Can't Help Who I Fall For

“Do you guys want me to leave or something?” Franceschi said, sounding slightly uncomfortable. That was definitely a first.

Jack pushed me away almost immediately. His breathing was heavy, and when I opened my eyes, I could see that he looked to be a mix of both terrified and embarrassed. For a moment, his teeth held his bottom lip in place, but then he was letting it go to whisper, “I forgot that he was here.”

In all truthfulness, I had, too. It was his fault, really, seeing as how he’d left the room to raid the kitchen. After ten minutes of patiently waiting for him to return, my and Jack’s innocent kisses had become a bit less innocent. Then, with each additional passing minute, it had lost a little bit more of its innocence until we were full-on making out on my bed.

It’s not like I was going to complain.

“Of course ya did,” Franceschi muttered. “Who would think to remember poor, ol’ Joshy when you’ve got a dementor trying to suck out your soul?”

“A what?” I asked with a laugh. A reassuring kiss was pressed to Jack’s lips before I was pushing myself up into a sitting position on my bed to look over at my best friend.

“A dementor,” he repeated, giving me an exasperated look and a roll of his blue eyes. “They’re, like, these things that... look, I got paired up with that Fuentes kid in my drama class, and he wants to reenact some scene from one of the Harry Potter books, and they do this thing called the dementor’s kiss, and—”

“I think he wants to make out with you,” I suggested with a wiggle of my thick eyebrows.

Josh almost looked embarrassed as he scoffed. “He’s got a girlfriend,” he stressed. Franceschi shook his head as he stood from where he’d been sat and began to make his way from my room. “That’s so… I’m not gay… he’s not gay… why would he…” By the time he actually reached the door, he couldn’t even think of something to say. “Shut up. They don’t actually kiss or anything, it’s just called a kiss.”

“Josh, woah, hold up,” I called, and he paused to send me a glance back. “Just thought I’d let you know that your gay is showing.”

“Fuck off,” he mumbled. He gave me the middle finger as he walked out into the hall, only stopping after a few steps to reach back and slam the door closed behind him before he continued on his way. I wasn’t even sure if he was actually leaving or just going in search of my mum to have her make him the food he couldn’t find.

Jack gave a quiet laugh from beside me, and I turned to smile down at him. No more than a moment passed before he was returning the look, and I leaned down to press an innocent kiss to his cheek.

“Guess we should give that diorama one last look over or something before we put it in the car, huh?” I suggested, to which he shrugged.

“I really don’t know what the farm looked like at the end, so I doubt I’d be able to actually help make it better in any way,” he said. I gave him my best pout, bottom lip stuck out and all, and he sighed. “I guess I can take a look at it just for you, if you really want me to.”

With a grin, I climbed from the bed and held my hand out for him to take. “I had to store it in the guest room because I didn’t really have much room in here,” I explained as I tugged him from my room and down the hall in the opposite direction that Franceschi had gone.

Jack didn’t say anything as I pushed the door open, but his jaw fell the slightest bit slack when he caught sight of the display that I’d made.

“You did this by yourself?” he asked as he dropped my hand and stepped a little closer to it. He fell to his knees by the edge of the bed where it was sat. “Why did you paint suits on the pigs? How did you get their legs to bend like that? Why are their legs bent like that?”

“Had you actually just read the book,” I said, walking up behind him and leaning over to kiss his shoulder, “or, y’know, paid attention when we all read it together in class, then you would’ve known the exact reason.”

“Well, English is boring. You should be a good boyfriend and tell me the reason,” he said simply, looking up at me before reaching out to poke at everything. “What if she asks me why something is the way it is? You’re willing to let me get in trouble over a silly, little book?”

“Oh, I see how it is,” I said as I took a step back. “You’re just using me to get a good grade in her class, aren’t you? Alright, I understand how it’s going to be.”

Jack stood from where he’d been kneeling and turned to pout at me before he stalked closer. Within seconds, he had me backed against the wall with his hands bracketing me in place. I could’ve easily moved away, but instead I turned my head away and pretended to ignore him.

“Alex,” he groaned after a few moments of attempting to get my attention. I gave in with a hum, but I still refused to look at him. “Pumpkin,” he tried again, and that time I chanced a quick glance over. He was still frowning, thick eyebrows scrunched together on his forehead to complete the look.

Then, he was reaching out to poke at my sides until I finally gave in. When our eyes met, a smile pulled itself onto my lips and I was leaning forward to push a sweet kiss to his awaiting (still turned down) lips.

“I’m just kidding, angel,” I promised in a mumble. He pulled away and opened his mouth to respond, but before he even got the chance to make a sound, his phone began ringing in his back pocket.

Jack sighed and took a few steps back before retrieving the device. I leaned myself back further against the wall and casually crossed my arms over my chest. It was silent as I watched on, doing my best to understand what was happening by reading the expressions crossed his face. Of course, then the sounds started.

“Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to record a message here,” a voice said from the device over the noises of whooping and yelling in the background. I was wondering if maybe someone had video called my boyfriend, but the look on his face still held one of confusion.

After the soft uproar had died down, the voice spoke again. “We heard what you did to Sykes. Don’t think you’re just gonna get away with that, bitch. It’s only a matter of time before he gives us the go ahead to do whatever the fuck we want to you. What’re you gonna do, huh? Cry about it to that pussy boyfriend of yours? Maybe we’ll have to—”

I reached out at that point, having heard more than enough of what was being said. Jack was beginning to look a little sick with each passing second as it was; I doubt he’d have been able to last through however long the rest of the video was.

The pause button was hit as soon as I saw it on the screen, and I took a few moments to glance through as many faces as possible before I was exiting out of it. Of course, they were all people who Oli was friends with—or, at least, pretended to be friends with. It was still hard to believe that at one point, I’d been one of them. I was lucky enough to have gotten out of there when I did.

When I looked back up at my boyfriend, I could see that he’d gone a little paler than before and started to shake ever so slightly. Jack’s gaze was still glued to where his phone had been, though his hand had gone slack. It didn’t even look like he was going to be giving me any attention, not if I didn’t force him to.

At first, nothing I did worked. The most he did was look at me when I tried to talk him out of the panic attack he was about to go through. It was understandable for me, seeing as how I was no stranger to the occasional panic attack, but he knew that I’d never let anything happen to him. He had me, Franceschi, Ramsay, Monster, Zack, Rian… we’d be able to take on anyone else.

Still, no matter what I had to say, it didn’t work. We were still stood in the spare bedroom, no more than a foot of space between us. A part of me felt that touching him in some way would be more comforting, but another part of me wasn’t sure if that would just cause him to break completely. Only, I knew that if he stood any longer, he was bound to collapse. Doing as I’d done earlier that day, I scooped him up into my arms and brought him to my room.

Jack made no protests to the action and instead clung to me tightly. Even when I tried to set him on my bed, he still wouldn’t undo his hands from where they’d furled themselves into my shirt. It was only when I’d climbed into bed as well that he began to loosen up.

His hands worked frantically at pulling me closer, tugging my body on top of his completely, and then he was giving out a shuddering breath. It washed against my skin from where his head was tucked into my neck, and a shiver wracked my spine. After a moment, he began to speak.

“What’re we gonna do?”

“We don’t even know if they were being serious, baby,” I soothed. My arms squeezed his body closer before my hands smoothed up and down his back in a comforting manner. “There’s a chance that they just wanted to scare you. Even if they weren’t, I’m not gonna let them hurt you. None of us are. You know that, right, baby?”

“They did it in the past,” he pointed out quietly.

I couldn’t hold in my sigh at that. “The past was different, baby. I’m not gonna let them touch you. In the past, they all left me and didn’t want anything to do with me. Now you’re here, you’re with me, and I promise you now that we’ll be fine. I’ll do something drastic if they try… like break one of their arms or something…”

“Don’t do that,” he mumbled, and there was what sounded like the hint of a smile in his tone. With a smile of my own, I was pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

“I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Notes