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The body was out cold on the floor, no signs of life. Jesus.
Michaela clenched her fists. Any second now she was going to say something, to do something. Any second now she was going to fix this.
But before she could, Connor spoke. Of course he did.
“Give me your pen. I’m going to draw a dick on his face.”
Michaela tore her gaze away from the disaster on Annalise’s carpet to glare at Connor, incredulous. “Asher is passed out, drunk, on Annalise’s floor, and you want to --” She could barely finish the sentence. “-- to draw on him?”
Did he not get how serious this was?
“Heeey,” Wes interrupted. Right, like she cared what he thought about-- “That’s my glass.”
She looked down at what she was gesturing with. It looked a lot fuller than hers.
“Quit whining,” she snapped, and took a long gulp.
Wes, boring, predictable Wes, pouted for all of ten seconds before shrugging and picking up her nearly empty glass from the table. She passed him the scotch -- no point in letting Asher’s dad’s guilt go to waste, even if Asher wouldn’t be drinking any more tonight.
“Connor, no!” Laurel’s whine cut through the beginnings of what could have been sympathy for Asher. So that was something to be grateful for. “Don’t!”
Connor had gotten a sharpie out of his bag and was drawing little dicks all over Asher’s face. Each one was maybe half an inch long, and they were flocking across his right cheek like a herd of-- Of something that herded. Geese. Geese dicks. Gicks. Deese.
Wes poked her in the arm. “Why are you giggling?”
“I’m not,” she said with dignity. “I don’t giggle.”
He scrunched up his face like he didn’t believe her, which, right, like he hadn’t been giggling since two seconds after Asher broke out the liquor.
Back on Asher’s face, Laurel had taken the sharpie and was drawing one big, hairy dick all over Asher’s left cheek, nose and right eye. “The little ones will smudge together if he drools on them,” she explained primly. Then, to Michaela and Wes, “Why are you two giggling?”
“We’re not,” Wes slurred over her perfectly clear, “I’m not.”
“You guys,” Michaela continued. “This is serious. If Annalise comes home and finds us -- finds him -- drunk in her home, she could fire us. She could fail us.”
There was a silence as the gravity of the situation finally hit home.
“She’s right,” Connor said, thank god.
“Okay,” she said, taking charge. “So, we need to--”
“Not you,” Connor cut her off. “Mousey Do Good’s right. The dicks need to be bigger.”
Michaela could feel her fists clenching again. They weren’t even supposed to be here -- Asher and his scumbag dad had won the case for them, they could go home, they could study, they could do the reading for one of the million other classes they were somehow supposed to make time for when Annalise had them working their asses off on her cases every hour of the day.
And instead they were all sitting around together getting drunk on guilt scotch in their boss’s home. She didn’t even like whisky.
“Connor,” Wes said decisively, “has really nice hair.”
He reached out to pet it, but Connor was still all the way over on the floor, putting some hair on his balls. His Asher’s-face balls, not his balls-balls. Those, he probably shaved. Ew. She did not need to be thinking about Connor’s balls -- she poured herself another glass. It was the only way to purge her brain.
“You have to come here,” Wes said to Connor. “Your hair.”
“You could come here,” Connor said, fake-flirty.
“Can I?” Wes asked her. His puppy-dog eyes were ridiculous. He probably hadn’t even been on the damned wait-list -- he’d probably just gazed up at the Dean and blinked a couple of times and now he was in their school, messing up their curve.
“No,” she told him firmly. “You’re surprisingly comborfable.” No. That wasn’t right. She tried again. “Surprisingly comfortable.” He was, too -- you’d think he’d be too scrawny to sit on, but he was solid, firm. Like there was something real under all those flannel shirts and stupid questions.
Okay, maybe she really was drunk if she was thinking nice things about Wes. Time to fix this.
“Guys. We’re dealing with this. Now.” She stood. “Connor, take his arms. Wes, you and I will take his legs. Laurel, you get the doors.”
Wes stumbled obediently over to Asher’s feet. Maybe that was what Annalise saw in him.
“Great plan, princess,” Connor drawled. “But how about you get his arms?”
He nodded down to where Asher was lying, face a mess of differently sized penises -- and, right, Laurel had put a vulva in there too. He was still clutching the trophy.
Connor shrugged, like it wasn’t his problem. “He’s not going to let that go, not without a fight.”
“He’s unconscious,” Michaela protested.
“You get it, then,” Connor said. He folded his arms across his chest in challenge. “We’ll wait.”
Fine. If they wanted to be pathetic about it, that was their problem. She wasn’t going to be found here with a quarter bottle of guilt scotch and two hundred pounds of deadweight frat boy.
She bent down to get at the trophy, and for one awful moment after she reached the floor the world didn’t stop moving, but then she was okay, she was fine, and she was going to get this out of Asher’s undeserving hands or die trying. God, she hated his smug legacy face. She’d worked for where she was -- and the rest of them had, too, for all Connor was snide and Laurel was wet and Wes was a walking disaster, they had worked for this -- and there he was, with his dad and his grandfather and his great-grandfather all the way back to when she would have been an un-person twice over.
She grabbed the trophy and yanked.
“Hey,” Wes said, reaching out a hand to steady her. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay. She pulled again, but his grasping little rich-kid hands stayed wrapped tightly around it, even in his stupor.
“It’s okay.” Wes again.
She looked up at him, met his eyes, willing him to get it.
He met her gaze head on. And oh, maybe that was what Annalise saw in him.
Wes bumped Connor out of the way and took Asher by the armpits, pulling him flat on his back. “I can take him like this, if you get the legs.”
See? Connor mouthed at Michaela, nodding down at the trophy still tightly in Asher’s hands.
“I’ve got the door,” Laurel said proudly.
Connor met Michaela’s eyes over the body. He raised his eyebrows, like he was asking if she wanted to take that one. She shook her head, no.
Connor grinned at her, sudden and blinding, before dialling his sarcasm right the way up to eleven to tell Laurel, “Well done, gold star for you. You get that door.”
Laurel glowed under the praise -- until her brain caught up with her ears, and her smile turned into a scowl. “Hey!”
“On three,” Michaela said, taking that as her cue.
“One.”
She took hold of Asher’s right foot.
“Two.”
They could do this. He wasn’t that heavy.
“Three.”
He was that heavy.
God, what did he need all those muscles for, anyway? It wasn’t like any girl with half a brain was going to sleep with him, and any girl shallow enough to go for his body was shallow enough to be put off by his face.
He should be the one moving a body from their boss’s carpet in the middle of the night, not them.
They made it four, five staggering steps before her arm muscles started to burn. Six. Seven. And then, just when she was sure she couldn’t take it, there was a sound exactly like a large metal trophy hitting a hardwood floor.
“Shit,” Connor said. “Now he drops it.”
They managed another step, and then put Asher down, half in, half out of the room, to go back and inspect the damage. Laurel let the door swing to, and Michaela wasn’t so distracted not to notice it bang to a halt on Asher’s genitalia-covered face. Good.
“There’s a dent,” Laurel said.
Yes, well done, another gold star. There was a dent. They could all see there was a dent. And tomorrow morning, when she came home, Annalise was going to see there was a dent, too.
“The rug.” Laurel again.
“Shit,” Connor repeated. “What are we going to do?”
“She hates when Sam scuffs the floors,” Wes said, because of course he knew all of Annalise’s deepest home furnishing feelings.
“The rug.”
Michaela turned the full weight of her frustration on Laurel. “There’s a rug. There’s a floor. There’s a dent. Any more observations?” God. It was like having a toddler and no nanny to look after it.
“No, you guys, the rug,” Laurel said. “We can move it to cover up the dent.”
“She’ll know,” Connor said.
“She might not,” Michaela thought out loud. Laurel could be on to something. “Not if we move the desk, too, and put the table back by six inches.” She pointed where it needed to go. “And if we don’t move it, she’ll know for sure.”
Laurel gave her an approving smile, not that she needed it.
“Okay, then let’s do this.” Wes started picking up bits of furniture and moving them off the carpet. He was swaying slightly, like finally the scotch was outweighing the adrenaline. She went to help him with the chair -- it made no sense to risk him dropping it and leaving another mark on Annalise’s precious floor.
“Little help?” Wes said, glaring at Connor.
“Happy to,” Connor snapped back, smug as a guy who hadn’t two minutes ago been freaking out about interior decorating right along with the rest of them.
They got the carpet moved and the dent covered, and it made no sense to leave the rest of the scotch, not when Michaela knew with a startling and fervent clarity she was never, ever drinking with these idiots again.
“Your hair is so cool,” Wes said again, and this time he fell forward as he reached for Connor’s hair. “It’s like a whole boyband right on your head,” he said into the carpet.
Michaela moved to pat him gently on the arm. It had been a long night, and maybe she should have let him pet Connor’s hair earlier, when he’d asked. And it was comfortable down here on the floor, soft and safe, like opening up a test paper and knowing you’d studied for it right.
Connor came down to join them so Wes could reach his head, and they all lay there for a minute -- Laurel was there too, where had she come from? -- just a minute, just to get it together, and then they’d get up and drag Asher the rest of the way out.
+
Annalise checked her watch. Ten minutes since the last noise from downstairs. They should be out by now -- though out of her house or passed out was a fool’s bet.
She trod softly downstairs, enjoying the feel of polished mahogany against her bare feet.
Asher first. No vomit, that was good -- she’d had enough of that when Frank was acting out, then again when he’d dragged Bonnie along for the ride. She checked his airways then put him into the recovery position, but left his face propping open the office door.
The other four were asleep on the carpet. Michaela against Wes’s shoulder, Wes with one hand on Connor’s head, Connor hugging one of Laurel’s arms against his chest, and Laurel drooling into her and Michaela’s hair. It was almost a shame to move them.
But she had a responsibility, so she moved them each, one by one, into the recovery position, lining them all up in a row for Frank to clean up in the morning. He could be bad cop this time -- he’d had enough of his own hangovers to know how to make theirs truly miserable.
And then, because she could, because no one would know, she picked up a blanket from the back of the couch and carefully, quietly, draped it over Wes.