Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author's Note: Thanks to everybody who reviewed the others. New fandoms scare me, but everybody here was lovely.
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Ephram hasn't known Colin without wanting Amy. It hasn't cast a pall on their friendship, because Colin doesn't know about it or at least doesn't acknowledge it. But it's always been there.
The friendship is real, independent of Amy, because Ephram actually likes Colin, despite being predisposed to despise him. But Ephram has always let Amy hover between them, the ghost of something that never was keeping them distant.
Ephram knows that Amy wants Colin, knows she probably hasn't spared him a thought since Colin's return. It hurt a lot, at first, and he still wishes he meant something to her, even a little, but now what he hopes most of all is that she'll let him be.
Even when she's not glaring at him, or beseeching him, she still makes herself felt. Ephram has always known that the most important thing in Amy's world is Amy, and she expects that to be true for other people as well. People don't go out of their way to put her straight, because they like her, and they don't want to hurt her more than they can help.
Ephram has wanted Amy, but he's never been sure he likes her.
He's felt so lost here, pushed aside by Colin, and Amy's ghost may be spooking him, but sometimes Ephram feels like a ghost himself, invisible to Amy, shadowy and unimportant at the edge of Colin's awareness. Ephram knows that's unreasonable — Colin has never tried to exclude him from anything, never even tried to keep him away from Amy — but he's felt it.
Now, though, all that has changed. Or is about to.
Ephram is trying to remember the first time he kissed Amy, but all he has left of that is the disaster, the fall-out, when he thought he'd ruined everything forever, and even that is fading fast.
They're sitting on Ephram's back porch. Their siblings are somewhere inside, with their parents and the Abbots and the new neighbour whose name Ephram has completely forgotten. Colin is leaning on Ephram's knee. Colin is leaning forward, using Ephram's knee to support himself. Ephram doesn't think it's strong enough to take the pressure, because Colin's eyes are fixed on Ephram's mouth and Colin's breath is brushing Ephram's face.
His knee spasms, like it's thinking about snapping him up and spiriting him away, but that possibility is lost as his brain tangles itself up trying to decide how it should intervene.
Ephram flatters himself that he doesn't run solely on instinct, that his brain does have a say in the decision making process. He just wishes his brain would decide what it wants, because Colin's lips are touching his now, and he still hasn't moved.
Colin's been outside longer than Ephram, and his hands are cold, the chill seeping into Ephram's legs through the too-thin material of his party trousers.
But Colin's mouth is warm, slicking over Ephram's lips, and when Ephram's mouth opens, all by itself, that's warmer still.
The kiss is awkward and rough, and Colin's hand comes up to grasp Ephram's jaw, and his fingers tighten too much. Ephram doesn't mind.
He doesn't mind anything until Colin abruptly pulls away, leaving his mouth clutching at air and giving shock a chance to set in. But then he notices that Colin is trembling, shivering in reaction and shrinking into himself, and Ephram knows that he can't manufacture drama from this, that Colin wouldn't be able to take it.
Instead, he leans forward and grabs Colin's shaking hands. They're bigger than his own, but they're clinging like Delia's. Ephram doesn't know how Colin did it, if he's this scared now.
"Hey," he says, and he rubs the cold from Colin's skin. "It's all right."
And it is. Colin's staring at Ephram, fear giving way to need. Ephram's not used to being needed in a way he can handle. This time, it's Ephram who's leaning forward. This time, it's all right.