Ro is drunk and wandering around the place. She finds Jerry and Galilee playing a racing game in the lounge. She plops down on the couch between them, stumbling so hard she jostles Galilee who goes off the track. Jerry laughs and puts down the remote. He's seconds before the finish line and Galilee is in last, so it shouldn't be an issue.
"Either you tried to DIY a pipe bomb with vodka or you are drunk off your ass," Jerry answers.
"Both," Ro feels her stomach heave. She's smiling though. "Life's so fucked Jerry."
Galilee's face turns pink. Ro would never speak like this under normal conditions. She quietly keeps holding down the buttons on the remote, hoping she will fade into the background.
"Okay, Nietzsche," Jerry wraps an arm around Ro, pulling her back on the couch since she looks like she's going to fold into a ball.
"You know, I've got half the baggage of everyone else here, and I actually packed for a plane trip," Ro slurs her words together.
"Choose: philosopher or shitty standup comedian. I can't handle both tonight," Jerry responds.
Galilee, still steering, is aware of how relaxed Jerry is. Sober Jerry, with an arm around somebody, joking with them. It's nice to see. Maybe it's just Ro that he's like this with. Maybe it's the book club they put together, or any other hundred things she has noticed Jerry do over the break.
"What about drunk chick in a bathroom?" Ro asks. She turns her head to look at Galilee. "What's got you sad, Gallita?"
"Huh?" Galilee asks. She looks over, her hand still on the remote, forcing the car to go down the straight while she looks at Ro.
"You always look so forlorn," Ro offers, pouting out her bottom lip. "It's fucking dreary, if I'm honest."
Yep, Galilee decides. There's Ro.
"She's Mormon," Jerry answers for Galilee. "It's all the shame and repression."
There he is too.
Galilee turns back to the game while Jerry and Ro whisper sweet nothings to each other. Literally nothings. Galilee eavesdrops. Ro has some sort of secret but she forgot what, and Jerry is being Jerry to an annoying effect.
"I have a secret."
"What secret?"
"I forgot."
"Forgot what?"
"The secret."
"What's the secret?"
"Jerry, I don't know!"
It goes on for just long enough that Galilee drives over the finish line while Jerry is distracted. She leans forward laughing. Jerry's jaw drops as he is shocked, and Ro points at him, laughing so hard she tips into Galilee, and both of them collapse on the floor. Jerry isn't dragged along but plops down next to them, just so he can join them.
Ro cannot believe she somehow wandered into this. Things this perfect shouldn't happen by accident.
~~~
In Benedict's lounge, Callie decides to battle him at chess. Originally, Callie had planned to find Ro since there are few joys Ro loves more than chess, but Ro seemed really drunk stumbling around the halls and Callie selfishly didn't want to get roped into caring for someone else that night. Instead, she happened upon Benedict.
Benedict likes board games. He's neutral on chess.
The pair play each other. Neither are as good as Ro, certainly, but they know the rules. When Callie first started playing with Ro in October during Halloween patrolling, she learned that she had been positioning the pieces in the back row in the wrong order. An eye like hers should catch that kind of thing.
Callie wouldn't typically describe herself as impatient. After all, she can spend hours agonizing over the smallest of details in a piece. Yet, Benedict is challenging her. So far, he has been observing the board for five and a half minutes, looking for his next move.
"It's not that deep," she offers.
Benedict shrugs, "please, don't tell me you're one of those 'the curtains are blue because they are blue' type of people."
"I meant the game," Callie rolls her eyes but smiles. "Honestly, you are acting like the outcome of the next world war might be decided on the board."
He shrugs again, and Callie rolls her eyes again. This all could be avoided if he just moved a piece.
Then he does, "checkmate."
"What?" Callie's eyes turn to the board. There it is. She has no idea how she hadn't realized it. Maybe his slow repeated moves over the last hour had driven her crazy enough that she stopped caring. "Damn, Benedict. Nice."
"Yeah," he agrees. This is what he wanted. Board games with a coworker. An effort to be less of a stick in the mud. It doesn't feel quite satisfying now. Maybe it's because Callie's compliments seem halfhearted. Maybe he tried too hard. "Go again? We can do a timer, give me twenty seconds to make a move."
Callie looks up at him and smiles. It's something. She feels herself pause because it isn't enough. As they set up the pieces for the next game, she blurts out her question.
"Did you know Galilee is famous?"
Benedict stops, looking up for her, "what?"
"Moonie knows because she's more into social media, and Tempest knows because of religious stuff. Galilee's family is the LarFam. They've got millions of subscribers. I'd show you if we had WiFi."
He didn't know. Something feels weird in Benedict. Really, he doesn't know Galilee at all. Sure, she smiles at him all the time and seems to be around often enough, but they are strangers. Even if he knelt down in glass for her, in soapy water tinged with her blood. That kind of thing makes you feel like you know someone. In a way that he insists to himself isn't creepy, he knows what the sides of her body felt like when he searched for an injury. He knows what her cool, wet skin felt like, and he even helped hold her up when she passed out. You can know someone's body under pressure without knowing them romantically or even sexually. He felt like he trusted him in that moment. Yet, he didn't even know this.
Benedict swallows, "family vloggers in a 'were rich and our lives are easy' kind of way, or in a 'we prank our children and exploit them for fun."
Callie doesn't know. She realizes she doesn't know much of anything. Some sort of panic sets in. The same sort when she saw Galilee unconscious and bleeding and didn't know what happened or what to do about it. She breathes in, staring at the chess board, memorizing the placement of the pieces. She's not as visual as she might imagine.
"If you don't know, it's probably best not to pry," Benedict says.
He recognizes the look on Callie's face. The look from the kitchen. If he were someone else, he might take her hand, but unfortunately, he knows he is Benedict. Just as he hasn't asked Galilee for details about it, he doesn't ask Callie.
Callie nods, but she isn't as sure.
~~~
Marcellus, at least, has decided not to smoke weed in the building. That is why, when Elodie asks him if he wants to join her, he decides not to partake. Not because he is decently drunk, and getting drunker still with a bottle of whiskey in his hands. At least he cannot get fired for drinking in the building. At least, those aren't part of the terms of his probation. Being visibly intoxicated in front of students is part of the terms, but there are no students here. There haven't been for days.
Elodie releases smoke through her open window. She's put a plastic bag over the smoke detector, and she's got on three sweaters and two blankets. Marcellus is similarly protected from the cold. It is fucking brutal out there. No snow, only chill. It's got to be well below zero. If she had to guess, it's getting close to forty below.
So, she shuts the window and puts out the blunt. She's high enough anyway, and it certainly isn't worth freezing to death.
"You know, fuck this shit," she manages. "I wish I was at home."
"Yeah," Marcellus shrugs. "I'm fine here, to be honest. At least I can get drunk off my ass here without nagging."
The drunk conversation with Ro, and the avoiding honesty with his life all afternoon, Marcellus can't do it anymore. He's so fucking tired. All the time, he's out late at night causing problems, and he's talking shit, and he's just got this big fucking personality that exhausted the best of his friends and even tires him out. Even now, he's doing it. If he went home to see his mother or his father, or his sick sister, no one would nag him. No one gives a fuck about him. He's always thought he shouldn't either. He should be logical, emotionless, and purposeful. Hiding it all is exhausting.
Snow can't stay cold forever. Such is the water cycle. It has to melt eventually. If it does all at once, the damage to the infrastructure will be terrible. It couldn't happen anyway. Snow doesn't explode the way a man might.
"Does it bother you that I flicker in and out of focus?" Elodie asks. She laughs, "sorry, that was stupid. I mean, like, I feel like a toy that you flash at a cat, you know? I can't ever be caught."
"Well, you're here now," Marcellus points out. It's true. At least Elodie makes very little pretense of caring about him. He swallows. "Why are you here?"
Elodie looks over at him. She's got to do it. Maverick would be proud, of her for taking the leap, "why are you here?"
"You're dodging my question," Marcellus rolls his eyes. They feel like they are sloshing in the alcohol soup that is his brain.
"No," Elodie finds herself giggling. "I'm trying to involve you. I can talk about myself all day. I'm here generally because I need the money. I'm here in this room because I enjoy your company. It makes me feel bad though, since you have no expectations of me, I guess? Like, I want to be a better person, but I know you and I have a no strings attached aloof kind of deal, and I want to, you know, really get to know people."
She's high as a damn kite, Marcellus realizes. She's talking about things that don't make sense. He leans forward and the room spins.
"What?" he asks.
"Well, it's just, I don't know," Elodie sighs. "I miss my fucking Dad. And my brothers. People are inevitably fucking disappointing, and I'd rather not see others or let them see me so none of us care."
She gets up and plops on the bed beside Maverick. The sheets shift, waves of water, a flood incoming. Marcellus can't stop staring at her. Often this is a problem for him. God, he has always thought she was beautiful. So damn beautiful, but now he can see more. She's in there, a person. More importantly, he sees his reflection in her eyes. He's in there too.
"Yeah," he manages. "You know, I hate fucking Christmas. My sister was always in the hospital, and my parents always fighting. It's not just Christmas, but every holiday. My birthday too. All of it. Stupid fucking reminders of the people who are supposed to love me but who are inevitably fucking disappointing."
Elodie can feel her heart flutter, and not even because she did it. Not because she sees Marcellus, for the person that he is beneath his shaggy haircut and hard exterior, but because she sees her reflection in his eyes. She's a person somewhere too.
It doesn't matter who kisses whom first. It doesn't. What does matter is that neither of them stops.
~~~
As the night is winding down, Tempest is sorting through the food they collected. It's already been done, but she feels the need to double-check it. The snow has stopped. When she was upstairs, she watched through a window for two hours and nothing is coming. The snow is now up past the window. She opened it and felt the top with a glove. The snow didn't billow in. The top layer is a hard crust, almost like a sheet. She wonders how far it stretches if it connects without cracking between all the buildings. Their cell service hasn't come back. She wonders if the telephone calls are covered in thick sheets of ice too. Maybe if she had majored in something more helpful than psychology, she might know the damage to the infrastructure from the storm.
Still, she's putting together the last of her things for tomorrow, hoping their Christmas present will be waking up to being rescued. Christmas Eve will be spectacular. Moonie and Callie already spent the last two hours preparing for their surprise. Tempest is going to set an alarm for six and get up to finish it all. Counting the food will at least buy her time until she has to go to bed. The anxiety is killing her.
She goes up to the whiteboard. Her hands are so cold, nearly numb. She takes out a black marker and begins to draw. Slow and steady, she draws a large black letter F. Something one might imagine in an ancient copy of the bible. Or as the first letter in a chapter of a children's fairytale. Tempest is somewhat satisfied with it.
Darlington enters the office. Tempest stares up at him, wide-eyed. He shuts the door behind him, staring back.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," he notes.
Tempest finishes the last line and caps the marker, "I just wasn't expecting you."
"I'm just," Darlington hesitates. "I'm trying to find some sort of solution. I wanted to check out the walkies that Ro's been using."
Tempest smiles. There he is again. He had almost been gone.
While Tempest goes back to sorting food, Darlington fiddles with the walkies. He thinks one of the batteries is dead. After scouring the storage cupboard for another set, he finally finds a pair. He puts them in and turns on the walkies. There are a few channels to flick through, and Tempest sits in the room while he talks into each set. Maybe someone is listening in, just like him, waiting. No voice comes.
"What's that thing in Shakespeare called?" Darlington asks, glancing up at Tempest. "Deus Ex Machina."
"You're the history major," she jokes.
Darlington looks her over. He can tell from the way she flutters about the room that she feels tense. There isn't going to be something plucked out of the sky to save them all. Darlington can do his best though.
"Do you parents know?" he asks.
Tempest cannot meet his eyes, "no."
"Mal, is he..."
She shakes her head, without even the words to describe the situation.
Darlington takes in a deep breath. He usually comes up with better ideas. The cold is freezing the wiring in his brain though.
"You know, parents like me," he says.
Tempest drops the box of protein bars in her hands. They spill out over the table. She doesn't even look.
"Pardon?"
"Well," Darlington forces an awkward grin on his face. "I'm the kind of guy parents like. Also, at the end of April, I'm graduating, so my trust fund will actually be mine. I'm not... well on the scale of being a single mom to lying to your parents, what's a bigger sin in God's eyes?"
Tempest shakes her head at him, "no."
"I'm not asking you to marry me," he clarifies.
Tempest persists, "no."
"Think about it," Darlington responds.
"No," she is grinning so wide, almost exasperated, and more shocked at his audacity than even feeling the horror that she might consider it. "Damien, you aren't putting your entire life on the line for me. I refuse."
"Martyrdom sucks, Temmy," Darlington replies, since if she will use his first name he will use her full name. "I'm not asking for an answer. Think about it. Okay?"
She shakes her head, still smiling, "well, if you want to be a Dad so badly, come help me be Santa tonight. Okay?"
~~~
Moonie doesn't want to play tag like she did with Darlington. On the off chance that Maverick is looking for her, which she knows he's not, she decides to take the stairs to his room. Maverick never takes an elevator anyway. They both live on the east side, so she knows which one he would take. It took a lot of courage to work up the energy. Callie even let her sit in her room after she had left to find Ro. Ten minutes, and Moonie's done it.
She gets up to his floor and knocks on his door. There is no answer. She tries the door handle and opens it. As always, he hasn't locked his door. Just like last time, he isn't there.
Moonie makes her way down the stairs back onto her floor. She walks into the hallway and there he is. Maverick, sitting on the ground in front of her door, a book in hand and messy blonde hair.
He sees her and lets the book go.
"You're back," Maverick said.
He had no way to reach her. He thought she might be in her dorm, which was locked, but he couldn't leave. Moonie might want a midnight snack. She might want to go see a friend. There was a chance, no matter how small, and Moonie took it.
"Maverick," she manages, her voice so soft.
Here he is. After all this time. They haven't spoken since yesterday morning, which is a thousand years in Moonie and Maverick time.
"Maverick, I..."
"No," Maverick juts in. She was trailing off anyway, but he cuts her off. He stands up and moves toward her, until hey are just outside of arm's reach. "I'm doing the thing. You know, the rom-com thing, where I won't let you talk even though you have something important to say. I want to go first, even if it's the version of the rom-com trope where you tell me you don't want to marry me or whatever. I'm going, because I'm hopeful. You make me hopeful."
She goes to speak and he shakes his head.
"I don't care that you had sex with Darlington. I don't care that you make mistakes, and I certainly don't own your body. You can have sex with as many people as you want. You can have sex with the entire football team if that's what you want."
"What?" Moonie laughs, smiling so wide she think she might explode. There are tears in her eyes, and she is almost laughing.
"That sounded weird," Maverick offers, smiling back. "I'm trying to be romantic. You're good at that. I'm not."
"No, I meant..." Moonie trails off trying to phrase it better. "Well yes, that was weird, but I meant that I didn't have sex with Darlington."
"Really? Wait, but T-"
"We can come back to that point," Moonie can feel tears coming out of her eyes. "I don't want to interrupt your speech."
"It wasn't a very good speech," Maverick laughs, scratching the back of his neck, praying that his face is going to become less red.
Moonie shakes her head, "declarations of love aren't like the movies."
"Being with you is like every Hallmark movie," Maverick says. "I don't care if you're the city girl and I'm the small-town guy and you are learning the love of Christmas, or if we are extras holding hands in the background, but I want to be there with you."
Moonie rushes to him. She leaps into his arms. They are laughing so hard it is difficult to kiss, but Maverick is trying his hardest. That's all any of them can do anyway. They can try.
~~~~~
Okay, I need to clarify. When I said the end was soon, I didn't mean that soon. There will at least be ten more chapters. This one though, this one takes the cake.
I need a favourite highlight from this chapter. There were so many culminating emotional moments. I feel so much catharsis. Urgh.