PeculiarChangeling
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The Baby Bet - Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2021-05-12 02:55:46 +0000 UTCNo author postscript or explanations required!
Grace woke up to find that someone had shoved nails into her skull, and was currently pounding on them with a vast collection of hammers.
No, wait. That’s just someone coming down the stairs.
She blinked her eyes once, regretted it, and shut them again. Light was torture. She’d fallen asleep in the living room, with the blinds open, sprawled across the couch.
“Fuck me…” she grumbled, rubbing at her temples and sitting up. Motion was bad, but she didn’t want to be laying down.
“Not until you’re feeling better,” Brains said, his voice coming from just a couple feet away. “Here.”
Grace raised a hand, reaching out and grasping at air until she got what he was offering.
A pair of sunglasses.
“You’re divine,” she said, putting them on and tentatively opening her eyes. The light still hurt, but it was no longer actively painful.
“If that were true, you’d call me ‘Forgiveness’,” Brains quipped. “To answer your next question, seventeen.”
“Huh?” Grace rubbed at the side of her head. “Is that a riddle, or…?”
“A riddle? Oh, uh. I thought you were going to ask ‘how many beers did I have’, or something similar,” Brains said. “Never mind. Point is, I’m making breakfast.”
There was another leap in logic there that Grace wasn’t following, but she nonetheless got to her feet and shuffled behind him towards the kitchen, where Melody was already clutching her head in her hands and trying not to puke.
“Mels,” Grace said, taking a seat.
“Beer…” Melody replied, shaking her head. “Bad.”
“Bad, bad beer…” Grace agreed.
“Drink up.” Brains set out two cups of coffee and two glasses of water.
The overpowering smell of fresh coffee was an assault on Grace’s senses, but she took a swig anyways. It was hot, almost hot enough to burn, and bitter, and strong. All that together, it was almost enough to make her pounding head feel a little better.
“Remind me never to go that overboard again,” she groaned. “The hell is wrong with me?”
“Well, if our teachers were to be believed-” Brains started, but he cut himself off. Nobody wanted him to finish that sentence, joking or otherwise.
“It’s Pierce, anyways,” Melody said. “I swear, you two were going at it like dogs fighting over the last scrap of meat on the planet. What’s your deal?”
“I don’t have the head for this right now,” Grace groaned. “Let me focus on keeping my head upright for a while first. Besides, i was drunk.”
“I’ll say,” Melody agreed. “Do you remember what you were arguing about?”
Brains snorted a laugh, and Grace had to frown and think about it for a minute. “He was being way too arrogant for someone as irresponsible as him, and…” She turned a touch pink, remembering just how loudly she’d been yelling, and about what.
“It half seemed like you were going to piss your pants right there, just to prove how mad you were,” Brains said.
“Ugh…” Grace said, taking another drink of the dark, bitter coffee. “Can you believe Pierce?”
She was looking down at her drink, avoiding looking at any sources of light, but she could practically feel the glance that Melody and Brains shared. “Yeah,” Melody said. “Uh-huh. Pierce.”
“I’m pretty sure you meant ‘me’,” Brains added.
“Well he started it,” Grace said, defensively. “And, come on. We all know he’s full of it.”
“Nope, nope, nope,” Melody said, shaking her head. “Not having this conversation. Too early, too hungover.”
Grace let them drop the subject. There was no point rehashing an argument where she was so obviously correct.
The banter stayed light while Brains made breakfast. He wasn’t the best cook in the house, but he could do alright, and his true gift lay with making a patent-pending hangover cure breakfast sandwich. Bacon, two fried eggs cooked in the bacon grease, stuck between two pieces of french toast. It was the most greasy monstrosity that Grace had ever heard of, but it worked wonders for alcohol-induced morning agony.
When breakfast settled, Grace didn’t exactly feel good, but she no longer felt miserable. The nails had been removed and replaced with mere needles, and the hammering pain with every beat of her heart was reduced to a dull ache.
“He just gets under my skin, you know?” Grace said, finally, unable to let the topic die.
“Yes, we know,” Brains said, washing out the skillet in the sink.
“Like… okay, yeah, whatever. He’s sloppy. I don’t care about that,” Grace continued, feeling out her own thoughts out loud. “We’ve all got our shit. But own it, you know?”
“Yes,” Melody said. “We know.”
“No, you don’t- Ugh.” Grace shook her head. “If he just was openly, like, ‘Yeah, I’m not good with organization and I’ve got no impulse control,’ that’d be fine. But he gets so fuckin’ smug about it, and then he won’t let it go, and… Like, I don’t know.”
“Are you done?” Brains asked.
“I guess. I’ll stop talking about it, it’s just-”
“No, I mean, are you done with your plate?” Brains asked. “So I can wash it.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Grace passed it over, pressing her palm to her forehead. “Ugh. I have work to do today, I should not have gotten that drunk.”
“Same,” Melody groaned.
“Well, it’s my day off,” Brains said, “And I’m still glad I didn’t get wasted. More coffee?”
They both accepted, commiserating over shared headache pain as Brains made another pot.
While they were sitting around the table, waiting for it to percolate, Melody heard the floor creak above them. Skip hadn’t gotten home from work yet, so that meant Pierce was awake.
Hooray.
“Don’t,” Melody said, warningly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start another fight,” Melody said.
Grace sipped her water. “I won’t if he doesn’t.”
“You just said he lacked impulse control,” Melody pointed out.
“I promise nothing,” Grace said, simply.
It took Pierce a few minutes to meander down to the kitchen, wearing a pair of rumpled sweatpants and nothing else. Pulling up a stool at the table, he said, “Brains, my man. Fix me up with your patented hangover whatsit?”
(If you’d been down sooner, you could have eaten with the rest of us.)
Brains nodded, already getting more bacon out of the fridge. “I think you had the high score last night, Pierce. Twenty one beers.”
“I still don’t get why you count,” Pierce said. “The beer can Rain M-”
“Nooope,” Brains said. “Wasters.”
“Sorry.” Pierce shook his head. “Jeez, I’ve normally got more restraint than this. What were we arguing about last night, anyways?”
Melody raised an eyebrow at Grace, who replied, “Hey, I’m not arguing, I’m just answering a question.”
“Huh?” Pierce said, graciously taking a coffee as Brains set it in front of him. “You’re a lifesaver, man.”
“You,” Grace said, “Were drunk, and were insisting that you were some sort of childcare expert.”
“Bloody hell…” Melody said, rolling her eyes.
“Never gonna hear the end of this…” Brains added.
“Oh, that,” Pierce said. “Yeah, I think I remember. Yeah, that was wild.”
“So you admit it,” Grace said, ignoring the annoyed groans of her friends.
“What? No,” Pierce said. “You were bein’ wild.”
Grace grumbled. She was too hung over for this. “You are ridiculous. I can’t believe-”
“Jesus christ, why do you care so much?” Pierce threw up his hands.
“Theeeey’re doing it again,” Melody quipped, dryly.
“It doesn’t matter,” Grace said, shaking her head and getting to her feet. She didn’t really want to have this argument, so rather than stick around, she’d just leave. “He’s not going to prove it, anyways.”
She hadn’t taken a step before Pierce shot back, “What was that?”
“I’m just saying,” Grace said, rolling her eyes. “Drunk you can bluster all he wants, but you’re full of it.”
“Bet’s on,” Pierce said, immediately. “I’m game.”
“Pierce…” Brains said. “Come on.”
“And,” Pierce said, “Once I win, you never give me shit about this again.”
“Oh yeah? Well, once I win, you’ll just admit you’re irresponsible and lazy and-”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
“FINE!”
“Fucking hell…”
That last one was Melody.
Furiously, they shook hands, and then Grace spun and stormed off without another word.
