Something in the Way You Move [O'J]

Hungover

Danny's POV

I wake up with a pounding headache. I look around and manage to determine that I'm in my own flat. Did I come back here alone? I don't remember. Then again, I don't remember much of yesterday... I sit up carefully and immediately a wave of nausea takes me. I lay back down, groaning, "Nope, nope, nope." I stare up at my ceiling. I should really paint it to make it more interesting to stare at.

"So you're alive?" Mark asks.

"Yup," I answer. "What happened last night?"

"You don't remember anything?"

"Not a damn thing..."

"Okay, well, you got plastered beyond belief pretty quickly and then partied hard."

"Sounds good." I stay quiet for a few minutes before asking, "Did I do anything weird with Jessie?"

"You told her you loved her and tried to get her to come back here."

I roll over onto my side and groan, "Agh, shit! I probably fucked up our whole goddamn relationship!"

"Dan, I don't think you did...she said it back, and she was only a little tipsy, if anything."

"But she didn't come back?"

"No, she went home herself. She took Callie with her."

"I see." At this point Glen comes in and announces, "I have the magic hangover cure!"

I roll back onto my back and slowly sit up. Glen orders, "Down the hatch, then! Don't look at it, don't smell it, and certainly don't try to taste it!" He pushes the shot glass into my hand and I take the shot as quick as I can. I shudder as it goes down, worse than the first shot of strong vodka. I swallow a few times and shudder again. "Christ, Glen, what is in that?"

"You don't want to know," he tells me. They each grab one of my hands and pull me to my feet. "Let's have breakfast, yeah?"

"Well, Glen, at this point it's more of a lunch than a breakfast..." Mark corrects him.

"Why, what time is it?" I ask.

"About one in the afternoon."

"Oh." We all head into my kitchen and eat something for lunch. Nothing big, since we're all still hungover and our stomachs are less-than-easy.

"So Dan, when are you going to visit your family? You always do around your birthday," Mark asks.

"I'm leaving tomorrow for an 11:00 flight," I tell them.

"Is Callie going with you?"

"Yeah, there are other kids she has to help. She made them a promise before running away. So she's going to bust them out and get them re-united with their families and whatnot."

"Will you be able to bring her, though? Won't her ID give her away?"

"I didn't think of that... But wait, she got into England from Ireland, so she has to have a passport, right?"

"But maybe she left before she was labeled as a missing person."

"Or she made a fake identity."

"Is she that smart?"

"She has to be; how else would she have escaped?"

"Luck."

I shrug. "I don't know, I don't think that luck is really on her side...I mean, her parents have been dead since she was six and she was adopted by an abusive man..."

"So how are you going to get her over?"

"I don't know." At this point, there's a knock at my door. I answer it and Jessie and Callie walk in.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say you just woke up," Jessie says, staring at me. I look down at myself and I'm mildly surprised to find myself just in my boxers. "Oh," I say, "Yeah. Anyways, what's going on?"

"What, we're not allowed to pop in on you?"

"It'd be nice to get a call so I can, ya know, get dressed before I answer the door."

Jessie walks over to me and whispers in my ear, "Honestly, I don't mind how little clothing you wear." I shudder pleasantly; oh my God, the things this woman does to me! I walk into my room and throw on some pajamas (that I apparently took off in my sleep, since they were right next to where I was sleeping) before returning to the kitchen.

"So, I hear you and Callie are going on a wild adventure to your homeland in an attempt to free her compadres?" Jessie asks.

"Yup, pretty much," I answer, sitting down. "Callie, how'd you get from Ireland to here in the first place?"

"Oh, I made a fake identity," she says casually. "Er, they made me one---technically, my name isn't Callie Elizabeth O'Shanahan; they changed it to something else, but I had a passport with my original name from when I was with my parents and just used that. They never suspected a thing."

"So if Callie isn't your real name, what is, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Branna Shanahan O'Doherty," she says. "O'Doherty was his last name so he just decided to give it to his daughter." She laughs bitterly. "Like he ever considered me his daughter."

"So there shouldn't be a problem getting you into Ireland, then!"

"There certainly wasn't one getting out, that's for sure!"

"Our flight's at 11:00 tomorrow, so we'll be leaving here at 9:30 to make sure we have plenty of time to go through everything."

"Fair enough."

"Are your bruises getting any better?"

She lifts the front of her shirt up and looks down at them. "Yeah, loads." They're now a sickly greenish-yellow instead of the black-and-blue of only a few days before. One of us must look surprised, because she says, "Since I was bruised so often, my body's used to it and heals faster."

"Okay. What are we gonna do for the rest of the day? Anyone have any ideas?"

"Play strip poker," Mark says, deadly serious.

"Mark, we're in the presence of an innocent---maybe two---I don't think strip poker is a good idea," I tell him quietly.

"Learn to take a joke, Dan!" he laughs, punching me in the arm.

"Dude you know how I am in hangovers; I can't tell a joke from your left shoe."

"Oh yeah."

"How about Cards Against Humanity?" Glen suggests.

"Oh my God yes!" Mark and Jessie yell.

"Callie are you okay with that? It's kind of inappropriate," I ask her.

"What is it?"

"Like a more mature, funnier, and a lot more risqué version of Apples to Apples."

"In that case I'm all for it."

"Alright!" I go and grab the game from my room. "Did you get the expansion packs?" Mark asks.

"No, why?"

"Go get them! It'll be more fun that way!" I sigh and grab the expansion packs from my room. We shuffle all the cards together and deal. We end up playing for the rest of the day, and in the end, Callie ends up kicking all our asses. We're not sure if we should laugh or be really concerned that a nine-year-old girl is so good at that game! At around nine at night, Mark, Glen, and Jessie all leave.

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Nine year olds should not play Cards Against Humanity! I threw that in there because I forgot how risqué it really is. You should only play it if you're 15 and older (in my opinion). :)

Sorry if the cursing upset you. I feel that a very hung-over Danny would curse a lot.