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Penelope was drunk off her arse, the six shots of tequila she had taken making her stomach nice and warm. She wasn’t normally one to drink this much, but she was sad and angry and felt like drowning her feelings in the bottom of a bottle instead of facing them head on.
Fuck him and his dumb pretty face and his stupid lovely arms that matched his idiotically perfect body, she thought, struggling to sit upright on the sofa in their dorm common area. She felt a sudden bout of dizziness rush to her head, the alcohol clearly having some sort of effect. She may not have been able to turn off her emotions, but she certainly was having a sensation of some kind.
She heard the front door to their dorm open, glancing up slowly to see Eloise entering. Her roommate took one look at Penelope, the bottle on the table, and the empty shot glass in her hand before Eloise marched over, gingerly sitting down next to Penelope and grabbing the glass out of her friend’s grasp, placing it on the table. Eloise moved to pull her friend into her side, placing Penelope’s head on her shoulder.
“What did my moron brother do now?”
“How do you know it was Colin?” Penelope was proud of herself for forming a full sentence somewhat normally. She was slightly worried her speech might’ve come out sounding as though she had peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“Because you would never be miffed enough to get this plastered about anything except for him or school, and I know you’re currently acing all of your classes. Plus only my brother would be able to cock up the best thing in his life.”
Penelope wanted to argue with that last statement, but couldn’t manage to think of anything with all of the liquor currently coursing through her system. She barely managed to make it off the sofa and into the loo before she expelled the contents of her stomach into the toilet.
She could vaguely hear Eloise saying something in the other room to someone, though she knew their other dormmates weren’t home so she wasn’t entirely sure who she could be talking to. She stopped trying to figure out what was happening, though, as another round of booze poured out of her and emptied into the bowl beneath her head. She had never been very good at keeping down alcohol, especially when it involved tequila, but she knew that it would be the quickest way to forgetting what had happened.
She waited a few more minutes before she finally felt like nothing else was gonna come up. Her stomach felt better, though she still felt pretty drunk. She supposed that wasn’t all that surprising though, given how much she’d had to drink in such a short time. She supposed the sickness was probably a combination of the spirits and her ill feelings towards Colin.
Penelope moved to stand slowly, trying not to make herself sick again. She turned the tap of the sink on, rinsing her mouth out before splashing water on her face. She brushed her teeth to remove any lingering nasty tastes in her mouth before adding mouthwash to the mix for good measure. She spit the rinse out before she left the room, making her way back to the kitchen.
Eloise wasn’t there when she returned, so Penelope assumed she had either escaped to her room or had gone out again. Before she could investigate further, a knock sounded on the door. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, but with no one else around, she was the only one there to answer it.
And Penelope really wished she hadn’t as she took one look at Colin’s face before she promptly slammed the door closed again. She could hear him pounding incessantly on the other side, his knuckles rapping harshly against the wooden frame.
“I’m not leaving until you let me in, Pen!” He shouted, and she briefly worried what the other occupants of the building must think before she decided she really didn’t care. She just wanted him to get the hell out.
“Go away! I don’t want to see you!”
“Come on, Pen. Let me in so we can talk, luv.”
“Don’t call me that.” She felt biting anger rise up inside her at the endearment. How dare he say that after what he told his “mates?”
“Fine, but I’m still not leaving until you let me inside so we can talk about this like proper adults.”
Penelope let out a huff, knowing he was stubborn enough to mean it. She reluctantly opened the door again, staring at his annoyingly smug face.
“You have five minutes. Make them count.” She moved to step aside so he could come in. Colin bolted inside, turning towards her as she closed the door behind him.
“Eloise called me. She told me you were pissed off your rocker. She also told me I had to come here and grovel, so that’s what I’m doing here. Tell me what I did, Pen, please.”
She stared at him like he’d grown a second head.
“Seriously Colin? You need me to tell you what you did wrong? What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She wanted to throttle him. The nerve of this man, begging to come inside after he’d torn her heart to pieces and then demand she tell him why she was so upset!
“Well forgive me, Pen, I’m not exactly a mind reader here. All I know is you’re clearly soused beyond reason and Eloise said it’s all because of me. I’m trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong since we last spoke, but I can’t rightly do that if you don’t tell me now, can I?”
He made a fair point, but she wasn’t about to admit that to him. She rolled her eyes at him, moving to lean against the counter that currently housed a bucket full of rubber duckies that their other roommate, Edwina, was saving for a dorm event.
“Fine. I heard you talking to those arseholes you call ‘friends.’ And I heard you tell them that you would never date me.” She struggled not to let the tears that came unbidden to her eyes escape. He didn’t deserve to see her cry.
“Oh.” Well at least he seemed to understand why she was so vexed.
“Yeah, oh.”
“You… weren’t supposed to hear that,” he said sheepishly.
“Really?! That’s all you have to say to me?! ‘I wasn’t supposed to hear that!’ Fuck you, Colin!” She started grabbing the rubber duckies, hurling them at him one by one. Colin curled into himself protectively, attempting to dodge her assault of plastic mallards. By the time number seventeen left Penelope’s hand, he cried out for a truce, saying he was waving the proverbial white flag.
“Oh my god, they’re fucking rubber ducks, Colin! Don’t be such a baby!”
“They can still hurt, Pen! Plus, I want to explain!”
“What’s there to explain? I wasn’t supposed to hear, I heard it, the end.”
“There’s more to it than that and you know it. Can we please sit down and talk about this?” He pleaded, looking like he was ready to get down on his knees and beg her to listen.
“No. If you want to explain, we can stay right here and you can explain it to me.”
Now it was his turn to roll his eyes.
“The reason you weren’t supposed to hear that was because it wasn’t… the full truth.”
She looked at him quizzically, unsure what he meant.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“I mean, I only told them that because that was easier than the full truth when the full truth is complicated.”
“Why is it complicated?” She was fully intrigued now, wanting to know why Colin seemed so evasive all of a sudden.
“Because it is.”
“That’s not an answer, Colin, and you know it.”
“I can’t tell you!”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t!”
“Why not?!” She was starting to get fed up again, realizing he was never going to be honest with her either. And if he wasn’t going to be truthful with her now, then she needed to move on from him once and for all. She knew she couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t find it in himself to put her feelings first when he had said something so hurtful about her behind her back.
“I…” He seemed on the verge of being ready to spill everything before he changed his mind, lowering his eyes to the ground. That was the final straw.
“That’s what I thought. Just go.” She was well and truly done with this whole thing.
“Pen…”
“Leave!” She just wanted him gone, out of her dorm, out of this building, out of her life. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be getting the picture.
“Penelope, please…” Colin seemed like he was desperate for her to give him just one more chance, desperate for her to listen to him even one more time. But Penelope wanted to wash her hands of the whole thing and couldn’t stand to tolerate another second of this.
“I’m so tired of your shitty excuses! I don’t want to fucking hear them anymore! Just get the fuck out-“
She didn’t get to finish her sentence before Colin pulled her roughly to him, placing his lips on hers and effectively shutting her up. She let out a squeak of surprise before she melted into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him closer. He, in turn, embraced her waist, enfolding her against his chest.
How they went from her lobbying toy ducks like projectile missiles at his head to this, she’d never know. She was totally amazed by and thoroughly enjoying this turn of events, however, and was more than happy to go along with them.
Colin pressed her up against the door, moving to mouth at her neck in quick, hot nips. Penelope angled her head to the side to give him better access, sighing dreamily. He continued his assault on her neck for a few more minutes before he returned to her lips, sucking on the bottom one gently before he nipped at it lightly with his teeth. He licked at the bite mark, soothing the slight sting with his tongue.
She moaned at the feeling, wanting to feel more of what he could do to her. But then Penelope remembered Colin had yet to tell her how they had gotten to this point, and she knew they had to talk before this went any further. She pushed away from him gently, moving far enough away to look into his eyes but not so far as to move out of his arms.
“As nice as this has been, I need answers.”
He sighed before leaning his forehead against hers.
“As your TA, I’m not supposed to date you. So I said that to those guys because I couldn’t tell them I wanted you without putting my job in jeopardy. Technically I’m not supposed to be friends with students either, but you’re my sister’s roommate and best friend, so you’re kind of a package deal.”
Penelope couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He had… he was willing to… he would choose her over…
“You want to… be with me even if it means you could lose your job?” Now she felt like crying for an entirely different reason.
“Fuck yeah, Penelope. I think you’re totally worth it. I mean, I would hope I wouldn’t lose my job, but if it means I get to have you…”
She couldn’t help but fling herself further into his arms, feeling his own tighten at her back. She felt so special, knowing how much he was willing to risk to be with her.
“I don’t want you to lose your job, though, so can we keep this just between us for now? I mean, I’ll tell Eloise, of course, since she helped us out, but I don’t want to risk you getting fired just for me.”
He smiled lovingly down at her before he kissed her nose.
“If that’s what you want, yeah.”
“Only until you’re not my TA anymore. And then we can just have fun with role play, except I get to be the TA this time.” His eyes gleamed at that, and she knew she’d won.
“Does that mean I get to be the naughty student or the bad, bad professor?”
“Whatever you want, baby. Whatever you want.”