Before he sank into sleep, he remembered flashes of golden hair and pale skin, and he was too tired to question the soft smile that he pressed into the mattress.

He woke hours later, groggy but energized. He had slept through most of the day, and in an uncharacteristic surrender to luxury he called down for room service. A ridiculous amount of food, actually, all so fresh and wholesome, cream and butter and tender pastry. Fully fed and well rested, he opened his overstuffed case.

He remembered that he had let Dare pick out his new clothes.

He knew now that he was going to kill him.

Years of wearing hand-me-downs and secondhand uniforms left him...unaccustomed to clothes which fit properly. He picked out a few items, struggling to get them on. And maybe it was just him, but it seemed a bit unnecessary that his jeans hug his butt (and such) with this level of, um, snugness.

The shirt wasn’t much better. He could see, as he stared in the bathroom mirror, the muscles he’d put on over four years of lacrosse and dining hall meals. He wasn’t—it wasn’t obscene or anything, but he was a lot more fit than he had been after fourteen years with his mom and the meager paychecks which fed her and never seemed to feed him.

He looked—well, he looked good.

He remembered an exotic combination of body glitter and eyeliner.

And he was uncomfortable.

But that wasn’t exactly new.

And now he stood, regarding himself in his too-tight clothes, debating his next steps.

It wouldn’t be weird, would it? He was eighteen, and he’d been pretty preoccupied with struggling and scraping by for basically his whole life, so it would make sense, wouldn’t it, for him to go to a nightclub. And he did know where a nightclub was, after all—and the fact that he knew about that because he’d seen Theo go in was just a coincidence.

And if he saw Theo, that would be...good. He shook his head. Fine. It would be fine.

He had been right about Cork coming alive at night. Young people spilled out of every doorway, it seemed—university-aged men with cigarettes hanging at the corners of their mouths, the women with them in neon high heels and shockingly short skirts. It was loud and jarring and rich with scents, cologne, sweat, bright red geraniums, clove and hashish. And no one seemed to look at him, as he ducked through crowds and kept his eyes wide open. He was just another kid, out on a Saturday night, not wonderful, remarkable, cursed at, coveted.

Just him. Just Jack.

He took a deep breath before opening the door to the club. Theo’s club.

I’m going to do this, he thought, and he set his shoulders. For no particular reason.