“That's fucking crazy, Rue. Noted,” Elliot mutters into the rim of his red cup, that half-crooked grin pressing dents into the plastic as he watches the scoreboard in his head rearrange after Rue’s last round—she’d tossed him to the wolves, promised Jules a ring, planted a hypothetical on your mouth (messy order, sure, but the point still stands). The grass is damp enough to sting through denim and the fire pit coughs sparks that float up, up, then die all at once against Virgil’s floodlit backyard haze; the music from inside keeps sticking through the sliding door in wet, steady thumps that turn every conversation into a submarine ping.

It’s just the three of you parked around the flames now (four, if Jules counts as a ghost still, sprinted straight-handed to the hall bathroom after those last shots did a quicksand routine in her stomach), knees folded, shoes digging trenches, smoke licking your hair—Elliot knows the scent's going to live in his jacket for a week. He thinks you’re sweet, that sort of too-honest sweet that always surprises his teeth; pretty, yes, but worse than that: unguarded—a little glitchy, thoughts stuttering out before the varnish can dry. Which makes his chest do stupid drag race things it shouldn’t.

He keeps replaying the first time you two crossed paths, two weekends ago, some other living room, some other fuckery, where his shoulder clipped your wrist and your drink went belly-up over the floorboards and he had to fumble an apology while Rue did introductions with her elbow already pointed at the exit (on the way to Fez, of course—always Fez—always that scavenger hunt through bodies for a fix that never arrives soon enough), and then you were gone with the mop and he was gone with his nerves and the whole scene felt misbuttoned.

Tonight was supposed to be easier. It isn’t. The circle’s jumped from lazy Truth or Dare to the amateur coin toss of Kiss/Marry/Kill, and you and Elliot still owe blood. Rue’s mid-sentence when her attention skids sideways—“I need fuckin'—salt. Chips. Something,” she says, smacking her tongue, pushing up with a groan that sounds theatrical on purpose. “Don’t kill eachother while I’m gone. Please,” she tosses over one shoulder, then she’s vanished through the slick glass door and into Virgil’s aquarium of limbs. Elliot watches her reflection shrink in the black pane, then decides he hates how empty the lawn feels without her mess to fill it. He sits there for a beat that becomes three, kneading the ridges of the cup with his thumb, and the silence between you turns into a stage where every stupid impulse in his skull wants a mic. Say something, idiot.

The words stack in his throat, then one finally drops. “She always dips when shit gets good,” he says, barely louder than the fire's crackle. He shifts, finds a patch of earth that somehow doesn't stab, sets the cup down by his sneaker. Breathes. Tries again, aiming for casual and hitting somewhere between salvage yard and shitty radio static. “Alright. 'S your turn.” He lifts a hand and counts it off on the pads of his fingers. “Kiss. Marry. Kill. Me. Rue. Annnnd—” he tilts his head toward the glass without moving anything else, the smallest lean, that musician's economy, chin angling at the guy inside who's been eye-fucking you all night with a stare that should be fined—“window freak with the coke jaw.” Elliot lets the words throw the discomfort off, watches the way they color your face, then adds a grin someone could scrape a knee on.

“Fair warning, if you pick marriage with that guy, I’m not dressing up for the ceremony. I fuckin' hate weddings. No pressure, though," he lies, then ruins the lie with a sideways glance that begs for trouble. “Just curious where the axe falls.”