It Was Always You

“When are you going to move in here?”

Jack stiffens, his fingers tightening around the blanket that he’s trying to fold. He’s standing in Joey’s room, trying to help the eight year old clean it up so that when Alex comes home from wherever the hell he went, he won’t flip out if it isn’t cleaned. “What do you mean?” Jack finds himself asking as he puts the blanket on the bed, “Move in?”

Joey nods eagerly, “Yeah. Live here? Like before we moved here? Since you and Daddy aren’t fighting anymore?”

He already knew what Joey meant, but he was hoping that maybe there was a slight chance that he was wrong. He doesn’t want to talk about this – he doesn’t even know what to say. But he smiles and shrugs anyway, sitting down on the edge of Joey’s bed. “I don’t know, buddy. We’ll see.”

“What about when it’s just you and Daddy?”

Jack’s heart stops for a second at those words. They’ve run through his head so many times over the past few days, watching Joey get weaker and weaker. He’s currently got a bad cold, sniffles and all. His body is trying to fight it off but his immune system is destroyed. He barely has any fight left in him. Soon, it really will just be Alex and Jack and that thought alone terrifies him. What’s he going to do when he actually has to deal with it? These past two weeks, being able to spend them with his son, have been amazing despite the little setbacks with Alex and Zack. Jack is positive that he’s not going to be able to go back to the way it was before. He can’t do it.

“Well…” Jack trails off, rubbing at the back of his neck. He knows that Alex has already talked to Joey about everything – his illness, what’s going to happen. But that doesn’t make him feel any less awkward. If he had known when Joey was born that he’d be sitting in his bedroom eight years later, talking to him about what would happen after he passed away, he might have done things differently. He says it all the time now, but it doesn’t make it any less true. “Daddy and I are…Well we’re gonna be…”

He can’t bring himself to actually finish his sentence. He wants to lie and say that they’re going to be okay. That they’ll be fine and that they’ll have each other. But suddenly it’s become so much harder for him to even breathe. His throat feels tight – that familiar signal that he’s going to start crying. But he swallows hard, forces a smile and just nods, “We’ll have each other.”

At first, the eight year old doesn’t look entirely convinced. He sits there with his legs crossed underneath him and his head tilted to one side as if he’s trying to dissect Jack’s words to find the lie hidden behind them. But Jack apparently does a decent job of covering it up, because after a few seconds, the boy smiles and nods as well. “Okay.”

-

“You haven’t said a single word since you came back from putting Joey to bed,” Alex states from his spot on the couch, opposite from where Jack currently sits. “We may have spent two years apart but I definitely remember the little fact that you get all silent when you’re thinking about things.”

“I’m thinking about Joey,” Jack admits quickly, not even trying to hide his thoughts. He shares most things with Alex lately. He finds it pointless not to. They had sex, talked about everything they’ve needed to. It’s like they’re together again – except not. Because Jack is still with Zack and is supposed to be meeting Zack’s request. “He’s getting worse, Lex.”

“I…I know,” Alex mumbles, his hands rubbing over his face once before looking over at Jack with a saddened expression. “His cold is getting worse. And he couldn’t even walk up the stairs by himself earlier. John had to help him. It’s happening, Jack. We don’t have much longer-”

“I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

Jack brings his knees up in front of them, rests his chin on top and tries to stare at the TV and ignore how close Alex has suddenly become. He feels the older man’s arm wrap around his shoulders, his fingers drawing small, simple patterns. He wants to push him away because he has Zack, but if he’s being honest? He just doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t have the energy needed to push Alex away. Mentally and physically. He does, however, have the strength to bring up Zack’s request. The one that he made days ago.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” He says softly, leaning a little bit away from Alex’s touch. “About something I spoke to Zack about the other day.”

Alex tenses up at the sound of Zack’s name. “Yeah?”

“We’re…Alex as much as I love you, we’re not together right now. Zack is my boyfriend. He has been for a while and he’s been there for me through some of the toughest things I’ve ever had to go through. And he pretty much sacrifices everything to do things for me and I need…I need to do something for him. I need to talk to you about legally separating – a divorce.”

Alex, as Jack expected him to be, is silent for a while. He sits there, staring at his hands resting on top of his knees. He’s breathing deeply, in and out, and Jack sort of wants to just tell him to forget it – that they can talk about this another day. But he’s put it off for too long –it’s been days since Zack asked him to and days since he’s even spoken to Zack since. He has to do it. It needs to be done.

“I don’t…Jack,” Alex shakes his head, bites his lower lip and doesn’t even look over at the younger man, “I understand. But I just…How do you feel about it?”

“Well…”

Jack’s frown becomes more prominent. This is the first time he’s looked at the question and thought about his feelings towards it. He’s not…He’s not exactly completely all for it, he realizes. He doesn’t really want to divorce Alex. And now, sitting in Alex’s living room while his son is sleeping upstairs, everything seems so normal. A divorce would ruin that. Alex wouldn’t be his husband anymore. He’d be his ex-husband and then everything would be so strange. Alex used to be all he ever knew. He still is pretty much all he knows. Ninety percent of his past fifteen or so years has involved Alex somehow. Only about five percent has involved Zack.

“I don’t… I don’t really know,” He finally responds, looking over at Alex. “I don’t know how I feel about it.”

“Well, I guess there’s your answer then, huh Jack?”

Alex stands up, clicks off the TV and walks away, simple as that. As if Jack didn’t just ask to divorce him and he was merely asking how he felt about the weather. He’s gone and up the stairs before Jack can even protest, and Jack finds himself about to cry again. And he still has to call Zack.

-

“How’s Joey?”

“I…he’s okay. He’s sick, though. He has a bad cold and it’s just getting worse. It’s getting more and more obvious that I’m going to lose him any day now and…”

“Jack. I’m so sorry. I wish there was-”

“Don’t. It’s fine,” Jack interrupts, wiping at his eyes from where he’s sitting on his hotel bed. He tightens his grip on his phone and says, “Listen. I spoke to Alex about um. Divorcing him.”

“Oh.”

Jack bites his lip at how nervous Zack sounds. “He didn’t exactly take it well and he didn’t take it badly either. He just… I don’t think now is a good time to try and talk to him about this. You know?”

Zack sighs into the phone and Jack can picture him running his fingers through his hair. “It’s okay, Jack. I can wait. Take your time.”

But Jack can hear that little bit of irritation underneath that painfully patient tone. And he realizes, he can’t keep doing this anymore.