I love my dead gay son - Romeo and Juliet AU

2.2 --- Hufflepuff house

The next day, Romeo's head felt like it was in a blender set to puree for a tomato salsa. In this analogy, he was the tomato. He groaned thickly, and could hear that his true dudepowers were being muffled by the hangover.

He rolled over and landed on the floor. It was a relatively soft floor, but still. It did hurt his arm, which was already sore. His legs ached a little too. He slowly, carefully, got to his feet and looked around. He had ended up crashing at Mercutio's house. He couldn't tell whether he remembered that or whether he was working it out as he saw where he was. He still tasted sour wine in his mouth.

Something had happened, something about Tybalt, after they had been on the balcony... but he couldn't remember. Not yet. And meanwhile, he needed a drink that wasn't gonna get him smashed.

He wandered through the only door available, across from the sofa-thing he had been lying on, and nearly ran into Mercutio. He looked a lot better than Romeo felt, which just made him jealous.

"Dude, you got water?" Romeo was definitely suffering on the dudepowers front. Hell, he could barely speak, let alone be a Bro.

"Yeah, just gimme a sec, bruh." His voice was all husky, and it was adorable, but Romeo still couldn't get over Tybalt. Something had definitely happened...

He ignored it as his friend handed over a glass. He tried to down it, but even that made his head hurt. God, he fricking hated hangovers.

He took another look at Mercutio while he sipped. He was no longer the Utterly Fabulous person he had been last night, but he still held a fraction of it, although that was probably just the dirty rainbow makeup still smeared across his way-too-beautiful cheekbones. The cheekbones which just reminded Romeo of Tybalt.

He must have groaned out loud at the asheughrdyd annoyance of not being able to remember what had happened, because Mercutio stared at him, confused. "Bruh, do you want something to eat? Or maybe the Friar can-"

"Omg, thanks, bruh. Friar Lawrence! See you!" Romeo rushed out of the door and had gone halfway down the (thankfully deserted) street, again paved with cobblestones - what was it with fricking Verona and cobblestones? - before he realised he was shirtless and in torn breeches. He rushed back and spent, like, 1.4 minutes making sure he looked relatively ok, before he left again. He didn't even tell Mercutio what he was doing. Fat Friar Lawrence waited for no man/woman/genderqueer person.

It took only ten minutes to walk to the garden, which was where he knew the Friar would be, thanks to his dudepowers. Just kidding, the Friar was always there. It was a fact of life.

Romeo slipped into the herb garden through a side gate and nearly tripped over the dude, who was gathering some wicked plant shit and chucking it in a basket. He nearly knocked over that basket as well.

The Friar stood up and brushed dirt off his robes. "So, Romeo, what do you need?"

"Um, well, I know for a fact that something happened last night, but I can't remember what it was?"

The friar chuckled, and his multiple chins wobbled. "You gatecrashed the party, didn't you." He kicked soil off his feet and resisted stooping down again to keep picking.

Romeo sighed. "Yeah. And I know something happened-"

"Romeo, I know about that bit. You've told me about that bit. Why are you here?"

"Oh. Yeah. Um." Romeo dithered for a bit, still a bit weirded out about speaking to someone who wasn't a bro, or even a dude. Even lords and ladies Montague and Capulet were dudes. "Well, I was wondering if you could help. This amnesia - did I say that right? - sucks."

"Well, you're a very lucky person, because I can, actually. Come over here." Friar Lawrence picked up his basket again and strolled over to the little shed by the side of the field, Romeo following in his wake. He didn't even have to shove the door, just hold the basket slightly ahead of him and keep walking. It must have had well-lubed hinges...

Romeo had to duck his head slightly to fit in the door, for he was CuRsEd with the most HiDeOuS hEiGhT. He watched as the Friar took the most random bundles of green stuff hanging on the dingy wall, chucked them into a little vial (really it was a medium-sized vial, but both Romeo and the author could see that it didn't flow as nicely), and in literally ten minutes had a weird lime green concoction of stuff. At least, that was the colour as best as Romeo could see it in the dim light in the shed.

The man proffered the thing, and Romeo hesitantly took it. He reached to unscrew/uncap the top before he realised there was nothing to unscrew or uncap. He lifted halfway to his lips and made some sort of should-I-drink-this-or-not face, and the friar nodded impatiently, before shaking his head to himself, which just confused Romeo even more. At last he got the message- "Just drink it for Pete's sake!" -and Romeo drank. It was only a couple of swallow's worth, but it tasted... special.

"Well thanks, um, mate." He had to take a moment to find a decent word to use to describe him. "So, I should be able to remember?"

"Yes, Romeo, you should be able to remember." This is when you should probably know that the Friar also sometimes taught young children, or just made sure they didn't screw up in a monumental way while their parents were doing other crap. These children were usually around five or six years old. Juuust saying.

Romeo wasn't sure what else to do, so he just kinda waved to nobody and wandered off. The Friar had returned to his planty stuff anyway, so he just brushed off the vague awkwardness.

As we walked back to Mercutio's place to pick up his stuff, Romeo was swearing to himself in his mind. He was starting to remember exactly what had happened last night...

Yeah, that was a supernatural reference at the beginning, if anyone here watches it. And please tell me someone knows why I chose that title... I struggled not to write the Fat Friar half the time.

So. Romeo has done something. Something other than balcony, walking-in-on-Paris-and-Juliet thing. I wonder what happened there... Put it this way, Mercutio was probably laughing about it.

Suddenly I have a lot of stuff that I'm doing in the next week. First I'm going to London with my mum, then I'm having a sleepover with a friend (not the same one who came camping), and then one of my friends who only comes every now and then because her parents are divorced is coming round to live with her dad for a whole week, and she only lives maybe three houses down the road. This is way too much for an introvert to easily handle. (That's me by the way... hello!)

*Gives everyone rainbow milkshakes*