𖤐 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑭𝑶𝑼𝑹:
╰┈➤ drunkenly beautiful ༉‧₊˚.

OXFORD WAS NOTHING IF NOT IT'S PARTIES. LED and strobe lights surrounded, green in one room, purple in the other. And the place reeked of sweaty young adults and booze.

The party scene never was something Meredith enjoyed, she just stayed for the company--and because she didn't know how to say no to any of the dozens of invites she'd receive.

Max had been on her left, drinking up a storm and urging her to do the same. He was wearing a blue and white striped polo that now wore stains from both sweat and alcohol. The poor boy was probably one of the drunkest here, and Meredith knew that her conscience wasn't going to allow him to get taken care of by anyone else.

"I'm going to use the restroom." She shouted over the music, yet still somehow kept grace and ingenuity in her voice.

Max nodded, but still, barely paid any mind to her--which Meredith wasn't sure was a blessing or not.

She wasn't actually going to the restroom, she just wanted to get out of that god-awful room. Instead, she went out the front door and leaned over the porch's railing. There had been a boy beside her, he had short-trimmed blonde hair and was wearing a plain black t-shirt. He had a cigarette between his lips and with single look at the motion, you could see the multitude of tattoos he had painted across each one of his hands and up his forearms.

"You want one?" he asked, voice gruff as he shook the cigarette cartridge, leaving two cigarettes out to grab.

Meredith shook her head at first--she didn't drink, didn't smoke. She focused on her studies and refuted anything that would get in the way of that. However, tonight, she was feeling rather on-edge and daring. She blinked, looking back at the boy before nodding. "Actually, yeah."

He gave a slight side-smirk with the corner of his lip, which almost scared Meredith. Slowly taking the loose cigarette, she froze. "You didn't lace this or anything, right?"

The question was stupid, obviously, but so was accepting a cigarette from a stranger.

He pulled the paper from between his lips and blew out a huff of smoke, fighting a laugh. "No, I didn't lace it."

She offered an awkward smile, but didn't say anything. Just placed it between her lips and waited for him to light the tip.

Once he did, she inhaled and felt the warm air at the roof of her mouth, but it went down too fast for her to catch it and before she knew it, she was coughing.

The boy across from her coughed out a laugh of his own at Meredith's suffering but Meredith's entire body was now flushed with warmth from embarrassment.

"I don't think smoking is for me." she said, once finally recovered.

The boy agreed with a nod. "Your first time?"

She nodded. "Is it that obvious?"

He gave another one of those half-grins, giving her an answer without saying anything at all.

She shared a laugh with him before returning her cigarette to him--which he soon placed between his lips after finishing his bud.

"I'm going to go back inside now." Meredith laughed once again, immediately shooting light out of her like the sun.

He nodded, and she slipped back inside, where Max had been currently dancing up against the stripper pole in the center of the living room.

Meredith, however, took this as a blessing to go and get a drink of her own in the kitchen.

AFTER A CUP AND A HALF OF BOOZE, Meredith took it upon herself to go back to the next room over, which didn't have coloured lighting anymore, but did have Oliver and Felix sitting on the sofa.

Meredith's tolerance for booze always was immensely low. She'd been just a few sips into her punch--or so she had thought, until looking down and seeing that half of it was now gone from her red solo cup--and was already starting to stumble in her heels and her entire memory was fogged. She was wasted.

She'd nearly toppled over herself trying to make her way onto the couch where Felix and Oliver were. Plopping down onto the small area of free space between the arm of the sofa and Felix, she beamed up at Felix. "Hi."

He watched over her body, analyzing her expressions and the utter emptiness in the girl's eye, he could tell right away that she'd been drunk—anyone could.

Meredith rarely did ever drink, but when she did, she was always with Felix. It was surely a trust thing for the girl; as if she didn't trust anyone that wasn't Felix enough to take care of her while in such a diluted mental state.

"What's got you so excited, hmm?" He asked her, a smile of his own forming at the bliss written in her smile.

She draped her leg over his with a teasing grin—that somehow still implied innocence—and that utter look of glimmer in her brown eye before taking a sip from her beverage. "Nothing."

Felix shook his head, taking the cup from between her lips, humming. "No more of that for you."

Meredith rolled her head back, puckering her red-painted lips out in pout, reaching for the plastic cup like a baby reaching for a bottle. "No, give it back."

"No," Felix shook his head, taking his own sip out of it before reclining his own head in complaint. "You're such a mean drunk."

Her lips gaped apart, swatting a drunken hand at him. "Am not!"

"Are too!" He laughed in response, then proceeded to place his hand on the top of her knee, tapping it as a command for her to take it off of his thigh. "Mere, we have classes in the morning. I can't be there to take care of you."

Meredith batted her eyelashes at him. "Like you go to class anyhow."

He gave her a playful smirk, taking one final sip from Meredith's cup before placing it on the side table beside the drunk girl's head.

Meredith then noticed Oliver sitting there, her face lit with familiarity. "Oh, Ollie! Hi!"

She rose from the couch and slummed her way over to his lap. He immediately stiffened beneath her, his entire body tense with sudden nervousness because Meredith Archibald was sitting on his lap.

"Hi." He managed to get the word out without stuttering somehow.

Felix chuckled once again at the scene unfolding before his eyes. "Mere, you're startling the poor fellow."

Meredith then fell back entirely, her head now on Felix's lap while her torso remained on Oliver's.

Mere gave him that thousand-dollar-smile she was always so good at doing—even when drunk—and reached up to ruffle his hair.

He returned the smile—or, mimicked it—almost as if Meredith's smile was contagious, like the best kind of virus you could possibly get. "We should get you back to your dorm, hmm?"

"No," the brunette frowned. "you have to dance with me first."

Felix raised his eyebrow with amusement. "Is that right?" 

With the subtle movement, it made Meredith want to reach up and run her thumb gently against the stud pierced into the skin of his brow; like she had many times in the dozens of mornings she'd spent awakening in his bed.

Meredith's smile threatened to grow now, at the memory, but she bit it carefully with intent. "Yeah."

His brown eyes looked into her own in awe for a moment. Meredith was so breathtakingly beautiful and enchanting and yet, she was here. Smiling up at him. He hummed. "What would your boyfriend think?" 

The Archibald girl rolled her eyes. Felix knew Max wasn't Meredith's boyfriend. He was just edging her on with a teasing half-smile. 

"He'll cope." she replied with a sluggish, drunken smile before she took hold of his hand.

She let out a loose giggle and jumped up from the boys' laps before going to the center of the floor and began moving to the music with a wicked grin on her face, lighting up her entire body behind that dress. 

"You really like her, mate. I can tell." Oliver quips from beside Felix, observing the way the boy watches her like she's the stars in the night sky. 

Felix doesn't move his eyes off of Meredith. No boy in the room could--not with the attention she drew with only her presence. He took one final sip from Meredith's half-empty cup. "Oh, I'm in love with her, mate." 

Oliver hums in amusement--or, rather, faux amusement. Oliver, too, found a deep fondness for the girl since he first laid eyes on her. But he wasn't so empty-minded about it. 

Felix Catton said the words with such ease, like it was just a known fact to the world with no doubt about it. He was in love with Meredith Archibald. 

"Are you going to marry her?" Oliver asked, but Felix didn't pay much mind to the question at hand. 

"If I can help it." He grinned from ear-to-ear as he faced Oliver before jumping up and going to join Meredith in the center of the dance floor.