Just One More Second

This time, when Jack visits the hospital, Alex is in a bigger room, with two empty beds on opposing walls. The younger boy is content, full of hope, because the doctors have announced that Alex is now in a semi-coma, bound to wake up in a week or so, and something is happening that makes Jack’s stomach flip: he’s dreaming.

No one understood why the skunk-haired boy was so excited about Alex having such brain activity, because, yeah, it was good, but what’s there to squeal about? Yet it made Jack so happy, because it meant that not only Alex’s body was on again, it meant Alex was truly alive. Because there’s no more lively you can get; dreams are the best to life.

So today, Jack chooses a certain story, rather than the usual randomness that ends up in weird sex. He wants something special, happy, something that will hopefully give Alex good dreams.

Dreams of Jack, preferably, but good is good enough. Anything that has to do with Alex is more than good enough for Jack, in fact.

The guitarist sits comfortably in the chair next to the other’s bed, one hand resting on the rose-tattooed semi warm back of the elder’s hand. Last time he felt it, it was cold to touch, so that alone already has Jack extremely joyful.

“Bunnies,” Jack reads, smiling to himself. There’s a secret behind this story, and he’s really proud of himself for keeping it.

“Bunnies were always the best thing I could think of that might possibly be more adorable than Alex. But then, of course, the wire would always twist around and point to Alexander Gaskarth as the cutest human being in the world, the cutest mammal, the cutest possible thing that exists. So when he smiled at me, dimples surfacing, asking if he could borrow some clothes, how could I say no?

Answer: I couldn’t.

Anyways, while to normal people, their best friend borrowing their clothes is totally normal. Unless your best friend is the opposite sex. Then it’s a little unusual, but still not weird.

But to me, remembering Alex asking me that is remembering the beginning. My life didn’t start until that moment. Sure, I lived, but until then, I saw no value in anything.

So Alex borrowed an outfit out of whatever clean laundry I had left, and I left him to it, stripping, stepping under the hot shower. And thank God for my fear of every possible disaster that might happen in the bathroom, because I left the door unlocked.

At first I was annoyed that I did so. Alex came in, every damn three seconds-Can I borrow your straightner?-Can I practice on your guitar? Danny has mine.-Can I this and Can I that-until finally, he asked the question. It was a simple question, and I paid no attention to it: Can I borrow your shower?

Of course I said yes, that I’d be done in a few seconds, with him giving me a confusing reply of ‘I’d better hurry up then.’ And then it happened. One second I was standing alone in the shower, and the next, Alexander William Gaskarth stood before me, all his beauty exposed, smiling shyly. It was a little weird on his part, because didn’t he just tell me five months ago that we should lay off on the Jalex? I think this is a little too much slash, if you ask me.

I was rigid, standing and staring, confused, and we just had this-this stare down, his brown eyes boring into mine, as if reading my soul or my mind, and maybe he was, because suddenly my head was being pulled forward as lips smashed into mine.

So that’s it, really. I’m not sure what everybody’s expecting. You want a kinky story where I tie Alex to a bedpost? Because that’s not exactly what I see when I think of my boyfriend. When I think of Alex I think of an adorable bunny who loves Disney movies and scarves and hats, who is kind enough to bottom every fucking time, and that’s a lot, because let’s face it, we’re both basically nymphomaniacs.

Well anyways, my name is Jack Barakat, I play in a band called All Time Low, and I’m in love with my best friend.”

Jack would continue reading-there’s more, of course there is, it’s basically a goddamn loveletter to Alex that the younger boy’s been writing since, well, their first time, and if it’s for Alex, it’s got to be the fucking best shit he’s ever written.

Which can probably be compared to a personal narrative that of a fourth grader’s. Jack isn’t much of a writer.

He has more to say, he always does, but he stops to take a look in the room. There’s nobody else in with him, but he can’t shake this feeling that someone is listening in. Alex is still in his semi-coma, and Jack isn’t sure if that means the machine still helps him breathe, or does he breathe on his own because he can swear up and down that he felt something warm breeze over his hand, which lays on Alex’s limp chest.

He looks at his boyfriend, then takes a breath, and begins to read again. He’s nervous and shaky, but he needs to get over it, because when it’s time to really read this, it’s going to be in front of thousands of people, and he might get publically humiliated, or worse, Alex might dump him.

“Of course none of you know that, though I’m sure over three hundred percent of you have been praying that it’s true, that I’m gay, for reals, or maybe you’re thinking, right now, ‘I knew it!’, but did you really? Did you predict all of this?” the skunk-haired boy reads, putting a little too much emotion into his voice, and Alex knows, he just knows, that he better do something now before he starts crying and Jack starts to think all of his internal liquids are leaking, that he’s dying.

He’s stuck between kissing Jack for the first time in three months, and hearing the rest of Jack’s little thing.

And then he decides that he can keep his eyes shut for a little while longer.