It was weird being in a grocery store. After everything that had happened - with the attack on their housing on Friday and the battle, which had happened in the village only that morning, punctuating the weekend; with the deaths and with Ange still missing - it felt obscene to Cappie to be doing something as mundane as shopping. The problem was, a weird feeling of emptiness - hopelessness, even - had been eating at him since he’d learned of Octavia’s death and, as he so often did when he wasn’t sure what else to do, he’d decided to turn to his dear friend Tequila for comfort. He planned to spend his evening getting trashed by himself on the porch of his temporary housing, avoiding Buffy (he’d well and truly burned that bridge), avoiding Tallie (who, thanks to his bad behaviour, he had started feeling decidedly awkward around) and avoiding Terry because, well… just because.
He’d woken up on Terry’s bed that morning, fully clothed and feeling just as terrible as he had when he’d shown up there the night before, despite the comfort of her company and a good night’s sleep. He knew he probably could have stayed and talked to her about how he was feeling, if he’d wanted to, but instead he’d slipped out quietly before she or anyone else in the house had woken up. He didn’t really want to talk. He didn’t know what to say. Drinking seemed like a better option, at least for today. Tomorrow he’d try to function again and be useful, like he’d told Rebecca he wanted to be. Probably. Maybe.
Cappie looked up at the top shelf, lined with bottles of various types of spirits from all over the multiverse, searching for his companion for the night. It didn’t take him long to recognise a brand he liked and he reached up to grab a bottle before hugging it to his chest and heading for the checkout clerk.
Some people needed a paper of some kind and a leash to bring their pet into the grocery store as their emotional support aide. Not Aubrey, at least not here (and not anywhere else she deemed she needed Dr. Harris Bonkers to come along to, really.). She had taken her break and used the time to buy some much needed supplies, seeing as her house had been totalled with most of her things inside. And the priority was, of course, her emotional support bunny.
She held it in a sort of sling around her torso, or something between a sling and a bunny hammock while in her hands were bags of vegetables, pellets, and some water. Having gotten lost in the aisles while looking for the way to the checkout, she almost bumped into Cappie and his tequila booty before she stopped herself. The bunny poked his head out of his sling at the sudden stop.
“Whoa! Hey,” she swallowed and made to lower her gaze away from him as she realized who it was. “Um, hey Cappie.”
Cappie had become aware of someone entering his personal space and turned just in time to put a hand out and stop the bags of vegetables tumbling to the floor.
“Easy,” he said, out of reflex, adding, “Bunny!” when he saw the fluffy head poking out of a sling at chest height. You weren’t supposed to start hallucinating before drinking tequila…
“Oh, hey,” Cappie said, a quizzical smile dawning on his face as he stepped back and recognised Aubrey. He was struck, suddenly, by how much she looked like Angelina (although Angelina as she was when she’d been in Atlantis before, years younger than she was now… or had been until that morning) and the smile faltered slightly.
“Are you aware you have a rabbit on you?” he said, not wanting to dwell on yet another reason to feel depressed.
Exclaiming “bunny!” was a good reaction to have towards Dr. Harris Bonkers, in Aubrey’s absolutely biased opinion. Aubrey’s smile was strained. She wasn’t good with this stuff. Pretending nothing was amiss for the sake of civility and because going in deeper into their feelings and their grief and whatnot wasn’t something one did at the grocery store. But she was all too happy to shift attention to her magnificent rabbit.
“Yes!” She set her groceries on the floor and angled the sling further towards Cappie. “This is my animal companion, Dr. Harris Bonkers PhD. Say hello, Cappie.”
“What’s up, Doc?” Cappie said as he reached out his free hand to pet Dr. Harris Bonkers’ head. His smile grew as he felt the velvet-soft fur beneath his fingertips.
“What’s his PhD in?” he added, glancing up at Aubrey’s face with a quirk of the eyebrow.
Aubrey smiled, pleased to see her bunny treated with the affection he deserved. Cappie’s question wasn’t one she really had an answer for, or if she did she couldn’t remember it. So, she shrugged. “He never told me! Rodent Studies maybe?”
“Huh,” Cappie replied, amused. “That’s something I never majored in.”
After an awkward pause, Aubrey gestured to his bottles. “Big plans for later?”
Cappie pressed his lips together and looked down at the tequila, feeling the humor melt away as he was reminded of why he was drinking in the first place.
“Oh, yeah. It’s gonna be wild,” he said flatly. “You and the doc can join me if you want. My liver would thank you; I’d only drink it all myself otherwise.”
Even though she had only turned twenty-one very recently (days ago, really), Aubrey was no stranger to the concepts of drinking to forget, grief-drinking, all things in between. She knew it was what was going on here, and knew she’d have tied herself to a bottle of hooch after Ned had died if it wasn’t for the immediate need to relocate and protect the Amnesty Lodge people.
Aubrey was one to steamroll over sadness and awkwardness with (typically bad) jokes, so she smiled, strained though it was, and nodded. “Thanks for the invite, I’d love to.” She wiggled her fingers and let flame pass through them. “Hear it’s gonna be liiiiiit...”
Cappie’s eyebrow rose as he watched the flame dance over Aubrey’s skin and he couldn’t stop a reluctant smile from spreading across his face. He remembered Aubrey telling him she could do magic as well as stage magic but he’d never asked her exactly what that entailed. He should have figured, though. With an alias like Lady Flame, it would be rude if her magic didn’t involve fire in some way.
“You ever had a Flaming Dr Pepper?”
Raising one single eyebrow, Aubrey extinguished the flame as she contemplated Cappie with a doubtful expression. “I have not. Sounds up my alley though, obviously. Did you make that up? Are you going to need my assistance to make it flaming, because last I checked Dr. Pepper wasn’t especially flammable.”
There was still the matter of getting the bunny supplies and getting Dr. Harris Bonkers safely home. “So how about I go get my bunny fed and watered, you get the tequila, and we meet wherever it is you’re planning on throwing this absolute epic bash?”
Cappie chuckled and shook his head. Still, if he was going to show her how to make a Flaming Dr Pepper, he’d need more supplies.
“Alright. Meet me on the back porch of Family 33 in about half an hour.” He was about to turn and head back down the alcohol aisle, in search of Bacardi 151 when he paused to give the rabbit one last stroke. “Goodnight, Doc. I’ll try not to keep her out too late.” He gave the rabbit a wink then smiled at Aubrey and disappeared amongst the bottles of liquor.
***
It was a little over half an hour later, and the bunny was napping comfortably in his enormous bed, groceries were stored and Aubrey was already sitting on Cappie’s couch - well not just Cappie’s since he lived with other people, but semantics didn’t really matter right now. “Well what’s the deal with this Flaming Dr. Pepper thing?”
“Okay,” Cappie said, pushing his knuckles out in front of him as he slid off of the porch furniture onto the decked floor in front of a low, rattan table. He had all the ingredients in a brown paper bag down beside the table leg and he quickly pulled them out one by one, placing them in a line on the table: beer, amaretto and 151. He’d set the glasses out already; two shot glasses stood either side of two large tumblers and, as Aubrey watched, Cappie opened one of the cans of beer and filled the two larger glasses almost up to the top.
“Right, so, you take almost a full shot of amaretto,” he explained, commentating on his own actions as he unscrewed the cap of the bottle and began to pour the brown liquor into the shot glasses.
“Aaaaand you top it off with the high proof stuff.” Switching bottles, he let the Bacardi dribble into the shot glasses, one by one, until each had a layer of glistening, swirling 151 floating on top of the amaretto. He returned the caps to both bottles then set them out of the way (which seemed like the sensible choice, considering things were about to get warm).
“Then you get a friend with magic fire powers to set the shot on fire,” he said, casting a cheeky smile up at Aubrey. “And, while it’s still alight, you drop the shot in the beer and down the lot.”
“So, if you wouldn’t mind…” He gestured with a flourish to the two shot glasses, waiting to be lit.
This was way, way more alcohol than Aubrey had ever drank separately, let alone together. She’d been rebellious and adventurous before but a lot of stuff was going into those glasses.
When Cappie mentioned the friend with magic fire powers she shot him a wide grin and lit up her hands, flames dancing along her fingers. “Okay. I don’t do this often.” Or at all, really. The drinking, anyway. “So let me...prep.”
Aubrey closed her eyes as if mentally steeling up her stomach for what was to come. “Okay. Okay, got it.”
Pointing each digit at each shot glass, she set both alight as if she were a cowboy shooting double pistols from the hip and clumsily followed the other instructions. She did not manage to down the entire beer however.