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It was already early in the morning but he did not care because he had unfinished business and no one cared about the test in the morning, anyway. The professors knew that the med students were hosting one hell of a party, after all. The music was echoing through the wide hallways and he was pretty sure that some of Dreyar’s chemist friends had mixed something that was not completely legal and that this was why the med students were currently glaring at all of the chemists but he had to admit, this was one hell of a party and that this was his opinion before he caught sight of the ice cube herself who was standing by an open window, dressed into some kind of red dress – it was always red with her, for some reason – and stared outside.
“Please don’t tell me that you took something from the chemists,” he said as he stopped behind her, frowning at her shoeless state and the glass of whatever-red-cocktail-she-had-been-drinking in her left hand. Her makeup was in a surprisingly good state and this seemed to prove what everyone and their mothers – quite literally – seemed to agree on, that she was a good girl and as everyone knew, good girls did not get into trouble.
“I’m on the other side in this, idiot,” she said and he did not even bother to feel offended anymore because she called people idiots to show them that she cared and he was actually surprised that she did care about him enough to keep talking to him.
“Oh right, you’re a med student, true,” he said with a nod at he frowned a little. “You’re drunk, right? You don’t act it but you are drunk.”
“I’m sober as a stone,” she replied as she twirled the glass between her fingers and smirked at him – the king of sly little smirks. “Believe me, you’d know if I was anything but.”
“…would I, now? I never experienced you drunk,” he said as he raised an eyebrow. He had heard rumours – Clive and Dreyar had yelled across the hallway that rather than to pick up girls, they should be keeping a close eye on her at the party – but he could not say that he was not curious how bad it would be if she got drunk.
“According to those who saw it, it’s hard to miss,” she said as she smirked at him and there was a glint in her eyes that struck him as weird and dangerous because it was a far cry away from her usual calm and collected demeanour.
“Okay…” he said as he carefully dragged her away from the window, looking around for her babysitters. “I have a feeling that you are no longer what I’d call sober.”
Really, now that he was looking closer, he saw what he had failed to see at first – the way her cheeks were reddened and the weird facial expression along with her amiable personality were dead giveaways for her state – and he sighed because there was no trace of either Clive or Dreyar in the crowd as they had probably ended up drunk enough to forget about the fact that they wanted to keep an eye on her rather than to go and enjoy the party the way everyone else was celebrating.
“…did you ever consider to just go home?” he asked as he pushed her out onto the balcony. He was no babysitter but he was sober enough to know what he was doing – he was just a little tipsy, it was not like any drinks he could get here had enough alcohol in it to get him drunk – and this was more than he could say about most other people around, including her.
“This is the party of the medicine students,” she said with a huff and sounded nearly offended by his simple question. He really did not get her but he was pretty sure that this was the general state of the world. “I can’t just leave.”
“Ice cube, you’re drunk and you look like you can’t even say for sure whether or not Dreyar and Clive are—“
“Gildarts studies business like you, Ivan is dabbling into biochemistry this semester,” she replied, never missing a single beat. “I’m tipsy, not drunk out of my mind. Seriously.”
“…how many of those drinks did you have?” he asked as he sat down on the stairs, frowning up at her. He had been promised a flock of pretty girls when he had agreed to come to this party and now, he was stuck with the prettiest pf them all and unable to make a move because she was drunk and he was not that sort of asshole.
“You mean of those girlish ones?” she asked and there it was again, this weird walk she did on the thin line between being drunk out of her mind and being sober as a stone. “Two … both sponsored to me by gentlemen who were trying to hit on me.”
“It got to be hard being the prettiest girl around. I mean, alcohol for free? Horrible.”
She rolled her eyes and punched him before she slipped back into her shoes. “It’s not always funny,” she then said as she rose to her feet, swaying a little and he nearly moved in to catch her when he realised that she was not dizzy but merely moving along to the sound of the music.
He sighed as he still reached out to hold her wrist because she was still drunk and they were still on a balcony. “Careful, dancing queen,” he said as he rolled his eyes at her. “So they all say that you’re the only one who’s as smart as Dreyar around here but you don’t—“
“Oh, Ivan is a good deal smarter than me,” she said as she gave him a dismissive wave with her free hand. “He’s, like, an actual genius … complete with the social issues because he has often trouble communicating with everyone below his level. I’m just smart and happen to like studying.”
“…you sleep in class, ice cube,” he said as he wondered when exactly she had decided that she liked the song and would dance to its calming beat because that was what she was doing and she was dragging him into it.
“I still pass,” she said in a weird singsong voice as she twirled herself around before she pouted at her phone. “Did you see some kind of male model running around here?”
“Um, no?” he asked as he frowned down at her. “Ex?”
“Hah,” she replied as she rolled her eyes at him, her cheeks nearly crimson as the intoxication slowly set in. “He’s family … and has left more than twenty calls since he realised I that I was skipping out on the reunion.”
“The good little girl skips family reunions?”
“I skip horribly embarrassing situations in which my relatives use my cousins and me as pawns in their elaborate game of slyly insulting each other,” she said and for a moment, she seemed to be nearly entirely sober – until the weird glint reappeared in her eyes. “It gets especially ugly each year after Christmas.”
“What happens each year after Christmas?” he asked before he could stop himself. One day, his goddamn curiosity would get him killed and this was likely going to happen soon unless he would finally learn to shut his mouth.
“We head to the family’s mansion,” she said as she clung to his arm and smirked up at him. “Up in the mountains … it’s really pretty…”