Rescue Me

The first thing Jack did as soon as he was allowed out of bed at the hospital, was go find Alex, and okay, woah, back up, hospital? He was totally puzzled about how they even got there because last Jack checked, he was weakly trying to make the water come spouting out of Alex like a fountain by giving him CPR. But he was near passing out and not very good at it and he remembers thinking they might get even more cold in the oncoming rain from those dark clouds before everything went black.

Apparently a family walking their labradors had stumbled across Alex lying spread-eagled with the waves lapping his ankles, and Jack slumped over the top of him not long after he'd blacked out. It was very lucky, really. It put Jack into an entirely new state of mind and two hours later when the nurses let him actually get up, he found himself on a mission to locate his boyfriend and apologise and just hope they were okay.

He eventually found Alex's semi-private room one floor up after asking three different nurses for directions, and perhaps he wasn't admitting to the fact that he still felt a little dizzy and disorientated from exhaustion, but he wasn't going to give up now.

"Hey, you," he said softly, tapping on the door and peering into Alex's bed, the first one on the left.

Alex smiled, small and weak, but it was a smile, and it was for Jack, and that was enough.

He looked washed out, not like Alex at all, so pale and tired, his hair hanging limp around his face. Jack imagined he didn't look much better, he hadn't stopped to check. The aim of the hospital gown he'd been given was not to make him look like he was going on a hot date, he realised. He just felt happy that his bare ass wasn't showing and he'd been able to put dry socks on before he came searching for Alex.

"How are you feeling?" Jack whispered and tiptoed over, as if Alex had come down with a bad cold.

Alex's lips moved and there was a sound, croaky and barely heard, but a sound. Jack's lip-reading skills were good enough to figure out he'd simply said, "Tired."

"Yeah, I bet," he nodded, smiling down at him. He took Alex's hand in his gently. Alex's eyes were already falling shut once more. Jack frowned slightly, a lump in his throat. "We can talk later, okay? Sweet dreams, beautiful. You saved my life. In more ways than one. Don't forget that, okay? Okay?"

Alex let out a sleepy sigh through his nose, nodding slowly with closed eyes. His mouth had twitched a little at the corners, and Jack knew he'd heard, so he left it alone and kissed Alex's hand before he backed quietly out of the room to let him rest.

In the morning, Jack was told he was well enough to go home, and when he checked on Alex, he was still sound asleep, but apparently doing well even though he was in a slightly worse condition than him. Jack decided to use this time wisely. He was all set to go home, shower, get changed and come back to see Alex later with flowers and a card and a big speech about how he'd fix this mess; the whole shebang.

He forgot the one small detail that his car -- his mother's car -- was still at the beach, by the cliff, along with Alex's.

Well, shit.

He'd sort that out... later. Somehow. Instead, he called a cab which ate up more of the little money he had left, and went back to his place, forgetting the other small detail of his parents.

His mom was all over him the second he walked in the door.

"Jack Bassam Barakat!" she shrieked, yanking him into the front room by his wrinkled clothes, dried courtesy of the hospital staff but definitely not ironed. "Where the hell have you been all night?! Where's my car?! You look terrible, don't tell me you got drunk and fell asleep outside somewhere! I thought you were at Alex's but when I called Isobel earlier, she said he was gone too and assumed he'd stayed over here because he stopped by yesterday! We've been going out of our minds for the past two hours! What do you have to say for yourself?"

Jack hung his head sheepishly, peering up at his flustered mother and tight-lipped father. "...Oops?"

Joyce looked like she might implode, and Jack quickly back-tracked.

"Not oops! No, no! Sorry! I'm sorry! I can explain! I can, we were... we went out, uh... I took your car to... we drove out and drank a little bit and couldn't drive back, so we left the car and, um..."

"Left it? Where? Where did you go? Where did you sleep?" Joyce snowballed him with questions once more, but at least her voice had lowered a little. Jack kind of wanted his eardrums intact and his mother could be kind of... shrill.

In the end, a decent lie wouldn't surface. It was like he'd used them all up on his huge fuck-up drugs/kidnap scam. Sitting down heavily on the sofa with a defeated sigh, Jack told them the truth, leaving out the part about, well, his huge fuck-up drugs/kidnap scam. He simply said that he and Alex had went for a drive to the beach to take a walk and, somehow, he fell into the sea. Accidents happen. And they'd spent the night in hospital, but all was well, and Alex was fine, just a little peaky. No need to worry.

Of course, parents being parents, they didn't take it as lightly as Jack hoped, and Joyce was shrieking again within milliseconds of Jack stopping talking, racing to the phone to call Isobel and Peter. Jack looked up at his dad again, who was standing with his arms crossed and lips pressed into a thin line.

"Mind telling me why both cars are gone?"

"What?" Jack faltered, eyebrows raising slightly, because honestly, he was expecting a lecture.

"Isobel said Alex's car was gone. You must have taken your mother's. Why did you and Alex head out for this walk in separate cars?"

Jack swallowed, clearing his throat and coughing slightly to try and stall. "Um. He was heading out earlier than I was. I mean, I had some stuff to take care of, and Alex said he wanted to get going, so... I said I'd meet him there."

Jack resisted the urge to curl into a ball and hide at the skeptical look he was given, but luckily the subject was dropped, and his father went off to see about getting the cars back where they belonged. Slumping into the couch, Jack was able to breathe again. Even with the sound of his mother practically screeching to Isobel on the phone in the background.

/////

"You're up," Jack smiled, pleasantly surprised to find Alex sitting up in bed that evening and looking around.

He had dark circles around his eyes and his lips looked a little paler than usual; his whole face had a kind of washed-out sickly appearance to it, but he seemed fine. Unshowered, definitely, but strangely chirpy.

"Jack," he beamed, as if he wasn't in hospital because of him.

The younger boy walked over to the bed with small steps, a hopeful smile on his face as he sheepishly offered Alex the red roses he had bought him. He was totally broke now after purchasing those, but the way Alex's eyes lit up told Jack it was all worth spending the last few scraps of his cash on.

"These are beautiful," he breathed, touching the soft petals carefully.

"I know," Jack nodded, helping Alex place them onto his bedside table beside the water jug. He plucked a little pink-bordered card from the flowers and passed it over. "They have a card."

Alex took it quickly to read the note that Jack had written. All it said was a simple, Sorry. x

He looked up, head tilted slightly and a sad smile on his face.

"It's alright."

"No, no it isn't. We need to... we're going to have a long talk, okay?" Jack said firmly, sitting down on Alex's bed and toeing his shoes off. He might as well get comfortable, he wasn't leaving any time soon.

"What, here? Right now?" Alex asked, bewildered.

"Yes! Why? Wait... are your parents still here?"

Alex chuckled weakly and shook his head. "No. They left when I got my dinner brought to me. They're not mad at us or anything. My mom told me everything. I mean, I fobbed her off telling her I couldn't really remember what happened, that I just blacked out the whole thing, and she told me what your mom told her that you said, so..."

"Right, yeah, I know I lied to them about exactly... well... most of it, I guess, but that's for their own good. It'll just hurt everybody if we tell them the whole story. Look, forget that, we need to sort us out, okay?"

Alex breathed out slowly and nodded. He couldn't feel the anger creeping back into his veins; he didn't have the energy for that. But he still felt sad, remembering everything Jack had said to him. That's all it was. Sad. He'd gotten in too deep, into some ridiculous situation, and it had brought their relationship to here. Serious talks when they should have been out partying together or watching movies on the couch with stolen kisses when one of them wasn't looking.

Jack held Alex's hand as he spoke. He had the whole speech prepared. He made promises that he intended to always keep.

"Jeremy's not my dealer any more so it'll be easy, I'm just not going to buy any more drugs, it's over."

"Do you really think it'll be so easy to just quit? I mean, you said nine months, Jack, that's... are you sure you don't wanna... I don't know, haven't you thought about rehab or something?"

Jack shook his head. "I won't need it! If I feel like I want it, I'll just distract myself. Go for a walk or take a bath or go out with some people or something."

Alex looked skeptical, but he shrugged his shoulders and nodded for Jack to continue talking.

"Alright, well, I'm going to quit my job too, and get away from Taylor and Chris. I'll call in tomorrow and tell the boss I'm done."

"What? But... how will you earn money? Your dad won't be too pleased to hear you just quit for no reason... well, no reason that you can tell him."

"Easy! You remember my uncle that runs the restaurant in town? He and my aunt have been offering me a job there since, like, last year. It's perfect! I always said no because even though it paid better, I just wanted to work in a music store. More interesting, I figured. But, hey, being a waiter won't be so bad. And I'll get to hang out with my cousins more often too, because they work there as well. It's the greatest set-up! Right? I'll be away from any temptation and harassment from my old workmates and I get to spend more time with family, and I can start saving up for a car again with a better pay, so everybody wins!" Jack threw his hands in the air with an enormous grin, as if he'd just solved world hunger.

Alex forced a smile for him, but there was a small part of his brain that wasn't quite convinced. There was a flaw in Jack's perfect plan.

"Jack. What about Jeremy? And the fact that he's still a free man? He should be in prison! Taylor and Chris too."

Jack's smile faltered, and he quickly looked down, hands in his lap. "I know," he whispered. "But I'm scared. If I were to go to the police... well, what would I even say? Walk in like, 'Oh, hey, just thought I'd let you know my ex-drug dealer is running round town kidnapping teenage girls, by the way, I have all the inside info because I helped him do it!'? No. I can't. He'd rat me out if they caught him anyways, they all would. What if he heard about it and tried to hurt my family? Or you? Or our friends? I can't put everyone in danger like that. It's safer not to say anything."

"What about the girls though? Nobody's really safe if they're still free!"

"I know that!" Jack burst out, hands flying up to yank at his own hair. "I know. I've been trying to block that out. Just... I want to put the whole thing behind me and never talk about it ever again. Not the girls, not Jeremy, not Taylor or Chris or any of it. Okay? I know it'll be hard but I think I can do it. No more cocaine, no more kidnapping, none of it. We'll call it a bad habit. Like smoking. Lots of people manage to quit smoking."

"But--"

"Look, Alex, I'll... if another girl in this area goes missing, it's gonna..." he trailed off, sighing. "Suspicion's already raised with all the shit that's went on recently, and I've got high hopes that Jeremy won't try it again."

"And if he does?"

Jack sighed again. "Then I don't know what I'll do, but I guess I will have to do something. For now though, can we just forget about it?"

Alex stayed quiet for a moment. There were so many reasons that he could refuse, so many reasons that this could get messy. But Jack wasn't just some guy he'd started dating a few weeks ago. Jack was Jack, his best friend and beyond since childhood. He couldn't cut someone like that out of his life and move on as if they'd never had a history together. Alex had come so close to losing Jack, so angry that he'd almost let himself lose Jack, and their brush with death was enough to have him nodding fervently, reaching out to his boyfriend.

Jack let out a small sob and fell against Alex, arms wrapping tight around the boy who rescued him.

/////

It was easier than Alex thought it would be. He and Jack fell back into the 'normal couple' routine very quickly after Alex was released from the hospital.

Jack had insisted he would forget all about the cocaine, insisted that it would be just that easy. Alex had to admit, he did a good job. Jack had never really shown any concerning addiction symptoms in the time he'd been taking drugs so perhaps he wasn't as hooked as he believed he was. He was doing so well, in fact, that Alex began to think his idea of addiction had been a simple placebo effect to taking them in the first place. So he brushed it aside. Jack's behaviour wasn't anything to be concerned about.

Alex was happy not to question it further. He could enjoy himself again. He went on dates with his boyfriend, and went out with his friends. He had dinner with his family at least once a week, and he was content with his college work and his job.

He and Jack would have naked encounters in each other's beds, trying to be quiet if their families were home. They would share kisses over lunch in front of the TV, and hold hands when they walked to college together.

It took two months of lips on lips and hands in hands for Alex to know he was in love with Jack.

/////

The only thing was, everything was far from perfect.

Alex's nightmares returned. Not quite as bad as they had been before, and not every night, but maybe three times a week. Alex would jerk out of bed crying and choking, clutching at his chest as if he couldn't breathe, sobbing some nonsense about water, about waves crashing. He dreamt of drowning.

It started happening about three months after he'd been released from hospital, and it seemed totally random. Alex would have expected any panic or terror after the incident to happen immediately afterwards, but it was as if this had crept up slowly, waiting to pounce when he let his guard down. He didn't understand why. It wasn't fair. Every time his life seemed to be okay again, things would fuck up, and he couldn't stand it. He cried in the shower about it once or twice, trying to breathe deeply through the steam just in case someone came in and heard him. He came to the conclusion that it was guilt. Guilt creeping up on him about Jess, about everything that had happened with Jack, about the fact that Jeremy wasn't in prison like he should be. He felt guilty for Jack, in his place, as if Alex had been the one to commit the crimes.

Not that Jack didn't feel guilty himself. It crept up, just like Alex's nightmares, and as much as he tried to forget, he'd feel pangs and reminders in every day life about what he'd done, how sick it was.

He was naive to think it would be so easy to pretend.

/////

Jack started to feel more and more like he couldn't take it.

Weeks passed, and Jack started to notice things the longer Alex's nightmares went on. The way Alex looked at him sometimes; he'd be staring at Jack from across the room, and when Jack sensed eyes on him, he'd look up, and Alex wouldn't avert his gaze. He'd just keep staring with this faraway expression, as if he were contemplating the meaning of life. His eyes always looked sunken and tired. Jack could only guess he was thinking about it all. About everything Jack had done, and the fact that his unhappiness was all Jack's fault. If only he hadn't been such an idiot, then Alex wouldn't be so quiet and sad, and Jack wouldn't feel like he was being eaten alive by his own guilt-ridden thoughts every night before he fell into a restless sleep.

The guilt was not helped when Alex would wake with horrible nightmares, crying and choking. Almost always, he was staying at Jack's, or Jack would be staying at his, so he could usually console him to at least cry quietly before a parent walked in and discovered him in such a state. Isobel had mentioned Alex's nightmare episode to Joyce just in case it happened when he started sleeping over at Jack's on a regular basis. Alex was at least grateful for Jack being able to help him calm down a little because he didn't want to have to go to a doctor about his nightmares. He didn't know what he'd tell them; it certainly wouldn't be the truth.

Regardless, apart from zoning out now and then and thinking over how his life had come to this, Alex continued helping Jack. If his boyfriend ever grew quiet and got breathless, Alex knew he was having a flashback about falling. Jack would never admit it, but he'd gotten a big scare that day. He did a good job at hiding it and he didn't have bad dreams like Alex did; he even refused any counseling that the hospital offered him, insisting he was fine. He refused to call them when the first flashback hit, several days after the incident. He was just sitting on the floor, watching TV while Alex munched biscuits on the sofa, and next thing he knew, he couldn't breathe, felt like his lungs were shrinking. He'd never had a flashback before. It was terrifying. He could see the water in front of him, felt just like he was teetering on the cliff edge, and then he got the feeling that his stomach was in his throat. Like falling in a dream. Except he didn't jerk awake in bed and realise there was nothing to be frightened of. He hit the water instead, and started gasping, flailing his arms to swim. Alex was by his side in seconds when he noticed Jack wasn't quite right, stroking his hair and whispering soft sounds into his ear. When Jack came to, he collapsed in tears, and Alex rocked him gently for almost an hour on the floor.

It happened now and again, the flashbacks, and they were never usually as bad as the first one because at least Jack recognised what was going on instead of being plunged into fear for no apparent reason. He could usually calm himself by shakily calling Alex, if the elder wasn't already there. It was lucky they spent the majority of their time together.

Alex treated Jack as if he were precious, cuddling him and asking him thirty times a day if he was feeling alright, or if he wanted Alex to get anything for him. Jack found it more than touching, but it got harder to accept, especially after Alex's nightmares started back up.

And as the weeks rolled on, Jack felt more and more like he didn't deserve someone as caring and beautiful as Alex. He didn't deserve anything, not for any of the bad things he'd done, but he especially didn't deserve Alex. It was the first thing he thought about when he got up, and the last thing that tortured his mind in bed before he slept. He'd ruined Alex's whole life and caused him horrific pain. The poor boy barely slept any more and he was clearly suffering just as much guilt as Jack but he tried to honour their agreement they'd made to save their relationship; he never spoke of it. Jack didn't either, but that was different. It was expected for him to feel guilty, and he'd told Alex that, but he was almost certain it would pass. It wasn't fair for Alex to suffer too, for Jack's inexcusable crimes. Alex kept it all bottled up because he cared about Jack so much, and that broke Jack's heart more than anything. Alex was willing to suffer for him. Jack didn't deserve that. Not one bit.

His mind grew more and more warped, and occasionally Jack would worry that Alex was only in love with him because they managed to save each other's lives the day they fell into the water, struggling back to shore together in a joint effort. He managed to shrug that off as irrational, because the pain of thinking that Alex would let himself hurt just to try and make life for Jack alright overrode it.

Oh, how he was so naive to think it would be easy.

Jack was convinced. Convinced he was sick and monstrous, undeserving of any happiness life had to offer him. And Alex was at the top of his list of happiness.

He's trying to rescue the broken boy, but Jack won't let him.