Beer actually started to taste good after awhile. Seth was fonder of drinks of the fruity variety, your mojitos and daiquiris and--other things with fruit. Pineapple, maybe. But that wasn't his point. His point was that after five or six beers, this complete piss of alcohol became palatable. Seth might almost go far enough to call it tasty.
He must be very wasted.
He's at USC, because it is very very far from Berkeley and that's all Seth really needs right now, distance and a new college and no architecture students with pretty lips and frowns that reached their hairline.
He can be grateful for the little things, like beer and fraternities that have parties every night of the week with beer and classes that he seems to pass by only attending for the tests. He doesn't think his parents would like him very much right now, but Seth is having a rebellious period, so he feels entitled to doing things his parents wouldn't like.
A guy Seth doesn't know has sat down at the end of the couch, nursing his own bottle of well-packaged beer, and Seth looks at him with glazed eyes and sees depression matching his own. So he does what any teenaged drunk does and clinks his bottle against the guy's, saying, "To stupid people who live in other places."
The guy blinks at him for a second before sort of warily clinking back, but as Seth knocks back the rest of his beer, he sees the guy relax just a little. He sticks out his hand. "Seth."
"Pete," he says, and thus a beautiful friendship is born. Or at least one seriously coloured by beer.
Seth is beginning to think he likes the word "beer" a little too much.
"So where are you from," Seth asks, and it seems that is the catalyst to get Pete going, because the next thing Seth knows it's one in the morning and Pete is wrapping up a story about cows and green rocks and guts or possibly mutts, Seth wasn't too sure and didn't want to ask. He likes Pete's accent, soft and midwestern and barely there. Seth's been listening to him talk for a long time, though, and when Pete says words like "horse" and "corn" it makes him smile.
"No no no no no," Seth interrupts, waving his new beer bottle around. "I don't believe you. Green rocks that *glow*? Now you're just making shit up."
Pete grins at him, taking a pull from his own bottle. "I've seen stuff you wouldn't believe, man. There's, like, a whole Wall of Weird in my hometown."
Seth nods in a parody of sobriety. "Absolutely. Here we just called it the Wall of Socialites. Slightly less interesting, but no less weird. They've done things with plastic surgery that I don't think are legal."
Pete laughs, and Seth tries to stand, but it doesn't seem to work very well. Pete stands too. He's a little less drunk than Seth, and grabs onto his elbow. They use each other to steady themselves, and somehow they get to the kitchen where the light is much brighter but the noise is no better. Land of beer, Seth thinks faintly. "I think I'm going to vomit now," he says, and thinks, I didn't mean to say that out loud, before sticking his head in the sink.
Pete helpfully turns on the faucet, and the one good thing about Seth's vomit extravaganza is that it sure clears a room. The kitchen gets quiet after all the people leave shouting about gross freshmen, which Seth would appreciate more if he wasn't sliding down the kitchen cabinet with a sympathetic Pete steadying him slightly.
"I feel like an eighties movie that involves Molly Ringwald, only I'm the geek," Seth says weakly.
Pete pats his arm. "There were never any black people in eighties movies for teenagers, so I wouldn't know," he said.
"Yeah, there weren't any Jews either," says Seth, and this is a very serious conversation for how sick he feels.
"I think I might believe your orange vomit and bird-meets-invisible-girl story now," Seth offers.
"Oh really? How come?" asks Pete.
"Largely because my vomit was partially orange, and I have just proven at least part of your story, which means that other parts, logically, might be true too."
"Oh." Pete pauses. "That was kind of nasty, Seth."
Seth grins. "Yeah, I know."
Pete looks around the empty kitchen, eventually lolling his head towards Seth. "I've been keeping a Wall of Weird of my own, here in California."
"Oh yeah?" Seth is interested. "Is it as big as the one in Kansas?"
Pete shakes his head. "Nah. I don't think it'll ever be. Things have a way of, like, going crazy in Kansas. I think it's all the corn."
Seth waits a minute before asking, "Were you glad to leave?"
"Yeah," Pete says. "Sometimes you have to just leave your past behind, you know?"
Seth knows. "I totally understand," he says, and means it.
"So, uh, you want to see it?" Pete says hesitatingly.
Seth frowns for a second, trying to recall which it it is.
"The Wall of Weird," Pete supplies. "My Wall of Weird."
Seth brightens. "Oh, yeah!" he says. "I bet I could get some good stuff for it, too. It might just be all drama bullshit, like 'She pulled out my weave so I dug out her heart,' or whatever, but it's something." He grins, really smiles, for what feels like the first time in weeks.
"Cool," says Pete, and it's weird to exchange a real smile with someone who isn't he-who-Seth-isn't-naming-right-now. Weird, but good, and they help each other up. Standing is sort of hard, and Seth is pretty sure he's going to trip over his own feet the whole way to Pete's dorm, but this is better than getting wasted again. Or at least, getting wasted alone.
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.