Hell Above

It’s nearly one by the time Jack wakes up the next day. He finds his side of the bed empty beside him and has to blink a few times to clear the drowsiness from his head. Once his eyes have adjusted to the brightness of his bedroom, Jack swings his legs over the side of the mattress, standing to his feet a second later.

He finds Alex curled up on the couch, immediately taking note that the man is wearing different clothes than those Jack had last seen him in and his hair is wet. He’s not sure how the sound of the shower hadn't woken him up.

Jack takes the open space left at the end of the couch. He tries not to take it personally when the blonde pulls his bent legs closer to his body, putting enough room between them to practically fit another person. He rationalizes that it’s okay for Alex to be acting this way.

-

And he has to continuously remind himself of that throughout the rest of the day.

When the blonde shakes his head and mumbles an ‘I don’t want anything’ in reply when Jack asks if he wants something to eat for lunch, the younger has to bite his lip in order to not argue.

He watches Alex slink off to the bedroom and after a few minutes the shower turns on over the low volume of the TV. It’s the third time the elder has bathed since Jack has woken up.

By dinner time, Jack is able to coax Alex to eat. He makes the other a grilled cheese, and it’s not much, but it at least assures him that the blonde is getting something in him other than the glasses of water he’s been nursing all day.

Jack still feels horrible about how he’d acted the previous day and he feels a need to apologize, but every attempt at conversation he’s made has been shut down by Alex’s vague one-word replies, so he doesn't even bother. He just hands the blonde his plate and another dose of pain killers before settling back down at the opposite end of the couch in silence.

-

The bedroom is gloomier than usual, that comforting gray dark that’s usually providing the slightest light is absent. A cold front had moved in earlier, giving way to the soft snowfall out the window that’s muddling most of the city light.

Jack watches it, trying to ignore the feeling in his chest because he’s positive it won’t be departing any time soon. Alex had headed to bed around eleven, and Jack had decided it would probably be best then to find out what he’s intending to face.

He’d spent over two hours reading and then rereading web article after web article of definitions and symptoms and after-effects. At one point, Jack had thought to write some of it down, but had decided against it in case it would upset Alex.

By the time he had turned off his laptop and went to bed Jack felt more in the dark than before. He’s still not sure what he’s supposed to be doing, if anything at all really. He’s unable to tell how bad this situation truly is because of the limited amount of detail Alex had provided, but he’s also trying not to categorize this by levels of extremes either. Rape is rape, period. And he knows this. Yet he also thinks that what exactly happened will determine how it affects Alex. The web articles, if nothing else, had confirmed this.

In the time that Jack had lain there, the snowfall had increased. He’s positive the next few days will be miserable ones, even if the weather outside eases up.

The elder shifts on the mattress beside him. The room is quiet again for a couple of seconds before Alex speaks, sounding unsure as he says “Jack?”, surprising the younger who had thought he was asleep.

“Yeah?”

“Do you still want me here?” The blonde asks, and hearing the question actually pulls at Jack’s chest.

His reply is almost immediate, despite it not actually answering Alex’s question at all. “What do you mean?”

He hears Alex sigh behind him, and it’s then that he rolls over to face the blonde. Despite the bedroom being darker than usual, they can still see each other fairly well. “Because of, uh, – because of what happened. I mean, I understand if you don’t want me now.” Alex explains, voice faltering at times where he stops to breathe and reconsider his wording. After a pause he adds, “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

Jack is silent until he decides how he wants to phrase his response. “’Lex – babe – listen to me.” He begins, reaching between them and taking Alex’s hand in his own, linking their fingers without much thought. When Alex doesn't pull his hand away, the younger continues. “I will always want you. I mean this in the nicest way possible, I don’t care about what happened. I want you here.”

His words hang in the space between them for another few seconds before Alex asks, “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.” Jack concludes, and the pair lapse back into a final silence after that. Eventually Alex falls asleep, lulled there by the feeling of the younger’s thumb smoothing over his knuckles. When Jack is positive that the elder is asleep, he lets himself finally follow suit.