your lipstick stain is a work of art.

"Find somewhere else to –" go have sex please, god, assholes he’s about to say when someone, a girl, giggles, saying oh. It’s you. Ted looks up and sees a dark haired girl, her cheers flushed warm. It takes him a minute to place her – it’s the eyes, that trigger the memory. “Oh shit!” he says, eyes widdening in recognition.

“Looks clean,” she nods before turning back to look at him, sprawled inside the bathtub looking like a miserable piss baby. “I mean, of course probably cause you never use it. Right?” She takes a sip of her drink. “My friend draged me here. What’s your story?”

She laughs (at her own joke) and tries to settle herself at the edge of the bathtub but slips, and falls right in. Andromeda lets out a small oof, muttering some curse as her arse lands hard on the surface of the tub. The drink she’s holding (a half empty cup of beer; and not the good stuff) spills, some landing on her, and some on him. 

 He hates Gabe Saporta parties. They’re always too fucking ridiculous –themes, costumes, elaborate plans and they’re so rowdy. Ted wishes he’d stayed home. He could have gotten drunk in the basement and probably lured Lily down to watch some David Lynch movies at two in the morning. But Brendon Urie had showed up at the store as Ted was pulling the gate closed and begged Ted to go with him to Gabe’s party because Brendon couldn’t show up alone since he was trying to get Ryan to notice him, so obviously Ted was the right choice. 

The theme for this party is apparently somewhere between beach party and Spring Breakers because Ted sees a lot of people in unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts and a couple glow-in-the-dark beach balls being bounced around. 

The party is too hot and too fucking loud and Ted gets too drunk way too fucking soon. Shots of whiskey went to his head really fast, but he always remembers that too late. One shot was never enough, and a second shot never tasted any better than the first, but he does it anyway. Which is stupid. 

He kind of hovers around Brendon for a while, but loses him somewhere between his third shot, licking whiskey off his hand, and his second beer. Ted wanders around kind of pointlessly – he doesn’t really know anyone here, save for Gabe and Brendon and there’s no way he’s going to hang out with the former and the latter has abandoned him for the greener pastures of Ryan Ross. 

He retreats up the stairs of the house, the music gets softer and Ted feels less crowded. He tries the first door in the hallway. It ends up being a bathroom. 

The tub is white, and Ted sighs with relief. The bathmat is blue and fuzzy and bleach-spotted, the shower curtain is covered in fish and spotted with mildew. It smells like bathwater and shampoo. Ted almost falls into the tub, settles in with his back against the tile and takes a drink from his beer. His toes press against the side of the tub. He can feel the thrum of the bass from whatever they’re playing downstairs. 

Andromeda thought she had graduated from this. It feels too much like high school, like Friday nights on campus and some fraternity down the block is throwing another kegger and it’s too loud, too crowded, and there’s too many bodies pressed against each other. For a good hour, Andromeda cradles a beer and sips on it bitterly until it’s turned warm and she chugs it down fast enough that the alcohol rushes through her head. It’s after some tequila shots, licking salt, and sucking on some lemon wedges that she is drunk enough to allow herself to slip easily into the this ridiculous fucking party. 

How she gets to the second floor, she can’t really quite recall. She’s looking for the bathroom, that she remembers; because her cheeks feel too warm, and her head is spinning madly and someone tells her that the bathroom is upstairs down the hallway. 

(Sober she’s miserable. Drunk, she’s less so. Maybe she has stooped as low as she thinks)

message: I’m busy taking care of a very ill Moony, but here I am talking to you.

message: where were you for the 4th of july family barbecue?

"I will," Lily says, in response to Andromeda’s suggestion. She pauses to look in the wide mirrors at the end of the changing room corridor, though, to see what the pink dress looks like from multiple angles. Lily likes the shoes the best, she thinks — she isn’t sold on the color of this dress or the cut. The wedges, though, are surprisingly comfortable. They’re dressy without being overly so and she knows she could easily wear them for multiple occasions. Lily’s sold on the shoes. "I’m definitely getting these," she says, pointing to her feet as she walks back toward her changing cubicle. She smiles at Andromeda and wiggles her toes in them. "They’re shockingly comfortable. I love the way they look, too."

She disappears back into her cubicle and gingerly changes out of the pink dress, making sure it’s hung properly on its hanger before she slips into the green one. Lily looks at herself in the changing room mirror and smiles — it’s a beautiful color, cut so that it’s flattering but not revealing. She thinks if she paired it with a nice jacket it would be perfect for her interview.

“I think a nice fitted white blazer would do just the trick,” Andromeda replies, smiling at Lily when the other girl suggested something more on the business side of business-casual. “I’ll be right back.”

Her eyes widen at the suggestion of Tuna and Lily snorts, covering her mouth as she laughs. “Oh, God, no, but that’s great. People called her Toony a lot, which drove her absolutely batshit. Her husband’s name is Vernon, though, which I think is significantly worse.”

Lily considers the shoes and the dresses, convincing herself not to look at the price tags until after she’s tried everything on. Her parents told her she could use her credit card, given the importance of this whole thing, and pay it off in monthly installments. Lily thinks that’s fair, though she also knows that Nordstrom charges outrageous prices for flimsy pieces of fabric. She takes a breath and smiles at Andromeda. “I think I will,” she says.

"Maybe you'll be the chance to write on at Brown," she says as she start leading them both towards the change rooms. "And trust me," she turns, looking over at Lily, "Nothing will be as worst as what my sister calls my other one. Cissy. Drives her up the walls."

The girl running the change room is a Greengrass, who Andromeda's known for a while. They run in the same circles, siblings and parents connections and the like. When Lily walks pass them both, Andromeda catches the look the girl gives Lily from behind. Tragic. The Greengrass girl tries to make small talk while Lily is in the change room. She mentions the Lestrange brothers; how the older one (her sister's right hand) had moved to New York, now works at Wall Street, and the younger one is at Princeton. Did she know, Greengrass asks and Andromeda ignores the questions, thankful that Lily's stepped out of one of the change rooms before the other girl could press anymore.

message: i forget you're young sometimes. 

She’s going off about the staff again and Ted sighs, rolling his eyes. “You know they call out the names and set down the cups, right?” He grabs the cup she set down, his name on it with a big, goofy face on it, thanks to Brendon. She curses. “I mean, you could say it’s your own fault.” 

When her shoulders knock into his, Andromeda catches him hiss and swear under his breath. “Watch where you stand next time,” Andromeda says, looking over her shoulders. The corner of her mouth twists into a sharp smirk. There is spilled coffee on his hand but she hardly thinks it makes a difference anything belonging to his has been ruined and stained. 

They make it to the shoes and Lily looks at them all, taking in the various colors and styles and shapes. She’s 5’2”, which means she’s the perfect height for heels on any occasion, but she doesn’t usually have reason to buy or wear them. She snorts as she reaches for a god-awful leopard print pair, holding a shoe up for Andromeda’s inspection and raising an eyebrow. “What. Are. These.” Then she sets the shoe back and laughs, shaking her head. “I am, but my older sister has it worse. Petunia. Our mother loves to garden and my father can never tell her no.”

She nods at the mention of a sister. “Did she ever get called Tuna at school?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. She chuckles.The question is a joke; although, Andromeda realizes that sometimes her sense of humour is a little bit more morbid and dry than others and she’s not sure how Lily would take it.