forced fun

She had kept to the corners of the room for the majority of the evening, only making polite conversation with those who approached her first and making sure that if she wasn’t at an arms-length distance from people physically, she would be socially. It hadn’t been a difficult task for Leo, avoiding the crowds that night, the mask offering an adequate enough disguise. It sufficiently covered her nose and eyes, anyway. It wasn’t until Felix flung his arm around her and crooned out her name that she realized that perhaps she wasn’t as unrecognizable as she thought. Maybe the height was a dead giveaway or even the hair. Or, maybe the most likely, a best friend was able to spot their counterpart quicker than any other old random. “Jesus, Felix,” Leo huffed, making a noise upon impact. Anyone else would’ve gotten shoved off a la Cher Horowitz. “I’m fine, Darby’s fine; I missed you too,” she sighed, chuckling and feeling slightly guilty for the white lie. She wrinkled her nose as his palms pressed against her cheeks, raising her eyebrows and doing the same to him, mimicking his theatrics. “As far as we know, I do not have another sister. But life is unpredictable, so I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket. Anyway! How was Tucson?”

Even drunk, Felix could recognize his best friend through the throngs of the crowd, bodies pressed tightly together like sardines in a can. The drunker he got, the less it bothered him, how he could feel everyone’s sweat dripping off them, dancing bodies thrashing around like buzzing flies under the influence of the band. He chuckled as she laid her hands on his face, scrunching his nose at her. “You never know, Leo,” he agreed, letting go only to pull her into a sudden, tight hug. Just as quickly as he took hold of her, he let go to groan at her question. “Don’t remind me of Tucson. I’m never going to live it down. It was fine. Sunny. Can’t you see my new tan?” He asked, cupping his face, any change to its color unnoticeable. “I was expecting a little more fanfare upon my return. No marching band, confetti? Harsh, Leo. and here I thought we were friends,” he joked, tugging on her hand, pulling her towards the bar. “The least you can do is take a shot with your poor old friend,” he implored, looking at her with puppy dog eyes.

𝐌𝐈𝐀 & 𝐅𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐗 /  𝔥𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔩𝔩 𝔞𝔯𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔱𝔲𝔪 ( @felixlcsser​ )

                when mia found out about the ‘ modern gods ’ themed masquerade ball that the Calloway was throwing, she was extremely excited and jumped right on figuring out what costume and goddess she wanted to be for the night. it was easy and she quickly decided on aphrodite – goddess of love and desire. when she found out what she wanted to go as, she went to work on her outfit instantly and it didn’t take long until she had everything ready for the big night. she had a feeling that the night was something everyone needed. a night full of alcohol, people flirting and having fun with each other’s company –– 

as she approached howell arboretum, which was located on the edges of campus, she took a deep breath as she took in everything that they had put up to make the location look more like Greece back in the day. ❛ wow, ❜ mia whispered quietly as she looked at all of the tables that had themed drinks placed on top of them, freshmen who stood around, ready to give the sophomore and seniors whatever their hearts desired throughout the night. everyone also looked amazing in their Greek outfits; which was to be expected, really. 

             as she stopped in her tracks, she scanned the place to see if she recognized anyone and luckily for her, it didn’t take too long until her eyes landed on someone that she had known for a long time and someone who, frankly, had quite a special spot in her life. a soft giggle fell from her lips as she approached the male and once she came up behind him, she placed her hands above his eyes, whispering quietly into his ear, ❛ guess who. ❜ pulling back, the grin on her lips widened, ❛ you clean up nice, felix. ❜

Felix stuck out like a sore thumb in his board shorts and Hawaiian shirt. But then, he had never been one to put effort into a costume. Especially if it meant buying anything that wasn’t already in his wardrobe. Poseidon had just seemed like the easiest choice. He had grabbed a pitcher from the bar, pouring champagne into it, easier than going back to the bar every time he wanted another drink. His eyes drifted over the crowd, testing himself, trying to identify all the different costumes. A bow and arrow, Artemis, for sure. A boy holding a bunch of grapes, Dionysus. Then his eyes were covered, his field of vision, already clouded by his mask, now obscured by a pair of hands. “Hey! Let me go! Kidnapping!” He exclaimed jokingly and dramatically, wriggling out of Mia’s grasp to turn around, smile falling across his features as he spotted one of his oldest friends. 

“Really? Why, thank you. I like to call this look surfer chic,” he countered, taking a bow, before reaching a hand out, twirling it around a lock of her blonde hair and tugging. “So do you. I feel so lame next to you now. You really went for it,” he complimented, taking a sip of champagne from his comically large pitcher. He held his hand out, gentlemanly, offering it to her. “Care for a dance, Aphrodite?”

FELIX LESSER AS POSEIDON || GOD OF THE SEA, STORMS, AND EARTHQUAKES

(LOGAN LERMAN, CIS MALE) - Have you seen FELIX LESSER? FELIX is in HIS SENIOR year. The FILM MAJOR is 23 years old & is a SAGITTARIUS. People say HE is GREGARIOUS, ROMANTIC, CHILDISH and UNMOTIVATED. Rumors say they’re a member of CALLOWAY. I heard from the gossip blog that HE RUNS A SECRET ESSAY WRITING BUSINESS. (Olive. u know.)

felix is definitely stupider than magda is, and this fills her with a particular thrill. she breathes in the smell of weed like it is fresh apple pie, the scent crawling into the fibers of her clothes and the tendrils of her hair. she loves it. “no, you don’t have to wear a tux. what kind of animal are you? if you don’t come in a hawaiian shirt i don’t want you as my date. duh. a–” before she can finish speaking, though, the boy in front of her is seemingly flying out of his seat, and she is overcome by a series of giggles and snorts. “god, do i make you that nervous? i know i’m sexy but please. contain yourself, man, for christ’s sake!” she crouches down and leans forward to pet his head like he is a sad stray puppy. “jesus fuckin christ, the bump on your head right now is surreal,” let the record show that there is not, in fact, a bump on felix’s head. magda just enjoys the drama. “are you okay? do you feel like you’re dying? do i need to call an ambulance? this feels like it could cause severe mental trauma. or like, amnesia.” she suddenly grabs his face in her hands, forcing him to look directly at her. “do you remember who i am? who is the president of the united states? actually, ew, no. that’s gross. ummmm. who is the husband of beyonce knowles?” the look on her face is everything but serious, and she cannot contain the snorts of laughter that still escape her lips. “honestly, good thing you didn’t have any brain cells to spare. cause that would’ve been bad.”

Felix bonks his head against the floor. Felix is concussed. “You’re laughing. I’m losing consciousness in front of you and you’re laughing,” he complained, scrambling out from under his own limbs, on all fours. His back arches like a tense cat’s as she touched the bruise forming on his head. “Hey! Paws off! Stop manhandling me, Mags,” he complained,” sitting down on the floor, by now all students within earshot looking at them. Some shot them dirty looks, clearly annoyed that their studies had been interrupted. “Magda.... Mags, I can’t see! I can’t hear you!” Felix cries out, shutting his eyes, a panic rising in his voice, reaching his arms out, grasping onto her shoulders. His penchant for theatrics was still well intact. Finally, he peaks an eye open, squinting at her, letting out a laugh, shoulders shaking in his denim jacket. “Of course I know that. It’s Jay Z. Lemonade cemented that in my mind forever. I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid,” he corrects her, nodding his head sagely, still laughing, getting to his feet at last, brushing his hands off on his jeans. “You want to get out of here? I feel like I’m not welcome anymore. and here I thought errybody in the club was getting tipsy,” he jokes,” gathering up his supplied. “And of course I’ll wear a Hawaiian shirt. And board shorts.”

Delilah had bought the sheer pussybow blouse and satin gloves, fully intent on attending the party as a jazz club pianist – she’d even thought up a whole backstory, a morbid fascination with asphyxiation and a string plucked from a grand Bösendorfer to twine around her victim’s neck, determined to play the murderer – but then Dustin had showed up, with his mop of stupid hair and his moth bitten jeans, before leaving just as fast, forgetting his pills behind him. The thing is, Delilah knew it was probably deliberate. She hated latching onto people’s bait more than anything, hated being predictable. Still, in the blink of an eye, she was sinking in her bathtub, sinking and sinking, passed out beneath the surface for nearly thirty seconds until she jolted with a gasp. A party didn’t seem realistic, after that, when she could barely pick up her shoes. A small stone plinked against Felix’s window, then a bigger one that almost broke the glass. Delilah didn’t flinch, only blinking once when he appeared there, in far too few layers for the roof in October. Only a large cable knit sweater, pale cream as always, thighs swamped like a dress. “Hi,” was all she said, no explanation for her being there, skin gleaming like the grass after a dawn’s fresh dew. A face mask, maybe. A shower she’d barely let settle. She had something behind her back that she wouldn’t let him see. “I think there’s a bat, higher up. I’m going up there to let him bite me, rabies is a great asset in this economy. It’s fiscally lucrative to froth from the mouth. I can foam my own cappuccinos at no extra cost. You can come watch, if you like.” @felixlcsser​

Felix had drifted through the party unmoored, bored even. He kept searching every room for a ghost, then disappointed when he didn’t see an apparition. Maybe he had been looking for Delilah the whole time. It seemed strange to attend a Yates affair without her there, the dark center of the universe, the thing everyone rotated around like stars willingly sucked into a black hole. Still, he laid in bed, sleeping off the remnants of his hangover until he herd a small ping at his window. Rolling over in the thick, cable-knit sweater he had fallen asleep in, he peaked at his window, seeing a flash of blonde hair that sent his heart rate up. Trudgiing off the bed, he ambled over to his window, opening the pane and leaning his elbows out to greet her, sleep still hanging off his face. Her words confused him for a moment, rubbing at a bag under his eye, until he processed it. “Oh. You sure it’s not Nosferatu?” He joked, hesitantly smiling at her. “Hi,” he parroted back. “Well I can’t argue with that kind of fiscal logic. Starbucks hates this girl,” he quipped back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, leaning against the window frame, suddenly aware of his disheveled appearance. He thought maybe to run a hand through his hair but resisted. “May I step into your humble abode?” He questioned, climbing out after her, the precarious pitch of the roof causing his heart to speed up for a moment. The wind licked at his face, feet dangling off the edge. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Not every day I get invited to contract rabies. Feels almost intimate.”

the penis sticker on her cheek is a stolen relic from the night before, when she had been bar hopping and somehow ended up joining a stranger’s bachelorette party. magda might also, technically, be a bridesmaid for this wedding, but she doesn’t remember saving anyone’s number. she hopes that if she did rsvp she picked the steak option, fish makes her a little queasy on account that she is a pisces and she’s convinced that this makes it technically cannibalism. nobody stops to ask about the sticker, they just kind of look at her with pointed eyes like they are trying to figure out if it is really a penis or some sort of wart. she walks confidently from her room in kincaid all the way to front steps of alderidge, penis on her face, until she sees felix and stands squarely in front of him. “hey, so like, totally random, but if i needed a date to a wedding where i may or may not be a bridesmaid, would you be down? we may even be able to steal more penis stickers.” @felixlcsser​

Felix is sitting in Alderidge, eyes glazed over at a computer screen. It may have been a mistake to smoke before getting to work on his philosophy paper. The scent of weed is practically rolling off him in waves, so much so that the girl he sat down next to has now chosen a seat much further away. He’s squinting at the screen, trying to make out words, the task of printing the article he was looking at now feeling Herculean. Moving his mouse towards the corner of the screen, Felix feels like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill as Magda distracts him, eyes snapping up to attention, looking like he had just been about to doze off. “I’m busy that day,” he jokes, not even knowing the date, flashing her a loopy grin. “Depends. Do I have to wear a tux? And the penis stickers are a requirement of my attendance,” he tells her, nodding his head emphatically, getting a few bizarre looks their way every time they say “penis”. He stretches out in his seat, leaning his chair back, arms behind his head, before he tips over onto the ground, yelling out “Ack!” Narrowly missing bonking his head, he scrambles to his knees, the crash drawing attention towards them. “And uh, can I go in a wheelchair?”

“you’ve definitely seen a noir film,” ellie assured, brows creasing as her head began to nod. through the thin fog of a somewhat tipsy mind she searched, trying to recall the movies they’d watched together at one another’s houses and dorm rooms. she flipped through the memories as though they were pages in a glossy travel magazine. highlights throughout the years. determined to come up with just one, her eyes hardly met the girl felix had motioned towards, catching her in her peripherals at the last second before he started speaking again. and just like that, the trail of thought was lost. “well, first of all, i didn’t know that. did you know that the dark knight is noir? i could’ve come as batman, as it turns out. a real shame.” ellie brought the glass of water she previously held a loose grasp on to her lips. it did little to diminish her humored grin. “secondly, i—well, i’m not in the business of betting against someone’s chance of living. call it previous-yates-parties PTSD.” while the topic of murder was light when veiled in fiction, it occurred to her that people were soon to forget that stories just as strange surrounded their own school. “hopefully the biggest mystery on our hands tonight is which one of these monsters—” her free hand pointed around the immediately area, “did that—” eyes flickered down at his ‘bloody’ shirt, “to you. who’s a girl gotta get revenge on?”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. You’re telling me Bruce Wayne is noir? I’m Batman,” he growled out in an approximation of Christian Bale’s voice, before fading into his trademark, golden retriever-esque grin. Maybe he shouldn’t have been joking about death, given the campus’s morbid past. Whoever planned this party certainly had a sick sense of humor. “Aw, c’mon, El. We can’t have a third mysterious disappearance. We’re just a bunch of college kids. Throwing a party in an abandoned mansion. Which as I’m saying it, sounds exactly like the premise to a horror movie,” he joked, the film major knowing the genre well enough toe recognize the tropes. “If anyone says “I’ll be right back” we’re fucked.” Taking a sip of whiskey from his glass, Felix looked down at his shirt, eyes growing in alarm, as if he were just seeing the bloodstain for the first time. “Oh, fuck. I’ve been shot! Ellie, avenge me. Tell my story,” he croaked out, as if he were fighting for breath, grasping onto her hand. His dramatics faded into another laugh, releasing her hand. “Unfortunately, I’m alive and well. Although I can think of a few people around here who would rather I was dead. Speaking of which, where’s the boyfriend? You know, tall, very serious, hates my guts.” Recognizing his quip could be taken as some sort of slight, he gave her another smile. “Just thought you guys would be glued at the hip. Hope everything’s going well.”

( + 1 notification from Instagram ) @lesserfelix this screams hardboiled detective but if the camera panned down for the blood stain... we all know i’m the dead body in the first five minutes of law & order

❤ 452 ✐ VIEW ALL 18 COMMENTS

@jackjones56: where’s ur friend leo

@seraphinaalbright: do we get to drag you out in a body bag? bc dibs

@leoaalbright: yeah kinda stole my look what's up w/ that

@leo_fowler: dad 😍

@beccastevens: wow a detective thats so original

@orpheusr: giving 1940s librarian vibes

( + 1 notification from Instagram ) @lesserfelix pov ur florian henneberg floating away on the sea of vibes after he walked into the ocean 

❤ 511 ✐ VIEW ALL 9 COMMENTS

@jackjones56: can i have your friend leo’s number