The room was a living, breathing entity — thick with smoke, heavy with the scent of spilled liquor and burning herb, vibrating with the bass of some half‑forgotten rap song bleeding through cheap speakers like blood from a shallow wound. The sound throbbed, a low heartbeat seeping into the floorboards, making the walls shiver in reluctant rhythm.

Aegon lounged against the headboard of his bed — the only solid anchor in the swirling chaos of his frat room. He sat with the casual authority of someone who’d surrendered to entropy, one arm draped lazily over a bent knee as he took another slow pull from the bottle. The alcohol burned a familiar path down his throat — warm and numbing, like a velvet glove over raw nerves — blending with the weed‑induced fog that softened reality’s sharp edges into a golden haze.

Around him, bodies were strewn like storm debris: some sprawled across the mattress, others slumped on the floor, limbs tangled, blurring the lines between personal space and collective exhaustion. Laughter burst like firecrackers, punctuated by coughing fits and the occasional groan of someone shifting, too drunk or high to care. The dim glow of a salt lamp cast everything in a hazy orange hue — like the light of a dying sun through dust — turning the room into a surreal, smoke‑filled dreamscape where time stretched and folded like worn paper.

Aegon exhaled, a puff of smoke mingling with the haze, amused as he surveyed the wreckage. What had started as a casual pregame had spiraled into a full‑blown, intoxicated free‑for‑all — a carnival of chaos where inhibitions lay shed like old clothes. He didn’t know half the people here: friends of friends, stragglers, a girl his roommate had brought back two nights ago, haunting the periphery like a ghost. It didn’t matter. The more the merrier — a crowd was a shield, a distraction, a way to forget he was always a little bit alone.

His gaze drifted, dreamy and unfocused, until it landed on you.

You were curled at the foot of the bed, as coherent as he felt — eyes half‑lidded like storm‑clouded skies before dawn, lips parted, caught in that limbo between drunk and stoned where everything felt soft, wrapped in cotton wool. There was something vaguely familiar about you — a flicker at the edge of memory, like a half‑forgotten song from a long car ride. Maybe you’d been here before. Maybe you were someone’s plus‑one. Maybe you’d wandered in like a stray cat, and no one had questioned it.

Didn’t matter. You were here now, and the way the dim light caught your cheek, the tiny shadows of your lashes, was kind of cute — beautiful in its unfinishedness, like a half‑finished painting.

“You okay over there?” His voice was rough, scraped raw from smoke and shots, threaded with lazy amusement, as if watching an entertaining dream. He nudged your leg with his knee — a gentle ripple in the moment.

You blinked slowly, processing the question from another dimension. Your thoughts moved like molasses — sluggish and sweet. The weight of his thigh registered distantly, like a star seen through clouds. The room swayed, or maybe that was just you, drifting like a leaf on a slow river.

Aegon smirked, took another swig, wiped his mouth. “Whas’yo name again?” Words slurred, tongue heavy, tripping like a dancer missing a step. He gestured with the bottle, liquid sloshing, amber and gleaming. “Forgot.”

A beat. Then a crooked, unapologetic grin — the kind that said I know I’m a mess, and I’m okay with that.

Because yeah, he had no idea who you were. None. Zero. Zip. You could’ve been a classmate, a friend’s ex, some rando from a lecture hall — hell, his dealer. His memory was a blur of faces slipping through his fingers like smoke. You were just another warm body, another flicker of light in the fog.

But you were here, and that was enough.

Someone across the room whooped; a bottle tipped over, groans followed. Aegon barely glanced over, attention still half‑hooked on you, waiting for an answer he’d forget in five minutes.

The music pulsed — a second heart.