The Party - 10: The Other Party

Harry was not someone to whom preparing for parties came naturally. He simply was not designed for it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to put the effort in, he merely suffered from a combination of complete ignorance of the principles of ‘making oneself look nice’ and a tendency to get distracted from this when he set time aside to at least try.1

As such, prior to that evening’s party, he had picked out a shirt, put it on a good hour before he had to leave and sat back down at his computer. Five clips of stand-ups on YouTube later, he had realised that time was no longer on his side and had begun to panic. He had run downstairs in his shirt and underwear to retrieve his ‘going out’ jeans from the tumble drier, emptied all the loose change from his wallet so he could fit it in the back pocket of said jeans without it making an unsightly bulge and immersed himself in a cloud of deodorant. Catching sight of a hideous crease running like a fault line across his shirt’s collar, he had hurriedly fired up his mum’s hair straighteners, he had never been able to get the hang of the iron, and flattened the crease out as best he could. Taking off his watch, which was far too cheap for him to be seen wearing at a Brindley party, best to go with the wrists bare, and tossing it onto his bed, he skipped haphazardly down the stairs, slipped his Converses onto his feet and his bomber jacket onto his shoulders. This is when he had realised that he had forgotten to eat his evening meal.2

He had arrived late and out of breath, but he had arrived. At least, at a house party such as this, punctuality was not the greatest of issues. At least, after running back inside his house for the first time, he had eaten something, even if it was only a cereal bar, and, after running back inside for the second time, he had socks on. He had been a trifle dazed upon his arrival, but had said his hellos, had a drink placed in his willing hand and had set to talking to Zero, thus bringing us up to speed with the narrative from the previous chapter.3

The party was trundling along steadily, a fair sized pile of empty bottles was building up in the corner of the kitchen by the back door (indeed Oscar’s first act upon entering had been to trip over this pile and land flat on his face, crumpling both his waistcoat and his pride) and Dorian was hovering from group to group, checking that everyone was happy, either drunk or well on the way to being so and possibly interested in a walk out the back to ‘look at the stars’. The scenes were familiar enough, but Harry felt distinctly uncomfortable. He was used to the bitchiness, but before he had always been one of the background figures content to bitch about others and their doings over the past week or so. At this party, he was most definitely the one being bitched about, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.4

He had reached the stage of drunkenness at which everything one hears over the hi-fi begins to sound like a dance remix, but Zero was already at the ‘tiredly bemused by everything’ stage, so Harry took the opportunity to escape his company, knowing that as soon as he slipped back into the real world, Zero would most likely start asking questions such as, “Do you reckon if I gave George my phone he’d shag me?” The next he was aware of, he was in the kitchen, swaying unsteadily towards the remains of the alcohol stockpile. It was at this point that he felt an eager finger tap him thrice on the shoulder. Turning, he beheld a slightly ruffed but otherwise divine 5’6” figure dressed, on first impression, like a particularly wealthy rent boy. Oscar grinned a Cheshire cat smile and gave a girly little wave.5

“Oscar?” enquired Harry, after a good amount of squinting (alcohol had something of an adverse effect on his eyesight).6

“Hi Harry!”7

There followed an awkward silence in which both teenagers tried to decide whether or not they should carry out the instructions that their hormones were forcefully shouting out to them. Then, at the same instant, they made up their minds, closed the short distance that remained between them and slipped their tongues into each other’s willing mouths. While not the most experienced at drunken smooching, Harry was fairly comfortable with the procedure. His left hand, palm wide open, nestled in the small of Oscar’s back, gently pushing him closer to his body, while the right combined the actions of steadying Oscar’s head and softly stroking the brittle, flattened spikes of his heavily gelled hair.8

As he was drunk, the pleasure of these actions was addictive but somewhat numb, his mind also couldn’t help wandering and considering such diverse topics as whether touching Oscar or having Oscar touch him was the best part and who might have been have voted off on the X Factor that night. After that, ‘Shut Up and Drive’ by Rihanna popped into his head, meaning he had to go through all the lyrics, leaving pauses of the correct length in all the relevant places. Once he had done this, he was rather surprised to notice that Oscar had gently broken the kiss and drawn back all of an inch, leaving them looking into each other’s eyes for several drawn out moments. While their gazes were locked together, Oscar’s hand descended to his pocket and pulled out a long, slim silver key.9

“For Oshie’s brother’s room,” he explained. Harry’s eyes widened. “He’s pretty much moved out, at uni. I, uh, rented it for the night if you…”10

“What, now? Already?” Harry wasn’t sure what his objection to this was, but something seemed morally wrong with doing, well, that, at a party this early in the evening. The sun had barely set for God’s sake. And he was most definitely the more experienced here, a veteran of a whole two sexual encounters in the past (though one had gone so badly that both parties had agreed to have it annulled for their future peace of mind). Then he focused on reality again and realised that he was already in Oshie’s brother’s room and that Oscar was kissing him again, the door shut and locked behind them. All was going to Oscar’s hastily thought-up plan. Unfortunately for Oscar, all was also going to Oshie’s more thoroughly thought out plan, which all revolved around the fact that a copy of the key to his brother’s room had been cut, a copy which, along with some rather juicy news, he had just given to George. For Oscar was too young and naïve to know that one should never, ever, under any circumstances, trust Oceanus Freedom Hopkins Jones.11

Oscar’s waistcoat, now even more crumpled, had been carelessly tossed into the corner and the room’s two occupants were, whilst their tongues were still entwined and their eyes still shut, hungrily unbuttoning each other’s shirts. The fact that they both wore button down shirts meant, conveniently, that they could be slipped off without their lips first having to be separated. This done, Harry turned his attention to Oscar’s jeans.12

“Hang on,” Oscar said, pulling away. “This could take a while.”13

Harry sighed, while Oscar, blushing, shrugged. Earlier that evening, when Oscar had been readying himself, he had fought a valiant battle with this same pair of jeans. Only his pride had stopped him calling to his mother for help. Their was a bruise developing on his thigh, just below where the leg of his skin tight white Calvin Klein boxers came to an end, from when he had, whilst combining trying to pull them up with hopping round the room, slipped on a copy of AXM, overbalanced and crashed into his chest of drawers. Now, he faced a similar battle, though with the added handicap that a certain part of his anatomy, in anticipation of things to come, was innocuously making it more difficult for him. Button undone, fly open, hunched over slightly, Oscar tugged downwards with both hands with all the strength he could muster, whilst Harry, feeling rather lost standing and doing nothing, stood behind him and helped to do the same, though the proximity of Oscar’s slim and now uncovered stomach was acting as something of a distraction for his hands. It was at this, highly inopportune moment, that George unlocked the door and walked in.14