Carter Ames

Age: 17

Height: 5′ 10″

Favorite tattoo: The dead flowers on her thigh

Favorite band: Bikini Kill

Favorite pastime: Mocking Dara Shirazi

Favorite color: Anything but orange, orange is actually the worst

Favorite food: The fries you can get from that one chicken and waffles place on Main Street. Also Baikal caviar but god that’s embarrassing.

Favorite human: Bethany Glennis, but like, in a “must protect” kinda way

 

 

blue nights (a carter ames playlist)

on spotify here

Young – The Chainsmokers feat. KO:YU

Runs in the Family – Amanda Palmer

Normal – Sasha Sloan

Broken – lovelytheband

Sober – Lorde

Medicine – Daughter

Beggin for Thread – Banks

Colors – Halsey

Need Me – Eminem feat. Pink

 

bad medicine (a short story)

click to download, or read below the cut

content warnings: drugs/alcohol, underage sex, emetophobia

The club was night-dark, lit only by dizzy lights overhead trapping everything in purple and blue and silver. Ames caught the back of Dara’s sweater as they wove through the pulsating crowd, everyone drinking and jumping and grinding to the rhythm of whatever the DJ played on the turntables. They broke free near the bar. Dara turned to look at her, party glitter shimmering on his cheekbones.

“You look like a pixie threw up on you,” she informed him.

“You’re too kind.” Dara had already raised a hand to get the bartender’s attention—and he must come here a lot, because the guy didn’t even bother asking what he wanted. Just showed up and slid a line of shot glasses across the counter, filled them overflowing with tequila. “I have more, if you want to borrow it.”

He tipped back the first shot in a single fluid movement. When Ames took hers, the cheap liquor burned all the way down her throat and she grimaced, gesturing for the bartender to bring lime. “God. That’s disgusting.”

Dara just shot her an annoyingly unruffled smile and downed another shot.

“I always thought,” Ames said, “I’d be spending my sixteenth New Year’s Eve drunk and in the arms of a beautiful man on his private yacht somewhere. Draped in diamonds and cocaine.”

Dara considered for a moment. “I can offer you,” he lifted a finger, “one of those things.”

She sighed and took the shot he pressed into her waiting hand, downed it quick—before she could think better of it.

It wasn’t like she wasn’t glad to be here with Dara. Dara was her best friend. Her only friend, if she was brutally honest with herself.

But he’d already turned to lean against the counter, scanning the room like he was looking for better prospects. And he’d find plenty of options here. Everyone was into Dara.

It was kind of annoying, actually.

“Promise me you’ll wait at least thirty minutes before running off with some creepy old man,” Ames said, sharply enough Dara glanced back over at her with both brows raised. She exhaled a heavy breath. “We just got here.”

“They aren’t all creepy.”

“Dara. They are all creepy.”

He rolled his eyes and reached for another shot in lieu of promising anything, which was Dara-speak for fuck you, I’ll do what I want. She bit back the snarky comment on the tip of her tongue, because Dara just got back to the barracks after six days of being…not-in-the-barracks, and she didn’t want to be the one to make his shitty week shittier.

Dara could do that all by himself.

Of course, it wasn’t like Ames’ week had been any better. She’d spent the first half of it attending awful holiday parties with her father—parties made twice as agonizing by Dara’s absence. Hours and hours of fake smiles and answering that question so what will you do after Level IV for the five-zillionth time. And, like, what was she gonna say? She wanted to climb ranks—to be a general one day. But then they’d smile and coo, oh, just like your father, which was definitely not the reason she wanted to do anything.

They finished the round of shots and Dara slid a few argents across the bar to pay. Then he caught her wrist and tugged her out onto the dance floor in his wake—all the way out into the center, where the heat from so many bodies drew beads of sweat at the nape of her neck and the music pounded thick and heavy in her bones. Dara turned to face her, his hands finding her waist and his hips finding the beat.

He always danced with her first. At least there was that.

But then the song changed and someone pulled him away—another one of Dara’s tall faceless men with their greedy hands—and Ames turned, momentarily lost in the shifting movement of bodies and the flickering lights.

Whatever. She could dance on her own, she was—perfectly happy on her own. Only all those shots already made her feel sick, she didn’t have Dara’s tolerance after all; the lights were too-bright and the heat of all these bodies made it hard to breathe, and then Ames was in the bathroom splashing cold water on her face and scrubbing clean the area under her eyes when her mascara ran, the walls throbbing with the pulse of the music and her heart too-quick in her breast.

She pulled out her phone and texted Dara: where are you?

Stared down at the screen for a few minutes, but he never replied. Then a new wave of girls crashed into the bathroom and she slipped out into the dark hall, dim, dizzy. The floor pitched ceiling-ward and she threw out a hand to catch herself against the wall.

“You okay?” someone asked.

She blinked open blurry eyes. It was a guy, college-aged, scruffy in flannel. Just Ames’ type.

“Yeah,” she said. It came out hoarse. “I’m fine. Little…drunk.”

“Are you here alone? Is there someone I can call for you?”

Ames really didn’t know how to answer that question. She settled for a complicated grimace and shook her head.

He held out a hand, helped her away from the wall. “Let’s get you some water, yeah?”

She nodded. He moved that hand to her elbow and together they headed back into the club, up to the bar where she hitched herself up onto a stool and he ordered two waters, with lemon.

She liked that detail. With lemon.

They sat there for a few minutes, both sipping their waters in silence. Ames perused him in sidelong glances: a scar splitting one eyebrow, short fingernails, broad palms. He looked like he was good with those hands.

“What’s your name?” he asked eventually.

“Ames.”

“Just Ames?”

“Carter, technically, but…ugh. No. Just Ames.”

“I’m Frank.” He tipped his head down toward her forearms, which were crossed atop the counter. “I like your tattoos.”

Her gaze followed his. Her arms were covered in ink—as was quite a bit of her, at this point, actually. She got her first tat when she was thirteen using a fake ID Dara gave her. She’d been collecting them ever since.

“Thanks.”

She took another long draught of water, enough to drain the glass. Set it down too-hard.

“So, Frank. You wanna dance?”

He laughed and put down his glass, too. “Sure.”

The dance floor was more navigable now, with Frank’s hand steady between her shoulder blades and a little bit of water in her system. And when they turned toward each other they fit together perfectly—always a challenge, when you were female and five-foot-ten. But Frank touched her like she was delicate: spun-glass between his hands. He didn’t just see a shaved head and tattoos and a permanent scowl. Didn’t see Carter Ames, Home Secretary’s daughter either. Just Ames, a girl in a club, and yeah.

Yeah, she could see how this feeling got addictive.

“I’m gonna go get another drink,” Frank said in her ear, and she grinned, trailing her hand along his stomach as she let him go.

The beat was still good, still swam through her veins like magic. She turned to watch Frank go—only.

Only, he wasn’t headed for the bar.

Ames stopped dancing, just stood there and watched as Frank tilted his head down to murmur something in Dara’s ear. Dara laughed and touched Frank’s chest, his fingertips catching on one of Frank’s buttons.

And Frank was staring at Dara like he’d never seen anything so perfect in his entire goddamn life, like he couldn’t believe his fucking luck when Dara drew closer—when Dara’s hips undulated against his, Frank’s hands on his body, pressing up beneath the hem of his shirt. Dara tilted his head back and Frank tangled a hand up in Dara’s curls, tugging enough that Dara looked at him. Kissed him.

Fucking typical.

All at once Ames was terribly, completely sober. She shoved her way back off the floor with sharp elbows and ordered another water at the bar, chewed the inside of her cheek until she tasted iron—then gave into impulse and drew out her phone, tapped out a text to Dara: I want to go home.

Looked up, out across the crowd. She couldn’t see Dara from here, couldn’t tell if he checked his phone.

But he probably did. He had to, in case it wasn’t Ames calling.

Well. Either way, he didn’t text back.

She called a cab and stood outside on the curb, stomping her feet and rubbing her hands together in the frigid air until the car finally rolled up and she climbed into the over-hot interior, told the AI to take her back to the barracks.

She made it almost all the way there before her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Dara: come ge tme

“God fucking damn it,” she shouted out loud, slamming her foot against the car floor violently enough the AI asked her if she needed medical attention.

Fuck him. Fuck him, he could get his own fucking cab. He could find his own way home.

Dara: dont ffeel good

Why. Literally, why was this her life? Jesus.

Her hands were shaking as she typed out her response: where are you?

He didn’t answer, also very fucking par for the course where Dara Shirazi was concerned—but if her math was right he wouldn’t have had time to get from the club to a hotel in the time since she left, so she had the AI turn the car around and go right back to where it picked her up.

Dara wasn’t waiting on the curb.

“Stay here,” she told the car, and got out into the icy air again, staggering past the line to show her stamped hand to the bouncer and head back into the dark club.

She found him in the men’s bathroom, curled up on the floor in front of a toilet smelling like vomit. He’d managed to flush the mess, which was something.

She grabbed his arm and he shuddered, moaned low in the back of his throat.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Then get up.”

He didn’t move, obviously.

“Dara.”

She crouched down on the grimy floor next to him and slid an arm around his waist, hitching him up enough that he grasped her shoulder on reflex.

“There you go,” she murmured, dragging him upright. He stumbled in against her, but at least he didn’t fall. She did up his fly with telekinesis.

He said something against her neck, but she didn’t catch it—and didn’t bother asking him to repeat himself.

It was tough work getting Dara outside again. He was all but dead weight, barely conscious. Somehow between when she’d seen him on the dance floor and now, an hour later, he’d either had a whole lot more to drink…or he’d found someone willing to sell him the kinds of pills that didn’t work too great with alcohol.

Either way….

Either way, she couldn’t take Dara back to the barracks.

Couldn’t take him to the hospital, either. Lehrer’d fucking kill him if he got arrested again.

That left one option. She told the cab to take them to her father’s house.

Dara slept the whole ride home, propped up against the far window while Ames stared out the front and seethed.

It was just…he was always like this. And like…sure, she got it. She understood why. But that didn’t make it any less fucking selfish.

And it wasn’t like Dara realized he was a shitty friend and tried to do something about it. He just kept destroying himself as efficiently as he possibly could. Didn’t care if he took her down with him.

Her father was awake when she got home, wandering down the stairs in his dressing gown while the footman helped Ames heave Dara into the foyer.

“Another late night?” her father quipped. “Shall I make up the guest room?”

“No,” Ames said, voice tight as Dara tried to claim his own weight and just ended up tumbling into her again. “He’ll stay with me. I’d better keep an eye on him, make sure he hasn’t actually poisoned himself or something.”

Her father sipped from the teacup he’d brought down with him. “Do you need help?”

Dara was slim, but right now it felt like he weighed about the same as a pickup truck. Ames grit her teeth. “Nope.”

She dragged Dara upstairs on her own, thinking at him as loudly as she could: wake up, wake up, stop making this literally as hard as it could possibly be—

But obviously he didn’t hear her, and didn’t listen.

For the first time in her life, Ames regretted not cleaning her room. Navigating Dara around the dirty clothes on the floor and all the discarded purses and shoes and textbooks was an Ordeal. Capital ‘O.’ She tripped over a copy of A Feminist Virology and swore; Dara groaned against her neck like it had personally pained him.

And maybe it was the tiniest bit vicious, the way she dumped him unceremoniously onto her bed. He mumbled something and curled up in a tight little ball, helpless as a fucking child. He stayed like that as she dragged the duvet out from under his weight and tossed it over his shoulders, tucking him in until just his head was visible over the blankets: a messy splatter of black hair against her pillowcase.

Ames stood there for a moment, hands braced against her hips, looking down. Informed him: “You should go to fucking rehab.” A beat. “And starting tomorrow, we are definitely not friends anymore.”

She dragged the trash bin out of her bathroom and positioned it next to the bed, where Dara could blindly lurch over the side of the mattress tomorrow morning and puke without getting it all over her carpet. He shifted in his sleep, rolling over onto his back, and she grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him onto his side again, lodging a pillow against his spine to keep him that way.

“You’ll thank me later,” she muttered, and was about to pull back to go and find him a glass of water when Dara’s hand caught her wrist.

He was awake, if just barely. His eyes were just slivers of black glass under heavy lashes, his fingers digging in against her pulse point.

“Hey,” he murmured.

She stared down at him. She didn’t know what to say—didn’t have anything to say that she hadn’t said to his liquor-deaf ears.

Ames half-expected him to just fall back into incoherence, drop unconscious against the pillow again. She definitely didn’t expect what came out of his mouth next.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know…terrible. Person.”

“You’re not terrible.”

He made a face and let go of her wrist. “Shuttup. …But. Thank you.”

Ames sank down into a crouch beside the bed, a sigh escaping her chest. “You’re a piece of work, you know that Shirazi?”

A slow smile curved at his lips and he didn’t say anything—fell unconscious again a second later—but Ames stayed there on her heels, looking at his face. It’d gone taut again in his sleep, drawn into a grimace, like he had unhappy dreams.

But that smile…. Dara’s smiles, the real ones, came rarely and in secret.

That smile had been real. And it had been for her.

“You’re the worst,” she muttered, but she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his forehead anyway. Got up, filled a glass in the bathroom sink and flipped off the light. And when she curled up in the bed next to him, on the other side of that goddamn pillow wedged between them, she thought…maybe this.

Maybe this was why they were still friends, after everything.

Because they were both just as fucked-up as each other, and in the end—despite it all—he needed her.

Maybe she needed him, too.