— douze ; twelve —

"WHY DID YOU REALLY come here?"

Henri gripped the table at his back with two hands, needing something to steady him. "Fucks sake," Henri muttered, trying to think straight around the alcohol turning his body to candy floss. "Same reason you did. To play Exy."

Jude looked unconvinced by that answer. "Couldn't wait another two years until you joined us?"

"No."

"That doesn't make any sense," KJ interjected with a scowl. "The press is going to have a field day with you. Why would they break their rules to recruit you at such a young age?"

Henri smirked at him. "Must just be that good."

Whoever had thought that funnelling alcohol into his system before grilling him with questions was a good idea was a fucking idiot. Henri felt like he wasn't even living in his own body, the world a dark smudge filled with bright lights, and he couldn't focus on a single person long enough to see them. See them properly, that is. He knew the person pinning him against the table was Jude and his expression was inexplicably murderous as he leant forward in Henri's face.

"There's something about your family," he said. "Jean was the same. Acting all weird. You're both hiding from something — someone. I want answers."

"That...isn't a question."

"Who are you?" he pressed. "Really?"

"Henri Sebastian Moreau."

Jude snatched up a glass from the table and dumped it over his head. He gasped as the cold liquid and ice cubes spilled over his skin, tasting alcohol as it touched his lips, but it managed to wake him up a little and shake a little of the disorientation away.

"What the hell do you want me to say?" Henri said through gritted teeth. "That's the only answer I can give, you fucking asshole. Leave me the hell alone."

Jude had another glass in hand before Henri could react but Xander caught his wrist before he could throw the contents in Henri's face again. "Hey," Xander frowned. "He answered the question. Lay off, Jude."

"Mind your own fucking business," Jude snarled.

"Xander has a point," Matthias said. "We all know you're just pissed off at the rookie because of Soren. Why don't you just ask him the question you really care about?" Matthias looked at Henri with a curious tilt of his head. "How did you manage to get his attention?"

Henri blinked. "What?"

"I've seen the way he watches you. We all have." Matthias indicated to Jude, whose jaw was working with barely contained fury. "Why do you think Jude is so annoyed at you? Soren follows you with his eyes, not just on the court, in a way he never watched Ju — "

Jude threw himself at Matthias before he could finish that sentence, knocking into him with enough force that they both hit the floor. Henri scrambled back to avoid being caught in the tussle, but he still didn't have complete control over his body, and ended up crashing into one of the nearby tables. He staggered to his feet with a groan to see a crowd converging around Matthias and Jude, but he didn't stick around to see the outcome. Something told him Jude would be coming for him next.

He fought through the crush of people, without any particularly direction but away from the upperclassmen. He felt like he was drowning in bodies until he finally found the bar curving around the edge of the room, grabbing one of the barstools to keep himself upright. He felt a little like he was floating on a cloud and a little like throwing up. It was a bizarre combination, and something told him the upperclassmen weren't finished forcing drinks down his throat to the point he wouldn't remember this night. He needed to sober up a little before that happened.

One of the bartenders stopped before him. "You alright?"

"No." Henri waved a hand. "I need some water."

"Not what I usually hear," the bartender smiled, pouring out a glass of water and sliding it across to him, "but sure thing."

He downed five glasses before his head felt a little clearer and he could look around the room without feeling like everything was fuzzing away at the edges. He was wondering how much longer he could avoid the upperclassmen when someone slid into the barstool next to him. Matthias looked a little worse for wear, a red mark blooming across his cheekbone where Jude had no doubt struck him across the face, but he was still smiling when Henri looked at him.

"The others are looking for you," he commented. "They're not happy you ditched us so soon, hm?"

"So what, you're here to drag me back?"

"Maybe," Matthias said. "But not until I've done this."

He leant forward and captured Henri's face between his hands. Henri didn't resist as Matthias's lips found his and instead curled his fingers in the fabric of his shirt, tugging Matthias closer towards him. This felt easier when he was drunk, everything loose and careless between them — he had no inhibitions left that told him not to do this. His lips parted on a low involuntary moan when Matthias dragged his hands into his hair, curling his fingers through the strands, and Henri felt him grin against his lips in response.

"Stop smiling," Henri growled against his lips. "Fucking stop it."

Matthias's grin only widened. "Make me?"

Henri bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood, and Matthias's fingers involuntarily tightened in his hair to the point it hurt. Henri liked the pain — it brought him back to his senses, returned a little of feeling to his numb skin. He snaked his hands around the back of Matthias's neck, dragging blunt fingernails across his skin, and the next thing he knew he was on his lap. He tilted his head down and forced Matthias's mouth open, enjoying feeling like the one in control for once. Matthias led him lead the kiss and seemed content just exploring Henri's mouth.

"Oh, Jesus," a loud and indignant voice said. "Seriously?"

Henri broke away and placed his hands against Matthias's chest, creating some distance between the two of them despite the fact they were still sharing the same barstool. Aria was standing in front of them, hands on her hips and rolling her brown eyes.

"We sent you to find him and bring him back, Matty," Aria said scornfully. "Not make out with him at the bar. I knew we should have sent KJ to get him."

Matthias swiped a thumb across his lip and laughed in disbelief at the light smear of blood. "Little fucker bit me," he said, looking up at Henri with a grin. "Do you always kiss as aggressively as you play Exy?"

Henri pushed off from Matthias's chest and stumbled a little as he found his feet, still feeling unsteady and lightheaded. "I'm not drinking anymore," he warned, ignoring Matthias. "I won't."

Aria laughed. "It's cute that you think you have a choice."

Henri was hauled back to their table and saw someone had restocked their drinks, more trays piled up high. Henri had no idea how they were affording these colossal amounts of alcohol and he didn't get a chance to question it when Benjamin forced a glass into his hand. It wasn't a shot glass but filled with deep brown liquid — Henri didn't know what it was, and he didn't want to know. Benjamin didn't give him a chance to reject it.

"Drink up, shortstuff," he demanded. "We didn't say to stop, did we?"

The rest of Henri's night was a fragmented mess of random memories he couldn't make sense of. Broken glass shattering to pieces, flashing lights of every colour, and lips that tasted like alcohol. If asked to recall the events of the night, Henri wouldn't have been able to remember much more than Jude tackling Matthias and Matthias kissing him. Whatever else happened, whatever he might have said or done, was a huge gap in his memory. The last thing he remembered was waking up as someone piled him into the back of a car and then falling asleep again before the car had even started up again.

He was half-conscious when he felt himself being lifted but it took his muddled brain a few minutes to understand the strange rocking motion wasn't the car but someone carrying him. "Woah, calm down," Matthias said, when Henri began struggling to break free. "We're nearly there, just — "

Henri kicked out with as much force as possible and hit the floor with a hard thud. The impact knocked the breath out of him and he pushed himself up into a sitting position, struggling to catch his breath. "Fucks sake, Matthias," Alixis hissed. "You're going to wake the whole fucking team up."

Henri blinked around the stars in his eyes and saw they were back in the Nest. The lights were off but someone had flicked on the lampshade in the corner, casting a faint yellow glow that outlined the room bright enough to see. Even though he was sitting down and knew he wasn't moving, Henri still felt like he was falling and had to dig his fingers into the carpet in an attempt to reorientate himself.

"Not my fault," Matthias protested in a whisper. "He's the one who jumped!"

"Just get him to his room."

Henri batted his hand away when he reached down to pull him up and grabbed the back of the sofa instead, pushing himself to his feet. "I can walk," he grumbled, leaning against the sofa as he waited for the feeling to return to his legs. "Leave me alone."

Matthias raised his hands in defence. "Fine, fine. You start walking, then."

It took Henri too long to make it down the Black Hall, a lot of fumbling and grabbing at the wall, but he finally made it to his door. "Fuck," he cursed, unable to work the door handle. He couldn't get his fingers to work how he wanted. "Fucking open — "

The door suddenly gave way under his weight and fell forward into the room, losing his balance. He couldn't stop a groan leaving his mouth as he pitched to the floor and he was too dizzy to get up again, instead rolling over onto his back. There was a flicker of light as a bedside lamp came on and then Soren was standing over him, staring down at him. His golden hair was a rumpled mess from sleep and he was wearing only sweatpants, same as he did every night.

"What the hell did they do to you?"

"Drunk," Henri admitted, draping an arm across his eyes. "Really drunk."

"Of course you are," he muttered. "It's three in the morning and we have practice. You need to get into bed."

Soren waited a beat, but Henri didn't want to move. "Pass," he mumbled. "I'll sleep here."

"Don't be stupid."

"I like that. You being so predictably irritating," Henri said, moving his arm down to peer up at Soren. "It's...refreshing. If that's the word. Refreshing," he repeated, in French. It sounded much nicer in his language so he continued speaking in it. "Everything is so heavy and cumbersome in English. We should all just speak French. It would be so much easier."

Soren sighed. "Can you save your drunken babbling for later?"

"But it wouldn't be drunken then."

Soren gave up on conversation and reached down to grab Henri's arm, attempting to pull him up. "You could help me here," Soren said through gritted teeth. "Maybe by being a little less uncooperative."

"But that wouldn't be as fun, would it? Ha," he chuckled, flopping back to the floor when Soren managed to get him upright. "This is the most fun I've had all night. You're more fun than the upperclassmen. Except, technically, you're an upperclassman too, aren't you? But you don't hang around with them and you aren't one of them. Is it because of Jude?"

Soren had leant down to yank him to his feet but froze at the final question. "What did they say to you?" he demanded.

"Now you're listening." Henri grinned up at him and wondered whether Soren's eyes were always this green. "You have to sit down or I'm not telling you."

Soren growled under his breath. "Henri — "

"Hey, hey, that's not how the game works." Henri wagged a finger in his face and wished he was a little closer. He settled for reaching out to grab his shoulder, his skin warm beneath his fingers, and pulled him down to the floor. "There. Isn't that better?"

"I'm this close to punching you in the face," Soren warned.

"Mhm, yeah. I won't tell you about Jude if you do that."

Soren shifted to get into a more comfortable position but didn't move away, so his knee was still pressed against Henri's thigh. They were sitting closer than they needed to but the small voice at the back of Henri's had taken over his mind now that he was drunk, and was telling him they needed to be closer. He shuffled across the floor slightly and Soren looked at him, but still didn't move away.

"I don't care about anything he has to say about me," Soren said in a short tone. "His opinion is irrelevant to me."

"Really?" Henri was rewarded with tense and angry silence. "Well, he didn't actually say anything. It was more what he didn't say. He poured alcohol on my head. He's a jackass."

"So are you."

Henri turned his head to look at him. "Must be your type, then."

Their faces were close than Henri had been expecting, only a few inches between them, and Henri felt a flicker of heat when Soren swallowed. His pupils were huge and dilated, his irises reduced to narrow green bands as he asked, "Who said you're my type?"

Henri responded by leaning forward and kissing him.

For three weeks, Henri had been trying and almost succeeding in telling himself that he wasn't attracted to Soren. It wasn't hard at first, when he was nothing more than an arrogant prick who cut him off at any corner. He was still arrogant and he was still a prick, but then he was an arrogant prick who would drive him to hospital in the middle of the night and who tolerated him with questionable patience. Henri didn't like him, wouldn't like him, but couldn't help wondering over the past few days what kissing him would feel like. What his lips would taste like and how his hair would feel between his fingers.

Now he was kissing him and it was so much better than he expected.

Henri hadn't been prepared for the rush of warmth that would spread down from his lips and through his whole body at the first touch of Soren's mouth on his, or how that warmth blazed into an inferno when Soren pushed him down, hot hands pinning him to the floor. Kissing Matthias had been fun. Kissing Soren felt like breathing for the first time and he didn't know how he'd survived so long without it. It didn't matter that he was drunk, because every one of his nerve endings was set alight when Soren propped himself above Henri, his body a strong and reassuring weight against Henri's.

"Still as scrawny as ever," Soren murmured against his lips.

Henri responded to that by rolling over to flip their positions, so he was the one straddling Soren, and shifted back until he heard the breath catch in the back of Soren's throat. "Scrawny?" Henri murmured back, trailing his lips down from his mouth until he reached the soft spot where his neck met his jaw. His own heart picked up pace when he felt the rapid beat Soren's pulse was making against his lips. "Are you sure?"

"Don't get cocky," Soren said, but any threat in his words fell apart at his breathless tone.

Henri bit gently at the tender area of skin beneath his mouth. He was just following his instincts without really knowing what he was doing, but every muscle in his body tensed with pleasure at the moan Soren gave. Henri wanted nothing more than to hear that sound leave his lips again and brought his mouth back up to meet Soren's, drinking up his taste. Soren raised himself into a sitting position without breaking the kiss, gripping Henri's hips to hold him in place and pulling him even closer. Henri moved his hands down in the nonexistent space between them, tracing the smooth lines and ridges of his muscles, needing to feel that skin against his own.

Soren seemed to be having similar thoughts, because he pulled away long enough to whip Henri's shirt off. Waves of pleasure rolled down his spine as Soren's fingers teased his chest, moving slowly down his torso as if trying to memorise every curve. Henri shivered when Soren pressed a hand flat against his abdomen, where the Master had bruised him with the cane and made him bleed from the inside.

Soren tensed slightly. "It still hurts?"

"No," Henri said. "Not at all."

Henri didn't know how long they sat like that, slowly coming apart in the heat of Soren's mouth, when the sinful amount of alcohol he'd drunk finally took effect. He wrenched away from Soren at the sudden wave of nausea that hit him, thinking for a horrified second he was about to throw up on him, which proved to be a mistake. The sudden movement only made his roiling stomach worse.

"Shit," Henri gasped, staggering to his feet. "Gonna throw up."

Luckily for him, the toilet was a mere few steps away. He knelt on the tiled floor as he threw up all the alcohol the upperclassmen had forced on him and slumped forward when he finally finished emptying his stomach. Now that he didn't have Soren's lips as a distraction, he could appreciate how shit he felt. The cloudy buzz was wearing off and a headache was taking it's place, along with a dry mouth and the lingering nausea that told him he'd be spending the night throwing up.

"You're an idiot," Soren said.

Henri cracked an eye open to see him standing in the doorway. "This feels familiar." Minus the part where I'd just made out with you and really fucking enjoyed it.

"Except this time it's self-inflicted from reckless drinking."

Henri didn't have the breath or energy to defend himself. "I don't think I can go to practice."

"I don't think you have a choice," Soren frowned. "The Master won't tolerate this."

"It's not my fault they forced me to drink."

"Do you think the Master will take that as an excuse? Ravens aren't allowed to drink."

Henri looked up at him. "They were all drinking tonight."

"I said they aren't allowed, not that they don't," Soren said. "But when they do risk it, they never allow it to get out of hand because a hangover is something that keeps you off the court and isn't tolerated by the Master."

"Maybe it isn't a hangover. He doesn't know. Can I pretend I'm dying?"

Soren's lips twitched. "You will be when he finds out what happened."

"Yeah," Henri sighed. "Probably."

Henri turned his head when another wave of nausea gripped him but he'd already brought everything up and could only retch. From the amount of times he'd thrown up in the past couple of week, Henri was surprised he hadn't rubbed his throat raw by now. There was no point in returning to his bed for sleep, seeing as he'd be back in here in ten minutes, and Soren seemed to have figured that out too. Henri didn't turn to watch as he returned to the bedroom and flicked the lights off, but he heard when silence settled over the room. Henri folded a towel on the floor to act as a makeshift pillow and thought about whether that kiss had changed anything between them.

Probably not. Henri still thought Soren was conceited and Soren still thought Henri wasn't good enough — he told him everyday. Hadn't Soren been the one to tell him hook ups never meant anything? It was all just purely physical. Jude had said the same thing about Soren, when he thought Henri was sleeping with him — always quick to draw the line. The line was already drawn between them and Henri wasn't stupid enough to cross it. Emotional attachments to Ravens was a disaster waiting to happen.

Still, that didn't stop Henri drifting off into a restless sleep dreaming about Soren's lips against his.