hiraeth ; harry lewis

ii. since when can he talk to women?

Five speed dates later, Val still stood by her previous thoughts. Vik's friends were...jarring, to say the least, though she understood that at least some of it was for the cameras. JJ had gone directly after Vik, then Tobi, Simon, Ethan, and Josh. Each three-minute 'date' had been memorable in its own right, and she found that she did indeed get along with them all really well. Vik going first had helped a lot, the familiarity of her interactions with help enabling her to possess the right headspace for the video and for meeting the others.

("Do you think I'm fit?" JJ asked, abruptly pausing in his list of the things he did.

She frowned. "Like, athletically?" she asked. "With your boxing?"

"No, like, facial," he explained, gesturing at his face.

"Oh," she said, blinking. "Well, yeah, of course."

"Of course!" JJ yelled, leaping from his chair. "You hear that, boys? OF COURSE!" He began prancing around the room, shaking his hips vigorously. Val clapped a hand over her mouth, watching with wide eyes.

"Was that interpretive dance?" she asked when he finally settled down. "Is that one of the things you do?"

"Wha - hey, hold on a minute, that was my victory dance.")

("Are you into bestiality," Val read off the card, eyes squinting. "That's where you fuck animals, right? Absolutely not. Are you?"

"No," Tobi said lowly, after a slight pause.

She dropped the card. "Are you sure?" she asked, leaning in closer to examine his face. "You hesitated a bit there."

"No!" Tobi repeated, louder and more firmly. "I was just thinking, I mean, people can be a bit animalistic in the bedroom..."

Val choked on her next words and stared at him in horror. "What kind of people are you having sex with?!" she shrieked.

"Not my bedroom!"

"So you're a voyeur then? How else would you know?"

"Okay, no, how's this happened then - ")

("Where is the weirdest place you've had sex?" Simon asked, glancing up from the card and throwing her an expectant look.

Val bit her lip. "I don't know, actually...I'm not too adventurous with that sort of thing, I'm too worried I'll get caught and that'd be really embarrassing. Probably just a club bathroom."

"That seems a bit unhygienic," Simon pointed out, wrinkling his nose.

She shrugged, clasping her hands in her lap. "We were drunk," she said. "You gotta make do with what's available. Anyway, what about you?"

"My uncle's house," he said, folding his arms.

"That's a bit weird, but okay," she said, making to reach for another card.

"He didn't enjoy it," Simon muttered under his breath.

Val's eyes shot up and widened. "Oh, so that's how it is," she said, biting back a smile. Vik had warned her in advance that some of them might say funny lies for content, otherwise she would've advised him to get therapy or something. "Did you?"

Simon's gaze had been fixed on the pile of cards she had been going for, but at her words, his eyes flashed over to meet hers. "What?" he asked, jumping a bit in his seat.

"He didn't enjoy it, but did you?"

He threw his head back and laughed. "Yeah, I did," he said. "My uncle's very attractive."