Work Text:
The party is - off.
Odd.
Not normal.
Which is to say, the party is loud and the party is alcohol-soaked and the party is intense, in a way Colin has not previously experienced. In a way that none of them have experienced, clearly; everyone is just a little too loud and a little too drunk and a little too wildly, uncontrollably freaked out by Richard's display in the garden to behave, well.
Normally.
Not that much here is ever truly normal , but Colin - Colin saw what happened on the beach. What Richard did on the beach, and ever since there’s been a strange, electric tension running through their group, through them all as individuals; he’s practiced with them and helped them with their scenes and been deeply, utterly unmoored by how horrifically dysfunctional they all are - he’d always thought, when he first came here, that they were something to look up to. Something to want to emulate, want to be , that their group, their little clique of borderline codependency was something he wanted to have .
Now he can’t imagine ever hating the idea of something more.
All they do is hurt each other, he’s found; whether it’s Meredith and Richard’s cataclysmic relationship, or Wren and James’ equally disastrous flirtation, or Oliver and the myriad people who’ve flung themselves at him that he never, never seems to notice - all they do is hurt each other. And tonight - tonight something is happening. Colin can feel it, the strung out tension of the last few weeks building and tightening and winching closer and closer and -
Someone’s getting hurt tonight.
Alexander rounds the stairs, swinging up to where Colin has made the executive decision to forcibly block the top of the staircase with his physical body, just in case Richard decides to come back to avenge whatever it is going on behind Meredith's door, which - Colin doesn't want to think about. The look on James' face had been quite enough for him.
Alexander folds himself into the space next to Colin on the stair, slinging his legs over the edge, his shoulder shoved up against Colin's as he tries to accommodate his extensive height in the enclosed space, which - who even is that tall? Like, naturally? Who is allowed to be that tall? Who decided people were allowed to be six foot three and slim and darkhaired and with irritatingly, infuriatingly distracting blue eyes and oddly, disarmingly delicate collarbones where the wings spread along the line of the neck below the hollow in his throat -
Colin shuts that thought down. It's possible that he may be drinking too much.
'How much do you want to bet Richard's going to kill Oliver?' Alexander says, as - apparently - his opening remark.
Colin winces. 'That's not even a question. He's going to murder him.'
Alexander snorts. 'James wouldn't let him.'
Colin glances at him, which - mistake. The orange flicker of lights across his darkened face is supremely distracting; the gold tracing over his eye and dipping into the hollow of his cheek beneath it, trailing a path along the sharpened line of his jaw, picking out the points of his cheekbones in rose gold against the pale of his skin.
'Are they -' he asks, to distract himself, except that's a mistake, because he can't quite get the words out, and if that isn't the most horrifically obvious sign he's ever given -
Alexander slants him a look, sly and dark-eyed. Colin's breath hitches, just once, just momentarily, a barely there catch between one inhale and another.
'At this point, the only people who don't know what James and Oliver are to each other are James and Oliver,' he says, a wicked tilt to his mouth. Colin finds his eyes drawn to it like a wasp to honey, dragging its sticky antennae through it again and again.
His metaphors suffer when he's drunk.
'But if Oliver's with Meredith -' Colin starts, trailing off, because he's never quite been able to work out the dynamics of this odd little group, understand the underlying threads tying them all together, the little crosshairs and points of intersection on the tapestry of their intertwined lives.
Alexander barks a short, sharp, not at all pleased laugh.
'Meredith and Oliver are fools,' he proclaims, a harsh undercurrent to his voice Colin's never heard outside of a stage. His eyes glint with something both angry and bitter, a kind of sad rage in the depths of his gaze. 'Meredith's just looking for a way out of Richard, and Oliver's just looking for someone to prop up his insecurities, and both of them are ignoring the people who would jump at the chance to do both of those things for them.'
Colin shoots him a glance, startled.
Alexander's mouth twists in self-acknowledging irony. 'No, not me,' he says, an exasperated fondness to his tone. 'I mean James and Wren, obviously.'
Colin is not going to think about the way his heart restarts in his chest at the words.
By the way Alexander's looking at him, all amused and languid and half-drunk, he thinks he might know already.
'And you?' Alexander prompts, nudging his shoulder against Colin's again, suggestive and proprietary and dizzying.
'Me?'
'You,' Alexander confirms, humming. The sound vibrates through the press of his shoulder against Colin's.
It's more than a little distracting.
This whole conversation is distracting; the lights and the music below and the things happening behind the door above and the motion of Alexander's breath like the swell of the sea and something tidal and catastrophic rising up against the walls of Colin's ribcage, rising and reaching and spilling like a wave.
'I - what?'
Alexander tilts his head to one side, devastatingly.
'I -' Colin says.
Stops.
Makes himself think, even though half his brain capacity is down with the half bottle of vodka he drank and the rest is somewhere beyond the inviting curve of Alexander's smile, running free with wild scenes and thoughts that send chaotic, bacchanalic images unbidden into his mind - he stops.
Takes a moment, between one half-filled, dizzied breath and the next, to consider what might happen to him if he does this.
Considers his words.
And as he opens his mouth to give voice to them, a siren sounds in the distance.