Reasons To Be Beautiful

A/N: Jori sort-of friends, takes place a couple of days after Crazy Ponnie. Tumblr prompt from anon 'Jade goes to Tori's for some reason and finds her drunk'. Onwards we go.

For a Californian evening in September, there was an unusual chill in the air and Jade pulled her leather jacket further round her body to counteract the coldness creeping up on her. The summer had only just died leaving usually balmy evenings which found Jade lounged out on the roof of her house, earphones plugged in and everything else zoned out; but this evening found Jade beginning to shiver whilst shifting from foot to foot outside the Vega's front door. She'd been waiting for over a minute and her scarce patience was already all fizzled out. She reached forward to yank the door handle- the door was never locked anyhow, she assumed the Vega's had just given up considering the large amount of people that just seemed to come and go in their house, Jade begrudgingly being one of these people.

The door swung inwards and Jade stepped over the threshold, shrugging off her jacket and turning to slam the door behind her.

'Vega! Come out to pla-ay!' Jade called out melodically, seeing no sign of the girl in the open-plan ground floor. She slung her jacket over the back of the blindingly-orange sofa and scanned the room again. No sign of Tori. In fact the house was eerily silent. She knew Tori's parents were rarely around these days- not that Tori had ever told her- but it wasn't hard to notice these things, and Trina was at the audition she'd been bragging about all day until Jade had yelled at her to shut up and thrown her water bottle at her. Nobody at the lunch table had even looked bothered, and Tori wasn't there to tell her to give Trina a break either. In fact, Tori hadn't been there all lunch. Odd. Not that Jade hadn't liked the freedom from Tori's peppiness, but even that had been curiously absent in Tori lately. It was the first time she'd missed lunch though.

Giving up, she began to yell as she headed up the small flight of stairs towards where she knew Tori's room was from previous 'explorations'.

'Vega! If you're asleep, then you're about to get a rude awakening! Vega! We have work to do!' The stupid advanced English lit report they had to do together. Jade screamed internally. She didn't have time for this, there was a script waiting to be written at home, and if Tori couldn't be bothered to…

The smell of alcohol rolled over her as she strode into Tori's room, foul and akin to the rotting carcases of dead skunks, it was that bad. Tori was sprawled out in the very centre of her bed, head on her pillow, staring up blankly at the ceiling. There was a bottle of unnamed alcohol in her hand, resting listless on her duvet. Jade stopped abruptly at the sight.

'…Vega?' Tori's slight eyebrow raise was the only thing that indicated Tori had heard her.

'What the fuck are you doing? It's a Thursday evening.'

Tori continued to stare straight above. 'What does it look like, Jade? I'm turning to alcohol to solve my problems,' she said with a slight slur to her words. Tori's voice was uncharacteristically laden with bitterness and Jade blinked before letting out a dry laugh.

'And what problems has Miss Vega got that requires drinking herself to bed on a weekday evening? Not getting the A in vocal class? Honey, I hate to break it to you, but you're not quite up to this.'

Tori's eyebrows drew down over her eyes and she struggled to push herself up into a sitting position. Her motor skills obviously weren't in brilliant condition.

'I don't need this right now, Jade' she spat out, as quickly as she could, the ends of words dropping off, however. 'I just want to be alone.'

'Oh yeah, how's that working out for you?'

Tori simply rolled her eyes with great effort and went to raise the bottle to her lips again and Jade still wasn't sure what she was drinking. It wasn't a smell she recognized, and she'd been to a lot of parties. She lunged forward and yanked the bottle out of her slim fingers.

'What is this stuff?' she asked sniffing the bottle warily. The stench coming out of it nearly knocked her off her feet and she slammed it down on the desk in disgust. 'Jesus Christ, Tori, are you trying to drink yourself to death? That smells like liver damage in a bottle.'

Tori was scrambling to get the bottle back, hands flying haphazardly and Jade caught her wrists. 'Stop. Why are you doing this to yourself, Tori?'

Tori wrenched her wrist out of Jade's grasp with great effort and flopped back onto the bed. 'it doesn't matter' she muttered almost incomprehensibly.

Jade crossed her arms. 'Nope, none of that, I take the bait Vega, so what's up?'

'You wouldn't understand.'

'You don't know much about me Vega, so just try me'

Tori's bottom lip began to quiver. Jesus, this is not what she was expecting. Tori's great big brown orbs began to fill with tears that began to spill over and trickle down her cheeks.

'Tori?'

She sucked in a big breath and let it out whistling between her teeth before she spoke again.

'Myparentsarebreakingup' She went for the alcohol again but once again Jade stopped her once again by simply touching her arm. 'V-Tori, I'm sorry.'

'I don't need your sympathy' Tori sniffled, rolling away from Jade on the bed and turning her back, her next words slurred and muffled, 'I jus' wanna forget about it.'

'But alcohol's not the answer, believe me I've tried. When Beck and I broke up? Yeah, then.'

Tori didn't move but she heard her sniffing. A couple of seconds later a hiccup followed. Jade sat down on the bed and let her head fall back onto the head-board with a dull thud. She ignored the pain. 'We're a right pair aren't we huh?'

'Whatdyamean?'

'Well, you're sat in bed, trying to drink away problems that aren't even yours. Look, you'll be okay, Tori. You always are. It might seem horrible at the moment but my parents divorced, I thought the world was going to end, I thought I'd never see my mum again, I thought she hated me. I cried for weeks, but eventually, I got over it. And well, I'm sitting here telling you all this and I don't even know why. We're not even great friends.'

Tori hiccupped again and struggled to roll over, but battled on until she was looking up at Jade with her head tilted on the pillow. 'Are you 'kay?'

Jade gave a short laugh. 'Look who's talking. I guess I'm wondering why I always seem to end up talking to you like this. Hey, you're drunk, maybe you won't remember.'

Tori harrumphed feebly. 'Not tha' drunk.'

'Maybe.'

'I'll be okay?'

'You'll be fine, Vega, you're you. You always come out on the freaking top.'

'Mmmkay' A pause. 'IloveyouJade.'

'Definitely drunk. '

'I'm tired.'

'Then go to sleep and quit talking.'

'…Kay' Tori rolled over again and her hiccups gradually subsided. Jade sat on the bed next to her, staring at Tori's purple walls and pop cd collection in the rack opposite, vaguely wondering how she got into this position in the first place, just what her relationship was with Tori, and how she was going to deal with Tori's hangover in the morning.

She drifted off to sleep.

A/N: I don't like this one at all but hey-ho, it's something to put up, Idk, It just kinda came out of me. Anyway, here you go anon. I doubt this is what you were looking for either. Later- Thea.

PS I hope to update this set of drabbles once a week, you're just getting two to start it off.