It took a second for Chanel to understand Collin's mention of the clear change in the way she was treating him. In the beginning of the day, she was mostly siding with Cara, and now she was being friendly, perhaps too friendly, but she didn't recognize the latter. Even as she sipped on her cup with a sly grin and shrugged nonchalantly, she didn't see how she was clearly dancing on a line here. "You can swim, can't you?" It probably wasn't so telling that Chanel wasn't jolted by Collin's words since she was so drunk, but, to put it plainly, it wasn't anything new for her. Tell her she's a sweet, super nice person, and you were more likely to get a blush out of her than brazenly flirting with her. It wasn't something she would openly admit, since it sounded pretty crass, but the point remained that she didn't shy away from flirting, innocent or not. To make matters worse, one of the key remains she enjoyed flirting was because of the mind games it entailed. She felt in a place of power. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but given Chanel's history with being manipulative, it wasn't entirely clean either, and it was apparent in the way she teased him a beat later. Chanel shrugged simply. "Not that you would have anyway," she noted. "My biggest flaw is that I care too little, and yours is that you care too much," she said, grabbing another mozzarella stick and using that to point at him. "Which is probably why you can't land with Cara's friends. I mean, when's the last time you did something super bold? And talking back to your sister doesn't count."
"Pretty sure sleeping with Brooklyn counts as being bold," he responded in defense, though lightly so. "Or maybe that falls under suicidal more than it does bold," he continued after a second of contemplation. He was tempted to bring up how she had not helped his case again, that night that he unknowingly brought Brooklyn back to his house at the same time that Chanel and Cara were there, but it didn't cross his mind in that second. "But either way, the point is that I can be bold," he continued, looking away from her for a moment as he tossed the now-empty container where the mozzarella sticks had been, and his empty margarita cup in the trash can behind him. It wasn't as impulsive as it could have been, since he paused for a second or two, looking at Chanel as he wondered whether he was being stupid or not, but before he let her respond, he stepped close enough to her that there was barely an inch between them, allowed his arms to fall just below her waist as he eliminated the small space between them, and kissed her.
It probably didn't need to be stated that Chanel was surprised. It didn't readily show up in her reaction, though. Even as Collin drew closer, she didn't hesitate, and once he kissed her, she didn't pull away either. She wasn't so drunk that she didn't, at least on a surface level, know that kissing Colling was a giant red X. But she was too drunk to fathom the reason for that, and so coupled with the fact that bad choices didn't seem so bad while intoxicated, she didn't see or feel anything wrong when she began to kiss him back. Chanel also wasn't too drunk to admit to herself that it wasn't bad either. Not that she'd ever fantasized about kissing her best friend's brother, but the giddiness thanks to the alcohol, on top of the magical feeling of being in Disney did play a role. All her recent encounters with men had been subpar and problematic to put it vaguely, so the pleasant feelings she felt were almost foreign. The fact that she could still feel that way especially after he'd just, in the same breath, mentioned about sleeping with someone else, that someone who was her best friend's enemy, said a lot about the state she was currently in. The ground beneath her felt unsteady, so even once Collin moved back, she grabbed one of his arms. "Very bold," she grinned, dragging her thumb across his mouth when she noticed faint remnants of her lipstick, that she very well could have been imagining. "You can finally say you kissed someone with mozzarella breath. Or maybe don't say that actually." Chanel laughed at her own attempted quip, resting her chin on his chest as she hugged her arms around him. "That was mildly enjoyable. And you have really pretty eyes," she cooed. "Mine are prettier though. But that's three nice things I've said about you, which means I've made up for whatever you think I did to you today."
In the short width of time between getting from the boardwalk to the elevator, Chanel had gotten to a point where nothing was fluid. Everything was staccato: short little bursts of activity. From shouting over the lake, to the sudden rush of cool, conditioned air, and now she was in an elevator, but it took her a second to realize that she wasn't stuck in a box. It didn't dawn on her that it was really the elevator, even though she didn't show any issue with knowing to hit the buttons. She leaned down so that her face was level with the buttons and narrowed her eyes, the numbers seemingly growing in distance from her. "How do you work this thing, you know?" she blurted in a slur of words. "I like this one," she said, pressing a random floor before turning so that she was leaning into the wall, but facing Collin. "I like you too." Chanel grinned as she stumbled to him, her arms around his neck. She rested her head on his shoulder momentarily, all her weight leaned into him as she embraced his warmth. Her arms were littered with goosebumps even though her heart was racing, her mouth was cottony, and everything seemed to be spinning so fast it left a gust of heat around her. Her hand was suddenly on the side of his face, as if simply saying his name wouldn't be enough to get his attention, which as soon as she did, caused her to start giggling. She only gazed at him for that breath, her mind traveling around the thoughts her mouth couldn't manage to say. How he was genuinely a nice person, and always seemed that way, and perhaps that's why being this close felt the way it did. How that was how it seemed with the others as well before they showed their true colors and ended up hurting her, but she wouldn't fault him if he did the same, because a part of her felt she deserved it. Her lips wouldn't move to say that she liked the way he'd held her back then, even if it was partially in jest, because there was still an innocence around it in the sense that his gain wasn't to treat her as an object. He'd touched her as a breathing person, and that was a novelty to her, and what drew her back. In this moment, they were both vulnerable, and that made her feel safe; it had been some time since she'd let her guard down. But because she couldn't force her lips to speak what she felt, she just pulled him to her again.
Collin wouldn't admit it in fear of sounding weak, but that one last margarita was what it took to push him into real drunkenness. The kind of drunkenness that got people into trouble, albeit serious trouble, or more of a moral sort of trouble. He was on a path towards the latter, though he didn't realize it in the moment. Even if he could realize that he was feeling pretty intoxicated, he was in the mindset where he was basing his own level of rationality off of a comparison of Chanel, and compared to her, he felt like he was more sober. It was easier to laugh at her, as if she was the one who was being stupid and silly and drunk, even though he knew he was close to being that drunk too. If he wasn't, there was no way that he would have thought about doing anything more than kissing Chanel. That was as bold as he could have gotten, even one drink ago. This last drink had given him the confidence and careless-ness boost that he needed to throw caution to the wind. Chanel was a wildly attractive girl, who wasn't just beautiful, but was also quirky and funny and cute and charming. She had a personality that brought along a contagious, uplifting vibe, and even disregarding the sexual attraction that he had for her, that he was suddenly allowing himself to embrace, her vibe in itself was attractive to him. He found himself not even able to maintain a smirk, as every time he tried to keep it on his face, it grew into a grin of amusement at what she said, or the way she looked at him, or what she did. For once in what felt like an entire lifetime, he silenced every little voice in his head that would normally be screaming "Caution! Caution! Caution! This is going to lead to problems!" and it felt liberating. With the way that she had pushed a random floor button, the elevator trip took longer than it needed to, but barely so, since Collin corrected it fairly quickly. Before the doors opened, though, he found himself kissing her again. He didn't know why, this time, other than that it just felt right, when she had pulled him towards her. His heart was racing, and his nerves were at an all time high, but in an exhilarating way, not an anxious one. He was playing with fire, but he didn't feel like he was about to get burned. "You're so..." he began, his voice near a whisper when he pulled away from her to take a breath, but before he could finish, the dinging of the elevator alerted him to the doors opening beside them. He didn't finish what was going to be a compliment now that he was distracted, and instead chuckled, almost in embarrassment, as if someone had caught them making out, even though no one was there, as he motioned for Chanel to leave the elevator first. "I hope your phone's at zero percent, because I don't wanna have to see anyone but you for the rest of the night," he said, referencing the given reason for why they were leaving the others.
Collin's cheesy flirtatious line went completely over and around Chanel's head, but it amused her nonetheless. "You're such a dork," she indicated him with her finger, even though he was the only person she could be talking to. Sober, had any guy tried feeding that line to her, she would have snorted and rolled her eyes dismissively. It wasn't to say that she was now so drunk that she was lowering her standards, because Collin was definitely a dream guy in his own rights, even if only looks and money were taken into consideration. Instead, she wasn't being so uptight and was able to appreciate the laughableness in their interaction. She pranced down the hallway, not minding if it was the right direction or not, swinging her arms to and fro. She twirled a few times, a decision she regretted seconds after. As she slumped (or, more accurately, fell) against the wall, her head wobbling just like the hall seemed to, she grinned hazily towards him as she stretched her hands out in his direction. She took his hands in hers and began to sway them side to side. "You know I used to do ballet? I was soooo bad," she said, emphasizing her lack of skill by turning her head up towards the ceiling. She fell into a fit of laughter thinking about how her instructor probably hated her because Chanel only wanted to do ballet so that she could dress pretty and look at herself in the mirror. She didn't want to actually learn what or how to do a proper plie. She remembered Collin earlier at the tequila bar, and she laughed harder as she shook her head, trying to speak through her hysteria. "Remember when you couldn't dance at the tequila bar?" While Collin was likely very aware of his dancing skills, or lack thereof, like most people who aren't good at something, Chanel found it especially funny, added with the fact that it seemed like it would be a surprise to both of them. Collin probably wasn't as bad as Chanel's laughter indicated, though. "You were like this." She let go of his hands and began dramatically imitating him, not concerned with how accurately she was portraying him or not, and more likely just dancing crazily for the sake of being silly.
Just as before, she got dizzy within a matter of seconds, the intense gestures and sudden movement not something her body could tolerate right now, so like before, she fell back against the wall, this time holding her stomach tightly. "Ohhhh my god, hilarious." When the room finally began to focus, her face changed. "Oh my god, are we seriously back at the hotel already? Oh my god, we're at Disney! God, do you know how lucky we are?" she asked, contorting her face as though she just couldn't fathom it. "That's craaaazy!" She extended her head back again as she elongated the word, amused with her own antics and the sheer craziness of being in the happiest place in the world. "I love Disney!" she shouted.
His face might have turned a shade of pink as Chanel poked fun at his dancing, especially since he didn't think he had been that bad, but to combat it, he playfully flipped her off as revenge. Maybe he wasn't great at dancing, but she wasn't great at holding her liquor, and so he reasoned that they were even. Granted, for someone who was thin enough to weigh next to nothing, Chanel was actually doing surprisingly well for how much she had drank. Given that they had been drinking steadily since dinner (and had actually had a drink or two earlier in the day with lunch), it was nearly shocking that she wasn't passed out in bed yet. Had he been more sober, he might have even felt bad that Brooklyn had refused to let Makayla go back to bed, because he couldn't blame her for being tired if she genuinely was. While he was drunk enough right now to not even consider falling asleep, after a day of travel, walking around amusement parks, and consuming copious amounts of alcohol, especially in the heat, it was expected that they would all be tired. Collin didn't even want to think about the hangovers that would come tomorrow, and he just hoped that he would surprise himself and not end up with one. He wasn't exactly a light weight, but he never went too hard with hard liquor, and rarely ever mixed hard liquors like he had done tonight, so what tomorrow entailed was truly going to be an experience in itself. If nothing else, he hoped that he didn't wake up tomorrow feeling the worst, and not even for the obvious reason of not wanting to feel like shit, but more-so because he felt like it would be embarrassing to be the only one dying of a hangover when he hadn't consumed the most alcohol out of the bunch.
"You're lucky you're cute or else I'd leave you here and let you try to find your way back to the room all by your self," he teased in response, as they passed a hallway that they should have turned down to get to their room. Collin didn't object, only because she stopped a few feet away and was leaning against a wall then, gushing about how lucky they were and how much she loved Disney. Even though Collin was definitely drunk, and definitely acting out of character compared to how he usually was, he had enough sense in him to know that letting Chanel shout in the hallway of a hotel predominantly filled with families (that were probably sleeping at this hour) wasn't smart. It didn't stop him from laughing at her, but he gently grabbed her arm and tugged her off the wall. "I'll admit that this is the most fun I've had in Disney in a long time," he said, "But you're gonna end up in a one-way lovefest with Disney if any of these other people end up complaining about some drunk-off-her-ass, can't-hold-her-liquor lunatic wakes them up with her uncalled for and inaccurate imitations of a good dancer, so save your... Chanel-ness until we're in the room," he said, barely able to hold back at laugh as he studied her face for a moment, before leading her down the correct hallway and to their room. With a scan of his wristband, the door was unlocked and he held the door open for her to go inside.
Looking at her again, especially now that they were alone in the hotel room (aside from Holly, who he had momentarily forgotten about), he struggled to not act on impulse, close the door and push her up against to kiss her. He wanted to, and he found himself reaching out to grab her wrist, in what would have led to something like that. Before he could get to it though, a minor background noise that couldn't have been anything more than a creak of a floorboard from whoever was staying above them, or maybe the sound of the air conditioning system turning on, startled him more than it deserved to. It made him quickly remember why Chanel was actually supposed to be up there. "I won't tell you to tone it down, because your personality is actually the best thing that happened to me tonight," he admitted, with a mischievous smile, "But if you wake up Holly, I feel like Makayla's the type that's got it in her to push you off the balcony, and I might be too scared to stop her, so..." Even drunk, when he wasn't overthinking everything, there was no denying that Collin still had a little bit of a quirky, awkwardness to him. He wasn't slick and smooth and good with his words where he could get a girl to drop her pants with just that. He could dream, but it wasn't one of his skills, and he knew it.
"Oh!" Chanel covered her mouth, remember that Holly was in fact in one of the rooms sleeping. Still in her laughing mood, she covered her face and shook her head, leaning into his chest for a moment. She pulled back enough to look up at him, but her voice was now a whisper, at least for her levels. It was more of a hushed speaking voice, but compared to how loud she was being before, there was a significant difference. "I'm being so loud right now, aren't I? No, wait! You're always super quiet. You never talk. Even when I go to your apartment and I'm like 'Hey, Collin!' You're so quiet. What's up with that?" she said, giving her a slight push, not out of anger, but because everything was theatrical at this point. Chanel was to the point where everything seemed to be moving three times as fast, she was moving twice as slow, and only remembering half of it. Her movements were long and lulled, so as she moved to the kitchen, she didn't turn the corner, but instead rolled around it. She didn't announce that she was getting water because she thought everything she was thinking was somehow being vocalized. "Aren't you so hot?" she said, the few steps taking more out of her than it should have. She pressed her palm to her face, and while she was warm, she felt that it was even stronger than it actually was. Her eyes widened in surprise as she gestured towards him and pulled him towards her. "Feel how hot I am." Without waiting even a second for him to do so himself, she placed his hands on her face, giving him a look that would translate to See?
Again, she'd lost track of her own thoughts and movement. She was in the kitchen because it felt like she might suffocate from dehydration, but with Collin right in front of her, there was a new distraction. She smiled sweetly, her hands holding onto his wrists. "Your hands feel nice," she said, which was probably a weird statement on its own. A more conclusive sentence would have been that his hands felt a lot cooler than her. Chanel let go of him, only to move her hands to his cheeks and pat them alternately, making clucking noises. "Boop, boop, boop!" When she got this drunk, which nowadays was pretty rare, she was very touchy. Even in sobriety, she felt too close to people too soon, but it was something she could consciously try to work on. With her walls down though, and with no filters, she was a person who liked being close to people emotionally and physically, and there were no boundaries. She was constantly dancing around and over the line between playful and flirty. From the ways she consistently went from silly like a few seconds ago, to now, where she was being far more intimate. It was a clear indicator that even she couldn't keep up with herself. In fact, she didn't even remember how or when they got into the room, even if it was just seconds ago. She tousled Collin's hair since it looked insanely fluorescent but then pulled him to her so that their foreheads were touching. Chanel squeezed her eyes shut tight. "Okay. Read my mind, starting now." Laughing soon after, she shook her head. "You have to be serious," she said, as though he was the one who couldn't hold a straight face.
If Chanel wasn't always so exuberant, and if Collin wasn't pretty drunk himself, it would have been a lot easier to realize that Chanel was probably past the point of being good-drunk. She was clearly entering the territory of being all over the place to a point where it shouldn't have been so amusing, but it was. It wasn't like she went from being a recluse to acting like this, where the transformation would have been undeniably noticeable, and additionally, Collin didn't know her well enough to know how she acted drunk, and how she acted when she was past that and wasted. It wasn't that he didn't care, or realized that she was too gone to make conscious decisions on her own, and he wasn't trying to take advantage of her. He was just similarly intoxicated, feeding off of her positive and flirtatious energy, and enjoying her, even if he was definitely ready to tease her about how him being too quiet for her was better than how she was too weird for him.
Even though she insisted that he had to be serious when she rested her forehead against his, telling him he had to try to read her mind, with a statement like that, it was hard to be serious. He tried to play along for a second, closing his eyes as if he was trying to concentrate on channeling her thoughts, before opening them up and smiling in a more gentle way. "In a perfect world, you're thinking that we shouldn't go back down and meet up with the others, and should take advantage of having this hotel room to ourselves," he said. Though it may not have been as blatantly bold as how he had kissed her in the spur of the moment earlier, what he was alluding to made it the boldest thing he had said in a while. "That's just what you're thinking in a perfect world, though. You tell me what you're thinking in the real world," he followed up, his smile growing a fraction as he looked at her.
"I'm thinking..." Instead of forming an actual response, partly because it was getting harder to so much as speak, she pulled him to her and kissed him. Unlike on the boardwalk, when it was playful but intimate, this time she kissed him hungrily. Should it so happen that she remember this point of the night in the morning--the overwhelming guilt she would feel aside--she'd be overcome with embarrassment. Not just because her actions were beyond her, but because of how intimate she'd been. It wasn't something she'd let herself feel in a long time, and not something she knew she needed until this very moment as she kissed him deeper and deeper. Now, though, those feelings didn't have any barriers or filters, or needed explanations, and perhaps that was what drew her closer to him. Because she'd been crafting every action and reaction for the past four years, it was like letting go of a long exhale, and taking in as much air as you possibly could because there was no telling when you'd be able to breathe again. It hadn't been long since she'd been intimate with someone, but in a pure, raw sense? She couldn't recall the last time. But at the same time, she didn't fully comprehend what she was doing. Not in that she didn't know she was currently kissing Collin as she led them to the bedroom. Even once they got there, she knew her exact intentions as she began pulling at his shirt, but she didn't comprehend the full weight of what she was doing: that this was all a red flag. Or maybe deep down she did know, but couldn't bring herself to care. Right now, all she knew and understood was what she was feeling in that second of time, and even to an extent, she didn't fully understand that either. But that was also why she kept following it. It was like a little taste of serendipity: a pleasant surprise you couldn't yet fathom, but you weren't willing to walk away from.
The alcohol in him was absolutely the only reason for why Collin wasn't overrun with butterflies to a point where he would have been frozen in place when Chanel pulled him towards his bedroom. Sure, he had just alluded to that, but even if he had somehow been brave enough to make a move like that sober, there was no way that he would go through with it. It was different with Brooklyn, even if there wasn't always alcohol involved there. He had a lifetime worth of payback that he was satisfying towards his sister when it came to Brooklyn, so the rush that had come with that had made him drunk in itself. With someone like Chanel, he knew that he would never be bold enough to do something like this without intense amounts of alcohol. She was too tall, and pretty, and cool, and most importantly, his older sister's close friend. There were too many barriers that normally would have stood in his way, and though even right now he got a rush of nerves, the rush of adrenaline and testosterone allowed him to momentarily overlook the nerves. He followed Chanel in eagerly, but paused once they were inside. He didn't know if he was about to kill the moment, but he wanted this sex to be good. Even drunk, he knew he would be more confident if he felt good, and that meant that he wanted to brush his teeth, spray some cologne, and most importantly, grab a condom from his bag of toiletries that he had left in the bathroom. "Give me one minute," he said, holding her hand for a second as it pulled at his shirt. He pulled his shirt off, tossing it to the floor, as if that was a sign that he was serious and this and genuinely would be as quick as he could be, but he turned back then and entered the bathroom.
Collin may have surpassed his promise of only needing a minute by an extra two or three minutes, but he tried to be as quick as possible, and doing that wasn't hard when he had a wildly attractive girl waiting for him in bed just steps away. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, though he didn't see it that way in the moment), when he returned from the bathroom, it was apparent that Chanel was out. Her eyes were shut, her body lay still, and the contrast in her behavior then, compared to how she was just a few minutes ago, surprised him. It shouldn't have, given that she was clearly drunk, but it still did. Although he was disappointed, he wasn't able to wallow in self-pity, and even in the moment, he realized that it was a good thing that she had passed out like this before they actually got intimate, because having sex with someone who passed out during or right after sex would obviously not be a good look for the other person. If anything, he was more concerned and felt bad, because he assumed Chanel would be disappointed in herself for being the first one to pass out (even though that was something that he would happily remind her of tomorrow). "I knew you couldn't hang," he said aloud, shaking his head and smirking lightly, though he expected her to not respond. "Let's get you to bed," he continued, as he tried to carefully wrap an arm underneath her to pick her up.