WARNING: Drug references and usage

ushil had never had weed in any state of matter—edibles, smoking, or otherwise. Based on experience, Lee kept Rushil to his side after they forked over thirty bucks for two Strong As Hell brownies. A full brownie for Lee and half of one for Rushil.

The lights were dim and the air was clearer and less hazy. The smoking section was on the top floor of the building. Lee and Rushil left the vendor room on the second floor where a line of people stood in the hallway chatting and mingling.

"Since this is your first time," Lee started as they stepped down the narrow corridor to the balcony, "you're probably just gonna get sleepy. It'll take forty-five minutes for you to even feel anything, got it?"

"Geez, you know a lot about weed. I don't know why I'm surprised," Rushil said as he accepted the half-brownie from Lee.

They leant up against the brick siding of the house with their feet pushed to the base of the iron railing. Lee unwrapped his brownie—it was still warm from the oven and soft and moist against his fingertips. Rushil and Lee tipped their brownies together like they were cheering the New Year before taking their first bites.

Roland wasn't wrong—it did taste like ass. Lee preferred edibles over smoking any day, though, so he downed it fast and gagged a little at the taste. He brushed his hands off on his jeans and looked to Rushil, who looked entirely too disgusted to finish the last half of his brownie piece.

Rushil stuck his tongue out and held it out to Lee. "Don't like that," he rasped out, coughing.

Lee laughed and said, "What, so you want me to take it?" Rushil nodded. Lee took it and popped it in his mouth. "Whatever, dude," he said, mouth full.

They stood on the balcony for a while longer overlooking Frat Row. There was music playing from the first floor, and they could hear people shouting and whooping upstairs. It sounded like some karaoke was going on, and Lee and Rushil laughed at the tone-deaf singers that were out of view.

Eventually, Lee turned to Rushil and said, "Hey, I wanted to ask you something."

Rushil folded his arms and said, "Sure, what's up?"

Lee opened his mouth but his voice was drowned out by a bright-haired girl popping out of the balcony door. Rushil startled with a curse, turning to where Olivia leaned out with a hand on the doorframe and a serious frown on her face. Lee was almost certain she was incapable of smiling without looking like a psychopath anyway.

She narrowed her eyes at them and said, "How come you two didn't come find me when you got here."

Lee held up his empty brownie wrapper and said, "Got distracted."

Olivia snapped her fingers at him and said, "How long ago did you take that."

"Like, fifteen minutes?"

"Good. We've got thirty for you to show off in the basement. I brought some girls from the club, and there's a pole downstairs. I wanna see what you can do."

"A pole? As in pole dancing?" Rushil said, amazed. Olivia was already marching off, fully expecting them to follow. Rushil put a hand to his forehead and staggered into the hallway. He turned back to Lee to whisper, "This is crazy! First weed and now pole dancing."

"Parties aren't usually like this," Lee said, but then again, he had a weird-ass high school experience, what with Sen as his older brother.

They followed after Olivia's red hair as went down the stairs and down a black lit hallway. Her hair turned a vibrant magenta in the light, glowing brilliantly in the bluish dark. Lee's hair and Rushil's t-shirt under his flannel glowed bright white. Rushil hurried alongside Lee, a giddy smile on his face. Lee elbowed him in the side with a laugh as they turned down the stairwell heading to the basement.

Kappa kept their dance floor to the basement. There were bedrooms on the far side of the basement, separated by a corridor that ended with the stairwell on one side and a door to the backyard at the other. They broke away through an archway to the dance floor where the music consolidated into a constant, drumming pulse in Lee's chest.

True to Olivia's word, there was indeed a pole up near the DJ and there was a girl already tearing it up. It was obvious that she knew what she was doing, as Lee knew the amount of core strength required to be able to flip around the pole like that. He had never been able to do it and never attempted after his first failure as a pole dancer several years prior when Sen took him to a gay strip club with a fake ID. Lee had went mostly against his will, but had tried out the poles on his own voluntary will.

Lee crossed his arms as they lingered at the outskirts of the people dancing. It was tamer at Kappa, but no less exciting. Lee could see actual space between the people, and it looked as though a crowd and formed around a select few taking turns as the star of the dance floor.

Olivia emerged from the crowd with a select few girls from her dancing club. Lee was startled by the intrusion and barely managed to grasp the things that were said or the things he agreed to. Before he knew it, they were dragging him by both hands to the center of the circle and expecting him to dance to a song he'd never heard in his life.

Lee staggered out amidst the chaos of people chanting and cheering encouragingly. He smiled weakly to all of them before at last circling around to where Olivia stood with him.

And then, the bass dropped.

I can get down to this, he thought, stretching his arms up over his head.

Lee spread his feet apart and dropped his arms back. He rocked his shoulders to the motion of his ankles rolling, his feet shifting fluidly in place with all the elements of the moonwalk. He rotated around before tipping to the side when the chorus picked up with the motion of his hands over his head. When he looked at Olivia, she was nodded in approval and sidling in to join him.

They swapped dance moves and, likewise, Olivia and the girls taught him entirely new shit he'd never attempted before. Rushil joined in and the dance floor commenced as it had before the circle formed. They all laughed and giggled over their failed attempts before ever realizing that it was because they were giddy from the high.

Lee didn't realize he was affected at all by the brownie until he was on the pole and it hit him like a brick to the face. One moment he was swinging around and leaping in the air, and the next he couldn't stop smiling.

If he didn't look like such a crazed toddler flinging himself around the pole, it might have been sweet. Then again, holding Rushil's head to his and giggling made him look more or less deranged. He felt so light and fluffy inside, like his brain was made of cotton.

He and Rushil swayed together on the dance floor during some hardcore rap song. Lee had his arms around Rushil's neck while Rushil hugged his torso. They rocked back and forth as the lights flashed around them and spiraled in colors of blue and yellow, red and green. Rushil put his head to Lee's shoulder and it felt like they were one slow song away from melting and dribbling into the cracks in the concrete under their feet.

"Oh, hey Milo," Rushil hummed near Lee's ear.

Lee pulled away a little, eyes bleary. He glanced over at where Milo Park was standing, staring at them with wide, energetic eyes. Milo beamed at him and Lee's wide smile spread wider.

"Hey guys, what're you two up to?" Milo said.

In that moment, Lee wanted to hug the shit out of Milo. He wanted to put his arms around Milo's neck and his legs around Milo's waist and hold on as tightly as his poor, sore arms and legs could manage.

But for now, Lee was hugging Rushil.

"I had a quarter of a brownie and Lee had one and a quarter," Rushil explained.

Milo's eyes widened and he leant forward saying, "Wait, are you serious? Dude, I heard they put the wrong ratio in."

"What do you mean?" Rushil asked.

"Someone put the whole stash into the brownies. There's, like, three hundred dollars worth of weed in the first batch," he explained.

"Holy shit, who fucked that up?" Rushil said. He tried backing away from Lee, but Lee would have none of it. The fear of losing Rushil in the crowd was compounded by the spike in his anxiety that had been numbed by the comfort of Rushil's arms around him. He felt it tingling up his spine like nails on a chalkboard, urging him to hold on and never let go.

Rushil whined for him to stop, but Lee's smile was gone and replaced with a teary-eyed frown. His throat felt tight as he clutch onto Rushil's arm and said, "Don't leave me—Rushil, I don't want you to disappear—"

"Is—Is he okay?" Milo said, brow furrowed with concern.

"I'm not going anywhere," Rushil reassured, giving Lee a pat on the hand and a discrete nudge to get his hands off.

Heat built up behind Lee's eyes. He could feel the moving bodies around him, crushing in now that the smoking period was over and done with. There were so many people tightening his lungs and wringing his nerves into knots. If Rushil walked away, he'd disappear into the thickening crowd and Lee would never see him again.

Before he could stop it, tears started to drip from his eyelashes.

Rushil startled forward, his hands going to Lee's cheeks. "Oh, fuck, dude—It's okay, I'm right here—"

"Y-You're gonna disappear," Lee stammered, lips quivering.

"What happened? Why's he crying?" Milo demanded, pushing up beside Rushil as Lee rubbed his eyes dry on his sweater. Milo put his hand on Lee's back.

"I'm gonna disappear?" Rushil whispered, eyes wide and dilated.

Lee nodded as he put his head to Rushil's shoulder. Rushil put his arm around Lee's back as Lee said, "If you leave me, you'll be gone. Thin air—poof."

"Shit, no way," Rushil breathed against Lee's hair. "Dude, don't let me go."

Lee sniffled and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He felt Milo's hand gently nudging him forward, and eventually, he realized that they were moving through the crowd and out of the middle of the mosh pit where he and Rushil had been slow dancing to Nicki Minaj.

Milo walked them down the black lit hallway. Lee felt the spacetime continuum warping around them and spinning the world into a web around them. It clung to his skin and reminded him that he needed to hold onto Rushil or risk losing him forever to the black hole void of the party. Somehow, they arrived at the first floor after a treacherous journey up the stairs in which Rushil had to physically prompt Lee to even take a step. The third dimension felt so unreal and unfathomable that to transfer his weight up a Y-axis was just too much for his mind to comprehend. He closed his eyes and let Milo and Rushil take the wheel.

When they at last collapsed onto the living room couch, Lee pulled his knees up to his chest and huddled into Rushil. Over his head, Rushil said to Milo, "Dude, you don't have to stick around us. I can take care of Lee."

"I don't mind," Milo said. "How are you feeling?"

"Sleepy but okay."

Rushil pressed his cheek to Lee's hair and glanced over at Milo. Milo had his arm around the back cushion, looking at Rushil expectantly, like he was anticipating something. Rushil was, by no means, going to relinquish Lee into the hands of his fuck boy of a roommate. Besides, Rushil was exhausted. The dancing coupled with the smash effect of the edibles made him feel as though he had partied for a dozen hours before just now sitting down.

Rushil looked down and found Lee's eyes closed. He glanced over at Milo again, nibbling on his bottom lip. Milo drew his eyes up from where he had been watching Lee. Rushil narrowed his eyes at Milo.

"What?" Milo said.

"Stop looking at him," Rushil said, defensively. It made him feel queazy thinking about the way Lee looked when he admitted that he and Milo would never be a "thing". Truthfully, it broke his heart to realize that Lee had spent all semester pining over his idiot of a roommate, only for it to end before it ever could begin because of Milo's superficial dating life.

Milo rolled his eyes away and said, "Fine, I won't look at him if you tell me why." With that, his eyes landed on Rushil again.

It was Rushil's turn to roll his eyes. "'Cause I don't want you to hurt him. I know your tendencies and I know Lee's a longterm type of guy. I don't know what happened between you guys but I know you really pissed Lee off."

"What makes you think I pissed him off?"

Rushil looked down from where Milo's eyes never wavered on his. He swallowed hard and shook his head. "When he's upset he doesn't like to show it. He said he was fine but I just... don't believe him, I guess?" He yawned then, slumping back in the cushions with Lee at his shoulder. "You going on dates with other people when you've got a perfectly good specimen right here is fucked up, dude. I'm sorry, but it is."

He hesitated to look up at Milo. When he did, though, he found Milo's eyes had settled at his lap. The hand he had over the back cushion rubbed idly at the seam, and Rushil could feel the guilt in all this and more. Milo lifted his eyes to meet Rushil's as he said, "I know I fucked up."

Rushil nodded. He didn't know what to say to that. He almost wished Milo had been more of an insincere fuck boy who Rushil could despise without consequence. He wanted Milo to say, "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know," like Rushil was his mom nagging him about cleaning the dishes just so he could call Milo out for being an asshole to his best friend.

Instead, Milo held up his phone and swiped through the screens for Rushil to see. "I deleted Tinder. I'm working on it," he promised.

Rushil nodded again. "Good. I'll... hold you accountable."

Milo laughed softly, lowering his phone. "Okay. I'm depending on you, then," he said.