Survival Of The Fittest

[Declyn continued from You Spin Me Right Round Baby, Right Round]

Once Declyn hit the kitchen for a small detour, almost stumbling over an empty Red Bull can, he realized he left his empty cup outside. He meant to throw it away since he hated littering, but he wasn’t going to go back now. The clean-up comes after the fun.

He grabbed a new cup and poured water from the fridge, taking a long gulp before he poured in some more. He was also eyeing an unopened beer on the counter (he wasn’t sure what Cecil would need or want, so he was going to take both with him) and when he was about to take it, something made him stop.

The music had gotten much quieter and a voice was echoing from the distance. It was hard to make it out first but once it hit a certain point, he recognized the lyrics.







Okay.

Someone had been hit with One Direction feels. Or had just found the love of their love. Or whatever was happening.

Declyn didn’t know whose voice it was but he couldn’t help but chuckle, grabbing the bottle of beer before he was making his way to the stairs, heading to the guest room Cecil had mentioned in the text.

[Declyn continued in liberosis]

At a different time, Julien might have rolled his eyes and smiled at the awful rendition now being cast onto the stage. Of course, he had his hands full with a sobbing Camilla right now. So he held her a little tighter in return and just let her get more of it out of her system.

Adonis showing up wasn't all that helpful. "Yeah... Now is perhaps not the best time for a group hug," he said, not begrudging at all. The music had been quite loud up until a moment ago, and everything here seemed so chaotic that it'd surely be hard for anyone to gauge something before getting close.

He did consider trying to slip the idea into Adonis' mind that maybe he should go find Emmett, but quickly decided otherwise. While it would get him out of their hair if it worked, and that problem of theirs really needed to be hammered out, Julien got the sneaking feeling that it was liable to turn out about as well as that attempt at singing.

That and he wasn't enthralled by the idea of pulling himself into the relationship issues of people he didn't really know.

>> Zen Alicea Feliciano continued from Dare You Enter My Magical Realm?

Oh boy.

Zen had had a feeling that Jeff couldn't sing, and boy were they right!

That was okay though! Dares were all about enthusiasm and Doing Stuff You Wouldn't Do Otherwise, not about ability. You didn't get graded on dares! Or you kind of did, but it was a Pass/Fail sort of grade, like gym class. You passed if you Tried The Thing and you failed if you didn't. Like if Stepney had spat out the vodka-beer that would still be a Pass because he tried even though he didn't quite make it! Of course he Had made it because he was a national hero but that was besides the point.

The point was that Jeff's singing voice kinda reminded them of their computer's text-to-speech function only if it was more broken, somehow.

It was pretty funny, though! They clapped along happily to the beat as they observed from the stair—ooh, wait a second, who was that? They immediately forgot why they'd come down here in the first place and followed the footsteps of someone who looked vaguely familiar as they passed by the top of the stairs.

Zen had not taken their ADHD medication today.

Whoops!

>> Zen Alicea Feliciano continued in Wow. Fantastic, Baby.

Adonis noticed that the situation with Julien and Camilla was really awkward. Now he wasn't sure what to do and he wondered if it would be rude of him to leave. He honestly was not paying attention to what Jeff was doing on the stage and he honestly didn't want to know what was happening. He was still looking at the other two who were in front of him.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll leave you two alone. I hope you can make her feel better, Julien." He said quickly, stepping away from the situation and he turned to leave the room.

Now....

Where was Emmett?

((Adonis Cohen continued elsewhere))

At the other guy's departure, Camilla drew in a deep breath and let it out again. Another deep breath, out again. As she did so the remaining tears slid down her cheek, as if in slow motion. She blinked rapidly. Her eyes still felt misty, but it was as if she simply no longer had the energy to cry. The deep breaths continued. Thinking back on it, such a basic piece of advice- take deep breaths- should have been heeded earlier. At... many points, really.

She let go of Julien and looked to him. Ah, he was holding the photo with the addresses, was he? That was convenient.

In between breaths, she said "I think I should be heading home now. I've been here long enough." At that, she slightly raised her hand to try and gesture to the photo he held, but felt like she wasn't quite getting the actual object, so put her hand back down.

As Jeff belted through the next couple of verses, the kids filing out of the room one by one didn't escape his notice. Honestly, that was the sensible response. He had no pretensions about his ability to sing. He knew he was awful and that he was off-key. So what? He wasn't planning to be the next...what were these kids' names again? Okay, one of them was named Zayn. He could be Zayn. Or not, because he frankly had no idea who Zayn was or where he came into the song, if at all.

That's the thing that really "grabbed" him about this song. No matter how hard he'd tried, he never could identify where one voice began and where one voice ended. Ostensibly there were five singers in this ensemble but when they all sounded like a whiny teen with bad hair, it wouldn't matter if there were five hundred of them. The only One Direction they were headed in was straight down into the trash bin of history.

"Oh. Oh oh. That's what makes you beautiful," he talk-sang, not even caring at this point about whether he was audible or not. The party was dead, and One Direction had killed it. With a mock bow, he hopped off the stage, not even bothering to plug in the speakers again. If the host wanted to play to a nigh-empty room, she was more than welcome, but as for Jeff, he was gone. Time to report his shameful display and find somewhere else to be.

(Jeff Greene continued in Dare You Enter My Magical Realm)

He hoped so as well.

"I couldn't agree more, Camilla."

Julien took hold of the hand she made an effort to raise. Even with the abominable singing driving people out of the room, more were liable to come in soon, and he wasn't about to lose track of a friend in this state in a crowded room even if he wound up needing to carry her out of the house.

"Right, ah," he looked at the photo, "we'll get out of this house, and then you can tell me which of these you want me to take you to. That sound good to you?"

"Yeah, that's good..."

Grasping a bit more firmly onto Julien's hand, Camilla took a deep breath and gently lifted herself off the sofa with one arm. She regretted it almost instantly, and just kept sitting. It took some willpower to not instantly fall back onto those luxurious rich person couch cushions, but she made it. Barely. Look, she was supposed to be the responsible, composed one. She had to have some self control.

...Yet, here she was, basking in the aftermath of going off to smoke weed with a stranger.

"Goddamn these cushions-" she muttered under her breath as she rested her palm on the edge of the cushion. Her knees felt weak, and she figured she'd fall on someone if she made a half-hearted attempt to walk.

"Hey uhhh... could I lean on you?" she asked Julien.

"Okay. Of course."

Camilla was quite clearly unsteady on her own, and even with her height he was quite certain he was well able to support her just fine.

Julien went from holding one of her hands to putting that arm over his shoulder so she could lean on him like she asked, and then started to guide her in the direction of the front door along with him. "Nice and slow, alright? It's what I had to do when my head was all screwed up, and I was in a worse state than you are now." He didn't want Camilla's knees actually giving out, or her throwing up on him or something more disastrous besides. "So you'll be just fine, believe me."

Camilla's hand lightly grasped Julien's shoulder as they walked. Perhaps you could call her gait zombie-like, with the way it shuffled unsurely. Nice and slow. Slow and steady won the race except there was no race, and no winners, just one supposedly above-it-all teenager who couldn't rein in their bad decisions one night and ended up in an utter mess and oh god what would the others think? She really hoped no one had taken pictures of her like this.

Eventually the two made it outside. She gave Julien the address to Auntie's house, hoping Mom wouldn't notice her absence if she came back early enough in the morning. There was just one thing she needed to do before they could head off.

[+] Declyn

>hey declyn
>did i ever tell you i love you
>because i do and you are precious
>im srry i got high at swiftball

Her hands seemed to wobble too much. She was too afraid of dropping her phone in that dark night to send a message to Drew, and resolved to do that when she got home. Still she felt a twinge of guilt about it the whole way there. But they didn't have to know when all those were sent, did they? It's not like they would compare message received times or whatever.

When she got home she sent a similar message to Drew. Then one to Theo too. Then one to Julien even though it was redundant because oh fuck it.

[Camilla Bell - Pregame Concluded]