Author's Note: Look what finally got updated! And it just happens to be the climax chapter!
*waves pom-poms in your face; does a little dance, makes a little love, gets down tonight*
I know this sounds completely redundant at this point, but thanks again to anyone who supports this fic. I normally don't write long ones because I find it really, really, REALLY difficult, but I'm proud to have stuck with this, and I love anyone who reads and reviews.
I.
The bass is pounding, pounding, pounding, and Maya's head and heart along with it. She stumbles through the door of the little blue house, almost crashing once again into that stupid Ping-Pong table shoved right in the main room, and then almost trips over two guys playing beer pong. Fuck, one of them curses, and watch it another one says, but she barely registers the voices as she trips into Skye, clutching his arm as he leads her further into the melee.
The stereo wails and beats, screeches and howls, wails and crashes and echoes. She can't tell where the noise is coming from, but around her, people eat and scream, chug and grind, dance and smoke. She thinks the tune might be "Gangham Style", because she spots two of the kids she remembers smoking with the other night doing some of the moves, but with the amount of people yelling at each other over the unbearable belting of the music, she has no clue; it could just as easily be "My Heart Will Go On".
She's tugged along by Skye into the kitchen, where she nearly slips and busts her ass on a broken beer bottle that fizzed and foamed all over the grody tiles. She clings to Skye, who trips and steadies himself, mumbling "fuck" under his breath as he pushes her away to hold himself upward.
He turns around to look at her, and she tries to stay standing.
"Sorry," she mumbles.
The bass. The beat. Her head. It pounds, pounds, pounds.
The irritation slips off his face as he shrugs, unconcerned once again.
"Let's get something to drink," he says.
She nods, sort of. Her legs are shaking, but after a minute, she thinks, she'll be okay.
She and Skye did something called pre-gaming at his cousin's house before they came here – didn't know what it meant, but apparently it meant that you got drunk before you actually went to get drunk. Didn't seem to make much sense, but after a few beers she was just glad Skye let her tag along.
He doesn't seem to be bothered too much by the few Coors Light they had. Maya hadn't either at first, but now she thinks those shots of strawberry-kiwi vodka on top of those beers might have been a bad idea. It seemed like so little at the time – the glass was so cute, a tiny little thing that fit in the palm of her hand – and she darted two of them down, one after the other. It was sweet and burned like hell all the way down, and she nearly felt like puking, but Skye cheered her on and when she'd finally felt like she wouldn't upchuck, he patted her on the back and told her she was a real pro. Then she'd felt like skipping, better than she had in months.
But now, her legs don't like to stay underneath her, like they might leave her here and walk away.
Skye hands her a cup of something, and she takes a sip. It doesn't make her headache stop, but for a moment it stops her legs from shaking.
"Thanks," she says.
Skye doesn't hear her. He's busy watching a couple of kids gathered around the island in the middle of the kitchen.
"Wanna play Ring of Fire?" he says.
She has no idea what that is. "Huh?"
Skye shrugs. "Never mind. Look, I'm gonna hang with them, okay?"
He doesn't wait for her response, so she stands there in the middle of the kitchen, holding her cup and staring at the brown contents swirling inside it. She tosses back another few sips of it for good measure, just to look like she's doing something.
She ends up inching her way into the main room – it's packed and the music is loudest there, but it has a couch, and right now she needs a couch – and she pushes aside a couple making out so she can at least sit on the armrest.
The girl turns to her and scowls. "Fuck off!"
Maya blinks at her. "Sorry?"
The guy looks up at her and then back down the girl's shirt. "Just ignore her," he urges. "She's too fucking wasted."
"Then she needs to get out of here," the girl says, and arches her leg out as if to kick Maya. "Get lost!"
Maya stares at them, and when the girl shifts again, pushing her off the armrest. Maya gets up and nearly falls over in an attempt to get away. She hears the girl laughing at her, but then figures her boyfriend's mouth stopped the noise.
Maya peers into the kitchen, but can't see Skye anymore. She doesn't know him from the other people, doesn't know anyone else in the room.
Can I go home? she thinks, bewildered. Maybe he'll take her home.
If she can find him.
She leans against the wall, trying to grab onto something and finding nothing to hold her. She leans against it instead of trying to hold on, which is good, because her legs don't want to stay where she is, they want to explore the party while she just wants to hide in the corner and go home.
Her head hurts so badly, oh god, and the drums are pounding, heart keeps pounding, pounding away.
II.
He doesn't really feel much for a party, but Luke and the rest of the guys have been talking about this thing all week, and he figures that it's better to just go along with it than the alternative, which involves staying in with the Torreses and dealing with Audra awkwardly try to coax him into watching a movie with her, in an attempt to cheer him up.
Yeah, no.
As soon as he gets to the party, he half-wishes he'd just taken the night humoring Audra and eating her parmesan popcorn. The place reeks of sweat and cheap booze when they get there, and people are already so plastered they're puking over the porch railings and falling over themselves in the street.
When they get inside, he winces at the music, way too loud. He ducks his head slightly, following Luke into the kitchen where the drinks are mixing. The windows are streaked with grime and spider webs, the floor sticky with spilled beer and broken bottles, and there's something that's either cat shit or throw-up piled in a corner.
He pours himself a rum and coke, and when he looks up, Luke's playing what looks like Ring of Fire. Dallas watches, wondering if it's worth it to get drunk enough, when he spots the curly-haired afro of the kid from the other night.
Katie's sister's co-star from the video.
Dallas peers around the filthy kitchen, trying to catch a glimpse of the Mini Matlin. Maybe she's not here, he thinks, but something tells him otherwise.
Whether she is or not, her new boy-toy doesn't seem too concerned. He's pretty hammered, Dallas can tell from here, and he's got his arm around Eli's drug hook-up girl from the other night's party. They're cheering something slurred and indistinguishable, over the thud of the bass that jackhammers through the entire little house like it's trying to blast it apart.
The floor underneath him shakes with every thud of the bass, and Dallas thinks, that shouldn't take too long.
He takes a sip of his drink, wincing at the awful sicky-sweetness of it. It fills his nose and burns all the way down, like swallowing rotting honey. Dallas doubles over and tries not to gag.
Around him, the house crumbles to the beat of the bass.
III.
Bass drums and a taste in her mouth like something died there. Maya keeps grasping for a hold on the wall, letting it lead her around the perimeter of the smoke-filled room.
Skye, she thinks. Skye, in the kitchen. Get.
I just wanna go home.
Her other hand clutches the cup of something – she isn't sure who gave it to her or what's in it, but she keeps holding onto it like it's going to help her stand. She takes another sip from whatever it is.
The heat and the music and the sweat and the smell of warm piss are all making her sick. The entire cramped room feels like it's shrinking in on her, the spinning walls coming together like puzzle pieces, amidst the uproar of stinking bodies coming and going.
She feels hot, so hot.
Get to Skye kitchen.
Someone bumps against her side, knocking her into the wall. The guy giggles, not even looking over at her as he walks away, and he nearly falls over trying to regain his balance.
She still feels hot, but now she feels? Her shirt. It's got something splashed all over it.
She moves to unbutton it, but with the hand that's still holding her drink. It spills all down the front of her camisole and down her jeans. Maya watches as the stains start to spread, darkening her clothes.
The whole place stinks like beer and bad breath and smoke and the bass plays on, too loudly, and someone stands up in the middle of the room and yells out, and everyone else punches the air and yells with him, and even the girl who had pushed her earlier covers her ears and scowls against the raucous screams.
Maya puts her hands over her ears. The aching thud of the bass becomes a duller whoosh, and for the moment, her head hurts a little bit less. She crouches against the spot on the wall, ducking downward, and keeps her hands pressed over her ears, chin tucked to her sweaty, liquor-soaked chest.
The world whooshes and spins and stinks and roars, but she stays low to the ground, and squeezes the noise away.
IV.
Luke is making out with some blonde in booty shorts, her long spray-tanned legs wrapped around him. They stretch on the couch, his long fingers clawing at her breasts and her tongue doing most of the work.
Dallas turns away from them and tries to scan the room, wondering if Eli is here with his hook-up girl. He can't see him, but that doesn't mean he isn't hear – the place is cramped from floor to ceiling, wall to wall with bodies.
One body bumps against Dallas, splashing beer everywhere. Dallas scowls at him, and the guy staggers off, muttering "shit, shit…" in between giggles.
In the middle of the room, people are circling around the ping pong table, but beer pong seems to have transformed into something else, as they are now throwing the ping pong balls at each other and trying to catch them in the Solo cups. One guy who looks big enough to be an NFL linebacker body-slams to the table in an attempt to catch a flying ball, his cup in the air. Dallas watches the flimsy table buckle under the heavy guy's weight as the beer goes flying, and the entire thing collapses in a crash of metal and surprise.
People turn to look at the sound, and when they saw the mess of the broken table and the guy sitting dazed in the wreckage, they let out a cheer and pump their fists in the air. The people who surrounded the fallen table seems in no hurry to help the drunk guy up, so they stare and laugh instead. Some of them dump their cups of beer on the guy and he looks around, bewildered, like he doesn't understand where it's coming from.
Dallas takes another sip of his drink, then puts it aside on a table ringed with stains. The room seems to be getting darker – looks like someone switched off a light – and another bawdy cheer goes up from the crowd as they shake their fists into the shadows.
V.
It's dark, too dark, and the rush of the crowd turns up another notch. Maya still bends down towards the ground, gripping her ears tightly, but the pulse-pounding headache is back, and her heart feels like it's about to break out of her chest. It hurts, and she lets out a soft, teary whimper.
I want to go home, she thinks, tears squeezing out of her stinging, smoke-filled eyes. Crying only makes her stomach turn, though, so she tries to hold it back.
But her head aches harder when she does that, and the headache is worse than the stomachache, so she doubles over crying, clutching her ears and letting snot roll down her nose and onto her chin.
I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go hoooomeeeee….
There's a hand on her head, and a face suddenly bending down towards hers.
"Maya?"
All she sees is a pair of scuffed up sneakers, caked with mud and the laces torn almost to shreds. She can't stop staring at the shoes, but then a hand cups her chin and makes her look into the face above them, and Zig's bloodshot eyes and beet red face meets her own. He's holding a cup of something, but puts it aside and tries to grab her face to focus it on his.
"Maya? What are you doing here?"
Her mouth is too dry to respond.
Your shoes, she wants to say.
He's still holding her chin, and tries to pry her hands off her ears. The boom in the little space suddenly feels a thousand times louder, and close as if she's standing right in front of the speakers.
Fresh tears fall from her eyes.
No, she tries to wail, attempting to bat his hands away. But she loses what balance she has and almost falls face-first into the floor. Zig catches her and pulls her upright, and her legs scream in agony from being crouched down for so long.
She thrashes against him. "It's too loud," she wails.
Zig hauls her into a corner, close to the bathroom. He holds her up against the wall, peering at her closely.
"Who did you come here with?" he asks. "How'd you get here?"
Maya shakes her head.
"Your shoes…"
His mouth presses into a thin line when he smells her breath.
"How much have you had to drink?" he asks. "Come on, let's get you water…"
He tries to take her hand, but she fights his hold, trying to arch away from him.
I wanna go home. "I wanna go home!"
Another sob escapes her, as does another train of tears and snot. Maya ducks her head down, but Zig takes the sleeve of his hoodie, and wipes her face clean with it.
"Hold on," he murmurs. He wipes the smoky tear tracks from her cheeks, the snot off her nose and chin, and wipes the stickiness out of her eyes. "Come here, I got it, it's okay."
As soon as the grossness is wiped up, he tries to hold her upright.
"Okay," he says. "Hold on, just…you really need to lie down and drink some water…"
Maya keeps shaking her head.
"I'm too loud," she cries, and her hands go back to her ears. A sob turns into a cough as she gasps in a mouthful of smoke and sugary sweat, and her throat burns. It's so hot, she feels like suffocating, can't breathe in anything but ash and dust. "Please, take me home?"
Her head's so heavy, too heavy for her useless neck. She slumps into the wall, and presses her forehead against it.
Feels good, she thinks, and it's a blessed relief that the harder she pushes against the cold solidness it, the less her head feels like it's going to explode.
Zig puts a hand on her cheek. He tries to turn her head towards her.
"Maya," he says. "Maya, hey. Hey! Maya. Look at me. Look at me!"
But it feels cool and dark against the wall, and her head doesn't ache so much. And the dark is so welcome, it's so restful and quiet and everything hurts so much less; she doesn't feel anything, not anymore.
I wanna go home, and she's finally stopped hurting, no more, no more, no more.
VI.
Dallas sees the shock of red before he sees anything else.
The corner by the bathroom has more light than the rest of the dim room, and there's fewer people standing away from the bulk of the action. There's the skinny niner that Dallas recognizes as Zig Novak, the guy Cam had cold-cocked. And he's holding someone up against the wall, someone with blonde hair and a filthy red shirt half-undone and head turned to the side as her glasses hang off her face, smudged and crooked.
The kid's shaking the fuck out of her, his mouth moving, shouts Dallas can't hear. But he knows panic when he sees it, and the way the kid's face turns grey as he keeps shaking the girl, the way her head is slumping uselessly and her limbs flailing like noodles, and Dallas is running, running, shoving and not caring and ignoring the people around him, until he parts the booze-soaked Red Sea of dazed partiers.
Zig is still shaking her, and the closer he gets the more Dallas can hear his screams – "Wake up! Maya! Look at me, wake up!". He's got her by the shoulders, but her legs are gone, and she's slipping beneath him, and he can't get underneath and hold her up, the kid isn't fast enough…
But Dallas is, and he shoves the niner aside. As soon as his fingers are pried loose, the girl falls like a dress off a mannequin, nothing inside to hold her up. Her head bangs against the wall and her legs crumble bonelessly, folding over and heading straight for the unforgiving hardness below her…
And Dallas grabs hold, gripping onto her tightly and pulling her into his arms, not letting go and catching her before she hits the ground.
