Atreus didn’t know what the reason for it was but he liked this touchy-feely version of Ricky that had showed up. Despite the two of them having been on-again-off-again fuck buddies for years neither of them were romantically attracted to the other so there was never much beyond just getting down and getting high together.
He laughed when Ricky gave set his rules, ignoring the uncomfortable itch of the paper stuck in his waistband. Atreus had a complicated relationship with money. He’d grown up poor and having money had turned out to always, always be bad for him. It easily opened up too many doors that he wanted to open with zero discretion.
He paused when Ricky asked about Bash, some kind of unrecognized alert going off in Atreus’ head. He hadn’t told Ricky about the recent shift in him and Bash’s relationship- or ever even called it a relationship in his head before just now. Atreus wasn’t sure how he felt about it and was hesitant to share things with Ricky, knowing there was a very real possibility that he’d be mocked for anything beyond a down-and-dirty hookup with anyone. Ricky had held the whole Teddy thing against him pretty hard, a point of conflict that Atreus didn’t want to revisit when he wasn’t even sure what was going on with Bash.
He frowned as he processed, uncomfortably put off by Ricky’s use of the term our. Atreus didn’t consider himself a jealous person but he was in some kind of juvenile competition with Ricky that he always felt like he was losing. Ricky always had nicer things than him and they both knew it. Atreus wanted to win but he also knew that Ricky could be petty and vindictive, two character traits that made Atreus nervous. Sometimes it was easier to just accept his fate as a knockoff and let Ricky feel like he held all the cards.
“He went to check in with Wyatt, I think.” He responded finally. He reached to take the cash from his shorts and leaned against Ricky as he moved it to the inside of his shoe, not about to lose it to anyone else. “Why? It’s probably better if he doesn’t know what we’re up to.” The last thing Atreus wanted was Bash catching him and Ricky getting messed up together, the memory of Bash’s reaction to drugs sticking with him too closely.
Bash didn’t like parties. He wasn’t fond of most people so a party being a gathering of a whole bunch of people was naturally somewhere he wouldn’t want to be. But he’d not only been required to come to make sure everything went fairly smoothly at the Troy tent and keep a look out for things going wrong (apparently no event could happen in Muddy without some form of disasters) he’d also been convinced to wear a costume, of all things. And it had ears. Atreus had had to do a whole lot to get him to even consider the idea and even more to convince him to actually wear it, though Bash had made his own modifications to make it bearable. He hated formal wear with a passion so he’d gotten rid of the shirt, jacket and tie and just kept the waistcoat, bare arms and chest visible. The pants stayed and the stupid pocket watch but he’d modified the ears to at least look grungy and bloody instead of fluffy and white. It was somewhat bearable, though he doubted he would stick with the ears for long.
If he had to be here, which he did, he wanted to be with one of two people he actually liked and since he’d already checked in with Wyatt and gotten a drink, he was on the look out for Atreus. There was no point texting him since the place was loud and he probably wouldn’t hear his phone. Luckily, Atreus’ costume, which Bash had seen earlier, was fairly bright and easy to spot, though when he did see it he saw another one too. Frowning, he walked over and approached the two men, the other one he recognized as Ricky from a way off. He also zeroed in on the fact that Ricky was being rather more touchy feely than he had any right to be and there was some sort of money being exchanged and that all seemed like bad news to Bash. Ricky wasn’t someone he’d trust Atreus with in any sense of the word so he made his way over quickly, just catching the tail end of what Atreus was saying. He wasn’t sure if he was the one Atreus was referring to, but he narrowed his eyes anyway as he grabbed Ricky’s shoulder and yanked him backwards hard enough to dislodge his grip on Atreus and make his point fairly clearly, so he thought.
“What are you up to?” He let go of Ricky and gave Atreus a hard look as he asked the question.
Ricky yelped when he was rudely shoved back, stumbling a step and turning blindly towards the voice. Despite his vision (or more likely, because of), he’d learned to rely on his other senses to identify people. The downside was the fact that his other senses were usually going haywire from the cocktail of substances he constantly snorted or poured down his throat. Luckily, Bash had a pretty distinctive voice, and even more distinctive mannerisms that made him easy to recognize.
“The fuck, Bash– rude much?” Ricky shrugged off the other’s grip with a sniff, irritated but willing to forgive the man for pulling him out of cat litter hell. “It’s a party. We’re partying,” he explained in a tone normally reserved for very stupid four-year-olds. He remembered Atreus’ warning, and erred on the side of being vague. Catching a glimpse of whatever was on Bash’s head, he assumed they were bunny ears. “Please tell me you’ve got a fluffy little tail, too.”
