Sanctuary

Jack barely had a foot inside his front door when his phone began vibrating wildly in his back pocket.

What took him by surprise was the fact that this wasn't just a text, it was a phone call. His friends rarely ever chose to call him rather than text him. Surely, then, this was just his mother calling to tell him something completely unimportant. Or perhaps it was a wrong number, as it often was. But as he dashed to disarm his home alarm system, he managed to slide his phone from his pocket and noticed that it was none other than Alex calling him.

"Hey, Alex," he beamed as he tossed his backpack aside. "Sorry I didn't text you, I decided to grab some Taco Bell after school, so I'm just now getting home. What's u-"

"What the fuck do you know about this Matt kid?" interrupted Alex, abruptly.

Jack froze, his body gone cold.

"M-matt who?" he blundered, though he already knew the answer to the question. He was only hoping to convince himself that Alex was speaking of another Matt.

"I don't know his last name. He's the English boy from the party. What do you have with him?"

Alex only hoped that this was just Matt screwing with him, that Jack really wasn't affiliated with this scum, and that this was all a hoax. He wasn't sure why a complete stranger would do this kind of shit to him, but it didn't matter. Alex just wanted to be assured that Jack was completely free of any kind of wrongdoing.

"Nothing, Alex. I told you. I don't know him at all," Jack said, hoping that his voice wouldn't give him away. There was no way of knowing what Alex would do if he knew the truth. Judging from his past and his brother, he more than likely wouldn't handle it well. That's why he'd had to lie on the night of the party.

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line, followed by a long pause as Alex tried to compose his thoughts.

"Look," Alex began, sitting down on the edge of his bed, "he was in my driveway when I got off of the bus earlier. I told him to leave like five hundred times, but he refused. He also said that something happened between you two, then he gave me a bag of weed that he said you asked him for at the party."

Jack's fear subsided into anger as he made his way to his own bedroom. It was just like Matt to do something as stupid and childish as that. He honestly regretted ever even associating with that idiot.

"Well?"

"I'd rather talk about this in person."

Alex felt the weight of the world on his chest, his lungs aching as he inhaled. This was the pain of knowing that his boyfriend had lied to him about something as serious as drugs. He wasn't even sure why he was so upset about it, it was only weed, after all. But he had never tried anything, so he wanted someone else who was innocent, too. Besides, if he was, in fact, associated with a kid like Matt, who knew how far he had gone?

"I wanna talk about it now," Alex said as he examined the small plastic bag in his palm.

There was a groan as Jack flopped onto his bed.

"Alex… please."

"No, please tell me. I promise I won't get angry."

"Promise?"

"Well… I don't know what it is yet."

Jack rolled onto his back and stared up at his ceiling, debating his options. He couldn't afford to lose Alex over some stupid decisions he had made in his distant past, not so soon. But he needed to know. Jack would just have to watch what he said carefully.

"I do know Matt," he murmured, his own voice sounding like a humming in his ears.

"But you said-"

"Let me finish. I know Matt because he went to St. Raphael for freshman and sophomore year before his parents withdrew him. Once he left, we stopped talking because I decided to get my shit together." There, that was all he needed to say.

"What do you mean you decided to get your shit together? What did you two do beforehand?"

The words Jack wanted to say were caught in his throat, forming a heavy lump where his heart should be.

"Look, Alex. Some things are better left unsaid. I'm sorry, okay?" His voice sounded unlike his own.

"Jack, you listen to me," Alex growled, annoyed now that he was having to dig so deep just to get some simple information. "If we're going to be in a relationship, I need to know all there is to know about you. This is really important, alright? I really like you, but if we can't be honest with each other, then this isn't going to work."

"Drugs. We did drugs," Jack blurted.

"You already told me that you smoked a few times freshman year. I've gotten over that, so I'm not mad now. See? That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"

There was a silence on the other end of the line, so heavy that Alex had to check to be sure that Jack hadn't hung up.

"Well you see…," Jack began, much to Alex's dismay, "we… kind of did more than just smoke. I'll explain, don't panic. When I was a freshman, I went through the whole 'I really want to fit in and I'm willing to do anything to accomplish that' phase. Matt was a year ahead of me and I knew him through friends of friends. You know how that goes. We got to talking sometime, and one thing lead to another. Before you know it I was smoking like… every other weekend, I'd say. It took the stress off. But one night things just got way out of hand. He offered me LSD."

Jack paused a moment to see if Alex had anything to say. He heard only silence, and so he continued.

"I took his offer. It was absolutely awful, Alex. I was horrified of what I saw, and I still get flashbacks to this day. I hated it so much, that I turned him down every time he asked me to come hang out from then on. Of course he got frustrated with me. He kept telling me things like everyone was expecting me, or he was going to tell everyone that I pussied out. That kind of stuff. But I still turned him down. I wasn't about to go down the same path that he had gone down. "

I'm so glad I didn't, too, because not long after that my uncle, who's a cop, came to me asking about him. He'd apparently gotten some reports on him and that I was usually seen with him. I got some shit for that, but they finally believed me when I said I stopped hanging out with him. I told them everything he had done, every last bit of it. I just hoped that they would make him stop harassing me."

So then they went to his house and they searched it. He had nothing but weed, and there's not a very big punishment for the amount that he had. I think he knew they were coming for him, so he got rid of it all. I don't know. But regardless he got pulled out of St. Raphael and his life became hell on earth. He also knows that I'm the one who turned him in, and I think he's trying to get back at me by scaring you away from me. But you can't listen to him, Alex. Please. Please just listen to me when I say to stay away from him. Promise me that?"

Alex had to take a few minutes to fully comprehend the story he'd just been told. Alright, so it wasn't quite as bad as he had imagined it, but he still found it hard to believe he had such a wild past with the other Englishman. If he wasn't scared to death of Matt before, he was definitely afraid now. His view on Jack had also been altered just a bit. He still felt for him, sure, but there was a strange feeling of fear that hung over Alex like a veil.

"Alright. I really don't want to be around him anyway. He makes me nervous as hell. But what if he just shows up at my house again?" Alex said quietly, going to shut his door since he could hear his mother's car pulling into the carport.

"Call the cops or something. I don't know. Better yet, call me. I'll handle it."

"Alright," Alex said as he returned to his bed, "I… uh… I love you." His tongue still refused to cooperate when he said those words. It just wasn't the time. But he felt like he owed them to Jack at this point.

"I love you too," Jack cooed without hesitation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The weekend that followed this surprise visit from Matt, the young couple decided to go to another house show nearby, stupidly enough. This time, however, there would be no drinking of the punch, and there would also be no need to crawl out through the window since Alex had told his parents he was going to spend the night at Jack's.

Presently, though, they were still at the older boy's home since they didn't need to leave for another hour in order to be on time. Alex was sprawled out on his back across Jack's bed, watching him try to get away from the cops on Grand Theft Auto IV by making violent jerks with his hands and screaming obscenities at the television screen.

"I've gotta say. I have never seen someone get five stars within five minutes of playing," Alex said with his eyebrows raised, honestly very impressed by Jack's police accumulating skills.

"Yeah, well, what can I say? I'm just so damn talented," he replied from the floor where he sat.

"If that's what you wanna call it."

The game was paused and Jack turned to face him, his eyes just barely peeking over the edge of the bed.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"Hm? Nothing," Alex returned nonchalantly.

Suddenly Jack was standing and crawling across the bed slowly, almost teasingly, leaving Alex to watch him in confusion.

"What did you say?" he whispered with a playful grin, rubbing their noses together softly as he positioned himself so he was straddling the younger boy.

"I honestly don't remember," Alex breathed as he looked up into Jack's eyes, his heart slowing down a few beats. Jack was literally on his hands and knees, an arm and a leg on either side of him so that he was hovering about half a foot above him. So of course he was going to get a bit hot and bothered and nervous.

"You alright, hun?" Jack asked, noticing Alex's eyes grow wide.

"Never been better."

"Oh. Alright."

Then, as if he couldn't make it any more worse, Jack leaned down and kissed Alex tenderly on the lips. Despite how light of a peck it was, it only managed to drive Alex that much more wild. Whenever Jack pulled away, the younger began twitching his lips gently. 'More.'

So the two began kissing a bit more fervently, their pecks becoming nipping, which soon led to tongue.

Back at Towson High, Alex had dated a girl by the name of Taylor, who was the first girl he had ever kissed with such passion. Prior to that was just a series of pecks and gentle kisses. Whenever the two of them kissed this way, however, it didn't evoke nearly as much feeling as kissing Jack did. This was strange because one would think that making out with someone your own gender for the first time would be awkward.

But it was far from awkward. In fact, Alex was wondering whether or not Jack had noticed the situation that was literally arising in his lower half as their tongues collided and their hands roamed.

If he didn't notice it before, he definitely knew now that he had a hand pressed gently to the fabric of Alex's jeans. His hips instinctively jerked upwards and a small whimper was evoked, all of which caused his cheeks to go bright red. Jack pulled his lips away to look him in the eyes as his palm rubbed small circles against the bulge. All Alex could do was stare at him with eyes full of shock.

"I-I'm sorry," Jack muttered, suddenly removing his hand and sitting up a bit. He must have mistaken his wide eyes for a sign of discomfort.

"No, no it's fine," Alex murmured. "It just happened so fast, and it's been a while since I've done anything like that."

"Anything like that? Meaning you've done stuff?" Jack asked with a blank expression, sitting up on his knees, still straddling Alex.

"I mean… I uh. I've done stuff, yeah. Not /the/ stuff… haven't you?" Alex asked, scrunching up his eyebrows. Surely Jack had gone farther than Alex, right? He was a senior in high school, and had a wild social life. That had to mean that he was a little experienced, right?

"No. No one's even seen me naked before. Well, aside from my parents or whatever," he said with a lame shrug, climbing off the bed to retrieve his coat. There was a tone of embarrassment in his voice that Alex chose to disregard. "Anywhore, we better get going."

As they headed out to his car, and then towards the house show, Alex couldn't help but think about how dirty he felt. He'd just gotten a hard on from another guy that he had been "dating" for roughly a month now. Sure it had felt good at the time, but he felt a bit sick at the thought of it happening again.

Then again, he did still have a very dull tingle in his lower half.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thankfully, no fainting occurred at this house show, nor was there any sign of You Know Who. In fact, Alex actually found himself having a very great time. There were about the same amount of people as there was the last time, and they all came off to him as extremely cool (and also, maybe, quite intoxicated. But they were still cool, nonetheless.)

There was one special moment that the couple shared. When the band was playing a very loud, very catchy song and everyone was shouting, they couldn't help but to lean in and kiss each other hard on the lips. There were what seemed like hundreds of people around them, but no one seemed to be watching. If anyone was, they were probably too drunk to care. In this moment, they were in their own little world, surrounded by a wave of music, with no care about tomorrow.

There's one thing that all couples should beware of when kissing in public, though. You should always be cautious of who may be watching you from the distance. Especially if you're trying to keep your relationship a secret.