#thread: colin1

[drmissymaclean]

The humming under Missy’s skin was bad today. Normally, she could ignore it, by going left foot first up the stairs or flicking her wrist at just the right angle that the movement fit in her brain. Today though, she couldn’t stop the irritable feeling that pricked at her skin like dry heat. Every move she made felt like it had to be done in a certain way and she tried to remind herself that was just a rule she’d made up in her head. 

She checked her phone, a weak smile making its way onto her face as Petey sent another text, reassuring her with many exclamation points (she didn’t dare count them, knowing her brain would try and find something horrifically symbolic about the result) that Gramps was just fine, settling down for the night, and that she didn’t need to rush home. She fired off a response, telling him that he was a godsend and that she hoped to be home before Gramps’ evening detective shows were over. Firstly though, she’d agreed to pay Colin a visit. 

She’d messaged him on her lunch break, asking him if she could come over after work. He knew what a request like that involved, and he’d agreed easily enough, not sensing anything wrong with her tone. That was good though. Missy didn’t want him to think there was anything wrong with her; she just wanted him to fuck the wrongness out of her.

Standing outside his front door, her knuckles hovering above the wood, she paused. Her fingers twitched, hesitated. One-two-three, knock! She missed the count. One-two- She finally gave in and knocked clumsily, not in any sort of rhythm that quieted the pit in her stomach. Her jaw clenched and she felt a muscle in her neck twitch.

She couldn’t help but flinch as soon as Colin opened the door, looking sun-kissed and smug, but oddly comforting too. He looked like ease personified, in such a stupidly charming way that she was almost comforted by the sight of him. Usually, a night with Colin, whether it be in the confines of his luxurious apartment or aptly nicknamed fuckboat, was conquered with no real difficulty. She got along with him more than she did with most people outside of her ragtag group of Irishmen and Bonnie. Colin had never been the sort of person she’d have ever envisioned herself hanging out with - in fact, he was the exact kind of person she’d have started a fight with in high school - but the buzzing in her veins mellowed a little as he stood there, leaning against his doorway.

She knew how she looked, her hair scraped back in a braid, museum ID hanging off her neck in its lanyard and her blouse still covered in fragments of bone dust. 

“Hey,” she said. Her voice was tight, a little hoarse from the repetitive left-right, left-right, left-right pattern she had muttered to herself on her way here, keeping it up under her breath to keep the image of Gramps falling down the stairs out of her head. 

Before he could say anything in response, Missy leaned forwards and kissed him, pushing him backwards into his apartment. Her bag slid off her shoulder, landing on the floor with a thud. The way she kissed him was automatic, muscle memory, like a routine. 

Her tongue found his with a practised ease as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to ignore the fact that it didn’t feel the same as usual. Something dark and ugly churned inside her as she grasped the front of Colin’s shirt, fingers scrabbling to find his buttons so she could undo them. 

It wasn’t desire she was kissing Colin with right now, it was desperation and as she deepened the kiss with a soft groan, she kissed him like it could erase her whole entire day and help her ignore the compulsions clawing at the back of her brain. 

She felt his hands on her shoulders, pushing her back a little and their lips separated with a wet click. She stared up at him, eyes blown wide as she tried to work out what he was doing. 

“Col…” she tried to lean into him again, craning her neck for another kiss before the stinging finality of rejection caught up to her and threatened to undo her completely. But he still kept her at arms’ length and Missy felt sick.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, quickly deflecting. As if Colin was the one acting oddly. 

[notactualteddyswims]

To an onlooker, the notification centre on one Teddy Ellwood’s phone would suggest that he was far more popular than his shy demeanour suggested. As he tried to comb his curls back into neat submission at his bathroom mirror, his iPhone continued to ping out a series of alerts that might have hinted at an active groupchat or someone who seriously wanted his attention. Slicking his hair back with a little more gel than necessary, he finally set his comb down and padded back through to his bedroom to see what was going on.

He tugged at his phone to forcefully unplug it from the charger in that way Amy hated - you’ll spoil the wiring, no wonder you need to keep rebuying them! she often chided him - and tapped the screen with his thumb.

No groupchat messages and no Instagram notifications or anything of that manner. Instead he scrolled through another e-mail from his lawyer querying if this date was suitable for him to attend the hearing to protect his shares in Infinity, a less formal text from his sister demanding to know the exact same thing, the results from the Google alert he’d set up for Art’s race and a few Hinge matches that he’d likely check out later and not reply to. Pressing his lips together to muffle an irritated moan, he sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, chafing the bridge of his nose in the space between his thumb and forefinger.

Reading through the e-mail and then Kaylee’s text, he felt a thread of despair snake its way into his chest and knew that if he tugged enough at it, it would fray into something insurmountably hard to ignore. As if sensing his anxiety, the end of his mattress dipped slightly with the weight of Dory hopping up onto it. The hand not clutching his phone was soon being pointedly licked by his spaniel until he relented with a smile and began scratching her behind the ears, just the way she liked it.

“I don’t think you came to make me feel better. You just wanted attention, huh?” he asked his dog, who rolled submissively onto her back.

As he rubbed her belly, his phone chimed again. He grimaced and kept it facing flat down on top of his navy blue duvet. Out of sight, out of mind and all that, which was a philosophy Teddy couldn’t realistically live by as someone who was always snowed under by an overwhelming sense of shame every time he ran from his problems instead of confronting them. After a short pause, he sighed in defeat and lifted it.

Surprisingly, when the screen lit up again, he wasn’t being hounded by his sister or pestered by his lawyer. He blinked a few times before rereading the text. It wasn’t even that much of a surprise; Colin had invited him to visit his yacht plenty of times before, he just hadn’t been expecting that to be the message that had come through.

The normalcy of Colin Nash flirting with him against a backdrop of court cases and copyright hearings was so absurd he couldn’t help but bark out a surprised laugh. What shocked him further was the way his thumbs immediately tapped out a reply to Colin.

Sure, man. Send me the address?

Being friends with Colin in school had always been tasking in a way Teddy would never put words to out of fear of hurting his friend’s feelings - because although the tennis star came across as being devoid of such a thing, Teddy knew he had them. Colin had always invited attention everywhere he went, the flavour of which being the exact kind Teddy had always tried to shy away from. Since birth, both boys had been destined for the limelight; for Teddy, it was just there for him because of his family, but for Colin… stepping into fame, whether it be the world of athletics or simply ruling their student body, had been like a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’d always worn popularity much better than Teddy. And then, of course, there had been the Ty of it all, which Teddy knew better than to pry into, even if the reappearance of their old school friend into Colin’s life had piqued his interest.

Still, even though Colin shone in a way that was almost too much for Teddy to bear sometimes, he could push that aside to make time for his friend. He’d graciously declined his invitation too many times already and suddenly being on a floating vessel with Colin seemed infinitely preferable to actually acknowledging that the Infinity custody battle was real and unavoidable now.

An hour later saw him standing on the dock in front of Colin’s yacht wearing a light blue chambray and white shorts. He couldn’t lie and say the boat wasn’t impressive, but he tried to hide his awestruck expression when the familiar figure of Colin appeared at the helm to wave down at him. Cupping a hand by his eyes to shield them from the sun, Teddy huffed out a laugh and waved back.

“Naturally you’d have the biggest boat here,” he called up to his friend. “Is that meant to be symbolic of something?”