Chapter Text
Connor isn't exactly known for subtlety.
It's not even something he notices he's doing right away. They're in close living quarters, they're physically active a majority of their waking hours (well, Riya and Yul aren't but that's a whole other set of issues), and they're all sharing the same tent. To be direct, they all kinda stink.
Connor’s resourceful. The years of listening to his dad drone on and on about perfume had made him more resourceful with plant identification than you'd probably expect. It's something he prides himself on, one of the few skills he feels he's earned. So he's able to identify some alfalfa. Just in time too, because as he makes his way back to Yellow’s campground, Riya is having a screaming match with Yul and, surprisingly, Alec.
“You are so disgusting!” Riya's voice cracks with how loud she's screaming, holding up one of Yul’s shirts and throwing it at him. Yul rolls his eyes, snatching the shirt out of the air and immediately thrusting it into Grett’s torso to hold. She looks distressed, eyes flicking to Riya and back to Yul, her hand raised like she wants to try and calm him down. It rubs Connor the wrong way when Yul disregards her with a wave of a hand.
“Oh puh-lease, you has-been. I am the least of your problems if you're worried about smell. ” Yul not so subtly narrows his eyes at Alec, whose arms are crossed defensively, jaw clenched as he grinds his teeth. Miriam is unbothered by the fire, just enjoying the squabbling, chuckling lightly at how completely this team has fallen apart. Not surprising, considering the lineup. She and Connor meet glances for a moment and she shrugs. ‘ Not my circus, not my monkeys. ’
Connor moves the bundle of alfalfa to his other hand, reaching out to rest on Riya’s back in an attempt to calm her down. She tenses immediately, glaring back at him before her eyes soften, just for a moment. “What's going on, you guys?” Connor looks over at Yul and Alec, voice calm and even.
Yul clicks his teeth, bristling further like a cornered animal. “Tell your sugar baby that she stinks just as bad as the rest of us do right now.” He pauses, turning back to look at Alec, and then smirks. “Well, maybe not all of us.”
Alec, who looks stuck between trying to match Connor’s calm, collected demeanor out of insecurity and punching Yul in the face, keeps his arms crossed. “Oh, what, am I supposed to believe I smell any worse than either of you two? I suppose if I did, it would make sense, since both of you just sit around and complain while the rest of us actually try to stay in the game.”
Riya scoffs, throwing her hands in the air. “You're both completely useless!” Connor tries to rub comforting circles on Riya’s back, but she bristles further and pulls away with a jerk, making Connor flinch. “Just keep your disgusting dirty clothes off of my expensive ones.” She stomps off, Connor not able to get a word in before she does. He wants to run after her, but Yul grabs his attention again with a snap at Grett when she tries to calm him down.
“Oh, stop. Don't touch me.”
“Darling, I'm sorry, I just wanted to comfort you. Remember? We do our countdowns…” Grett's voice is soft, and it makes Connor’s chest tighten.
Yul, obviously, doesn't calm down. “Save it, you want to comfort me? Go find something to eat that isn't squirrel. ”
Alec immediately snaps his control, arms uncrossing as he takes a step towards Yul. “Why don't you go find something to eat. We're not going to survive the next challenge if we're not all doing what we can.” Alec’s eyes are hard and mean; Connor hadn't known him personally for very long at all– three days so far –but he remembers his demeanor in season one. He’s more loose with his anger than back then, wearing his disdain more boldly on his sleeve…but maybe the TV changes your perspective of someone.
Connor interjects, holding up the results of his foraging. “Actually, if you want, I found this by the border of our camp and Cyan Team’s. If you guys wanna take a lake bath with it, maybe it'll help you all calm down?” Miriam perks up from her end, craning her neck to see the alfalfa in Connor’s hand. He meets her eye and gives her a short nod. He'll share once things are settled.
Yul narrows his eyes, mouth a small pout as he thinks it over, eyes flickering around at how outnumbered he is, and scoffs. “Fine.” His voice is tight. He is not happy to let things lie. He stomps over to Connor, holding his hand out demandingly like a petulant child. “Well?” Alec looks like he's about to scold Yul further for his attitude, but Connor lets it go like it’s water off a duck’s back. He gives Yul a handful and the spitfire of a man stomps off. “Nobody bother me!” He snaps as if he has eyes in the back of his head when Grett moves to follow.
Grett makes a face, looking dejected before Connor hands her a portion. “There's an area of the lake with a lot of coverage,” he gestures with his head towards Miriam, “if the girls wanna go over there for privacy.”
Grett smiles small, her fingers rubbing self-soothing circles into her arm. “Thanks…” she takes a handful of flowers and leaves, studying them. “So…we just rub this on like soap?” She looks skeptical.
Connor weighs his hands awkwardly. “Eh, more or less. Should work better than just straight lake water, at least.”
She nods, walking where Connor gestures to where there's more tree coverage. Miriam gets up, cracking her back as she stretches. “It's nice to have somebody around here with a level head…” she says, moving to collect her portion. She gives Connor a pat on the shoulder as she follows Grett.
Alec doesn't attempt to make a move toward him, instead sighing heavily and taking Miriam's spot by the campfire. Connor glances over his shoulder to where Riya stomped off, but they'd talked about giving her space. It makes him anxious, but he decides to distract himself with Alec. He tries to keep busy when he’s stressed; his father had always warned him about the dangers of idle hands, after all.
Connor sits on the log beside Alec, offering the remainder of the alfalfa. Alec turns his nose up a bit, looking at the offering down his glasses. Dark eyes meet Connor’s, suspicious. “What about more for you and Riya?”
Connor waves a hand, smiling. “Ah, don't worry. There's way more back where I got this. I can get more. You can have this, I probably won't shower until Riya gets back and calms down.”
Alec puts his hand out, taking the bundle with a hardly concealed gratitude. “Thanks,” he mumbles, still tempestuous about trusting anything anyone gives him in this game. It reminds Connor of Riya a bit. This show, this game, it… changes people. Or maybe it brings the rawest parts of them to the surface. He wasn’t sure.
Connor leans back, trying to give off a casual, relaxed vibe. “No problem, we're a team after all. It's good to keep clean anyway: I'm sure once we're all back to smelling like people instead of animals–”
Alec snorts, throwing his hands up in the air, interrupting the older man. “Ha! We don't smell that bad. It amazes me how this is the thing that everyone's up in arms about.”
Connor laughs, shrugging. “Small stuff’s easier to control than big stuff, easier to focus on and get mad at. Besides, we smell pretty bad, man.”
Alec rolls his eyes, lifting his arm, presenting his armpit to Connor as if to prove himself. “You’re telling me this is so bad to cause a complete team breakdown?” His tone is completely exasperated.
Connor's eyes immediately widen, tensing, as a thick waft of musk hits his nostrils and he reels back, a mix of obvious repulsion from the foul smell and… a startling jolt of heat down his spine. Connor feels his face flush and tries to play it off as a joke, like he's 100% disgusted and only disgusted, covering his nose and laughing. “Aw, dude, you do reek!”
Alec puts his arm down, rolling his eyes. “Not you too. What? You smell like roses over there?” Alec leans towards the larger man, moving to whiff him. Connor flushes, laughing nervously, arms at his side as Alec looks up at him from over his glasses.
“N-no, not at all, trust me. I stink with the best of ‘em.” Connor considers Alec a nice enough guy, definitely easier to talk to than the others… and he'd be lying if he didn't find him at least a little handsome under that unkempt stubble and messy ponytail.
The older man shakes that line of thinking from his mind immediately. He's in a relationship. With Riya. That's going…good.
…Well, to be truthful, it's struggling. He still doesn’t have an exact read on where they even stand anymore, but he's still invested in it, and he's not going to start sniffing around some random guy with his own collection of problems. No matter what memories of college parties, blurry from time, fade into the dim theater of his mind. A hazing ritual gone off the rails with a blindfold and a face full of armpit ending in a shameful jerkoff in the closet…
“Well, damn, I guess you don't smell as bad as the rest of us.”
Alec’s comment snaps Connor back into the present, and the old man startles back with a crooked smile, flashing those two gold teeth to distract from how bad he's sweating. “Ah, I'm sure all that cologne and perfume soaked into my DNA or somethin’.” Alec gives Connor a long, careful look and the older man's worried he's been had for a second before the smaller man just shrugs and sits back up, leaning back a bit on his hands, palms digging uncomfortably into the bark of the logs.
“Yeah, maybe.”
–
The next few days feel especially brutal on Connor.
Whatever hopes he had of Riya and him rekindling whatever spark they had before the season is snubbed out before he could even try and save the dying embers. He tries not to feel hopeless and tries to focus on the game, but it’s hard. They’re all sharing such close quarters, they’re all on edge, and it feels like Connor’s only reprieves are Miriam and Alec.
So, of course, that would be the next thing to go wrong for him. Miriam, the only other contestant even remotely close to Connor in age, is sent home. To further conflict him, she passes him an envelope on her way out, a quick whisper of ‘don’t trust Alec’ and she’s off to the loser’s motel.
The stress of keeping it secret that he’s the one who delivered the letter is damn near going to kill him, combined with the anxiety that the next time they lose a challenge it’s him going home, no matter what Riya might tell him. She’s already stated her intentions with this game, and he isn’t a priority.
That left Alec, who was as much a mystery to Connor regarding allegiance as Riya was… or maybe a little less? The older man thinks back to their brief conversations confiding in one another about their mirrored situations and feels a somewhat kindred flame with the younger man. It’s nice to have someone at least a little closer in age to talk to about things so complicated. Even if Alec’s outlook is dour and cynical in ways that Connor can’t help but worry for the poor guy.
So when they win the camp shower, it feels like a boon. Riya and Yul damn near claw each other’s eyes out fighting to get in first, but once the two of them are good and clean they mellow out considerably, even sitting together at the campfire to chat cattily about the other contestants. Grett listens from a distance, letting out an occasional snort hidden behind a hand nearby. Small miracles, Connor thinks. He’ll jump to take any victories he can get.
It’s late when he finally heaves himself up from the docks, figuring the shower’s finally available after the girls– and Yul –have had their time with it. Connor’s just about to reach for the shower door when Alec comes shuffling out of the woods, stopping with eyes wide before he settles back down to his usual relaxed slump. “Oh, I… didn’t realize you hadn’t had a go yet.” Alec sighs, starting to turn back to the woods.
“No, wait!” Connor holds up a hand to wave Alec back and it comes off a little more desperate than necessary and earns him a cocked eyebrow in response. Connor rubs the back of his neck, shrugging with a smile. “Sorry, didn’t mean to shout. It’s, uh, been a rough few days…”
Alec gives the older man a rare look of sympathy. “Yeah, I noticed.” Tanned hands flex nervously at his side, kicking the dirt, unsure what to do from here. Alec’s not particularly good at the whole ‘confiding in someone’ thing. His emotional IQ is about the same as his shoe size, and he knows this better than anyone else. “So uh, did you… want to go next?” He says dumbly, pointing at the shower.
Connor shakes his head, waving his arms. “Nah, you can go. There’s not a whole lot of hot water left in this thing anyway. I can, uh, wait until morning for the tank to reheat after you’re done.”
The offer surprises Alec, not used to being treated so considerately. It should feel nice, but it slides down his neck like a slug, right under his skin. “Uh. That’s ok. I’ll just wait until–”
“No offense, bud, but you could use it more than me.”
It slips out before Connor can stop it and his eyes widen at the comment, the two of them staring at one another for a beat in silence before Alec clears his throat again. “Well, uh, thanks I guess?”
Connor flushes red. “I mean, sorry, that came out–”
Alec snorts, rolling his eyes. “Relax,” he deadpans, “After the last few weeks of Riya and Yul’s bullshit, you think that’s going to hurt my feelings? You’re underestimating me.” Alec makes his way over to the shower stall, inspecting the tank and thinking, before he leans over to Connor and gives him a sniff.
Immediately the older man breaks out into a nervous laugh, holding his hands up. “I’m not sayin’ I smell great either, you know that!” His voice is unusually nervous and he tries to temper his thudding chest. Connor knows he’s just vulnerable right now, desperate for any sort of intimacy. That’s all this is. Besides, Riya was a miracle and a half for him. Alec’s no movie star, but they’re both men. Not that Connor’s particularly against men or anything: in fact, he wouldn’t complain if he were against a man right now–
Connor nearly slaps himself to keep his mind back on track. Alec’s still busying himself with looking at the water heater, clearly trying to calculate how much time he’s got for hot water. He shifts on his feet, eyeing a path back to camp and out Alec’s vicinity before he starts to wonder if the old man’s showing early signs of dementia for how much he’s spacing out. “Well, I’ll let you get to it! I’ll, um, see you in the morning–”
“We could probably both fit in here, honestly.”
Alec says it so matter-of-factly, so casually , that Connor feels like he’s been hit upside the head with a tree branch. Blue eyes blink blankly into dark brown, the whites of his eyes fully exposed.
“It’s totally fine if I wait,” Connor says with a casual smile, figuring Alec’s joking around. However, instead of laughing along, the younger man just rolls his eyes and opens the shower door, gesturing inside.
“That tank isn't refilling and reheating in time for an early morning shower, and you’ll probably end up fighting off Yul and Riya again. Those two strike me as the type to hit the shower twice a day.”
Connor deflates, knowing on some level Alec’s right and that there would be no way in hell he’d put his foot down if Riya demanded the shower first. Christ, he was pathetic. The older man’s shoulders slump as he mulls it over. “Sure, I guess. If that’s fine with you.”
Alec claps a hand on Connor's shoulder, firmly patting, “Don’t look so defeated; it’s not the end of the world. Besides, it’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before.” Connor barks a laugh at that, nerves settling under the brief warmth of Alec’s hand on his shoulder, and sighs like he’s been defeated.
“Ok, ok, but we oughta be quick. Even a single shower is pushing it at this point,” he laughs, knocking the tank and listening to it echo, nearly empty.
They peel out of their shirts and Connor has to try not to breathe, Alec’s scent coming over in wafts so strong it’d make a weaker man cough. They both absolutely reek. Connor’s never been one to shy away from a little grime, but even he’s at his limits with lake baths. He’s pretty sure he could peel the dirt and dead skin off his face if you gave him a fan to point at his face for long enough. Connor elects to leave his boxer briefs on, modest as a courtesy. When he turns back around at the sound of water spraying, he nearly feels his eyes pop out of their sockets. Alec’s fully nude, already reaching for the well-used soap bar on the shelf.
“Woah!” Connor yelps before he can catch himself, laughing nervously.
Alec squints over at him, both from skepticism and because he’s not wearing his glasses. “What?” He asks, before squinting harder at Connor’s modest underwear, an unknowable black blob given his poor sight. He lets out a snort, obviously amused once he realizes what he’s seeing. “I can barely see, if that makes you feel any better. I didn’t take you as a shy kinda guy.”
It does feel silly, now that Connor thinks about it. He’d been in plenty of locker rooms during his time in high school and college football. This wouldn’t be so different. They were both grown men, after all. “I guess you’re right. Sorry, I promise my sensibilities aren’t usually this delicate.” With that, he peels out of his underwear and shuffles next to Alec in the stall. It’s cramped, but they have enough space not to touch one another, which the older man counts as a blessing.
Alec just lets out a breath of a laugh, letting his hair fully down and running his head under the stream of warm water. “I’m sure it’s a generational thing,” he jokes, eyes shutting as water hits his face. It feels incredible after weeks of roughing it. He almost didn’t want to move out from under the stream, but he didn’t have Connor in the stall just to stand around naked.
Connor rolls his eyes at the age jab, shuffling to move under the showerhead next. “Yeah, yeah, and you’re a spring chicken.” Connor cards his fingers roughly through his hair, tousling it with warm water, dragging his fingertips against his scalp and sighing in relief. “God, I needed this. Can you pass me the shampoo?” He holds out a hand, gesturing for the bottle.
Their hands brush briefly and Alec nearly drops the bottle, murmuring an apology before working the soap bar into his skin. No loofas or sponges, huh? Figures, cheap bastards…
They try to make quick work of the shower, given their time limit and the cramped conditions. In the rush, Alec gets a little careless, moving to pass the soap bar to Connor with a grip so hard the damn thing goes flying out of his hands and into the air. Both men scramble to try and catch it, but it slips out of their grasp in a way that feels cartoonish. Alec makes a noise of frustration, leaping to try and grasp at the bar and nearly tumbling over his own feet. Connor manages to nab his arm, but loses his own footing in the process. He slips, landing on his ass. Alec, by a miracle, manages to catch himself just in time to keep from collapsing on top of the older man.
Connor opens his eyes, wincing and rubbing his sure-to-be bruised tailbone. Before he can complain about being far too old for this kind of stuff, his lungs immediately shrivel in his chest, paralyzed. Alec’s arms are on either side of his head, hands firmly pressed against the side of the shower, kneeling over Connor with a hair’s breadth of space keeping their skin touching. Alec is swearing up a storm, face scrunched in a scowl that’s equal parts frustration and pain.. Water runs down his hair, rivulets dripping down the side of his face and neck, and Connor can smell the mix of Irish Spring and musk over the pine trees around him. The blood in his body, despite his own better judgement, is very suddenly redirected southward.
“Son of a bitch! Fuck, sorry, Connor…” Alec hisses, and Connor has to thank whatever God will listen that the younger man can’t see right now. Connor tries to speak, but his voice is caught in his throat, pupils dilating like a shark when it smells blood. The overhead fluorescent light of the shower is so bright behind Alec that it makes it impossible for Connor to avert his eyes anywhere else– and down is not an option –so he just slaps his hand over his eyes, rolling out from under Alec and scrambling to bolt out of the shower door, making to grab his clothes as fast as physically possible.
“I’m actually all clean, I think I pulled something, I’m gonna go run back to camp– you enjoy the rest of the hot water, bud!” The words tumble out so fast Alec doesn’t have a second to respond before Connor’s off like a bullet, disappearing behind the treeline. Alec blinks, unable to see, knees sore, and makes to stand up, standing under the stream of water for a good long while, deep in thought. The water tank makes a noise as it pumps to refill.
“Ah, cold…”