9pm Oliver and OPEN
To say that the party wasn't exactly Oliver's regular cup of tea would have been such a gross understatement that anyone who knew him would have thought it was the beginning to some sort of lame joke. The only parties he'd ever really gone to were receptions for weddings, or events that Jason had been involved with for work. He'd only bothered because with the right push he really was a sucker, and his husband had known how to play that fact like a kazoo. That didn't exactly mean that Oliver disliked socializing in groups, he just preferred there to be beer, jeans, and a grill involved.
He'd spent the better part of an hour trying to decide if he really felt like going to this one. In fact, the mood he'd been in for the past two had been so like the way he'd woken up that he wondered what the fuck was actually going on with him. Belatedly, he realized it had been that way, off and on, all day long. Not just rage, but the hunger, the weird giddiness, the hour he'd spent in the bathroom with....things... They were all pieces of him, he supposed, but seemingly blown out of proportion. Like a series overblown caricatures of himself, rather than a reliable portrait representing the whole. For now, however, he felt...settled, which he supposed was about as good as he was going to get. Besides, Kate had been kind enough to help him, in his woeful ignorance, find something deemed suitable to wear, and it felt wrong to waste her efforts.
So, for the past half an hour Oliver had been playing the role of the mansion's officially sanctioned wallflower. Literally. He leaned against the wall opposite of the massive bay windows, half looking out, and half using the opportunity to associate names with faces while everyone in the room went about their business. There hadn't been much available by way of non-alcoholic drinks, and he'd wandered back into the kitchen not long before to pour himself a glass of good, old fashioned orange juice. Such a rebel. Still, despite the fact that he wasn't living it up, or engaging with vibrant crowd, comprised of his housemates in various stages of inebriation, he still felt truly relaxed and content for the first time that day.