Top Bunk

DAY 17

⌚️ 6:50 AM

El wakes up to the smell of coffee and an annoying amount of light shining in her face. (It's not even that much, to be honest. Just a bit coming through a gap in Finn's cabin's curtains.)

Actually, saying she "woke up" is being quite generous. It sounds too gentle of a term when El feels like she was flung out of death and into a fire. When her senses adjust, she can feel something soft beneath her. Smell strawberry and vanilla, now much stronger than the scent of the coffee. Hear pained groans. See a curtain of wavy blonde hair. Her mind takes awhile longer to catch up, but El finally understands that her head is resting on Grace Upland's lap.

Grace is propped up against Finn's bed, her head lolling back on his mattress.

El tries to remember what got her on Grace's lap in the first place, but this gives her a searing headache paired with a very strong urge to vomit her guts out. She sits up - too quickly, fuck - and crawls to where the strong coffee scent is wafting from. El feels Grace stir from behind her.

"Why did I drink so much?" Grace mumbles, mostly to herself.

El recalls the countless bottles of beer Grace had downed the previous night. Honestly, El is more surprised at what Grace drunk rather than how much she drunk. Beer. Who'd have thought Grace - an Upland - her preferred drink would be beer? Bitter, bubbly, incredibly disgusting -

El should stop. She swears she tastes a bit of vomit in her mouth.

Coffee.

That should make her less sick.

Will is making coffee. Okay, technically, the coffee maker...that's what's making the coffee. (A coffee maker? What other wonders does Finn's cabin possess that El and Grace's cabin doesn't?)

El collapses at Will's feet, a dull throbbing at the back of her skull.

"Good morning," Will mutters. His eyes are shielded with big sunglasses; Finn's most likely.

"Coffee." El claws at his legs.

Will's mouth quirks. "You look like shit," he says, pouring her coffee into a mug. El swears that mug is the same one she used last night.

"Nothing new about that," El retorts after thanking him for the coffee. From the taste of it, it's the same mug. Gross.

"Now El," he says in a motherly tone, and funnily enough, he resembles one as he pours coffee for everyone. "You have to give yourself more credit! You are a radiant sun goddess sent down from the heavens!"

Shit, that sounds like something her mother would say. "I know that I am," El says. "I just look like shit."

Will chuckles. "You still sound drunk."

"You, too," El tells him. "You're never this jolly."

"Oh no, El, I'm not jolly," he says, grinning. "I'm hungover as fuck and covering it up!"

"You sound like Lionel." El sips at her coffee. It burns her tongue. "Except for the swearing."

"I don't know what to make of that." Will pours a coffee for himself.

"I'd just take it as a compliment," El shrugs (as much as someone clinging onto someone else's leg while drinking coffee can shrug).

"Will!" someone calls from across the cabin. El can't recognize who it is. "Coffee!"

He sighs and grabs a (clearly used) coffee mug from the floor. "Coming, boss!"

Will takes a step and El grumbles when he shakes her from his leg. The dull headache she's experiencing only intensifies when she tries to get up...and then even more light floods the entire cabin.