2007-03-24: What Do You Do With a Drunken Dog Trainer?

Starring:

Lachlan_icon.gif Cass_icon.gif

Summary: Put 'im on the carpet 'til he's sober, earl-aye in the mornin'! A very drunk and somewhat bruised Lachlan breaks into Cass' apartment for an ice pack after his scuffle with Nathan, much to Cass' chagrin. He winds up sleeping on her floor and crawling out with God's worst hangover in the morning.

Date It Happened: March 24, 2007

What Do You Do With a Drunken Dog Trainer?


Cass' Apartment, Brooklyn

Being drunk and somewhat bruised up on his face, jaw, ribs, and knuckles, Lachlan isn't exactly the most rational of men. Somewhere during the cab ride back to his apartment, he became fixated on the idea of an ice pack, but he was unable to locate one at home, either because he had failed to unpack it before, or because he just doesn't /own/ one after having made the move. Instead of going out and /buying/ one, though, he did the most intelligent thing: he stumbled back into a cab and arrived at Cass' apartment building. She wasn't home, so he decided to let himself in: breaking and entering is something he's done before. A little effort got him to scramble up the fire escape, and a little more effort was used in prizing open the window, but he managed. The ice pack was located and that's what finds Lachlan asleep on the couch in the living room of Cass' apartment. By now, the gel in the pack has grown warm and soft where it rests across the knuckles of his right hand, but because he's good and out of it, the Scotsman probably doesn't feel any pain.

There's some scrambling and scraping when Cass makes it to her door. She's in heels and those are kind of death traps for her. But she's giggling when she pulls her keys out of her purse and unlocks her door. Dressed up in a nice beige flouncy skirt and black top threaded with gold, she all but stumbles into the apartment. Dancing with Ramon was fun and kept her mind off of Lachlan, which is exactly what she needed. Still tipsy, she doesn't realize there may be someone else in here until she flips on the lights and lo and behold. There is the person she has been trying to forget for the past two days. Much like she does when there are guns going off, she freezes. The grin fades quickly and she just stares disbelievingly at the Scot lying on her couch. She doesn't notice the bruises or the ice pack yet. She's too busy trying to process this information. Whoosh. Good feeling gone.

Surprise Scotsman! The only reaction Lachlan gives to the turning-on of the light and the fumbling and opening of the door is to grimace a bit in his sleep and half-turn to face the back of the couch with a grumblesigh. Mrrrrrgh. Too early. Five more minutes. The ice pack falls off his hand and lands on the floor with a soft /spliff/.

"Lachlan." Cass does not sound amused by this situation. Not in the least. When the light doesn't succeed in waking the Scot up, and neither does her first calling of his name, she decides to get louder. "/Lachlan/." Storming over so that she may just physically pull him off the couch if need be, she frowns when she sees that he's been bruised and, well, beaten. "What the hell, Lachlan." She not about to kick an injured man onto the floor. Not yet anyway.

First there's a door, then there's /light/ and now someone is /talking/ to him. Lachlan really likes his sleep, especially when he's drunk. A confused and rather displeased squint is sent up Cass' way and it takes him a few moments to place her voice and face. Then, he just seems more baffled. "Cass?" His voice comes out muffled and slurred, but he doesn't want to dwell on the 'what, how, why?'. Sleep. Sleep is the important thing. He gruffs something under his breath and shifts fully onto his belly, covering his head with one arm to block out the light. "G'way, 'msleepin'."

Okay, well, Cass was /trying/ to be nice, but she's not going to let someone she's mad at tell her to go away when he broke into /her/ apartment and is passed out on /her/ couch. Kicking off her shoes and hiking up her skirt, she's not really careful when she steps over Lachlan to sit on the back of the couch. Then, once she's situated, she plants her feet right about at Lachlan's hips and pushes as hard as she can in an attempt to roll him right onto the floor.

WHUMPF! Surprise Scotsman! on the floor. Not long after the impact has sounded, Lachlan seems to wake up a bit more. Now he's on his back on the carpet, and /how did he get here/?! He lays sprawled there a moment, peering bleary-eyed at everything as he attempts to focus. "The ffffff— ?" This is the only utterance of shock he can manage. Brain tired; can't focus on more than one function at a time. After a few moments, he decides to make the most of it and rolls onto his side to bury his face into the base of the couch. This blocks the light just as good as his arm!

From her perch on the back of her couch, Cass groans when even that doesn't manage to wake the Scotsman up. "/Lachlan/." Throwing her hands up in the air, she's frustrated and has no idea how to get him out of her apartment. He's too heavy for her to drag out the door by herself and it's not really the sort of thing that one asks neighbors to help with late at night (early in the morning?). Plus, while she's very angry at him, she's not sure she really wants the spectacle of a passed out drunk right outside her door for everyone on her floor to see as they go to work the next morning. Standing up, she wobbles on the cushions a bit and then jumps back down onto the floor. Grabbing the throw blanket, she tosses it at him, but doesn't really bother to unfold it or make him more comfortable. He can just sleep on the floor.

Which is precisely what he does, all through the night. Sometime in the night, he manages to half-cover himself with the blanket, though it's probably more by accident than anything. Notably, it's the /top/ half that is covered — the /entire/ top half, including head. Lachlan remains curled up with the couch all night and it's there that Cass will find him in the morning. The ice pack that fell to the floor earlier is being used as a makeshift pillow, but it's not doing a thing as far as padding goes. The headache promises to be epic.

Cass slept in her bed. With her door shut firmly behind her. When she wakes up in the morning, she has a headache of her own to nurse and she wakes up slowly in order to go deal with that. Dressed in yoga pants and an old Pogues t-shirt plus a beat up kimono as a robe, she steps out of the bedroom almost forgetting that there is passed out Scot on her floor. However, as she walks to the kitchen, she sees his legs sticking out and the events of last night come back to her. Frowning, she's not quiet as she walks over to him and nudges his leg firmly with her foot. Wake up time. "Lachlan. Get up."

It's like an elephant just stormed through the house and started wildly kicking him in the leg. Worst wakeup call /ever/. Lachlan lets out a groan of protest at the nudging and curls up tighter under his blanket fortress of dark and warmth and oh dear sweet GOD worsthangoverever. Where the hell is he? What did he /do/? He's woken up in some pretty awful places before, but this? This is bad. A low curse is uttered before he slowwwwwly starts to peel himself out of the blanket so that he might get his bearings. A frazzled Scottish head appears unto the world and squints at its surroundings groggily. Huh. /This/ is not his apartment. /That/, however, is Cass. Therefore, /this/ must be Cass's apartment. Lachlan just blinks and peers stupidly up at Cass, trying to piece it all together. Did they make up? Probably not. He's all bruised up.

Frowning, Cass watches slow thought processes go through Lachlan's brain. She did have some drinks, but certainly not enough to look quite as bad as he does. "What, did you run into Benjamin's mom again?" she gestures at the bruises and the ice pack. Leaving the Scot to pick himself up, she goes for a glass of water and some tylenol. Both are necessary this morning.

Hmm. Good /question/. He looks to the ice pack, then feels over his face absently. There's a swollen lump on his jaw, his cheek is purpled, his ribs are killing him, and his right hand feels like he punched a brick wall — which isn't far from accurate, really. It takes a few moments of struggle for Lachlan to bring any memories to the surface; by that time, he's rolled onto his belly and pushed himself up onto elbows and knees. "Mmmnah," he grunts in an overly quiet voice so as not to aggravate his splitting headache. "Was … 'unno. Som'ut the pub." Totally coherent, this one.

As she's already getting water and aspirin for herself, Cass gets an extra glass for Lachlan. On the way by the stove, she turns on the heat for her teapot. Tea is a great cure for a hangover. Plus, caffeine. Putting the glass down on her coffee table, she drops two aspirin for him to take as well. "Here. Take these. I need to get ready for work, so however you got in here, you need to get back out the same way again."

Truth be told, /Lachlan/ isn't sure how he got into the apartment. He was kinda hoping Cass had the answer to that one. The aspirin is eyed suspiciously before he reaches up a hand to snag them off the coffee table. He manages to get hold of one, but the other is scraped onto the carpet near his face. Undeterred, he pops the one, dry-swallows, then half-flops over to literally suck the second off the floor. There he remains with his face pressed into the carpet, trying to make the world stop hating him. God, he doesn't need aspirin; he needs a /gun/. "'Unno howa go' in," he informs the floor honestly. It's an important detail; the floor needs to know.

With a roll of her eyes, Cass moves back to the kitchen. "Well, me neither. So, I guess the front door will just have to work." Pulling open the fridge, she grabs milk and then goes for cereal. "Sooner rather than later." Though, watching the state of him it doesn't look like it will be a rapid recovery. The tea kettle goes off with its piercing whistle and she lets it go for a little while before shutting off the heat and letting the sound die down.

That isn't a tea kettle whistling; that's God descending with a wrathful vengeance upon Lachlan's head and slowly twisting every last particle of brain matter into tiny pretzels. "FFFFFFFFF— !" is snarled back at the unholy contraption and its torturous banshee scream, but the Scotsman thinks better of bellowing out the rest of that word. He knows it will just make his life worse. Instead, he grasps his head between his hands and attempts to squeeze all the shattered pieces back into one cohesive, painless mass. "Ye haffa do tha'?" he whimpers once the sound (thankfully) dies off.

Yes, the teapot was specially crafted to be Cass' teapot of justice and it's sound pierces the souls of Scotsmen who stray. It was definitely worth the price. "To make tea? Yes. I have to put the kettle on to make tea." Grabbing a mug and a tea bag, she pours the boiling water to make her Tea of Righteous Justice. It's no mistake that Lachlan isn't offered one. "Look, do you want me to call someone for you?"

Someone skilled in the art of euthanasia might be a step in the right direction. Otherwise, no, Lachlan can't think of anyone to call. Right now, he's making really good friends with the floor. The floor has done him no wrong, and so he is going to stay with it for as long as he possibly can. Slowly, slowly, slowly, he unbunches and lays flat on his stomach, drawing the blanket back over his head. "Mmmnah." He and the floor will just tough it out right here.

This is really not going well. It's like that old song, what do you do with a drunken sailor. Except in this case it's a drunken dog trainer. Cass takes her mug by the handle and watches Lachlan's antics on the floor with a frown on her face again. "You can't stay here. I'm getting changed and by the time I'm done I'd really like it if you weren't trying to be part of my carpet when I come back out."

Shame Lachlan isn't in any state to enjoy the prospect of Cass changing somewhere in his immediate vicinity, because he'd probably make some sort of smarmy comment and get scalded with hot tea. So … perhaps it's a /good/ thing his broken brain is the only thing that's really registering with him right now. "M'head'urts," he explains plaintively from under the blanket, not moving an inch. Lachlan Deatley, the Talking Carpet Lump — that's him!

But wait, there's movement. An arm reaches out, feels over the carpet and, once it finds and seizes the useless ice pack, it places the blob of gelatinous wonder-nothing on a skull-shaped lump beneath the blanket. There. That totally helped.

"Well, your head can hurt somewhere else," is Cass' reply. It's true. Any sort of smarmy comment from Lachlan would earn him some lovely burn marks to go with his bruises. "I will drag you out the door and leave you in the hallway if I really have to." There is movement! Hope! However, all he does is grab the ice pack and go under the covers again. "You can keep the ice pack. Just please get out of here."

The singular arm that went in quest of the ice pack waves in a dismissive fashion before dropping onto the carpet again. Lachlan seems to have lost interest in talking and is more interested in what's behind his eyelids. Maybe if he sleeps more, he'll be okay. That's it.

It's like trying to talk to a wall. Cass gives up on the whole talking thing as well. Groaning again, she rolls her eyes and takes her mug of tea into the bedroom with her. Unable to move Lachlan, she might as well just ignore him.

No, it's like talking to a /floor/. Lachlan has become one with the carpet. It is nice carpet and it loves him. Still, in the time it takes Cass to get dressed, she will probably find that the Scotsman has at least made progress toward the door. The ice pack is placed on the coffee table — that is /her/ ice pack — and the blanketed lump has crawled across the floor and has now stopped for a moment of more carpet-commune somewhere between the coffee table and the exit.

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