rules don't stop me

[Rhys Armitage]

Rhys lied motionless on a hospital bed, blissfully hopped up on pain potions as he idly shifted the top half of his bed up and down. Last night, during a party at his friend's house, he had the bright idea to jump from the roof and attempt to land in a hot tub full of girls. And, well... he only managed to complete the 'jump off the roof' bit. Once his friends managed to lump together their few working brain cells to rush him to St Mungo's, he was treated immediately and then subjected to some very disapproving looks from his Healer.

"Rhys, you have a visitor," she said before cracking the door open.

"Come here," Rhys said in a low, dramatic voice while extending his arm toward the light now streaming through the door, not quite able to make out who was standing there. "I'm going to ask you a question, and you have to be honest with me, because I almost died. I saw the light. I saw God! Or possibly Jim Morrison. Actually, yeah, it was probably Jim Morrison." He took a long pause, drawing in a great deal of breath before asking the question. "How... bad does my hair look?"

(ooc: Anyone~)

[Rachael Barnes]

((ooc: Have a secretly-worried-and-so-lashing-out Rachael! Yay for Rhys, haha.))

Rachael sat slumped in a chair in the waiting area beside the Healer’s station, from which vantage point she’d already seen her Aunt Amy bustle into the ward, asking frantically after her son. Clearly they’d got round to contacting Rhys’ emergency contacts then. The only reason Rachael was even waiting here was because his friend Tom (a mutual acquaintance she regretted) had called her to give her a heads up, asking her to try to keep Amy out of the ward for long enough until Rhys would be off the pain meds and appear relatively sane again. Amy had already been ushered off by a Healer down to the canteen to try to calm her down since their duty of care to patients included making sure hysterical relatives didn’t impede their healing. And now Rachael was left to receive the verdict as to how Rhys was.

The girl leaped up out of her chair to speak to the Healer who called her over. How did you say you know the patient? “He’s my cousin,” Rachael explained, “One of his friends called me to tell me he was here. I thought I should maybe… check he was okay… given that my aunt, his Mum, is a bit… prone to… overreacting,” she chose her words carefully but they still seemed mean. Oh well, they were accurate, she figured. “I can see him? Great, thanks,” she replied as she stepped away from the desk and followed her to the room Rhys was in, grimacing tightly at her as the woman left her to it after informing the patient he had a visitor.

Standing in the open doorway, Rachael looked critically at her cousin as he lay in bed, being his ever-dramatic self about it all. “You didn’t see the light. Or God. Or Jim Morrison. Tom said you just jumped off a roof and missed the hot tub, which was and I quote ‘sooo not cool duuuuude’,” she retorted humourlessly, folding her arms across her chest in a show of disapproval and not actually making any efforts to move further into the room. She let out a loud scoff of disbelief then as he asked how bad his hair looked, finally striding over the threshold and shutting the room’s door behind her. “How bad does it look? It looks a fucking mess, Armitage, as are you,” she growled lowly. She wasn’t about to feel sorry for him. “Just so you know, your mum is majorly freaking out right now! Like… the only reason she hasn’t burst in here is because she was hysterical when she got here so the Healers wouldn’t let her in here to see you until she went and had a drink of water and calmed down. Which we both know could take an age. But yeah… she’s worried hysterical so maybe quit the Jim Morrison jokes when they finally let her in, yeah?” she suggested dryly, sighing and flopping down into the chair beside his bed. “Why the fuck did you think it was a good idea?!”

[Rhys Armitage]

Rhys had always been someone who glossed over problems and avoided negative emotions at all costs. He was fine, clearly, so everyone should just get over their worry, have a laugh, and not yell at him too much... right?

"Aauuugh no, I'm in helllll!" he joked when he realized it was Rachael at the door, shielding his face with his arms. "I may not have seen the light... but I definitely saw... a light..." he mumbled while waving his hands around. He vaguely wondered if Tom got the whole thing on tape.

Finally registering Rachael's more serious, angry tone, Rhys frowned (though it didn't stop him from attempting to flatten down his wild hair). "Wait, they called my mum? Why did they call my mum? I'm fine! Look at me! Totally cool!" Ignoring the fact that she was his number one emergency contact, and that he'd repeatedly pleaded for his 'Mummy' during his painkiller haze... obviously that didn't mean he wanted her here, worried sick about something that only came about after his own stupid drunk mistake.

"Why do you think I do anything?" he asked rhetorically; his reputation for partying a little too hard wasn't exactly unearned. Nor was his reputation for idiocy. "Oh my Jim Morrison. No one's going to tell my mum I took drugs, right?" he asked desperately, looking oddly vulnerable for a second. His mother seeing him as anything other than her perfect golden boy seemed unbearable.

[Rachael Barnes]

"Yeah that light is called impending unconsciousness, it tends to flash before you pass out because you've done something monumentally stupid," Rachael commented, unamused by his joking about being in hell because she was there. She knew she might not be his favourite person ever and she wasn't exactly the one you'd want by your bedside (her bedside manner left something to be desired) but underneath all her scorn and irritation laid true concern.

She sighed in defeat, finally digging in her bag that hung across her body, to find something in its depths. "Here," she offered her pocket mirror to him to check his hair, since he was clearly irrationally concerned about it because he absently fussed with it whilst talking to her. She retracted her hand and leaned back in her seat, "Your Mum is your emergency contact, you were brought to hospital after a fall from considerable height, you could have landed on your neck, they didn't know how serious it was, that's why they called her for Merlin's sake," Rachael explained exasperatedly, sighing at his manner.

"Because you're a reckless 'carpe diem' 'YOLO' kind of partier?" she proposed and then shook her head, "Frankly, the act is wearing thin, Armitage. Your friends might egg you on but, come on, are you not just a little bit shaken by what just happened?" Rachael asked in confusion. She ran a hand wearily over her face as she saw how oddly vulnerable he looked when considering the prospect of Amy discovering he had taken drugs. "You're legally considered an adult and they have patient confidentiality so they probably can't talk to her about it and they'll only discuss your treatment with you. I think Tom texted me about this whole situation so I could run interference to keep your Mum out of the picture whilst the Healers are talking to you about it all," she explained. Then shrugging the girl pointed out dryly, "Besides, when it comes to her little angel she's blinkered. She could have a Healer tell her there were drugs and alcohol in your blood and she wouldn't believe it. Fuck, she could catch you smoking a joint and still refuse to believe anything untoward of her golden boy."

[Rhys Armitage]

Rhys took the mirror, idly twisted his front chunk of hair around his finger and attempted to shape it into something vaguely Elvis-y (mainly to avoid having to make sheepish eye contact with Rachael). He hadn't realized how bad his fall was; the whole memory just felt like a hazy rush of sounds and colors. "Look, I don't want her to worry either. Make Tom my emergency contact. Is Tom here?" he asked, not knowing that Tom had fled the waiting room pretty much immediately, with a vague explanation that hospitals 'gave him a bad vibe'. He shifted and winced slightly at the pinching in his side from where the Healers had sealed up his cracked rib. "And tell them I want to change family visitation to family I actually knew about before I was sixteen," he attempted to playfully rib her, though perhaps it wasn't the time or place for it.

"I've told you a million times, that 'YOLO' tattoo was a mistake... it was supposed to be a yo-yo..." he joked nonsensically before frowning visibly. Rhys hated disappointing anyone. "That's... that's who I am, that's why people like me. It's not for my stimulating intellectual conversation, alright? I make them have fun and feel good and forget about stuff for awhile." He craved constant love and attention and was secretly terrified that if he cut back on the partying, no one would want to hang out with him anymore. He lowered his bed so he was staring at the ceiling. "She actually did find a joint in my sock drawer, once. I told her I confiscated it from Nat's boyfriend to try to 'get him off the pot'. She seemed very concerned for him." He gave a choked, self-deprecating laugh at this.

[Rachael Barnes]

Rachael sighed softly and looked down at her hands as Rhys fussed with his hair, “I’d suggest reconsidering that decision,” she piped up quietly, “Look. Tom isn’t the most reliable person on the planet and he bailed as soon as he saw me walking across the lobby downstairs. I know he’s your friend but sometimes it’s not a friend who you’d want there, or need, in an emergency.” She looked up sharply as she heard him wince slightly, “Are you okay- what’s wrong?” she asked immediately, her icy ‘I am very disappointed in you’ demeanour cracking accidentally as she realised he was actually in pain and it wasn’t just another one of those stupid stunts where they gave him a couple of stitches and sent him on his way. She slumped back into her seat at his joke, letting out a snort of amusement, “Nice to see this experience hasn’t changed you, Armitage,” she sniffed dryly.

She rolled her eyes at his justification, “That’s really not helping your case, you know?” she pointed out with a shake of her head. “If people only like you for jumping off a roof and nearly killing yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be friends with those kinds of people,” Rachael suggested humourlessly, meeting his gaze earnestly and being utterly 100% serious for that moment, “You honestly think that all you have to offer people is the party, right? You’re wrong. I just wish you’d see that. People won’t stop hanging out with you if you’re sober, or not high, or not jumping into hot tubs full of girls.”

“Yeah, your mum’s capacity for stubbornness of opinion really shines when it comes to you, well done,” the brunette commented sarcastically, “Although, I do sometimes wonder if she kind of knows about what goes on at parties you go to but she just buries it because it’s easier to pretend and delude herself than face the facts. She does have a record with that sort of thing,” she noted, looking at him as if to say ‘I’m sorry I had to say it but it is true’. “But do tell, which of Nat’s boyfriends was this? Because if it was Biermann, the disparity between the story and the reality is comedy gold, frankly,” she finally smirked once more in amusement.

[Rhys Armitage]

"Jesus H. Christ, what did you do to him?!" Rhys laughed cheerfully, though strained slightly by his injury, trying to mask his hurt at Tom's abandonment. It was a consequence of the sort of attachments Rhys tended to form: fast, fleeting, with drugs or hookups (and usually both) as their primary catalyst. Rhys couldn't imagine, say, François being any better than Tom in a crisis. Or any of his... lovers? Was that the right word? Anything implying further commitment didn't seem right. "I'm fiiiiine," Rhys responded without even thinking, immediately trying to downplay the situation as much as possible. "I'm on, like, a crazy amount of pain medication right now. It's amazing. Want me to try to score you some?" he joked.

"Great. I'll just sober up, hang out with you and talk about Simone de Beauvoir. Just what I've always wanted," he groaned while awkwardly attempting to shift around in his bed. Admittedly, she wasn't entirely wrong, but it just... wasn't that easy. What if he wasn't equipped to deal with reality without floating carelessly above it? What if he couldn't form real, deep friendships? What if he was just a sponge, soaking up everyone around him and spitting back whatever they wanted from him? The Universe gave him an adventurous spirit, (self-described) amazing looks and a tolerance for chemicals normally found in large elephants; that was what he brought to the table. "Are you honestly going to stand here and tell me all of these great things I have to offer?"

Rhys' natural urge was to jump in and defend his mother, but he couldn't really argue with what Rachael was saying. Still... he was sure his mum was just trying her best to deal with life and if that involved denial, so be it. He would be a hypocrite to fault her for it. "Uhhhh, I think it was one of the straight ones," he paused to think for a second, "He had some weird name, like... Wharf. Or... Stumpy?" Whatever his name was, it definitely was not either of those choices. "Anyway, it was a believable story, is what I'm saying. Though I did get Biermann high once. Gave him too much, I think... it was less fun than expected... also, I don't think he likes me very much? It's like, you try to hit on your sister's closeted gay boyfriend for homework answers once and suddenly you're a terrible person." He was still convinced that he would have been doing the guy a favor, in the long run.

[Rachael Barnes]

Rachael rolled eyes, fixing Rhys with an unamused look, “I didn’t do anything to him. Alright, full disclosure, the text I replied with might have had one too many expletives and been written entirely in capitals so I think he thought I was on the warpath out to get him?” she suggested. She settled back in her seat as he claimed he was ‘fiiiiine’, funny how so many people used that word yet very few of them actually meant it, and shook her head, “If I refused drugs any other time you offered them, even in the form of baked goods, what makes you think I’m going to jump at the chance of pain meds?” she teased slightly.

“Is that what you think I do all day, just walk around reciting ‘The Second Sex’?” the brunette asked sceptically, looking to him expectantly though it was probably difficult to tell whether the truth or a lie would be more safe to reply with. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not a man-hating, ball-crushing feminist. If a woman was a dick to me the way some guys have been in the past, I would not hesitate in, I don’t know, administering a swift jab to the left tit,” she commented, waving a hand around vaguely as though to illustrate her point further, “I just don’t like being treated like shit and I won’t stand by and let bullshit just slide. I think Simone would agree that’s not a bad stance to take in general.” She sighed and shook her head, “No, I’m not going to stand here and tell you what you have to offer because… honestly? Right now, I think you need to tell yourself what else you have to offer. Because I’m not sure you believe you do have anything. And hearing your cousin saying some stuff isn’t going to convince you, you need to actually believe it yourself.”

She snorted softly, “Usually that distinction wouldn’t have to be made,” she cut in dryly, shaking her head at Natasha and Justin’s relationship before her brow furrowed as Rhys tried to recall the guy’s name. “Here’s a thought, stop trying to get people high who don’t generally touch drugs. If they were curious, they’d ask. Also, if it’s true, then maybe Biermann isn’t overly fond of you precisely because he remembers you first and foremost as the guy who hit on him when he wasn’t even out and entirely comfortable with being gay. Not everyone is as liberal and easy-going and just generally ‘free love’ as you are, it’s more awkward and uncomfortable for some people,” Rachael pointed out matter-of-factly. Then she sighed as she practically heard herself back and ran a hand tiredly across her face, murmuring, “And I promise as soon as you are better, you never have to hear any of this quasi-wanky crap coming out of my mouth. I’ll go back to just being standoffish and harsh towards you.”

[Rhys Armitage]

Rhys tried to shift himself further upright, just managing to rest on his elbows. "Maybe you're running a prescription pill ring on the black market? I don't know your life!" he laughed. He decided to let himself believe that Tom would have stayed for him under any other circumstances, but Rachael had just scared him off with her scary... Rachael-ness. It was easier to swallow than the truth.

"Come on, I didn't say that," Rhys pleaded while tilting his head to the side. "You know I didn't mean it like that." The Simone de Beauvoir comment was mostly a knee-jerk reaction, one based more on the intellectuals he'd known in Paris -- who always seemed to make him feel a bit stupid for failing to understand feminist literature. He considered himself rather liberal and progressive, though his clearly brilliant insights on heteronormativity and oppressive social mores usually only came around when he was a few bong hits deep. Honestly, he liked his cousin a lot, and just wanted her to know that he was on her side. "And I'm not some misogynistic douche who'll sleep with anyone just to rack up numbers. For the record." He was, in fact, a douche who would sleep with anyone for love and attention... he didn't want to get into it, though, so he shrugged it off. "You really need to work on your pep talks, you know that?" he laughed before wincing slightly as it pinched his ribs.

"This coming from someone who snogged her cousin..." Rhys mumbled jokingly before shaking his head. "If he didn't want anyone to know, why'd he come over to our house every time I had to work in the garden with my shirt off? I always know when people are checking me out, okay, it's a finely-tuned radar that's had to overcome tremendous barriers of language, culture and sexual labels," he justified his decisions, mostly to himself. Rhys had always allowed himself to believe that as long as he was nice, friendly and non-malicious, any accidental damage he may have caused probably wasn't all that bad. Right? "Just... I don't know, man, I don't get why it's such a thing, why everyone has to be in this box or that box and the possibility of anything outside of that box is suddenly cause for a major identity crisis. Like, just because you've always defined yourself one way, doesn't mean an 'homme-homme-femme' ménage à trois with your best mate François can't turn into three months of heavy experimentation. Or that someone can't get all soaped up now and then with their all-female sports team... these are just random examples," he assured her, joking around so he could side-step anything too serious.

[Rachael Barnes]

Rachael let out a snort of amusement, “Yeah, that’s right, dealing pills. Sometimes harder stuff. You wouldn’t believe the amount of self-medication athletes get through,” she retorted humourlessly.

Seeing his pleading head-tilt she softened, hating herself for it, and rolled her eyes, “Okay fine, fine, just stop with the puppy-dog face!” she protested. “I know you don’t. And, for the record, I know that you’re not a douche at all. You mean well, you just… I think you just want people to like you, and while I don’t understand this need to be liked by every single human being on the planet, if that’s what you want to aim for then more power to you and I hope it works out for you,” she shrugged easily. “Yeah, pep talks: not really ever my strong point, you might have noticed that,” Rachael laughed. “I don’t know what is my strong point, mind. Possibly scaring people without even having to raise my voice or harm one hair on their pretty little heads…?”

The levity didn’t last too long as Rachael fixed Rhys with a deeply unimpressed glare at his clearly hilarious joking undertone. “I’d like to remind you that you also snogged your cousin, it’s not like I latched onto your mouth and you sat there helpless,” she countered, knowing he hated talking about it (well she did too, to be fair) because it still made him uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive her parents for not making sure the Barnes kids, in light of their father’s complete departure from their lives, knew who all their relatives were at Hogwarts. She also questioned her teenage self’s judgement for getting off with Rhys of all people. “You’re so deluded,” she huffed and shook her head at him, “I’m sure it was a coincidence. Unless you texted Biermann every single time to tell him you were working in the garden, how could he have known? Are you sure what you consider as ‘checking you out’ doesn’t sometimes, in fact, mean ‘looking you over in disdain’?”

She sighed and folded her arms defensively then, slumping back in the chair and resting her head back on the top of it, staring up at the ceiling as he spoke about sexual labels. “That’s a lovely and refreshing way to look at sexuality, Armitage,” she murmured, a tad sardonically, “We classify things because we like to think it makes our lives easier. We can get into gender performativity and heteronormativity if you like but I’m guessing the lovely walls of Mungo’s aren’t really the forum Judith Butler envisaged her work being discussed in.” She dropped her gaze from the ceiling to look at him again, her brow furrowing slightly, “Mmm. You and François? Look, dude, whatever floats your boat. If you like dudes, if you like girls, if you like both and you don’t really know why but you just do, look… whatever, just go forth and enjoy.” She waited a beat before adding with an impish grin, “And you’re still thinking about that soapy shower scenario, huh? Will it ruin everything your little mind conjured in way of girl-on-girl fantasies if I point out that there are, in fact, separate showers at the Harpies training ground?”

[Rhys Armitage]

"I assumed Biermann figured it out through secret gaydar powers," he said dryly. "Okay, fine, I also chose to take my shirt off to work in the garden..." Rhys conceded, slowly coming to the realization that his ploys for attention were slightly more transparent than he had intended. He didn't spend every day in the gym for his health, okay? He'd take his validation anywhere he could get it.

"I didn't really... 'get' Judith Butler," Rhys admitted, surprising no one. To be honest, he couldn't remember if he had actually tried to read her work, or if he'd being lying for years and managing to fake his way through conversations with his more philosophical friends. There were just so many... words. Confusing words. It wasn't his bag. "Here's the thing... it's fluid. For me, anyway. Blurry. I'm really close with François and then it just blends into this other thing. But like... I can't tell you what I'm going to be into for the rest of my life. I can't even tell you what's going to do it for me when I'm at home with my laptop tonight. Sorry if that's too much information. I'm on a lot of drugs." Which, to be fair, was not unusual for Rhys. He was, in fact, more lucid right now than normal. He then sighed heavily, and probably would have flopped dramatically on the bed were he not already lying down. "You know how people think, though. A girl experimenting is just a sexy sleepover, a guy doing it is obviously a closet homosexual." He rubbed his eyes. "Ugggggh, damn you for making me think. With your... thinkyness. Also, separate showers seem like a waste of water? Try thinking about the planet every now and then, Barnes."

[Rachael Barnes]

The brunette rolled her eyes at Rhys’ dry comment before shaking her head slightly, “I’ll bet you did, you tease,” she joked. For all she couldn’t empathise with Rhys’ need for constant validation, she could see where he was coming from- if he wanted to spend hours perfecting his physique and then parade it around, well, there wasn’t anything overtly harmful in that. He was a fairly harmless person, as a rule, except for when he worried people (like now) which she wasn’t entirely sure he even grasped yet – having people check out your abs wasn’t true validation, having people give a shit about whether or not you’ve ended up in the hospital was.

Then, Rachael snorted softly in derision and looked back down at him, “Well if you ever need more than the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry to help you impress your little pseudo-intellectual café-scene buddies, let me know and I’ll explain Butler in simple terms.” She mmm-ed noncommittally as he explained how he saw things as fluid, “Woah, yes too much info, I really don’t ever need to know your browser history,” she joked dryly before shrugging at his next comment, “I don’t know what people you’re hanging out with that think girls experimentation equals sexy sleepover but not the same for guys, that’s a complete double standard. But hey, what do you know, welcome to what girls have been harping on about for years!” Rachael pointed out with a slight smile. “Look, I promise you I wasn’t trying to make you do something as heinous as think. Well. Not about sexuality anyway. I mainly came here to try to cover your back with your Mum, and point out that maybe you should ease off on the partying before you give your Mum a panic attack…?” she shrugged easily.

“I’ll tell that to the girls, see what they think about the shower situation. I should point out, however, that our coach is still a sexist pig so he basically doesn’t listen to anything we say, ever,” Rachael snorted softly then in amusement, “Still, at least I get on marginally better with my coach that Dannyboy does with his. Did I ever mention that my ex coaches Wigtown now? Seeing the look on Dan’s face was… oh god… I don’t think ‘priceless’ even covers it. Brilliant.”