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Lanolin hears Surge before she sees her.
It’s dark in her office other than the small desk lamp and the light of her laptop. From the small window she’s left open comes a gust of wind, and then the clink of glass.
Lanolin turns to look, sighing deeply as Surge’s silhouette shifts, light catching on her teeth when she grins.
“Hey, you,” Surge says, voice rough. She’s been crying.
“Hello,” Lanolin responds, closing her laptop.
Surge hops into the room, and the clink sounds again. This time, Lanolin sees exactly what it is.
In one of Surge’s hands is three bottles. Two look like wine, and the third…
“Is that vodka?”
Surge sways, and that’s an answer in and of itself.
“Where did you get that?” Lanolin asks, standing as Surge settles herself on the floor.
“Liquor store out in the city,” Surge explains, screwing a top off one of the wine bottles and taking a long swig. “Alcohol tastes bad.” Her arm shoots out, offering. “Try.”
Lanolin, unsure, tugs the bottle out of her hand. It’s lighter than it should be, and when she swirls the liquid inside, she realizes it’s nearly done. “Did you drink this all on your own?” she asks.
“It tastes bad,” Surge says again, gesturing for Lanolin to go on.
It’s with a little sigh that Lanolin brings the bottle to her lips and takes a tentative sip. She pauses, swallows, then sips again.
“Surge, this is good wine.”
Surge frowns. “It tastes bad.”
“Have you ever had alcohol before?” Lanolin asks, brows raised high. “This tastes great.”
But then Surge sputters, and Lanolin comes to the realization: “You haven’t had alcohol before.”
Surge takes the wine bottle back, holding it close to her chest. “I’ve- I- Yes I have,” she argues.
“Did you try the vodka?” Lanolin asks, amused.
“Yeah,” Surge admits, holding the (rather large) bottle up to catch the low light. It’s nearly full. “It tastes like rubbing alcohol.”
“It does. Did you take it like a shot, or like a drink?”
Surge looks confused.
Lanolin snorts, kneeling to sit with the tenrec. She tugs the vodka from her weak grip.
“Like… Without holding it in your mouth. You drink and swallow at the same time.” Lanolin twists the top off in one smooth movement, then brings it to her lips and swallows. She offers it back to Surge, as though to have her attempt, then pauses. “Oh, holy- ow.”
Surge laughs, long and hard.
Lanolin stares down at her in a mix of awe and annoyance. “You drunk bastard.”
“No,” Surge manages when she’s finished laughing, but she’s rocking back and forth, a giddy smile on her lips. “Um, I wasn’t drinking it like that. I didn’t know I… should?”
She takes the vodka back from Lanolin and tries again, then chokes, hard.
This time it’s Lanolin’s turn to laugh, feeling the vodka hitting.
“That was soooo bad!” Surge wails.
“If you do it wrong and it’s strong, you’ll choke,” Lanolin agrees.
“It hurts,” Surge notices.
Lanolin takes all the bottles and lines them up on the ground between them.
“You,” she begins, a warm feeling settling in her chest, “know nothing about alcohol. So I’m going to teach you.”
Surge grins, large and excited, and for just a moment, that’s enough for Lanolin to smile back.
Lanolin leans her head against her desk, swirling the last bit of wine in the second bottle. Her jaw tingles with the aftertaste and the smile on her lips.
Head propped up against her thigh, Surge lies down, eyes wide and a little glossy.
Lanolin almost laughs. “How’s the vodka been treating you?” she asks.
Not long after opening the second bottle of wine, it was decided that the wine was Lanolin’s and the vodka was Surge’s. Now, Surge is absolutely wasted, and Lanolin is… Well, she’s definitely past just feeling it.
“I thing I’m gunna cry,” Surge says, blinking quickly.
Lanolin wipes under the tenrec’s eyes with a thumb. “You might,” she admits. “I might.”
“I already cried,” Surge says with a huff. Then, an afterthought, “Why’m I so quiet?”
“You aren’t,” Lanolin tells her.
“I can’t hear me.” A pause, then, like a realization, “Myself!”
Lanolin laughs. “That’s the alcohol.”
Surge frowns. “Mm I supposedta know that?”
Lanolin shrugs. “Maybe, if you had a normal life.”
Surge’s frown twists into a sneer, and she turns her head to bury her snout in Lanolin’s stomach. “S’ stupid. I shoulda had a normal life.”
Lanolin winces. Oops. “Well, if you knew people who drank alcohol, I mean.”
Surge huffs into her fat and Lanolin shivers. “Starline drank alcohol.”
Lanolin blinks. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Surge sighs. “Wine.” She looks up at Lanolin with a fierce look in her eyes. “And I don’t even know where he kept it!!! I was aaaalways trying to get into his stash and I’d run alllll over the base looking for it and I’d never find it!!” Her eyes drift down to Lanolin’s hand, her own coming up to wrap around. “I drank rubbing alcohol instead. Out of curiosity.”
Lanolin’s brows shoot up. “You- you drank rubbing alcohol.”
“It was bad,” Surge says, nodding. “Starline got all worried ‘n stuff. Told me not to do it again. Said it wasn’t for drinking.” She snorts. “Duh. I just wanted to know how it felt.”
“How did it feel?”
“Bad,” Surge says again. “I threw up.”
Lanolin can’t help but laugh. Surge snorts a second after, then turns back to shove her snout against Lanolin’s waist.
It’s with slightly blurry vision that Lanolin considers the wine bottle. “… Is that why you grabbed wine? Because of him?” She asks.
Surge nods sleepily. “I was curious why he liked it.”
“Do you get it now?”
Surge snorts. “No. It tastes baaaad.”
Lanolin tugs on her ear. “This tastes great. You’re drinking vodka.”
“Tastes familiar,” Surge says softly. “It… The lab smelled like this.”
Lanolin stays quiet for a minute. She doesn’t really know what to say here. “Can I ask… what it was like?” It’s curiosity, simple and easy as that, but there’s a thick guilt there too.
Lanolin opened her room to Surge, watched her break down and cry and scream and hurt herself. But she doesn’t know her. Doesn’t know much of anything at all.
“I mean, I don’ think it was any sort of big deal,” Surge says. “Sounds creepy, I bet, when I call it a lab. But I don’ remember any of that stuff- it was all just… He taught us and helped us and put us through training. Nothin’ really to talk about.”
Lanolin takes a swig of the wine and feels it tingle as she puts the bottle down. “Anything’s worth talking about. I’m not asking for something bad,” she says.
Surge doesn’t respond.
“My home wasn’t anything special,” she starts, voice distant even to herself. “I was a farmgirl, you know?”
Surge glances at her.
“No dad. Just my mom and me. Chickens, when I was younger, and I watched the neighbour’s cows enough that I called them mine.” She cards her fingers through Surge’s quills, staring blankly at the wine bottle.
That vodka sounds nice right now.
“They were an older couple. No kids. Needed someone to do the work.”
Surge shifts, ears perked.
“I liked the work part. I like keeping busy.”
Surge snorts. “I know that much.”
Lanolin tugs lightly on her ponytail. “Jerk.”
Surge’s smile is blinding.
“Anyway,” Lanolin says. “My mom is… fine. Overbearing. Very particular about the way she’s viewed by the people in town.” She can feel the way her voice quiets. “I went behind her back a lot. She wanted me to be a good little girl, but I’m… not. Not really.”
Surge laughs, a full and real sound. “You’re one of them goody-two shoes, Puffball. You’re plenty good.”
“Don’t you know how to sweet-talk a girl?” Lanolin asks, Surge’s laughter infectious despite the pit in her chest.
“S’ not a compliment from someone like me,” Surge snarks.
“And I’ll take it as one anyway,” Lanolin decides haughtily.
Surge twists, pushing herself up and off of Lanolin’s thigh. There’s a half second where Lanolin misses the warmth, but then Surge tugs at her hair, their noses close, and she finds that this is a fine substitute. “Dumbass,” Surge whispers, grinning. There are tiny tears in the corner of her eyes.
The hand holding a lock of Lanolin’s hair moves, searching blindly for the vodka. Surge sips, then coughs into her arm, then dizzily leans her head against Lanolin’s shoulder.
Lanolin sits, unsure, as Surge deals with the new rush of alcohol.
Then Surge speaks. “How’d you go behind her back?” she asks, quiet.
Lanolin blinks. “Like, how difficult was it?”
“No, no-“ Surge shakes her head, and then whines.
“You never move your head too fast when you’re drunk,” Lanolin reminds.
“Shhhuddup,” Surge mumbles.
“Do not throw up on me.”
“Shhh!!!! I won’t!” They sit in silence for a second as Surge steadies herself. “… What’d’ya do behind her back, I mean,” she asks, a stage whisper.
Lanolin blinks down at her, then stares off, out the window. There’s nothing out there now, other than the skylights up to the surface, but…
“Whatever,” she says. “Weed off my cousins, sometimes. Moonshine with the boys down the street. Doing dumb shit in the woods behind town.” Lanolin thinks a moment. “I broke a boy’s nose once. We were wrestling, and he got me in the tit so I got him in the face. The deal was that he wouldn’t tell my mother if I didn’t tell anyone else.”
“Woah,” Surge says. “You sound like you were friends wit’ assholes.”
Lanolin snorts. “He was fine,” she promises. “But, yeah, I mean- I was. Cuz I was an ass too.”
“But you’re so… like…” Surge pauses, face twisting in legitimate thought, searching for the word. “Like, like a princess.”
Lanolin stares at her, brows raised high.
“Like! All that duty shit or whatever. And you talk all…” Another pause. “FORMAL. Formal, you’re all formal.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Lanolin asks, unsure if she should be offended.
“Nuh uh,” Surge says. “Jus… I don’t get it.”
Lanolin’s brows furrow.
“You did all that stuff, bein, like… a rebel.”
Lanolin waves her hand, so-so.
“N’ it’s all… real rebel stuff. I’ve never had mara-wunna, or alcohol, or done anythin’ Starline didn’t want me ta do.”
“Never?” Lanolin asks, legitimately surprised.
Surge settles her head on Lanolin’s shoulder, absently drawing circles along the sheep’s collarbone.
“I mean- I unno. I thought so, back ‘en. Annoyed him, wuz a jerk ‘n all. But real rebellion woulda been, um-“ she pauses, blinking slowly at nothing. “I dunno. Leaving. Splittin’ his stupid head in two. Not helping him spray paint his stupid logo everywhere just cuz graffiti is illegal and I wanted ta be cool.”
“You did leave,” Lanolin points out. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”
Surge’s eyes turn up to catch hers. Her expression is pinched, pained.
Then she turns away.
“Doesn’ count.”
Lanolin feels her face change in a way she can’t hide. “How?”
“I ‘unno. Jus’ doesn’.”
“You know you’re out now,” Lanolin says, a question phrased like a statement.
“Duh.”
“Then?”
“I…” Her nose wrinkles. “Shut up, Lanolin.” She grabs for her vodka and swallows down too much. She squirms as it runs through her, thigh to thigh with the sheep.
Lanolin feels hot.
“Stop,” Lanolin murmurs, taking the bottle from Surge’s hand and sliding it too far for her to grab. “I think you’re starting to get to ‘too much,’” she says.
Surge doesn’t even whine, just makes a face at her through her lashes. Then she hiccups, her whole body jolting with it.
The silence afterwards is heavy in a way Lanolin didn’t mean for it to get to, when she started. Surge’s eyes are distant, lost in thought.
“Don’t get in your head,” Lanolin whispers. “Not right now.”
“I didn’ do it,” Surge says, far off.
Lanolin blinks. “What?”
“Doesn’ count, cuz I didn’ do it.” She falls, boneless, against Lanolin’s chest. She’s breathing heavy, and Lanolin realizes half a second too late that the wet in her eyes isn’t just a drunken sheen, but the beginning of tears.
Lanolin shifts to support Surge better, one hand resting against her hip.
“We didn’ even fight ‘im,” she murmurs. “Or- I- We did. N’ then we made him forget, like he made us forget, n’ when he died, nothin’… It wasn’t us.”
Lanolin sucks in a breath, slow, slow, steady. She rubs a soothing line down Surge’s back.
“We stayed in the lab afterwards. Didn’ leave ‘ntil we ran outta food. Didn’ leave soon enough. He died and we still… stayed.”
“I’m sorry,” Lanolin whispers.
Surge shifts, teeth bared against Lanolin’s breast. “Shut.” Her breath stutters in her chest, tears finally falling from rapidly blinking eyes. “Shut up.”
Lanolin pulls her close. Surge wraps her arms around her neck, claws sharp against the back of her head. She’s loose but desperate, shoulders shaking with sobs she refuses to let out.
“Fuck,” Surge whines.
Lanolin’s shirt is getting damp.
“‘S was subbosed to make me feel bedder,” she laughs, more of a cry.
“It- Surge, it’s- It just makes you feel more.”
Surge laughs, really, this time, clawed hand clenching painfully against her skin. Her voice is pitifully small as she looks up. “Why didn’ you tell me?”
Lanolin means to tense, to find some excuse. “I-“ She can’t quite find anything. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’ wamt you to be sorry, I wanna feel better.” Surge sniffles, pressing her face into Lanolin’s shoulder. Quiet, quiet, quiet; “I wanna be happy. Why can’d I be happy?”
“Hey,” Lanolin hums, going for sweet and probably missing by a long shot. “Hey, you can, okay?”
“I ‘unno how.”
“But you’re going to learn, okay?” The words feel untrue, but Lanolin promises them anyway.
Surge sobs, a hitch in her breath and a jolt in her shoulders.
Lanolin breathes deep. The alcohol dulls her, and she’s lost the knowledge of what might be helpful in this situation, but she knows that alcohol makes her honest.
So honesty it is.
“I wanted to enjoy something with you,” Lanolin admits.
Surge shifts, surprised.
“I knew you’d been crying. I’ve heard before, during and after enough times.” There’s a bit of a laugh in her voice, but none of it really feels funny. “And you had alcohol, and I knew it would make me feel…” Lanolin pauses. “Not better. Warmer. I wanted that. And I wanted it for you too.”
For a moment, they just breathe, chests rising and falling together.
Then Lanolin goes on. “Then I got curious. I wanted to know you better. I still want to know you better. And I knew you’d be more open to answer me right now.”
Surge inhales sharply. “…I hate people who do thad.”
“I know,” Lanolin says, even though she doesn’t quite.
Claws clench painfully. “I hate people who want somethin’ outta me n’ just take it.”
“I know,” Lanolin repeats, soft. It’s true this time.
Surge shoves Lanolin hard against the desk behind her. Claws dig into skin, threatening to pierce.
But they don’t.
“You can’t do thad,” Surge growls. Her voice breaks halfway through, and she ends it with a sniffle. She’s crying. Openly.
“I wanted to know you,” Lanolin whispers. An excuse, an explanation.
Broken, “Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Lanolin wishes the answer was no, but Surge is Surge, and Surge needs a reason. She doesn’t say it, but she waits. Waits with sad eyes that expect a betrayal.
Lanolin opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
“I-“ It’s like thorns in her throat, tearing her flesh as she tries to force the words out. “I… I know you from your worst days,” she tries. “But I don’t know anything real. I want- I want to see more. I want to-“
It’s so close to what it could be, but she can’t say it. She can barely bring herself to admit what she means to herself.
“Not like this,” Surge whispers.
“No,” Lanolin agrees. “Not like this.”
Surge loosens her grip. Sits back on her heels. There’s a distance between them that there hasn’t been since the beginning of the night.
“I don’ even know whadda give you, Lanolin,” Surge sighs. Wipes at her nose. “All I have are m’ worst days.”
Lanolin stares at her. Reaches out to place her hand on Surge’s knee. “You’re gonna be happy,” she promises, and knows it this time. “And I’ll be there to see it happen.”
A deep-seeded want, disguised as an offering.
Let me be there, Lanolin begs. Let me see every part of you.
Surge cracks a smile. “Arright,” she laughs, voice low, gravelly. Freshly cried for the second time that night. “You gonna show me how t’ be happy?”
“Yeah,” Lanolin says softly. A promise. “Yeah.”