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[sub][color=9ed7db]Interacting: Cupcake, Alpha [@Hitman][@DarkRecon][/color][/sub][/center]
The Fourth of July found Angelica Alexander in a very …uncharacteristic circumstance. While normally, the eldest Alexander would be perched on the very edge of the party, watching the goings-on with an expression oscillating between confusion, bemusement, and horrified affection, today she was at least somewhat more involved. Blake would be proud.

The young woman, clad in a white, off-the-shoulder crop top and navy blue miniskirt, stood amid a crowd of heroes that she did not quite recognize. Her usually impeccable makeup was already a bit smudged, eyepoppingly bright red lipstick lightly smeared at the corner of her mouth and her eyeliner blurred as though she’d rubbed at her face with the back of a hand. She swayed to the beat of the music that was playing – she couldn’t be entirely certain of the song, that’s how loud it was, but the bass was loud enough to reverberate through the floor and drown out the noise from outside, so it was a good enough place to be for her.

Angie stirred her cocktail, a fancy red-white-and-blue layered slushie in a margarita glass, and tried to remind herself that the night was supposed to be fun. She’d honestly thought it was going to be, up until the fireworks a few nights ago had rendered her panic-stricken and useless, curled up in a shaking ball in her bed with a pillow squeezed tight against her chest. Lots of teens smuggled fireworks in for the season and had their parties early to avoid getting caught, it seemed, because the first two weeks of July in their neighborhood were always laden with firework noises and sirens. It had been no different this year, and so she was running on very little sleep and quite a lot of emotional stress, and yet – here she was, at a party. One of the biggest of Blake’s parties that she’d ever been to…

She hadn’t mentioned to him the thing with the fireworks inducing her panic, or any such thing; he was such a sweetheart but she didn’t want to cause him any worry. Truthfully, also, she was afraid to mention it. She’d long been involved in all manner of sneaky operations and had used her fair share of firearms and explosives; the noise hadn’t bothered her, beyond when she was very young and new to this whole line of work, so it was incredibly frustrating and self-hatred-inducing that now, as a grown-ass adult with a grown-ass job and a grown-ass track record of covert ops, she could suddenly not even bear to hear a firework go off without her mental state collapsing.

She’d downed two shots right when they got here, quietly and sneakily enough that no one had really noticed – or they’d thought she’d done her usual thing of taking shots of water, to appear to be in the partying mindset while still maintaining her wits. Nope, she’d taken two shots of some alcohol or another – she’d honestly not been paying attention to the label – and it had certainly had the desired effect, blurring together the world around her and hopefully staving off the panic that she could feel rising from even [i]thinking[/i] about what was to come. Clumsily, she took a large gulp of her half-melted margarita, scrunching up her face slightly. Extra strong was certainly an acquired taste, one that she had not yet acquired.

She thought she heard Blake’s voice, cutting through the thumping bass of whatever R&B chart topper this was, and she stumbled as she limped through the crowd in search of him. [color=9ed7db]“Cupcake?”[/color] Angie mumbled out, the word noticeably unclear. She definitely heard him shouting upstairs, and hovered near the stair railing waiting for him to return. Seemingly, she missed him through the fog of alcohol, but it was easy enough to pinpoint him by his obnoxiously bright hair. Wobbling on her feet, she limped off after him, paying little mind to the person he was talking to as she slipped her free hand into his. [color=9ed7db]“You’re handsome,”[/color] she whispered, giving him a moderately-inebriated smile.
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[sub][color=c3bbc9]Interacting: Trish <3 [@canaryrose][/color][/sub][/center]
Parties at the Von Brandt house had [i]never[/i] been Eliza’s scene. First the Halloween, then the pool party  - they’d both been absolutely catastrophic for her.

But today? Today was special.

Adjusting the blanket she’d wrapped herself in, tucking it under her chin instead of up over her nose as it had been, she grinned up at Patricia, sleepy affection written all over her face. She snuggled closer against the taller girl’s side, adjusting the placement of her fingers between Patricia’s. Her gaze lingered on the soft upwards tilt of her girlfriend’s nose, the barest suggestion of her dimples, the smooth line of her jaw…

It was very hard to resist the urge to kiss her in that moment, but doing such a thing would require readjusting, and the two had just managed to get comfortable. The blanket pile was warm and inviting, the documentary just interesting enough to take up the majority of her background attention while not trying to distract her from the beautiful human being she was cuddling with. 

Gosh, Patricia was her [i]girlfriend.[/i] Just the thought made her giddy, though she quickly bit down on the thought. It was secret, for now – at least at work, and at home, and everywhere but at school. Lots of people had seen them kissing at prom, after all, and though everyone in her quintet had been incredibly accepting, it was yet another reason now for her to be excluded from and shunned by many of the groups at school… she pushed the thought from her mind, resting her head on Patricia’s shoulder and squeaking happily at the gentle forehead kiss, managing to peer up into her hazel eyes for a brief moment, before refocusing on a loose wisp of her hair that caught the TV’s blue light.

[color=c3bbc9]“This is wonderful, really,”[/color] Eliza tried to reassure her, her voice soft and for once not tripping over itself. She really meant it; her heart rate had settled back to normal and the panicked, nauseous tension in the back of her throat was but an unpleasant memory, the tingling in her fingertips mostly gone. Her ears still rang, but that was normal for her, sometimes for hours after a sensory meltdown. [color=c3bbc9]“You’re wonderful. This is perfect. So are you.”[/color]

Eliza gently stretched up in her seat, clutching the blankets so as not to let them fall, and placed a soft kiss on the side of Patricia’s jaw. It had been meant as a proper cheek kiss, but she’d misjudged distances. Oh well. It was a kiss, and set the butterflies to gently fluttering beneath her ribcage again as she snuggled back in, her attention idly flicking back to the montage of photographs currently being narrated on the television.