Chapter 3 – Green-Eyed Wonder

-:-:-:-:-:-

"Kayla?" Luke echoed, the brunette staring down at Alex with an incredulous look from where he'd more or less tackled the blond to the ground the moment he'd entered the studio. "You're dating Kayla? Dude, why?"

"Because she's nice," Alex grunted, frazzled because he hadn't anticipated needing to defend this decision. "And she asked me."

"I thought you had this whole school-first mentality," Luke pressed, giving Alex a fierce side eye. "Dude, tons of girls have asked you out."

"Well." Alex swallowed, trying not to fidget under the weight of Luke's stare, knowing full well that the others were watching from across the room, Reggie now cuddled in Bobby's lap when Alex had been pretty sure they were both standing just moments before. "She made a good case. She understands that what we have can't get in the way of the band."

"Damn right, it can't," Luke said, getting all squinty eyed. "That involves band bonding sessions."

"She gets that too." Alex reached up to awkwardly pat Luke's shoulder. "And I have the same understanding about Dirty Candy."

Luke huffed, pulling back until he was sitting up, straddling Alex's waist in a horrific tease. "If you guys are barely going to see each other, why date at all?"

It was an entirely fair question, but it was still one that made a spark of frustration flare in Alex's chest. He knew Luke didn't mean to imply that Alex was – what, too busy to have the normal teenage experience? To dedicated to celibacy? Too occupied for romance? Alex didn't know, and he realized that he was ten times more sensitive to these things because they were coming from Luke, but in that moment his brain wasn't working at a hundred percent, partially because he was flustered and partially because Luke was sitting on his dick.

So Alex might have snapped at him.

And by 'might have', he meant definitely.

"I don't know, Luke," Alex hissed, sitting up because he didn't want to be at a height disadvantage anymore and not realizing until he was there that it was a terrible idea because it brought him that much closer to Luke. "Why are you dating Bobby and Reggie? It's just a thing I wanted to do."

Luke reared back in surprise, his eyes going wide at the frustration Alex couldn't hold back, and countered it with his own annoyed huff. "Fine," Luke muttered, climbing off Alex and marching over to his guitar in angry movements. "I hope you have fun."

"That would be the point," Alex snapped, again, before retreating to the safety of his drums, both of them pretending they weren't totally mad at each other while definitely being mad at each other.

It wasn't that much of a surprise when Bobby called rehearsal early, the rhythm guitarist forcing Luke and Reggie into his house so they could play helpers to Gran while she baked cookies.

With that settled, Alex started to pack his stuff up, knowing a dismissal when he saw one.

"He was just surprised," Bobby offered, lingering on the outskirts of Alex's vision. "You know how he gets. He is happy for you, Alex. We all are. He'll show you that much later, I promise."

"Sure, Bobs," Alex murmured, ignoring Bobby's silent request to stay, to linger. He'd sent the other two to the kitchen because it was what they needed, but the quiet implication had been that Alex and Bobby could still hang out together the way they had so many times before.

That time, though, Alex's stomach curdled at the thought of depriving the rhythm guitarist of his boyfriends, of getting in the way, so he pushed on.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Alex said, ducking out of the studio without looking behind him.

He didn't really want to know what expression Bobby was wearing. He didn't have the fortitude to carry on if it wasn't concerned in the slightest, so he just pretended that he was. Just to feed into his ego, if nothing else.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Things didn't really change that much, at least for Alex and Kayla.

They made more of an effort to meet up at school, to talk between classes as an excuse to hold hands. They tagged each other in memes on Facebook and promoted each other's gigs since they'd never actually be able to attend them, both of their bands usually performing on the same nights. They didn't have the same lunch period so Alex didn't have to worry about keeping her company then, and other than that, things were mostly fine. Kayla got the appearance of a boyfriend so people stopped bothering her, Alex got parents who were delighted with his new endeavors in romance for some reason, and that was that.

At least, as far as he was concerned.

As far as the band was concerned, things apparently went off the deep end, and Alex wasn't even sure why.

The root of the issue, of course, was Luke, because it was always going to be Luke. Reggie went out of his way not to cause problems, always one who preferred to go with the flow, and Bobby was likely the best at communicating out of all of them. It was Luke who was not. It was Luke who liked to poke the bear, who responded to life changes with a flare of drama and chaos that Alex would normally admire were it not so unquestionably aimed at him.

Alex would like to think it started benignly, but it was Luke, so it probably didn't.

"What do you think of this?" Luke asked, playing a riff for him during one of the lulls during their rehearsal.

"It's solid," Alex offered, trying not to gush because it would just go straight to Luke's head anyway, and as the one who wasn't dating the brunette, Alex was obligated to be his reality check.

"Yeah?" Luke evaluated him with narrowed eyes. "What would Kayla think of it?"

The question caught Alex so staggeringly off guard that he had no idea how to respond to it, could only blink at Luke helplessly, wondering if he'd heard wrong. "What?"

"Kayla," Luke repeated, getting a little louder. Across the room, Bobby shot him a concerned look, his shoulders hunching with tension. "What would she think of it?"

"How would I know?" Alex asked, trying desperately to hide his confusion. "I'm not her."

"I would know how Bobby felt about it," Luke sniffed, shifting his focus back to his guitar frets, silently working through his fingerings. "Reggie too."

That's just fucking great, Alex wanted to snap. I also know what they'd fucking say, you fucking asshole he wanted to yell (fondly, though, always fondly, because Luke might be a shit sometimes but he was their shit).

In the end, Alex said neither. "I just started dating her, Luke."

"Why though?" Luke asked, circling back to that one question again.

"I already told you," Alex sighed. "We have an understanding-"

"You could have had an understanding with other people!" Luke snapped, flailing his arm as though to emphasize this.

"Guys," Bobby finally cut in, deciding to head things off before they got out of control, as they tended to when it was Luke and Alex facing off against each other. "Let's get back to rehearsing."

"Whatever," Luke grumbled, pouting as though he hadn't been the one to start the fight, if that was even what it was.

Alex tried not to think about it, and if his fingers shook a little, he just held onto his drumsticks tighter, trying to latch onto the one thing that had always kept him steady.

-:-:-:-:-:-

It was little stuff like that. Sometimes Luke would bypass asking Alex's opinion on things in favor of pushing for Kayla's – what did Kayla think of the latest movie or song or tv show, what did Kayla think about the food in the cafeteria, of the theme they had chosen for prom? What did Kayla think of Reggie's flannel?

It was utterly baffling. Alex didn't know what to do with it and Bobby was giving him looks that barely concealed a soft sort of pain, like he was mad at Alex for distracting his feisty boyfriend, but that wasn't Alex's fault.

"Are you having this kind of trouble with your friends?" Alex asked Kayla after two weeks of this, the two of them at their regularly scheduled between-class canoodling near her locker. He had a hand curled around her waist and it was fine. Or, it was weird, but he just pretended that it was Julie and he was psyching her up for a show or something and it wasn't as bad.

"Nope," Kayla hummed, aiming an amused glance his way. "Can't say that I am."

Damnit, that meant it was a Luke-specific thing instead of a regular friend thing, which made all of it entirely more complicated.

"Why is he doing this?" Alex tried not to look dejected to keep any observers from thinking that he was upset with Kayla or something, when really it was Luke. It was always Luke.

Alex would have asked Nick about it, since he was the only guy he knew that was attracted to ladies that wasn't in his band (there was also Willie, but Willie had this habit of just knowing things that made him too dangerous to approach on a good day, let alone whatever the past few weeks had been), but Nick would immediately take the conversation to Julie, and then the whole world may as well know.

"Two words," Kayla murmured as she shut her locker in a deft movement, turning to give him a mischievous grin. "Dangerously codependent."

"What?" Alex didn't even know what that meant. Or, he did, but he didn't understand how it applied in this context.

"Luke's not used to sharing you so he's acting out," Kayla explained. "He's feeling insecure."

"I don't think Luke could feel insecure if you paid him," Alex said, trying to wrap his mind around the concept.

"That's because you're too close to the problem to properly see it," Kayla countered. "He just needs a little reassurance about his place in your world."

"He's being a brat," Alex said. "I don't want to positively reinforce that behavior."

"He'll probably stop being a brat if you give him that reassurance," Kayla offered, her voice a cheerful lilt. "Luke might seem all tough, but you know better than anyone else he has a marshmallow center. Had to get two boyfriends somehow, am I right?"

"Sure," Alex said distractedly, once more trying very hard not to think about the inevitability of their relationship, how they'd been falling together forever with Alex on the outside, not even looking in, because he hadn't known it was there until too late.

Because Alex had no other answers, he tried giving Kayla's advice a shot. He picked up milkshakes before rehearsal and hid them in Bobby's freezer until he could bring them out as a surprise, something that Reggie openly delighted in, that earned a small smile from Bobby. Even Luke seemed ultimately happy, and with the four of them sipping away at their treats – definitely spoiling their dinners – it seemed almost like old times. Like before they had told Alex about their relationship, before Alex had started 'dating' Kayla. All was well.

And then halfway through their treats, Luke squinted at him again, his new favorite evaluation tool to make Alex squirm. "You get one of these for Kayla too?" he asked, making Bobby sigh.

"Of course," Alex lied, as though he would ever dare to do such a thing because Kayla had already told him about her strict diet, which was why any for-show presents had to be like, key chains or jewelry or makeup.

"Of course," Luke echoed, rolling his eyes as he took another vicious slurp of his milkshake, and Alex wanted to strangle him just as much as he wanted to throw that damn milkshake away and start licking the creamy sweetness off his lips until Luke was a whimpering mess below him.

Fucking hell, did Alex hate himself sometimes.

He tried. He did try. He didn't even pretend to text Kayla when he was around the guys, he didn't even bring up her name. He tried to focus on them, got them presents, gave them compliments, plied them with affection. He ruffled Reggie's hair and squeezed Bobby's shoulders and didn't smack the back of Luke's head despite how much he desperately wanted to.

And still. Still, Luke would ask about Kayla.

It got to the point where Alex broke down and asked Bobby about it, because Bobby was his sounding board for all things Luke-related. They were the logical ones. They fought with reason and intellect instead of succumbing to the heavy swell of their emotions.

"Why is he so fixated on this?" Alex asked, trying not to sound half out of his mind. "I haven't let it get in the way of the band, have I?"

"No, you haven't," Bobby assured him, giving Alex's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "He um- just needs more time."

"For what?" Alex asked, but for once, Bobby had no answers for him.

Which just went to show how well Alex's life was going.

-:-:-:-:-:-

The thing was, it wasn't just Luke who was acting weird, Reggie was too.

The bassist was pulling back, not being as generous with his physical affection as he normally was. And ultimately, that was – it was for the best, and Alex certainly didn't want to force anything if Reggie was uncomfortable, but he hated how shy Reggie seemed around him nowadays. He didn't skirt away from Alex's touch, but he didn't seek him out either, didn't eagerly sprawl himself across Alex's lap and play with his hair and excitedly babble about the latest Star Wars fanfic he'd been reading.

And Alex – who only cared about Star Wars to the extent that made Reggie happy – was desperately starting to miss all these things. He didn't know what was wrong. They'd all started dating without him, but when he'd started dating someone else, they'd gotten weird. Was he supposed to not date people? Granted, he could tell them that it was all a business arrangement, that it was for show, because it was convenient for both Alex and Kayla, but for some reason admitting to that much seemed like it would destroy the last line of defense Alex had, like he'd gone through all this for nothing, so he kept it to himself.

That was not to say he wasn't there for his friends, because he was. Even if they were being weirdos, they were his weirdos, and Alex would throw down for them until the day he died. Probably past that, if he was being honest.

He was an admittedly stubborn guy; he could make it work.

So when he heard the telltale scuffles of an attempted fight along the same path Reggie usually took to meet Alex at his car, the blond hadn't hesitated, charging around the corner to see Reggie huddling against the brick wall of the school building, three assholes cornering him with scowls on their faces.

"You know they're not really dating you, don't you, freak?" one of them heckled, his face twisted in a sneer. "They just say they are because they feel sorry for you, but no one would actually want to touch you."

"Who's even heard of three people dating anyway?" another one laughed. "And you bought that? You're fucking stupid, Peters."

"Fuck off!" Alex snarled, shoving himself between Reggie and the three bullies before he could really think about it. "Get the hell out of here, you dumbass idiots."

"What the hell, Mercer?" the first one said, like they were equals in this. "You of all people should know how fucked up this is. You have to witness it up close."

"The only fucked up shit I see here is you three," Alex snapped. "I get it, none of you could manage to get one person to date you, let alone two. It's too much for you to comprehend, but you don't have to show off your stupidity to the rest of us."

"Hey, fucking- fuck you!" the first guy snarls, and Alex might talk a good talk but he wasn't the best fighter, so the black eye he received before a teacher stumbled upon them and broke things up was probably inevitable.

Alex got a detention to the other guy's one-week suspension, and Reggie spent the entire time waiting for him outside the office. Hopefully, he had texted an update to the others, otherwise they were going to have two very nervous boyfriends on their hands by the time they got to rehearsal.

That time, Alex broke his own rule and held Reggie's hand all the way to his car, his face aching but head held high, because he was not ashamed of the wounds he'd acquired in the defense of his friend.

"Don't listen to a fucking thing they said," Alex urged, trying not to squeeze Reggie's fingers too tightly. "They're just narrow-minded pricks. Luke and Bobby worship the ground you walk on. They would never, ever see you as extra, do you understand? You are vital."

"Alex…" Reggie began, his voice soft when they settled into Alex's car. "You- you didn't have to do that."

Alex swallowed hard for a moment, and after he got the car in drive, he reached over and held Reggie's hand again, because that felt far more important.

"Yes, I did," he said, resolute in this one thing. "Yes, I did."

-:-:-:-:-:-

There was a party, and Alex didn't want to go.

They weren't playing the party, but they also didn't have any gigs. No one had gigs, because it was on the rare occasion when Sunset Curve, the Phantoms, and Dirty Candy were all free – and as it was dictated by the stars, in the few instances where that occurred, they were required to party. These were the people that had afternoon and week night birthday parties because they'd rather perform gigs on the day of, these were musicians through and through, but even they needed to cut back every once and a while.

This time, the party was at Carrie's place, and Alex would have avoided it altogether if Carrie hadn't given him a stink eye that Kayla had laughed at. Normally, Alex wouldn't protest spending time with his friends, because he did genuinely like these people and wasn't afforded the opportunity to see them too much, but this would be the first time that Kayla and Luke were in the same place together for an extended period of time, and Alex was going to have to spend most of it with Kayla. Those were just the rules. He already gave the band the rest of his free time, he at least had to make a semblance of effort of caring about his 'girlfriend'.

Thank goodness for party games. Kayla firmly carried their team through a set list in 'Just Dance', which Alex praised her for appropriately. Normally, it was him and Reggie against the world and failing horribly, or him and Luke, when the brunette was in the mood. Neither one of them seemed particularly dancy right now so Alex paid them no mind, didn't save them snacks he knew they would like or try to act as a social buffer for Bobby because Alex had a 'girlfriend' and he was supposed to pay attention to her.

"So," Yellow Candy – whose actual name Alex couldn't remember if his life depended on it – spoke up when Alex had a casual arm draped around Kayla's shoulders (ugh, how much was too clingy? He didn't even know. He could only hope Kayla would shove him off if he seemed like a possessive douche). "How did Kayla get the great Alex Mercer off the market?"

"By asking?" Alex hazarded, confused as to why everyone seemed to consider him as the white whale equivalent of dating or something.

"Boys," Yellow Candy said with a roll of her eyes, something that made Kayla chuckle in delight, like she knew a secret they didn't. "Okay, follow up question – why do you keep dating her?"

"Dude," Alex said, his brows furrowed in offense on Kayla's behalf. "She's your friend."

"No, that's a fair question," Kayla informed him, giving his hand a few comforting pats. "You don't seem like the dating type, sugar plum."

That's because he only wanted to date three people, and none of them liked him back.

"I like her," Alex offered, the only answer he ever had to that question. "We have um- good-"

"Chemistry," Kayla finished with a wide grin. "Sweetheart, tell her about our last date."

At that, Alex actually perked up, because this was a familiar game. He and Kayla had a lot of fun making up fake dates that they never actually went on. To date, Alex had a great fake time at each of them.

"It'd be my pleasure," Alex said before launching into an exaggerated retelling of a community theater production of Cats that could have actually been much worse than it was (Alex's parents had been the ones to go see it, his mom thinking the outing would be fun) before getting smoothies because those were perfectly allowed within Kayla's diet while they walked under the stars.

"Aw, that's so sweet," Yellow Candy said, perhaps a bit predictably. "You guys are so cute."

"Yeah, we are," Kayla chirped, her grin victorious.

"How come we don't go on walks anymore?" Luke asked, seeming to appear from out of nowhere so suddenly that Alex almost startled and sent Kayla and himself tumbling to the ground. Somehow, at the last moment, he managed to stabilize himself, but it was enough that he dropped the arm around Kayla shoulders.

Kayla made up for it by twining their fingers together, an action Luke didn't miss, though he kept the majority of his ire pinned on Alex.

"What?" Alex asked, a familiar question nowadays.

"You, me – walks," Luke replied, like that made any sense. "We don't do that anymore."

"I'm pretty sure we never did that in the first place," Alex tried to defend, searching his mind for a single instance where they just- walked together. They'd hiked before and explored the creek. They'd gone biking and on car rides, but just like- random walking? Without a purpose? Why would that happen?

"Which makes it an even worse," Luke complained, now tugging at Alex's free hand. "We need to fix that."

Alex knew it was all in his head, but everywhere Luke made contact with him felt superheated, felt electric, making Alex painfully aware of how little Kayla inspired the same response. Between the two of them, Alex felt torn, conscious the painful accumulation of all the things he could not have, a steady reminder delivered via Kayla.

"Why?" Kayla asked, the question seeming innocent, but that was her playful voice.

"Because the band comes first," Luke huffed. From the corner of his eye, Alex could see Bobby realize that Luke had instigated some kind of confrontation, could see the rhythm guitarist's expression fall with his shoulders. "You shouldn't get something we don't."

"Luke," Kayla began with a laugh, something that made Alex's stomach feel entirely sour. "I hate to break it to you, but there's a lot of things I'm going to get that you never will, if you catch my drift."

Ironically, it took Alex a few moments to catch her implication, and when he did, his face flooded with a heat that made it feel on fire.

Luckily for once, Luke was on point, his body struck with a sudden tension. "Yeah, I catch it," he grumbled before stomping away, the two members of Dirty Candy laughing at his retreat.

In the meantime, Alex was confused. He didn't understand why Luke was making this harder than it needed to be.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Eventually, Alex couldn't take it anymore. He reached his breaking point, his limit, and because he could no longer approach the situation rationally, instead of taking his concerns to Bobby, he confronted Luke head on, knowing that it would likely be the least effective way to handle the situation.

He couldn't even do it at rehearsal, because Luke kept canceling rehearsal (he wouldn't say why, only he thought that Alex would be happy about it, Reggie dropping comments like 'oh, now you can spend time with Kayla!'), except apparently he didn't because when Alex drove over to Bobby's house to corner the guy – because Luke and Reggie don't spend time at their own homes if they don't have to – the three of them are definitely in the studio and they're definitely practicing, happily carrying on without Alex.

And he wasn't- he wasn't surprised, because he'd already seen this in action plenty of times before. They didn't need him. Did the band need a drummer? Yes, but they didn't need him around all the time, so obviously they either trusted his abilities enough to decide that he didn't need as much practice as they did, or they were willing to take that hit because they truly didn't want him around, and either way, Alex wished they would have just had a fucking conversation about it.

Instead, he found out like this, posed in the open doorway to the studio and watching the other three awkwardly trail off from where they'd been very obviously working through a song.

And Luke, of course, was the one that spoke up first, squinting at Alex with a sort of honest confusion. "Dude, what are you doing here? Don't you have a date or something?"

And that- that did it, that does it, that broke it, because pretending to date Kayla was supposed to fix Alex's problems, it was supposed to give him a safe place to retreat to, it was supposed to protect him, give him some kind of buffer space so he wouldn't feel so much around the guys, except it seemed to be doing the exact opposite this entire time, slowly tearing Alex apart piece by piece until he didn't know what to do with himself.

So there was a chance that Alex might have lost it. That he had always lost it, and this was the explosive, unapologetic result of that.

"No!" Alex snapped, and later he'd feel bad about it because he could see Reggie flinching in his peripherals, but in that moment, he was done. "No, we don't have a date because she has rehearsal! Just like we, apparently, have rehearsal that you guys lied to me about!"

"Don't fucking yell at us," Luke snapped, taking his guitar off in angry movements and setting it aside so he could confront Alex properly. "We were trying to be nice-"

"I didn't ask you to do this!" Alex hissed. "I told you that my relationship wasn't going to affect us. I told you the band came first, but ever since I started dating Kayla, you've been acting like a spazz!"

"You should be thanking me!" Luke growled, jabbing his finger into Alex's chest. "Should be thanking us. How are you supposed to keep a girlfriend if you never spend any time with her?"

"I spend time with her," Alex defended, feeling the tips of his ears begin to burn with embarrassment.

"No, you don't, you asshole," Luke huffed. "You were doing shitty job and instead of asking for like, advice or something, you bottled it all up, so of course we had to step in-"

"I didn't ask for your help!" Alex snapped. "Kayla and I have an understanding-"

"What, that you're a terrible boyfriend?" Luke pressed. "Shit, man – all those people who wanted to date you so badly over the years should be glad you turned them down, because you're a self-centered, thoughtless, unattractive prick!"

The words hit Alex like a slap in the face, jab into his stomach so hard he took a few fumbling steps back. He was certain he would never forget the look of disgust in Luke's eyes, and he knew without asking that the singer entirely believed this, knew it with every fiber of his being.

It was what he'd always thought of Alex. What he'd always known, now he had the courage to actually say it.

Immediately, Alex felt his anger dissipate, felt it melt away until all he had left was overwhelming sorrow, something that made his eyes burn with a terrible heat that choked up his throat.

Across the room, Reggie had his face buried in Bobby's chest, was trembling against the rhythm guitarist because they'd thoughtlessly triggered him with their fighting, but it didn't even matter because he probably agreed, Bobby probably agreed, after all, they had all decided to lie to Alex about rehearsal, tried to help him before he sabotaged himself with his terrible boyfriend tendencies.

"Alex," Luke said after a long moment, his expression crumpled into something like sorrow. "I didn't- I'm so fucking-"

"I gotta go," Alex choked out, tears blurring his vision. "I'd hate to interrupt your private rehearsal."

Somehow, he made it back to his car. Somehow, he managed to get out of there, but not without his heart breaking.

He wasn't sure why it took until now for it to really sink in. He'd always known they didn't love him.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Endnotes:

Shoutout to Luke being incapable of saying what he actually means to say at any and all times. Stand up work, my dude.

Story notes:

I checked the wiki, and Yellow, Orange, and Blue candies do not actually have names. Such is the life of a background character, I guess. They also say she's red and not orange, but I love costuming and if you look real close, most of her stuff is dark orange rather than red. The more you know ;D

No shade against Cats, but it is an admittedly acquired taste.

Until next time :)