The semester wasn't as easy as John would have liked it to have been, the most challenging class he was taking being the literature class that Vriska just so happened to also be in. Now he wasn't anywhere close to failing the class, but he wasn't exactly getting the best grades on his assignments, and he certainly wasn't understanding the reading that was assigned. Most of the blame for this sudden onset of not being able to process short stories had to have come from the fact that he was sitting next to easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, but was he going to pack up and move elsewhere for the sake of his grade? Of course he wasn't. Getting to be next to her was a dream, and he wasn't going to stop it.
By the time Spring Break rolled around, he was getting closer to failing than he would like to admit to anyone, and she was beginning to notice that he wasn't doing so well in the class. With their big paper due the day classes resumed, she figured that the least she could do for the guy was help him out with that, as much as John denied that he ever needed the help. "Come on, you're so going to fail if you don't come over and spend some good time hitting the books with me," she said to him, watching him become flustered at the idea of spending time with her. "Hey, don't be like that. We've hung out before."
"Yeah, but not like this. This is like tutoring or something. I don't need it." Defiant and stubborn as always, John really did not want to admit to needing help. Truth was, he had no idea where to even begin with his major analysis paper that he had to do, and since Vriska had already turned her in and gotten a grade on it (a perfect grade, at that), taking up her offer for help would have been in his best interests. But he was a stubborn guy, and guys like him didn't go for help so easily. "I can manage on my own."
"You won't be saying that when you fail the paper and the class. Now just trust in me, come over a few times over break, and we'll get you the best grade ever." The way Vriska smiled at him as she said that, while not enough to convince him into believing her right away, was more than enough to get him even more flustered.
"I-I don't know if I want that," he sputtered, trying to keep up his defiant ways, but there was just something to how confident Vriska was in her abilities to help him out that was hard to resist. "Maybe I will come over once, or twice, I don't know…"
She grinned. "That's the spirit! Just shoot me a message when you want to do this, and I will make sure to have the place to myself. Since my sister isn't coming home for break, it'll be a lot easier than it would normally." And with that, she packed up her bag, said bye to the teacher, and left John sitting in his seat in a mostly-empty classroom, wishing he hadn't just agreed to doing what he was now going to have to do.
He picked the first day of the week off to do this thing, texting Vriska that he was planning on coming over that particular day (they had exchanged numbers not long after the bookstore incident, so that they could communicate easier), and she replied quickly that he was more than welcome to it. She had to give him her address and he had to make sure his dad carpooled to work that day, but everything came together and he found himself parked in front of a rather trashy-looking apartment building the day he had chosen for this to happen. It didn't ever occur to him that such a beautiful person could live in such a terrible looking place, but she was a college student. She probably didn't have a lot of money.
Going inside the building was even scarier than sitting outside of it, because it smelled faintly of blood and he honestly thought that someone had died inside there recently. But once he was in the apartment that Vriska lived in, things were better. Everything was brightly decorated, and it was a lot more cheerful than what was just outside the front door. "Sorry that you had to see what's out in the lobby," Vriska apologized, once they were settled in to do some studying. "Some guy came in after being shot yesterday, and it was a huge mess."
"I figured that was the case," he replied, before opening his textbook to try and get his mind off of a potential dead person in the lobby. "Now, should we get to making me understand what this story means so I can write about it?"
"Of course, you decide to come over for my help, and when you get here, you're so set on working that you want to get started right away." With a laugh, Vriska opened her own book to the same page John's was on, snuggled up close next to him, and began explaining what she felt was important for John to know about the story he had chosen for his analysis paper. Her words didn't always make sense to him, but they sure made a hell of a lot more sense than what the teacher had been lecturing, and after an hour or so of explanations, he was beginning to understand that he wasn't nearly as screwed about this assignment as he may have thought.
They would have gone on longer into the beginnings of the assignment if Vriska hadn't looked away from her textbook for a moment, her eye catching a glimpse of something laying out on the table. "Oh yeah," she said, setting her book aside to reach forward and grab the smaller book she had seen, "guess what I was doing yesterday?" She held up the book, and John recognized it as his (or, rather, their) senior yearbook. "I can't believe you didn't know we went to school together. Was I really that unmemorable?"
"No, I just didn't really care to know or remember anyone from our class." John shrugged, putting his own book aside so that Vriska could open the yearbook and lay it between them, opening straight to the page with her senior biography on it, complete with her picture from that school year—and she looked completely different than the beauty sitting beside him. While the Vriska he was with had long, honey brown hair that hung down her back, sometimes freely, sometimes in braids, the version of her that was pictured had shorter hair that was darker and pulled up into a ponytail. Her bangs in the pictures all covered her left eye, the one that John knew as the fake one, and it made sense that he had never once thought to suspect her eye was fake, because if he did remember seeing her before, it would have been covered and not noticeable at all.
"God, I looked like a dweeb," Vriska said, shaking her head at her pictures. "How I had two different boyfriends with that gross face is beyond me."
John looked at her, eyebrows raised over the rim of his glasses. "Two boyfriends? At once?"
"No, oh no, I'm not the one in this house who likes stringing multiple guys along at once!" Rather than getting offended by the misunderstanding, Vriska laughed it off, turning the page from her pictures to those of a different guy that they had graduated with, one that John groaned at the sight of when he saw him. "You remember him?" she asked, to which he gave even more of a groan. "Can you believe he's the first guy I ever kissed?" When John shook his head, she laughed more. "Yeah, it's true. Sophomore year, I had the biggest crush on him and he had one on me. We dated for a few months. Then he made one insensitive joke about my eye and, well, I sort of pushed him off the top of the playground out behind the building."
Looking at the pictures of the guy in the yearbook, John only took a second to get where Vriska was going with that. "So you're telling me that not only did you date the biggest dork in our graduating class, but you're the one who paralyzed him?"
"It wasn't intentional. Tavros and I still have a decent relationship now, anyway. He's terrified of me but would still kiss me again if he got the chance, I bet." Vriska shrugged at her thoughts. "He doesn't live too far from here, anyway. I see him out and about sometimes. He laughs at my eye, I laugh at his crippled legs. All in good fun."
Thinking to himself that it didn't sound like much fun at all, John made an attempt to divert the conversation to somewhere that wasn't about a guy with a physical handicap. "So if that was your first boyfriend, who was your second?"
"Let me show you." Turning through the pages, only stopping for a moment to show John his very own senior page, put next to Jade's even though they had different last names, Vriska had to go to pictures of students that weren't set up specially to show her other ex-boyfriend. This one was just a small picture in a row of them, a hipster glasses-wearing sort of guy who was scowling at the camera when it snapped the photo. "Him," she said, pointing at the picture and rolling her eye, "that's the other one. Eridan."
"Didn't he get in trouble for writing love poems in permanent marker on some chick's locker?" John asked, examining the picture a bit closer. "Or was that some other guy who looked like he was going to kill himself at any moment?"
"Nope, that was definitely him. What a trashy and gross guy. At least he isn't as disgusting as his brother, but being scum of the earth must run in their family." Vriska flicked the picture and laughed. "Can't believe I actually ever thought he was cute. Then again, he thought I was a goddess when I looked like a horrible and stupid dork, so I guess we're even on that front. Even though I am now a goddess and he's just a gross asshole."
"Who ya talkin' about out there?" It was an interrupting voice, one that came from one of the bedrooms in the apartment, and when she heard it, Vriska jumped to her feet, sending the yearbook flying. "Lemme guess, it's probably one of my guys. And, lemme also guess, it's gotta be one of the low tide dudes, not the high tide ones."
"What does she mean by 'low tide' and 'high tide'?" John quietly asked, trying to make sense of what was happening, but Vriska was too busy being shocked at the fact that Meenah was even around to reply to him.
In fact, she was almost too shocked to be able to reply to her roommate. "The only guy of yours I was talking about was Cronus, and you and I both know that he's disgusting. What are you doing here?"
"I sorta live here. I know, crazy fact." Coming into the room, Meenah gave John a dirty look when she saw him. "And he doesn't live here. What's the shrimp doin' in my apartment?"
"We were studying, and then got distracted with looking through our yearbook, which is what you heard us talking about. Now answer me, since you said you had plans today: what are you doing here?" Vriska had put her hands on her hips, trying to make herself seem more intimidating to Meenah, but the dark-haired woman was still glaring at John. "Pay attention to me and answer me!"
Meenah looked away from John, stepping closer to Vriska as she did. "'kay, I'll pay attention to you. I'm not sure what you expected from me, since my plans normally involve bein' someone's bed friend for the night. It ain't night, it ain't time for me to decide what length I'm feelin' and go for it." She gave a large and clearly fake smile at Vriska, who sighed. "What, that's the truth. You got somefin to say about it?"
"Sure do. You told me that you and…one of those guys were going to go out of town for the day. Obviously that changed and you didn't bother telling me."
"Because I didn't know until it was time to go and there wasn't anyone here pickin' me up. Turns out that I got invited on a date I wasn't supposed to know about. That's what happens when the guy you bang has a girlfriend that ya sometimes bang too." The smile fell and Meenah kicked at the floor a bit. "Probably for the best that I didn't go, real talk. Ain't exactly feelin' like bangin' the day away."
Watching the soap opera that was unfolding before him was a blast, and John was enjoying it immensely (and by that, it was meant that he felt awkward and a bit disgusted at what he was hearing), but he figured that stepping away to let the ladies continue their conversation on their own was for the best. Rather than interrupting them, as Vriska was coming up with some sort of rebuttal he was completely ignoring, he just stood up and walked to the bathroom in the apartment. In there, he'd at least be able to lock the door and be alone for a bit, trying to forget what he had just heard about Meenah's sex life.
That was going to be nearly impossible, though, when he realized that this bathroom he was currently hiding in was filled with sexual items. There was a shelf dedicated solely to differently-shaped dildos, with another shelf of lubricants and other tools beneath it. To try and not focus on that, he turned to the sink counter, hoping that it would be a safe place. For the most part it was, with the typical toothbrushes and hair supplies on it, but then he saw something that was nearly as bad as the pleasure shelf. Combined with what he had heard out in the other room, this thing sitting there was most definitely not something he had wanted to see or even think about.
He covered his face, wishing that he wasn't at this place, with these people. Sure, Vriska was cute and nice, but she seemed to have a lot about her that John wasn't entirely okay with, Meenah being the biggest problem. And said problem was present and making things horrible for him and her both, and all they had been trying to do was get him to pass a class. "Yo, get the fuck outta there," he heard Meenah saying from the other side of the door, and he was slightly thankful she wasn't banging on the door. "I need to get in there and show miss 'never been fucked by a guy' out there that there ain't any harm to some screwin' without a porpoise." It took a second for John to realize she was being punny with the word "purpose", but by then he had already opened the door to let her in and himself out.
As he walked back to the couch, his face mostly covered, he saw Vriska sitting back down, muttering something under her breath. "I can't believe that she…" Her voice trailed off as John came into the picture. "Oh, you're back. Great."
"You don't sound too happy to have me here," he replied, his voice showing that he was offended by the tone she had just taken with him. "I could go, if that's what you want."
"No, it's not you that I want gone right now. It's her." Vriska shook her head, sighing as she did. "She's convinced that I didn't want her here today because I wanted to fuck you, which isn't the case at all. Now she's going to prove to me that casual flings are completely safe, which I'm sure they are, but I don't think I could fuck someone without a real emotional attachment, which we don't really have yet."
"Even if we did, I wouldn't want to have sex with you," John said, hoping that his words would mean something to Vriska. "I was always taught you save that for marriage, or for when you really love someone. And we aren't even together. We're just friends. I couldn't do anything with you and not feel really bad about it."
"I'm glad you see things that way, and don't feel entitled to my body just because we're friends. I wish Meenah was able to understand that, though." Again, Vriska sighed. "But okay, enough about us."
John nodded, as talking about their hypothetical relationship bothered him a bit. "What was so important that she needed in there?"
"Right, never said that, did I?" He shook his head and she took a deep breath, preparing herself for the coming explanation. "So her reason for why I should be okay with fucking you even though we aren't together is completely stupid, but it's because she thinks that if I got laid by something real and not rubber, then I'd chill out a bit. Then I pointed out that she has no right to talk about that, because she bangs different guys each night based on how many inches of flesh she wants rammed into her, and then she mentioned that at least it's not rubber. So of course I asked her if she makes her guys, uh, wrap it before they tap it, and she said she doesn't because it ruins the experience."
John was silent a moment, just thinking about what he had been told, before he replied with, "Oh, that would definitely explain why there was a pregnancy test on the counter."
"Wait, what?" Vriska's voice was full of surprise, and she jumped to her feet again, this time to pace around the room. "Oh fuck no, she knew about this. She fucking knew. This was her way of telling me, wasn't it?" As she continued going on and on about how screwed they were, about how there was no way that they'd ever know who the baby daddy was, and about how they were never going to be able to keep a child alive in the apartment they were currently in.
It was somewhere in the middle of the last rant when Meenah came back out, proudly holding out the little piss stick that John had seen on the counter. "Y'know, I think you're worryin' about nofin at all. I bang and get banged almost every night and look, clean and not up the spout even a l'il bit." The announcement stopped Vriska where she stood, before she ran to Meenah's side to investigate for herself. "Look and be proud. I know how to be fun and safe without, whale, bein' safe."
"I fucking hate you right now," Vriska told her, pushing the stick to the ground. "Don't do this sort of thing to me again, especially when I have a guest over."
"Then maybe next time, you should invite a guest over that you'll get wet 'n wild with!" Laughing as she spoke, Meenah retreated back to her room, without so much as an apology to John for mentally scarring him for life.
When Vriska sat back down, she looked at him and tried to smile as best as she could, although her emotions were still all over the place from what just happened. "I guess we should get back to our work now, huh?" she asked, reaching for her literature textbook once more. "Or do you have a different idea for what we should do?"
"I think I want to go home." John spoke before thinking, and the hurt look on Vriska's face from what he said made him instantly regret ever opening his mouth then. "I mean, I don't want to be here if Meenah might come back out and make things weird again. She's a lot more than I want to ever handle."
"I hear you on that one. Once my sister's done with school, this summer, I am so moving back home or anywhere that isn't in this place. I can't take Meenah's shit anymore." There was a bit of a smile on Vriska's lips as she spoke, but it was replaced with a small frown that made John feel bad for her and her situation. "But it's whatever. We've got work to do to get you passing that class, and if it means we have to do the work at your place instead of mine, I'm down for that. At least your dad seems cool."
"And he wouldn't interrupt us with sex talks." That's what John thought, anyway, but when they met up at his house the next day, his dad made sure to tell them the story of the birds and the bees before he left for work.
The next major event of John's life was his twenty-first birthday, the one day of his life that he really wished he could remember. It had started as such a great and promising day, a party that people of all ages and situations could enjoy, but it devolved into a day that would forever be lost to the cause of being completely wasted for the first time in his life. But everything that he learned of that happened on that fateful day had found its beginnings in the months leading up to April thirteenth, and so when he heard of what happened, he wasn't too terribly surprised.
Starting with what he did remember, he had woken up to the smell of freshly-cooked pancakes, courtesy of his sister, who had taken a long weekend to get to celebrate with her brother. "I didn't come home for break just so I could do this," Jade explained as she plated up a few pancakes for him. "Figured you'd want someone around who'll remember what crazy stuff you do tonight."
"What do you mean by that? Aren't you going to get drunk like the rest of us?" John, eyeing the plate like a ravenous wolf, waited for his sister to set it down in front of him before he dug into it. "You can drink, so why don't you?"
She shrugged, putting pancakes onto a plate for herself. "I don't want to do it, really. It's scary waking up and not remembering what you did the night before, and the last thing I want is for both of us to not know what we were doing while we were celebrating you."
"You make it sound like we'd do something bad." After John spoke, he remembered the scene that had taken place in the very kitchen they were in, back at Jade's birthday celebration, and regretted saying his words. Something bad very well could happen if they both got drunk, if he was as careless with how much alcohol he consumed as she was. "I mean, you make it sound like everyone would let something bad happen."
"Trust me, I'm not drinking tonight, no matter what. Someone's got to be sober enough to drive everyone home, and you know that no one else will make this noble sacrifice. Especially not someone coming out here specifically to get you plastered." When asked about what she meant by that, Jade was quick to remind her brother of something that had been planned for a long time coming: "Jane's going to be here in a few hours. You know, to celebrate both of your birthdays in the most drunken of ways?"
"I remember that. I just, well, don't think we'll be doing much of what she would like to do." He was mostly done shoveling pancake into his mouth now, watching his sister eat her own food for a moment before continuing on with his thought. "Vriska's not old enough to drink, and I invited her out with me, so we could hang out more. Is that bad?"
Jade didn't even bother to sugarcoat things. "That's the worst idea you have ever had. So not only is our cousin going to be subjected to something that minors can do, she's going to be deprived of her binge drinking experience with her baby cousin that she's wanted since she turned twenty-one. And, on top of that, you've invited the girl you're madly in love with out for a night of watching you become a stumbling fool. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if she never wanted to speak to you again after what's going to happen."
"Aw, come on, you act like I'm going to be a pushy and rude drunk or something. Or that I'm going to get sick over everything like you did." At that, Jade shot her brother a dirty look and he laughed. "Okay, maybe it makes sense as to why you're going to be the sober one. Just, uh, make sure that I don't fuck things up too badly with Vriska tonight, please. I really like her, and I think she likes me, and the last thing I need is my drunk ass scaring her off."
"I've got your back, little brother, don't you worry." Dropping her glare, she began to smile at him, a reassuring look for him to be getting. "If anything happens to go wrong, you bet I'll be there to stop it in its tracks."
As confident in herself as Jade sounded, John should have known that there would be a lot of things that could possibly go wrong before he even got to the bowling alley where he'd be celebrating the night away. The first thing to go slightly sour happened mere moments after his cousin and her girlfriend came into the house, Jane grumbling about something or other about the flight out to see him (he didn't catch all of it, but what he understood was that she had been stuck in an aisle seat, with Roxy across the aisle, and a bulking guy twice her size next to her). When she saw John she gave him a small smile and they exchanged happy birthday greetings, which was quickly followed with a question he was dreading: "So, where are we going to go first? A club? A bar? I'm down for whatever, as long as it's fun."
"About that," he said, looking to the ground. "I've sort of invited someone along, and she's not old enough to drink yet. We can go bar crawling tomorrow night or something, but tonight we're going bowling so that my friend can come."
"But we've been waiting for this moment for—wait, did you say she's not old enough? As in, this person isn't just a friend but a girlfriend?" There was no denying that there was anger in Jane's voice, but something about the idea of John having a significant other made her seem a lot happier. "Why didn't you tell me that sooner?"
"She's not my girlfriend. Not yet, maybe not ever. But she's coming with us because she's a cool girl and I'd like her to be around." He was blushing, hoping that this would be the end of all possible problems for the day. How wrong he was, and how wishful of thinking he had been taking part in.
He had completely spaced on the fact that, although she may not have been old enough to drink and would therefore remain sober all night, Vriska was unable to drive herself places due to her only having half of a range of vision. So when they had gotten to the bowling alley and he saw Meenah walking around, he was upset and didn't really know how to handle things. There was no way he wanted that weird woman at his birthday celebration, even if she was there only because the girl he did want present needed someone to drive her home after everything was said and done.
"Sorry that she's here," Vriska told him, when she got to get a word in to the birthday boy. "I told her that Jade could drive, because she actually remembered that I can't and did offer to get me and everything, but you know how Meenah is. She likes the chance to get a good lay, and at someone's birthday party? That's the best time to go for that chance."
"You don't think she'll try and go after me, do you?" John asked, his voice a bit small as he did, but he regained confidence when Vriska shook her head. "Okay, good. I don't need that tonight. Don't need my first sexual encounter to be when I'm drunk."
"I wouldn't let that happen, and if I somehow did, I bet your sister would kill Meenah for it." Looking around to see who else was present, Vriska tapped her finger on her chin a few times before pointing at someone John couldn't see. "I'm just going to make a guess here, but if Meenah decides she wants to get in bed with anyone here, it's going to be that person."
When John turned to see where Vriska was pointing, he couldn't help but laugh. She was pointing at one tall, thin blonde he knew as his cousin's girlfriend Roxy. "Dude, if that happens, then she'd be getting the wrath of my cousin. That's her girlfriend."
"Lovely. Meenah enjoys threesomes." Vriska laughed, dropping her hand to her side before anyone noticed that she had been pointing anywhere. "Let's just hope she gets bored and leaves me here without deciding to bang anyone."
"I think I like that plan best. Let's call that one 'plan A', and let's let 'plan B' be if she decides to sandwich herself between Roxy there and Jane. Depending on how drunk they get, it could happen." John shrugged, not really sure if that's how drunk people's thought processes worked, but he was teetering ever closer to finding out.
Within the hour, he had already had three drinks purchased for him and had downed them all, taking well to the taste and smell of alcohol once he was drinking it. Whatever was to happen after that would be a fuzzy memory at best.
A/N: This is my favorite chapter of this story. I mean, the next one is great too, but there's something with that scene in the apartment that just gets me. :D Anyway, hope you enjoyed this week's installment, and that you'll stick around for the end. Which posts next Monday, 3/2, which happens to be the birthday of the person I wrote this for!