As many times as it happened, the mass-departures always came as a shock to Cappie. He’d been here long enough that there weren’t many displaced people that he hadn’t at least met once or twice and there were a hell of lot more that he actually gave a crap about so it was always with a twinge of sadness that he read through the list of people who had gone. Some, he knew, chose to leave and that was their prerogative - it wasn’t like he hadn’t considered it himself a few times - but some didn’t and were just snatched away by whatever magic it was that controlled the portal between worlds. Those were the ones that seemed unjust.
However, whether they’d chosen to leave or not, it was the names that had been on that list which had put Cappie in a grey mood: Claudia and Tonks, Pippa or Paige even, PJ, Domino and Terry. In one fell swoop, Atlantis had sent home six people who each, in their own way, had meant something to him, either in Atlantis or in Breckentale. To make matters worse, the one person he would once have gone to about this kind of crap was the one person he was trying to stay away from. There was Rebecca, of course, but… Well, things had been kind of different between him and Rebecca for a few weeks now, ever since returning from Breck really, and he thought that talking to her about how sad he was, at losing the other women in his life, might be just a strain too far on their already weirdly blurry friendship. As a result, when Mikaela had offered to be his drinking companion for the night, he had been glad to take her up on her offer.
“I hope you like… whatever this is,” Cappie said, offering Mikaela the bottle of weird Atlantean beer which he’d found in the fridge downstairs. He kicked his bedroom door shut behind him, taking a drink from his own bottle.
“Ignore the mess,” he added, glancing around at his room. To be fair, it was fairly tidy by his standards but no one would be rushing to use it as a show home any time soon.
“It’s not an ideal place for commiseration drinks but Garrett’s dog tends to wander around downstairs and he’s the size of a small car so…” He shrugged, throwing himself down on the bed to sit with his back propped against the headboard.
Mikaela wasn’t used to mass departures like the one that happened that day, and seeing Veronica leave had hurt her more than she had imagined. She had become a close friend of her, specially after Breck. And now she was gone, just like that. It sucked. Big time. However, she knew it sucked even more for Cappie, who had lost more friends than one would want in one day. So drinking their sadness away seemed like a good plan.
“I’m sure it’s good. And if not, I brought a backup plan,” she said as she held a bag with two bottles of booze to share with her friend. “I’m used to big dogs, but this works just fine,” she smiled, sitting on the bed cross legged. “Atlantis sucks sometimes.”
Cappie raised his eyebrows, impressed, as he heard the chink of bottles from inside Mikaela’s bag. He liked a girl who thought ahead.
“Barkspawn would give Arcee a run for her money, size wise,” Cappie laughed. He thought he had adapted surprisingly quickly to having a war hound padding around the house, although it had taken him a few weeks to stop freezing every time the dog walked into the same room as him. He’d thought spending so much time with Cooper in Breck would have prepared him but Barkspawn was another level of big and scary.
“Yeah,” he sighed, the smile fading from his face at Mikaela’s last comment. He took another sip of his drink.
He’d been feeling more positive this past month than he had in a while - he thought there was something about making the decision to move on that had made him feel kind of free - but, just for today, he was going to allow himself a good dose of ‘Atlantis sucks’.
“Your friend Veronica left, right?”
“Really? Damn. And here I thought my dog Bonecrusher and Arcee were big,” she chuckled, taking a sip of her drink. “I like his name, definitely sounds like a big dog.”
She nodded, her expression saddening a little bit. “Yeah. We got really close while in Breck. We were best friends, and we continued to be here. But now she’s gone... Stupid Atlantis,” she muttered at the end. “But you had it worse than me... I’m sorry, Cappie,” she said softly. “I’m not gonna ask how are you because I know you’re not okay.” It’d be a stupid and pointless question to ask.
Cappie nodded, a frown spreading across his brow.
“Stupid Atlantis,” he echoed glumly.
“No, I’m alright,” he said after a second. “I mean, it sucks that they’re all gone but… well, I guess it was Breck me who was close to most of them.” He’d already had to reconcile in his own mind how he felt about people like Paige and PJ now he knew that everything he remembered from Breckentale was false. He had decided that it was alright for him to still care for them but that he wasn’t going to cling on to Breckentale memories. He couldn’t, not if he wanted to ever get over Octavia.
Terry, though… her leaving had been a blow. She’d been his friend, regardless of the benefits, and he was genuinely sad that he wouldn’t be able to hang out with her any more.
He took a deep breath in, held it for a second then blew it out again.
“I guess there’s no point moping,” he said, glancing up at Mikaela. “That’s what the drinking is for, right?”
Mikaela nodded. She knew he was right. What was the point of moping? What was done was done and they could do nothing about it. She didn’t even want to hope Veronica would come back because maybe she wasn’t the same Veronica that left, so that was pointless too.
She moved closer to Cappie so she could rest her back on the headboard and leaned her head on his shoulder. “To drinking our sorrows away,” she said as she lifted her bottle.
Cappie mirrored Mikaela’s gesture, chinking his bottle lightly against hers. However, as he was drinking to their toast, a frown crossed his face. He lowered his bottle, turning to look at Mikaela.
“You know what, fuck this. Let’s go out.” Why agree not to mope then proceed to do exactly that for the rest of the evening? Sure, they could get drunk and watch a movie and eat whatever snacks Cappie could find stashed around his bedroom but, in the end, one or both of them would end up passing out or throwing up and, either way, they’d wake up in the morning feeling hungover and no happier for it. On the other hand, they could go out and do shots and dance until they couldn’t feel their feet any more. The hangover would likely be the same but at least they might have achieved their aim of forgetting their troubles for a night.
“You up for Trocution?”
She smiled softly when their bottled clinked and drank from her bottle. Drowning their sorrows seemed like a good plan... The only plan she could think of, to be honest. That is until Cappie came up with a much better plan.
“I definitely am,” she said with a nod, smiling at him. Between drowning their sorrows away in a room and doing it in a club, the club sounded like a much better idea. “Let’s go,” she said as she got up from the bed, downing whatever was left of her beer and putting the bottle down.
Cappie grinned and nodded, glad that his plan hadn’t gone down like a lead balloon. He downed the rest of his beer before wiping his mouth and putting the empty bottle down on his nightstand, reaching out for Mikaela to pull him up.