Seth Mission #9 - Get Rodney Drunk
Following on from 'Grandparents', and referencing 'Childhood Memories' - Seth achieves half of a mission to unexpected results, and things are totally not awkward.
This is quite long and possibly sympathy-for-Rodney inducing, so: TL;DR: Seth's going to be a little less confrontational, a little more smugly knowledgable, and Rodney is going to be very confused and suspicious. Also, according to Seth, they're now officially friends.
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The mission was succeeding well (although it had yet to proceed to the karaoke stage); while Rodney was apparently aware that what he was drinking was alcohol, he didn’t seem to realise how high said alcohol content was. Seth began to wonder whether what he was doing was technically illegal - well, if this went wrong and Rodney found out, it would be soon at least.
So far it had loosened his tongue quite a bit - Seth had been listening to Rodney’s complaints about being Mayor for about an hour, and, from the way he told it, Rodney would soon be banning everything from freedom of speech to the internet, to adverts with jingles in them and cheese with holes in it.
“How many of these have I had?” Rodney frowned at his glass on the bar.
“Er, five?”
“Oh. I want more.” He sounded vaguely curious, like it was some unusual phenomenon.
“You’ve probably had enough. You wouldn’t want to get drunk now, would you?”
“I don’ know… I kind of feel like getting drunk.”
“Well… maybe you already are?” Make that definitely are.
“No - you said there wasn’t much alcohol in these?”
“Well it’s not to me, but you’re not much of a drinker, so maybe you can’t handle it so well.”
Rodney frowned at him. “I’m not that bad. Just because you’re an alcoholic. With a stupid nose.”
Seth laughed in surprise. “A stupid nose?”
“Yeah. It’s like, right there. And all bumpy and annoying,” he said, mind suddenly apparently totally focused on it.
Seth laughed to himself and bit back pointing out what he wanted to: Rodney would notice such things because he was too short to look Seth straight in the eye. But if all he wanted was a slanging match with Rodney, then Rodney didn’t need to be drunk for that, so he decided to try a different tactic. “Oh, just the nose? Not going to point out the long, thin face, small eyes and big cheekbones then?”
Rodney blinked and seemed to notice those things before frowning down at his empty glass again. “At least nobody ever accidentally or even purposely mistakes you for a girl.”
Seth suppressed the laugh. “That is true. Though you might not get that if you cut your hair…”
“I like my hair - why should I have to change it just because other people think guys should have short hair? Your hair looks ridiculous and no-one makes you change it.”
It looked like it was going to be an evening of Seth ignoring insults just to keep the conversation going. “You could try growing a beard or whatever.”
Rodney shook his head. “No, it doesn’t grow or look right on me. Have you ever tried?”
“Ehh, I grew sideburns a bit back in school, but it didn’t really work. Perfect as I am,” he smirked as he sipped his beer.
“Pfft, you just get everything easily.”
“Says who?”
“The whole freaking universe! You want women, you get them. You want friends, you get them. You want to be famous and cool and the centre of attention-”
Seth laughed and shook his head.
“You do! Don’t deny it, you have everything! You only met Liv a little while ago and already she likes you more than me, and I’m her father!”
“She does not like me more than you, you idiot. She may like me and we get on well, but she loves you - if I told her to go and marry some guy she barely knows and doesn’t love, she wouldn’t. She’d probably be very polite about it, but she wouldn’t.”
Rodney’s frown refused to fade, even as he acknowledged that. “…Well maybe, but the rest is still true!”
“You could have way more than you do if you’d just let yourself - Jesspret is throwing herself at you, but you’re the one who shoots her down-”
“Jesspret is just using me-”
“And you think none of the women I’ve been with have used me? And fine, forget Jesspret - go meet some other girl who can like you for you! Be nice for once, and you’d do fine! I don’t know why you find it so hard!”
“No-one’s ever going to like me for me,” Rodney said miserably, resting his chin on his hands on the bar.
“What makes you so sure? People like me for me - well, okay, they don’t know everything I’ve done, but if you leave the past out and just act as you are now, you’re bound to find someone.”
Rodney shook his head. “No-one’s ever loved me. Not even my parents.”
“I- Uh-” Seth found that he really didn’t know what to say to that. Rodney had never talked about his past, so he couldn’t even dismiss it. And all of a sudden everything was bordering on extremely awkward. “What?”
“I was always just a major disappointment. I had an older sister, Rachel, and she was like amazing at everything; always got As, and she was really popular, and she could play the piano and the flute and everything. And I was expected to be just as good, if not better, because I was the son. But whenever I remembered how important every test and everything was, my mind would just go completely blank and it was like I couldn’t do anything, no matter how hard I tried. I don’t think my father ever made his mind up as to whether I was lazy or stupid. Maybe both. And every time he’d be talking to his colleagues or friends it’d be like ‘This is my daughter Rachel, she’s an A* student, she’s head of the debating society and she can play grade 7 piano and speak Takemize! Oh, and that’s Rodney.’”
“That… sucks.” Seth got the impression that he’d long missed the deadline on Rodney being the right amount of drunk for karaoke. And the awkwardness was painful because Seth knew that sober Rodney would rather die than tell him all this. But then, he was a firm believer that situations were only awkward if you let them be awkward, and he was definitely not that kind of person. “That doesn’t mean your parents didn’t love you, though. I mean, I spent all of my childhood and adolescence getting into trouble and winding my mum up, and she still loved me. And if you were basically still well behaved…”
“Well I was, but I don’t think they knew that. ‘Cause I had this bastard of a cousin called Aden, and, whenever we’d go to family parties, him and his friends would always pick on me because I was small and skinny and they knew they’d get away with it - he locked me in a bathroom cupboard once when I was seven; had to scream the house down before I got let out - but I was too scared by what they’d do to me if I told on them, so I just tried to hide or refused to go to the parties and everyone would get really angry at me. And then there was my hair…”
Awkwardness aside, this insight into Rodney’s past was kind of fascinating, joining the dots between his past and present. And, if nothing else, Seth could annoy the hell out of Rodney when he was sober again, so he pressed on. “What about your hair?”
“Well I first grew it out like this when I was 6, kinda by accident; my mum was really busy that summer and kept forgetting to organise to get it cut, but I liked it long - it made me look different to all the other boys who had the same haircut, and it was like I could hide behind it. But my dad didn’t like it at all, and when I went back to school all the boys started teasing me about it, saying it made me a girl, and I hadn’t really had proper friends before- or afterwards actually, but I hadn’t been bullied there either, so I gave up and let them cut it, but I was so miserable about it afterwards that I grew it back as soon as I could and never let it get cut short again, no matter what anyone said. But between my not-perfect grades, long hair and refusal to go to family events, I think my parents thought I was trying to make trouble. And my sister, meanwhile, was perfect in every way.”
Oh man, if you were sober and thinking straight, you would be mortified, Seth thought with an odd mixture of amusement and pity, as he patted him on the shoulder. “That sucks.”
“Yeah. So I gave up on family and school - never went to uni, and haven’t spoken to any of my family since I left home - and then I discovered that I was actually quite good at sneaking around without people noticing, and stealing stuff. Started out just stealing from cars and stuff, but worked my way up to houses and museums and things.”
“Like all good criminals,” Seth smirked.
“And then blackmail and everything. And everything was going fine until you came along with your stupid magic spells, making me fall in love with Mia stupid Ryman!” Rodney finally looked up and glared at him.
“Yeeeeah… What can I say? At least you got laid out of it?”
“Well yeah, except when your first love turns around and tells you that none of it’s been real because her evil cousin put a spell on you both, so she’s breaking up with you!”
“In my defence, she wasn’t supposed to find out the truth.” Then another thought struck him. “Actually, if she hadn’t found out and had wanted to stay with you, I may have had to kill you too…Hmm…”
Rodney seemed to be too angry to listen. “And then you get put into a bachelor challenge with a load of people she’s never met and a couple of rotting, lurching zombies, so you should be a dead cert to win, but noooo, apparently she’d rather be with the reanimated rotting corpse of Juan freaking Harris than you!”
“At least you beat the reanimated rotting corpse of Zack freaking Landry? What can I say; the heart wants what it wants. That or she has a really weird kink for half-dead people, in which case you’re better off out of it.”
“But then you’ve still got to see the stupid bitch who rejected you, and the zombie, because she’s had your child, and now you’re competing with that zombie bastard for your own child’s love!”
“You didn’t have to compete-”
“I wasn’t going to share her or lose yet another person to him. And then he went out of his way to catch me and put me in jail.”
“Do you really blame him?”
“Yes! By this point I was meant to be married to a woman I loved with kids, but instead I had one kid with a woman who loved a zombie more than me, and I was in jail!”
“And then you met me properly, and it was all made worth it…” Seth said with a pleasant smile.
“Yeah, I meet a mass-murderer and we break out of jail, and somehow karma sees fit to make him and his life a million times better than mine! I think I’m cursed to be miserable.”
“But I don’t see that - Liv loves you, she chose you over not just Harris, but her mother too! You could have Jesspret, you’re the freaking Mayor, and you use your power to make Harris miserable - what more do you want?”
Rodney quickly went from angry to depressed again, chin back on the bar. “Liv doesn’t really love me; she doesn’t know me, and if she did she’d hate me.”
“Maybe not if you were sorry.”
Rodney seemed to consider this for a few seconds before changing the subject. “Being mayor doesn’t make me happy. Not really. Not even making Harris suffer.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“And Jesspret…”
“You could be using her too?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “So she’ll be using me for money, and I her for sex. Why don’t I just get a prostitute while I’m at it?”
“Touché.”
He sighed and put his whole face down on his forearms. “I want more than that. I want somebody to accept me for who I am….. I just want to be loved.”
The last part was said so quietly, genuinely and, it had to be said, pathetically, that Seth couldn’t help but give him a one-armed half-hug. “And a large house with a swimming pool and staff, all on your own private island.”
“That would also be nice,” Rodney agreed quietly.
Seth then discovered the half-hug had backfired slightly when Rodney shifted so his head was resting on Seth’s shoulder. Picturing sober Rodney’s horrified face, Seth decided to roll with it. “If you want somebody to love you, you have to let them in first.”
“But how are you supposed to trust people? Let them have that kind of control over you and your life?”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Seth shrugged with his spare shoulder.
Rodney gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes. “I want what you have.”
“What,” he smirked, “ridiculous hair and a stupid nose?”
“No, I… Just the ability to do anything and not care what happens or what anybody thinks.”
“You know that’s largely because I have nothing to lose, right?”
Rodney gave a vague noise of agreement, but didn’t say anything. Then his breathing got deeper.
Seth laughed and shook his head in disbelief. And he’d thought Rodney doing karaoke would have been surreal. “Come on Rodney,” he said, pulling Rodney’s arm over his shoulder and standing up. “I think we’d better get you home; I may be many things, but I am not a pillow.”
“Really? You’re not bad at it…” he murmured.
They half-walked-half-staggered back to Rodney’s, Rodney barely conscious. When they got to the door, Seth had to find the key in one of Rodney’s pockets before they could get in. He considered dumping Rodney on the couch, but looking at how badly drunk - and now unconscious - he was, Seth wondered whether he should stay the night, if only to make sure he didn’t die. Part of his brain contested that if Rodney died it wasn’t his problem, but somehow that part of his brain felt… outdated. Oh dear, we’ve had one of those relationship-altering experiences, he realised wryly, and he’s not even going to remember it in the morning.
Luckily Rodney was relatively light and Seth worked out a lot for his acting roles, so he carried him upstairs and put him down on the bed. That really was enough, it really was. But he brought the bin from the bathroom to the side of the bed because Rodney was probably going to be sick after all that alcohol. And then he took his shoes off. And put him under the covers, where he peacefully curled up in a ball. Maybe it was just everything Seth knew about him now, but… he seemed so much more… vulnerable. Seth sighed, shook his head and went back downstairs to crash on the sofa.
Staring up at the living room ceiling, he laughed and shook his head in disbelief again. He never foresaw Rodney being a clingy, emotional and talkative drunk, but there it was. Rodney’s whole life laid out in front of him; sufficient to blackmail and humiliate him dozens of times over.
“I hadn’t really had proper friends before- or afterwards, actually”… Congratulations Rodney, Seth thought to himself with a slightly devious smirk, that has now officially changed, whether you like it or not, and you may never know why.