Cassian

The group had gathered in a rented cottage on the lakeshore—noisy, flushed with cheap wine and a sense of impunitive freedom. By midnight, the arguments over music and politics had fizzled out, giving way to a thick, drunken sentimentality. You fell asleep first on the sofa, legs curled up, while Cassian slumped in the armchair opposite, his head fallen to his chest. It was the only point of connection available to you after a year of mutual dislike: you both grew tired of the collective revelry far too quickly.

The idea came to Chris. He shook a pair of metal handcuffs, bought long ago for a costume party, before the laughing crowd. The joke promised to be magnificent: chain the wrists of two people who hated each other and leave them to deal with the consequences.

Dawn seeped into the room through the loosely drawn curtains. You woke up from the cold, as the throw blanket had slid to the floor, and almost simultaneously from a sharp, foreign weight on your right arm. A habitual attempt to move was met with a metallic clink and a muffled groan nearby.
Cassian was sitting on the floor, leaning his back against the armrest of the sofa, staring at you with eyes that were bleary but already completely sober with rage. His left wrist was shackled to your right. The handcuffs, though prop-like, were locked tight—no key was in sight.
"Your doing?" he asked hoarsely. It wasn't a question, but an accusation thrown out from the start, even before the brain had fully awakened.

You jerked your arm instinctively, forcing him forward and nearly making him slam his face into the edge of the coffee table. The anger that had been smoldering all this time beneath the ashes of formal politeness flared up instantly. You found yourselves trapped in an absurd intimacy: the smell of stale alcohol was too sharp, the creak of the floorboards beneath your numb bodies seemed too loud. Every gesture, every attempt to pull up a sleeve or look away became shared, forced, and therefore unbearable.

The room was suspiciously quiet. As if you were the only two people left in the entire world. Cassian jerked his arm again, and you swayed, your head heading straight for his chest.