Aaaaaand....relax.

[Mia Keystone]

”You shut up!” Mia snorted, leaning forward and covering Jonah’s mouth with her hand as she giggled. ”Don’t use that against me! That’s unfair...” her mock outraged expression faded a little and she blinked. What big brown eyes he had... all the better to not stare into and she dropped her hand and pulled back so fast she fell onto her side and only just saved herself from rolling off the bed.

She was keeping her dignity, yes she was.

Still, extreme foolishness aside, Mia’s expression of extreme confusion changed into wicked delight so quickly it may have made Jonah’s head spin. ”You have a suit?” she giggled, covering her mouth with both hands though her teeth could still be seen between her fingers. ”That. Is. Awesome. Ginny found me a dress with Pacman on it. Pacman! And Ginny’s promised it doesn’t make my tits look too ridicules so I will be...” she paused for dramatic effect, and also to think of a way to finish that joke

And maybe to convince herself she had not just felt weird about mentioning her boobs in front Jonah since the first time she’d gotten them and had raced to his room after the break to complain about how over Summer none of her t-shirts fit anymore and her brother had had to take her shopping and had argued with her about lace being a normal thing even though, as 15 year old Mia had pointed out, it was scratchy and stupid. She'd explained the whole debate to Jonah. He'd just looked at her like both her and her bra might explode at any second.

”I will be Mrs Pacman’s younger, hotter sister or cousin or something,” she finished a little lamely, then shrugged and smirked again. ”Ginny’s dress has Batman on it. I got her a headband. With Pow on it. Like in the comics!” She threw a punch at the wall to demonstrate the awesome powers of Batman and thanks to the wonders of drunkenness didn’t even feel it when she cracked the plaster a little. Her wall had a few cracks, and a few straight out holes. Mia punched it a lot.

”And this is why it is good you are coming,” she added then sighed and lent back against the wall, closing her eyes which had grown suddenly very very heavy. ”You know if you didn’t go I’d just be texting you every other second anyway.” she nudged his leg with her foot and half opened her eyes, smirking lazily. ”Good you’re coming. Used to having you around, won’t change that now, ya know? That takes effort.”

[Jonah King]

Mia was drunk. As her hand closed over his mouth, Jonah realised just how drunk she was – he visibly jolted as her thoughts poured into his head. It was probably the way that hearing people would feel if they were sitting in a cinema and the screen suddenly turned on, complete with booming sound. It was something of a shock to the system. Usually, it took Mia longer than this to get as drunk as she was now – maybe the stress of the day had contributed. And Jonah doubted that she had eaten anything since lunch. Her thoughts were loud and fast, but there was a moment when her entire focus was on his eyes.

Just his eyes.

He didn’t have time to think too much about it though, because then she was almost rolling off the bed, and Jonah was trying to work out exactly how much she had had to drink. Unfortunately, this was Mia – if he suggested that she slow down, she would be very likely to do precisely the opposite.

It was lucky for him that she covered her mouth at that point – he couldn’t read her lips (Mia had been very difficult to train in that respect: it had taken two whole years before she had finally always remembered to look at him when she spoke, and never hide her mouth). But he was still struggling to build back the barriers in his mind, and when she remembered how she had looked in the dress, he caught the image. Gently, Jonah reached out and pushed her hands away from her face, his expression the exact copy of the one he had always used, all those years ago, to remind her that he couldn’t see what she was saying.

He had forgotten how excitable Mia could get when she had drunk one too many – Jonah watched with an air of resigned amusement as she punched the wall, and when she leaned back against it he looked down at her with a grin. The first time he had seen her get drunk, it had unnerved him. Now, he was too used to it to do anything but find it funny. She was like a child who has had too much sugar: first she would get very hyperactive, then she would come down and need a nap. Or at least, an episode of Firefly.

Probably ‘Trash’. When Mia was drunk, she always seemed to have an overriding desire to see Nathan Fillion naked.

Now who was being the sappy one? Well, as sappy as Mia Keystone ever got, anyway. Jonah smirked. ’Love you too, Mia, he said, with not inconsiderable sarcasm in his expression. ’I’m glad you have a reason for keeping me around.’ His smirk became a proper smile, and he gave her a gentle nudge in the ribs. ’Come on,’ Jonah reached for Mia’s DVD folder. ’Want to watch some Firefly?’

He paused.

’Not ‘Trash’, though. I am never watching that episode with you. Ever. Again.’

[Mia Keystone]

This new Jonah, the one who was all touchy feel-ly (well, not really but by their standards) was really wigging Mia out. And maybe she had had too much bourbon, because it had been a long time since she’d forgotten Jonah couldn’t understand her if he couldn’t see her mouth. She grimaced, screwing her nose up and squishing her mouth to one side. It was a my bad look, albeit made a little more ridicules by her inebriated-ness.

For the second, or third, possibly fourth time that night, Mia almost fell off the bed. Well, she didn’t fall exactly. Leaning against the wall as she was, her arm buckled and she slipped sideways. Jonah was not so good at sounding sarcastic, and she hadn’t been looking at him and oh shit what had he just said? What had just happened? Her ribcage was hurting, did she want to laugh? Had she just eaten a tub of popping rocks because she was feeling like there were at least... three million explosions happening inside. Making the decision, Mia choose to continue rolling until she was on the floor and could flop onto her back and look up at the very very tall Jonah in complete shock.

Then she saw his smirk... Right. Sarcasm. Silly Mia. and her expression started flickering.

Shock melted to an exasperated scowl, and there may have been something in between. But it was gone, and buried deep deep down in Mia’s memory banks to be dragged to the trash as soon as she was sober enough to manage it. Right now, she was trying to decide if it was better to punch Jonah in the face or roll under the bed and pass out.

But no, Jonah kicked her in the ribs from all the way up on his her mattress, and this was the real world, and Jonah was her best friend and now, they would watch Firefly and she’d imagine owning Serenity and being a space cowboy until Jonah told her her imagination was making it hard for him to follow the actual plot. Well, he had until Mia had sat him through all of them enough times for him to be able to quote the whole thing.

With a sigh she pushed herself up and took the DVD folder. With a wave she managed to turn on her tv, as well as most of the other equipment in sleep mode. Lots of lights suddenly flicked on; the blue of dead screens and the green of lots of little ON lights. ”Shit, shit,” she muttered and concentrated on switching off the rest, while keeping her TV and personalized game console on. Dvd in. The rest, Mia could do from the bed, which she flopped back into.

Picking up a pillow and leaning it against Jonah’s legs, she curled up and blinked a the TV. The move Serenity started up and wordlessly, the short girl offered her very tall friend the bag of reece cups with a crooked smile.

They HAD just saved the school, after all. Well, at least a part of it. They deserved a whole movie.

[Jonah King]

Jonah watched Mia fall off the bed with an expression torn between worry and amusement. Worry, because she had obviously had so much to drink that she was no longer in control of her own faculties, and amusement because – well, I’m sure you can imagine that the sight of Mia falling off a bed is one to make anyone smile.

But he could feel the intense confusion and consternation coming from her, even if he couldn’t guess the reason behind it – well, he could, if he wanted to, by going into her mind and finding out why she was behaving so oddly, but that was not an option. He didn’t pry into peoples’ private thoughts unless he had to, and there was no way he would invade his best friend’s privacy in that way. Then Mia was looking up at him in what appeared to be amazement, and he did his best to work out what the hell was going on in that mind of hers.

The last thing he had said was ‘love you too’, in as sarcastic a way as he had been able to manage. But that was hardly something which should provoke a reaction like that from Mia – unless she thought he wasn’t joking? But even if she didn’t get the sarcasm, why should it be a phrase which resulted in her falling off the bed in shock? Jonah had learned long ago that Mia was an impossible person to second-guess – but this was a particularly intriguing puzzle.

‘What’s your problem, Keystone?’ he asked, nudging her gently in the ribs with his foot as her expression changed from gape to scowl. But his tone was gentler than his words, and he looked down at her with one of his boyish grins. ‘I haven’t seen you this drunk in a while.’ Yes, it was far easier to blame that strange reaction on the bourbon, and not on…whatever else it could be. These were not things to be considering now, they were things for careful consideration at a later date.

Or, rather, they were things to hopefully never think of again. Jonah had the feeling that he didn’t want to know where all this was going.

Jonah pulled himself into a more comfortable sitting position on the bed, and smiled as Mia curled up next to him on her pillow. It was good to have her there, solid and alive – as, today, she might well not have been. His right arm had been resting in his lap but he shifted it to make more room for her, and realised that the most comfortable position at this point would be if he put it around her shoulders.

And it wasn’t a big deal. How could it be a big deal? They were just two friends, two close friends, and they had been through a big ordeal – as Jonah took a Reese cup from the proffered bag, he leaned back against the wall and let his arm rest, almost casually, around Mia.

It felt far more natural than he had ever thought it would.

[Mia Keystone]

What was her problem? With a groan Mia jabbed a finger at Jonah, then circled his face. Your. Face. Yeah, how you like that sign language, King?! Gripping the carpet to make she didn’t fall off, the tipsy technopath grinned a mischievous grin in reply and pushed herself back up onto her elbows. From there, it wasn’t so far to tip herself forward and back onto the bed.

”You,” she pointed at Jonah, then back at herself, ”and me saved the world, dude. Drinking is,” she waved her hand in a carefree gesture, because it didn’t matter. Mia was a humble soul and she did not demand a medal, but she was entitled to a night of tipsy drunken confusion with her B.F.F, thank you. Blinking at the screen and without noticing, she was twitching her finger as Mia raised the volume of the film and switched on the subtitles with a thought, flicking past german, french, what was possibly icelandic, and finally arabic before she found english for the hearing impaired. They were good to go.

Shifting slightly, Mia bit hard into the pillow against her face. When she’d been younger, before Hammel, she’d been to the local zoo with her dad and had gone into the butterfly house. The air had been sticky and heavy and the colourful insects had darted through the air but despite Mia reaching out for them, none of the butterflies would rest on her. That was, until her father had told her to try holding very still so she didn’t scare them.

Get it? Jonah’s arm was the butterfly.

Holding still, Mia chuckled into her pillow and grinned happily as River proved once again that teenage girls with poor social skills could totally rock. The short girl reached up to grab another chocolate and let herself lean the tiniest bit back against the long arm slung around her shoulders. Sure, they didn’t do sappy, and neither did physical contact but they’d just risked their lives and permanent records. And she was drunk. So there was nothing in it, thank you very much.

Nothing at all.