Chapter Text
The phone rings. And rings. And rings.
At first, Erin's brain doesn't register the sound as anything to pay attention to. Her brain isn't registering much at all. And when it begins registering things, the first thing that it does register is the blinding pain in her head. And then the phone.
It isn't her cell phone. It's an actual phone with a cord and a real ringing ring. The hotel phone. Sitting atop the nightstand in the much-too-fancy hotel that none of them would have ever been able to afford on their own.
She groans and opens her eyes but regrets it because the sun is too bright and her entire head is throbbing and her mouth is too dry with a revolting taste lingering on her tongue and her limbs are aching and she wants the phone to stop ringing.
Then there's a clamor, the sound of a hand hitting wood, something falling to the floor, and a sleepy grunt when the phone finally does stop ringing.
The sleepy grunt comes from right beside her, and Erin turns, cracking one eye open to see Holtz in bed with her, facing towards the nightstand, phone in her hand. She grumbles something into the phone, then slams it down, falls face-first into the pillows.
They're sharing a room but they have separate beds, so Erin doesn't understand why Holtz is in hers. Or is she in Holtz's? Either way, she doesn't know why they're in a bed together. She tries to remember getting into bed, tries to figure out what decision led them to sharing, but she's coming up blank.
In fact... she hardly remembers anything from the night before at all.
"Holtz?" she croaks out, her throat sore and dry. There's an incoherent groan from beside her. "Holtz, how much did I drink last night?"
"If you think," she begins, lifting her head from the pillow and looking over at Erin with squinting eyes, "that I have any idea how much you drank...then you were even drunker than me."
Erin stares at her. Both because she's trying to comprehend what she's said, but also because her appearance is...odd. She's wearing makeup, but it's smeared across her face, pink lipstick smudged all the way down her chin, eyeliner running down her cheeks, and her hair is down, but it's messy and matted and sticking up all over the place.
"You were drunk?" Erin asks.
"Uh. Yeah."
"But..." she frowns.
"You have something in your hair," Holtz points out.
She turns her head slowly, but even that sends pain shooting through her skull, down her neck, all over her whole body. She grimaces, then looks at her hair splayed over the pillow, and she sees some sort of bright yellow plastic and grabs it only to find that it's stuck in her hair.
"Eurgh," she cringes, touching something sticky, strands of hair wrapped around and stuck to it. "What is--? Is this candy ? Why is there candy stuck in my hair ?"
"Is that a Ring Pop?" Holtz asks, and she begins to laugh softly, but immediately stops and then groans.
"What the...?" Erin mumbles, unsticking the half-eaten candy from her hair, pulling out several strands in the process. "Oh, gross ."
She tosses the candy off of the bed and looks towards Holtz, who has her face pressed into the pillow again. She has the blankets pulled up to her neck, so it's just a mess of blonde hair peeking out while the blanket rises and falls rather quickly, as if Holtz is panting.
"Um...you okay?" she asks. Holtz simply groans.
"Is this death?" comes her muffled response from the pillow. "Is this what death feels like? I know this can't be Hell because you're here, but maybe it’s Purgatory. Maybe I'm in Purgatory, because I get to spend my whole afterlife with you but I will feel like this forever."
"Sure are saying a lot of words for feeling like death," Erin comments.
"It's a coping mechanism."
"You weren't supposed to drink," Erin states. "That was the whole deal."
"Yeah, I know, Erin. Believe me, I'm regretting a lot of things right now."
"I told you that I would only drink if you stayed sober enough to keep me from doing stupid things. Because I do stupid things when I drink. That's why--"
"Yeah, I know , that's why you hadn't drank more than a few beers since we've been here. I know, Erin. I know ."
She's cranky. Erin attributes it to the hangover. She isn't offended. But she is confused.
"But we made a deal . You were supposed to stay sober."
"And I did," she says, lifting her head and looking at her. "Long enough for you to change your mind and decide that it wasn't any fun if it was only you drinking."
"What?"
"And believe me, I did argue. But you were very forceful."
"I could not have been that-- "
"You sat on top of me and poured vodka into my mouth, Erin. First from a bottle. And then from your own mouth."
" What ?!"
"You called it Mama Bird-ing. It was disgusting. And adorable."
"I...did not ..."
"Yes. Yes, you did," she nods, but then she stops, a frown crossing over her face, brow furrowing, and she closes her eyes for a moment, her breathing suddenly much heavier.
"Are you....?"
"Oh, god," she whimpers, and then she's throwing the blankets off of her, and jumping out of the bed, sprinting in the direction of the bathroom. Erin only gets a quick glance at what she's wearing, but it leaves her bewildered. Because she's in a dress. Tight, white, and riding up her thighs.
And then there's the unmistakable sound of retching and the splash of vomit hitting the water in the toilet. Erin cringes, pressing her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear it, the noise alone making her feel queasy. But she hears it again, only slightly muted. And then again.
Then silence.
She thinks that maybe she should get out of bed and check on Holtz, because she's been in the bathroom for a while without puking or making any sort of indication that she's alive.
But when she pulls the blankets off of her, she's taken aback by her own outfit. She's in a dress that she has no memory of ever seeing before, also white, flowy with thin straps, and with some sort of stain down the front. She trying to find any sort of pieces to even attempt to put together to figure out what the hell they did last night when Holtz emerges from the bathroom.
Standing up, she looks even more of a mess than she did when she was in bed. She walks slowly, appears to be limping slightly, and Erin has never even seen her in a dress before, so seeing it now is weird. Especially this particular dress. It's so tight, conforming to every single curve of her body, stopping several inches above her knees.
"Uh, hey, Erin?" She asks in a soft mumble. "What the fuck am I wearing?"
"I was wondering the same thing," she admits. "About you and about myself."
Holtz tilts her head, narrowed eyes peering intently at Erin.
"Did we decide to go shopping or something?"
"Apparently," Erin says.
"And you let me buy this ?" Holtz asks, looking down at her body, pulling at the hem of the dress, wiggling a bit. She tugs it down a few inches, but when she does, she pulls it all down, the already-low neckline plunging even lower, her breasts threatening to spill out. Erin can’t help but laugh as Holtz screws up her face in a grimace, pulling the dress back up on top, and then seemingly gives up, stepping towards the bed and falling onto it, covering herself up with the blankets once more.
“Why are you in my bed?” Erin asks.
“‘Cause this is where I woke up,” she says.
“Okay, but why? Why were we in the same bed?”
“I have no idea,” she admits, turning her head to look at her. Erin is sitting up, her knees pulled up, resting her head on top of them, and she keeps her eyes on Holtz.
“I don’t...remember…,” Erin begins, then trails off.
“Me either,” Holtz says. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that drunk in my entire life. I hardly remember anything and I don’t like that at all.”
“What did we do? ”
“Bought dresses at some point,” she says, and then she lifts herself up onto her elbows. “Hey, your dress still has a tag on it.”
She reaches towards the back of Erin’s neck and Erin feels the slight tugging of Holtz grabbing the attached tag.
“ Holy shit,” Holtz gasps.
“What?!” Erin asks, turning (too quickly. Much, much too quickly) to see Holtz’s wide-eyed expression.
“Um,” she mumbles, then shakes her head, ripping the tag from off the dress. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Dress is stained so you can’t return it anyways. No use knowing how much it cost.”
“ What?”
“Nothing,” she says again, crumpling up the tag in her hand and throwing it across the room. “Nothing.”
“Oh my god, how much did I spend on this?!” she asks, looking down and running her hands over the white chiffon.
“Unimportant,” Holtz states simply.
“Holtz, how much?”
“Um.”
“More than a hundred?”
“ Maybe.”
“More than two hundred?!”
“
Possibly.”
“ Three hundred?!”
“That...multiplied by two...plus twenty-five.”
“ What ?! Six... six hundred and twenty-five dollars?! ” she exclaims.
“ Loud,” Holtz hisses, head falling back down, hands coming to cover her ears.
“Oh my god,” she says, burying her face in her hands. If she drunkenly spent over six hundred dollars on a dress, she has no idea what else she might have done the previous night. Her heart is racing and she feels like she might vomit now. She doesn’t, though. She takes a few deep breaths, reasoning with herself that it could be worse. Or...something.
"Why was the phone ringing?" Erin asks, suddenly remembering that that happened.
"Oh, uh, they were calling to ask if we still wanted the room service order we placed this morning?"
"This morning ? What time is it now?" she responds, the thought suddenly occurring to her that she doesn't even know what time it is.
"Um. Three," Holtz answers.
"In the afternoon?!"
"I think it's a little too sunny for it to be three in the morning, so yeah, I'm gonna go with PM."
"Oh my god," she runs her hands over her face. "How late were we out? What were we doing ?"
"Asking a lot of unanswerable questions there, Erin."
"What's the last thing you remember doing?!"
"Shit, um... I don't know. Everything is just in little flashes and I don't know if the flashes are in chronological order and...I don't know . We were here for a while. Because this is where we started drinking. And then. And then...um. We... went to the hotel bar, I think..."
"Wait! Where's my phone?! Maybe we took pictures!" Erin exclaims.
"Oh, that's so smart," Holtz agrees, sitting up in the bed and glancing around the room. "But I have no idea where my phone might be. If I ended up in this dress with no pockets, I don't really know how I was carrying anything."
Erin spots her purse lying on the floor close to the bed. She extends her arm, sliding out as far at she needs to to grab it, pulling it towards her.
"Looks like I ended up holding your stuff," Erin says, finding Holtz's phone and wallet right on top. She tosses them both onto the mattress.
"And my phone is dead," Holtz comments.
"Mine isn't," Erin says, first seeing that she has several missed calls from Abby as well as a text message.
U guys alive??????
Before that, though, are other texts that she has no memory of sending or receiving.
"Oh, oh, I was texting Abby," she says. "At one in the morning, I told her that she needed to meet us and it was an emergency?"
"What?" Holtz asks.
"And then she asked what was wrong. And I didn't answer. And then she said she was calling me... which, I assume she did. And then thirty minutes later, I sent a text saying 'where is Elvira'?"
" Elvira ?" Holtz raises her eyebrows. "Did we meet Elvira last night? Because if we met Elvira and I don't remember it, I'm gonna be pissed ."
"That's it from last night," she frowns, closing out her texts, and opening up her photo albums. There are several new pictures but they are all blurry, with bad lighting, and they tell her nothing. She groans, dropping her phone down.
Just then, there's a knock on the door, followed by "room service!"
"Oh, I guess I told them to go ahead with the order," Holtz grumbles, and then slides out of the bed. Erin watches her walk towards the door, her dress riding up with every step she takes.
And then two hotel employees are wheeling in three small tables full of covered dishes and Erin's mouth drops open because they seem to have order an entire feast .
"Uhh," Holtz mumbles. "So we, um. We ordered...?"
"Two of everything on the breakfast menu, ma'am," one of the employees answers with a smile.
"Two of....everything...wow. yeah, I can see how that would seem like a good idea while shit-faced."
Erin is incapable of words and can only stare. In the middle of each of the three tables is a rose in a vase, and on one of them is a bottle of champagne next to a carafe of orange juice, two mimosas already served in champagne flutes.
"Oh. Um," Holtz says, and then reaches for her wallet, opening it, but then looks at Erin. "All my cash is gone."
"What?"
"All my cash is gone. I'm assuming I did something stupid with it, but I can worry about that later, but uh, we need to tip these guys and uh..."
"Oh. Right. Right," Erin nods, grabbing her own wallet, partially convinced that she'll open it to find all of her cash gone as well, but she lets out a relieved breath when she sees that she still has some. She grabs two tens, hands them to Holtz, who hands them to the two workers.
"Thank you," one of them says. "And congratulations."
"Um, thanks, congratulations to you, too," Holtz responds in a mumble as they leave the room. Erin stares at the three tables, all of the covered dishes, trying to wrap her mind around the whole situation.
"Why did we do this?" she asks with a frown. Holtz simply shakes her head and pulls the shiny silver cover up from one of the dishes.
"Ooh, pancakes," she says. "I love pancakes...except...the smell of pancakes right now...kind of making me...yeah. Yep. I'm gonna go puke again. Be right back."
"Can you like, turn on the sink this time so I can't hear it?" Erin calls out to her.
"Sure!"
The sound of running water blocks out most of the vomiting noises. Erin runs her fingers through her hair where she pulled out the sticky candy. Strands are matted together from the sugary mess. She lets it fall back down onto her shoulder and she finally slides out of bed for the first time. Her limbs ache. When she takes a step, her legs feel wobbly, her thighs burning, and she doesn't even know what she did last night, she can't even begin to figure out why her body is in such pain.
She sees herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. Her hair is a mess. Her face is a mess. She is a mess.
"I'm never drinking again," Holtz says from the doorway of the bathroom. "Never. Not ever."
"Make sure you're drinking water," Erin says, turning to look at her. "You're probably already really dehydrated from the alcohol, and now the puking...drink water."
"Right. Yeah. Smart. Thanks," she nods, slowly shuffling back to the bed once more.
"I need a shower," she announces. "I'm gonna do that."
"'Kay," Holtz grumbles, covering herself up with blankets again.
Erin steps into the bathroom and her head is pounding, she feels like it very well might explode, and she squeezes her eyes shut, taking several deep breaths. She turns on the shower, pulling off her clothes, and when she steps in, she doesn't even bother trying to stand for any duration of it. She just sits down on the cool tile, letting the lukewarm water hit her skin.
She sits there for a while, eventually leaning her head against the wall, her eyelids drooping shut.
She can't remember ever feeling this hung over in her entire life. She also can't remember any other time that she'd been so drunk that she just forgot an entire night . Sure, she's blacked out before, but it usually happened towards the end of the night, and she would wake up the next morning and not remember a few hours . But not.... She had started drinking in the early evening. Around five or so. There is so much missing from her memory.
She didn't even want to come here in the first place.
When they had successfully busted several malevolent ghosts from a very fancy, very expensive, five-star hotel in Manhattan, the owner had been so appreciative that he had gifted them with a free week's stay at any of his other hotels, airfare included. They'd had multiple destinations to choose from. This was not Erin's top choice. In fact, it hadn't been one of her choices at all. But she had been severely outnumbered. Abby and Patty both kept insisting on how much fun it would be. Erin’s barely had any fun at all. And this certainly is not fun.
She just sits under the water for at least twenty minutes before she finally grabs a small bottle of hotel shampoo, beginning to actually wash away the traces of whatever she had gotten herself into last night. By the time she turns the water off, she almost feels human again. But then she stands, and her head pounds, and she's instantly dizzy, and she grabs a towel, wrapping it around herself, and then dropping to sit on the closed lid of the toilet. She lets out a groan, doubling over, folding her arms atop her knees and resting her head on her arms.
"Hey, Eriiiiin ," Holtz calls from the other side of the closed door. Erin doesn't feel like shouting, so she reaches towards the bathroom door, opening it.
"What?"
"So, um. Don't freak out, but--"
"What?! Don't freak out? Why would I freak out? You telling me to not freak out implies that there is something to freak out about!"
"Okay, yeah, you're right, I should have taken my audience into consideration," Holtz says, appearing in the doorway. She's washed her face and changed her clothes -- now in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt -- and she holds a piece of paper in her hand. "Let me try this again. Um. Erin?"
"Yes?"
"Everything is totally fine," she says. "But, um...I think...um. I think I know what we did last night."
And then she drops the piece of paper onto Erin's towel-clad lap. She lifts it, her eyes scanning over the first few words.
State of Nevada. County of Clark. Marriage Certificate.
Join in lawful wedlock. Erin Gilbert. Jillian Holtzmann.
"We...?"
"Got married. In Vegas. To each other. Yeah."
"Oh my god."
Her head is definitely about to explode.