For good reason, maybe. The death of Philip has left him more stressed than he's ever been in his life, especially with all the fallout that comes with it. Plus his mother breathing down his neck at every given moment. While he loves her, she can certainly be overbearing, and he feels like he hasn't gotten a singular moment of peace in the past week.
He stands and stares out the window of his room now, seemingly lost in thought, not hearing Hephaestion approaching from behind. When his hand rests on his shoulder, Alexander jumps and whirls around, clutching a knife....and then relaxes when he realizes who it is. "...Sorry," he murmurs, laughing shakily and dragging a hand down his face. "I feel like I'm going crazy."
Hey, I've got a bouquet of roses and box of chocolate here for an.... Alexander?
"For me? Oh, uh, wow, I-- I'm... flattered, uh, this is so unexpected... Who's it from? An, um, a secret admirer? C'mon, I'm sure you can find someone younger and more successful to humor..."
you surrender your heart
I surrender every dream
every weapon you've got
every secret that I keep
you can fight this, all you want
but tonight belongs to me.
alexander was nervous. of course he was, there was a huge, dense secret between he and gavin. “you sure we can make it?” he asked carefully as they sat in the car in front of their parent’s house. “i mean... we’re not exactly subtle.” a small chuckle followed, but he still glanced back up at the large, looming building. they said they weren’t going to touch each other all weekend. and alexander was going to make sure he did his absolute best to abide by the rule. but even now, he found himself wanting to reach over and hold gavin’s hand. the only source of comfort in a never-ending sea of questions and uncertainty. “i mean, you’ve always been the favorite so... i don’t know how much attention they’ll be paying to me, anyway.”
Wake Me Up || Nick & Alex || Late Wednesday Afternoon
@shootembetweentheeyes
At first things were fuzzy. They always were after something like this. His consciousness being rebooted was never an easy thing. As thoughts and memories started to flood back into his head, Nick was vaguely aware of the ghost of a pain in his neck, and a lingering fear.
That man... he wanted Claire. Obviously he was serious about it. Luckily he’d just happened to pick on the one guy that could get back on and warn the poor girl about it.
But that required him to actually get up. As he slowly came back to life, he started to realise there was a voice - a man’s a voice - somewhere near him. Was it the same guy? Back to try again? Possibly.
Taking a sudden deep breath, Nick bolted up, prepared to immediately be in the same position if that thug was back for more. He didn’t actually have to revive like that, he just wanted to freak the guy out if it was him. When he readjusted to the light of the late afternoon, he was able to recognise the figure kneeling next to him and let out a sigh of relief.
“Is this heaven? Are you an angel?” He asked, a mock-panicked look on his face, playing the part of a recently resurrected guy quite well. Admittedly, he’d done this quite a lot.
Alexander didn't exactly remember what the conversation had been about anymore. It had been a long day, a long week, really, and it was late. Whatever it was had just been smalltalk.
However, he remembered the time exactly.
6:04PM.
Parties start on the hour, and this one started at five. After a nice sixty minutes of running around the arcade and showrooms, kids got half an hour for food and cake, then another hour to keep doing whatever they saw fit. It was a simple schedule.
Alexander wasn't usually in charge of this, but he had no qualms putting in a little extra time and effort on the floor in this situation. Over the past few years, Freddy's acquired a sort of tedium to it, but being there surrounded by smiling faces reminded him what it was all for, and why he'd even bothered to work as hard as he did in the first place.
Five minutes before the feast, someone at the front would announce over the PA for Derek's birthday party to head to party room four or such, and then usually the kids would all show up. Some rowdier kids demanded a second announcement, but it wasn't a major deviation from standard procedure. He'd notify the front desk over HT, they'd make another announcement, and if anybody was still missing, a parent would go out to find them. Usually, they'd simply be engrossed in a game of skeeball.
That was what he explained to the woman at the time. He remembered that part of the conversation, the mild twinge of concern in her voice when not a single kid had arrived what was supposed to be well into the birthday cake dinner, and how she eased up just slightly, but two minutes more and she was restless again.
One of the fathers, a skinny pale man with an East Coast accent, quickly joined her, whispering to him how his son was a little faint-hearted and always very obedient, he wouldn't be horsing around unless there was something wrong. Could he send someone to check? He likes to wear a light blue scarf...
Again, Alexander had to assure them that sometimes children got carried away. The music could be too loud out there, or maybe the PA system had malfunctioned without anybody noticing. He'd notify the front desk of the issue again, no cause for alarm.
And yet, he found he couldn't focus on the conversation with them. The air was tense, it was quieter than before, despite the adolescents cheering just outside the door. He wrung his hands as he spoke, not quite hearing himself, but he had to get the words out somehow. He had a lot of them.
A woman stepped forward to ask something. A husband and wife in their Sunday best had similar things to say.
It was 6:13PM when his patience ran out, and Alexander found himself marching out of the room, partially in shame, partially in frustration. The guests couldn't see him do the latter. They might panic. They might feel bad.
He stammered some questions into the HT, struggling to really articulate his thoughts. Was there a situation? He remembered 1983, he remembered clear as day, had somebody else broken the rules? Did somebody dive into the shallow ball pit and break a leg? Everyone split up, look for large crowds of children where there shouldn't be any. Look for... the mother says he was wearing a hat, is there anybody in a hat? Just a little over knee height, painted hair...
Alexander didn't remember much of the search, either. The creeping panic worked like blinders. At a certain point, he wasn't even sure he was talking to as he droned into the radio. All he could be certain of was that he wasn't seeing the right children anywhere. Everything was smudged together.
It wasn't that big a building, they had to be somewhere. Why hadn't anybody found them? It was just a few kids, how do you lose a few kids? Are the cameras on, check the cameras, check the footage...
It was 6:23 when the reality of the situation started to sink in.
