Alex Faulkner (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
videokilledme) wrote2018-02-12 01:05 am
videokilledme) wrote2018-02-12 01:05 am
“And The Rest Is (World) History.” Alex, Bianca. (Persona Dreamscape) - Chapter Ten
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"And The Rest Is (World) History." Alex, Bianca. (Persona Dreamscape) - Chapter Ten
[music]
Sure enough, just a few hours later, Alex found himself at a college party so cliché, he almost couldn’t believe that it wasn’t some kind of joke, a production that Connor had talked the campus drama club into putting on for his benefit.
First of all, there were way too many people crowded into a house that normally would’ve seemed pretty decent-sized, and while technically it wasn’t a frat house--there had been no sign outside, no Greek symbols anywhere that Alex had seen--the inside looked about like Alex would’ve expected a frat house to look. The lighting was dim, there were lots of poorly-patched holes in the walls, which were steadily pounding with the heavy beat of multiple speakers, making it feel vaguely like being trapped inside a giant, labyrinthine heart. There was a visible haze in the air in certain rooms and a sea of red cups everywhere--on the floor, in peoples’ hands, cluttering up every available flat surface--and after a single brief glance downwards, Alex decided that he didn’t want to look at or even think about the floor in this place ever again. The house itself smelled like ten different types of cologne and even more types of perfume, though the scent of sweat and smoke with undertones of even less pleasant things was impossible to mask completely.
Alex hated it from the moment he stepped foot inside--no, actually he hated it from the moment he set eyes on the place, from the very first second he heard the thump-thud of the too-heavy bassline vibrating the darkened windows of the neighbors’ houses. But he had said he’d go if Connor was there waiting for him after class, and Connor had held up his side of the deal, so Alex was left to hold up his side as well.
Having Connor with him was less help than he’d expected, though Connor did seem to know just about everyone, or else he pretended to, and everyone seemed happy to see him...especially the female section of ‘everyone’. Connor introduced him to all the people they ran into, but thanks to the music, Alex only caught one or two names out of the whole lot, a ‘Rory’ guy who was built like a brick house and was clearly on some sort of sports team, and a gorgeous, statuesque black girl named ‘Chisomo’ whose carefully put-together outfit, subtle makeup, and watchfully sharp eyes made her look as out of place there as Alex felt.
They’d made a complete round of the ground floor level of the house, stopping in the kitchen for Connor to arm-wrestle another guy from the drama club, then briefly ventured into the basement, where there was a mostly-abandoned pool table at one end and a thick crowd of people circling around a ping-pong table at the other. Judging by the yelling and cheering and the sheer number of people, there must’ve been some sort of beer pong championship going on. There wasn’t even room to get off the stairs, so after shouting greetings to a few people, Connor had hauled Alex back upstairs. They didn’t go up to the second floor, Alex noted, and he was left to wonder if that part of all the parties in movies was true, too. (Not that Alex wanted to be seen ‘going upstairs’ with Connor, of all people...or anyone at all, for that matter, but Connor was a particularly strong no.)
Once they were back in the entryway, the lanky senior turned to Alex with a bright smile. “All right, I’ve taken you around, introduced you to some people...you should be good from here. Get yourself a drink, find someone new and interesting to talk to or hang with, and go crazy, man.”
Alex blinked in surprise, then frowned hard, following close on Connor’s heels as the other student turned and waded back into the crush of people. That had almost sounded like...Connor wasn’t planning on hanging out with him anymore while they were here, which didn’t make any sense. He had literally dragged Alex to this place, he’d said that he was going to be Alex’s wingman, or that Alex would be his, and you didn’t just abandon-
Connor stopped abruptly enough that Alex almost ran into his back, though he managed to side-step the collision at the last minute. A moment later he saw the reason for the tall Asian’s pause: two girls, both very pretty, had placed themselves in Connor’s path, and all three had leaned their heads in close for some sort of discussion. A moment later Connor straightened, half-turning to flash Alex a toothy grin and suggestive eyebrow-waggle. “Ladies, ladies,” he laughed as both girls took one of his arms and then apparently decided to race to see who could get through the door of a nearby bedroom first, dragging him along afterwards. “No need to rush or fight things out! Never fear, there’s plenty of Connor to go around~”
...Well then. Alex gave a low noise that was half scoffing groan and half resentful growl as the door shut firmly behind the trio, followed by the click of a turning lock. So much for Connor being his ‘wingman’.
Wandering around the party without Connor was an entirely different experience--surprisingly so. Before the mass of bodies had seemed to part easily, naturally, leaving a clear path for walking regardless of how crowded the room was. Everyone had turned towards them and brightened, smiling and calling out and slapping hands or shoulders or backs (or, in one or two cases, butts; Alex had managed to avoid receiving a similar welcome, though he’d been looked at consideringly on both occasions). Now, it was all that he could do to wedge his way through the thick clumps of people, most of whom seemed to have an annoying predilection for standing in doorways. Now, instead of grins and friendly greetings it was scowls and bared teeth and watch it, shrimp or just where do you think you’re touching, asshole? or hey short stuff, wanna try something that’ll make you feel a hundred feet tall? That last one had been forceful enough to send him all but diving across the dance floor, getting knocked around between gyrating figures like a human pinball until he managed to stumble out the other side, bruised but otherwise whole, and with a decent amount of space between himself and the far too bright-eyed drug-pusher. Someone had shoved a mostly-full red cup of something into his hand at some point, he found, but he just as quickly put it down; thirsty as he was getting, he still knew better than to drink from a random cup.
I guess if I was more personable, like Connor, I might enjoy this more, he grumbled to himself as he found an empty and non-stained space on a couch in the darker corner of a room that shared a wall with the bedroom Connor had vanished into and crammed himself into it, sighing a little as he did so. Because truthfully, despite all the noise and people and music, Alex was bored. And also super right about people not coming here to talk. How was being in a place like this supposed to help make him more popular, or personable or whatever?
After glancing at his phone, Alex’s eyes flitted towards the door Connor had vanished behind more than half an hour ago now, and he started to wonder how long Connor was planning to stay at this party...and how much longer he would have to stay to satisfy the irritating senior.
That seemed like an extremely poor choice of words a moment later, when there was a brief pause in the music as someone changed stations or playlists, and thanks to his almost uncannily good hearing, Alex’s ears caught a long, drawn-out, decidedly male moan coming from inside the room behind him. Thankfully the music kicked in again almost immediately, covering any further awkward sounds, but Alex was still a little mortified. He didn’t know for sure, he tried to tell himself...but yeah, he kinda did. Not that he was surprised--it was pretty obvious what those girls had wanted from Connor, and that the tall senior had planned on giving them just that--but still. He didn’t want to have to listen to it.
He didn’t want to have to see it either, but as he looked around the room, he noticed there were lots of couples and even trios getting pretty hot and heavy despite this being a pretty public location. Whether he wanted to or not, he kind of couldn’t help but see it, and it made that hollow place in his chest--the one a certain absent someone had painstakingly carved out with only a few months of patient, steady companionship--echo just noticeably, and Alex found himself biting his lip, his eyes lingering on one nearby couple just a little longer than he’d intended.
Withdrawn--and to be truthful, shy--as Alex had been for all of his teenage years, he’d never been kissed before. He hadn’t gone to parties in high school, hadn’t had a girlfriend or even casually dated, hadn’t really been particularly close to anyone, so the opportunity had never come up. He was curious, of course, and definitely interested in the idea of it all, and what might come after as well, but utterly clueless about how to approach the matter.
As it turned out, he didn’t need to know.
One of the long string of girls Connor had introduced him to earlier, whose name he hadn’t been able to catch over the music, suddenly appeared in the doorway, scanning the crowd. When her eyes fell on Alex, she gave an excited little jump and waved from across the room, then crossed it to settle in on the couch right beside him, so close that the sides of their bodies were pressed together from shoulder to hip to knee. Smiling coyly at him through her eyelashes, she took a long drink from the red plastic cup in her hand, then leaned across him to set it down on the end table to Alex’s left, an action that brought even more of her body into contact with his. Alex swallowed hard, part of him suddenly wishing that he had accepted that cup of booze before, underage or not and potentially dangerous or not, and he jumped a little when he felt her hand settle high on his thigh.
“Y’know, you’re pretty cute,” the girl purred, smiling at him in a way that left Alex frozen in place, unsure whether he wanted to stay there and see where this was going or bolt before it went anywhere at all. She chose for him, as it turned out, by leaning in and pressing her mouth against his roughly, inelegantly, the kiss sloppy and hard enough to push him up against the back of the couch as she climbed into his lap. It all happened so fast, and the kiss tasted like cheap alcohol and the watermelon lollipop she’d been sucking on before when Connor had introduced them; but he didn’t pull away, doing his best to mimic the movement of her lips against his own. He felt her fingers running through his hair, ruffling it before her hands came to rest at the back of his head, pulling him in closer. Alex had no idea what to do with his hands, and very little mental capacity at the moment to think about it, so he simply settled for letting them rest on the curve of her waist, marveling a bit at how soft her skin felt.
The whole experience was nothing at all like he’d expected, and for a short while he was caught up in all the pleasant, unfamiliar sensations of having a soft, pliant figure pressed tight against him, humming and moaning into his mouth. It was a heady feeling, enthralling enough that Alex couldn’t seem to help but follow the longing pull of his body as the attractive girl on his lap pressed her lips to his jaw, his neck, the outer shell of his ear, all places that he’d never thought of as particularly sensitive but that made his whole body feel hot when touched like this.
Warm breath ghosted across his skin, and he gave a shudder of pleasure as her teeth found his ear before she murmured, “So, what’s your name? Gonna need something to scream in about ten minutes”--when suddenly, without warning, Bianca’s smiling face flashed into his mind. The abruptness, how out-of-the-blue it was, left Alex feeling even more dazed than he was already, thoroughly besotted by all the new, pleasurable sensations...and the girl in his lap chose that moment to rock against him hard, grinding her hips down into his, sending an electric shock of awareness through his whole body. Instead of dragging him down with a riptide of lust and hormones, however, it had the opposite effect: his brain kicked back in and he fully realized what was going on, what was happening, and what very well might have happened if he’d allowed things to continue as they were.
She doesn’t even know my name, and I don’t know hers either. That thought alone was mortifying enough to bring a hot rush of shame to his face and an uncomfortable tension to his whole body.
To her credit, the girl stopped when she felt his shoulders stiffen, pulling back and looking down at him with a blank, kittenish sort of inquisitiveness. “Hey, you okay?” she mewled, a vague note of absent-sounding concern in her voice.
“I—have to go,” Alex heaved, his hands coming up to push at her shoulders, not frantically but firmly. The girl, whatever her name was, looked more bewildered than ever as he dumped her off his lap and onto the couch beside him as gently as possible, but she didn’t cling to him or voice any real protest; instead, her semi-glazed eyes just moved to a girl sitting on the other end of the couch, and before long they were a tangle of limbs, much like she and Alex had been a few moments before.
Alex didn’t stick around to see that happen, however, and he didn’t look back as he weaved his way through the maze of bodies, bumping into more than a few people and getting beer spilled on his shoes in his haste to get out, to get away, to wrest himself free of the scummy, viscous feel of the whole place. Some people might enjoy it, and it was probably good that he’d tried it, but he knew now beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t his scene.
I’m leaving.
He paused in an alcove by the kitchen to send Connor that two-word text, then tucked his phone away and immediately ducked to the side to avoid being hit in the face with a plastic bowl full of cheese dip. It left a lurid orange splatter on the wall that was almost cartoon-like, but Alex didn’t even stop to see who’d thrown it, or why. As he stepped over a football-player-esque guy wearing a poorly-tied toga and (unfortunately) nothing else doing a breaststroke in the middle of the floor, dodged around a couple of guys being loud and physical enough that he couldn’t tell if they were fighting or making out, and ducked between two giggling girls doing a drunken kind of swing-dance routine, Alex knew that was definitely long past time for him to go home.
Once he was outside in the near-to-freezing November air, Alex immediately felt better, his head clearing as he escaped the stink of sweat and cheap alcohol and weed. A clear head meant that his thoughts picked back up to normal speed, which was a mixed blessing, and he briefly closed his eyes before starting off across the lawn, walking fast.
Why, was the thought pounding at the forefront of his mind, why had he thought of Bianca in that moment? Why her, of all people? It was confusing, and he was wont to blame his scrambled thoughts on the remnants of that cloying, choking smoke still lingering in his nose, lungs, and brain. It was something he didn’t want to think about, he realized, something he didn’t want to analyze and pick apart and study, and the very thought of doing it left him feeling a little panicked and short of breath. He couldn’t comprehend that feeling, couldn’t know that he was feeling was fear--fear of finding out that Connor might be right after all, that he might have feelings other than friendship for Bianca--so instead he simply put it aside and went at it all from another angle.
Perhaps the reason she’d come to mind was that he knew what she probably would have thought of him in that moment. The very idea of Bianca seeing him like that, pinned beneath a girl whose name he didn’t know, who he hadn’t even known existed a hour ago...it made him physically wince. He didn’t want her to think that of him, that he was only looking for fun and didn’t care where he found it, or with whom.
Not that he’d been the one to initiate, and he’d been so hesitant and uncertain that it was hard for him to admit that he might’ve taken advantage of the situation just a little, even if the girl in question had all but thrown herself at him. Still, she had been just buzzed enough for her inhibitions to disappear, definitely not too drunk or stoned to know what she was doing, so maybe he was less to blame and really more the victim here. Then again, he’d kissed her back and hadn’t stopped her right away, but well, he’d assumed that it was just part and parcel of that kind of party, so he hadn’t felt the need to. It hadn’t felt bad; in fact, it had felt almost distressingly good. But it had felt wrong, uncomfortable and prematurely intimate once he actually allowed thought into the equation-
“Alex!”
His jaw clenched tight at that familiar voice calling his name, and Alex jammed his hands deeper into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and kept walking without slowing or looking back.
“Hey, slow down!” Connor said a little breathlessly as he fell into step with the shorter student, who neither broke stride nor looked over at him, though his hands clenched into tightly-balled fists in his pockets. “Dude, talk to me,” Connor pressed, undeterred by Alex’s stony silence. “What was that all about? Don’t you like girls?”
Alex immediately rounded on the taller student with a glint like fire in his pale eyes. “That isn’t the issue here,” he all but snarled, his voice low and controlled and even more hoarse-sounding than usual, and Connor (whose rumpled clothing and backwards t-shirt made it clear that Alex hadn’t been wrong in his previous assumptions) was already holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Okay, okay, geez, it was just a joke.”
That only made Alex’s glare grow even colder. “A joke, huh? Mind explaining to me what’s so funny about someone’s sexual orientation? Are you saying there’s something wrong with not liking girls? Or are you just ‘pretending’ to be an even bigger jackass than usual?”
Connor had the good grace to look ashamed at that, if only for a moment, but then he shifted tactics, at least slightly. “So...what, then? You just shy?” He flashed Alex a toothy grin, waggling his eyebrows in a manner that made Alex dearly want to punch him in the face...not that he didn’t feel that way about the other college student pretty constantly of late. “Oooooh, I bet I know! You were nervous ‘cause you’ve still got your ‘v-card,’ huh~?”
“I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of,” Alex shot back stoutly. “I’m not interested in letting anyone get that close to me if it doesn’t actually mean anything to either of us. But you clearly are into that kind of thing, so why don’t you leave me alone again so you can get back there and keep getting your rocks off?”
Connor’s eyebrows had gone up so high that they were almost making a believable run for his hairline, and he studied the blue-haired student with a careful closeness. “...Dude...are you...jealous?”
Alex let out a bark of harsh laughter. “Ha! Jealous of what? You and those girls? You wish, but hell no.” He pointed to his face, his tone going fake-patient and pedantic. “See this? This is not jealousy; this is anger. Anger at being dragged to some stupid party, and then completely abandoned by the person who all but harassed me into going in the first place. Some ‘wingman’ you are.”
Connor let out a sound that was similar to a whoopee cushion--and, Alex thought, about as intelligent-sounding, too. “God, you’re really something, aren’t you? You seriously don’t know how to loosen up and have some fun by yourself.” He rubbed his chin, giving the smaller student a considering smile. “I wonder if alcohol would help you relax…”
“I’m not 21 yet.”
“Yep. And it’s a proud college tradition to ignore that fact and drink anyway.”
Alex turned a flat, withering look up at Connor. “Are you honestly suggesting that I should get stupidly drunk and then try to have some kind of worthless hookup with some random person whose name I don’t even know? What part of that is in any way ‘fun’?”
“All of it!”
Alex just rolled his eyes. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
He started to turn away, only to find Connor reaching after him, grasping his shoulder and forcibly turning him back around. “Hey, wait-”
“I said ‘no’.” The icy chill was back in Alex’s voice as he shrugged away from the other student’s touch, staring him down with an equally subzero temperature in his gaze. “If you actually want to be anything like my friend, instead of just some annoying guy who follows me around for some inexplicable reason, then you’d better learn to respect other peoples’ boundaries and personal opinions--specifically, mine.” Alex took a meaningful step forward, and Connor found himself taking an involuntary step backwards. “My sex life, or lack of one, has absolutely nothing to do with you. Plus, I just told you that I don’t want to do that with just anyone. It has to be someone I trust, or it’s not gonna happen. So kindly accept that, and don’t make fucking jokes about getting me so wasted that any kind of consent is out the window.” Alex’s lip twisted in a dismissive, disgusted sneer. “A real friend would never even allow something like that happen on their watch, much less be the one to cause it.”
A strange sort of shiver went through Connor as he looked down at the younger student, something that almost looked like a tremor of fear...or perhaps excitement; it lasted for no more than a fraction of a fragment of a second before a startled, then appropriately shamefaced expression took its place.
“H-hey now...you should know by now that I talk a lot of shit-”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Alex muttered not quite under his breath.
“-But!” Connor went on valiantly, attempting to smile and wave it all away, “You know I wouldn’t ever really do that kinda thing to you, right, bruh?”
“Don’t call me ‘bruh’.”
“Right, b-”
“If you call me ‘bae,’ so help me-”
“-Buuuuddy,” Connor amended hastily, though it was obvious that he had indeed been intending to say something else. Alex give him an look of pure, 100-proof annoyance that should’ve been strong enough to force him backwards at least another step, then huffed out a low growl and stalked off.
“I’m going home. And I know that your dorm is in the other direction. Don’t follow me.”
Connor made a show of giving another shiver, this one entirely intentional, and mocking. He wrapped his arms around his body as if trying to shield himself from an arctic storm, and sighed, “Ahhh, that chilly vibe...! Alex, you’re so tsundere!”
Alex’s steps didn’t slow, and he didn’t even bother to look back as he deadpanned his reply of, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about or what that even means, and I don’t wanna know, either.”
“Of course you don’t!” Connor called after him cheerfully, “Though it’s even more tsundere of you to say that!”
Alex gave up on words after that, settling for a single rude gesture that made his feelings on the whole last half-hour or so abundantly clear, which made it worth several thousand words. Connor just grinned at that solitary extended finger and the still-walking, now rapidly-disappearing Alex, unable to hold back a pleased chuckle. Tonight hadn’t gone as planned at all, but even so, parts of it had gone even better than planned...
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"And The Rest Is (World) History." Alex, Bianca. (Persona Dreamscape) - Chapter Ten
[music]
Sure enough, just a few hours later, Alex found himself at a college party so cliché, he almost couldn’t believe that it wasn’t some kind of joke, a production that Connor had talked the campus drama club into putting on for his benefit.
First of all, there were way too many people crowded into a house that normally would’ve seemed pretty decent-sized, and while technically it wasn’t a frat house--there had been no sign outside, no Greek symbols anywhere that Alex had seen--the inside looked about like Alex would’ve expected a frat house to look. The lighting was dim, there were lots of poorly-patched holes in the walls, which were steadily pounding with the heavy beat of multiple speakers, making it feel vaguely like being trapped inside a giant, labyrinthine heart. There was a visible haze in the air in certain rooms and a sea of red cups everywhere--on the floor, in peoples’ hands, cluttering up every available flat surface--and after a single brief glance downwards, Alex decided that he didn’t want to look at or even think about the floor in this place ever again. The house itself smelled like ten different types of cologne and even more types of perfume, though the scent of sweat and smoke with undertones of even less pleasant things was impossible to mask completely.
Alex hated it from the moment he stepped foot inside--no, actually he hated it from the moment he set eyes on the place, from the very first second he heard the thump-thud of the too-heavy bassline vibrating the darkened windows of the neighbors’ houses. But he had said he’d go if Connor was there waiting for him after class, and Connor had held up his side of the deal, so Alex was left to hold up his side as well.
Having Connor with him was less help than he’d expected, though Connor did seem to know just about everyone, or else he pretended to, and everyone seemed happy to see him...especially the female section of ‘everyone’. Connor introduced him to all the people they ran into, but thanks to the music, Alex only caught one or two names out of the whole lot, a ‘Rory’ guy who was built like a brick house and was clearly on some sort of sports team, and a gorgeous, statuesque black girl named ‘Chisomo’ whose carefully put-together outfit, subtle makeup, and watchfully sharp eyes made her look as out of place there as Alex felt.
They’d made a complete round of the ground floor level of the house, stopping in the kitchen for Connor to arm-wrestle another guy from the drama club, then briefly ventured into the basement, where there was a mostly-abandoned pool table at one end and a thick crowd of people circling around a ping-pong table at the other. Judging by the yelling and cheering and the sheer number of people, there must’ve been some sort of beer pong championship going on. There wasn’t even room to get off the stairs, so after shouting greetings to a few people, Connor had hauled Alex back upstairs. They didn’t go up to the second floor, Alex noted, and he was left to wonder if that part of all the parties in movies was true, too. (Not that Alex wanted to be seen ‘going upstairs’ with Connor, of all people...or anyone at all, for that matter, but Connor was a particularly strong no.)
Once they were back in the entryway, the lanky senior turned to Alex with a bright smile. “All right, I’ve taken you around, introduced you to some people...you should be good from here. Get yourself a drink, find someone new and interesting to talk to or hang with, and go crazy, man.”
Alex blinked in surprise, then frowned hard, following close on Connor’s heels as the other student turned and waded back into the crush of people. That had almost sounded like...Connor wasn’t planning on hanging out with him anymore while they were here, which didn’t make any sense. He had literally dragged Alex to this place, he’d said that he was going to be Alex’s wingman, or that Alex would be his, and you didn’t just abandon-
Connor stopped abruptly enough that Alex almost ran into his back, though he managed to side-step the collision at the last minute. A moment later he saw the reason for the tall Asian’s pause: two girls, both very pretty, had placed themselves in Connor’s path, and all three had leaned their heads in close for some sort of discussion. A moment later Connor straightened, half-turning to flash Alex a toothy grin and suggestive eyebrow-waggle. “Ladies, ladies,” he laughed as both girls took one of his arms and then apparently decided to race to see who could get through the door of a nearby bedroom first, dragging him along afterwards. “No need to rush or fight things out! Never fear, there’s plenty of Connor to go around~”
...Well then. Alex gave a low noise that was half scoffing groan and half resentful growl as the door shut firmly behind the trio, followed by the click of a turning lock. So much for Connor being his ‘wingman’.
Wandering around the party without Connor was an entirely different experience--surprisingly so. Before the mass of bodies had seemed to part easily, naturally, leaving a clear path for walking regardless of how crowded the room was. Everyone had turned towards them and brightened, smiling and calling out and slapping hands or shoulders or backs (or, in one or two cases, butts; Alex had managed to avoid receiving a similar welcome, though he’d been looked at consideringly on both occasions). Now, it was all that he could do to wedge his way through the thick clumps of people, most of whom seemed to have an annoying predilection for standing in doorways. Now, instead of grins and friendly greetings it was scowls and bared teeth and watch it, shrimp or just where do you think you’re touching, asshole? or hey short stuff, wanna try something that’ll make you feel a hundred feet tall? That last one had been forceful enough to send him all but diving across the dance floor, getting knocked around between gyrating figures like a human pinball until he managed to stumble out the other side, bruised but otherwise whole, and with a decent amount of space between himself and the far too bright-eyed drug-pusher. Someone had shoved a mostly-full red cup of something into his hand at some point, he found, but he just as quickly put it down; thirsty as he was getting, he still knew better than to drink from a random cup.
I guess if I was more personable, like Connor, I might enjoy this more, he grumbled to himself as he found an empty and non-stained space on a couch in the darker corner of a room that shared a wall with the bedroom Connor had vanished into and crammed himself into it, sighing a little as he did so. Because truthfully, despite all the noise and people and music, Alex was bored. And also super right about people not coming here to talk. How was being in a place like this supposed to help make him more popular, or personable or whatever?
After glancing at his phone, Alex’s eyes flitted towards the door Connor had vanished behind more than half an hour ago now, and he started to wonder how long Connor was planning to stay at this party...and how much longer he would have to stay to satisfy the irritating senior.
That seemed like an extremely poor choice of words a moment later, when there was a brief pause in the music as someone changed stations or playlists, and thanks to his almost uncannily good hearing, Alex’s ears caught a long, drawn-out, decidedly male moan coming from inside the room behind him. Thankfully the music kicked in again almost immediately, covering any further awkward sounds, but Alex was still a little mortified. He didn’t know for sure, he tried to tell himself...but yeah, he kinda did. Not that he was surprised--it was pretty obvious what those girls had wanted from Connor, and that the tall senior had planned on giving them just that--but still. He didn’t want to have to listen to it.
He didn’t want to have to see it either, but as he looked around the room, he noticed there were lots of couples and even trios getting pretty hot and heavy despite this being a pretty public location. Whether he wanted to or not, he kind of couldn’t help but see it, and it made that hollow place in his chest--the one a certain absent someone had painstakingly carved out with only a few months of patient, steady companionship--echo just noticeably, and Alex found himself biting his lip, his eyes lingering on one nearby couple just a little longer than he’d intended.
Withdrawn--and to be truthful, shy--as Alex had been for all of his teenage years, he’d never been kissed before. He hadn’t gone to parties in high school, hadn’t had a girlfriend or even casually dated, hadn’t really been particularly close to anyone, so the opportunity had never come up. He was curious, of course, and definitely interested in the idea of it all, and what might come after as well, but utterly clueless about how to approach the matter.
As it turned out, he didn’t need to know.
One of the long string of girls Connor had introduced him to earlier, whose name he hadn’t been able to catch over the music, suddenly appeared in the doorway, scanning the crowd. When her eyes fell on Alex, she gave an excited little jump and waved from across the room, then crossed it to settle in on the couch right beside him, so close that the sides of their bodies were pressed together from shoulder to hip to knee. Smiling coyly at him through her eyelashes, she took a long drink from the red plastic cup in her hand, then leaned across him to set it down on the end table to Alex’s left, an action that brought even more of her body into contact with his. Alex swallowed hard, part of him suddenly wishing that he had accepted that cup of booze before, underage or not and potentially dangerous or not, and he jumped a little when he felt her hand settle high on his thigh.
“Y’know, you’re pretty cute,” the girl purred, smiling at him in a way that left Alex frozen in place, unsure whether he wanted to stay there and see where this was going or bolt before it went anywhere at all. She chose for him, as it turned out, by leaning in and pressing her mouth against his roughly, inelegantly, the kiss sloppy and hard enough to push him up against the back of the couch as she climbed into his lap. It all happened so fast, and the kiss tasted like cheap alcohol and the watermelon lollipop she’d been sucking on before when Connor had introduced them; but he didn’t pull away, doing his best to mimic the movement of her lips against his own. He felt her fingers running through his hair, ruffling it before her hands came to rest at the back of his head, pulling him in closer. Alex had no idea what to do with his hands, and very little mental capacity at the moment to think about it, so he simply settled for letting them rest on the curve of her waist, marveling a bit at how soft her skin felt.
The whole experience was nothing at all like he’d expected, and for a short while he was caught up in all the pleasant, unfamiliar sensations of having a soft, pliant figure pressed tight against him, humming and moaning into his mouth. It was a heady feeling, enthralling enough that Alex couldn’t seem to help but follow the longing pull of his body as the attractive girl on his lap pressed her lips to his jaw, his neck, the outer shell of his ear, all places that he’d never thought of as particularly sensitive but that made his whole body feel hot when touched like this.
Warm breath ghosted across his skin, and he gave a shudder of pleasure as her teeth found his ear before she murmured, “So, what’s your name? Gonna need something to scream in about ten minutes”--when suddenly, without warning, Bianca’s smiling face flashed into his mind. The abruptness, how out-of-the-blue it was, left Alex feeling even more dazed than he was already, thoroughly besotted by all the new, pleasurable sensations...and the girl in his lap chose that moment to rock against him hard, grinding her hips down into his, sending an electric shock of awareness through his whole body. Instead of dragging him down with a riptide of lust and hormones, however, it had the opposite effect: his brain kicked back in and he fully realized what was going on, what was happening, and what very well might have happened if he’d allowed things to continue as they were.
She doesn’t even know my name, and I don’t know hers either. That thought alone was mortifying enough to bring a hot rush of shame to his face and an uncomfortable tension to his whole body.
To her credit, the girl stopped when she felt his shoulders stiffen, pulling back and looking down at him with a blank, kittenish sort of inquisitiveness. “Hey, you okay?” she mewled, a vague note of absent-sounding concern in her voice.
“I—have to go,” Alex heaved, his hands coming up to push at her shoulders, not frantically but firmly. The girl, whatever her name was, looked more bewildered than ever as he dumped her off his lap and onto the couch beside him as gently as possible, but she didn’t cling to him or voice any real protest; instead, her semi-glazed eyes just moved to a girl sitting on the other end of the couch, and before long they were a tangle of limbs, much like she and Alex had been a few moments before.
Alex didn’t stick around to see that happen, however, and he didn’t look back as he weaved his way through the maze of bodies, bumping into more than a few people and getting beer spilled on his shoes in his haste to get out, to get away, to wrest himself free of the scummy, viscous feel of the whole place. Some people might enjoy it, and it was probably good that he’d tried it, but he knew now beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t his scene.
I’m leaving.
He paused in an alcove by the kitchen to send Connor that two-word text, then tucked his phone away and immediately ducked to the side to avoid being hit in the face with a plastic bowl full of cheese dip. It left a lurid orange splatter on the wall that was almost cartoon-like, but Alex didn’t even stop to see who’d thrown it, or why. As he stepped over a football-player-esque guy wearing a poorly-tied toga and (unfortunately) nothing else doing a breaststroke in the middle of the floor, dodged around a couple of guys being loud and physical enough that he couldn’t tell if they were fighting or making out, and ducked between two giggling girls doing a drunken kind of swing-dance routine, Alex knew that was definitely long past time for him to go home.
Once he was outside in the near-to-freezing November air, Alex immediately felt better, his head clearing as he escaped the stink of sweat and cheap alcohol and weed. A clear head meant that his thoughts picked back up to normal speed, which was a mixed blessing, and he briefly closed his eyes before starting off across the lawn, walking fast.
Why, was the thought pounding at the forefront of his mind, why had he thought of Bianca in that moment? Why her, of all people? It was confusing, and he was wont to blame his scrambled thoughts on the remnants of that cloying, choking smoke still lingering in his nose, lungs, and brain. It was something he didn’t want to think about, he realized, something he didn’t want to analyze and pick apart and study, and the very thought of doing it left him feeling a little panicked and short of breath. He couldn’t comprehend that feeling, couldn’t know that he was feeling was fear--fear of finding out that Connor might be right after all, that he might have feelings other than friendship for Bianca--so instead he simply put it aside and went at it all from another angle.
Perhaps the reason she’d come to mind was that he knew what she probably would have thought of him in that moment. The very idea of Bianca seeing him like that, pinned beneath a girl whose name he didn’t know, who he hadn’t even known existed a hour ago...it made him physically wince. He didn’t want her to think that of him, that he was only looking for fun and didn’t care where he found it, or with whom.
Not that he’d been the one to initiate, and he’d been so hesitant and uncertain that it was hard for him to admit that he might’ve taken advantage of the situation just a little, even if the girl in question had all but thrown herself at him. Still, she had been just buzzed enough for her inhibitions to disappear, definitely not too drunk or stoned to know what she was doing, so maybe he was less to blame and really more the victim here. Then again, he’d kissed her back and hadn’t stopped her right away, but well, he’d assumed that it was just part and parcel of that kind of party, so he hadn’t felt the need to. It hadn’t felt bad; in fact, it had felt almost distressingly good. But it had felt wrong, uncomfortable and prematurely intimate once he actually allowed thought into the equation-
“Alex!”
His jaw clenched tight at that familiar voice calling his name, and Alex jammed his hands deeper into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and kept walking without slowing or looking back.
“Hey, slow down!” Connor said a little breathlessly as he fell into step with the shorter student, who neither broke stride nor looked over at him, though his hands clenched into tightly-balled fists in his pockets. “Dude, talk to me,” Connor pressed, undeterred by Alex’s stony silence. “What was that all about? Don’t you like girls?”
Alex immediately rounded on the taller student with a glint like fire in his pale eyes. “That isn’t the issue here,” he all but snarled, his voice low and controlled and even more hoarse-sounding than usual, and Connor (whose rumpled clothing and backwards t-shirt made it clear that Alex hadn’t been wrong in his previous assumptions) was already holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Okay, okay, geez, it was just a joke.”
That only made Alex’s glare grow even colder. “A joke, huh? Mind explaining to me what’s so funny about someone’s sexual orientation? Are you saying there’s something wrong with not liking girls? Or are you just ‘pretending’ to be an even bigger jackass than usual?”
Connor had the good grace to look ashamed at that, if only for a moment, but then he shifted tactics, at least slightly. “So...what, then? You just shy?” He flashed Alex a toothy grin, waggling his eyebrows in a manner that made Alex dearly want to punch him in the face...not that he didn’t feel that way about the other college student pretty constantly of late. “Oooooh, I bet I know! You were nervous ‘cause you’ve still got your ‘v-card,’ huh~?”
“I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of,” Alex shot back stoutly. “I’m not interested in letting anyone get that close to me if it doesn’t actually mean anything to either of us. But you clearly are into that kind of thing, so why don’t you leave me alone again so you can get back there and keep getting your rocks off?”
Connor’s eyebrows had gone up so high that they were almost making a believable run for his hairline, and he studied the blue-haired student with a careful closeness. “...Dude...are you...jealous?”
Alex let out a bark of harsh laughter. “Ha! Jealous of what? You and those girls? You wish, but hell no.” He pointed to his face, his tone going fake-patient and pedantic. “See this? This is not jealousy; this is anger. Anger at being dragged to some stupid party, and then completely abandoned by the person who all but harassed me into going in the first place. Some ‘wingman’ you are.”
Connor let out a sound that was similar to a whoopee cushion--and, Alex thought, about as intelligent-sounding, too. “God, you’re really something, aren’t you? You seriously don’t know how to loosen up and have some fun by yourself.” He rubbed his chin, giving the smaller student a considering smile. “I wonder if alcohol would help you relax…”
“I’m not 21 yet.”
“Yep. And it’s a proud college tradition to ignore that fact and drink anyway.”
Alex turned a flat, withering look up at Connor. “Are you honestly suggesting that I should get stupidly drunk and then try to have some kind of worthless hookup with some random person whose name I don’t even know? What part of that is in any way ‘fun’?”
“All of it!”
Alex just rolled his eyes. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
He started to turn away, only to find Connor reaching after him, grasping his shoulder and forcibly turning him back around. “Hey, wait-”
“I said ‘no’.” The icy chill was back in Alex’s voice as he shrugged away from the other student’s touch, staring him down with an equally subzero temperature in his gaze. “If you actually want to be anything like my friend, instead of just some annoying guy who follows me around for some inexplicable reason, then you’d better learn to respect other peoples’ boundaries and personal opinions--specifically, mine.” Alex took a meaningful step forward, and Connor found himself taking an involuntary step backwards. “My sex life, or lack of one, has absolutely nothing to do with you. Plus, I just told you that I don’t want to do that with just anyone. It has to be someone I trust, or it’s not gonna happen. So kindly accept that, and don’t make fucking jokes about getting me so wasted that any kind of consent is out the window.” Alex’s lip twisted in a dismissive, disgusted sneer. “A real friend would never even allow something like that happen on their watch, much less be the one to cause it.”
A strange sort of shiver went through Connor as he looked down at the younger student, something that almost looked like a tremor of fear...or perhaps excitement; it lasted for no more than a fraction of a fragment of a second before a startled, then appropriately shamefaced expression took its place.
“H-hey now...you should know by now that I talk a lot of shit-”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Alex muttered not quite under his breath.
“-But!” Connor went on valiantly, attempting to smile and wave it all away, “You know I wouldn’t ever really do that kinda thing to you, right, bruh?”
“Don’t call me ‘bruh’.”
“Right, b-”
“If you call me ‘bae,’ so help me-”
“-Buuuuddy,” Connor amended hastily, though it was obvious that he had indeed been intending to say something else. Alex give him an look of pure, 100-proof annoyance that should’ve been strong enough to force him backwards at least another step, then huffed out a low growl and stalked off.
“I’m going home. And I know that your dorm is in the other direction. Don’t follow me.”
Connor made a show of giving another shiver, this one entirely intentional, and mocking. He wrapped his arms around his body as if trying to shield himself from an arctic storm, and sighed, “Ahhh, that chilly vibe...! Alex, you’re so tsundere!”
Alex’s steps didn’t slow, and he didn’t even bother to look back as he deadpanned his reply of, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about or what that even means, and I don’t wanna know, either.”
“Of course you don’t!” Connor called after him cheerfully, “Though it’s even more tsundere of you to say that!”
Alex gave up on words after that, settling for a single rude gesture that made his feelings on the whole last half-hour or so abundantly clear, which made it worth several thousand words. Connor just grinned at that solitary extended finger and the still-walking, now rapidly-disappearing Alex, unable to hold back a pleased chuckle. Tonight hadn’t gone as planned at all, but even so, parts of it had gone even better than planned...
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