ship sink down ((lien))

As soon as he graduated from Hogwarts, Macmillan bought the first apartment he could afford and moved out of his family's manor. There was zero way he could embark on his pro surfing career if he had to deal with all four seasons; he had to stay at Blackrock full-time. Being at Blackrock was quite freeing: he never had to wear a shirt. He could get away with only wearing his swim shorts and thongs.

Atticus was busy with James, James' kid, and his sister's wedding... Oleander was doing who knows what. Lien was back to being single and likely doing nothing but studying as if they didn't just finish Hogwarts. So, Macmillan naturally had to force his bro out on a outing in Blackrock to get some color on his skin. However, he needed some fuel in his body before he could begin working out, so it became some sort of lunch date.

"Bro, are ya gonna eat that?"

@Lien Chang

Since their exam results had arrived a week ago, Lien could do nothing but brood over what he perceived as mistakes. Exceeds Expectations - only Exceeds Expectations?! He couldn't even remember which subjects they were in sometimes, as he'd only briefly glanced at that parchment before releasing it like an electric shock. Where did he go wrong? Had he slacked off?

No...

He'd spent a lot of time worrying about James, but he couldn't blame him. That was pointless.

Having hardly touched his meat skewers and chips, Lien was gazing over at the Tiki God statues on the bar whilst leaning his cheek in his palm. "Hm?" Macmillan had said something. He moved his head away from his hand, blinked at Macmillan, then down at his plate. "Yeah... sorry. I will. Uhm..." He picked up a chip and took a bite. "This place hurts my eyes a little bit..."

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"You're stressing over those results again, bro? Our classmates would've killed to get an 'E', dude!"

Macmillan didn't pay too much attention to his own results; all he knew was that he did better at it than twat. Heh. He kept trying to tell Lien over the past few months that his nagging was for nothing! His test-taking skills were pretty decent for how much he slacked off and procrastinated the entire term.

With how he always went here after his daily surfs, finding the atmosphere to be more relaxed than Neptune's, Macmillan had become acclimated with the gaudiness and loudness of the decor. Near their seats was a huge waterfall with all sorts of animal sounds coming out from a speaker. Very tropical. "That's because you need to see more color, bro."

Grabbing one of his crab rangoons, Macmillan popped it into his mouth. Mmm, tasty.

@Lien Chang

"I know, but I can't help it. I was aiming for Outstandings across the board, and devoted the majority of my time to achieving that. To see that I'd just missed the mark by a few points is extremely frustrating. It's particularly frustrating that there are others who performed better than I did under exam pressure, but didn't put nearly as many hours of study into it..."

He uttered a long sigh, frowning at his chips.

Macmillan was one of those people. Perhaps there was a part of him that was feeling bitter about it.

"... you can have one of these skewers if you like, I don't think I'll finish them."

More colour, indeed. There was colour, then there was tetrachromatic proportions.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"Bro, you need to chillax about those marks. You did better than most of Hogwarts, it's all rad, dude."

That was easy for Macmillan to say, having grown up in a life that was definitely more luxurious in comparison.

"Whatever you say," he replied, picking up one of the skewers and downing them quickly. "You need to eat more, bro. You should try one of the poke bowls."

Although it was clear Lien had zero interest in a gym lifestyle, Macmillan thought it'd be good for him with the discipline he had.

@Lien Chang

He felt it, like boiling acid, burning away at his insides as he spoke. There was a time when he felt such a sensation, and it had usually surrounded James in his younger years. Why all of a sudden was he feeling this way? He, Macmillan and Atticus had been friends for years: there may have been occasions where he felt jealous of them, but it was way back in his childhood before he really got to know them.

But now everything was irritating him.

The way he spoke.

The words he repeated.

He wasn't aware of his molars grinding together behind a tense, quivering lip.

"Oh shut up!"

The thundering reverb of his voice was paired with his fist to the table, where the cutlery chinked and clattered in the outburst. As soon as he'd said it though, he probably looked as shocked as Macmillan did. The acid ebbed away and settled. What was that just now?! How could he have shouted like that at one of his friends?

"S-sorry..." he murmured, loosening the tension in his fists.

How could he recover from that?!

@Hyacinth Macmillan

He was casually feasting on more of the skewers when there was suddenly a loud roar from across the table, causing him to drop the skewer and lose his coordination on the chair. Landing ass-down on the floor, Macmillan glanced up at Lien, almost in shock.

"Bro...."

Macmillan stared off into the distance, focusing his eyes on one of the tiki statues as he processed whatever that was.

"Bro. You need to let that adrenaline out..."

He normally didn't sound that breathless pre-workout.

@Lien Chang

"..."

He drummed his fingers lightly on the table. Although he said he was sorry, he wasn't doing anything to attempt to help him up. The bitterness resided in the background still, but he was also aware of Macmillan being perfectly able to help himself.

Rotating his eyes to the left, he was deep in thought. Despite his outburst, there was some sense to what Macmillan was saying. After years and years of devoted study: going into the early hours with his light still on and his hangings shut. But now Hogwarts was over. He could be spending all his time preparing for University, yes, but he was here now. In Blackrock. There wasn't a book in sight, as far as he was aware.

"Fine."

He gave an exasperated sigh, and looked back at him.

"Let's go to a club or something then. We're both adults - officially from seventeen, yes, but now we're outside of the boundaries of Hogwarts. I've never been to a club before. Maybe I could try..." There had to be ones here. "Do you know one here that's any good?" He didn't know if Macmillan was into clubbing as such, but if he was a virgin to the experience as well, they could break it in together.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

Lien? Wanting to go to a club? That was definitely a first. In fact, he was surprised that it wasn't him initiating something like that to get one of his friends out of their comfort zone.

"Yeah, bro there's a few clubs here. Which one do ya wanna go to? There's Luana and Colours. Colours is the gay club, Luana is on some private part of the beach."

He hadn't been to either yet as he's been focused on getting settled in his flat and working his way to professional surfing.

@Lien Chang

A nightclub was a step, but a gay nightclub was a huge step.

"I think we'd be safer at Luana," he confessed frankly.

Perhaps he had some preconceived notion that Colours was full of older men who thought they'd scored the jackpot after two good-looking eighteen year olds came in for the night. It wasn't a case of being egotistical: Lien realised that they would be very popular within that crowd. That's not what he wanted. He just wanted to have the experience of letting go, but not letting himself get to the point of warding off lechers.

"Have you been there before?"

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"Nah, I haven't. I've been spending my nights catching the waves and enjoying the sand. I only moved into my flat a bit ago. I haven't gotten around to unpacking everything..."

Currently, his bed was a mattress and some sheets directly on the floor. It worked well enough that he slept as well as he normally did.

"Our food's on my tab here, so we can just go to the club now."

Finally getting up from the floor, Macmillan took one last gulp of his drink as he waited for Lien to get up.

@Lien Chang

"Yeah. I don't think I can eat this anyway."

Abdoning the majority of his meal, Lien stood up. Everything felt like a radio script, a prompt, something charged into him before he could think too much of what he was doing. That was the only way he could allow himself to have fun. First, treat it like a studying schedule: do this for an hour, do the next thing for thirty minutes, take a fifteen minute break. Until he was really having fun, carelessly and without considering consequence, he could let go.

He hoped.

"Let's go."

He passed Macmillan in the direction of the exit, expecting him to take charge of which way to turn after that.

@Lien Chang

Now that they were back outside, Macmillan spread his arms out to bask in the glistening, warm sunlight as they walked down and around the boardwalk. "I don't think I can ever go back to experiencing winter after living here for a couple of weeks, bro."

Before they went further down the block, Macmillan quickly bought a cup of boardwalk-styled chips from a vendor, offering some of the cup to his friend. "These chips are better than the ones at the Shack. They put some kind of seasonings on these that's really good. Atti might know what they are." Atti knew far more about cooking than he ever did.

"I think this club will be rad, bro. How sloshed are we gonna get?"

@Lien Chang

Although seemingly impervious to heat, Lien wasn't wearing a jacket while around Blackrock. He was wearing a long sleeved shirt and trousers, but that was the extent of his summer wardrobe.

"It is quite nice here," was his insight, but at least it was genuine. The boardwalk vendor chips had a British seaside feel to them, and the hot crunch with herb-filled seasoning was enough to have him eating again.

"I hadn't actually thought about it, but I suppose drinking comes with the experience..." If that wasn't telling of his lack of experience, he didn't know what was. "Please tell me this is your first time to a club as well." An equal footing would be comforting, particularly after his outburst.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"You think I've been clubbing? Nah, I haven't, bro. Closest I've gotten are some parties when we attended Hogwarts," Macmillan replied, getting through some of the chips in the cup as they got closer and closer to the part of the beach that's said to have Luana. "I don't know the dress code, brah, but we should be cool, it's Blackrock!"

He was going to have a major blast telling Atticus about how Lien actually wanted to go and followed through with going to a club! Never in all of his years of knowing him did Macmillan think this would happen. Did Merlin rise from the dead?

In the vicinity was a huge neon sign that said Luana in a very retro Hawaiian font.

@Lien Chang

Smiling back at him, Lien was momentarily reassured.

Still, he wondered, in all his time at Hogwarts...

When had Macmillan ever really demonstrated being smarter than he was? But in some subjects he came up almost the same level as Lien. Underneath the guise of chilled out surfer dude there was actually a brilliant mind that absorbed information like a sponge. He'd known that for a while. He just didn't think Macmillan could ever continue to succeed when it came to NEWT level.

He hated Macmillan's brother Indigo, but there was part of him that understood his frustration.

He glanced up at the neon sign. The bass of music thudded somewhere at the back of his eardrum.

"How are we supposed to hear anything?" he shouted at Macmillan. A twenty-something year old woman rushed past with her friend in tow, wearing a bikini that didn't leave much to the imagination. They giggled at the two of them.

"Apparently it's okay to go in wearing something like that, so we should be fine," he said, flushing as the girls still seemed to be giggling at them in the distance. What was funny?!

@"Hyacinth Macmillan "

'You don't! That's part of the fun!"

Now that he thought about it, it was sort of odd how some of those Hogwarts parties didn't get shut down due to noise. Did some of his peers' soundproofing spells actually work that effectively for all of the students that attended? There had to be so many people to have cast them for it to work like that. He can only soundproof enough to not be heard within the same locale a corridor at most.

Unfazed by the giggling girls, Macmillan was ready to get inside the club and get his friend to have some energy and fun for once.

They finally got to the entrance where they were greeted by a bouncer who began by checking to see that they were of age. Macmillan dug through his trunks and pulled out his ID to show the bouncer.

@Lien Chang

Lien patted down his pockets as this absolute tower of a man set his steely gaze onto him. Macmillan appeared to have his ID - but Lien...

"I don't have it..." he muttered, sighing, "Is there any way I can--"

The bouncer interrupted him by pointing to his left. "Use the second door. Move along."

The second door? Okay, so Macmillan had walked through the first. What was the other door for? Where they considered you were underage and contacted the Ministry? Surely not. Seeing as he didn't have much choice though, he glanced at Macmillan quizzically before being pushed along by the bouncer. The second door, it seemed, was completely unguarded. When he walked in through the threshold there was a small foyer and another double set of doors through to the main club.

Wondering what the heck was going on, he was just about to step through the double doors when there was a piercing scream from behind him. Spinning about, he saw a girl had been thrown backwards, away from the first door, landing on the sand. Shocked, he went to assist her, but then something very strange happened: her skin turned dry, papery white; wrinkled and flaccid. Her hair thinned and turned white. Warts spouted from her nose and grew hairs.

"Ah... an age line."

Well that certainly was an effective way of filtering out underage witches and wizards.

Seeing that the girl was a fifth-year he vaguely recognised, he chuckled a bit before proceeding through the double doors into the club. A blast of sound almost knocked him backwards like the age line did to that girl. He saw Macmillan, and rejoined him.

"This is..."

Intense?

People grinding on top of one another, jumping and pushing yet unperturbed as they sipped from large, fishbowl like containers. The drinks were all glowing like neon lights all over the club. When someone accidentally knocked one on the floor, it looked like toxic waste.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

While he waited for Lien to join him in the club, somebody had come up to him with a few glowsticks before fading back into the crowd that formed near a loud, expansive DJ set.

"Are you party people ready to get hype in the club? DISCO BEACH SEX REVOLUTION!"

Macmillan cringed slightly as the bass began to shake him and the floor. Merlin, this was even louder than he expected it to be! How was Lien supposed to handle that?

"Yeah, bro, I know!" he yelled, handing him one of the glowsticks. "What do we do now?"



@Lien Chang

Lien took the glowstick from Macmillan, but hadn't heard a word he'd said.

"What?!" he bellowed back at him, already feeling frustrated from the difficulty of conversation, the noise, and the fact the phrase sex revolution had definitely been said over a loudspeaker.

Annoyed, he tugged on Macmillan's arm and jabbed his finger towards the bar. Perhaps it would be slightly less loud around that area. Heading towards there, he pocketed the glowstick and got in a wall of people also clustered around the bar area.

"I need to have a drink in order to even tolerate this," he confessed, as some bloke nudged him in the side. Urgh.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"PUT YOUR HANDS UP IN THE AIR! LET ME SEE THOSE HANDS, PARTY PEOPLE!"

As they headed near the bar, there were already a few girls posing themselves only to follow that up by fake-making out and fondling each other. This was definitely a genuine club alright... It was even more horny than some of the Hogwarts parties. The worst those got was streaking and random couples sneaking out to a more private area in the castle.

"Huh? What did you say?"

Once at the bar, Macmillan stared at the bartender as all sorts of cocktails and other concoctions were being mixed up for the other clubgoers around them.

"Do you have any mai tais?"

@Lien Chang

"I NEED - A DRINK - TO EVEN - TOLERATE--"

Was that women getting fondled by another one? He couldn't help but gape openly, as it was nothing he'd ever seen before. There were a few young men surrounding them and whooping, but that only seemed to encourage the girls, so Lien tore his eyes away from them.

Seeing that Macmillan had already managed to get close to the bar, Lien struggled himself, but was now close behind him.

Tapping Macmillan's shoulder, he pointed at one of the fishbowls.

"Let's just get one of those!" he suggested, now glancing around to see if there was anywhere in the club where they could just sit and drink. There were odd spots, but they were completely occupied. Some of the types occupying those seats didn't seem welcome company: honestly, some of them looked like thugs.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"THOSE THINGS???'

Well, it was probably better to have something they could share among the two of them. It might get dangerous both alcohol and money-wise if they only got individual drinks.

Tapping onto the bar counter, Macmillan tried to get the bartender's attention. "Hey! Can we get one of those big bowls?" Oh, right he had manners to show. "Please? We're just trying to have a good time, dude!"

It took a few minutes, but he finally was able to order the fishbowl for the two of them, loudly slapping some coins onto the counter.

"HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IT'LL TAKE, BRO?"

@Lien Chang

"To get drunk?" he shouted back, realising that if he stood at a certain angle they could just about hear one another over the noise. "Going by our differences in body mass, I'd say you'll need a lot more than I do. So we should stay close to the bar!"

He definitely wasn't ready to join the bedlam quite yet. That's what it looked like to him in his current state: too much going on, an overwhelming slaughter of all five senses; definitely a time to be dulling them with alcohol so you could try and take it all in.

"What do you think this 'sex revolution' thing is all about?" he asked Macmillan loudly.

Just at that very moment, sod's law, the music died down as the next track came through. Those in the vicinity, who weren't drunk yet, laughed at him. Lien flushed.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"Yeah, bro, let's do that!"

Now that he thought about it some more, it'd be better if he drank less. At least then, if it came down to it, he could attempt to apparate Lien back to his flat without issue if the alcohol hit him too much and too quickly.

He glanced over at his friend with a shrug; even he had no idea what the DJ meant by that.

Luckily, it didn't take that long for the drink to come. Maybe the bartender was on fishbowl autopilot. Macmillan took the first sip of it, humming and nodding as he tasted then swallowed it. "Bro, this shit's strong!" Of course, to him, it didn't really feel like a whole lot of alcohol. He just knew how it tasted.

@Lien Chang