A Little Therapy

There was no denying what the series of events would be, everything that he had tried to distance himself from would come true in a few days space. Within three or four months of knowing a boy he had simultaneously fallen in love and fallen in lust, and that was a bargain split between two. Since his arrival he had managed to accidentally construct a love/lust triangle constructed from a hormonal teenager who indulged himself in anything recreational, and an Anxiety ridden bad boy with cigarette smoke lingering on his jacket. Either which way the wind blew, there seemed to be a feather landing on trouble. Jack’s trouble was the rope being tugged between Alex and Kellin, and then of course himself.


He wouldn’t ever say he loved Kellin Quinn, because there was no way he did. He loved the way his eyes darkened and tinted sapphire when he was in the mood to be all fluttering eyelashes, he also loved the way his lips wrapped around a blunt and inhaled as if toxins were he salvation. It was always mesmerising to watch the charcoal haired boy because he was so full of movement; he never stayed still long enough to appear boring, and even when he did there was an aura around him that magnetised men and women alike. Kellin wasn’t just attracting people, sometimes it felt as though he were lust wrapped up in a golden little box, but despite his reputation, Jack hadn’t heard of any actual…anything happening between him and anyone. People would mention a wild night with the other (and some stories were wild) but when Alex would bring it up, the cerulean eyed boy would just shrug it off.

He wouldn’t ever say he was in love with Alex Gaskarth, because there was only a fraction of chance affection would be returned. He loved him, that was for sure, he loved the childish sparkle to his deep caramel eyes, the fluffy feather-like quality too his mussed honey and chocolate hair. Attraction covered Kellin, but with the other half of the troublesome two, it was another ball to a game on the other side of the pitch. Attraction didn’t make him want to spend every second he was away from the other, with him; Jack was also sure that whilst attraction sure made him awkwardly nervous, it didn’t make him feel as though he were having a heart attack every time they drew close to each other.

But then Alex was in love, totally and irrevocably (Or so the assumption was) with the ebony haired boy, he could understand why, but he also couldn’t. For about 60% of his life Kellin failed to be a nice person after all, which statistically probably doesn’t sound half as bad as it does, but that means that there’s a 20% difference of him being a nice person and being whatever the opposite of nice was in socially correct terms. Putting aside that, his personality was a string of highs and lows, whatever he could grab onto until cigarette smoke made up his DNA. It seemed however, that the shimmering mischief in deep cobalt eyes overthrew the fact he was a complete and utter asshat.

Either way this seemed to go, whether together or further apart, there would always be someone left to clean up shattered pieces of scarred hearts.

Trudging home with his converse scratching the gravel under his feet, Jack buried his reddened and ice cold hands into the inviting warmth of his pockets. Burrowing further inside his jacket as he tracked the familiar road, he leaned against the fence and stared up at that house, Alex was expecting him so really he should go in, but the other didn’t trust himself enough to keep his mouth shut. If he walked in there, he would confirm to the elder brunet that he was definitely at the summit of having romantic feelings for him. Just too get rejected again.
So he walked on, sending a quick text whilst feigning an illness that probably didn’t exist yet, his scuffed up and greying converse planning back a route that usually was followed a few hours later. Home, or something like that. He took off his shoes before he walked in to avoid his mother’s complaints of dirtying a house she spent all day cleaning, but that was out of respect not force. However his lips sealed shut and Jack escaped to the fortress of his room in vain hope he hadn’t been noticed. “Jack? Is that you, get down here at once,” With something short of annoyance at his father, he threw his bag onto the bed and tried to walk downstairs as if his heart hadn’t just plummeted and his spine didn’t suddenly want to curve.

“Good afternoon,” The brunet spoke softly but clearly, his eyes torn between looking at the floor and ceiling before meeting his father’s eyes. “Have you had a nice day?” They exchanged simple pleasantries as if they were strangers and not of the same family, for now.
“It was adequate, how is school, no one you can’t handle right? Staying away from the scum right…the addicts and the fags?” If it wasn’t such a cruel situation, Jack would’ve found it amusing, he wasn’t just hanging out with the addicts and the fags, he was becoming one. The dark eyed boy couldn’t wait until he was eighteen, he’d run so far and fast away from his father there would be burnt tarmac behind him.

“Yeah…sure…may I be excused now?” There wasn’t much else to say, they never really had anything to discuss between them as there was nothing in common and at the best of times Jack despised his father. His own dark ebony eyes had seen the things that man did once the bottle became his mistress; his ears had heard the cries of his mother. You’d have to be blind to miss the bruises.

He would feel sorry that he was running and leaving her behind eventually, but there was nothing more he could do. When he left, the young man could direct the police too their house but his father had enough power to cover it all up and buy his way out and then the two of them would be in danger from his mental anger. It was best to let her figure out how to run by herself.
True to his word, is was barely half ten when the screaming started, the anger over boiling words that held so much sting it made his own coffee coloured orbs spike with tears. Alone in the dark of his room, he curled himself around his body, listening to the shouts and screams that sent spikes into his spine. Then he grabbed his jacket off his bed and took off down the stairs and out the door, hoping he wasn't found by his parents for a good few days. But the screams echoed, they bounced around his ruffled head as he yanked his jacket up his arms, taking off down the street. He knew where to go, where he would always go, the one person who's face alone seemed to for some strange and fucked up reason, make everything better.
There were tears rolling down his face, his mother's screams, his father's shout, the words, oh God those words, he heard them so many times. By this point he was visibly shaking, his knuckles rapping on the splintered wood; so cold, everything was so cold. "Alex," Jack managed to gasp out, before he was collapsing into the arms of a startled young man.

--
As it turned out Alex had also been alone that night, Kellin had been too stoned to stay and the other boy wasn't one to take advantage of a situation, but he didn't help him either. It seemed the boy with hair of burnt golden finally found some sense to step up on a pedestal and stand against the darkest haired boy shoved him around as if he were worth so much less. The elder lay Jack down on the bed, tugging off his wet jacket and tossing it onto a chair, he wondered silently why he had been his choice too come too in this state.

'He's a rich kid so surely he has friends lining up left, right and center,' But then he rememebred that this was Jack, the same Jack who found the best conversation was in Vic Fuentes, a boy with selective mutism. It was strange to see him like this in anyway, with the strands of his fringe plastered to the sickly pale skin of his forehead and cheeks. His pastel pink lips and ivory lidded eyes were reddened as if he had been crying crimson tears from his veins to his eyes; although he knew this wasn't true the thought alone made Alex shiver. Reaching out too brush a droplet of rainwater from his translucent skin, he tugged a blanket over the shivering body.

"See you in the morning Jackie," As he lay down beside him, drowsy from lack of sleep, he didn't even have the energy to realise that a name he'd never used before had tumbled from the dark corners of his mind into the air around him.

Notes