ship sink down ((lien))

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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

"Let me try," he said quickly, as the urgency of needing alcohol was getting to him with each passing minute.

Taking a straw from the bar, he stuck it into the fishbowl. For a moment he hesitated: the sheer colour of the thing was making him doubt whether his waters would be their normal colour ever again. He'll be seeing acid green in the toilet for the next few days! But no - it had to be done. He'd gone too far now, and Macmillan would be suffering the same infliction...

He tasted it, and his face scrunched up in repulsion. It was sour, sweet and had an aftertaste of rum or something similar. Coughing a few times, he managed to take a second sip. That sip wasn't as bad...

"This probably won't be the last time you come here," he shouted at Macmillan, "I bet half the people in here are surfers. It'll all be part of the lifestyle!"

@Hyacinth Macmillan

Watching Lien drink it, Macmillan threw one of his glow sticks up in the air and act as if the alcohol was already affecting him. For one thing, be didn't want to get too dehydrated. Two, maybe it'd get his friend to be wiser about how much he drank while they were at the club?

"I don't know, bro!" he answered loudly, "I haven't hit the competitions yet!" Macmillan could only somewhat make out some of what was being said. Taking another sip of the drink, he began to chuckle.

"It's 2021, and we're going to have some fun!"

Then came an extremely abrasive beat drop.

@Lien Chang

"Just don't drown!"

Macmillan was too competant a swimmer to do that. Still, if this was the sort of thing he was going to get up to every weekend, he was feeling a little envious of him again. If it was ever time to move on from the sport and Blackrock, he had a feeling he could slip into University at any age and picked up where he left off, without having to study much for it either.

Was he already feeling the alcohol?

Lien wasn't, so he already felt he'd triumphed over him there. He slurped away at the fish bowl, finding it very easy now to continuously devour. "Maybe we should talk to some girls?" he suggested loudly, glancing around the vicinity. That's what people did it clubs, right? Or at least tried to talk to them.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"I'll just eat some gillyweed, bro!"

That seemed like an easy enough method to prevent drowning: become a water-breather. With how much time he spent in the water, he should've developed gills by now.

At least the music was quickly becoming incomprehensible noise again as the partygoers in the club began to loudly talk over the noise again... The bit he heard definitely wasn't wizarding music, that much could be said.

"Yeah, bro, let's do that. Who's catching your eye?"



@Lien Chang

Lien winced at the change in the music. He would have preferred it just remained the same vague thud thud boomph beat continuously, that way he didn't have to think much about what was being played and envelope himself in the atmosphere.

Glancing around, he saw various groups. Some were women and men mixed: those wouldn't do, as there were likely some who were already couples. There were some big groups of young witches, but it was intimidating for him to approach so many at the same time, even if he was only interested in one. Their best bet was trying to find two girls alone together who were single and didn't play for the same team.

Hmm.

Just when he thought there was too much to consider, he caught a pair of ice-blue eyes looking straight at him. She was slim, wearing an electric blue, tight strapless dress. Her waist-length black hair had blunt, straight bangs like they had been sliced presicely with a very sharp knife. Next to her was a girl who was quite obviously her sister, but shorter and with pretty little freckles. Lien looked away.

"At the bar. Two o'clock. By the pitcher full of ice."

@Hyacinth Macmillan

Macmillan glanced down at the fishbowl drink and took another sip of it, thinking he'd come off more casually if he appeared aloof. If anything, he felt more along for the ride with the club being Lien's idea. The club wasn't bad, but he felt too concerned for his bro to genuinely focus on the fun aspect. Lien had gone through a breakup, went off on him at the Shack...

He just didn't know what his friend's goal was, really.

"HUH? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

The bass was making his eardrums throb miserably. Now he had one finger in his ear trying to drown it out.

@Lien Chang

He couldn't exactly point at them. So, instead, he grabbed Macmillan's arm, did an exaggerated gesture of his head in their direction, before sipping more of the drink.

"Those two! What do you think?" he bellowed back at him.

The music wasn't really getting to him as much as it did when they entered. The colours no longer seemed like lurid spillages but bright, beguiling lights that were getting him into the spirit of things.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

He glanced at the girls Lien was pointing to and nodded. "Yeah, they're fit!" Not exactly his type. They were too pale and dark-haired for him, sort of like the one Lestrange. But they were at a club, and it'd be weird if he stayed solitary.

"Go talk to her, bro!"

@Lien Chang

"Got it, bro."

With the fishbowl still in hand, Macmillan walked over to the two girls and smiled at them. He turned to the younger one and asked, "Do ya come here often?"

At least he had a decent amount of experience when it came to flirting.

@Lien Chang

How could he be so casual and comfortable about talking to a complete stranger? Watching in awe, Lien followed him, staggering over the seat of one of the chairs that was pushed back as he went. Managing to pass it off as a minor deterrence, he got to where they were at the bar.

"No - I don't. We don't. This is our first time here!" replied the smaller woman. "My name's Marie. This is Emma! What are your names?"

Emma. The same name he'd given his bloody owl. She was looking at him in a very similar way that Emma The Owl did too, silently and silkily, but with a slight smile on her painted mouth.

"I'm Lien..." he heard himself say, as Emma had clearly looked away from him and was now looking at Macmillan.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"What a coincidence, it's our first time here too! I just moved here a week or two ago."

Of course, Macmillan could tell that Lien was nervous. His friend just needed to get comfortable first. He hoped.

Smiling at them, he added, "...And I'm Macmillan. Did you chicks travel from anywhere?"

@Lien Chang

"Just Wales - no where special," Marie replied, giggling. "But our jobs get us out around most of the country. This is actually our first time in a wizard-only spot for a while. Usually we get around the Muggle world and the clubs there."

There was a problem he was beginning to notice here. Emma, although silent, was looking at Macmillan. Marie, despite chattering away mostly to Macmillan, kept looking at Lien. Urgh - no. It was all mixed up. This wasn't supposed to happen! Maybe of he actually said something, Emma would turn her attention onto him?

"So what do you both do for work?"

"Will you dance with me?" Emma had spoken finally, but it was directed at Macmillan.

Marie went on like that interruption hadn't happened, smiling at Lien. "We work for a small company! They're just trying to find their footing, so we get sent all around. Shall we get a drink?" Marie asked him.

This. Was. The wrong way. Around.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"Oh, that's pretty rad!"

Hm, maybe a traveling kind of chick would push Lien out of his comfort zone for once. Ever since he and James broke up, it was like Lien was returning to the bitter bloke Macmillan had known since first year. They did seem nicer than Alayna, but that seemed like a low bar with how some of the girls at Hogwarts were. Not many were as consistently kind as Lakelyn...

Then he raised his eyebrows in surprise when Emma, the older, taller one asked him to dance. "Hell yeah! I haven't done any dancing!" He swung his glow stick around erratically.

Passing the fishbowl over to Lien, he began moving away from the small group to find a spot to dance.

@Lien Chang

Having the entire fishbowl shoved into his arms, Lien watched bitterly in their wake. It wasn't Macmillan's fault. He probably didn't realise which of the girls he was the most interested in, or thought it was impolite to reject an offer, or simply didn't think anything at all. More than likely, it was the latter. Emma was putting her arms up and swirling them around, then smoothly sliding her hands down her body. At least she wasn't dancing all over him.

"Hello?"

Lien jerked his head suddenly, forgetting about Marie.

"Sorry," he said, "What did you want?"

"I'll pay. I suggested it after all." A bit of a surprise there, so he put his money away. "The only reason why she's doing that is because I said I liked you. She wanted us to be alone. Pretty embarrassing..." And yet she didn't even have to admit that.

"I don't recognise you - did you go to a different magical school?" he asked, wanting to change the subject. Marie didn't seem offended by that.

"No. Neither of us went to magical school. We're muggles."

Lien was bewildered by the information. Was she joking? How could a muggle get into Blackrock?! How would a muggle even know to refer to themselves as 'muggle'?!

@Hyacinth Macmillan

As they danced, Macmillan was doing very awkward jigs involving his glowstick.

"So you two travel?!" he asked out loud as he did a little shimmy down to the ground, almost falling down in the process.

It was safe to say dancing wasn't his best subject in pureblood behavior. "What business stuff do you do?"

"RHYTHM IS THE NEW STYLE OF DANCE! BLACKROCK LET ME SEE THOSE BEAUTIFUL FACES!"

@Lien Chang

Emma wasn't answering any of his questions. She was dancing closer to him, until her thighs were brushing either side of his. Her fingers went through his hair, and she fixed her eyes onto him, stretching her body up, up, arching her back, swirling with a dip in tempo and the lights went down, circling the floor. She put her hand on his shoulder, leaning her head to his hair, and said to him:

"You're not enjoying yourself."

Meanwhile, Lien was still processing what Marie had said.

"You can't be serious..."

"Of course I am," she said casually, while ordering a couple of drinks for them. She hadn't even asked what he may have liked, and just ordered two of the same. Perhaps that was the way with clubs: as long as you were drinking. "You must be fresh out of Hogwarts, and you're not a muggleborn, so you haven't seen this before. The immediate family of muggleborns are aware of wizardkind, but still have to adhere to the Statute of Secrecy. Our older sister is a witch. All immediate family members are granted access, in the presence of their magical family member, to wizard-only places. That means that they can take their child to Diagon Alley, for example. We came here with our older sister."

Their drinks were delivered, and Marie took his hand. Still astounded by what she was saying, he didn't think much of it.

But something was left in his hand when hers retracted.

@Hyacinth Macmillan

"HUH? I CAN'T HEAR YOU?"

His eardrums still weren't getting along with the bass of the music in the club, and the tempo slowing down only made the slight ringing apparent to him.

"CAN YOU REPEAT THAT?"

@Lien Chang

Emma smiled.

"You can have a good time."

Taking something out from the bust line of her dress, she played with it inside her hand for a moment - dropping the bag and keeping the pill inside. Placing it on her tongue, she moved towards him until their foreheads touched, stroking his hair affectionately, before moving to lock her mouth with his.

"That's ten galleons," said Marie.

He knew what it was, just by feeling it. His brows furrowed.

"I don't want it."

He pushed it back inside her hand, and she smiled. "What are you afraid of? It will only make you forget everything, and make you love again. All that in one, small swallow. This night can be your night, if you want it to be."

Lien wanted to get away from her as quickly as possible. He needed to find Macmillan and--

He was with the other one. They said they were in the same business. Looking up and around, he tried to find Macmillan amongst the crowd: beyond the flashing lights and crashing bodies and darkness. Where was he?!

@Hyacinth Macmillan

Whoa, she was making quite a move on him. Heh, he hooked up with Chase Campbell once. How much harm could come from this? Lakelyn had a boyfriend after all, and it only made sense to do something fun. If he did something fun, maybe Lien would too...

Before he knew it, they were kissing. Something was also beginning to poke the back of his throat. Was he losing a tooth? It was possible as he sometimes hit his jaw when he got in and out of the school pool.

No point in trying to fish it out of there, so he swallowed.

Smiling at her, Macmillan asked, "ARE YOU FEELING IT?"

@Lien Chang