FF: Hobbesian
Title: Hobbesian
Author: Quaggy
Category: Humor
Rating: G
Notes: Remember Donna's line in The Short List? You know the one. "Because when it doesn't work out, you end up drunk in my apartment in the middle of the night and yell at my roommate's cats." Well, a while back I was going to write a drabble for tww100 when the promp was "Calvin and Hobbes" and my mind immediately went to that line, but I couldn't get the drabble down to 100 words, so I abandoned it and tww100 has seemed to have died (or, at least, gone into deep hibernation) since then. This weekend, I pulled it out again with the idea of turning it into a ficlet, but something wasn't quite right. Fortunately, amycurl came to my rescue and suggested that I change the POV. The result was twice as long and ten times better. Thank you so much, Amy!! I seriously couldn't have done it without you!!!
All I know is that it’s not my fault. I don’t care what anyone says.
Well, actually, Donna said that we’re going to blame that crazy senator from Alaska since it was his fault the bill fell apart which was what started this whole thing in the first place. You see, my roommate works for the White House and they’ve been working on this bill forever. Donna’s been coming home way after I’ve gone to bed and going back in before I’d even gotten up. The only reason I’d know that she’d been home would be because the bathmat would still be a little damp or her favorite coffee cup would be in the dishwasher. And if you think that’s nuts, apparently her boss had been working even longer hours. I think he might have been sleeping there. Or maybe that was the last time they did something like this. I can’t remember.
So anyway, here they’ve been working on this bill for all this time and the senator blocks the whole damn thing. Don’t ask me how. I don’t understand this stuff. Something to do with a bridge to nowhere, I think. All I know is that this would have been a very good thing for inner-city schools and now it’s not even going to happen. After going through all of that, getting drunk seemed like a pretty good idea to me. So, when Donna called me, I went at to meet her at the bar down the street, even though I was actually just about to get into bed.
What Donna didn’t tell me was that her boss and a fair number of Senior White House Staff were there too. These are the people who run the country and I’m wearing my favorite t-shirt from when I was in high school and blue jeans with a hole in one knee. Now, granted, I probably wouldn’t know that these people ran the country if I didn’t know Donna, but still, it would have been nice to have been wearing something that was from this decade. Not to mention, I was the only one not in business causal. I looked like a hobo next to them. Still, they were a nice group. I can see why Donna likes them all.
Now, Metro had already been closed for hours, so no surprise when the bar closed shortly after we all got there, right? I mean, it was a weeknight in DC. This isn’t New York City. People here actually go to bed at a reasonable hour. But these folks had just gotten off of work and didn’t want to go home. I can’t say I blamed them. They needed to unwind. So, next thing I know, me and my big mouth have invited everyone back to our place. From the look on her face, I didn’t know if Donna was going to kiss me or kill me.
We didn’t have a lot of beer in the apartment, but fortunately I had picked up a big bottle of Smirnoff a couple of days before for this pasta vodka recipe I wanted to try and everyone was already pretty loaded by that point anyhow, so it all worked out. Well, the grumpy guy with the beard turned out to be a vodka snob, but other than that we were fine. Let me tell you, those people use a lot of big words when they are drunk. Most of the stuff they were talking about was totally over my head. Still, it was really funny watching Josh-that’s Donna’s boss-loudly lecture my cats about Congressional maneuvering. Donna said they were probably the only ones left in the apartment (and possibly the city) who were still willing to listen to him. Well, at least they were until Bella decided to bite the finger Josh was waving in her face to emphasis his point. You can’t really blame her, she’s a calico cat. It’s her nature to be bratty. I’m not sure Josh was buying it, though.
They finally left around four in the morning, all of them piling into one tiny cab. Well, everyone but Josh, who stayed behind because he had his car. The thing is, though, I had sort of hid his keys earlier in the evening because I didn’t want him drinking and driving and, by that point, I couldn’t quite remember what I had done with them. Not that he should have been driving, anyway, but we were too drunk to care by then. Which was probably why I hid the keys in the first place. (They were actually where I keep the cats’ food, in case you were wondering, which was pretty smart of me, since I found them first thing in the morning.) So, anyway, we decided it would just be easier on everyone if Josh slept on the couch. Apparently, it wouldn’t be the first time he had worn the same clothes to work two days in a row.
So you think that would be the end of it, right? If only. Shortly before dawn, this horrific crash wakes me up. Donna and I race to the kitchen and there’s Josh sprawled on the floor, fairly wet, with a broken glass beside him.
“What happened?” Donna gasped.
“Homicidal psycho jungle cat” he muttered with this dark look. I was too afraid to ask if he had tripped over Murphy, who was still lying there like the lump that he is in the center of the room, or if Bella had gone into attack-kitty mode and had pounced on him in the dark. Since there was no blood, I would guess that he had tripped over Murphy, but you never know. Still, I got to tell you, Donna’s boss may be more than a little insane, but you have to like a guy who knows his Calvin and Hobbes.
So that’s why I came in late today, but don’t tell anyone, alright? Everybody else thinks I had the stomach flu.