I'm in Pain

“You really need to start being careful, Jay,” Alex commented in a worried voice, and let his eyes peek up at Jack, through his overgrown fringe. Currently, he was dabbing a hydrogen-peroxide covered cotton ball to his boyfriend’s wounds for what was probably the fifth time this week. Jack got into these fights numerous times, and each time, he came away with a new scrape or cut or bruise. Alex was patching up a scrape on the side of Jack’s face right now, and putting one of those white gauzes over the area that was injured. “You’re going to end up in the hospital and I’m not gonna be there to be gentle with you.” The smaller boy pushed his sleeves back down and set everything back into his first aid kit, before standing up completely. The thought of Jack being hurt wasn’t appealing and neither was the thought of Jack hurting people. At this point, Alex was used to it, though, really.

“Calm down, princess,” was Jack’s response, voice cocky just like Alex had expected, “’tis a scratch, a scratch.” Alex couldn’t help but to roll his fucking eyes because really— did he seriously just quote Shakespeare while the younger was trying to make a serious point? “No, Jack, I’m being serious. You really need to stop getting into these fights all the time. Honestly, it’s a little…” he had started to roll his hands around in each other. What was the word? Not scary; they were far from scary. Scary at first, but routine as he got to know Barakat. “Worrying,” Alex had finished, the sleeves of his sweater rolled over his hands. Yeah, worried.

All Jack did was stand himself up and wrap his arms around the younger’s petite waist, and burrow his nose against soft unnaturally caramel hair. “I’ll be fine, baby, I promise.” Alex turned himself around in the elder’s arms and stared up at him, somewhat challengingly. He really did want Jack to be fine, and honestly, it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it, because he was small and the guys Jack fought were not. It wasn’t even that Jack was disliked in their community — he literally fought people for the fun of it. For the thrill of it. To keep Alex up at night, worried that Jack was going to break his nose and have the bone pressed hard enough and far enough to kill him because it lodged into his brain. Well, not exactly that part. Jack didn’t do that part on purpose; it sort of just happened because Alex worried quite a lot.

“If you’re sure,” the younger murmured, cheeks rosy.
“I’m sure,” the Lebanon native chuckled, only pulling the English boy closer.

Over the course of the next week, Jack really had been being careful. He understood the extent to which Alex worried, and he could understand why he did, too. Also, Alex was a tiny thing; he didn’t really want his boy to worry about him. Jack could handle himself, but Alex always insisted on patching him up.

Only, the funny thing was that this time, Jack was patching Alex up.

“What even happened?”

Alex was embarrassed — he was so fucking clumsy. What had happened was that he was trying to carry too many things all at once, and he couldn’t see over the items in his hands, and he thought he knew the layout of his house well enough to walk without looking at his feet. Apparently not, though; Alex had tripped over an extremely slight raise in the flooring. Not even a step, just a little raise, a little bump. Too embarrassed to say this out loud, especially in front of Jack, for fear of feeling stupid, he hid behind his hair and murmured. “I fell.”

Jack was pressing an ice pack to the bruise on Alex’s thigh, and pressing a kiss to the slight scratch on the bridge of the coffee eyed boy’s nose. Really, it was funny, kind of. Alex was so fragile, Jack wanted to wrap him in bubble wrap and keep him in a ball. “It’s funny,” Jack said; the context could be taken offensively, so before Alex could even start to get offended, Jack tacked on, “not that you fell, but that I’m patching you up, baby love. You’re always fixing me.”

At this, the younger’s shoulders swung up, before small dimples had poked into his cheeks as his lips curled upwards at the corners. Jack always had some stupid, some dorky thing to say, and he loved him. All he could feel toward the elder was love, and tons and tons of affection. This in mind, Alex had shifted himself into Jack’s lap, and wrapped his arms around thin shoulders, and his legs around a matching thin waist. “Can we go watch a movie and make out? Or something?”

The way Alex’s demeanor had shifted from bashful to affectionate made Jack laugh a little; he was always sort of changing his thinking like that, out of random, and he couldn’t really say that he didn’t appreciate it. “Of course, sweetheart.”

They spent the entire afternoon sharing kisses and playfully arguing over what movie to watch next, before they fell asleep on top of each other, heartbeats in sync, and feeling equally grateful for the other’s presence.

It was Monday when Jack was knocking sheepishly on Alex’s front door again, but this time, he was adorned by a scrape on his forehead and a bloody lip. Alex beckoned him in, would help him nonetheless, but he wanted to know what happened.

“What happened this time?” He asked as he started to dress the wound on Jack’s forehead. Jack went into detail about how he bet Zack (a shared friend of theirs, much larger than either of the two; it didn’t surprise Alex that Jack came away injured, okay) that he could beat him up, and of course, the elder lost. “I thought I told you to try to be more careful,” Alex deadpanned, eyes narrowing.

“I said I would try,” Jack spoke with sarcasm, and cocked a brow, lips curving up into a smirk, “I never said I would succeed.”

“Jack!”