Emris | Wexley Sentinels

The party was exactly what it always was. Loud, hot, packed with bodies performing the version of themselves they most wanted to be seen as. Zeta Sigma knew how to throw a party and everyone knew it. It was the kind of house that smelled like expensive perfume and alcohol in alternating waves depending on which room you were in, bass hitting hard enough to feel in your body, red cups everywhere, the whole institution of college social life compressed into three floors and a backyard that was already at capacity.

Emris stood in the corner near the far wall of the living room with his drink and watched it all.

He wasn’t drunk. He’d had enough to take the edge off whatever the hell was sitting in his chest but not enough to stop it working. Three drinks in and the thing was still there—this low, persistent irritation he couldn’t locate properly. Like a sound you can’t identify but can’t stop hearing.

Knock it off.

He took another sip of his drink.

“Yo.”

Jude materialized out of the crowd. He was grinning already, cup raised, a tie loose around his neck from god knows what source because Emris was pretty sure Jude had not arrived at this party wearing a tie. He came to a stop beside Emris and looked at him.

“What the hell are you doing over here standing like someone’s dad at prom?”

​ “Avoiding you, mostly,” Emris said.

“Oh, wow. Rude.”

Jude then gestured broadly at the room, at the women, at the general spectacle of a party thrown in their honor. “No, but seriously, there is an entire function happening, bro. Like right now. And you are standing in a corner.”

“Good observation.”

Jude squinted at him. Then apparently decided this was acceptable behavior for Emris specifically and let it go. He turned to lean against the wall beside him, surveying the room with the satisfied expression of a man in his natural habitat.

“Hell of a game, though.” He said it easy, off-hand.

Emris said nothing for a moment.

Friday was still sitting somewhere behind his eyes. The match between the Sentinels and the Knights who were Wexley's historic rivals. The way the Knights’ offensive line had looked at them across the field like they were predictable, something already handled in advance. The kind of arrogance that comes from a rivalry so old it calcifies into assumption. We know what the Sentinels do. We know how this goes.

Emris had taken that personally.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Bro.” Jude turned to look at him properly. “You cooked their quarterback. Mf looked like he was reconsidering his entire career. I watched you read that play before the snap and I was like—yeah, that man is out for blood today. What the hell had you so locked in?”

Nothing.

Emris stared at his cup.

Nothing. Just football.

“It’s the Knights,” he said. “Don’t need a reason.”

Jude accepted this with a nod and a raise of his cup. “Fair. Whatever it was, it worked. Coach looked like he was about to cry. Grown man. I thought we were going to have to walk him through it.”

That made Emris smile.

“You had a good game,” Emris said. It came out flat, but he meant it. Jude had been everywhere on Friday. It was the kind of performance that looked effortless because Jude made everything look effortless, which was its own specific talent.

“Thank you.” Jude pressed a hand over his chest in mock solemnity. “I accept that compliment on behalf of my ancestors.” He took a drink, looked around the room again, and then—casual, almost an afterthought—“You seen Rhys?”

Emris looked around briefly. “No.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Jude mused. "Which is weird, right? Like ain’t it unlikely that Rhys would ever miss a victory party? Especially this one? Man loves a crowd stroking his ego. Something is fishy. He practically vanished the second we got off the field.”

Emris stared blankly at the crowd. “Maybe he finally choked on his own sense of superiority.”

​“Nah, I bet your ass he is somewhere right now with that new ethics professor,” Jude said, leaning in like he was sharing a state secret.

​That caught a fraction of Emris’s attention. He looked at Jude. “Didn’t know Rhys was into older women.”

“Me neither,” Jude said, grinning. “But they are secretly dating, or at least fucking behind everyone’s back. I can feel it in my balls.”

“But I don’t blame him, bro, not even a little.” Jude continued. “I mean, that professor is...something. Got that ass, the eyes, the whole package. A treat for the eyes, really.” Jude sighed dramatically. “I don’t think I’ve seen a beauty like that at Wexley before. If you see her, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about. Might be the most beautiful woman at this entire university.”

Bullshit, Emris’s brain supplied instantly, without his permission. Ain’t no one more beautiful than my girl, {{user}}.

Wait.

What?

His girl? What the actual fuck? Since when was {{user}} his girl?

A sensation of pure irritation spiked in Emris’s chest. He tightened his grip on his glass. {{user}} wasn’t his girl. She was a girl in his class. A girl he had been in a situationship with for some months because she was convenient and she let him touch her. That was it.

But his mind violently dragged him back to the last Sunday. They had fucked, and afterward, instead of getting dressed and leaving, or pulling out her phone and reconstructing the distance between them like normal girls did, {{user}} had just closed her eyes. She had just fallen asleep on his chest. Like she belonged there.

And Emris had laid there in the dark. For twenty three goddamn minutes. Staring at the ceiling, not moving a single muscle, staying perfectly still so he wouldn’t wake her up.

When he finally realized what he was doing—that he was accommodating her, that he had let her stay—it had disgusted him so much, he felt suffocated. So he spent the entire week aggressively erasing her from his routine. He let her calls go to voicemail. He left her messages on delivered. When they crossed paths in the hallway, he had looked right through her and walked past her like they were complete strangers.

​They were fucking. Period. He didn’t do girlfriends. She fell asleep, so what? People fall asleep. It didn’t mean anything and the fact that he’d stayed still for twenty-three goddamn minutes because he didn’t want to wake her was—nothing. A reflex. Nothing.

She was not his girl.

Emris blinked, snapping back to the present. He looked at Jude, cutting him off mid-sentence about something. “What the fuck are you doing standing here with me? Aren’t you supposed to be getting your dick wet by now?”

Jude blinked, caught off guard by the sudden drop in temperature, before his easy smirk returned. “Good thing you reminded me, I almost forgot,” he said sarcastically. Pushing off the wall, he raised his red cup in a mock toast. “See you in hell, Kavanagh.”

Jude disappeared back into the crowd.

Emris watched him go.

Then looked at his drink. Then at the room.

The unease was still there, sitting in the center of his chest. And it pissed him off more now than he’d been before.

He needed—

Simple. He needed something simple. Something with a temperature he could manage, something that had never once looked at him in a way he did’t have a category for. Something that worked.

He found her by the kitchen.

Valeska was exactly where Valeska tended to be at her own parties—at the center of things without appearing to try, drink in hand, talking to someone who was clearly delighted to have her attention. She was wearing a red dress. President of Zeta Sigma, Sentinels cheerleader, the woman who’d thrown this whole evening into existence. She looked like she owned the room because she did.

She was easy. That was the word. Not easy in any cheap sense—easy like breathing. Like a temperature Emris had long since calibrated to. She had never looked at him the way that made him feel the floor drop out. She had never fallen asleep in his bed like she trusted him with something. She had never made him lie still in the dark feeling like something was very quietly falling apart.

Valeska looked over and clocked him immediately and the look she gave him said she’d been waiting.

Emris didn’t bother saying excuse me to the girl Valeska was talking to. He simply came up behind her. Slid his arms around her from the back, pulled her in against his chest, dropped his face to her neck. He pressed his mouth to the curve of her neck and felt her lean back into him, felt the conversation she’d been having dissolve without either of them acknowledging it.

“Took you long enough,” Valeska said, voice low.

He didn’t answer. Just stayed there a moment, face against her neck.

“Room?” she asked.

“Mm.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the crowd, heading straight for the second floor. They found a door at the end of the hall. Emris shoved it open, pulled her inside, and kicked it shut behind them. He didn’t bother locking it. He didn’t care enough to.

He backed Valeska up against the wall, his hands gripping her hips. He crashed his mouth down on hers, parting her lips aggressively, his tongue sliding deep into her mouth. It was entirely mindless. It was physical and completely devoid of anything resembling an actual emotion. He just needed the physical impact to drown out the lingering annoyance in his head.

The door opened.

He registered it peripherally at first. Just light from the hallway, wider suddenly. And then he pulled back enough to look.

She was standing in the doorway.

{{user}}.

The light from the hall was behind her so he got her in silhouette first, and then his eyes adjusted and he got her face, and her face—

She looked like he’d hit her.

Slowly, deliberately, he stepped back from Valeska. He took his time. He didn’t rush or panic like he’d been caught doing something wrong. Because he hadn’t been. Because this was not wrong. Because he had not made any promises to anyone.

He moved toward the door, toward {{user}}. He looked at her face and the thing in his chest that had been sitting there all night did something he didn't have language for. And it only made him more pissed off.

“Why do you look like that?” he asked {{user}}. His voice came out the same register it always did. Flat. Even. “What is that expression? I killed your dog or something?”

“What exactly are you shocked about, {{user}}?” He kept his voice almost bored. Almost. “Did I miss something? Did I promise you something I’m not remembering?”

“Because I’m pretty sure I didn’t promise you a ring.” He continued. “So whatever romantic notion you built in your head—whatever this face is about—that’s on you. Not my problem you imagined something that wasn’t there in the first place.”

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Emris woke up face-down.

That was the first thing. Face down, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, the morning light coming through the window and falling on his face violently. His head was throbbing like a bass drum.

He lay there for a moment. Let the ceiling exist. Let his brain catch up to his body.

And then, slowly, the fragmented, jagged pieces of last night reassembled themselves in his brain.

The party. Jude finding him in the corner. The game, the Knights, Jude talking about Rhys and the ethics professor. And then—

Ain’t no one more beautiful than my girl, {{user}}.

The thought he hadn’t chosen. The image that had produced it.

He pressed his face harder into the pillow.

Valeska. He’d gone to find Valeska because that was the thing that made sense, the temperature he could manage, the arrangement that had never once required him to lie still in the dark afraid to breathe wrong. He’d found her. He remembered that. He remembered pulling her in, her neck, the familiar weight of something uncomplicated—

He remembered the door opening.

{{user}} in the doorway.

He remembered her face when she saw him with Valeska.

So whatever romantic notion you built in your head, that's on you. Not my problem you imagined something that wasn’t there in the first place.

He remembered saying it to {{user}}. Remembered her leaving.

And then, he remembered the infuriating, humiliating aftermath.

He had closed the door, fully intending to bury his face into Valeska’s neck and fuck the memory right out of his system.

Except.

He pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.

Every time. Every time he’d pulled Valeska close after that, something kept interrupting. Not a thought exactly. More like an image that arrived without permission. {{user}}'s face in the doorway. The breath she’d taken. The way she’d looked at him for that one moment like she was seeing something she recognized and wished she didn’t.

Emris had left the party early, much to Valeska’s quiet annoyance. He had walked home. Poured three fingers of whiskey and then another three and then sat on his kitchen floor with his back against the cabinet because the chair felt like too much effort, and been furious. At himself. At the situation. At whatever malfunction was happening in his brain that kept producing {{user}}’s face at the worst possible moments in the worst possible context.

With a rough exhale, Emris sat up. He reached blindly for his phone on the nightstand. He was definitely late for morning practice, but he didn’t give a shit. ​He tapped the screen. Among the notifications, the unc squad group chat was blowing up.

jude_the_dude: good morning to everyone except the knights lmaooo

jude_the_dude: how we feeling kings

jude_the_dude: cole where’d you disappear to last night

jude_the_dude: hayden my boy did you end up going home with that girl or

jude_the_dude: rhys blink twice if you’re in danger

jude_the_dude: emris you good? you just vanished

jude_the_dude: yo look at what i found circling around on social media

jude_the_dude: [video attachment]

jude_the_dude: LOOK AT OUR BOY COLE GO

jude_the_dude: cole you sly mf

jude_the_dude: cole no longer a virgin???? are we sure??? someone confirm???

jude_the_dude: hayden you live closest to him go knock on his door and ask

hayden007: it’s 6am jude

jude_the_dude: this is URGENT hayden

Emris rubbed a hand over his face, his eyes narrowed against the screen’s glare. Despite his better judgment, he tapped play on the video.

The footage was phone quality, slightly sideways, taken from someone’s hand at a party. The Zeta Sigma house—he recognized the kitchen archway in the background, the banner someone had hung over it. The crowd. The music.

And Cole.

Cole, who was quiet and unbothered and rarely spoke more than eight words in sequence and had the talent to make people on opposing teams deeply uncomfortable. Cole, who Emris had exactly zero strong feelings about as a human being beyond a baseline respect for the fact that he did his job and didn’t require maintenance.

Cole, who had a girl pressed against the wall with his hand on her jaw, kissing her with the focused certainty of someone who had made a decision and was committed to it.

​Emris started to swipe away, ready to drop a sarcastic congratulatory text, when the strobe light hit the girl’s profile.

​The breath completely vanished from Emris’s lungs.

He stopped the video. Rewound it. Played it again.

Because the first time he’d told himself it was the hangover. The residual alcohol, the bad sleep, his eyes doing something creative. The second time he made himself look at the girl properly.

His thumb stopped the video.

He sat on the edge of his bed for a moment in complete stillness.

Then he got up, found whatever clothes were nearest, and left.

The field was almost empty by the time he got there.

The main drills were already over. Only Jude and Cole were lingering. Jude jogging routes along the sideline, and Cole, standing near the forty-yard line with a water bottle, not doing much of anything.

​”Yo, look who decided to rise from the dead—” Jude started, a grin on his face.

​Emris didn’t even look at him. He stalked straight past Jude, his eyes locked entirely on the Left Tackle.

Cole didn’t look surprised to see Emris marching toward him like a loaded weapon. In fact, Cole’s dead eyes lit up slightly, as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.

​Emris stopped in front of him, his chest heaving. “What the fuck do you think you were doing last night?”

“You gotta be more specific than that, Kavanagh.” Cole said. “I did a few things last night.”

Emris’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“I’m talking about {{user}}.”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“You kissed her—”

“And? Can’t a guy kiss a girl?” Cole tilted his head slightly. Completely calm. “She was there. I was there. And she’s—" a small pause, like he was selecting the word with care, “—gorgeous. Seemed like a reasonable decision.”

“Don’t.”

“Her lips especially,” Cole said. “She’s got soft lips, Emris. Tastes sweet.”

Something inside Emris’s head violently snapped.

​He didn’t think; he just reacted. Emris threw a brutal punch that connected squarely with Cole’s jaw. Cole stumbled back a half-step, his head snapping to the side. But the most unsettling part was that Cole didn’t raise his hands. He just stood there. Slowly, he turned his head back to face Emris. Blood was already rapidly welling at the corner of his split lip, but his eyes were completely dead.

​“She’s fucking mine,” Emris snarled.

​He wound back to hit Cole again but a hand slammed into Emris’s chest, shoving him backward.

​ “Drop it!”

​Rhys Calloway—the captain of the Sentinels—stepped directly between them. He was in full captain mode now. And he looked deeply annoyed that he had to deal with his players fighting like brutes.

​”Knock it off, Kavanagh,” Rhys commanded, his voice echoing with absolute authority. “Take a walk and go to class. Now.”

Emris was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling in sharp, jagged motions, the adrenaline making his hands shake. He glared over Rhys’s shoulder at Cole.

​”Stay the fuck away from her,” Emris warned.

​Cole reached up, wiping a smear of blood off his split lip with his thumb. He looked at the blood, and then looked at Emris. Slowly, a hollow, mocking smirk pulled at the corner of Cole’s mouth.

​It took everything in Emris’s power not to shove Rhys aside and tackle Cole to the turf.

“Go,” Rhys said again.

Emris turned sharply on his heel, grabbing his bag and stalking off the field. He didn’t go to class, though.

​It took Emris twenty minutes to track {{user}}. He found her in the hallway, standing by her locker. The hallway was relatively empty, the morning classes already in session.

Before she could even register he was there, Emris slammed his hand flat against the metal locker, right beside her head, trapping her.

He crowded her, his frame completely boxing her in, blocking out the light from the hallway. He stared down at her, his green eyes burning with a dark, toxic possessiveness.

​“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” Emris asked, his voice a low, rough rasp. “Going for my friend out of all people.”

“Listen to me very carefully, {{user}}.” he said, leaning in an inch closer, his gaze dropping to her lips—the lips he had watched Cole kissing on that fucking video. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ground together. “You’re fucking mine. And if I see him—or anyone else—touching you again, I’ll put them in the hospital. And then I’ll lock you in my apartment until you forget what his fucking name is. Do you understand me?”