Archive of Our Own

The thing about faculty events is that there is so much good alcohol involved that it was hard not to lose self-control. Palamedes doesn’t quite understand what it is between wine and scientists just yet, but he supposes it was easy to make good wine when you’ve quite literally understood rocket science. Well—neuroscience, this time.

He and Cam had this agreement that whoever dragged the other to their respective faculty events would be the chaperone while the other gets freely drunk as their ticket to call it a night as early as possible. It was a familiar, naughty song-and-dance that he loved and she claims to do for courtesy’s sake—but seeing how she gets so red and flustered during her turn, he knows she loves it more than she claimed, too.

“ Hellloooo , handsome,” Camilla stumbles right against his shoulders, face-fist into the crook of his neck as he rounds an arm over her vest and dress—very sensible indeed—that accentuated her hips to the unfortunate extent where he’s getting flustered. “All alone tonight?”

“I’m afraid not,” he chuckles, adjusting her so that she at least looks like she’s able to stand straight, albeit too closely leaning against his body. “I went in with my partner, but you see, she’s nowhere to be found.”

“Huh,” Camilla drawls out, an amused smile tugging on the corner of her mouth. “Really?”

“Have you seen her, actually?” He frowns to take a good look at her. “About this height, just a tad bit taller than me—chin-length hair, very sensible gray dress, a fringe that need juuust a bit of a haircut—”

“You think so?”

“Just a bit, you know how unruly they can be when they get too long—”

“About the dress?”

Palamedes raised his eyebrows. “Ah. I suppose I do like the vest, too.”

Her face inches closer into his right ear. “Yeah?”

He hums. “Makes your hips look… What does Coronabeth say these days? Snatched?”

“I could slip them off, if you’d like,” she murmurs, “see how sensible it looks when I—”

“Ooo-kay!” He declares, loud enough to attract the attention of his colleagues circled just a few steps away from him. “It’s been a grand evening, lads, but we’ve got to make our way out—”

“This early?” Someone from the crowd quips, while the others glanced down to check the clock on their wrists.

“I do apologize, but we’ve—” he tilts his head towards Camilla, just so slightly, “—had too much to drink, I’m afraid—and besides, we’ve got junior waiting at home…”

There wasn’t really any more argument to be had when he’d said the magic word , and so he made their way out of the hall with Camilla stumbling dizzily by his side, and makes a mind to thank Nona when they get home.

Camilla was losing more and more of her bone function when he guided her out of the car, practically lugging half of her body up the stairs to their front porch. She was rambling nonsense about the effectiveness of dual wielding daggers and its examples in Filipino martial arts—which means she’s happy, despite being drunk out of her mind—when he punched the doorbell with his elbow and yelled for Nona to help open the door, since Pyrrha, apparently, isn’t home for the night, either.

“Good evening, Nona,” he greets the girl when she opens the door for her—grimaces as she stumbles backward out of surprise when he hauls Camilla’s body inside. “So sorry, darling, Cam’s had too much to drink tonight. Could you help—oh, and now she’s down. Alright.”

Camilla is, in fact, finding solace on the wooden tiles of their foyer, pressing her reddened cheeks against the floor in hopes of cooling herself down. She is quite warm, when he presses a hand against his face—but not so much that he has to begin worrying about alcohol poisoning. He knows Camilla—intricately, intimately so, and he knows she’s stronger than people assume her to be. All she needed was a few graham crackers, a whole lot of water, and a good eight hours of sleep—and of course, getting off the floor and into bed. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” he tries, rounding her arm over his shoulder to coax her up as she’s adamant on melting into a puddle on the floor—but she’s heavy, and he’s significantly less athletic than her, so all hope will be lost if she refuses to help him get up. “The bed’s right over there if you’d just—get on your feet again, c’mon—”

“What’s wrong with her?”

It was a valid question to ask; Camilla has always been so calm and composed and oftentimes more serious than not, and it was hard to ever picture her letting go this freely if she wasn’t drunk out of her goddamn mind. But the way Nona’s voice wavered even in how quiet it sounded made him look up, abruptly, and the look on her face—

“M’fine,” Camilla groans, muffled by her coat and the floor. “Just… dramatic, s’all. Gimme a minute, No-no.”

Palamedes smiles up at Nona, and prays that it comes at the very least reassuring to her. “How about you help me get some pillows from our bed upstairs and bring it to the couch? Can you be a big girl and do that for me, please?”

Camilla begrudgingly puts her feet to use after the pitter-patter of Nona’s footsteps disappears from the hallway, murmuring about how the bed is too far and that there’s no way she’s making it up the stairs for the night.

“How about the couch,” he compromised, and up they went down the hallway and into the living room.

“I’m never gonna get this drunk ever again.”

Palamedes shook his head and chuckled. “You always say that.”

“S’the only way I can have fun in your—” a hiccup, “events. Can’t believe they’re more nerdy than the people in mine. And I’mma data scientist, for God’s sake…”

He’s chuckling some more and rubbing her back as he rolls down her socks from her feet to prevent overheating when Nona comes back with two pillows clutched in her arms, still staring at Camilla with her wide, puzzled eyes. He praises her for the pillows and uses them to support Camilla’s side as she starts to doze off the rest of the alcohol, murmuring to her that he’s going to get Nona to bed and don’t throw up on the carpet, please, but when he shrugs the rest of her arms away to face Nona—

—He’s met with the same wide eyes she’d stared at Camilla with the entire evening, except they were… terrified . The lines around her eyes have contorted into a frown, like she was still trying to understand what it is she’s seeing in front of her, but panic is already halfway seizing her body—

“Hey,” Palamedes calls out, quietly. “Hello, Nona.”

She shook her head at his call—slowly, at first, but getting increasingly agitated as she instinctively backed away from him. Panicked tears are welling up in her eyes when he moves in to hold her, all the way across the living room from when they first started, short and rapid breaths racing against his open palm—”Hey, hey. Nona, honey, you’re panicking. You’re panicking. Look at me?”

Even as he’s managed to wrangle her in his lap, her refusal is clear—she just keeps shaking her head and hyperventilating, like she doesn’t exactly know what to do with herself, just as she’d been the few times she had a meltdown in the past. It doesn’t help that the only thing Palamedes could do to soothe her is to rub her shoulders and chest over and over, until her body feels like it could calm down again, or she’s tired enough to pass out on him. 

“OK. It’s alright. You’re alright. All I want you to do is to breathe with me. Nice, full breaths. Can you try?”

Nona shook her head again and coughed up a sob. “What’s—what’s wrong with her?”

Palamedes frowns, looking back over his shoulder to what Nona is staring, at the curled-up body sleeping soundly on the couch… oh . “With Camilla? Sweetheart, is that why you’re upset?”

She seems to be embarrassed by this, because she grunts angrily at him and tries to squirm away from him—but it’s easy to hold her in place and hush apologetically until she calms back down, almost, still breathing with her asthmatic little gasps, wheezing through her mouth with her eyes shut. “Yeah, alright,” he murmurs, rubbing the back of her neck as she buries her face on his chest, “Alright. Let' s just breathe for a minute. I promise you nothing’s wrong with Camilla.”

“But she was—she was, all weird, she was being so weird —”

“I know, I know,” he takes a breath. “I know. Hey, you know about alcohol, right, Nones? It’s just a drink that adults have sometimes. And if you have too much, they can make your body and brain go weird for a bit—just for a bit.” His shirt has a soaked spot where Nona’s pressed her face and cried over, and he makes a mental note on just how upset she is at the whole thing; he hasn’t seen her this upset at anything for months. “Camilla’s had quite a lot of it tonight, but I promise she’ll come back alright tomorrow. She just needs to sleep it off for a while.”

“But what if she doesn’t?”

“She will,” Palamedes assures. “Honey, I promise she will. Remember that night a few months ago, where I came back drunk, too? You were at the door, you and Pyrrha, I remember. When I get drunk I can’t stop being silly, and laughing, d’you remember? I would just—”

“Shut up ,” Nona whines. “Just shut up! I hate it, I hate it when you leave me and come back wrong and act like it’s all fine— !”

He pauses for a moment, swallowing how much he’s taken aback from her reaction—he didn’t know she’d be so upset. He didn’t know why she was suddenly reacting like this, and didn’t quite know how to respond to her, either, so he just tells her, “Alright.”

“Wait—wait, I’m sorry,” she inhales, choking down another sob in her throat, “I’m sorry. Pal, I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” Palamedes says to that, very quickly, rubbing his palm up and down her shoulder blades again. “I’m not mad, Nona.” And then, against his better judgement, he adds, “but you are, though. And you can , of course you can be upset at me, but—can you tell me why?”

Nona coughs and sniffles, and shakes her head again.

“Okay,” he nods, just rubbing her back again, on the space where the collar of her pajamas border on her neck, feeling the little cut-off label that Camilla cuts on all her clothes because she hated how much it itched and scratched. “Alright. That’s alright. Just keep breathing for me. Follow my breaths. In for five… two, three, four, out… good. Nice and slow. Let’s try again. Big breath… two, three, four…”

The first thing Nona registers when her eyes flutter to life is the bright yellow stream of sunlight penetrating through gaps between the curtains. Nona shifts in her bed, rubbing her palm against her eyelids—not too hard, Cam doesn’t like it when she does that—but enough to wash the remaining sleep from her eyes, kicking away the tangled mess of blankets around her legs and turning around to—

“Hello,” Palamedes chirps, looking up just slightly from the cover of his book to smile at her. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Nona sniffs. Her eyes still feel a bit sore. “Um. My eyes…”

Palamedes shifts and lays down his book on the nightstand to pull her up onto his lap. “Mmm, let me see. You’ve had quite the crying last night…”

At this, Nona recoils with hot embarrassment, almost swatting away the hand that’s come to examine her eyes if she hadn’t made a mind to stop herself— self control , Camilla’s stern voice reminds her. And then—Camilla. Oh.

“A bit of ice around the eyes will get you fixed just right,” Palamedes decides, after looking around for a while, moving his hand to stroke around her hair instead. “What about we go to the kitchen? Cam’s making breakfast.”

Nona shakes her head and presses her face against a pillow instead. “No, thank you.”

“No to breakfast, or no to the ice?” He asks in amuse.

“No to Cam.”

Palamedes hums. It wasn’t in disagreement or anything in particular—just letting her sit with that thought for a moment before continuing, “you know, the effects of alcohol usually wanes overnight. Meaning—she’s back to normal, now. Normal, happy Cam,” he chuckles softly, rubbing the back of Nona’s shoulder in encouragement. “Let’s just go see her, how about that. You don’t have to talk to her or anything. Just some ice, and breakfast, and we can sit outside to eat if you’d like.”

Nona considered this for a while before sighing and murmured into the pillow, “no breakfast.”

“One pancake and a glass of juice.”

“No pancakes.”

“Okay. Just juice, then.”

“Fine.”

“Alright,” he murmurs, then huffs out a single laugh. “Who taught you how to compromise like that, hm?”

The plan was simple enough. She was going to follow Palamedes to the kitchen, wait at the doorway, wait for him to get her ice and juice, and then come outside to see the sun. It had no room for error, no sudden happenings—Nona takes a deep breath and follows him, down the hall and into the living room, and catching a glimpse through the doorway, where Camilla—

Is Camilla. There were no funny voices, no slurred words, no weird movements from her limbs and face and mouth. She was just Camilla, shaking the skillet with her strong arms until it rattled against the hob and flipping over the pancake with a single graceful move. She’s Cam. She’s just Cam. And yet, Nona’s breath hitches with fear mounting on her throat when Camilla turns to smile at her.

“Hello, Nona. Good morning.”

Nona wants to open her mouth—wants to greet her and be normal, for once, like other people are, but her words are failing her and her tongue feels disconnected from the rest of her body. She just stood there, like a stupid thing, and she feels stupid, feels overdramatic and dumb and—

“Hey,” Palamedes murmurs, a firm hand placed on the back of her neck and squeezes her shoulders, just slightly. “Everything OK?” 

Nona shakes her head. She watches as Camilla turns off the fire and looks over with worry, her brows furrowing the way she had been, last night, the not-Camilla that doesn’t remember her, might not love her when she’s like that, and Nona needs—she needs to get out. 

“OK—ok, sweetheart. Alright.” Palamedes has a grab on her hand before she manages to do something not entirely good with it, to reset her buzzing head, and wraps his arms around her shoulders to guide her over outside. “Breathe. Everything’s alright. It’s okay.” He leans back, a little bit, to say something to Camilla—but Nona wants to breathe, and she needs to feel the grass and earth and outside, now , “Nona, darling don’t do that to yourself—come on—c’mon, you can breathe, just–”

The next asthmatic inhale Nona takes is the fresh cold breeze of the backyard grass as Palamedes guides her to sit down on the porch, his hand pressing on her side to let up the pain. Nona is wheezing through her teeth, just breathing and whining and then breathing some more, feeling like a dumb baby for being so—so…

“Hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to be upset at yourself,” Palamedes murmurs. His hand is now moving up to shoo away the sweat-plastered strands of hair on her forehead, but then he’s looking up and goes quiet, for a little while, and Nona doesn’t mind this, until his arm around her is being replaced by another arm entirely, one that’s bigger and sturdier and stronger, and she couldn’t help but flinch away.

“OK. No touching?”

“No.”

“Got it,” Camilla’s voice says, on her other side, as Palamedes gives her one last stroke of her hair before he gets up to leave them alone outside. Nona wishes she could make him stay, just so that she won’t be alone, but it was Camilla—she loves Camilla, doesn’t she? So why does it feel so scary?

“Let’s talk.”

Nona shakes her head. She couldn’t help the whining. “ No .”

“I think we should,” Cam says, very softly. It was the voice she uses when she knows Nona isn’t being regular-difficult—the voice she hears when she’s sick, or exhausted, or very very… “I’m sorry I made you this upset. I didn’t know. Could you please tell me what made you upset at me?”

Nona wants to. She wants to tell her how much she hates it—but she suddenly forgets what it is, all of a sudden, just the feeling—just how Camilla looks when she comes home like that, or anyone else, really; like a ragdoll being puppeteered, like some alien who’s come to take her in her sleep, so she just stutters out: “I hate it when—when you—when you’re.”

Camilla nods. “You don't like it when I’m drunk.”

Right. That was the word Palamedes said. “Or—or Palamedes,” Nona adds, quickly. “Or Pyrrha.”

“Alright. Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry.” It was a simple apology. Camilla apologized. She’s never the kind of person to stall her apologies. But Nona still feels angry. “Could you… tell me why?”

She wouldn’t have anyway if she could, or even knew at all, but Nona doesn’t. So she says, “No.” 

“OK.” 

“I don’t know,” Nona feels very very helpless, all of a sudden. “I’m sorry.”

Cam clicks her tongue and shakes her head, turning her head to look over the backyard. “It’s no problem.”

Then they just sat there, for the longest while, breathing in the sharp morning air with the cold of the night still clinging to its breeze. Nona stays curled up over her lap, still, knees drawn up to her chest as she sniffles what’s left of the sobbing. She wants to hide her face forever—she must be acting like such a baby right now, and it was even worse that Cam was being so nice about it…

“Nona, I love you,” Camilla suddenly said, turning to her side to look at her again. “Even when I’m drunk, or being weird. I still love you.”

Nona frowns into her arms. “But you don’t remember. When you’re drunk, you don’t remember anything.”

“I’ll remember that I love you,” Camilla murmurs. “Of course I will.”

“No you won’t. Nobody does.”

“Well. I think it depends,” Camilla tilts her head and shrugs, the way Palamedes responds when someone makes a very good point. “And I think I do. Do you know why?”

Nona swallowed thickly and shook her head. There’s a hand lingering around her shoulders now, like asking for some wordless permission to hold her again, comfort her the way humans know how to—and it was weird, sometimes Nona doesn’t feel like she’s a human at all, not like how Camilla and Palamedes and Pyrrha and everyone else are. Sometimes she stares at herself in the mirror and practices the way people smile, using her fingers to tug up her mouth and eyebrows and the line under her eyes. She’s really good at copying other people at being human. Palamedes said that when Nona was very young, they had to teach her everything, sing her all those baby songs just so she'd understand how to say things. The story always makes Nona burn with shame.

Nona tries very hard at being human. It wasn’t fair that someone else gets to have a couple drinks to forget how to be one. It makes her so irrationally scared. 

Camilla’s hand is on her back, again, rubbing comforting circles around, and Nona realizes that she’s looked up from the cocoon of her body. “Because it’s inside me, that I love you,” Camilla says. Nona’s eyes are welling up with puddles of hot tears again. “It’s in my chest, and my throat… right here, would you like to feel it?” 

Nona nods. She was afraid that if someone forgot how to be human, they’d forget how to love her, too. But Camilla doesn’t. Even when she’s drunk out of her mind and trying to sleep on the floor, she’d called her the nickname they all call her, back from when she’d been a baby who didn’t know how to be human at all. Cam is opening her lap and holding her arms to welcome the shape of Nona’s body, now, and it was hard to refuse the urge to fit in them. She has always fit in them. Maybe, a twinge of hope in Nona’s chest squirms, it doesn’t matter.

“You can’t change what’s inside,” Camilla says into her hair, running her fingers through her hairline softly. “No matter what happens. And my insides love you very much. Could you feel it?”

Nona listens in to the thump-thump-thumping of her heart beating against her ribcages. “Yeah.” 

“It won’t happen again,” Camilla murmurs, tracing her knuckles along her cheekbone. “I’m sorry. If it makes you upset, it won't happen again.”

Nona looks up at her. “Because you love me?”

Camilla smiles at her. It was the most beautiful thing in the world, next to the thundering of the ocean rushing to shore and the scent of soil right after it rains. 

“Yeah, there you go. You got it.”