Get back, get down, pull me closer if you think you can hang

“So where are we going first, my girl?” Sylvia asked Gina, her eyes shining with excitement. She wondered just what the other woman had in mind in terms of showing Sylvia how to be rebellious and how to “stand up for what she wanted.”

Gina smirked.

“I think that’s self-explanatory, don’t you?” She said, wiggling her eyebrows. “I’ve got the perfect place for us to check out first…” She turned on her heel and strolled into the elevator.

Sylvia raised her eyebrow, not sure what to make of that.

She found out what Gina was talking out a few minutes later when the elevator dinged to a stop, reaching one of the hotel’s bars. The same dive bar that Gina liked to frequent; not one of the ones in the Shopping Center, but the main bar located in the hotel itself.

Sylvia’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “…No way!” She exclaimed, shaking her head frantically. “You can’t be serious!”

“Oh, deadly serious,” Gina said, cracking a grin. “Come on! You know you want it, right? Let’s get a drink together!”

“B-but… I’m only 18,” Sylvia pointed out, shaking her head. “I’m not supposed to be drinking!”

Gina rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Oh come on. What were we even talking about, do you remember? We can do whatever the hell we want. This hotel is our stomping ground, after all! Isn’t that the whole point?”

“But…” Sylvia winced. She wasn’t sure if this was a very good idea. In fact, she was quite certain that this was a very bad idea; she should really know better than to listen to what Gina wanted, considering the other woman’s irreverent, self-destructive nature.

“Come on, Sylvia, you’ve had **** before,” Gina urged her. “I know you have, you’ve said as much! So if you’ve already had some drinks in the past, what’s the problem with doing it now that you’re human, huh?”

Sylvia shook her head. It wasn’t that simple, it just wasn’t.

“It doesn’t work that way,” she said somberly. “My body is different than it was before. Back then, I was drinking just to drink. But I wasn’t affected by the ****; I couldn’t be! My body was incapable of even getting drunk! Now, though…”

Now, her body was human. And not only was it human, it was 18. That was underage in America, where her Daddy was from. And there was a pretty decent chance that she would get completely plastered out of her mind, which wasn’t exactly advisable either.

Sylvia couldn’t really see any upside in this idea; at least, not for her.

Gina, on the other hand, just laughed. “Come on!” She said, slapping the other woman on the shoulder. “A couple drinks won’t kill you! Let’s make a toast! I did the same thing with Dakota when we first came here; she’d never had a drop of **** in her either!”

Gina’s relationship with the new host was a complicated one. She disliked the way Dakota had been tricking them, they all did. And she wasn’t thrilled that Dakota had stabbed them all in the back by becoming the host again (though one could argue that the others stabbed her in the back first) or what she’d transformed into.

But, all things considered, Dakota had actually been pretty decent towards her, before and after becoming a host. Save for the whole “turning her into a good girl again” thing, but hey, that was pretty much Sylvia’s fault or touching the mirror; she couldn’t blame the other woman for her own bad choices.

She’d lived her whole life blaming other people for her problems; what was that word her mom had always been using? Accountability? Yeah, that was it. She had to take accountability for the things that she’d done.

One of the ways she was going to take accountability for herself, she decided, was to help show Sylvia that she could do whatever the hell she wanted, and didn’t have to care about Dakota, or Nick, or anybody else thought of her!

…Okay, so maybe she didn’t know exactly what “accountability” meant, but she had a pretty good idea about it.

“Just try it,” Gina urged the new woman. “It’s not going to kill you.”

Sylvia bit her lip. Gina had done this same thing with Dakota, like she’d just admitted. And Sylvia had observed that directly. She had plenty of footage of Gina getting completely plastered, even if she no longer had any access to it at this point.

Maybe… maybe she should give it a try.

She took a deep breath and exhaled, knowing that there wasn’t really any going back if this blew up in her face. There was a pretty good chance that she really ruined things, or messed up one of her other relationships. What if she used her Fuck the Voters transformation in some drunken bar bet without even thinking about it?!

Okay, I think I’m talking myself out of this, she realized. She cracked an eye open and stared at Gina’s eager face.

“…I don’t know if getting shitfaced is me doing “whatever the hell I want”, Sylvia admitted, much to Gina’s surprise.

“Oh?” Gina asked, raising her eyebrow.

Sylvia shook her head. “I think it’s definitely something YOU want to do, getting drunk with me so we could party together, but I don’t know if I want that.”

Realizing what she was saying, she quickly backtracked.

“Oh! Don’t get me wrong, I like hanging out with you!” She said quickly, shaking her head. “It’s just that, well… this is what you want to do to have fun, get shitfaced drunk at a bar,” she explained. “I don’t know if that’s something that I want to do or not…”

She searched Gina’s face, trying to find some note of understanding. Gina scrunched up her chin and considered what the other woman was saying.

But Sylvia wasn’t done.

“In this body, I’m 18,” she reminded Gina. “And while, yes, getting drunk is definitely a kind of rebellion, especially when I’m this young, I don’t know if it’s the RIGHT kind of rebellion, my girl. I think it might be really problematic. When I first tried food after turning into a real human, when I slept for the first time… it was… I don’t even know how to describe it!” She said, shaking her head. “I suppose I would have to call it ‘transcendental’ or some other fancy word.”

“That’s the whole reason about why you should get drunk, though!” Gina urged her with a wild smile on her face. “It’ll be so much fun! Like a whole new world opening up for you to enjoy yourself, and experience thinks through a different lens!”

Sylvia bit her lip. She understood what Gina was trying to say, really, she did. She just wasn’t convinced that what the other girl was proposing was the right course of action for her.

“But that’s just it, I don’t want to view things through a different lens,” Sylvia said. “I want to be the kind of girl who keeps her head on straight and doesn’t get completely trashed. There are other ways for me to rebel, right?”

Mainly, Sylvia was just afraid of what she would do when she got drunk. If it wasn’t for that, she would have been perfectly fine with knocking a couple back with Gina. But the fact that she might end up making a mistake with her Fuck the Voters transformation was enough to give her pause.

Gina could see that she didn’t have much chance of getting Sylvia to budge on this. So she sighed and shrugged.

“Well… alright, if that’s what you think is best,” she relented. “We don’t have to get a drink if you don’t want to, Sylvia. So go ahead, make the choice! Where do YOU want to go?”

Where… where did Sylvia want to go?

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been asked that.

Maybe she never had.

After all, Dakota had never asked her opinion on anything. And when Nick asked similar questions, or one of the other girls, it was usually couched in the sense of the host’s reality-warping abilities, and the fear of what Sylvia would do with them.

She didn’t think she’d ever been asked what she wanted to do, just because someone wanted to know that information.

And knowing that made her uncomfortable.

She bit her lip and questioned whether or not this was the right course of action for her. There were so many decisions she could make! And what if she made the wrong one? What if what she suggested ended up being boring? Or worse, ended up in getting her and Gina hurt, or injured, or in even more trouble!?

Sylvia wasn’t sure if she could do that.

“Gina…” Sylvia turned to the punk, wondering if she might have another idea of where to go. In spite of the statement of “whatever the hell you want”, when someone wasn’t sure what they DID want, it became a matter of uncertainty very quickly.

Gina, though, was focusing her attention on the bar. She stared longingly at the bottles and Sylvia could swear she saw the other girl lick her lips in desire.

Inspired by Gina, Sylvia took another look at the bar, and suddenly it looked a lot safe and nicer than she expected. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with her coming here and sharing a drink or two with Gina.

It would make Gina happy, right? And as for Sylvia… well, she was supposed to do what she wanted. And while she didn’t want drink that much, she was still very curious about ****, so that had to count for something, right?

Maybe she was just scared of being defiant.

“Actually, I think… I think we SHOULD stay here and get a few drinks,” Sylvia relented.

Gina’s eye widened and a crooked smile stretched across her face. “Really?” She asked eagerly. “You think so?”

“Y-yeah,” Sylvia nodded, swallowing her doubts and uncertainties. “Like you said, tonight’s about us being rebels! And I can’t think of anything more rebellious than getting a drink in a bar while I’m underaged!”

Kim had rejected drinking underage many times. Sylvia had mocked her ruthlessly for that in private, but she could also understand why such a straight-laced girl would turn down something like that.

Sylvia was far from straight-laced, though. Her laces were so crooked that she had to crisscross them when tying on her boots!

So she really didn’t see what would be different about her going and getting a drink now. “I was just doubting myself earlier,” she explained to the other woman. “I wasn’t sure if getting drunk was the best idea or not. But I couldn’t really come up with anything else we could do, so…”

She lifted her shoulders into as shrug and let them drop. If this was what Gina wanted, then maybe it was the best idea. “I believe in you, my girl,” she assured the other woman. “You know more about being a rebel than I ever will.”

“Aww, that’s sweet!” Gina said, cracking a grin. “But don’t worry, Sylvia.” She smiled conspiratorially and patted the other woman on the shoulder. “You’ll learn a lot if you stick with me!”

Sylvia had a sinking suspicion that that was the truth.

Maybe she was making a mistake. Maybe she should have thought more about what she wanted to do. But she’d been drawing blanks. She couldn’t come up with anything rebellious she wanted to do, so why not this? It was fine that way.

“Okay, but I do have one condition,” she said, grabbing Gina’s wrist before the other girl could run over to the bar. Sylvia’s expression was deadly serious.

“Oh?” Gina blinked, and then cracked a smile. “What condition would that be?”

“You, uh…” Sylvia glanced away, her cheeks burning. “You have to take responsibility, alright? For everything that happens here. Whatever happens, whatever I do when I get drunk, you’re the adult in the room, and you need to take responsibility.”

She batted her eyelashes and smiled innocently at the other woman.

“I’m just a pure, sweet little Daddy’s girl!” She said, putting on a sickeningly sweet voice. “All this underage drinking is terribly frightening… I need someone with experience to properly guide me, wouldn’t you agree?”

Gina laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, so that’s how we’re going to play this, huh?” She snorted, shaking her head. “The pure and innocent route, I see how it is. Well, fine then. If that’s how you want it, we can play your little game, Sylvia. I’ll take responsibility. You get all messed up, throwing up everywhere, then I’ll clean it up for you.”

Sylvia had meant something a little more serious than that. But if Gina was also offering in that respect, well…

There wasn’t any reason to turn her down, now was there?”

So with that settled, the two of them went to the bar to order some drinks from the bemused faerie playing bartender.

“Unbelievable,” Gina groused, shaking her head. “After ONE drink?”

Sylvia had been inadvertently prophetic. She had declared her fears about barfing all over the place, and lo and behold, that was exactly what had happened. And after only one drink, too.

“I couldn’t help it,” Sylvia muttered, resting her arm on the bar to keep herself from falling off of it. The room was still spinning around. “I didn’t expect it to be that… tat strong…”

The room was spinning, and Sylvia was spinning with it. Then she realized that she was spinning on the stool, and kicked out her legs. “Wooooo! This is so much fun!” She cheered, throwing her head back. Of course, that resulted in her falling right off of that scale. Luckily, her body was nice and relaxed after those drinks, and her muscles were loosened.

If that hadn’t been the case, she may have fallen and split her head wide open like an egg!

And that certainly wouldn’t have been fun.

Sighting, Gina shook her head and glared at the faerie bartender, who was glaring right back at her. Then the faerie nodded to a mop.

Gina sighed. She really had messed up, promising to take responsibility for Sylvia’s actions.

“This is why I’m glad I don’t have a preggo fetish like Mary,” Gina groused, grabbing the mop and starting to sweep. She was way too sober to be enjoying herself doing a menial task like this, that was for sure. “I would be an absolutely dreadful parent. Who the fuck wants to deal with a baby spitting up?! Not me!”

Of course, as she thought of that, her mind turned towards Nick. What if… what if he wanted her to get pregnant? What if she didn’t have a choice?

Of course, she knew she did have a choice. If she did inadvertently get preggers, then she could always take care of it… but would she even want to do something like that? Gina knew that Nick wanted children. And if he wanted her to have them…

A shiver rolled down her spine as she thought about her stomach swelling. Damn. She didn’t think that Mary’s pregnancy fetish was a contagious transformation, but in that moment she would have believed anyone who told her that it was.

Now wasn’t the time to think about that, though, she had an actual baby to raise, and this one was drunk too boot. She couldn’t think about how having a baby would actually be a sign of maturity, and would help her develop as a person to take responsibility for another human life, forcing her to grow up and become a mature adult, a parent.

She couldn’t that would be…

“BLEEEEGHHH!”

Sylvia had ignored orders and gotten another drink. One with even more **** in it. She’d drained it dry. Needless to say, this was not going the way Gina had anticipated.

“Okay, maybe this was a mistake,” she admitted, shaking her head. She was going to need some help if she wanted to handle Sylvia in this condition.

She set down the mop and practically tore the other woman off of her stool.

“Okay, you, let’s get going,” she said, dragging her towards the bathroom.

“H-huh? Gina! No! No, my girl! Not the basthroom!” Sylvia gasped, realizing something in her haze of foggy thoughts. “I’ve already promished Daddy my firsht time! We can’d!” She started to thrash and scream. But she was already so plastered that her thrashing was more just flopping her arms around, and her “screams” were just drunken mutterings because she couldn’t think about how she usually raised her voice.

Gina rolled her eyes and sighed. Oh, yeah, this was a special kind of intolerable. Luckily, she had a lot of experience taking care of sloppy drunks like the girl clawing at her arm. Gina kicked the door open, and shoved Sylvia inside.

“We’re not doing stuff like that,” she assured the other girl, ignoring the look of disappointment that flashed across Sylvia’s face. “I’m putting you in here, because frankly, I don’t want to clear up another puddle of your puke.”

She turned Sylvia around, **** her to her knees, and pushed her head over the toilet bowl.

“There, now you can throw up to your heart’s content,” Gina said, rolling her eyes. “Have a blast. Meanwhile, I have a mess to clean up.”

“Righty-o!” Sylvia stood up and drunk saluted. But her legs were so shaky and uneven she nearly toppled over, and had to go back to kneeling because she was too light-headed. “…Sorry. Right. I think I’m going to… again…”

Gina quickly turned sylvia around so she was facing the toilet again, and gently held her head forward. As the other woman began tot hrow up, Gina winced. It was a thankless job… but somebody had to do it.

“You have fun in here,” Gina said sarcastically. “I’m going to go clean up your puke.”

Not exactly how she wanted to spend her evening.

This is way too much trouble for me, though, she thought, shaking her head. If I want to handle this girl and keep her from doing anything crazy and reckless behind my back and getting us all in trouble, then I need to call in some reinforcements!

And she knew the perfect woman for the job.