Symphony of Sound.

Rian comes stumbling through the door to the common room after Zack’s been gone for around fifteen minutes. Evan finds himself silently wondering if Zack managed to avoid him, as the brown haired boy rests his hand on the back of the sofa and sighs heavily.

“Have you seen Zack at all?” He asks, trying desperately to regulate his heaving breaths.

Evan is curious as to why Rian’s breathing is shot, right up until he hears Kara screaming from outside. Then, he understands completely.

Hell hath no fury like that of Kara Diakoulas when she’s angry.

“Do you want me to go try and calm her down?” He asks, very deliberately dodging Rian’s original question about Zack’s whereabouts.

“If you don’t mind?” Rian pants, running his slim fingers through his wild hair. “I’m kind of afraid of going back out there right now.”

And rightly so, Evan catches himself thinking.

But still, he’s willing to sacrifice himself despite how much the older boy irritates him. Mainly because he knows Zack will never forgive him if anything was to happen to Rian, and he doesn’t want that disaster on his conscience.

Kara is pacing around in the hall in front of the common room door when Evan surfaces, and she immediately runs at him.

“Where is he?” She shouts, trying to peer over Evan’s shoulder.

“Who?” Evan says, sighing slightly, even though he knows exactly who she means.

“Dawson!”

Evan bites his lip and pulls her into a hug.

“He makes me so angry!”

“I can see that.” Evan mumbles under his breath.

Kara makes a disgruntled noise at the slightly older boy and pushes at his chest, discounting the fact that he’s a fair bit stronger than her.

“You’re not going to let me go, are you?”

“Uh, no.” Evan replies bluntly. “I’m kind of scared for Rian’s health if I do, you see.”

Kara pouts, frowns up at him and sighs, glaring at him through her bangs.

“Sorry, Kara, but it’s true.”

“You’re meant to stick up for me, you idiot.” She laughs breathlessly. Evan hugs her tighter still.

“He’s a guy. Bro code, you know?”

“No, Evan. I don’t know. He’s upset a very close friend of mine, do I not have a reason to be annoyed with him?”

“I’m not saying you don’t, Kaye, but I think you should, I don’t know, see if they can sort it themselves before blowing up at Rian.”

“I tried that! It made it worse!”

Evan can just tell that she’s about to fly off into another rant about Rian, and how much she despises him and wishes he’d just fall off a cliff, so he ducks his head and kisses her.

Half to shut her up, half because he kind of really wants to and he’s been building up to this moment for weeks.

Kara makes a confused little noise from the back of her throat, but kisses him back anyway.

Needless to say, it distracts her from her vendetta against a certain junior boy.

Zack, by now, has managed to wander around almost the entire school campus and back, trudging through snow and slush and generally bad weather.

He’s about to turn and head back towards the junior block when he sees something from the corner of his eye. He turns, straining his eyes to focus on the shaking form of Jack, sitting on a bench alone a few feet away.

He moves over quickly, carefully dodging the icier parts of the path and slumps down into the seat beside Jack. The younger boy looks at him and sniffs, wiping his already reddened eyes with the back of his wrist and the rough, woollen sleeve of his jacket.

“You alright, Jack?” Zack asks, moving his hand to rest on Jack’s knee.

“Not really, no. I’m just freaking out a bit, I guess.”

“What’s wrong?” Zack presses further, shifting his hand slightly to link his fingers with the dark haired boy’s.

“It’s, uh, a long story.” Jack sighs hesitantly, bringing his free hand up to tousle loosely in his hair. “Alex, uh, asked me out on a date this weekend.”

“What did you say?” Zack asks, his expression quickly changing into a broad smile.

“I, uh, said no.”

“What?” Zack asks in disbelief. “Why? You totally like him!”

“It’s complicated, Zee.” He says, giving the smaller boy’s hand a quick squeeze. “There’s some… There’s some stuff I need to deal with in my life before I even think about anything like that.”

“I’m here for you, Jack. You know that.” Zack says softly, biting his lip and giving the other boy’s hand a gentle squeeze in return. “Do you want to talk about it? You know I’ll listen.”

“Ordinarily…” Jack starts, trailing off quickly. “Ordinarily I’d have said yes in a heartbeat -you know that.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because this weekend… This weekend is my grandma’s memorial back home. I kind of need to be left alone so I can collect my thoughts and sort my head out without him getting worried.”

Zack nods, resting his shoulder against Jack’s in a brief moment of comfort.

“I know… I know what it’s like, Jack. I go through it every year, too.” Zack says with a soft smile. “At least you had the chance to know your grandmom, I don’t even remember seeing my mom.”

Jack squeezes Zack’s hand hard.

“And Evan, you know him, right? His parents both walked out on him when he was five. He doesn’t even know their names. He hasn’t seen or heard from them in ten years.”

Jack sniffs, because both of their problems make his pale by comparison.

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty because your problem doesn’t sound half as bad as ours, but it’s because I want you to realize that you are surrounded by people who know what you’re going through. We’ll always be here for you, Jay.”

Jack gives him a small, soft smile as a thanks and Zack brushes his bangs away from his eyes.

“Your grandma’s memorial is in Baltimore, right? That’s only a couple of states away.”

“Yeah, but it’s still almost ten hours away.”

“So? If we leave as soon as school lets out on Friday we can get there by Saturday morning.”

Jack’s head snaps up to stare at the older, blonde boy sitting beside him.

“Are you being serious right now?”

Zack nods, squeezing the dark haired boy’s hand tightly.

“Yeah. We’d better go and start packing now –I’ll get the train tickets booked.”

“Thanks, Zee.” Jack says with a bigger smile than before, standing and helping Zack to his feet. The blonde boy stumbles gingerly on the icy ground underfoot and laughs as Jack struggles to keep them both on their feet.

Rian, meanwhile, is stumbling and fumbling around the junior common room and dorm area in search of a certain tan skinned, blonde haired Californian that he could really do with talking to.

As if on cue, Zack and Jack appear through the double doors to the common room and Alex looks up at them from the floor in front of the fire.

Rian comes careering down the three stairs he’s standing atop and heads towards Zack.

The younger boy just stares blankly at him, as though pretending he isn’t even there. Rian frowns at him, slumping down beside Alex as the older blonde watches Jack longingly.

Zack drags the younger boy towards his dorm, pushing him towards the door in a signal to unlock it. Jack struggles with his keys in his pocket for a moment before he manages to force them out.

“So, you decide what you need to take, because I can just throw everything back into my bag. I’ll book the train tickets, but you need to call your mom and dad and let them know we’ll be there.”

Jack throws him an offhand smile as he starts to rummage around in his closet for suitable clothes as Zack pulls his laptop up from the floor and switches it on.

Within fifteen minutes he’s got two return tickets from Augusta to Baltimore and back again, and he’s feeling somewhat proud of himself.

Jack is currently occupied with talking on the phone to his mother and explaining to her that, basically, he’s going to be able to make it, and that if she could set up a mattress of some sort on the floor, then that’d be great. Zack is kind of infinitely proud of Jack at this point for being able to have this conversation without having some sort of breakdown, because God knows if it was him, he’d be sobbing right about now.

Jack hangs up the phone and sits down on his bed beside Zack, who has a few websites for the local train stations and travel fares open on the browser.

“It’s about forty five dollars for a return.”

“Alright. That’s fine. Mom said she’ll pay, so we can put it on her credit card.”

Zack nods, carefully typing out the numbers that Jack recites to him.

The younger boy grins at him when the confirmation message pops up on the screen, because he honestly thought he’d have to miss the memorial again, for what must be the third year running.

“Thanks for this, Zee. I’m kind of glad I won’t be on my own for this again.”

“You’re welcome.” Zack says with a small smile, closing the browser window and being met with Jack’s desktop wallpaper –a photograph of them all from sophomore year.

“Oh, God, I look terrible.” He laughs, leaning forwards to scrutinize the photograph.

“No you don’t, shut up. Have you seen Alex’s hair in this? It’s hilarious!”