To be honest, Freddie has no fucking idea what's going on when he's shoved bodily into a closet. He's more concerned with where the hell they put his drink.

It's sort of shameful that he's eighteen and he's never had a taste of alcohol before tonight. He's only had two plastic cups full and he's about ready to fall over and possibly take a nap wherever he lands – which is the only reason they'd gotten him into the closet in the first place, without him thrashing and kicking, because that he was good at. He's never smoked, either, but at this point the entire room is covered in a thin haze and he couldn't avoid inhaling it if he tried.

Well. That's two firsts down, anyways.

Several hundred to go, probably…

Freddie sometimes wonders what life might have been like if he'd grown up anywhere but where he did, and with anyone other than his downtrodden mother and her string of disgusting boyfriends. Could he ever have been normal? Would he have gone to parties like this one without being dragged?

Speaking of dragged –

"Ow, Freddie –" Florence shoves him, giggling, and he wonders how much she's had to drink. It's not like Florence has never been to a party before. She's probably not nearly so woefully underprepared for it all as he was. "Are you okay?"

"I'm…" He blinks into the darkness, struggling to make out her face in the light creeping beneath the door. The sounds of the party are muffled but still, it all roars in his ears like an ocean wave, threatening to pull him under. And now he's in here… alone… with –

His face is unbearably hot. "What the fuck just happened?"

"We're playing seven minutes in heaven," she admits, like she's embarrassed. Her breath smells pleasantly fruity. She's definitely been drinking. Freddie wonders what he smells like and decides that it's probably somewhere between a bar and a sweaty teenager, which he can only just barely deny being. I'm an adult, damn it.

An adult who's locked in a closet.

The irony of all of this is catching up to him really fast.

"Well I'm not playing." He scowls, trying to pretend he's not trying to figure out whether or not Florence will know he's staring at her exposed shoulder, where her bra strap has slipped down and her breast is so, so tantalizingly close to being visible…

It's okay if it's in the dark, right? She probably can't tell.

And if she slaps him, well. She's slapped him for less before.

His binder feels incredibly tight and uncomfortably hot and he wants to struggle out of it, but then Florence is going to get ideas and he doesn't want her thinking this was all his doing, because it's definitely not…

(He sternly tells himself that his fantasies are not, definitely not, being translated into reality by some benevolent god with an interest in getting him laid.)

"Oh, suck it up," she huffs, smiling, and the curve of her lip is more than enough to render him stationary. Forget leaving, then… She reaches up to feel his shoulders, fingers moving up into his hair. "It's just a party game."

Maybe to her. She's been to parties before. Freddie has not. This is all incredibly unfair.

He finds that he's holding his breath, and releases it as quietly as he can, heart pounding. "Um," he says eloquently. "So."

"So all we have to do is make sure we're in a compromising position when they open the door in… five minutes," she murmurs, amusement dancing on the tip of her tongue. He wants desperately to taste it. How much of this is a joke and how much of this is real and is he allowed to touch her, now, when she's pressing her body up against his, because it seems like a really fucking terrible game if he's not, and –

"Stop thinking," she whispers into his ear like an order, and slips a hand up underneath his shirt, palm flat over his belly button.

Obediently, he brings the axe down on the shoddy strategy forming in his brain and clutches at her hips, pulling her close so he can bring their lips clumsily, eagerly together.

Perhaps this isn't what he thinks it might be, and maybe later Florence will laugh about it while he silently cherishes the memory for the rest of his life, but right now he's tipsy and alive and she's touching him and he's touching her, and it's more than he ever could have wanted out of this whole ridiculous experience.

Florence gets his zipper open, and he forgets how to breathe when her fingers slip down the front of his pants.

All in all, he thinks as they stumble lip-swollen and red-faced out of the closet together, he may have to go to the next party he's invited to, after all.

Well…

As long as Florence is going.