Chapter 1 - The Party

Fyn: Int. Frat House, Night

Fyn hadn't been invited to this party.

They'd been invited to a party, sure. They'd even intended to go to the one they were invited to. This wasn't a case of seeing something more interesting on the way, or trying to make havoc for the sake of it, or even freeloading on some idiot frat house's beer before jumping ship.

No, they'd just gotten properly lost between the endless, identically trashed frat rows and it’s taken them almost an hour to realize that they haven't seen any of their friends because this is not, in fact, their friends’ party.

Fyn sips something questionable from a red solo cup and looks around at the crowd. Well, they’ve enjoyed their people watching, at any rate. They're not particularly embarrassed about the mishap– no one has singled them out as an intruder, which means everyone is either too drunk to notice, too hyped up to care, or just as lost in the costumed crowd as they are.

Halloween means that their outfit only gets them some interested looks as they make their way towards the door, and not outright recognition as an outsider. Most of the women are dressed in slutty versions of various animals and characters, most of the men have made only a token effort or an ironic one, and if anyone fits between those genders they're not being obvious about it.

Fyn is in a full length, black robe with a split to the top of their thigh. Obedience is written out in black sequins along the length of the split. An authentic white scapular is bound around their face and shoulders, topped with the black veil of a Cistercian nun. They're holding a white handkerchief studded with red beads to look like blood, and red sequins drip down the scapular. It's a faithful, if irreverent, recreation of a Sisters of Charity habit from circa 1900 Europe. Not that anyone here would recognize the authenticity. They probably just think Fyn is dressed as a sexy nun. Plebians.

Really, it's a wonder Fyn hadn't realized their mistake sooner. Their friends are much more creative than this lot. But then, Em had said it was inviting friends from a few different colleges, so how were they supposed to know?

Fyn reaches the door, squeezing between a sexy rabbit girl and a guy dressed as a sexy crayon and losing a few sequins in the process. They glance back over the crowd. They hadn't even offended anyone. They consider finding the host to thank them, laugh out loud at themselves for the delightful absurdity of the idea, and drain their cup before tossing it back towards the overflowing trash can. No, it’s time to leave. They actually do want to get to Em’s place. There's supposed to be a seance.

And still, they linger. Their gaze roves over the crowd again, searching for whatever unfinished something is stalling them. Is it really that no one is noticing them leave? Is it just that they wanted one person to care that they'd been there, even if it had been to throw them out? What point is a silent crime, anyway?

And then, walking out of the kitchen with his own solo cup in hand, is Teddy. He looks so incongruously normal that Fyn struggles to register that it's him at first, and not someone dressed up as a ‘stressed medical student.’ He's wearing his lab coat, for god's sake.

Actually, on second thought, that does make sense.

Fyn rolls up onto their toes and waves their arm above the crowd.

“Teddy!” they shout, and get a few annoyed glares for it. Crayon-guy startles, swearing ‘oh shit!’ in a drunken laugh as he spills their beer over himself and his neighbor. Fyn ignores him. “Teddy! Hey!”

Teddy glances over his shoulder, back into the kitchen, and smiles slightly when another man steps into the doorway and slings an arm over his shoulders. Fyn doesn't recognize the guy– another med student, maybe?-- but he must be a friend, because he leans in with a sort of drunken, triumphant unbalance to press his forehead to Teddy’s for a second, and Teddy melts a little against him.

The guy says something. Teddy nods, that oddly sappy little expression on his face. They move off through the crowd together, towards a hallway door that Fyn is pretty sure leads to a rickety second floor, if their experience of most of the local frat houses holds true. Fyn raises their eyebrows, not sure if they should be impressed or offended, and they decide they can needle Teddy about it later.

They pull the robe of their bedazzled nun costume over their shoulder, hike up their skirt, and head back out onto the street.

***

Teddy: Ext. Main Campus, Night
Several hours later

Teddy is very drunk.

He's drunk and he's teetering on the edge of a migraine. Maybe it's a hangover. Can you get a hangover while you're still drunk? He isn't sure, but maybe he's the first of his kind — hell, maybe this will make for an excellent term paper case study topic when the end of the semester rolls around.

You know, when he's not drunk anymore and feeling like he's about to be sick. That's only partially related to the alcohol, though.

Right now, he's preoccupying himself with wandering aimlessly around campus, contemplating his next move. He's got a sort of rhythm going—walk until his legs feel like jelly, then sit. Sit until he becomes too aware of his body and the absolute state of it, then stand. Stand until his stomach refuses to stand still anymore, wrestle with a bit of dry heaving over the nearest trash bin, etc. etc., rinse and repeat.

0.4% blood alcohol level is considered the fatal threshold. Teddy can't be anywhere near that, really — he'd had, what, a badly made cocktail? A bottle of beer he didn't even like? Callie had brought him a shot at one point — or no, two shots actually, definitely two — and he doesn't even really like drinking because it always gives him a migraine afterwards, but it was Callie and she'd been the one to invite him in the first place and she was just trying to include him.

Alcohol poisoning doesn't start until 0.3% blood alcohol level, and he can't be anywhere near that. Even if the legal limit is a much lower 0.08%. He wonders if he's at the legal limit. Not that Teddy plans on driving a car anytime soon — hell, he doesn't even own a car — but it would be bad if someone tested his blood and found him over the legal limit. Why would someone be testing his blood? He's not sure. Maybe they just looked at him, knew he was drunk, and decided to stick a needle in him. Is that how people test blood alcohol level? He's honestly not sure.

He tries to do some mental backwards math: if he has 4.5 liters of blood, the average amount for an adult female — though, doesn't testosterone sometimes result in a higher red blood cell count? He should probably account for that, right? He's honestly not sure he's been on T long enough for that to have any effect, but— okay, so 4.7 liters of blood. 4.75, maybe. If he has 4.75 liters of blood, then 0.08% of that would be…um. It would be… Well if he does the math backwards, then it would be around—

Okay, so maybe he's just…stalling a bit here. The problem is, he'd gotten all the way back to his apartment before realizing that he'd left his keys at the party. The problem is, his roommate is out of town, which means that he has to go back to get them.

The problem is is that going back to the house is near certain to bring him face to face with Sam once more, who was more than happy to keep partying away as Teddy slipped out the back, who is someone that Teddy absolutely, positively, one-hundred-and-ten percent does not want to see again tonight—

He sits on the nearest bench, forcing himself to breathe slower. He's just— he's too aware of his clothes right now. One of his socks has fallen down into his shoe. He's pretty sure his binder is on backwards, given the way its digging into his ribs. His lab coat feels too warm despite the chill of October, and he can't stop picking at his shirt where it's clinging to his underarms, or his pants where they're clinging to his. His—

Deep breaths, Teddy. You are absolutely not going to cry on a bench in central campus where anyone and their mother could see.

He just feels so stupid.

It's not that Sam is a bad person. It's not that Teddy can even bring himself to say he dislikes Sam. Sam's— he's Sam. Lots of people like Sam. He's two years ahead of Teddy and had TA'd his Intro to Human Anatomy class a few years back. He went to high school with Callie and Miles, who are just about the only two people in his year that Teddy’d be comfortable enough calling friends to someone asking.

Sure he can be— a little pushy, Teddy supposes. A bit loud. Those aren't sins, though, and Teddy's sure if he knew the guy better he might be able to conjure up a whole list of good things about him that don't start and end with he's tall and he's gay and showed interest in me. Surely. Definitely. He'd even offered to wear a condom after providing the lengthy, reasonable list of reasons that anal penetration wasn't a viable option currently. It hadn't been his fault that it'd broken. Of course not. That's no one's fault.

Except Teddy's, of course, who'd been the one to agree to the whole thing even with the floor-length list of reasons why he shouldn't, namely — he's drunk, he's an idiot, and if he doesn't get a shower soon he's quite certain he's going to burst into tears over the fact that he's sore and sticky and disgusting in the exact place that he does not want to be sore and sticky and disgusting. He's not sure if spreading his legs is making it better or worse.

He's trying not to think about it. He just needs to— to focus. Focus on getting his keys, right. Or…going somewhere else. Somewhere he can stay the night. The student gym is already closed. Maybe he could call someone? He's not even sure who he'd call at this point. Most of the people he'd loosely consider friends are at that party, and the rest are— well, he doesn't know. He doesn't have a lot of people's phone numbers, to be honest. Michael from his study group, which would probably be weird. His biochemistry professor. Fyn. Fyn's at a party though, he knows that.

Teddy checks his phone anyway, a measly 7% battery left proudly displayed in the corner of the screen. He should probably charge that. His charger is at home. His keys are still at that party. Teddy does not want to go back to that party. He thinks he's going to be sick again. He stands up, walks to the nearest bin, and stands over it for a moment until the feeling of nausea subsides once more.

Phone charger. The library has those. The library is nearby and still open. He could go there and charge his phone. It still doesn't solve his key problem or the god-awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, which is stupid and pointless and his own fault for feeling, but it's something to do. Somewhere to sit for a moment out of the night air.

Teddy digs his nails into the palm of his hands to ground himself. Focus, Teddy, focus. He steps away from the bin, willing himself not to be sick. Then he scrubs his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his lab coat, takes an unsteady breath, and heads to the library.

At least that's a place he's familiar with crying in.

***

Fyn: Ext. Main Campus, Night

Fyn walks in weaving steps along the curb around the roundabout near the quad, each foot placed like a tightrope walker, their arms out and waving for balance. They half sing, half shout the opening number from Beetlejuice: The Musical until they take an odd step and slip off the curb, nearly twisting their ankle.

They laugh uproariously at themselves, head thrown back and stumbling a few steps into the road. They grin up at the stars– it's beautiful out, and they can see the stars so well here, which is one of the only really great things about being in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire– and continue to spin around, arms flung wide.

They've had a wonderful night. After that first little snafu, they’d found Em’s place with so few problems it was almost uncanny. There’d been a dozen new people to meet, and Em knows how to throw a party that would put Fyn’s parents to– well, to the shame they’d never experienced.

Em had also had substantially better drinks than the frat house. Fyn had made a few drinks of their own with special ingredients pilfered from Quest’s roommate who was, apparently, “from Europe where stuff like this is legal.” Fyn hadn't received a satisfactory answer about how the roommate had made it through customs, which had to be a good story if it was true, but they also certainly hadn't passed up the opportunity for maybe-illegal definitely-questionable substances.

They're glad they hadn't. They feel great.

The noise of a few people talking and walking from around the corner of the student center makes Fyn's head whip up. They've been staring at the sky for a bit, they realize. They wave cheerfully to the group. A girl in a decomposing mummy costume waves back, but she's the only one who notices Fyn.

Fyn doesn't mind. They like walking around the campus at night, feeling like a ghost. People often don't notice them, and they get to feel like they're part of the buildings, and the trees, watching the ever-changing, ant-like students crawl all over the campus as if it's not wildland waiting to rise up beneath. As if it's tamed.

Fyn kicks off their shoes and drags their feet through the damp grass as they weave through the shadows of the buildings. They don't want to go back to their apartment. Their roommate is back home in Tennessee for her brother's wedding, and Fyn doesn't feel like sitting in that cold, empty place by themselves.

They could have stayed at the party. They should have stayed at the party. Except one of Em’s partners was visiting from off-campus, and there was a whole lot of sappy goo-goo eyes and hand-holding and other overtly romantic things going on that Fyn had felt very explicitly excluded from. The other newcomers had been interesting but cliquish, and nothing had gone farther than one of the handsome anthro students– also named Finn, ironically– copping a feel.

And Fyn hadn't felt like spending the night on Em’s couch when they knew what was happening in the bedrooms without them.

That's why they'd left early. Those are the reasons that make sense, anyway. They'd just felt like leaving. Sure, maybe it felt like something had been off since they'd gone to the wrong house. That niggling sense of something they'd left behind, that sense of impending doom, the restless need to get out when they don't want to go home– it's not real.

They can tell the difference between things that are real and not. They can. It’s just…sometimes it feels so real, and– no. They can't start this, not when they're still drunk and probably high. This is why psychos like you aren't supposed to mix drugs and alcohol, they remind themselves wryly. Drugs and other drugs and alcohol and druuuuuugs…

Fyn's thoughts and feet slow at the same time as they find themselves walking by Baker-Berry. Maybe it's some internalized need to be quiet by libraries. They see someone buzzing themselves in with their student card and squint at the white lab coat.

“Hey,” they say out loud, startling themselves. They turn their meandering towards the library, the door closing after the student.

It had been him, hadn't it? They're pretty sure. And, hey, going to the library isn't going home! Not to mention that Teddy owes them for unintentionally standing them up from across the room.

Fyn grins and follows Teddy into the building, their shoeless footsteps dancing and silent, their heart suddenly much lighter in their chest as it fills with the comfortable warmth of purpose.