Rule Three
Rule Three
It was past two in the morning, and the Friday night party at Antonio’s parentless house had dwindled down to the group playing spin the empty vodka bottle and pass around the emptying tequila bottle in the sunroom. The wicker furniture had been pushed back or outside onto the porch, and all fifteen teenagers were fighting off exhaustion and the sourer effects of their inebriation. They had been playing for hours, and everyone in the circle had kissed at least everyone else’s cheek, if not mouth, at some point that night - some of them needing more liquor persuasion than others.
Well, most everyone.
Gilbert, a rambunctious albino, let out a bark of victorious laughter when the spin of the blonde boy with glasses pressed against his left side pointed to himself. Before the blonde had a chance to think, Gilbert grabbed his face and gave him an overplayed smack, complete with smacking noise. The blonde shook his head out and giggled. “Thanks, Gil.”
The albino grinned. “No prob, Mattie.” He reached for the bottle and spun it as best as his inhibited motor skills would let him. “Come on, gimme a chick,” he pleaded, earning too-loud laughter from the circle. It stopped just shy of a girl with long pale hair at a scowling, barefoot boy.
He jolted out of his glaring at the floor when he realized Gil and his evil smirk were approaching. “No, no! I chicken, I chicken!” he said quickly, holding his hands up in defense. Gil wrinkled his nose at him, plopping back down in more of a sprawl across his spot and Matt’s lap than anything else. “You’re no fun, Arthur. Now strip.”
Grumbling about stupid people and stupid rules of stupid games, Arthur was forced to follow the second of the three rules of their version of the game. (Rule One was that the two people selected by The Bottle had to kiss or chicken. Rule Two was that the person who chickened out had to take off an article of clothing. Rule Three was any pair who got picked more than five times had to go to The Closet.) He pulled off his shirt to the whistles of the girls and the jibes of the guys, then studiously ignored everyone’s eyes as he stretched forward to spin the bottle.
‘Please don’t land on Alfred, please don’t land on Alfred,’ he chanted in his head (and maybe a little out loud, it was hard to tell at this point), taking the tequila bottle from Ivan on his left, throwing back a mouthful, and passing it on to Natalia without taking his eyes off the spinning bottle. He and Alfred had been matched five times already, and he didn’t want to face that gray area of attraction versus friendship that they were stuck in their relationship when he was drunk and slightly horny. It certainly didn’t help that Alfred’s usual fake flirting seemed to get more and more intense as the night wore on.
When it finally stopped, it was pointing at the sunny-skinned jock for the sixth time that night. Arthur stared at a widely grinning Alfred in dumb shock as his fate stretched out before him.
You couldn’t chicken out of Rule Three.
Their ‘friends’ were cold and merciless, cracking jokes and laughing uncontrollably as they were pushed to their feet by their neighbors in the circle and shoved out of the room - Arthur by Ivan, who was far too big to still be in high school, and Alfred by Bridget and Maddie, both ‘sexually active’ and the main sponsors of the more daring exploits of the last few hours. Ivan held open the door of the coat closet (the coats themselves had been thrown into the hallway so that there would at least be standing room for two people) while Maddie and Bridget shoved the two boys inside. Ivan slammed and barricaded the door behind them, plunging them into darkness and silence.
“Get off my bloody shin, you idiot,” Arthur hissed, kicking at the knee or elbow digging into his calf. The Closet wasn’t big enough for two seventeen year old boys to sit down, and various pieces of junk poked at and fell on them as they tried to untangle their legs in the dark.
“Ow! Watch your nails!”
“Don’t touch me! Your hands are fucking freezing!”
“Well stop feeling me up with your feet!”
After a short but vicious struggle, they gave up trying to stand, resigning themselves to being hopelessly knotted together and cramped into a space that was more appropriate for one person a decade younger than them. Arthur ended up with his feet resting on Alfred’s abdomen, one of Alfred’s legs folded beneath them at an uncomfortable angle while the other was caught between Arthur’s, cowboy boot propped against the wall behind Arthur’s back.
There was a thunk from Alfred’s direction. “My head hurts.”
“Gee, I wonder.”
“You could kiss it and make it better?”
Arthur groaned, burying his face in his hands. This was exactly why he had avoided any sort of contact with Alfred - not just during the game, but for the past few weeks. For some odd reason, whenever they were near each other, Alfred had taken to hitting on him relentlessly. Arthur was too confused by sorting out his sexual orientation and the mixed messages Alfred gave off to do anything but get flustered and run away. He really didn’t want to know what had made Alfred switch from being just another guy in their circle of friends to becoming this flirtatious, ridiculous, far too close… thing. However, it seemed like he had no choice but to find out now.
Alfred tried to shift away from the tennis racket at his back and failed. “So.”
“So what?”
“ ‘Well now what?’ so what.”
“We sit here and ignore each other for seven minutes?”
“You’re funny.” He grasped Arthur’s ankles, then trailed his hands up the side of his legs, his touch just light enough to send Arthur gasping and shivering, and resettled them just above his knees. He lifted his legs apart and up so he could extract his own leg from between them, then pulled a quivering Arthur forward so he was in his lap. Arthur was speechless as Alfred leaned forward to whisper in his ear and hit just below his target, mouth ghosting over his jaw.
“We should make out.”
Alfred’s hot damp breath coated Arthur’s face, neck, and bare chest; all of the handling and the statement, combined with his drunken state, made him only able to nod along. “Yeah. Okay.” He smiled against Arthur’s cheek, then trailed his mouth across his face to ease it over Arthur’s, who responded instantly. Fuck, he just wanted physical contact, and even if it was with Alfred, he didn’t care anymore.
Arthur opened his mouth to Alfred, letting the other’s hands roam over his bare torso and feel every square inch of skin several times over. He himself was too busy running his tongue around the inside of Alfred’s teeth to protest. His touch burned and chilled him, and Arthur trembled, rutting against Alfred’s stomach unconsciously as his kissing pace sped up, getting sloppier and wetter. Alfred moaned into him, hands diving into the back of Arthur’s jeans and pulling him even closer. Arthur tried to wrap his legs around his waist, but was thwarted by the clutter of The Closet. Alfred arched forward to give him room, and Arthur gasped and withdrew his tongue as the action brought Alfred’s erection to his attention. He grinned down at him, even though he knew the other couldn’t see it.
“Happy to see me, love?” he asked, running his fingers through soft hair. Hot breath blew across his face as Al panted under him.
“Shut up,” he said when he could think, giving Arthur’s ass a squeeze in revenge. “It’s not like you’re any better.”
Arthur’s face burned, but instead of keeping up the banter, he found Al’s mouth with his own again so he could bite down on his bottom lip. Al groaned - in pain or desire, it was hard to tell - and pulled his lip away to suck at Arthur’s neck. Arthur clutched broad shoulders and tipped his head back.
If he had been in a more rational state of mind, Arthur probably would have been asking questions, like ‘why’ and ‘what the hell is going on’, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t. All he could do was dig his nails into his shoulders and grind his hips in time with Alfred as his skin was tasted.
Alfred leaned forward a little too much trying to reach lower on Arthur’s chest and lost his balance, tipping forward and banging both their heads on the opposite wall. Arthur cursed and Alfred laughed, shifting into a crouch over him. A sliver of light came through the crack under the door, tinting the left side of Arthur a slight blue and monochrome. His eyes were half-closed and fluttering, and spotty, rectangular bruises were already forming along his neck and shoulder.
“I’m not going to remember this tomorrow,” Alfred stated. Arthur raised his impressive eyebrows.
“Even if you could, would you want to?” he asked, avoiding eye contact in favor of watching his hands run over Alfred’s thin undershirt.
He bent down and kissed him, cheek to mouth to cheek. “ ‘Course I would!” Arthur’s eyes snapped wide. “I mean, I’ve only been trying to get in your pants for, like, two months now.”
Arthur’s eyebrows drew together, and Alfred kissed them. Now that he’d had a taste, he wanted to kiss every part of Arthur. He felt his intake of breath on his neck.
“You mean, all that - you were fucking serious?” he asked, stunned. Alfred laughed.
“Bet your bottom dollar and hope to die,” he swore, drawing an X on Arthur’s chest.
Arthur huffed. “Well shit.” He reached up and pulled Alfred’s grinning face down to his. “You’re not going to forget this in the morning. I’ll make sure of it,” he said, lips close enough to Alfred’s to brush them while he talked.
Alfred shivered. “Stop being so damn hot,” he whispered before closing the distance, nose pressed into Arthur’s wet cheek and moaning.
````
“How long’s it been since we threw those two in The Closet, anyway?” Mathias asked as he spun the bottle after getting a kiss from a very giggly Mei. The others shrugged.
“Long enough, probably,” Francis said, checking his watch even though he couldn’t focus his eyes enough to read the hands. “Who wants to let them out?”
A brief silence. “I will,” Elizaveta volunteered, standing up and wobbling a little on her feet before stumbling out into the hallway. She ran a hand along the wall to steady herself and clutched the chair that was propped under the doorknob, and was about to yell through the door when she heard it.
It, of course, being the pants and moans of two people obviously engaged in some risky business.
She giggled, listening for a moment to the bumps and name cryings coming from the crack under the door, and decided to leave them be. She turned back to the sunroom, tripping over one of the coats on the floor on the way but recovering nicely, and kept giggling until she sat back down next to the very busty Katsuya, who had been forced to strip down to her bra while she was gone.
After she had made sure she was sitting properly, she looked up at the curious circle. “I don’t think we’ll be using that closet anymore,” she said, hiccuping and trying to rub the heat from her cheeks.
Life was certainly good tonight.