Survival Of The Fittest

Lorenzo popped a pill. Like, not an actual pill pill, duh, one of those Chinese milk powder sugar pills that really hits the spot juuuuuuuuust right. One of these bad boys.

Come on, like, Lorenzo, doing Drugs and Alcohol in a socoal gathering near you? Nah. They still have to drive home, maybe take, like, two other kids home when they pass out drunk or whatever. Never happened before, but, hey, it looked kinda funny in the movies!

Thirteen minutes ago exactly, they've pushed the door open, big 'ol tray in their hands, shouting ''WHO'S READY TO HAVE A SHRIMP PARTY!!!'' And about a single person went ''I AM!'' and now they just want to curl up and die a bit. And no, they totally aren't thinking about it, not at all, when they hobbled to the drinks in the corner in their little pirate costume and grabbed a Sprite and some Oreos, those peppermint ones, yeah, either it's never been seasonal and they're just too stupid to notice, or someone's been hording the good stuff.

Please don't be the first option oh god they're dumb enough ALREADY alright OK MOVING ON.

((Continued from Calling All The Monster))

To say things were going well would be an understatement in Dani’s eyes. The party was in full swing and everyone looked to be enjoying themselves! And given the few looks sent her way, she was pretty confident to say that her costume was also a big success. But even still, with a party in a place as big as this something was bound to get out of hand. So she managed to pry herself away from conversing with her party guests to make a quick patrol around the house to check up on her guests.

Through her walk through the house she didn’t see anything immediately wrong. Sure some of her party goers were drunk or doing drugs, but that came with the territory of a party. Personally she never did any of that stuff. Alcohol can dry out her vocal cords and she couldn’t have that. She eventually found herself entering the room where she was keeping the drinks. She spotted someone in the corner in a pirate costume and made her way over to them. As she approached she put on a polite smile and folded her arms.

“Hey there!” she greeted, beaming at her guest. “Having fun?”

''Yeahhh,'' Ren smiled, aware of the gratingly high pitch of their voice. They've been trying to sound enthusiastic, but it only came out weird instead. Girly.

TheyShe frowned for a second, as if offended by their own vocal chords, and then cleared their throat.

''Thanks for volunteering your house for the sacrifice. Someone's gotta do it. Feels bad for whoever gotta clean, uh, whatever's gonna happen up. Anyways- you tried the shrimp?''

Vaguely deprecating humor, let's go! Her second favorite kind. Because the only thing more fun than making fun of an unspecified nonexistant construct is making fun of yourself. The construct being the maid or

oh fuck it, let's not overthink that.

She took a swig of theirher soda.

''I like your, uh...' Big eyes stared at her chest area in a way that is quick enough to not be disrespectful but long enough to not be obviously embarassed.

''Is that Momo? From MHA? Never knew you liked anime!''

She bounced from one topic to another, trying to give enough hooks for Dani to attach to.

“I have not tried it, no,” she said with a shrug. She looked over to the plate of shrimp, eyeing it curiously before turning her attention back to Ren. “I’m sure the cleaning staff can handle any mess this party makes. I’m more worried about it being done before my mom and dad come home in a couple days!”

She laughed a little to herself. It was true, she was more than confident that the staff her family employs could handle a little mess here and there. Though if anything got out of hand under her watch, she didn’t doubt she would hear no end of it from her dad. Mom probably not as much, but her dad definitely. After all, it was his money that got this house. But that was something to be concerned about later, as right now Ren commented on her costume.

“I’m glad you like it!” she said, giving a little twirl to show off the whole costume. “Took me a while to decide on what I wanted to dress as, but I had been working on this one for my Instagram account and figured I’d debut it here at my party. And I’m not super big into anime, but I know enough about it to hold a passing conversation!”

She looked over Ren’s costume. “And I see you’re a pirate. Nice choice, classic.”

''Cleaning staff, damn. I had to vacuum everything myself.''

Seriously, a cleaning staff for just a family? More than one maid? How much money do you get by doing, uh, porn anyways? Or politics. Yeah, probably politics, but also they've seen someone talk about how lucrative Onlyfans is and like it's kind of a shame how a platform that's meant to cater to all kinds of content creators got reduced to just Pornhub+, anyways moving on

She looked pointedly at a kid downing a can of what looks like beer, and then looked back at herself, at her own costume. Classic, right? That's what Dani said? Isn't that just a polite way to say that it was cliche as all hell?

She'd thought that it was a bit safer to go girlmode, you know? Something innocuously androgynous but not resembling any particularly male character. And it wasn't entirely a costume as much as it was a sort of piratey regular outfit- a tee-shirt and trousers with accessories worn over it. The eyepatch sort of made their vision a pain to deal with, and the bandanna over theirher hair kept on slipping off, and it was overall just a damn pain. She'll never really understand why anybody would dress with their tits out on a late october evening, like, they would literally freeze to death. It was cold even underneath the pleather coat they wore.

Their voice grew a bit lower as the laughed. All the thoughts in their head are kind of bouncing together, making it difficult to pick one and go with it- should she talk about the costume, or tell Dani to try the shrimp out, or maybe go and gossip about whatever girls gossip about? Clothes? Crushes? They didn't know.

Like literally who the fuck even wants to openly talk about what person they like lmao if Ren did that he'll literally die. Girls are fucking weird. Or maybe media's depictions of girls in a really problematic and sexist context are really fucking weird, honestly, he hung out mostly with the boys so who the hell knows.

Moving on again!

''You should try the shrimp. It's pretty popular at the buffet. Well, unless you have an allergy, in which case please don't, I'd hate to hide your body to prevent a manslaughter charge.''

Was the grammar weird? They def could've worded it better.

She blinked, smiling politely as her gaze shifted from Ren to the plate of shrimp. She didn’t recall having that on the list of party foods when she planned this whole thing out. So that means that her conversation partner must have brought it, especially if they were so insistent on trying it. Dani was no stranger to having shrimp since that was practically a staple of the high society or business parties she had to attend with her family, alongside caviar. She supposed her guest was polite enough about it, and it would be rude to not try the food they brought. She reached down and plucked a shrimp from the plate it rested on, holding it up to her face as she looked at it.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t have a shellfish allergy,” she said as she inspected the food. “Good thing too. If I were to die, it would suck to have a body that looks this good get hidden.”

She laughed at her own joke then took a bite out of the pink crustacean. She chewed on the food, humming in thought as she analyzed the flavor and the texture. It wasn’t bad per se, but it wasn’t the best she’s had either. She supposed it couldn’t be helped though as she doubted this was the high quality stuff.

“It is good. Thank you,” she said, carefully disposing of the tail end of the shrimp. “So, um, where’d you get the shrimp? I figure you brought it, right? Which is totally cool since I’m pretty sure some others brought snacks as well.”

Dani kept her polite smile plastered on her face as she shifted her gaze around the room, kind of regretting asking about the shrimp. She was not expecting to be having a conversation about shrimp of all things when she came over here, but now she found herself stuck in it. She could have said anything else, she realized, to change the subject but now she is stuck on shrimp. And not even really good shrimp either, just OKAY shrimp at best! But she was the host, this was her guest, and she wanted them to be comfortable.

They politely laughed at the joke as if they found Dani attractive. Which she is! But just not to them. But like they can recognize someone conventionally hot when they know it, and even if Dani was ugly they would've laughed either way. Even while she unknowingly psudo-insulted them.

"I, uh..."

You literally ask the kid whose parents OWN A CHINESE RESTURANT and COOKED THIS EXACT DISH FOR LIKE EIGHT PARTIES BEFORE where did they get the fucking SHRIMP are you not paying attention??? What the fuck??? Like alright, sure. They spent too much time on the costume and rushed the defrosting and the whole entire cooking process and yes it is like a 7/10 at best but come ON at least have the COURTESY of-

"I made it, actually. Did sorta, um, rush the process, because I had to fix the bandanna up."

They smiled. Awkwardly. It was a kind of smile that sort of gave them that 8-year-old-white-girl-asking-you-for-candy charm and damn, like, that's the worst way to describe it but that's life, and hey, if it works it works, and also he kind of wanted to usher this conversation onto something more productive and less dumb.

"Not gonna pretend it's my best work. Anyways. Aren't you cold?"

They made the shrimp? Dani wasn’t sure if she believed it, but if it was true then that’s… Was that impressive? How hard was it to cook shrimp? She couldn’t imagine it was that hard. After all, you just need to boil them or something. It wasn’t like she was a cook though, so she really didn’t have a frame of reference for how difficult preparing shrimp actually was. And it was a rushed process apparently… That didn’t quite sit right with Dani. She quietly hoped she wouldn’t get food poisoning from having that one shrimp. That would be embarrassing…

Then Ren asked if she was cold. She blinked in confusion as her thoughts were taken off the subject of the shrimp. Then she remembered what she was wearing.

“I’m pretty okay inside,” she admitted, looking over her revealing costume. “Usually when I wear this stuff I’m inside. But I can tough out the cold if I need to. Not like I haven’t worn this stuff outside when it has been chilly.”

Which reminded her, when it comes around daytime she should go outside and get a few pics of the costume to put on her Instagram. Nothing better than natural lighting!

“You know, I think you are the first person to actually ask me that.” she said, placing a hand on her hip. “That’s pretty considerate. But if you are worried, again, I can tough out the cold while rocking this.”

In the background of the conversation Quentin began to stand on a chair to reach the smoke detector. He jolted it until it would disjoint from the ceiling.

...

What the fuck is this guy doing?

Wait, is-

is he-

Whatever. Focus on the conversation, Renzo.

''Wow, wish that were me.'' (Not the costume part they would literally kill themselves slowly and painfully before wearing that, they meant the whole toughing out the cold part.) ''Always sort of get too hot or too cold underneath clothes I thought suited the weather.''

(Hey, Dani, you said 'tough out the cold' twice.)

Oh god, did they repeat a phrase like twice in five seconds in this conversation? Did anyone notice? Oh fuck.

“Yeah, weather is hard to account for when making outfits.” Dani said, nodding her head in understanding while being oblivious as to what was happening in the background. “Sometimes you think you’ll be warm enough and end up being too cold, or cool enough only to be overheated.”

Quentin climbed down the chair and proceeded by opening the smoke detector and removing its batteries. He walked to a nearby table to place the smoke detector and batteries on it.

Quentin, who was dressed like a vampire, then continued by going to the nearest window to open it. He brought the papers and the green stuff from his pockets and rolled it to something that would fit into his mouth. With his head outside the window he lit the blunt and began to smoke.

"Mm-hm."

They'd like to say, in hindsight or whatever the future is called, that they just didn't really realize what the hell was going on, but like... a little part of them just wanted to watch. Like, how far could this guy get away with it?

Apparently pretty far. At this point they wouldn't be surprised if he just opened a drawer, took fifty bucks from a wallet, and fucked off.

Rosa actually tried that once.

“Trust me, this isn’t even the skimpiest outfit I’ve worn either,” She said with a shrug. “I once did this one character called… Um… Quiet, I think? All this character wore was a bikini, some torn leggings, and boots. I didn’t wear that during the fall though. Got good pics out of it though!”

She started to reach for her pocket to fish her phone out, stopping as an odd scent started to drift her way. She sniffed a few times, her face contouring in confusion.

“Hey, do you smell that?” She asked, looking side to side. “Like, seriously, what the hell is that smell?”

Quentin continued chillin'.

He looked back and saw Ren, a fellow cook, and Dani, the host of the party and also in a sexy dress, having a conversation. The dress drew his attention but he also was like concerned cause he opened the window and she was dressed sparsely and it was an October Night.

"Hey, I hope it's not too cold for you. If you want I can close the window."