16 #2
“Yeah, don’t think I didn’t see that half-chub you were sporting, bucko .” Celeste rolled their eyes. Blake swore and turned away from them, walking back towards the side of Star Club and shoving his hands into his pockets. Celeste threw back their head and groaned.
“You are seriously acting like a twelve-year-old at his first middle school dance!” they accused. “This isn’t 2011! At the end of the night you don’t get to go home and watch the premier of Camp Rock on Disney Channel in your jammies—you take your boy home and you fuck him .”
“Oh my God,” Blake said, pointedly facing the outside wall of the club. “I am not trying to sleep with Marin and I am not talking about this with you!”
Celeste sputtered in shock. “What the hell do you mean you’re not trying to hook up with him?! Aren’t you supposed to be trying to save him with your love or your schlong or whatever?!”
“The vase does not say anything about sleeping with him being part of the conditions required to save him!” Blake blanched. “It says I need to prove my heart , not my ‘ schlong ’.”
Celeste rolled their eyes again, propping themself up on the wall next to a Cheyenne Pepper poster and taking another rip off of their vape. “Yeah, yeah it’s not like you have to,” they said. “I thought it might help the falling-in-love thing a little?”
“Again, I have to ‘prove my heart’, not get him to fall in love with me,” Blake corrected, taking out another cigarette. “Besides, you don’t fall in love with someone just because you sleep with them.”
“Yeah? Tell that to my sixteen-year-old self, you demisexual cuck.” Celeste snorted. “Fine, maybe it won’t make you worthy of his love, but it’s got to be worth something, right? That’s why I agreed to take you guys out. If you get with the guy tonight, it’ll definitely guarantee—”
“I’m going to stop you right there, Celeste. Having sex has nothing to do with being worthy of love. It’s only sex.” Blake glared at them, flicking the flame on his Zippo to life. “And besides, I’m starting to think you agreed to take us out so you could get blackout drunk.”
Celeste opened their mouth, looking offended, and held out a single finger as if they were about to make a point—but quickly deflated.
“Okay, yeah, you may have gotten me there. But! The reasoning still stands—you gotta get with the merman.” They punctuated their order with a puff of fruity vapor.
“Hell yeah dude!” a drunken bear said as he stumbled past them. “ Get that mer-tail!”
“ Thank you! See? He gets it.” Celeste gestured to the man with their vape.
Blake scoffed and took a drag off of his Marlboro, glancing out of the corner of his eye. “Look, I know you’re trying to help by playing wingman—wing… person? But I don’t want to put any pressure on him. That’s not what tonight is about.”
“So you’re saying that giving him the best night of his life doesn’t involve taking him home and banging him with that monster in your pants?” Celeste’s eyes flicked down to Blake’s fly. “Or at least according to the ancient texts…”
“Who the hell is talking about that ?!” Blake shouted, almost dropping another cigarette in his embarrassment. He pointedly turned his pelvis away from Celeste.
They ignored Blake, a mischievous grin creeping its way up their cheeks. “That’s not important—you need a little more liquid courage is all. Come on.”
Celeste grabbed Blake by the shoulder and began to haul him down the street, towards the door of a nearby bar.
Blake heaved a sigh, only managing to stub out his cigarette right before Celeste wrenched the door open and dragged him inside. The bar was packed wall-to-wall with men and the pair had to fight through a raucous pack of baby gays in order to reach the bar.
“What, are you done drinking already, pussy?” Celeste teased, jutting their tongue out at Blake. “I only wanted to help get you in the mood.”
“You do know that too much alcohol is counterintuitive to hookups, right?” Blake asked as Celeste dragged him up to the bar.
“You’re such a spoilsport!” Celeste rolled their eyes, picking up a suggestively-shaped straw off of the counter and proceeding to stick it right between their teeth. Blake wanted to crawl into a hole and die. “Please turn your stupid brain off for once and let your junk do the thinking!”
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked.
“Two shots of belvedere neat!” Celeste cheered, holding out two fingers to the bartender. Blake blanched.
“Are you trying to forget your childhood?” He choked. The bartender returned with the pair of shot glasses, setting them on the counter in front of Celeste. They slid one to Blake, who held up a palm in refusal. “No thanks.”
“Meh, more for me.” Celeste shrugged, slamming the shots in rapid succession.
As his companion picked up a conversation with the bartender, Blake shuffled off in search of breathing room. The only place he could find space to stand was next to a unicorn pinata with a wiener for a horn. The thing’s licentious smile made Blake want to punt it across the bar.
“‘Demisexual cuck,’” he muttered to himself.
It wasn’t as if he was a virgin—Matt had seen to that almost a decade ago—and it also wasn’t as if…
Blake sighed. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t interested in Marin. He’d admitted it to the merman himself the previous night.
But it went beyond simply liking him—even though it had only been forty-eight hours since he’d met Marin, Blake found himself becoming attached—and if he was being honest with himself, that realization scared him.
If the visions he’d had during Noel’s song were any indication, that attachment ran far beyond “platonic”.
It felt ridiculous—and some level of horrific—to have that epiphany as he stared down a horny pinata.
Celeste wasn’t far off the mark with the “demisexual” comment. Blake had always needed some level of friendship or closeness (if not romantic feelings) with a person before he experienced any sort of physical attraction towards them.
It had been so long since he’d felt this way about someone. So long.
Before Marin, it was Jace. Blake had been stupid and managed to get attached to someone who was supposed to be a friend with benefits in an open relationship.
Then he’d ended up getting crushed when Jace rebuked his feelings and cut things off to focus on his and Faren’s budding relationship with Alex.
Before that, it was Matt. A bright, passionate, devoted love that had paled in comparison to the relief of Xanax on Matt’s tongue.
Bad things always happened to the people Blake loved. His mom dying. His dad and Matt getting addicted to drugs. And now—by allowing himself to get so attached—didn’t that mean it was Marin’s turn to suffer by the hand of his affection?
“So are you done having an existential crisis, or…?”
Blake jumped, realizing that Celeste had come to stand next to him. They were swirling a plastic cup in their hand, looking judgmental and glassy-eyed.
“Sorry,” Blake said. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah, just let me finish this,” Celeste slurred, holding up their half-finished drink and attempting to chug it.
“ No, ” Blake admonished. “ Nurse. It . I don’t want to send you back home in a coroner’s van.”
“brUH,” Celeste threw back their head, eyes in danger of getting lost in their skull. They slammed the half-finished drink down on top of a trash can, nearly missing the mark. “Forget it, I’ll get another at the club then. Come on.”
They gestured for Blake to follow them and the two stepped out of the bar and back onto the quiet streets.