Survival Of The Fittest

The bass of the music being played throbbed from the basement all the way up through the house. People outside the upstairs guest room that Myles had opted to hang around in could be heard laughing, shouting, doing all the usual party people things. It was a pretty lively joint, more or less everything that the Zoo Pals or whatever they called themselves had been promising since the start of the semester.

Myles was bored.

((Myles Roux continued from Adult Education))

He'd been feeling... jittery, lately. There was just too much stuff going on, with school inching closer and closer to the actual, factual end, prom coming up (and he still didn't have a date, he needed to get on that), and of course The Ivy And Wyatt Thing, which Myles really wished he could just flush out of his brain entirely. He wasn't even sure where Ivy was right now, but she'd been wandering around with a wineglass in hand (brought from home, to even Myles's disbelief). If anybody got on her bad side tonight, they were liable to end up with a trip to the ER, and honestly? Myles was in the mood to just let it happen. It wasn't like she wouldn't be able to lawyer her way out of anything and everything that might go wrong.

Was he bitter? Was that what he was feeling? Bitter and jittery? What a combination. He'd been looking forward to this weekend for a while, waiting on what seemed like the best opportunity to really let loose for maybe the last time before all of the end of year nonsense and then everyone preparing to get a move-on to the so-called real world, and now he just wanted it to be over so he could go home and go to bed.

Ugh. He should have been drunk, but he didn't want to find his way down to Forrest's kitchen and deal with whoever he might bump into on the way.

(Ugh, was there a chance Julien was here? Nobody in their right mind would invite him to anything, but this was basically just an open house. Gross.)

So yep. That was where Myles was at. Biggest party of the year, and he was hiding out in someone's guest room having a sulk.

((Aurelien Valter continued from I'M A SHARK, I'M A SHAAARK, SUCK MY DIIIIICK, I'M A SHAAARK))

Aurelien, on the other hand, was very very drunk already.

Sure, he was a big guy, and sure, he had a much higher tolerance than most, probably most people here at the party, but when your red solo cup seemed to magically fill itself to the brim the instant you finished your drink, there was only gonna be one outcome.

Not that he minded. He’d been looking forwards to this for weeks now. Hell, longer than that, probably, ever since he’d been invited to it. School had been kicking his ass over the past month and a half, and all he had wanted to do was jump straight out of a plane. Parachute attached, obviously. But a party where he could just relax and let all his stress and worries float away was the next best thing, especially a party hosted by Mikki and Forrest where he could get insanely drunk, make a total fool of himself, and probably end up without his shirt before the night was out.

And so far, he thought, as he took a rare quiet moment to pour himself another triple shot of Captain Morgan with the tiniest splash of Coke, that had all gone to plan. Minus the shirtless thing, but he was sure he’d get around to that at some point. There was, however, one thing that put a bit of a damper on this whole night; he hadn’t bumped into Dante at all yet. He had to be somewhere in this big-ass house, right? Wasn’t like Dante and his cute butt to miss a party, after all.

Aurelien just about felt his face slip into a frown as he leaned on the kitchen counter, taking a swig of rum. Seriously, where was Dante? He missed him. Missed his cute face. Wanted to kiss it. Just… fuckin’ cover it in kisses, smooch smooch smooch.

Damnit. He was kinda sad now, and he just wanted to latch onto somebody’s arm and cry about how Dante wasn’t here and how wonderful and precious he was and how much he loved him.

But he also really needed to piss, and that part of Aurelien’s brain was being the loudest right now. Cup in hand, he stumbled towards the stairs. A minute later, he was at the top of them. He didn’t remember climbing up them at all, but what he did know was that these were fuckin’ nice stair railings. Like, damn. They were so smooth and shit. He ran his hand across them, grinning wildly, before looking around his general vicinity. He was pretty sure… that door hid the bathroom behind it. It was a white door, bathrooms had white doors. It made sense.

Aurelien fumbled with the door handle, pushing the door open on his third try.

“Oh.”

This… was not the bathroom.

“Uh, hey, Myles.”

And this was not someone he’d really wanted to bump into tonight.

This music wasn't appropriate for Myles's mood. They needed to get some slow, heavy J-rock ballad going over this, maybe a little rain going on the window so he could stare out at the streetlights and mope properly. Do a nice, slow arcing shot over the street, across and into the house to sweep over the party, and then back up to the room where he was. Alone.

He might have complained that nobody had caught the obvious cues that he wanted someone to come in and comfort him, but of course nobody was around, and Myles wasn't actually sure if he wanted to be comforted or left alone more. Of course, right then the door swung open and killed the moment.

Myles wouldn't admit it, but he had gotten pretty invested in staring forlornly into the distance and doing his mental movie shoot, so he did actually jump when Aurelien bumbled in. Aurelien... well, they weren't friends, for sure, but he wasn't the worst. In person or in bed.

"Oh, uh, hey. You scared me." He gave Aurelien a once-over and came to the obvious conclusion that Aurelien was plastered. Well, that was how it usually went with them. This wasn't particularly new. He looked good, even drunk and mussed from weaving through the crowd. Aurelien always looked better a little disheveled.

...Maybe Myles could come around to the idea of a little no-strings-attached comfort tonight.

He swung around on the edge of the bed where he'd been perched, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear as he rearranged himself. "I uh, just came up here to cool off for a minute. It's pretty hot downstairs." Flimsy excuse, but Aurelien was drunk. And hey, if he was cooperative, Myles could have a change of plans and go for a few drinks himself. "What's up?"

Aurelien had a… complicated relationship with Myles. Or, rather, a complicated relationship towards Myles; he wasn’t sure of Myles’ feelings about him, and he didn’t particularly care anymore. By all rights, the two should have hated each others’ guts. Myles was joined at the hip to Ivy, who was attached on her other side to Wyatt; basically, a who’s who of the shittiest people at George Hunter.

Myles was, however, the lesser of those evils, and, well… he was cute, and normally fun to be around at parties. Very fun, to be exact; he could have said they were friends with benefits if they’d been anywhere close to being friends. He always felt a fleeting feeling of guilt whenever it happened, but fleeting was all it ever was, considering it had happened multiple times over the past few years.

The situation had changed now, however. Dante was in the picture, front and center, and so the time for drunkenly making out in spare rooms and one-night stands with Myles and his ilk was over. God knows, Myles had plenty of other people to do that with anyhow.

“Oh, yeah, uh, I guess it is kinda hot down there, huh? There’s a lotta… uh, lotta people and stuff. Lots of people! And drinks. Yeah.”

It was a little stuffy in some of the smaller rooms. Aurelien had taken off his ever-present bomber jacket, leaving him in just a white t-shirt, dumping it on one of the many sofas downstairs. It was probably being sat on and slept under right now. He’d find it in the morning. Hopefully.

“But yeah, I was, like, looking for someone. Uh… Looking for… Oh! Dante! Have you seen Dante around?”

Aurelien squinted at Myles, swaying gently.

“Is he in here?”

Myles pursed his lips at Aurelien. The room was obviously empty aside from him, unless Aurelien's drunk brain thought that Myles for some reason had hidden Dante under the bed, but whatever. "No, I haven't seen him."

Myles couldn't even have said for sure that he knew Dante was at the party. Either Aurelien had seen him earlier, or Aurelien was just being a drunk goof. Seemed like fifty-fifty odds, honestly. He shrugged, tilting his head to the side slightly.

"I mean, if he's looking for you too, you could just wait around here and he might find you. What do you need him for?" There were two sides to that question. Myles had a good layer of civility with a side of flirting on now, but he was still feeling testy underneath it all. Maybe he needed a drink or two to loosen up, after all.

Of course, acknowledging that didn't really solve the problem that he didn't want to deal with most people right now. Maybe he could get Aurelien to go and get a drink for him instead.

“Oh. Damn.”

Truth be told, Aurelien’s slightly influenced mind had wondered if Dante was like… hidden under the bed in here. For some reason. Wasn’t like Aurelien could judge, considering he had been minutes away from taking his shirt off just for the hell of it downstairs. Maybe he’d fallen asleep under there. Oh! Or maybe he’d fallen asleep in the bed and Myles was looking after him?

Wait, no. Myles had just said he hadn’t seen him. Damn it!

“Yeah, y’know, that might be, like, y’know, a good idea, actually,” Aurelien said, adjusting his position to stop himself from losing his balance entirely. “Probably need to take a break anyway. ‘s getting pretty hot anyway, and I’ve got pleeenty of drink right here.”

Aurelien’s cup was, indeed, filled almost to the brim. He took a long swig out of it, and all of a sudden, there was about a quarter missing. How’d that happened?

He made to push the door shut out of instinct – door was closed when you came in, door closed behind you, that was a rule in the Valter house – but realised halfway through the motion that Dante wouldn’t be able to see him if the door was shut, so he ended up weakly flapping at the handle, nudging it slightly, before stepping further into the room. It was a nice little room, kinda small but in a, like, cozy sorta way, rather than a cramped way. Myles was sitting on a soft looking bed. Like, really soft. The kinda bed you’d lie down on and fall asleep instantly.

“But yeah, I’ve been, uh…”

Hmmm. This was… tricky. Especially in his current state. Aurelien and Dante weren’t officially dating yet, although Aurelien was feeling more and more and more positive about it by the day, so he didn’t really feel comfortable about saying that to Myles without Dante’s permission. People would find out at Prom, and the penny would drop even sooner if they ended up making out here tonight or something, but for the time being, maybe best to keep it on the downlow.

“We’ve been hangin’ out a bunch recently, wanted to find him and check on how he was doing, y’know? ‘s a big place, you could prolly get lost in this house.”

Aurelien paused, swaying slightly.

“Actually, I can’t remember if he even said he was comin’ to this party.”

Myles blinked slowly at Aurelien's explanation, not particularly impressed and not bothering to try to look like he was. "...Uh-huh."

So, like. Aurelien was cute, and he had value as a distraction, but he was... kind of an idiot. Unfortunately that was just kind of the way Myles's tastes rolled. Aurelien being typical Aurelien just... wasn't quite playing ball the way Myles wanted him to right now. He was too drunk for subtlety, and Myles didn't have the patience to stick with it anyway.

"Well if you don't know if he's here, and I don't know if he's here, maybe it's better to assume not?" He went for the head tilt again, playing up a small smile. That usually worked.

"I was getting kind of bored, actually, so it'd be cool if you wanted to hang out for a bit. I don't mind."

Aurelien stared blankly at Myles for a moment. He lifted his red solo cup to his lips, using the action to try and hide the fact his brain simply had not received Myles’ words yet; an essentially pointless act, given that literally anyone could see in his eyes that there was nobody home right now. He took a sip of rum and coke, then another, and suddenly the lightswitch flicked on and his eyes widened as the words finally rammed home.

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure, uh-“

Wait, hang on, he was talking into his cup. Whoops. Aurelien lowered it, sheepish grin on his face.

“Yeah I can hang! And maybe Dante’ll, like, find me if I stay here. Or maybe he won’t, I dunno if he actually came to the party… Did I say that already?”

Aurelien paused again, then shrugged, stumbling over to the bed and flopping down onto it, the slats creaking under his movement. Somehow, most of the liquid remained in his cup, as his left hand fell to his side, only a few drops spilling onto the sheets.

His right hand landed on Myles’ leg, and it settled there, resting on his thigh. Aurelien kept it there, didn’t move it; he hadn’t even noticed where it had fallen.

“So what’s been happenin’, Myles?” Aurelien said, trying very very hard to stop his words from slurring together. “What’s going’ on in your life?”

Finally, jeez. Now they were getting somewhere. Aurelien's sudden arrival on the bed bounced Myles slightly, but he managed to not be annoyed at getting jostled.

"Oh you know," he said, tone back to casual. "Not a lot. School, work, all that stuff." If Aurelien had heard any inkling that Myles's life wasn't all peachy, he'd better keep his mouth shut. The mood was still a fraction of an inch away.

Myles wound his arm around Aurelien's, squeezing his bicep slightly. He had half a mind to steal Aurelien's cup too; maybe he could grab it for a quick gulp before setting it aside in a minute. "What about you, though? I feel like everyone's been so busy lately, I've been running in circles just trying to get caught up. Just hanging with Dante?"

Myles really hoped that Dante was not at the party. He could clearly picture Dante bumbling in and sweeping Aurelien away so that they could go do whatever it was that jocks did at parties, and he was not here for that scenario. He edged a little closer to Aurelien, closing the already small distance between them and cuddling up to his Aurelien's side. Honestly, he wasn't that here for small talk either, but Aurelien was clearly in slow mode tonight.

Aurelien was in that lovely state of drunkenness where, as soon as you sat down for a couple seconds, everything suddenly became all warm and kinda fuzzy, but in a nice way, like you were inside a big fluffy jumper. Or trapped inside a pillow. It was nice, and it felt nice, and nice things… were nice!

The downside of that state was that Aurelien could only focus on one thing at a time, and even that was pushing it. Straining his concentration to the maximum, and with a smile on his face that showed that he was clearly away with the fairies, he was able to pay attention to the stuff Myles was saying. He felt the arm tightening gently around his own, but nothing more than that. The implication, as it stood, was lost on him.

And y’know what? It felt nice too. It felt nice having someone as nice and cute and soft as Myles close to him. He always did get into a cuddly mood at parties.

“Same too!”

Aurelien glanced down at Myles for a couple of seconds, smiling like an idiot, before his face froze in realisation.

“Wait.”

He paused for another couple of seconds thought, before chuckling and taking another swig from his drink.

“Ah, y’know what I meant. It’s been all, like, busy busy busy these past few weeks ‘n stuff. Thought maybe school’d lighten up towards the end of the year, but nah, it’s just been work and studying up the ass. And soccer season’s over so I don’t even have that as a distraction, so I’ve just been playing basketball and hiking around the foothills ‘n shit. Oh! And hanging out with Dante.”

Aurelien breathed for a moment, taking the opportunity to down another mouthful of alcohol. He absentmindedly traced his finger in circles on Myles’ leg.

“We’ve both been kinda worryin’ about prom, too, y’know? It’s, like, a super huge thing, and, uh… we both want it to be super awesome and work out and be fun! And stuff.”

His head was gently resting against Myles’ own. He didn’t remember that happening, but he didn’t move away.

"Mm-hmm." Myles did not care about 90% of what Aurelien was saying and barely processed most of it anyway, his hand instead inching closer to the red solo cup. The physical contact, such as it was, was good, but this was so slow.

Myles brushed his fingers over Aurelien's and then took hold of the rim of the cup, prying it out of his grasp. He lifted it to take a swig, draining the rest of whatever jungle juice nonsense concoction was within, and then he carelessly tossed it towards a wastepaper bin in the corner. It hit the edge of the bin and bounced off onto the carpet. Myles did not acknowledge it.

Instead, he reached up to cup Aurelien's cheek, turning Aurelien's face towards his to plant a sloppy kiss on his mouth.

Hmm. Myles didn’t really say much in response to Aurelien’s words, and he thought that was kinda rude. Like, he’d gone and poured his heart out to the guy, in a sorta not-really, drunken kinda way, and all he’d gotten back was a vague noise of comprehension? Yeesh. Rude.

… Or maybe Aurelien had just been totally incoherent. That was always a possibility.

His brain was still clicking into gear, trying to puzzle that one out, when Myles grabbed his drink from out of his hand. It took a moment for that to process in Aurelien’s head, too, by which time, his cup had already been drained and lobbed lazily at a wastepaper bin in the corner of the room.

“Hey, tha-“

And then, none of Aurelien’s previous thoughts mattered anymore, as Myles gently took his face in his hand and kissed him on the mouth, wiping his mind clear. His eyes widened momentarily. There was something there, something he was missing, something he couldn’t quite dredge up from the murks of his mind.

But the warm fog of alcohol and the welcome touch of Myles’ hands on his face and arm stopped those cloudy thoughts from being anything more than that, and he relaxed, leaning into the kiss, following the steps of a dance he’d performed with Myles many times before, as his hand found its way into Myles’ hair, tangling itself up in the blonde and pastel curls.

For a brief, exciting moment, all Aurelien could think about was kissing Myles, drunk and ungainly kisses against his lips, movements clumsy but rehearsed, touch-starved and vaguely horny instincts driving him forwards.

But as his other hand moved, running up Myles thigh to his side, pushing up his shirt, that previously sunken thought resurfaced, and his eyes widened again, breaking suddenly away, heart simultaneously sinking to his heels and pounding like a jackhammer.

“Wait… wait, fuck, shit, shit, hold on…”

Aurelien pushed himself off of the bed, standing up and trying desperately to maintain his balance.

And then everything was finally going well, until it wasn't again.

"Hey!" Myles made an indignant noise as Aurelien practically shoved him away and leaped off the bed. He didn't move to follow, instead leaning back on his hands as he panted slightly, looking up at Aurelien with a mix of confusion and irritation.

"What?" He couldn't keep the annoyance out of his voice. Honestly, it'd be just his luck right now if Aurelien suddenly needed to pee or something.

A switch had been flicked on inside Aurelien’s head the moment his fingers had brushed against Myles’ skin underneath his shirt. The realisation buried deep down inside of him had been unearthed, the niggling feeling that had plagued the back of his mind since he’d opened the bedroom door had revealed itself again.

The switch had not, unfortunately, magically sobered him up and made him totally lucid, and it was taking almost all of his energy just trying to stand upright. His words were jumbling about in his head, reversing themselves and jumping from sentence to sentence and switching from English to French to Luxembourgish, and the sudden rush from standing up was mixing with the cocktail of various poisons congealing in his stomach and the heavy megaton weght of guilt pressing down on his heart.

Aurelien took deep, deep, open mouthed breaths, making sure the room stopped spinning and that he wasn’t about to throw up all over Myles before he said anything.

“Ugh, shit, sorry, I’m… fuck…” he managed to splutter out, realising as he was speaking that he still didn’t have a clear idea what he wanted to say to Myles. Or, well, he knew what he wanted to say, he knew exactly what he was supposed to say here, the words were even right there in his head… it was just a matter of pushing them out of his mouth in the right order, without his heart, ping-ponging around his chest as it was, getting in the way.

“Me and Dante are, like… we’re together and shit, we’re a thing, y’know? It’s super recent and stuff, but we’re going to prom together an’… that’s why I was looking for him. An’ stuff.”

He went for another drink to clear his throat, then remembered that his cup was currently lying on its side in the corner of the room.

“Thought I’d made it more obvious… fuck…”

Myles stared at Aurelien while he slowly parsed out the jumble of words that had just been thrown at him, his mouth gradually pressing into a thin line.

Okay, so. Dante. And Aurelien. Aurelien had said something about prom hadn't he, when Myles wasn't really listening, and he'd been looking for Dante, so things partially checked out. Except.

"...Dante is straight," Myles said slowly, like he was talking to a small child, or a very large, dumb, drunk one. Right? The one thing everybody who had ever met Dante knew was that he couldn't see a girl go by without turning the charm up to eleven. He didn't do that with guys. Myles would have noticed if he did that with guys.

Myles was going to be really offended if Dante had been doing that with guys somewhere out of sight, and Myles had never been on the receiving end of it.

"Sooo... how exactly is this working out?" He thought that he was doing a good job of keeping his expression and voice smooth, but he could feel a twitch threatening to break out near his right eyebrow. He wasn't upset. Really. Or angry. Really. He was just. A little perturbed. That things couldn't go smoothly for five goddamn minutes in his life lately.