Tell Me I'm a Wreck

This whole thing was stupid, as far as Jack was concerned. He’s only just realized this as he flies around his and Alex’s room, throwing everything he can into a backpack.

He guesses he could’ve been nicer about the situation, maybe he didn’t have to scream the entire apartment building down - but then, neither did Alex. He zips up his backpack and throws it on, leaving his keys on the kitchen counter as he leaves.

Maybe it could’ve stayed like the old days, when Jack had actually given two shits about everything.

Alex stands in the doorway, thinking exactly the same thing.

Jack used to be his everything; the one who’d pick him up when he was down, kiss him just to prove he was his, hold him when he’s crying. Sooner or later, Jack was the one making him cry.

For some reason, Alex wishes that circumstances had been just a little different; that Zack and Rian hadn’t told him Jack was bad for him, maybe. Or maybe if Jack had just been a better person then maybe Alex wouldn’t have to be considering this all right now.

Jack stops on his way out and looks at Alex, a noticeably sad look painting his chocolate eyes.

“I tried.” He says simply, fingers twisting tighter around the right hand strap of his backpack as it clung to his bony shoulder. He pushes past Alex and is halfway down the hall before his words sink in.

“What do you mean ‘you tried’?” Alex shouts. Jack turns to look at him, eyebrows furrowing together.

“I tried to care about you. Guess it didn’t work.” He turns to continue walking, but Alex comes flying out of the apartment faster than Jack has ever seen him move before.

“You only tried?” Alex asks, breath hitching as he catches up with the younger “We’ve been together three years.”

Jack nods.

“I know. And sure, maybe it was wrong of me to try and hide the fact that I don’t care about you all that much, but it’s not like you’ve never done that.”

Alex stares at him, disbelieving.

“And, hey, if it’s any consolation, I can’t see the good in why I did it either. Kind of makes me feel like a bad person.”

There’s a sickening noise as Alex’s fist connects with Jack’s jaw.

“You fucking liar!”

Jack recoils, but quickly recovers.

“This is why I don’t give a shit about you anymore! All this bullshit you say! Jack do this! Jack, you’ve done this wrong! Jack this, Jack that! Every fucking time I do whatever pointless task you need me to do, I’ve done it wrong, haven’t I! And then you just fucking complain more! I can’t take it anymore! And yet you still wonder why I’m leaving!”

Alex flinches at his words, simply because he knows they’re all true. He does get at Jack for the littlest things, and in hindsight it probably wasn’t his best idea to call him a ‘useless idiot.’

Down to Alex’s silence, Jack continues with his tangent.

“Remember my twenty-first?”

Alex does, and very clearly. They’d gotten into yet another very public fight. It was all over the rock magazines for weeks on end.

“You decided it was a brilliant idea to go to the tiny ass restaurant where we went on our first date and got through four glasses of their double strength house wine. You got smashed and started a pointless fucking argument over the fact I said your shirt was gross. Even though you already knew I thought that, because every time you wear the damn thing I remind you how much I hate it.”

The fact that Jack’s voice sounds so monotone is what upsets Alex; not his searing words as everyone would’ve though.

Maybe he never cared at all.

“Simple answer to all of this is that we want different things at different times. I know for sure that I just want space to be myself. You, on the other hand, I have no idea.”

“What I want?” Alex asks, his voice shaking and watery “What I want is to get married and be happy, but that’s obviously not going to happen. At least not with you.”

“You say that now and yet you’re the one who insistently said that we’re ‘meant to be.’ Why did you even believe that in the first place?”

Alex hangs his head and lets a few tears stray to his cheeks. Whether they’re for real or for effect, even he doesn’t know.

Jack does kind of want to go back over to him and envelop him in a hug, but he knows that’s exactly what Alex wants him to do. Give in.

“Do you know how it feels now?” He says instead “To be told you’re useless - a wreck, even - and then be constantly reminded by someone who’s supposed to care about you? It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Alex nods gently, more tears hitting his lightly tanned cheeks. He knows he’s not faking it now.

“I had to grow to expect it from you.”

Jack’s suddenly thrown backwards as Alex flies at him - now sobbing - and clings to him like he’s the only thing preventing his death.

“You fucking bastard.” Alex sniffles “You fucking led me on.”

Jack stares down at him but doesn’t push him away.

“If you’d have asked what I thought about us, I’d have told you the truth and said that I thought we weren’t going to work out. It’s not my fault that I’m not confrontational.”

Jack prises him away gently and begins to walk away. He turns and sees the elder collapse onto the floor and start crying even more.

He stops walking, and Alex looks up at him with expectant honey eyes.

“You know, I guess you never really knew me at all.”

Jack turns on his heel and does his bet to ignore the sound of his ex-boyfriend crying hysterically in the middle of the hallway.

As he steps into the elevator at the end of the corridor, he hears people begin to fawn over Alex.

He hears Alex’s sobs working themselves up louder and louder, until eventually as the elevator doors slide shut, he hears one final shout of anguish from the boy still kneeling on the floor.

“You’re a fucking bastard, Jack Barakat!”