I'm so sorry it took me so long to update this. I'll promise to try and be better.
Please enjoy!
Friction always practiced on Saturday evenings. It had become a weekly Delta Alpha Phi tradition by that time; pledges had to clear out the living room and make sure the kegs of beer were full every Saturday morning. Kurogane never had to deal with it, he was always at practice. But he had come to expect that when he returned he'd have to dodge tangled messes of electrical chords to get up the stairs. Once late afternoon arrived though, so did their fellow students. Most of them were females toting six-packs of fruity liquor, cigarettes and trendy clutch-purses filled with nothing but touch-up powder and lip gloss.
He managed to get a shower in before too many people started to show up and take up his bathroom time. But for some reason, he was not in the mood to make his way downstairs like he usually did to fraternize with the regular bunch of people he could hardly remember the names of. Something about having to watch the swarm of usual harpies that would cling all over him again, having to watch him smile and laugh and pretend again; that bothered Kurogane for reasons he couldn't explain. He'd never even thought about it before, but their brief conversation from the night before had struck him much deeper than he had been expecting it too.
"I don't know either…" Fai's laugh rang in his ears. It bothered Kurogane that he didn't know exactly what the blonde had meant by it. Did it mean that he didn't think about his future either? That he was just going along with life because it was there and not because he really truly wanted to.
Fai had fooled him. Fooled him with his twisted melodies that suggested that he had it all figured out; that he knew what he wanted in life; that he knew his wishes and desirers and was working toward them with every note he sang.
But they were only wishes. Not answers.
Kurogane was not sure why he had ever thought otherwise, but until their shared memory of hot milk and talks of empty futures, Fai had never seemed quite real to him. Just a person that passed through his life. Just that person other people talked about that existed just outside his usual radar. But Fai was downstairs just like he always was. Kurogane could hear him singing, even through the vibrations of the guitar chords that shook the walls and the chatter of several dozen college students. And he wondered, for the first time, why Fai was there at all.
Did he even want to be?
There was a rumor that one of the smaller label companies in Tokyo was considering signing them on. Their keyboardist, a young man everyone called B-chan, had even worked out that they get studio time to put together a demo CD.
Yasha didn't have time to give Kurogane guitar lessons anymore, he was too busy practicing new material and working with their base guitarist, Lantis, to come up with new melodies for Fai's lyrics.
Things were going to start getting serious for the band, and Fai just seemed to be floating along with things.
He shook his head and shut the door to his room before falling to the bed. He had studying he could be doing. Surely that was better than wasting his thoughts on a band he wasn't even a part of.
But an attempt to study was a wasted effort. Noise seemed to be crawling through the walls to dig at his ears. Wordless chatter seemed to come from all around him. The scent of cigarettes and beer. Laughter. Fai's voice.
Frustrated for no apparent reason he gave his zoology book a satisfying chuck at the wall only to grin to himself at the sound of the rattling thud as the book hit, shaking the crooked, cheap wall hangings on the entire half of the room. He didn't even know why he was taking that stupid class. What was he going to need zoology for?
What he really needed was a beer.
It was eight beers later, long after the sun had gone down and the chords and speakers had been tucked away in a corner and covered with blankets, Kurogane found himself in the living room sitting next to Yasha on the couch. Though, Yasha was paying very little attention, if any, to Kurogane at this point. Not while Ashura was perched in his lap playfully nibbling away at his ears.
Typical weekend evening at Delta Alpha Phi, that was for sure. Not a sober face in the house, and most of them were stuck together while lurking in any dark corner they could find.
"We should play a game!" one of the girls Kurogane couldn't have even guessed the name of giggled through a drag of her cigarette, a half-drained bottle of some colorfully labeled beer in her hands.
There were cheerful mummers and nods of agreement all around. Drinking games were almost always welcomed among present company.
Fai was there too, leaning against a wall almost directly across from Kurogane. He was drinking something from a red plastic cup and talking excitedly with raven-haired B-chan. Kurogane found it odd that he didn't really know what B-chan's real name was. He was the least sociable of them all. He knew Yasha plenty well – enough that Kurogane would call him a close friend. Kurogane had a few classes with their bassist, Lantis.
There was a quick, somewhat slurred conversation over what game it was they should all play. Pyramid. I Never. Kings. Quarters. Chandeliers. Twenty-one. The usual, popular drinking games.
Many rounds of Kings later, and enough beer he had actually lost count of exactly how many it had been, a few of the girls sitting on the floor were beginning to get antsy and eventually, one of them suggested a classic game to play instead – now that the boring people had left and things were getting more interesting.
Spin the Bottle.
"Leave it to Kanoe to suggest spin the bottle," someone teased. But no one seemed to object. There was a sufficient collection of bottles laying about, after all.
Everyone was laughing, giggling, snuggling up next to each other as the occupants of the room formed an acceptable circle. Fai, however, looked rather uncomfortable. He stayed against his wall, slowly sipping at what had to have been his fifth of sixth cup of whatever it was he was drinking, and looking to B-chan with those sky blue eyes of his as his only hope of saving him.
But it was too late.
"C'mon Fai-chan!" Miyuki giggled, jumping to her feet and latching on top his arm. "You're playing too right!?"
It wasn't long until Fai was pulled down to the ground and sitting cross-legged on the floor among everyone else, a typical, bright smile on his face. Kurogane wondered if anyone else had the slightest idea it was completely fake. But Kurogane couldn't blame him much. He'd have edged out of the room if he thought he could actually stand. He'd been sitting there on the couch all night slamming down one beer after the next. Walking was not going to be an option for him, so he opted to just sit on the couch and keep his dull, uninterested expression on his face as long as possible. If he was lucky, they wouldn't even notice and would skip right over him. There were plenty of people in the room after all; most of them female. Plenty of other distractions for the attention to remain off of him. Personally, he'd rather go back to playing Kings.
The first spin was Souma's. Three times around it went before landing on Eagle. They both laughed, leaned across the table and hastily kissed one another before sitting back down.
Kurogane yawned, crossed his arms and sunk back into the couch, hoping the bottle on the table wouldn't betray him.
Boring. Boring. Boring.
As always, as the game progressed, people got more daring. It had been a while since any of them had played the game, but with the mixture of alcohol and raging hormones, it was always inevitable. Kisses were longer, deeper while the others could applaud and holler in approval. It was just a silly, pointless game to show off and get a rise out of people. But the kiss between Satsuki and Fuu was especially well-received.
Kurogane found the clock on the wall more entertaining though, it was just a pointless party game. In the morning, none of those kisses would mean anything. Most of them wouldn't even be remembered.
He hadn't expected the room to go silent though. Perhaps he should have been paying closer attention – at least he could have been more prepared for it. But it was only moments before he realized that everyone in the room was staring at him. He glanced around quickly, wondering what he had missed only to discover the tip of an empty blue beer bottle pointed straight for him.
"Stupid bottle," he wanted to say.
Yasha jabbed him in the side with his elbow, "Rules are rules Kurogane. You're in the circle. You have to kiss him."
Him?
A handful of girls were silent and staring at him with wide eyes and the biggest, hungriest grins he had ever seen in his life. It was mortifying. And it wasn't until then that he realized had had no idea whose turn it had been.
"Y-you don't have to," a soft, smooth voice came. A familiar voice. Fai's voice. And his eyes were noticeably wider than normal. Probably scared out of his head.
"Yes he does. Everyone else had been playing by the rules. You kiss who the bottle lands on or you don't play at all," Yasha shook his head and laughed, giving Kurogane another jab with his elbow.
It was probably not the best time to tell them all that he hadn't wanted to play to begin with. He really didn't care about the fact that he'd come off sounding like a jerk if he said so either. But he was sitting there. He could have spoken up before they started; he'd probably have even been able to keep his seat on the couch and watch.
"Whatever," he grumbled and pushed himself away from the couch, ready to just get this over and done with. It was just a stupid kiss, and no one was going to expect a show from them, and then he could go back to staring at the clock on the wall.
Fai was on the opposite side of the table, almost directly across from him, kneeling on the floor. His eyes were so blue…
"You really don't have to," Fai almost whispered at they looked at one another from across the short, ring-stained coffee table.
"Rules are rules," Kurogane shrugged. He would never hear the end of it if he didn't go through with it now. Everyone else followed the rules, they'd call him a chicken for not doing it – even if Fai was another guy. That was part of the fun of the game now, after all: you never knew who you were going to have to kiss.
Blue eyes fell to the table for a moment, even though Fai hadn't meant for them to. He hoped that Kurogane hadn't noticed.
But he had.
And that made Kurogane all the more curious: why the blue eyed vocalist been washed over with a half-moment of sadness.
He could hear whispers and hushed giggles as he leaned across the table to meet the blonde.
Lips met for a brief moment. Warm. Chaste. Soft. But Kurogane blamed the alcohol entirely for their return. Or perhaps his pride kicking in to say that couldn't have even qualified as a kiss.
He must have been drinking vodka mixed with some sort of fruity flavor. Cherry. Strawberry. Watermelon. Something red, sweet and juicy, that was for certain. Kurogane could taste it on him as he licked along Fai's soft bottom lip. He was far softer, far sweeter than he had been expecting. Not that he had thought about it before hand. And then he realized that he probably shouldn't even be thinking about it at all.
He pulled away, trying to keep his face adjusted to its usual, nonchalant, stoic gaze but couldn't help but notice the blonde's eyes flutter open as he slipped back onto the couch. He didn't even hear the clapping and the whistles of approval, the girls in one corner giggling like mad.
The rest of the game went on, unremarkably unremembered in Kurogane's mind. The clock on the wall kept him some fine company until the crowd dissipated and the sun began to rise and he could stumble back up to his room in relative peace and quiet. A quick, vague thought of having lost track of Fai around the time everyone else was leaving came and passed as Kurogane shut his eyes and fell asleep.
