Never Lost a War

It's four am when Jack hears finally the door open to his dorm, and then Alex's shadow projected on the wall. He pretends to be asleep, which leads to him actually falling asleep, from a combination of alcohol and school stress and sexual frustration and Alex.

---

When he wakes up again, the clock reads 8:31, and Alex has left again, but that isnt surprising since it's a Monday, and Alex has an eight am class every Monday. He should be home in less than an hour, but Jack's not sure he feels like talking, and he doesn't want to have to talk to Rian or Zack, so he gets dressed, walks across campus, and winds up outside of Delta Gamma, where Keller already is, because apparently she likes to be outside in the mornings when pretty much everyone else is asleep.

"I was right," she says, stupid smirk on her pretty lips, and she shrugs. "I expected you'd be coming."

Jack raises an eyebrow. "Is this part of your girlish intuition or am I missing something?"

Keller laughs, and it's a nice sound, not mean, exasperated like the way Alex sounded the night before. "The latter would be more accurate, probably," she says, and her smile fades a bit to something more gentle. "I saw Alex last night."

"Oh?" Jack asks, playing it cool like he's not interested, even though Keller can see right through him, anyway. She's kind of weird like that.

"He slept with Nina. I think they're sort of dating now, or something? I'm not entirely sure. She seemed to like him when they first met though, so I guess I'm happy for her."

"Aren't you just a fountain of knowledge," Jack mutters. For some reason he feels weird, knowing that it was that easy for Alex; that while Jack was sitting in the dorm worrying about Alex, he was fucking a girl with purple hair. He feels kind of irrationally angry, and kind of wishes Keller hadn't told him anything, but knows he would have found out, anyway.

Keller smiles a bit, just the sides of her mouth, and she rests her head on Jack's shoulder. "You boys," she says, no explanation further than that; and she sounds tired but fond, and it occurs to Jack that she probably hasn't slept much either if she was expecting him.

"Did you talk to him?" Jack asks, rubbing his eyes, the full force of his lack of sleep finally hitting him.

"Briefly," she shrugs. "But I dont think I'm the one that really needs to sort things out with him." She sends him a knowing look.

"Both of you with the mothering," Jack mutters, and Keller laughs, shaking her head. "What did he say?"

"I'm leaving it to you to talk to him yourself," she says. "I'm not going to solve your problems for you."

Jack sighs. "Alright, yeah, you're right."

"Of course I am," Keller says smugly, and pats his shoulder. "Good talk."

---

Things start changing, after that.

For one, Zack is single again, which means he's gone back to taking every chance he can to mope around over it. Maeve already has a new boyfriend, which Jack might feel bad about if he didn't already have twenty things to feel bad about.

Rian and Cass are fine, of course, because they're always fine, and Rian has been dating her since freshman year and she still hasn't been scared off so she probably isn't going to be, but Rian's starting to talk about 'knowing she's the one' and being in love, and while Jack knows that, yeah, that's awesome for Rian, he's also too busy thinking that he'll never find someone to tolerate him like that.

And Alex... Alex is dating Nina, and he writes her cute little notes about their first kiss and her pretty smile and the color of her eyes, and asks Jack to read them over- "Is this alright, is it... Is it too much?"- and he seems happy, and Jack knows he should be happy for him, just logically, Alex is his best friend, but he really, really isn't.

--

When the weekend rolls around, neither Jack or Zack make much progression on their respective sides of the bet.

Zack is still depressed or something over Maeve, and he's acting all thoughtful and philosophical all the time, and in all honesty it's really starting to piss Jack off.

Jack, on the otherhand, is aiming to just call the bet off. He doesn't want to forfeit, because Zack is ruthless and he'd probably never live it down, but he doesn't want to stay in it, either.

All he seems to be talking to Alex about is Nina, fucking Nina, and oh, Jack, she's so smart and interesting, and she seems so shy but she's got a great personality, and Jack really fucking doesn't care.

--

Jack spends a lot of time with Keller, blaring obnoxious music from her tiny room and playing dumb video games that Jack has no idea why Keller owns in the first place, a little bit because she's an attractive girl and a little bit because they suck.

"Have you talked to Alex recently?" she asks, and she's chewing a piece of fruity-smelling gum and wearing an oversized Sonic Youth t-shirt, and her hair's kind of a mess; meant to be pulled up into a ponytail but the short layers are all falling out.

Jack raises an eyebrow. "Well, yeah. I sleep like five feet away from him, of course I've talked to him recently."

"No, like, are things still weird," Keller says, putting in the tiny Super Monkey Ball disc into her GameCube, because apparently she still owns one of those.

"Things aren't weird," Jack says, maybe a little too quickly, because they're not, they're not avoiding each other or anything, the only thing that's changed is that Alex is dating someone, which Jack doesn't even care about, because it's Alex's life and he can do whatever the fuck he wants, he doesn't need Jack's goddamn permission. Obviously.

But Keller just grins, shark-like with all of her perfect-if-not-slightly-yellow-from-coffee teeth showing, and she looks way too happy for the given situation. "That was defensive, Barakat, you're jeaaaaaaaalous," she sings, and Jack rolls his eyes.

"I'm not jealous of Alex, I don't even know Nina," Jack says logically, looking down at his GameCube controller and hoping that will postpone the conversation until, oh, maybe never, but of course that doesn't happen because the universe hates him.

"You're not jealous of Alex, you're jealous of Nina, idiot," she says, rolling her eyes with that stupid grin still plastered on her face.

"I'm not jealous of Nina," Jack argues, and Keller just laughs.

"Okay, babe," she says, shrugging casually, still smirking (Jack considers making a comment about if she keeps up that face, it'll get stuck that way), "of course you aren't."