mistakes we knew we were making → “solo” para
TAGGING → Mary Kate Hood & Blake Porter
TIMELINE → June 23, 2018
SETTING → Merelsa’s Wedding
SUMMARY → Dumb idiots in denial about who they really have feelings for do a thing. 80% Blake ruining his own life, 10% Mary Kate being a brat, 10% of me being bored and evil.
Mary Kate wasn’t sure what weird fake fight Blake and her cousin Will were having this week, but she kind of wasn’t complaining about the whole having a date to the wedding thing that had come as a result of it. After all, a date would keep her from doing something too stupid, she hoped -- and with all the dumb anonymous rumors that had been floating around about Noa wanting to hook up with her or Elise Fitzherbert at this wedding, the temptation to do something stupid was at an all time high.
Not that any of the rumors were true. Mary Kate knew they weren’t, that was why she and CJ had even created a Noa drinking game to prove exactly how much he didn’t want to hook up with her. At least, not any more than he wanted to hook up with anyone else. She knew she was on par with every other girl in Auradon in Noa’s eyes at best, and that was exactly why she didn’t want to hook up with him. She didn’t want to be just another notch in his belt or whatever; with some people, she didn’t care, but for some reason when it came to him, the idea of being just another girl bugged her.
Tonight was just a night for her to have fun, not worrying about stupid feelings for stupid boys who she was better off just staying stupid friends with.
Her mom had helped her get ready; though Mary Kate was closer to her dad, Marian had been beyond excited to have some time to help her daughter with dolling up for the wedding. And her parents would be there with her, too; all the more reason to keep herself out of an embarrassing situation. She’d hate to let her mom’s hard work on her make up and her lavender dress and her curls go to waste because she was crying or in need of going outside and stringing up a bow and arrow to shoot things.
Not that either of those would have happened regardless. Mary Kate didn’t get all stupid about boys, not like other girls did. It just was even less likely to happen when she was on the arm of Blake, someone who she’d been friends with since the first time Will had brought him to Sherwood Forest at age five.
Blake wasn’t really sure what had possessed him to ask Mary Kate to be his wedding date. Sure, she was fun, but she was his best friend’s cousin, and his ex’s best friend -- someone he would have hung out with regardless, but didn’t need to beg to be glued to his side all night. Still, hearing how mad Will got at him for no reason just for joking about being dates for the night had kind of pissed him off. He didn’t like not knowing what was going on in Will’s head, and that freak out? Definitely made Will’s head more shrouded and mysterious than ever. It had kind of hurt his feelings, getting yelled at without any real explanation, and instead of making things right, Blake’s stupider instincts had told him to get even instead.
Will hated any threat of Blake and Mary Kate starting to like each other better than they liked him, or so it had always seemed to him. And so, in the heat of the moment? Blake had decided the best thing he could possibly do was dangle Mary Kate right in front of Will’s face, and let his best friend see that he could have more than a little fun without him.
And it was fun, too. They’d sat through the wedding ceremony, with Mary Kate pretending to make sad faces at Blake in response to ‘the love of his life’ getting married to someone else. They’d even somehow ended up walking hand in hand, very close to Will, might he add, into the reception afterwards, too, where Mary Kate had promptly handed him a drink and said she and CJ had created a game they’d be playing throughout the course of the night. Blake didn’t know the rules, but he kind of liked it better that way; everytime Mary Kate told him to drink, he raised his glass in a dramatic toast, followed her eyes, and attempted increasingly ridiculous guesses at what the rules he’d be following were.
He didn’t really remember if it had been one of the times when they were doubled over laughing at his most recent rule-guess when they’d started kissing, or if maybe it had been when they were squeezing onto the dance floor, flailing their arms in ridiculous, alcohol-fueled motions that made people all around them stare. Either way, Blake had definitely felt Will’s eyes on him right before it started, and that had been part of what had made the idea of pressing his lips to Mary Kate’s so appealing.
That, and kissing was fun. Blake wasn’t super into the idea of trying to go any father with anyone than that, but drunk body shots and a little making out here and there? Those were things he never said no to at a party, and if it had the dude who had hurt his feelings the day before fuming to see Blake having said fun? Well, even better.
Mary Kate would be lying if she said she hadn’t been a little sexually frustrated for a while now. She’d never been super opposed to random hookups in the past or anything, but it felt like lately, everyone else she had the chance to hook up with just... couldn’t hold her interest long enough for it to happen. She hadn’t been looking for it tonight, though; just for an excuse not to do something stupid like throw her name into the ring of the dozen stupid girls who all would be wanting to hook up with Noa.
Not looking, apparently, was exactly how to end her draught, though.
Andy had made it sound like Blake wasn’t anything special in the kissing department, but the way Mary Kate’s body reacted to him kissing her in the middle of the dance floor seemed to have a completely opposite opinion. And she’d pretend later that she would have been more discrete about being all over her cousin’s best friend if she hadn’t been taking big sips and even shots every time she spotted Noa doing something that violated one of her and CJ’s rules. The truth was, though, she was sick of everyone calling her out on feelings she didn’t want to have. She was sick of people thinking she was pathetic over something she’d never even admitted out loud.
And maybe, hooking up with her cousin’s surprisingly hot best friend where everyone could see was exactly what she needed to make the rest of Auradon shut up and leave her alone already.
Maybe it was what she needed to do to get her own brain to shut up, too.
Blake didn’t feel fireworks going off in his brain or anything like people described when they were kissing someone they really liked, but kissing Mary Kate felt good enough to keep doing it for as long as she was up for it. And it didn’t seem like she was in a hurry to stop, either; Blake was just going with the flow, letting it happen, mentally preparing an apology for all the Neverland fairies who liked to take shots off his abs so much for later... And then, a hand was pulling on his shoulder, tugging him away from Mary Kate, and Blake was blinking in confusion, trying to figure out what had just happened.
His first assumption was that some dude who was into Mary Kate was pulling him off of her or something and about to launch some kind of weird punch-attack on him -- Blake would have laughed at that, knowing damn well that no one defended Mary Kate but, well, Mary Kate herself. A random face wasn’t what he was met with when he finally figured out who had pulled him away, though.
Instead, it was the most familiar face in the entire world, and Blake’s stomach dropped at the look on Will’s face.
Sure, he’d known what he was doing would annoy Will, but the emotions etched on his face were almost unreadable. Blake felt like a dog with his tail between his legs, like he needed to start apologizing profusely right then and there...
But he didn’t even have time before Will was practically yelling at him, scolding him like he was a misbehaving child instead of a grown man who could do whatever he pleased with whoever he pleased. Even if that whoever was Will’s cousin, so what? His best friend had ditched him, had left him in the cold, and hadn’t even given him a good reason why. He’d just gotten mad at Blake, and here he was again today, doing the same thing. Making no sense. Overreacting. Treating Blake like he was so terrible when all he wanted to do was have a little fun.
“Wow, so you can’t make a scene having a good time with your best friend at a wedding, but you’re more than happy to make one yelling at him? Fuck you, Will,” Blake had all but spat in his face, the same anger that had made him ask Mary Kate in the first place twisting inside of him and making him say things he didn’t mean. Making him walk away when he wanted to stay, making him abandon Will when all he wanted to do was fix things.
Blake knew he couldn’t, though. The sinking realization that his best friend was shutting him out -- no, pushing him away, even -- upset him more than anything else in the world did, and Blake had never been great at dealing with being upset. He lashed out, he did things he shouldn’t... and so, pissed at Will for trying to tell him what he could and could do when he wouldn’t even explain why Blake wasn’t allowed to just spend the whole thing with his best friend like he’d wanted to instead...Blake did the exact thing Will had tried to forbid him doing.
He stalked right back over to Mary Kate.
Mary Kate didn’t know how long Blake had been gone, honestly. The second Will had pulled him away, she’d assumed she’d lost her date for the duration, actually, and had headed over to the drink table for a refill and to hopefully find CJ. But of course, somehow her dumb self always managed to end up wanting to talk to Noa, and out of all the people she’d talked to since Blake had left her, of course that was who she was with when her date found her again.
At least the world seemed to agree with her that it was a great idea not to just go for it and hook up with him.
She didn’t know what had shifted in Blake since she’d last seen him, but he seemed a lot more urgent as he wrapped an arm around her waist and asked so not subtly, “Wanna get out of here?” Mary Kate’s jaw gaped for a moment, because not really was the answer. But God, she’d already screwed up and blurted out that she was playing a drinking game based on Noa tonight. How smug would he be if she admitted she was kind of having more fun staying here talking to him than she thought she’d have running off with Blake?
“Yeah, um, sure,” she finally said, waving goodbye lamely at the real person she would have wanted to spend the entire night with -- if, you know, watching him flirting with everyone else in sight hadn’t been the reason she was pretty drunk at this point in the night. Mary Kate idly thought that CJ better be as tipsy as she was, but that was her brain’s excuse to glance around the room for her blonde friend instead of trying to see how few seconds it took Noa to bounce to the next girl once she was gone with Blake.
That thought shouldn’t annoy her. It was none of her business -- Noa was her friend, he was only her friend, and the fact that she kept stupidly letting her thoughts trail to him during the night was exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen. How did she get him out of her head again?
The last time she remembered her mind being blissfully blank was when she’d been making out with Blake, and here he was again, in a hurry to get her alone. Barely missing a beat, Mary Kate decided to just go for it, pulling Blake into the nearest alcove and going straight in for another kiss.
Blake had never in his life known when to stop. He always took things too far, pushed people too hard, crossed lines when he should have stopped...
And tonight was no exception. Kissing in the hallway had turned into finding their way back to where they were staying and locking the door to her room behind them. It had turned to his hand fumbling on the zipper of Mary Kate’s dress, and his pants somehow pooled around his ankles, and to her eyes widening in surprise when she’d realized he’d never done this before.
Blake had been embarrassed, and he didn’t know why. But everyone assumed he’d had sex already -- Will assumed, the person who was supposed to know him best in the whole entire world, and for some reason remembering that just upset him all over again.
When Mary Kate had bit her lip and asked if he was sure he wanted to go through with this, he’d thought briefly about how Will wouldn’t even be surprised, because he apparently expected this kind of stuff from Blake anyway, and then he’d nodded his head and suddenly he’d been living the most awkward, uncomfortable five minutes of life.
Sure, he was Blake, so he’d known how to joke around and act smooth and act like this was nothing, no big deal, something he’d wanted to do for ages and just hadn’t gotten around to. But it was so... squishy, and weird. Weren’t people supposed to feel like they were on top of the world when they were with a girl for the first time? Wasn’t he supposed to feel... something, besides the desire to just go through the motions and get it over with as fast as he could?
At least it didn’t last long. When it was done, Mary Kate had winked at him, and given him props, and it had been really easy to forget that he’d just had sex with her if he just focused on her face and her words and the way that those two things didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary. It was just Mary Kate, just the girl he’d known forever, and she made him feel better fast, acting like nothing had happened, talking and laughing until she’d fallen asleep with her head resting on his arm and Blake had time all to himself to panic again.
He felt exposed, different... dirty, even? And he didn’t understand why, because there was nothing wrong with sex. There was nothing wrong with Mary Kate. And there was nothing wrong with him, right?
So why did he feel so bad?
Blake nervously tugged his arm out from under Mary Kate, padding silently to where his clothes were and sliding them back on so quietly he prayed he didn’t wake her. The door was right there, Blake knew, but he didn’t go for that -- he pulled Mary Kate’s window open quietly, and did what he was so used to doing.
Blake climbed out the window, but instead of finding his own, he counted the numbers until he found where he knew Will was staying,
It was a nice night, and the window was open, Will’s curtain’s fluttering a little bit in the breeze. But no matter how great the weather was, or how lucky it was that Will’s window was open, Blake still felt off as he climbed into his best friend’s room.
In his life, whenever something was wrong for Blake? Will had always been the only one to make him feel better. And yeah, maybe Will hurting him in the first place was what had led him to be rash, and stupid, but Will was still the only one he wanted to be with right now, the only one who could make him feel like himself again.
Climbing in windows in the dead of night was so commonplace for them, and Will only stirred a little as Blake found himself inside of the room and stripping off his shoes and his jacket again. Will’s eyes bleated open just a little as Blake crawled into bed beside him, sliding closer towards him and wrapping his arms around him for the kind of bro-hug that this new weird, incomprehensible Will seemed on the verge of rejecting until he saw the hollow look in Blake’s eyes.
And then, being cuddled up to Will, Blake felt like a little bit of whatever he’d just lost with Mary Kate was coming back to him. Not his virginity, he knew he couldn’t get that back -- but whatever weird, soullessness he’d been feeling after losing it. Being with Will was warmer, brighter, happier... and Blake nestled closer to his friend as he pushed all thoughts of what he’d done earlier away.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to Will, no explanation of what he was sorry for as he said it. “Me too,” his friend replied sleepily, and with those two simple words, Blake finally found the peace he needed to slip into a slumber of his own, knowing that at least tomorrow he could wake up and everything would be close to okay.
