House of Cards Series # 3 One Shots (QoS, KoH)

Ring in the New Year

The clock ticked miserable seconds down, the agonizing count until the new year started. There was still hours to go before anyone became excited, though by the smell of it, Nate was the only sober person left in the house. He was nineteen now and at the age where a house party was only fun if there wasn't a sober person left standing. But someone had to make sure no idiot tried to drive home, and so he had pulled the short stick.

The only reason he was even at the party were the two sixteen year olds he was supposed to be chaperoning. One was his sister, Adri, and the other was his best friend, Grace. He didn't particularily trust either one of their current boyfriends and since the guys had brought the girls here, Nate had come also. Though the girls thought he was here of his own volition as these were his own classmates gyrating against each other. Normally he would have been one of the guys taking a girl into a nice, quiet room, so they could talk of course. A smile spread across Nate's face as he remembered the first house party he went to that had ended in a very interesting game of spin the bottle. The smile left his face as he remembered that it had been the girl's first time too, and she was no older than his own sister. Suddenly it was a lot less fun for him to be here, waiting for something to happen. Too many things could go wrong and he couldn't figure out what.

Nate drained the last of his pop and decided to go check on the ladies, just in case one of them needed a knight in shining converse to step in. A sigh of relief left his lips when he spotted the flailing, ungracefully writhing that his red headed best friend considered dancing still on the dance floor with her date at a safe distance away. He was already sporting a black eye, probably an accident from one of Grace's spaztic dance moves. It still confused the Spainard how his best friend was the daughter of two very talented dancers, was best friends with the Vegas, all of whom were rather talented themselves, and yet after years of the best teachers, Grace still made him wince to watch.

The smile was back on his face as he searched the rest of the main floor for his sister. Irritation drove him down stairs to the games room and the basement bathroom that several of his friends were hot boxing. He left the basement with anger pushing him up the stairs and he climbed to the top floor, knowing that no one came up here unless they had a specific thing in mind. Knowing that if he found his sister up here, he was likely to lose his cool, Nate opened each door, expecting a fight. One room had several couples in various states of intoxicated intimacy, but none of them were his sister.

The next room held a couple in the deepest throes of ecstacy, their actions making even the experienced Nate blush. He took a moment to appreciate the girl's athletic figure that was on full display but dodged back out, too determined to be distracted. Even by an amazing rack. The next room showed the sleeping forms of a couple post coitus, drunk and passed out, and Nate pulled a blanket over the dumb pair, knowing that both of them had significant others that were elsewhere in the party. Some people just couldn't stay loyal. If you didn't want to be with one person permanently, you did the world a favour by being upfront about it. Nate had never technically had a girlfriend, he had hook ups. He couldn't dedicate his time to a girl, so he never tried. Sex was fun, but he'd never loved a girl enough to change his ways.

Getting pissed off and a little worried about where the hell this guy took his sister, he heard the unmistakable sound of a woman tearing a man a new one in Spanish. Nothing sounds the same as a pissed off Latina. He followed the sounds of slapping and Adri's angry voice and opened the door to the last room. He saw his sister without her shirt on, a girly bra burned into his memory and making him wish for brain bleach. Cowering in front of her was her boyfriend, his shirt off and his pants caught around his knees. His nose was bloody from where Adri had slapped him hard and his face and arms were red from constant slaps and girlish punches.

"No significa que no hay! No esforzarse más!" Adri shouted at her boyfriend, not caring that her brother was standing in the doorway, watching the whole thing. (No means no! Do not try harder!). Adri slapped the boy hard again and he flinched. "You tore my damn shirt off you prick!" Adri shouted in English and Nathaniel rolled his eyes.