mock-headlock, so to speak, but that didn’t make Faye’s head or stomach feel any better. When Maggie crash landed again, this time propped up against Faye’s boot with a wing throw open as if to say ‘Oy vey,’ Faye raised her head and said, “For all the lorries in th’City, Jones, you’re making Maggie dizzy.”
--
What was that? Spinning? Winning? Top, block, rock? "'Course you're not a winning rock," she hoped that was what Faye had said, as they continued to totter around in a completely graceless circle. "Rocks can't enter the lottery, can they?" In-between the hazy background noises of the place, of which Faye's occasional shrieking was one of them, Kitty could hear her daemon... singing? Huh. Looked like the thing had picked up some of her more cultured talents. Though it didn't make them sound culture as it yowled "frigging in the rigging, there was fuck all else to do" for all to hear.
"Never thought I'd see a cat—oof," she muttered. Now, Kitty had probably never seen a cat 'oof' either, but that hadn't been what she had planned to say. That had come out when she suddenly found Faye ramming into her chest like some kind of deranged bull. And she wasn't even wearing red today. Her stomach flipped in protest at the sudden contact, and in protest to that a couple of hundred sharp knives seemed to stab their way into her brain. It was like the ultimate hangover the morning after, except this was still the evening current. Saying she didn't feel good was an understatement.
She probably said something along the lines of 'bollocks' or 'fuck', or even simply 'urg' if she was feeling especially creative, but words aside she staggered back a little, continuing to cling on to the other woman, quite unable to let go. They were spinning still, she realised, and she couldn't stop. It was like the carousel ride from hell, way scarier than that stupid apocalypse thing they had up somewhere else in the City. So tacky. Staggering round and round in a square with a bounty hunter in a hat was far more traumatising, particularly when she was having to watch carefully where she put her feet to make sure she didn't stamp on the other woman's soul.
"This... is... really... weird..." Kitty managed to spit out as they continued to circle - ever the most constructive of girls.
--
Weird? Weird? They had animals circling their feet and heads—animals singing--and all Kitty’s drunk imagination could come up with was that this was ‘weird.’ Not that Faye could’ve come up with something better, really, but Kitty didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t like Faye was so drunk she was speaking her mind, literally, every five seconds a light bulb so much as flashed in it, but Kitty had never really had much self-control to begin with.
She realized, belatedly, that they were a lot closer to the fountain than Faye had anticipated. Apparently wide, sweeping turns and spins and Kitty stepping on her foot and almost stepping on her daemon were enough to gravitate them toward something that was shiny and splashing. Of course, that could have just been Maggie leading them toward it, since he seemed to have an affinity for anything that was particularly shiny. Maybe he liked splashing too.
Faye, though, had suddenly realized that Maggie was nowhere to be found. For a moment she considered checking the sole of Kitty’s shoe for him, but she still seemed to be alive so she didn’t think he was dead. That bucking fird--fucking bird--was worth more trouble than he was worth and—
Unexpectedly, so quickly that it seized her without decency or control, Faye felt dizzy. Dizzier than from spinning, dizzier than from all that rum and her tequila chaser, dizzier than from being sick. Sick, she also felt sick. This was all Maggie’s fault. Faye stopped Kitty dancing by completely halting her body, standing at the edge of the fountain and looking like she might like to use it as a giant toilet bowl.
Faye looked at the fountain and thought about life. Oh, life. Wonderful life. How sweet thy sound. Something like that. But just as suddenly as she had thought abut life and all its splendors, she suddenly realized that she didn’t want to go swimming anymore. Faye wanted to throw up. And she had a good idea why, and, looking around, she found it. Maggie, below one of the closer buildings, wings thrown back lackadaisically, beak parted, bump-on-head-forming, man down.
The sort of thoughts she had after seeing this were simple: Stupid. Bird. Laugh. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Despite being dizzy, Faye did laugh. Faye laughed so hard that she had to hold onto Kitty again to keep herself upright, throwing one arm around the other girl’s shoulder and burying her face in the opposite one, laughing so hard she didn’t realize or care that they were practically hugging.
And then, just as suddenly as life and the fountain and Maggie, Faye threw up. She threw up in the fountain. Not ‘in’ as in ‘Faye leaned over and threw up like a lady into the fountain.’ ‘In’ as in ‘Faye pitched forward, lightheaded, and fell in the fountain, where she then threw up.’
--
To start with, Faye looked confused. That really wasn't unusual, in fact it was almost common, so Kitty wasn't concerned. The next moment, the woman looked sick. Again, Kitty didn't feel a huge bubble of anxiety well up within her. They were drunk, and even her daemon was turning green - it was nothing special. Then Faye hugged her. It was at that point Kitty realised that either the world was ending, or something was seriously, seriously wrong with Faye.
"You all right?" The question seemed a sensible, logical one when she started to ask it, but in the time it took for her to go from 'you' to 'right', Faye went from 'shoulder' to 'fountain' to 'puke'. Not such a graceful transition, and not particularly attractive either, and so Kitty sat there completely dumbstruck. She was tempted to pinch herself to check if she was dreaming, but found this was rather like a train-wreck. She simply couldn't look away.
...All right, that was an exaggeration. Kitty did look away, and fast, the moment she saw the contents of Faye's stomach. The two of them were close, but there were some levels even their friendship didn't reach, and vomit was one of them. She doubted bile was the foundation of any healthy relationship, unless they'd met through Bulimics Anonymous. Still slightly gob smacked, she tore her gaze away, and noticed the crumpled little heap of feathers by the base of a building wall. The magpie looked like a thoroughly distressed dishcloth.
Ignoring the sounds of retching and heaving behind her, Kitty made her way to the bird, and gingerly poked it with one foot. "Is it... dead?" She poked it again, and noticed Faye gagged particularly loudly behind her. Whoops. It seemed every action prompted a reaction from Faye over in the fountain. Tricky things, materialized souls. As if in agreement, Maggie suddenly coughed - as much as birds can cough - sounding like an ancient chain-smoker who had just rubbed their throat down with sandpaper. Satisfied that there was life in the old bird yet, Kitty returned to her friend in the fountain.
She stood there for a moment, watching as Faye slumped helplessly in the water, and as the two animals seemed to start spinning helplessly (where had they gotten that idea?), and as the night lights of the City seemed to sparkle rather too brightly to be polite. Then her legs started to buckle - and at first she thought it was an after-effect of the so-called dancing, but then she began to realise it was something else entirely. Kitty was laughing. Hysterically. And she couldn't seem to stop. Sinking down to her knees she laughed and laughed until it was hard to breathe. The few words that one could make out - 'bird', 'lightweight', 'shim-shimmererery-shim-dee-do', 'lorry' - were lost in an endless stream of giggles, whilst she reached out with a shaking hand to pat Faye on the back.
--
When Faye came around, she noticed two things. One, that she had passed out in the first place. Faye was not accustomed to passing out unless she was either A) passing out with something warm and sometimes snuggly, B) passing out on a floor, or C) not passing out at all. So the fact that she had actually just woken up from passing out was enough of a shock in and of itself, and she really didn’t need the second part of the equation.
However, life—glory be and all that—was sometimes funny. And it gave her that second part because, Two, Faye was wet, and clearly that was something all important and impossible to get past otherwise. Correction, too, she realized, since she wasn’t just wet, she was soaked. Her hat was floating around one of the lights near the lip of the fountain, and her clothes—the nice jacket, the pretty skirt and top, and her stockings—were sticking to her like glue.
And, of course, Kitty was laughing, but Faye couldn’t bring herself to do so anymore. She didn’t even feel drunk now, just sick. Sick and miserable and cold, and she had a feeling that when Maggie came around, too, he’d laugh at her as well. Faye had been laughed at by plenty of people before in her life, but she’d never been laughed at by a bird she should’ve shot and eaten. It only got worse when Kitty sank down in front of her, laughing harder, their daemons doing some weird sort of jig whenever Faye tried to look at them.
It was at that point in time that Faye—sober is as sober does and twice as sick to her stomach—realized the hilarity of the situation. She wobbled to her feet, since walking was an impossibility not yet ready to be breached, and leaned against the edge of the fountain, her arms shaking as she started to crack up, too. Trying to climb out of the pool herself seemed a little fruitless, so she grabbed Kitty again, still laughing.
By the time she got her arms around the taller girl’s neck, she was crying. When was the last time she’d laughed this hard? A month? A year? Half a century? It didn’t matter. She was laughing so hard that she didn’t even realize she was hugging Kitty, arms tight around her shoulders, in her still-drunk mind still somehow trying to convey… well, trying to convey things better left unsaid. The past was the past, wasn’t it? She’d said that herself. Time to let matters die.
And, really, it was a lot easier to let them do so when losing your balance and falling backward. Kitty was her best friend, after all, the only one she could remember having. Drunk partner in crime, loyal follower throughout the worlds. And what one monkey does… well, Kitty would just have to follow. Even if that meant getting a little damp.
--
When she felt Faye crying on her shoulder, for some strange reason, Kitty started to cry too. In fact, she started to sob. In a spilt second she went from laughing to still laughing but with thick, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. And her arms went from hanging limply at her sides to wrapped around the other woman, clinging tightly. There was crying and hugging and vomit and she couldn't help but laugh through it all. The last time she'd been this physically close to Faye had probably been when the other woman had punched her in the face, and now... now things seemed to be getting better, wounds that apparently only vomit could heal were mending faster than you could say 'drunk'.
It didn't even matter that they were falling back into the fountain. It didn't matter that it hurt more than a little as Kitty hit the ground. It didn't matter that the damp was seeping swiftly into her new boots, and-- all right, that did matter, but it mattered very little in the overall scheme of things. Kitty lay flat in the shimmering water and peered down at her body as it stretched out in front of her, watching it float. She splashed at the ripples that travelled outwards as both she and Faye continued to shake with mirth.
Beyond her feet she could see their daemons wobble into view, and heard slight splashes as her cat-dog-thing... cougar, that was it... walked into the fountain. Maggie was perched unceremoniously on the larger daemon's head, apparently recovered from its hundredth near-death experience in the last hour. "Bird's in the water - we're in a birdbath," she muttered, and that only made her snigger once again. The cat lay down at their feet, and still Kitty continued to laugh, and she had absolutely no idea when she was going to be able to stop - if ever.
"We make this place fun," she managed to splutter out in-between her hysterics. And she knew, of course, that that was a terrific understatement. Fun didn't even begin to cover this. Vomit and all.
--
Rating; PG-13 for drunk times (like you didn't see that one coming), language, cheese, and possible animal cruelty
Characters; Kitty & Faye
Summary; How many drunk daemons does it take to filter the Fountain?
Log;
In the long run, Faye would probably end up deciding that this was one of her less than brilliant schemes. She’d had plenty of them in her long history of conning and gambling and bounty hunting, but there was a distinct finesse to this one that put all her previous ideas to shame. It could’ve been the fact that this was The City, so it liked being called, and, after all, Faye had never been privileged enough to have a physical manifestation of her soul either digging its annoying little claws into her shoulder or circling her head like it was waiting for the perfect opportunity to drop a bomb on her forehead.
Well. It had been. Up until about an hour ago. When Faye decided that, in order for this scheme to work, she needed to be piss drunk. Which she was. Piss drunk, that is. Probably more piss drunk than she had been since that day with the eggs however long ago, not that she kept tabs on days she woke up with Kitty Jones and the urge to vomit since, really, the complications from that coupling were just too disturbing to think about.
But, back to the daemon, which was, sad to say, belly up on the sidewalk in front of her. Still feeling a bit awkward around it, the only thing Faye could really do was come to a stop—a bit difficult since the process of Faye Valentine stopping while drunk was something like a freight train trying to completely halt after going however fast it was freight trains went. After she stumbled to a speed that was enough for balance, she touched the bird’s wing with the toe of her boot. Looking at Kitty with glassy eyes and a feeling that she was looking at something beyond Kitty, Faye asked, “Is it dead?”
As if to answer her question, however, the little thing on the sidewalk suddenly shuddered like it had just seen the worst of all pornographic images and flew up again, poking little holes into Faye’s tweed jacket and fluttering its wings annoyingly against her hat. She turned back to Kitty with a scowl that kind of felt like she might be missing her upper lip and the bottom of her nose, saying, “Did I say it could-should do that, Jonesy?”
--
Kitty was a little occupied at the moment. Her eyes were fixed on her own daemon - or as she had come to amicably call it, her big, sodding cat - which had shown up early that morning and followed her ever since, with less subtlety than the worst of stalkers. Like most City residents it had stayed fixed in its form, a cougar, but as she looked at it now she was convinced it was beginning to turn a little green. What's more, it was swaying from side-to-side. That could be put down to Kitty's blurred vision, of course, but add to that the fact that the creature's purr now sounded less like a motor engine and more like a broken motor engine... and it was obvious the cat was drunk.
Bugger. Weren't there laws against this sort of thing?
She reassured herself that those kinds of laws didn't apply in the City - and anyway, it wasn't an animal, it was a soul - and turned round to see that Faye's magpie had fallen over. Again.
"No. No, you didn't say it could. Sure you didn't," she reassured her friend in a somewhat-slurred manner, blinking slowly as the bird flapped its wings haphazardly. Meanwhile, the cougar staggered and almost fell over itself in the corner of her eye. Luckily the City square wasn't too busy at the moment with bystanders who might try and interfere. "That," she raised a slightly wobbling finger to gesture at the bird, "is a fragrant-- flagrant -- flout of discipline."
Again, she blinked. Kitty knew she should be relishing this experience, as it had been so long since she'd done anything like it, but relishing was one of the things that was beyond her now. Along with 'articulate speech' and 'coherent thought streams'. The many varied and miraculous affects of inebriation were indeed a sight to behold.
She tugged at Faye's arm like some kind of petulant child. "Now, listen, this is a great song! Listen!" ...Nothing followed the 'listen' for a few moments, because Kitty was struggling to remember the words. Eventually she took in a deep breath... and immediately regretted it, as the sudden intake of somewhat-chilly night air tickled the back of her throat, making her cough. She paused, shaking her head, and tried again.
"It was on the good ship Venus, by Christ you should have seen us..."
--
Faye’s brain was still trying to sort through the bird on her shoulder, the fact that she had just nearly tripped over Kitty’s stupid animal, and what Kitty was saying to her. Something about perfume? She answered her in her mind: ‘Why, yes, my perfume is nice, isn’t it’—but her mouth was unable to form the words until she realized just what it was that Kitty was doing, saying, trying to say.
It became obvious after a few seconds that Kitty was trying to sing, though it really just sounded like someone with a severe amount of cotton balls shoved in their mouth was trying to moan with concern. To Faye’s ears, it sounded something like, “On raaar rip reenus, byyyy bliiiist oo rould aaaaabe eeen sss.” And Faye was sure that was a language she’d never heard, drunk, sober, or otherwise.
For a moment she considered asking the bird on her shoulder, the bird that was ruining her favorite jacket, but then she remember that she had just now decided she wasn’t speaking to it. For ruining her jacket. And for making her bend down to pick her fine-feathered friend up off of the sidewalk before he was squished by passers-by, thereby smiting out both their bright little lights.
She adjusted her hat and gave Kitty that same wobbly look, grabbing onto the other girl’s arm as she felt the world start to tilt like a carnival ride. Stupid carnivals. She wanted some cotton candy. Did the City have that? It should. She shook her head and brought herself back to zero, accidentally knocking Maggie when she brought her hand up to rub her eyes. The bird took off, having nearly fallen asleep on her shoulder and startled upon being woken, making some sort of noise at her that sounded like cursing.
When it came back down, it sat on her head, trying to ruin her hat. Faye ignored it, squeezing Kitty’s arm and shaking it a bit ridiculously, “That’s not singing! Sounds like you’re, you’re… swim-swimming.” This gave her pause. She could see the fountain from where they were standing, all flashing, polychromatic lights and colors, decidedly spectacular to her hazy brain for now, though she had a feeling it wouldn’t be so great after a while. She shook her head again, getting back to the subject at hand. “Sing’t raight and then let’s get in the fountain.”
--
"The figurehead was a whore in bed, and the mast was a mammoth—" And just before half the City could be enlightened as to exactly the type of craftsmanship that had gone into the ship in question, Faye interrupted her. "What?" Swimming? Where was the water? Was there a flood? Kitty found herself looking around her frantically, and then squinting up at the sky to check there weren't any clouds on the horizon. Faye sounded like she had no idea of what she was talking about. Kitty, having no concept of the whole pot-kettle analogy, shook her head in disappointment and sighed affectionately - that Valentine was a sweet girl, if not too bright.
She ducked a bit as the bird flapped around, and was glad that her own animal didn't have the power of flight. That'd be weird. Imagine if cats could fly... "Mice'd be wiped out," she muttered under her breath, not realising or caring that she was actually speaking her mind. Kitty always spoke her mind, obviously, though not usually to such a literal degree.
"The captain of this lugger," she attempted to sing again as they staggered in the direction of some big, flashing lights - which always a good decision when picking where to walk, unless you were on your deathbed. "He was a dirty bugger..."
Kitty lost her place, her tongue stumbling over the next line just as she stumbled over a stone on the pavement that probably didn't even exit. To steady herself she grabbed Faye by the shoulder, and noticed her big-dog-or-cat-whatever thing was reeling too, a little behind them. Whoops. She tried to stand up straight, using Faye for support. She meant to say 'sorry', but it probably came out as 'worry', or even 'lorry', neither of which conveyed quite the same message she had originally intended.
"If there's singing, there should be dancing," she decided the best course of action now was for the conversation to go down a completely different route, and so she grabbed Faye's arms, starting to spin round and round. "It's like a party. With a bird and a cat and a fountain and a lorry and a..."
--
Kitty was saying something--as per usual—and Faye wasn’t paying any attention—as per usual. Something about mice, apparently, which made Faye look away even quicker, her head nearly banging into Maggie’s beak and poking her very own eye out in the process, as the bird had settled again on her shoulder, this time a bit more careful of tweed and talons in general.
But Faye had little time to ponder over Kitty’s most recent stroke of not-exactly-genius as the other girl opened her big, fat mouth again and started singing. Far be it from Faye to be surprised anymore when it came to Kitty Jones, she whipped her head back around to look at her. Kitty didn’t exactly have a bad voice, per se. No, not bad at all. It was more like… a choir of angels had had their vocal chords ripped out and replaced with motorbikes that wailed whenever they passed Go.
Worst of all, now Kitty was grabbing onto her—no, now Kitty was swinging her around. Despite the skirt, Faye was not a rag doll of Kitty’s childhood days gone past. “If there’s gonna be dancining,” Faye slurred, listening and feeling Maggie take off for his own safety, not that he could fly straight, “then I’d like’a par-ner that want—will not spin me like’a top. ‘M not a spinner.”
And Faye wasn’t a spinner. Faye liked to dance, sure. She liked to dance when she didn’t see three Kitty’s—her worst nightmare—in front of her face, spinning too. She liked to dance when she didn’t have a bird yelling at her and a big cat—dog?—yelling at Kitty and so much noise. And… hello sweet, sweet pavement.
Except the pavement never came, one arm thrown around Kitty’s neck for Faye to brace herself, the other hand clutched in Kitty’s shirt so she didn’t fall forward anymore. Mock-headlock, so to speak, but that didn’t make Faye’s head or stomach feel any better. When Maggie crash landed again, this time propped up against Faye’s boot with a wing throw open as if to say ‘Oy vey,’ Faye raised her head and said, “For all the lorries in th’City, Jones, you’re making Maggie dizzy.”
--
What was that? Spinning? Winning? Top, block, rock? "'Course you're not a winning rock," she hoped that was what Faye had said, as they continued to totter around in a completely graceless circle. "Rocks can't enter the lottery, can they?" In-between the hazy background noises of the place, of which Faye's occasional shrieking was one of them, Kitty could hear her daemon... singing? Huh. Looked like the thing had picked up some of her more cultured talents. Though it didn't make them sound culture as it yowled "frigging in the rigging, there was fuck all else to do" for all to hear.
"Never thought I'd see a cat—oof," she muttered. Now, Kitty had probably never seen a cat 'oof' either, but that hadn't been what she had planned to say. That had come out when she suddenly found Faye ramming into her chest like some kind of deranged bull. And she wasn't even wearing red today. Her stomach flipped in protest at the sudden contact, and in protest to that a couple of hundred sharp knives seemed to stab their way into her brain. It was like the ultimate hangover the morning after, except this was still the evening current. Saying she didn't feel good was an understatement.
She probably said something along the lines of 'bollocks' or 'fuck', or even simply 'urg' if she was feeling especially creative, but words aside she staggered back a little, continuing to cling on to the other woman, quite unable to let go. They were spinning still, she realised, and she couldn't stop. It was like the carousel ride from hell, way scarier than that stupid apocalypse thing they had up somewhere else in the City. So tacky. Staggering round and round in a square with a bounty hunter in a hat was far more traumatising, particularly when she was having to watch carefully where she put her feet to make sure she didn't stamp on the other woman's soul.
"This... is... really... weird..." Kitty managed to spit out as they continued to circle - ever the most constructive of girls.
--
Weird? Weird? They had animals circling their feet and heads—animals singing--and all Kitty’s drunk imagination could come up with was that this was ‘weird.’ Not that Faye could’ve come up with something better, really, but Kitty didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t like Faye was so drunk she was speaking her mind, literally, every five seconds a light bulb so much as flashed in it, but Kitty had never really had much self-control to begin with.
She realized, belatedly, that they were a lot closer to the fountain than Faye had anticipated. Apparently wide, sweeping turns and spins and Kitty stepping on her foot and almost stepping on her daemon were enough to gravitate them toward something that was shiny and splashing. Of course, that could have just been Maggie leading them toward it, since he seemed to have an affinity for anything that was particularly shiny. Maybe he liked splashing too.
Faye, though, had suddenly realized that Maggie was nowhere to be found. For a moment she considered checking the sole of Kitty’s shoe for him, but she still seemed to be alive so she didn’t think he was dead. That bucking fird--fucking bird--was worth more trouble than he was worth and—
Unexpectedly, so quickly that it seized her without decency or control, Faye felt dizzy. Dizzier than from spinning, dizzier than from all that rum and her tequila chaser, dizzier than from being sick. Sick, she also felt sick. This was all Maggie’s fault. Faye stopped Kitty dancing by completely halting her body, standing at the edge of the fountain and looking like she might like to use it as a giant toilet bowl.
Faye looked at the fountain and thought about life. Oh, life. Wonderful life. How sweet thy sound. Something like that. But just as suddenly as she had thought abut life and all its splendors, she suddenly realized that she didn’t want to go swimming anymore. Faye wanted to throw up. And she had a good idea why, and, looking around, she found it. Maggie, below one of the closer buildings, wings thrown back lackadaisically, beak parted, bump-on-head-forming, man down.
The sort of thoughts she had after seeing this were simple: Stupid. Bird. Laugh. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Despite being dizzy, Faye did laugh. Faye laughed so hard that she had to hold onto Kitty again to keep herself upright, throwing one arm around the other girl’s shoulder and burying her face in the opposite one, laughing so hard she didn’t realize or care that they were practically hugging.
And then, just as suddenly as life and the fountain and Maggie, Faye threw up. She threw up in the fountain. Not ‘in’ as in ‘Faye leaned over and threw up like a lady into the fountain.’ ‘In’ as in ‘Faye pitched forward, lightheaded, and fell in the fountain, where she then threw up.’
--
To start with, Faye looked confused. That really wasn't unusual, in fact it was almost common, so Kitty wasn't concerned. The next moment, the woman looked sick. Again, Kitty didn't feel a huge bubble of anxiety well up within her. They were drunk, and even her daemon was turning green - it was nothing special. Then Faye hugged her. It was at that point Kitty realised that either the world was ending, or something was seriously, seriously wrong with Faye.
"You all right?" The question seemed a sensible, logical one when she started to ask it, but in the time it took for her to go from 'you' to 'right', Faye went from 'shoulder' to 'fountain' to 'puke'. Not such a graceful transition, and not particularly attractive either, and so Kitty sat there completely dumbstruck. She was tempted to pinch herself to check if she was dreaming, but found this was rather like a train-wreck. She simply couldn't look away.
...All right, that was an exaggeration. Kitty did look away, and fast, the moment she saw the contents of Faye's stomach. The two of them were close, but there were some levels even their friendship didn't reach, and vomit was one of them. She doubted bile was the foundation of any healthy relationship, unless they'd met through Bulimics Anonymous. Still slightly gob smacked, she tore her gaze away, and noticed the crumpled little heap of feathers by the base of a building wall. The magpie looked like a thoroughly distressed dishcloth.
Ignoring the sounds of retching and heaving behind her, Kitty made her way to the bird, and gingerly poked it with one foot. "Is it... dead?" She poked it again, and noticed Faye gagged particularly loudly behind her. Whoops. It seemed every action prompted a reaction from Faye over in the fountain. Tricky things, materialized souls. As if in agreement, Maggie suddenly coughed - as much as birds can cough - sounding like an ancient chain-smoker who had just rubbed their throat down with sandpaper. Satisfied that there was life in the old bird yet, Kitty returned to her friend in the fountain.
She stood there for a moment, watching as Faye slumped helplessly in the water, and as the two animals seemed to start spinning helplessly (where had they gotten that idea?), and as the night lights of the City seemed to sparkle rather too brightly to be polite. Then her legs started to buckle - and at first she thought it was an after-effect of the so-called dancing, but then she began to realise it was something else entirely. Kitty was laughing. Hysterically. And she couldn't seem to stop. Sinking down to her knees she laughed and laughed until it was hard to breathe. The few words that one could make out - 'bird', 'lightweight', 'shim-shimmererery-shim-dee-do', 'lorry' - were lost in an endless stream of giggles, whilst she reached out with a shaking hand to pat Faye on the back.
--
When Faye came around, she noticed two things. One, that she had passed out in the first place. Faye was not accustomed to passing out unless she was either A) passing out with something warm and sometimes snuggly, B) passing out on a floor, or C) not passing out at all. So the fact that she had actually just woken up from passing out was enough of a shock in and of itself, and she really didn’t need the second part of the equation.
However, life—glory be and all that—was sometimes funny. And it gave her that second part because, Two, Faye was wet, and clearly that was something all important and impossible to get past otherwise. Correction, too, she realized, since she wasn’t just wet, she was soaked. Her hat was floating around one of the lights near the lip of the fountain, and her clothes—the nice jacket, the pretty skirt and top, and her stockings—were sticking to her like glue.
And, of course, Kitty was laughing, but Faye couldn’t bring herself to do so anymore. She didn’t even feel drunk now, just sick. Sick and miserable and cold, and she had a feeling that when Maggie came around, too, he’d laugh at her as well. Faye had been laughed at by plenty of people before in her life, but she’d never been laughed at by a bird she should’ve shot and eaten. It only got worse when Kitty sank down in front of her, laughing harder, their daemons doing some weird sort of jig whenever Faye tried to look at them.
It was at that point in time that Faye—sober is as sober does and twice as sick to her stomach—realized the hilarity of the situation. She wobbled to her feet, since walking was an impossibility not yet ready to be breached, and leaned against the edge of the fountain, her arms shaking as she started to crack up, too. Trying to climb out of the pool herself seemed a little fruitless, so she grabbed Kitty again, still laughing.
By the time she got her arms around the taller girl’s neck, she was crying. When was the last time she’d laughed this hard? A month? A year? Half a century? It didn’t matter. She was laughing so hard that she didn’t even realize she was hugging Kitty, arms tight around her shoulders, in her still-drunk mind still somehow trying to convey… well, trying to convey things better left unsaid. The past was the past, wasn’t it? She’d said that herself. Time to let matters die.
And, really, it was a lot easier to let them do so when losing your balance and falling backward. Kitty was her best friend, after all, the only one she could remember having. Drunk partner in crime, loyal follower throughout the worlds. And what one monkey does… well, Kitty would just have to follow. Even if that meant getting a little damp.
--
When she felt Faye crying on her shoulder, for some strange reason, Kitty started to cry too. In fact, she started to sob. In a spilt second she went from laughing to still laughing but with thick, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. And her arms went from hanging limply at her sides to wrapped around the other woman, clinging tightly. There was crying and hugging and vomit and she couldn't help but laugh through it all. The last time she'd been this physically close to Faye had probably been when the other woman had punched her in the face, and now... now things seemed to be getting better, wounds that apparently only vomit could heal were mending faster than you could say 'drunk'.
It didn't even matter that they were falling back into the fountain. It didn't matter that it hurt more than a little as Kitty hit the ground. It didn't matter that the damp was seeping swiftly into her new boots, and-- all right, that did matter, but it mattered very little in the overall scheme of things. Kitty lay flat in the shimmering water and peered down at her body as it stretched out in front of her, watching it float. She splashed at the ripples that travelled outwards as both she and Faye continued to shake with mirth.
Beyond her feet she could see their daemons wobble into view, and heard slight splashes as her cat-dog-thing... cougar, that was it... walked into the fountain. Maggie was perched unceremoniously on the larger daemon's head, apparently recovered from its hundredth near-death experience in the last hour. "Bird's in the water - we're in a birdbath," she muttered, and that only made her snigger once again. The cat lay down at their feet, and still Kitty continued to laugh, and she had absolutely no idea when she was going to be able to stop - if ever.
"We make this place fun," she managed to splutter out in-between her hysterics. And she knew, of course, that that was a terrific understatement. Fun didn't even begin to cover this. Vomit and all.
--