Bad Habit

thirty seven

Finny wasn't lying when he said 10 minutes. It was a prompt pickup, after he spent roughly five combing over his mop of hair and a spraying some Axe into the air to run through. After he finished "getting ready," he sped to Aro's house and laid on the horn, anxious and excited at the same time. Aro emerged from his front door approximately two minutes after Finny had begun honking, and he looked more annoyed than usual. His pace was quick as he jogged to Finny's beater of a car. "Dude, are you fucking insane?" He asked as he fell down into the seat.

"I told you ten minutes," Finny laughed, shifting into drive. "I knew texting you would've taken an extra, like, five minutes."

"So you woke the whole neighborhood up? For what?" Aro cried. "What're you so fucking eager for?"

"I just wanna get there," Finny shrugged. "I wanna get drunk, I don't know." Aro scoffed and shook his head.

"Then maybe you shouldn't have picked me up, idiot. How're you gonna drink and then drive home later?"

Finny smiled meekly and shrugged. "I figured you weren't going to drink."

"You figured wrong," Aro sighed. "After the stress you've just caused me. I had to get ready in less than ten minutes, I don't even feel comfortable right now." Finny craned his neck to eye Aro up and down. He looked nice, dressed in light wash jeans and a regular, black tee shirt.

"Aww, Ar, you look sick," Finny cooed, making a sharp left turn. He had been to a few of Cory's parties before. "You seriously look so good." Aro rolled his eyes dramatically and took a deep breath.

"Whatever. Maybe I won't even drink, I'm feeling anxious now."

"Anxious? Are you okay? Should we just go home?" Finny asked frantically, not wanting to be the cause of one of Aro's severe panic attacks.

"No, like, it's fine," Aro backtracked, "I just won't drink."

"Sleep at mine tonight?"

"Yeah, sure."

The rest of the ride was somewhat silent, besides Finny's old CD playing on loop. Aro was hesitant to tell Finny about his meeting with Moss, considering Aro really did take pride in honoring people's secrets. He also feared what it might make Finny do, since Aro wasn't naive to the fact that Finny wanted to go to the party to instigate things with Moss. He wondered if telling Finny would be counterproductive in their relationship.

So he didn't. He stayed quiet and honored Moss' wishes hoping that it wouldn't get too crazy at the party. Aro didn't want to deal with another few weeks of a battered and beaten Finny, it was actually quite draining. But Aro didn't know how to stop Finny from, well, being Finny. He resolved himself to the fact that he might have to just let Finny make his own poor, poor, piss poor decisions.

When they pulled up to the party, there were already a plethora of cars parked outside. Finny's eyes scanned, not only for a parking spot, but also for Moss' souped up ride, which Aro noticed right away. "Mosser is here," Aro said blandly, hoping that Finny would get more serious about finding a parking spot if he knew Moss was inside. "You knew he was gonna be here tonight, right?" Finny took a sharp inhale.

"Uh, I mean, no," Finny lied, pulling against an empty sidewalk. "I guess I assumed he would be, though."

"Have you spoken?"

"No, I would've told you if we had," Finny said quietly, contemplating whether to tell Aro about Moss' use of his shorts on the broadcast earlier that night. "I. . . He like, I don't know. He did a broadcast earlier."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Finny said, biting his cheek. "He was wearing a pair of my shorts I left at his house." Aro's eyes bulged.