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“Are you two going to help me or continue to fail miserably?” Ingrid called.
Her hands were currently stained red from the juice of the strawberries she was cutting and she’d only made it through half of a box. The lemonade and vodka bottles were waiting on standby next to the blender and the box of popcorn was still sitting, unpopped, on the counter in front of the microwave.
“We’re almost there, Ing, come on!” Sylvain protested, not even tearing his eyes from the TV screen.
Felix didn’t even bother to reply, twisting his controller with such an intense look of concentration Ingrid wondered if he would throw the controller at the TV if he managed to lose this time. On the screen, the glowing orb balanced precariously on the edge of some kind of maze thing. Felix tilted his hands a little and the orb shot forward, launching onto the next area of land.
Sylvain cheered and jumped off the couch as the game played its telltale jingle for the correct solving of the puzzle. “Fuck yeah, Felix!”
Felix groaned and dropped the controller, tipping sideways so that his face collided with the couch. “I fucking hate that puzzle. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”
Ingrid rolled her eyes. “No one told you that you had to play the game again.”
Felix lifted his hand and flipped her off without moving. “I have to be ready for the race.”
Sylvain laughed. “Look, just because Dorothea challenged you to a race doesn’t mean you have to actually do it.”
Felix looked up at Sylvain. “You’re joking, right? I’m not losing to a music major.”
Ingrid clicked her tongue as she finished cutting up the last of the strawberries. She scooped them up and dropped them into the blender. “You seem plenty happy to lose to Annette whenever she’s over,” she teased.
Felix went red and scowled. He saved his game and quit to the main menu before shutting the console off. He jumped up and walked into the kitchen. “How can I help?”
Ingrid grabbed the lemonade bottle and poured a healthy amount into the blender. “Can you grab me the ice cubes from the freezer?”
Felix immediately opened the freezer. Ingrid turned to glare at Sylvain who was still lounging on the couch, though now he was scrolling on his phone. He glanced at her when he realized she was staring at him and just batted his eyes at her innocently.
“Are you going to help?”
“And get stuck doing all the dishes like I always do anyway? No,” he replied cheerfully.
Ingrid wanted to berate him, but he had a point. Sylvain almost always ended up doing the dishes. He was the worst cook of the three of them, so that meant he was almost always relegated to dish-duty after meals. When alcohol was involved, he ended up doing the dishes purely because he had the highest tolerance and was the most adept and practiced at managing his hangovers.
She picked up the vodka bottle and reached around Felix for their liquor cupboard. Felix glanced at her oddly, but placed the ice cube tray next to the blender and backed out of her way. He leaned against the counter and folded his arms.
“What are you doing?”
Ingrid grabbed the metal cup from the cabinet and waved it at him. “I need this."
Sylvain laughed. “Ah, Ingrid, always the responsible one, using the jigger to measure our alcohol intake.”
Ingrid was screwing off the lid of the vodka bottle when he spoke. She paused. “The what?” she questioned.
Sylvain blinked. “The jigger.” He gestured to the shot-measuring cup she was holding.
“Why the fuck do you know what that thing is called?” Felix asked, staring at Sylvain.
Sylvain raised an eyebrow. “Because we own one? And we drink a lot?”
Ingrid laughed out loud, almost spilling vodka on the counter. “Sylvain, I’m pretty sure only bartenders who are either super hipster and sell you the most expensive shit on the menu or the ones who work high-class events know what these things are called. As far as I’m concerned it’s a shot-measurer.”
Sylvain’s ears reddened. “It’s not that strange of a thing to know!” he argued.
The doorbell rang, saving Sylvain from more teasing and Felix slipped out of the kitchen and down the hall to open the door. Ingrid focused back on the task at hand, measuring a full shot of vodka and adding it to the blender. She dumped a handful of ice cubes in and then measured another shot.
Sylvain hopped up from the couch and leaned on the counter across from her, watching her as she mixed their drinks for the night. “Please tell me you’re adding more than two shots to that thing. Dimitri is coming.”
Ingrid paused and stared at him. “It’s not Dimitri I’m worried about.”
Sylvain held his hands up innocently. “Don’t blame a guy for his alcohol tolerance.”
“You started drinking when you were like 14."
“I had a good high school experience.”
“Sylvain.”
“Ingrid,” he parroted teasingly.
He leaned forward until there was only about an inch between their faces and every muscle in Ingrid’s body tensed. She was saved from having to react when Felix and Dimitri re-entered the kitchen. Sylvain leaned back and she went back to measuring vodka to add to the drink mix.
“Why do you know what a jigger is called?” Dimitri asked Sylvain, completely bypassing any greeting.
Sylvain smacked his forehead. “Is it really that weird?”
“Yes,” Ingrid and Felix chorused.
“I mean, I knew what it was called,” Dimitri admitted. “But that’s because there was a very chatty bartender at an event I went to last summer.”
Sylvain and Ingrid exchanged a look. A chatty bartender meant a flirty bartender and Dimitri, in his glorious and typical Dimitri fashion, had not even noticed a thing was strange about her behaviour, chalking it up to the woman being “friendly”.
“Anyway,” Sylvain cleared his throat. “I see you have brought food to rescue us from Ingrid’s inevitable wrath.”
Ingrid was almost offended, but then her stomach growled and she could only drop her gaze back to the blender and hope that she wasn’t flushing. She dumped a few more ice cubes in and slapped the lid on, holding the blend button as the grinding sound quickly drowned out her embarrassment.
Dimitri dropped the pizza box on the counter and Felix immediately went to pull out plates. Sylvain strode into the kitchen and it was suddenly very overcrowded with her three male friends, Dimitri and Sylvain especially, who had no concept of the fact that they were buff guys who took up much more room than they thought they did.
Ingrid stopped the blender and picked up the pitcher, sloshing the liquid in it a bit. It had changed to a pretty pinkish colour thanks to the strawberries and it smelled both sweet and alcoholic: just how they liked it. She poured it into the four glasses she had out and turned to hand them off.
Felix took the first glass and Sylvain the second. Dimitri took the third and replaced it with a plate that had three slices of pizza on it. Ingrid beamed at him and carried both the plate and her own glass over to the couch where she sat next to Felix in the centre of the couch. Dimitri immediately claimed the armchair and Sylvain lingered in the kitchen to grab the bottle of vodka from the counter.
Felix tasted the drink and wrinkled his nose. “This shit is sweet.”
Ingrid sipped it and was pleasantly surprised by the sweet and fruity taste of it. It tasted almost exactly like the strawberry lemonades she used to get at restaurants as a kid with just the slightest hint of alcohol.
“I think that’s the point,” Dimitri said as he sipped from his own glass. His brow shot up. “Wow, there’s alcohol in this?”
Ingrid hummed in agreement. “Annette gave me the recipe. I wanted to try it out.”
Sylvain plopped down on the couch next to her and placed the vodka bottle and four shot glasses down. “As lovely and boozy as it is, we’re still doing this with shots.”
Felix grumbled. “Just because you don’t have anything to do tomorrow.”
Sylvain grinned. “Your fault for scheduling shit after movie night.”
Felix crossed his arms and glared at Sylvain. “You’re cancelling on us next week so we rescheduled to this week. This is your fault.”
Sylvain shrugged. “Hey, the girl from my gym said she was only free next weekend. I’m not going to miss that opportunity.”
Ingrid’s drink was suddenly less sweet. She placed it on the coffee table and stood up, heading for her room. She grabbed the hat from her dresser and walked back into the living room. She placed it on the corner of the TV and balanced it so it wouldn’t fall off.
Felix grabbed the remote from the table. “I can’t believe we’re watching this movie again.”
Ingrid sat down between Felix and Sylvain and picked up her drink again, grinning. “It was my turn to pick and we watched Dimitri’s choice last time. Besides, this one works great with the hat game.”
Sylvain tapped his glass against hers. “Not that we don’t appreciate the artistry of The King’s Speech, Dimitri, but Ingrid is definitely correct on this one. Die Hard is a true pinnacle of cinema.”
Felix rolled his eyes but queued the movie. “No chickening out on these rules.”
Ingrid laughed. “Yeah, yeah we know. Every time someone wears the hat you take a sip and every time they have a line while wearing it we do a shot. We have done this before.”
Dimitri slouched in his chair. “I always lose these things immediately.”
Sylvain threw an arm over Ingrid’s shoulder and smirked at Dimitri. “That’s because you care more about the film than the actual drinking. We’d get the same reaction from Ingrid if we were watching the Great British Bake Off or Chopped.”
Ingrid elbowed him but didn’t shove his arm off. She was already a little warm in her stomach and she took a bite of her pizza. She was hungry and they were about to drink a whole lot more, so she needed to have food to balance the copious amounts of alcohol.
“Are we still doing the Sylvain rule?” Dimitri asked as the studio logo took over the screen as the movie started.
“Obviously,” Ingrid snorted. “Anything stupid or romantic he’d do means the last one to shout “Sylvain” takes a shot. That’s a given for whatever film we’re watching.”
“Everyone shut up,” Felix grouched as the film started.
Ingrid was warm. She was warm and her arm was numb and her eyes were sticky. She shifted the arm that wasn’t numb and brought her hand up to rub her face. She pried her eyes open and got an eyeful of grey t-shirt.
She blinked and twisted, realizing that she was definitely not in her bed. She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t move her left arm, the numb one, at all. It was thoroughly pinned between her very fit roommate and the couch that they had fallen asleep together on. Plus, his arm was tightly wrapped around her waist like a steel band, keeping her pinned against him. Her head had been resting against the top of his chest over his shoulder and under his chin.
Sylvain didn’t stir as Ingrid twisted, still passed out cold. Ingrid managed to carefully extract her arm and pry Sylvain’s arm off of her. She had a horrid crick in her neck that made her scowl as she disentangled their legs. She sat on the very edge of the couch and looked around the living room.
Sylvain was, naturally, passed out on the couch where they had been unintentionally cuddling. Dimitri was asleep in the armchair, head awkwardly bent forward against his shoulder. Felix was nowhere to be seen. Ingrid turned and looked behind her into the kitchen and saw her other roommate standing in the kitchen, sipping from a coffee mug with an amused look on his face.
She rolled her eyes and stood up, walking towards him. She dropped her voice low so that she didn’t wake Dimitri or Sylvain. “When did you get up?”
“About fifteen minutes ago,” Felix whispered back. “Unlike you idiots, I did actually make it to my bed last night.”
Ingrid’s cheeks warmed and she glanced at the back of the couch where Sylvain was still sleeping. “We just fell asleep?”
He shrugged. “We were talking after the movie and you started wrestling with him. Dimitri was already out so I just went to bed. I guess you guys fell asleep after that.”
It wasn’t unusual for them to fall asleep after movie night and it certainly wasn’t the first time that she’d woken up cuddled to one of her friends. The best was still the time that Dimitri and Sylvain had fallen asleep together and she and Felix had taken many, many photos.
“Did he get his contacts out?” she asked, gesturing to the couch.
Felix shrugged. “I doubt it. It’ll be his problem today.”
Ingrid’s nose wrinkled. She felt sympathetic, but not overly remorseful. Sylvain had bitched about how much he hated sleeping with his contacts in before, but he continued to forget to take them out so it really was his problem.
“How much did we drink?”
Felix nodded to the vodka bottle by the sink. It was empty. Ingrid slapped her hand over her mouth to muffle a startled laugh.
“Oh,” she replied dumbly.
Felix sipped his coffee again and shrugged. “Pretty on brand, honestly.”