Chapter Text
Lanes Jones didn't doubt their friendship.
She doubted plenty of things, a wary cynicism, picking apart everyone's words to find out what they were saying - not just the words, but what they meant and what the speaker thought they meant (not always the same thing) and what they weren't saying, and why - because it wasn't relevant or they didn't want to tell her? Because they should she would respond in this way, and wanted her to do that instead? Laney listened close and decided how to react - how they wanted her to react, how she wanted to react, and which she should do.
She still did that with her friends, but it wasn't targeted at them. It was habit. It was catching Rupert's strain, his pressures and the burdens he thought he had to carry, when it was getting too much. It was picking apart Jack's confidences and hesitations, building up an idea of what he could do and when to let him call the shots. It was spotting Grey's fears and motivations (and, once his secrets started to come out, piecing together all of his strengths, not just the ones he wore on his sleeve).
Rupert did. He didn't doubt his friends - at least, he didn't doubt the things he knew about them other than a cautious awareness that everyone, sooner or later, had something they were trying to hide. But he did doubt why they wanted to spend time with him. Rupert was very good at seeing the worth in everyone but himself.
Jack and Laney followed him into an adventure (into danger) and he told himself it was just because they were stifled under the Academy rules. It was, in part. But they could have gone in search of a cause for themselves. They were reckless, yes, but they wouldn't have followed Clem. They trusted Rupert - for a given value of trust, to begin with, and he wasn’t fully sure he deserved even that. Like Laney, Rupert was used to shaping himself into what people expected him to be. Unlike Laney, he thought it was a flaw that he had to think about it.
After that first night of blazing camaraderie, Rupert realised he was lonely - or rather, let himself realise how lonely he had grown, his time measured in days of disinterested classmates and only odd hours with friends. He noticed the space around him in the dining commons the next morning with an unease he had thought he’d long since put behind him. Laney dropped her breakfast down by his and started on a rapid fire update on the status of their group project, as though she and Jack had meant every word they had said about being stuck with them. Rupert didn't have to think to make himself smile, to weigh up what was needed and expected and the appropriate response.
Neither did Laney.