Archive of Our Own

Four days later, Alex's phone rings at one in the morning.

"You fucking broke him," Zack hisses through the line. "Alex, seriously, what the fuck?"

"He broke me, too," Alex says dully. Of course Jack went to Zack. That's always his first stop.

Well. His first stop used to be Alex. Good for Zack, at least, that now he's moved up on Jack's list of priorities.

A beat on the call means Zack is considering his words. "Sorry," he says. "I just don't understand. I know I'm not a part of it, but…I don't get it."

Neither do I, Alex wants to scream. You think I understand any more than you do?  "There's nothing to get. We broke up. Jack and Alex are officially past tense. That's all."

"Yeah," Zack says. "But why."

Alex closes his eyes and hides his face in one hand. "Zack, I don't— I can't now. I'm sorry, but I can't do this with you now. Give me a week."

"Okay," Zack says. "Sorry. You're right." Heavy silence crackles on the line. "But if you're this upset, and Jack is this upset, then…"

"I know," Alex says bitterly, and he does.

"He won't say who ended it," Zack says quietly.

Maybe because Jack doesn't know. Alex doesn't really know either. If someone asked him, he's not sure he would have an answer either. Neither of them did the breaking-up, exactly, and yet the relationship ended. Jack still left Alex. Or maybe Alex let him leave. Perspective is a hell of a trick. 

"Are you waiting for me to say something?" Alex asks tiredly. 

"Yeah," Zack says. His sentence ends there.

Alex sighs and grits his teeth, because he knows what Zack is waiting for him to ask. And he knows he's going to ask.

"Is he okay?"

"Of course he's not okay," Zack replies. "The love of his life just broke up with him."

"I didn't—"

"I know I can't change your mind if you're convinced that this was the right thing to do," Zack says. "Both of you. But Jack has been crying for three days straight, and you sound like you've been fucking steamrolled. So I'm not convinced." He sighs. "I know you didn't ask, too."

"Yeah," Alex says, feeling the curling edges of anger spark and catch in his chest. "I didn't fucking ask. You weren't fucking there, and you don't have to understand. It's between me and Jack. End of story."

The disappointed quiet swelling through the line makes Alex want to disappear forever. "Okay," Zack says, monotone. "Call if you want an update." Because I won't call you goes unspoken. That's what Alex gets, he supposes. Burning bridges never ends well, just leaves him stuck on one end with the wood and metal.

The call ends. Alex curls up on the couch, letting the throw pillow swallow up his face. If he doesn't die here, he'll fall asleep. Alex hasn't been sleeping in his bed. No mystery why not.

The world feels like it's slipping off its axis, so Alex wonders how only he's losing balance. There are no crumpled-up clouds, grim and gray as they hang in darkened skies; there is no icy rain. Apocalypses, Alex is learning, don't have to happen to everyone. This one is only happening to Alex.

And to Jack. Apparently.

The whirlpool that is Alex's house is so close to sucking him in and tearing him apart, limb from limb. Silence is his new worst enemy, but Alex can't bring himself to break it willingly. He deserves this. He wants it. Sooner or later, the swirling vortex will claim him for good.

He finally caves and dials Rian.

***

“I’m not going to change my life and everything about myself just for you, Alex!” Jack stares at Alex, eyes slightly wild, like he can’t quite believe he’s said that, but he keeps going in spite of it. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to live on a farm and be exhausted every day and have to take care of a bunch of animals. I only just learned how to take care of myself.”

“Well, I don’t want to live in the middle of a city, surrounded by traffic and garbage!” Alex retorts, feeling like his tongue is scraping the roof of his mouth with spikes, like there’s blood on his lips, like he can taste the metallic tang of something about to die. “L.A. sucks the life out of me. We don’t agree. I’ve tried it and I hate it. You know that.”

"I'm not leaving L.A."

"I don't want you to leave L.A.! But Jack, I'm not leaving Baltimore either. So I don't know what you want me — or us — to do."

Jack suddenly freezes in place, a drawn, haunted look on him. “What’s happening?” he says, and his voice is so small. “What’s happening to us?”

“Nothing is happening,” Alex says, but it’s a lie. The architecture inside his chest is crumbling, splashing like stones into his gut. Panic crawls over his skin. “We’re just at an impasse. That’s normal.”

“But we’re always at an impasse about this. We keep talking about it, and getting to this point, and never actually figuring it out.” Jack swallows, still unmoving. “Eventually we’re gonna have to face the problem.”

“We are.”

“No, we’re not,” Jack says weakly. “We’re not. Not the real problem.”

Realization sinks its claws in, and Alex feels like he’s falling.

“Don’t say that,” he begs. “Jack, I love you. This isn’t— this—”

“I love you too,” Jack says, wrapping his arms around his middle. “But—”

“But nothing.”

“But what are we supposed to do?” Jack draws in a sharp breath. “We were fine when we were always on tour, but now we’re not. What…what if—”

“Jack, no.”

“What if we can’t last like this?” Jack whispers. “Seriously, Alex, listen to us. We’re not going to tour forever. And — if we want to be together, live together…get married or—” 

A fierce pang of hurt and dismay overtakes Alex. “We do. At least I do. We’ll figure it out when it comes to it.”

“It’s come to it,” Jack says, impossibly forlorn. “Right now. The world pulled us apart, and you won’t live in L.A., and I won’t live here.”

“This is crazy,” Alex says, hysteria mingling indiscernibly with panic. They slosh sickeningly in his stomach. “We can’t— this can’t be the reason we break up.” There’s not supposed to be any reason they break up. They’re not fucking supposed to break up.

“Alex, please, you think I want this?” Jack closes his eyes. That’s not fair, Alex thinks hollowly. If Jack is really doing this, he should at least look Alex in the eye. “I’m just trying to see it like it is.”

“Neither of us want this,” Alex says. He sounds desperate, and he knows it’s pathetic, but he is desperate. “So don’t do it.”

“And what?” Jack’s voice pitches up. “And nothing changes? I stay in L.A., you stay in Maryland, and we’re both miserable and alone? I don’t want that, Alex. And I don’t want you to have to change your whole life for me, just like I don’t want to change mine for you.”

“I don’t want you to change.”

"I know," Jack says. “But I don’t want to measure my relationship in the time between plane tickets forever.” He takes a shaky breath. “If we keep going like this it’s going to make one of us resentful eventually, and God, Alex, I don't want to resent you. I don't want you to resent me."

"Obviously I don't want that," Alex says, stricken. “But I—” He breaks off, at a loss. They’re in a high-speed train, hurtling towards a brick wall; he should have seen this coming earlier. He could have tried to steer them a different way. 

But he knows there is no other way. The two of them are too different. This was always going to end — it was just a question of when. He shouldn’t be surprised that they’re going to crash when he’d boarded a train to a city called Brick Wall. “But I love you,” he says helplessly.

“I love you too,” Jack repeats quietly. A tear slips down his cheek and disappears under his chin. “I just don’t think it’s enough. And I don’t think you do either.”

Somehow, Alex is breathing. It doesn’t feel like it, but he hasn’t passed out, so he must be. What it feels like is that his insides are being put through a paper shredder. Like an icicle is being plunged into his heart. Resignation tightens like a vise around his lungs.

“Are we giving up?” he manages. “‘Cause this feels like giving up.”

“I don’t think it’s giving up,” Jack says, sniffing and brushing away another tear. “I— I think it’s, um, the right thing to do. Sooner rather than later. So we don't become, um, a My Chem situation."

Alex shakes his head a little without meaning to. A burning feeling stings behind his eyes. Jack is right, as he so often is, and Alex hates it more now than ever. This can't go anywhere but south unless they break it off now. If they want to preserve any of it, they have to sacrifice the best of it.

Still, Alex tries, “For the best?” and hopes Jack will disagree.

“For the best,” Jack says, lower lip trembling. He sniffles. “Um. I…I guess I should probably, um, go.”

He’s going to go. He’s going to leave, and it’ll be over. The longest and best relationship of Alex’s life will become a line in his history. It feels like giving up, like giving in, but Alex is helpless.

There’s nothing else they can do. It is for the best, however bad that may be.

“I—” don’t want you to, he swallows with difficulty. “Yeah.”

“I’m—” Jack closes his eyes as another tear treks down his face, and then he opens them. Glassy brown eyes meet, and the depth of Jack’s all but unsteadies Alex. 

He can’t hide the hurt. Or maybe he’s not trying to. Whatever the case, it’s laid bare for Alex. Anguish swims in his gaze, which he pulls away after only a moment. “Go,” Alex says, yielding a little, giving a little. Even at the end of the road, he can’t help but want to ease the burden off Jack. “It’s okay, Jack. You should— you can. Go.”

Jack takes an aborted step away, and then seems to shudder to a stop. “I— I don’t want to.”

Fuck. This is all wrong. Jack can’t leave. They can’t break up. This can’t be the end. They’re Jack and Alex, for fuck’s sake. The two of them are never supposed to end. They’re supposed to die holding hands. Alex doesn’t want to die alone. He doesn’t want to die holding someone’s hand if it’s not Jack’s.

“Jack—”

“I know, I know,” Jack croaks, and he scrubs a hand over his face, shakes his head, and turns away.

Alex stands rooted to the spot, too dumbstruck to speak, as Jack slowly walks out the door and it softly clicks shut behind him.

There’s no explosion. No bang, no crash, no loud noise. Only the quiet click of Alex’s front door serves to mark the end of Jack and Alex. It should feel bigger, but there’s nothing else; after the door shuts, it’s silent.

It will be silent for a long time.

***

He tries to write music, but it’s a lost cause.

There aren’t words for it. Every song Alex has ever written about heartbreak is like a cruel laugh in his face now. He’d had no problem putting those into words, but those had always been underscored by rage, spite, bitterness — all things he can’t feel for Jack, no matter how hard he tries.

The feelings he does have aren’t ones he can express. All he knows is an all-encompassing ache, the fiercest sadness he’s ever felt, the most tangible heartbreak. All he has to work off are lungs that feel like they’re always full of water and an ever-present anvil weighing down on his chest. 

Also, it doesn’t help that he won’t pick up a guitar. 

Rian arrives the following day, seemingly unfazed by Alex’s haggard demeanor. They face each other on the doorstep for only a moment before Rian opens his arms and Alex falls into them, burying his face in Rian’s neck.

“You want me to ask?” Rian says softly, but Alex shakes his head vehemently. “Okay. Fine.” A beat of silence passes between them, then Rian exhales, long and slow. “For whatever it’s worth…I’m sorry.”

It’s worth close to nothing, but not nothing. Alex hugs him tighter and only lets go when Rian gently reminds him that they should go inside.

Somehow, Rian slips into the role of caretaker like a second skin. It’s always been in his nature, Alex figures, and he just hasn’t had to use it in a while. Certainly not to this degree. Rian is helpful and nice and patient with Alex, but Alex can tell he doesn’t understand, either, and despite the promise that he wouldn’t ask, it’s only a matter of time before he caves. Presumably he’s waiting until Alex starts replying with more than one sentence at a time. That will take a miracle, Alex thinks, because he knows if he talks too much he’ll start crying, and God, he cannot cry. If he starts crying, he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop.

Rian makes him go to therapy. Alex had intended to skip it. What he hadn’t counted on was Rian actually knowing the date and time of the appointment. And Alex doesn’t have the energy or resolve to refuse, especially not when he won’t even need to leave his house for it, so he ends up on his therapy call, staring at his knees with his head hung, and when his therapist asks what happened, Alex just shakes his head.

“Please don’t ask me,” he says weakly. “I’ll tell you next week.”

Telling her would be admitting that it’s something from which he needs to heal. And it’s not. The more it hurts, the more Alex digs his heels in, paradoxically protective of the worst feeling he’s ever experienced, or at least the worst in a long time.

(Because if it hurts, that means it’d been real. Alex can present the evidence in court: see, your honor, I did love him. I still do. I don’t know how not to. )

But more than that, Alex knows that the more people he tells about the breakup, the more real it becomes. Once it’s real, it’s unfixable. Alex is holding onto hope, tragically, pathetically, like a sailor on a stormy sea grasping for a plank of his splintered raft, like somehow that will magically transport him to shore, where everything will be okay. 

He’s starting to think he wouldn’t recognize the shore if he saw it. All he knows is ocean and rain. 

“You can’t sleep on your couch forever,” Rian tells him that night, as Alex is curled up with a throw pillow, hoodie strings drawn as tight as they’ll go. All he can see are Rian’s shins and the corner of the coffee table.

“Watch me,” he mumbles.

“You have a guest room,” Rian says. “Just sleep there.”

“No.”

“Yes. I’ll take your bed and you take the guest bed. You can’t sleep on the couch forever.”

“I’m going to,” Alex responds, petulantly, and pulls the edges of his hoodie closed in front of his face. “The couch is fine.”

“No, the couch is going to give you back problems before you’re forty,” Rian says patiently. “Do you want me to sleep with you?”

Alex inhales, exhales, closes his eyes because it’s dark inside his hood anyway. “I don’t know.”

Rian sighs. His next words are closer to Alex’s face; he must have crouched down. “I’m going to be Nice Guy Rian for another day, and then I’m going to become Tough Love Rian, okay?”

Alex whimpers. Normally, Tough Love Rian is what he needs, but he’s so fucking fragile now he can feel all the pieces of himself balancing precariously in the shape of a person. One blow will take him out, and he’ll shatter like sugar glass.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “I’ll probably cry when you do.”

There’s a gentle hand on his head, the feeling dulled through Alex’s hoodie, and Rian presses a kiss to the fabric over Alex’s forehead. “The fact that you haven’t cried yet is worrying me,” he says in a hushed tone.

“I—” The words stick in Alex’s throat. He exhales through his nose. “I really miss him.”

“Yeah,” Rian says softly. “I know.”

“He probably misses me.”

“He does,” Rian says quietly, which is nice of him to say despite most likely having no idea. Unless he and Zack are trading notes. Which, on reflection, they definitely are. Fuck. Rian probably does know. 

“This doesn’t make sense,” Alex whines. “Shouldn’t someone be happy after a breakup?” 

Rian sighs, gently massaging Alex’s shoulder. “Not always.”

Yeah. Not always. Because most breakups don’t happen when both people are still in love. 

It’s too late for questioning it, not that that stops Alex from doing so every passing day. The time for questioning had slipped out the door after Jack, and now Alex has to take the next step. Move past this. Do the next thing. 

It’s just, he doesn’t really know what the next thing is.

He’d never anticipated breaking up with Jack.

Sometimes, Alex lies about things like that. We could never have expected this, he’ll say when they win an award they’ve been working to win for years. We don’t really know what the future looks like for us, he’ll fib, pretending they haven’t already written enough songs to fill two albums. But.

But fuck if this hadn’t fucking blindsided Alex. 

How the fuck is Alex supposed to move past this when this had been the foundation of his life? When the pier he’d been walking had gotten abruptly shorter, and Alex’s next step had plunged him into icy depths? What is he supposed to hold onto while he catches his breath to swim ashore? There’s salt in his eyes and water in his mouth and it’s a wonder he hasn’t sunk like a stone at this point. No, there’s no moving past this. There’s no visible next thing. Just the fact that Alex isn’t actively drowning is miracle enough.

“I know you think I should get over it,” he says hoarsely.

“No,” Rian says. “I don’t think you should. I’m not even expecting you to. I just.” He breathes slowly out and squeezes Alex’s shoulder. “I hate seeing you like this. I don’t want you to hurt. That’s all.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Alex says sadly. “It would feel wrong to feel better, does that make sense?”

For a moment, the crushing silence that had attempted to choke Alex out before Rian had shown up returns. It swells in Alex’s ears. He wants to cry.

“God, this is a mess,” Rian murmurs, leaning his forehead against Alex’s. “I’m not asking you to feel better today, or tomorrow, or this week or next. But can you at least come sleep in a normal bed? With or without me, it’s up to you.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Rian says resignedly, “I can’t make this better, I can’t…heal your broken heart, but I can take care of you in other ways. Like making sure you’re sleeping well. And eating enough. Because I love you.”

And if nothing else, that’s evident. It’s in the way Rian has been cooking and cleaning for Alex, caring for the farm, keeping busy; but it’s also in immeasurable things, moments like now. Alex sulking on the couch, and Rian holding on to him, knowing he can’t fix it but staying anyway. The waves are strong, and Alex is weak, but he grabs ahold of Rian, anchored firmly in place, and it’s enough for now. It has to be enough for now. 

Maybe they won’t get ashore, but Alex won’t drown, either. Not on Rian’s watch.

***

Rian gets up, but Alex doesn’t. The compromise had ended with both of them sleeping in the guest room bed, only now it’s morning, or at least it’s probably morning because Rian is no longer in bed. Alex is not going to check the time. He will live in ignorance as long as he can so that when Rian comes in to wake him, Alex will have deniability. 

Nice Guy Rian is still here for another day, but Alex is practicing.

He hates to admit it, but Rian had been right; sleeping in a real bed had been leagues better than sleeping on the couch. It’s not Alex’s bed — he’s not there yet, and he probably won’t be for a while — but it’s a mattress and a comforter, and that’s already more than Alex’s sofa has.

Of course, this still leaves one glaring problem.

Alex is alone.

Waking up alone is never fun, but it’s not like Alex hasn’t done it. Months of quarantine have gotten him accustomed to the feeling, so at first when he wakes up it doesn’t even feel wrong. Jack’s not here, but ever since the world flipped on its head, Jack’s rarely been here. 

And then reality sinks in.

Jack’s not here because Jack isn’t Alex’s boyfriend anymore. Jack’s not here because they broke up. Alex is waking up alone, but it’s not because Jack wanted to be here but couldn’t.

Jack had been here. He’d left.

The heavy weight pins Alex down; he pulls the covers up to his chin, wishing he were tired enough to fall back asleep so he wouldn’t have to think about this. About how Jack used to refuse to fall asleep without his arm tight around Alex’s middle, nose pressed into Alex’s neck. How his lips would linger over the tattoo behind Alex’s ear, mouthing what Alex always knew to be I love you. How he would cuddle in as close as he could get, claiming that “it’s about preserving body heat, Alexander,” clinging to Alex like a last hope.

It’s so fucking cold now. 

Alex runs too warm to be cold here, under the blankets in his perfectly temperate house, and yet he’s freezing. Lethal loneliness crystallizes like ice inside him. It smarts somewhere Alex can’t put pressure on, so he’s left with no choice but to endure it, clenching his jaw hard enough to break his teeth. Remembering.

***

The mattress dips. On the edges of Alex’s consciousness, he knows this is Jack. A late-night call with May had kept him longer than Alex cared to be awake, so Alex had turned in early. They must finally be done talking. If Alex opened his eyes, he’d know exactly how long it’s been, but he doesn’t care.

“Sorry,” Jack whispers. He always whispers to Alex when he gets in bed last, usually apologizing. “That was longer than I expected.”

Alex murmurs, “I could have been asleep, you know.”

“If you’d been asleep you wouldn’t have answered me,” Jack answers, rustling around. “Sometimes I say something and you don’t answer. When you’re asleep you don’t hear me.”

“Really?”

“Duh,” Jack says. “You think I can just tell when you’re asleep?” A pause. “Well, I usually can. But it doesn’t matter. I’m quiet.”

Alex hums as he feels Jack settle in, flush against his back, one arm wrapping familiarly around his waist. The same way his couch creases to accommodate him, Alex increasingly believes his body has adjusted to fit with Jack’s. 

“How’s May?”

“Tell you tomorrow,” Jack says gently. “Go to sleep.”

“Mm, okay.” Jack is right; Alex is tired. Now that Jack is here, there really isn’t any reason to stay up. Sleep still pulls at Alex, fogging up his mind, so he succumbs to it with ease.

Their legs tangle under the duvet, calves sandwiched together. Jack’s cold feet brush against Alex’s ankles, but it’s warm enough beneath the sheets that Alex just shifts closer to Jack, pulls the blanket further up, and quietly mumbles, “Love you.”

Jack presses a kiss to the back of Alex’s neck. “I love you more.”

It’s never been true, and it’ll never be true, but the fact that Jack thinks it means they probably love each other the same amount. And that’s good enough for Alex. 

***

Jack is imprinted on Alex’s sheets, but more than that, he’s a staple of every bed Alex has slept in for the last who knows how many years. The mattresses in hotels had been in a permanent state of change, each as unrecognizable as the last. Tour had taught Alex to cling to Jack for the much-needed familiarity that no hotel room could provide. For years, the only constant in a rotating cast of beds and bedsheets had been Jack, like that stuffed animal you never stop needing. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t Alex’s bed; it doesn’t matter that he and Jack never actually slept here. This might as well be another hotel room bed, and Alex aches something fierce for the only thing that had ever made those beds bearable.

The shape of Alex’s body has been remolded to fit Jack in his curves and edges, and lying here alone he feels like a fragment. Unfinished. A puzzle missing half the pieces.

Alex sighs. It’s a real low point when staying in bed actually feels worse than getting out of it. He swings his leaden limbs over the edge of the bed and forces himself to his feet, already dreading the weight of the day as it stretches threateningly before him.

***

In a moment of weakness, Alex calls his mom. And then, twenty minutes into dancing around every question she asks him and avoiding the subject of how he’s doing, she asks a question he can’t avoid.

Really, it’s Alex’s fault for not seeing it coming. That seems to be a theme with him, lately.

“And how are things with Jack?”

Alex stutters over nothing, chokes on air. “Things with Jack?” he echoes, buying time. What the fuck is he supposed to say? What can he say? What is there to say, other than the truth — the icy, bitter truth, the cold, hard truth, no matter how much it breaks him to say it? 

“Yes, my other son, Jack,” says Alex’s mom, unaware of the cleaver she’s taking to Alex’s heart. “Are you guys doing okay? I know the distance has been hard on some couples. Anne was telling me her daughter’s girlfriend just broke up with her. I told her I was lucky I had nothing to worry about.”

Fuck.

“You, um, may have—” Alex swallows thickly.  “You might’ve jumped the gun, mom.”

 There’s a resounding silence on the line. “Sorry?”

“We, um.” Fuck. Fuck. This is suddenly impossible to say. It occurs to Alex that he hasn’t had to break the news aloud to anyone. He’s not sure he knows how to. Not without a complete meltdown, and he’s been so good avoiding the complete meltdown. But he’ll have to do it eventually. His parents need to know. 

And oh, God, what if his mom has been texting Jack? There’s no reason why she wouldn’t be, and every reason why that would add insult to injury for Jack. Shit. Alex has to take care of this. He’s already done enough to Jack as is.

No big deal, Alex tells himself with zero conviction. Only telling his mom — who’d been there since the day he’d dragged this kid, too lanky to be the anarchist ruffian he dreamed of being, through their front door, announcing Jack, this is my mom. Mom, this is Jack. We’re gonna be in my room if you need us — that arguably the most important relationship of his life is over. That the man they all thought he’d marry is now highest on Alex’s list of heartbreaks. No big deal. Just one sentence.

(Just one sentence and it’s forever stamped into Alex’s life. Just one sentence and everything changes and it never changes back.)

Alex takes a breath that he barely feels and quietly says, “Actually, we aren’t— we aren’t together. Anymore.”

And then it’s out there. Earth-shatteringly real. Inescapable.

The emptiness in Alex’s chest feels heavier than it ever has, and the water in his lungs stings behind his eyes.

“No,” says Alex’s mom, softly. “Really? But—”

“I know,” Alex manages. “It, uh, just wasn’t working. Turns out being forced apart made us realize we didn’t, um, know how to be apart.”

“Oh, Alex, love,” Alex’s mum says, and Alex can’t. Not now. 

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he says, swallowing twice when the first one doesn’t quite suppress the sob building in his throat. “Rian’s actually here now, so I’m okay.”

“Come on now,” his mom says. “I’m not going to push you, but I don’t expect you to be okay. It’s natural to hurt when a relationship ends.”

“Yeah, no, I am,” Alex says weakly. “Don’t get me wrong, mom. This hurts like a bitch. But I just.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and when he opens them his eyelashes are damp. “I’ll be okay, is what I meant.” Another swallow. “I’m gonna go,” he adds in a wobbly voice. “Can I call you later this week?”

“Yes, of course. Of course.”

“And can you just…can you not ask me about Jack, please? Or text him, or anything?”

“Of course,” Alex’s mom says again. She sounds so subdued, almost lost. Alex knows it’s not the same, but he also knows Jack is like a second son to his parents. This isn’t his loss alone. 

It’s not a loss, says Alex’s inner voice. He’s still in your life. You’re just not in a relationship anymore. 

But that’s bullshit. Because Alex has all this love, tangled up with the memories he has of Jack, every moment they’ve spent together, and he can’t untangle them. There’s never been a moment in his life when he didn’t love Jack with everything he had. He doesn’t know how to separate them. He doesn’t know how to have Jack in his life without loving him like catching fire.

“I love you,” his mom says after Alex is too quiet. “Ring you later, yeah? Or you’ll call me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I will. Love you.”

“Love you.”

The fuzzy background noise of the call abruptly cuts out. Alex pulls the phone away from his ear to see the call ended message flash across the screen. He throws his phone onto the counter and his back slams against the fridge as he slides to the floor with his face in his hands.

The first strangled sob claws out of his throat, then the next, then too many to keep track of, and on some level Alex thinks it’s about fucking time. He’s been putting it off, but he couldn’t put it off forever, and now it’s real. His mom knows. His mom will tell his dad, and they’ll tell Jack’s parents if Jack hasn’t already, and there will be no going back. No returning to the vacuum in which they lived, or at least in which Alex lived, pretending like they might patch this up. Like maybe a week of being broken up would miraculously make them realize how much they can’t be broken up.

But Jack hasn’t called. Jack has become a ghost to Alex. 

They’re not going to fix this. They’re going to live with it. There’s no other option. 

The whirlpool has won.

A shuddering gasp pulls all the oxygen out of Alex’s lungs and he chokes on his next breath. It’s more like sharp bursts of air, a machine gun exhale, as palms wet with tears slide over his face into his hair, hiding his face in his knees, crying too hard to breathe. Crying too hard to see or hear anything outside of his own staccato breaths, but not so hard that he forgets. Not so hard that he can escape the echo of I just don’t think it’s enough, or of the fear in Jack’s voice — what’s happening to us? — like nails on a chalkboard for how instantly it’d made Alex’s blood run cold, like watching a horror movie, unable to do anything but yell at an unresponsive TV, screaming don’t go in there, you’ll never survive it, once you open that door you can never close it. 

The salt in these tears seeps into the open wound, a freezing burn; it doesn’t clean Alex’s memory, but preserves it, and Alex doesn’t even know if that’s what he wants anymore. It shouldn’t hurt more to love Jack less if they’re not going to be together, so why is Alex so certain it would? Why is he clinging to a love that isn’t his to keep anymore? But how can he not?

And then Rian’s footsteps pound over the floor, giving Alex only a half-second’s notice to wipe his face before he’s entering the kitchen, humming.

Hiding this is a futile effort. Not that Alex should. There’s a reason Rian is at Alex’s house. 

“Oh my— Alex,” says Rian, alarmed. Alex doesn’t look up, forehead on his knees, staring down at the floor. He sniffles loudly, annoyingly. “Oh,” Rian says again, more of a whisper. “Oh, no. Al.”

Alex shakes his head. Words are not going to happen. He’s fucking awful at talking when he cries and if he tries it’ll only prolong this episode. 

“Okay, alright,” Rian says, crouching down. “Do you want me to leave you to cry in peace?”

Alex shakes his head.

“Good,” Rian murmurs. “‘Cause I wouldn’t have anyway.”

Alex hums what would be a laugh if he weren’t preoccupied by the vicious crack running lengthwise across his heart. His shoulders jerk, and with a monumental effort he picks up his head, swiping at his cheeks like that will do anything and sniffling again.

“Hey,” Rian says, kneeling in front of him. “What’s— did something happen? I mean aside from the obvious?”

A fresh wave of hurt crashes over Alex, new tears springing forth. There’s a sharp ache in his jaw and temple and his head is starting to hurt, plus he really needs a tissue or nine, and if he could say any of that to Rian that would be great, but all he can do is open and close his mouth uselessly. Nothing comes out except a staggered exhale, a trembling breath in as he tries to regain some semblance of control. It doesn’t really work; he still can’t talk. Or won’t talk.

“Be right back,” Rian says, patting Alex’s ankle. He stands and goes elsewhere, and Alex takes the brief respite to try and pull himself together.

I just don’t think it’s enough.

But why not?  Alex thinks sorrowfully, wishing he’d had the presence of mind to say it then, instead of thinking it now. It’s useless to him now, but he can’t stop himself replaying the moment over and over, wondering what he should have said instead. Somehow, impossibly, this breakup had been mutual. But Alex had let Jack go because he loved him, not because he ever stopped. And maybe Jack had left for the same reason. 

How could Jack love him enough to leave him, but not enough to stay? 

(How could Alex ever let him?)

Their moment is gone, but Alex wants it back. With a Herculean effort, he reaches blindly for his phone on the counter and finally locates it.

The call is ringing when Rian returns.

“Sorry, I had to—” There’s a box of Kleenex in his hand. When he sees Alex’s holding the phone to his ear he drops to a kneel and wrestles it out of Alex’s hand. “Jesus, Alex, no. You—”

“Um…Alex?”

“Not available,” Rian says curtly into the phone. “Sorry, Jack. I love you, but this is for your own good. For both of you.”

“...Rian?” Holy shit, Jack sounds shattered. Zack had been right. Jack’s broken. Because of this. “Did…is Alex…” 

“Please let me talk to him,” Alex begs. Rian shakes his head and hits the red button, and the crack in Alex’s heart splits it cleanly in two.

“I’m sorry,” Rian says.  “I didn’t like doing it.”

“Fuck you,” Alex snaps. Vitriol flares in his chest. “Fuck you, I’m a fucking adult and that’s— you don’t get to decide things like this, fuck you.”

“You are not in a fucking state to be calling him,” Rian says sharply. “And you know that.”

“Fuck you,” Alex spits, dropping his face into his hands. “I just want— I—” He tries to catch his breath but another surge of tears takes him by surprise, and a gut-wrenching sob spills from his lips. Whatever he’d planned to say gets swept up in the tidal wave, and when Rian sits beside him with a hand around the nape of Alex’s neck, Alex sags against him, his shoulders shaking.

“I know this isn’t a normal situation,” Rian says quietly. “I know. And I know you’re an adult, and so is he, and you’re not going to let this get in the way of the band because you’re both mature, and you love your job, and you love each other” — this draws another wounded noise from Alex — “but the situation we’re in right now has given you something you don’t usually get, which is time.” Alex sniffles, so Rian offers him a Kleenex, which Alex gratefully accepts. When he’s done blowing his nose, Rian continues in a low voice. “There’s no tour. There are no shows. Nobody is whisking you away to interviews, Alex. There’s nothing going on. And you just got your heart broken. Not only should you grieve, you can. You’re supposed to. That’s what a normal person would do.”

Alex tenses his jaw until he feels relatively confident in his voice. “But,” he croaks. “If I grieve it. Then.” His lower lip trembles. “That means there’s something to grieve.”

Rian gently squeezes the back of Alex’s neck, and Alex wipes away a tear trekking down his face. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “But that’s the thing, Alex.”

“It’s not.”

“You can’t be in denial forever,” Rian says. “I understand how you feel, man. But at a certain point you have to accept what’s real.”

“You don’t—” Alex swallows harshly. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re right,” Rian says, which is not what Alex had expected him to say. “I wasn’t there, and I said I wouldn’t ask, so you’re right, I don’t understand. But I’m not gonna ask you to explain when you’re sitting on the kitchen floor crying your eyes out.”

If it weren’t built into Rian’s code to be a good friend, Alex thinks it would be hard to tell, sometimes.

“Need another tissue,” he slurs. Rian obligingly passes him one, then moves the box between their legs. The absence of noise ricochets around the kitchen. Alex takes a deep, cleansing breath. “We said it was for the best. Because— we couldn’t stop arguing about— God, this sounds so fucking stupid now.”

Rian hums, prompting him to continue.

“I don’t want to live in L.A.,” Alex whispers. “But he doesn’t want to live here. We were never going to agree. Jack’s a city boy, and I like this rural farm life. And yeah, on tour it’d been easy to pretend like settling down was a distant problem, and if we’d kept touring forever we probably would’ve gotten married on tour and we would’ve had to get divorced once we realized. I love him, you know?” His voice catches. “He loves me. Or at least he loved me last week. I don’t think you can stop loving someone so soon. And I know Jack. Zack called me a few days ago and said Jack hadn’t stopped crying, and you heard him on the phone just now.” 

Alex sniffles. His head kind of hurts, but talking about it isn’t as painful as he’d expected. Maybe because he’s at rock bottom and he can only go up from here. Maybe because now that it’s real — and his mom knows, so it is real — he can bear it a little better. Sure, it feels like wearing a chain-link choker, but at least he can breathe through it again.

“I don’t love him any less,” Alex says mournfully. “I want to believe he doesn’t love me less either. But it wasn't enough. For some reason, that wasn't enough."

“You broke up for a reason,” Rian says, scratching gently against Alex’s scalp. “Sometimes people break up even when they’re as in love as you were.”

“That’s so fucked up,” Alex says vehemently. “How are we allowed to break up when we love each other this much? That’s the number one rule for relationships. That’s the only rule. We were fucking perfect. And I love him more than anything in the world and I’ve never had to learn not to. I don’t know how not to. I never thought I would need to. It’s Jack, Rian.” He turns beseechingly to Rian, whose face only contains traces of Alex’s disconsolate look. An empathetic echo. “He’s Jack. My Jack. I don’t— I don’t know him any other way. I don’t want to.”

Rian nods. “I know. It’s not going to be easy.”

“Stop talking about it like it’s something I can’t avoid!” Alex groans and closes his eyes. His skin feels tight from the aftereffects of dried tears. “I’m still in denial, okay, and I know that, but please just let me believe that this isn’t the end of us. I don’t think— I don’t think I can handle it right now. I think it will fucking kill me, Ri.”

Rian sighs, and for a moment Alex really thinks he’s at the end of his rope. But then he says, “Yeah. To be honest, I’m kind of in denial too, and it’s not even my relationship. I’m not really one to tell you to do anything.”

Alex could cry, again. 

“It kinda is,” he mumbles. All of a sudden he’s too exhausted for words, and his body feels so heavy. “Your relationship. I mean, it’s not. Wasn’t. But in a way, it was. Is. Was.”

“I’m not gonna pretend like I didn’t think the two of you would have happily ever after,” Rian says. “And if you want to keep believing that for a little while longer, I can’t stop you. I’ll believe it with you. But I need you to promise me you won’t call him.”

Alex feels that like a dagger to the heart. “But he’s my best friend,” he whispers wretchedly. Rian is probably his real best friend, but only because Jack had always been the Best-Friend-Boyfriend. They’d never had to compete in the same category before. They still aren’t. Rian must know that, because he doesn’t seem hurt.

“I know,” he says. “But right now he’s your ex-boyfriend first. And I would be the worst friend in the world if I let you call your ex.”

Alex moans, feeling the crushing weight of helplessness spill over him once again. “I fucking hate everything about this.”

“Yeah.”

“Why isn’t it enough?” Alex whimpers, aware of how broken his voice sounds. “Why isn’t it enough just to be in love?”

Rian wraps an arm around Alex’s shoulder. He’s safe, and solid, and unflinching, and Alex allows himself to be embraced, because so far it’s the only thing that’s made him feel like for a moment he’s not wholly submerged underwater, waterlogged lungs and all. “You tell me,” Rian says gently, but neither of them has an answer, probably because there isn’t one.

***

REASONS WHY WE SHOULD BE TOGETHER  || REASONS WHY WE SHOULDN’T

There’s only one point in the right-hand column of Alex’s table.

• we can’t agree on where to live

It seems like the kind of problem that comes from too much love — from anticipating a future and wanting to plan it. For the two of them, that had been monumental. Being a constantly-touring band had kind of taken away their motivation to plan for any futures that weren’t on the tour bus. Sure, they would plan for music- or work-related things, but never life. 

Jack had been the first person to make Alex consider it. Not just consider it; want it, want a shared life in a house without wheels, a corner of the world that would be theirs alone. In Alex’s head, that had always been the farm. Jack loved visiting him here anyway. He was friends with all the animals, particularly Maverick, who’d always whinny happily at the sight of Jack. And when Alex would wake up and find coffee already brewing in the kitchen, Jack at the island in glasses and one of Alex’s rumpled hoodies, reading a book recommended to him by Rian, it had felt like glimpses of the future. This would be them. It almost already was.

But those visits had been temporary, just like Alex’s trips to L.A. to see Jack were temporary, which was why Alex had never hated those. He doesn’t like L.A. — it’s a fine city for working and networking, a good place to be to make music, but it’s awful for living. And you can’t see the stars. Out here, on Alex’s farm, the night sky looks like the glittery class project of a kindergartener. That had been a selling point way back when he’d bought the place. 

It hadn’t mattered, staying in L.A., when the objective of the visit had been Jack. There are worse things than a vacation in Los Angeles. But truthfully, even then Alex had always felt a twinge of panic seeing Jack in his element. Back then he’d shoved it down, insistent that this was not something to worry about, not when he and Jack loved each other this much, and anyway it wasn’t like they would be done touring anytime soon, so where either of them lived hardly mattered. They lived on the road for most months out of every year. It wouldn’t be a problem.

And then the world ended. And suddenly it was a problem.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Alex looks up from the notebook page. “Don’t ask.”

“Too late,” Rian says. “I’m asking.”

Alex sighs. “I’m making a list.”

“Yeah? Of what?”

Another sigh. “Of…reasons why we should be together and reasons why we shouldn’t,” Alex mumbles.

“Makes sense,” Rian says. “Do you have ‘we aren’t anymore’ on the list of reasons why you shouldn’t?”

Alex jerks. “That’s not a reason. That’s a result.”

“It’s a reason to me,” Rian says. “If you were together and now you aren’t that means something happened to break you up. Which means there’s a built-in reason why you shouldn’t be together. Because you already were, and something didn’t work.”

“You’re not being helpful,” Alex grumbles.

“That’s because you’re only looking for reasons why you should,” Rian says, crossing his arms over his chest. “This is a bad use of your time.”

“I know,” Alex says. “I don’t care.”

“Enough with the list, Alex. It’s not going to change anything.”

“I don’t like Tough Love Rian,” Alex complains. “I didn’t invite him here.”

Rian huffs. “Alex. Stop dwelling. You’re gonna make yourself crazy.”

“You can’t make all of my decisions for me. I’m hurt, I’m not a fucking child.” Alex sets his jaw. “I haven’t called him. Even though I’ve wanted to. I want to right now, but I haven’t because I promised. So fucking lay off a little.” 

Rian watches him for another unflinching moment, and then he sighs.

“Okay,” he yields. “Fine. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s— you’re not wrong,” Alex says. “I know I’ve been kind of acting like a little kid.”

“But I’m not your mom,” Rian says. “Or your therapist. Or your conscience.”

“Well—”

“Okay, sometimes your conscience,” Rian concedes, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not trying to control you. I just want what’s best for you, and I know that when you’re in the middle of a breakup like this it can be hard to tell what’s best, but I’ve also been a little, uh, domineering. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I appreciate it,” Alex says wearily. “I think you’re probably right that I shouldn’t. Call him. And you’re right about— well, mostly everything else.” Rian inclines his head, and Alex sighs. “Thank you for dropping everything and coming here just to listen to me whine for a week straight. I don’t know if I ever said that.”

“Of course,” Rian says. “You’d do it for me. Actually, you did do it for me.”

All the stuff with Cass feels like forever ago. Rian’s not wrong; that had gone roughly like this, just kicked into double speed because back then they’d had tours and shows and songs and promo. The world moves so incredibly slow these days, Alex is noticing. Every day feels like a week, every month like a year. Maybe that’s why this whole thing feels so fucked up. Time-wise, it feels like a month since the breakup, but the way Alex’s heart still hurts it might as well have been yesterday.

“I just don’t…get it,” Alex says, eyes returning to the list on his lap. I love him, the left column reads, printed at the top in big letters and traced over twice, like writing it once hadn’t quite gotten the message to sink in. Like Alex needs the reminder. It’s all he thinks about. At some point, he’s going to have to let go of that, but he’s not sure he’s capable. “I’m trying to make it make sense and I can’t. It doesn’t.”

Rian hesitates. “Do you…do you want it to make sense?”

“I’m in love with him,” Alex says, though that doesn’t answer the question. It’s never hurt quite as much to say as now, when it doesn’t matter anymore; therein lies the problem. Alex is in love, and it doesn’t matter. “We were in love. Why wouldn’t we try to figure this out? Was something more wrong than I thought? Are we just fucking idiots? I mean, really, Rian, how fucking much does this matter? Where I live? ”

“No, don’t do that,” Rian says, shaking his head. “Don’t let your feelings right now make you forget the reason you broke up. This is your home, Alex. Your farm, your land, your place. You like it here, you’ve said so a thousand times. It’s quiet. You can see the stars. You get to take care of your animals. That’s important to you.”

Alex is stuck on this is your home. It boomerangs around his head, seeking truth to latch onto. Something in Alex to agree that this is his home.

But it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it, lately. He can’t even sleep in his own bed, for fuck’s sake. Only Rian has kept the place from feeling thoroughly hollowed out, empty of every soul who’d ever resided here, Alex’s included.

“Yeah,” Alex says, gritting his teeth. He knows Rian is right, even if he can’t feel it at this moment. Rian has to be right, because if he’s wrong then— then Alex has made the worst mistake of his life and he doesn’t even have an excuse. The animals. The space. The stars. Yeah. Alex likes it here. Nothing feels more like home than this farm except, sometimes, the tour bus.

It’s been so long since Alex has been on a tour bus. The thought makes frustration flare in his abdomen.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I know you’re right. God, I hate this fucking pandemic.” Alex groans and drops his face into his hands. “If we were just still touring then this would never have happened.”

“And you would never have known,” Rian says. “But it would have come up sooner or later. Wouldn’t you rather know now?”

There’s logic to what Rian is saying, but Alex doesn’t want to hear it. He’s sick of logic. “I don’t want to know at all. I don’t want there to be something to know. It’s— I just—” Throwing the pen onto the table, Alex whines, “I just wish we’d had more time, you know? I wish Alex from a month ago could have at least had advance notice that we were gonna break up. So I could have been ready. Visited more. Told him I loved him more. Maybe— maybe it would be different if he knew.”

“But you know that wasn’t the problem.” Rian sits beside Alex, a hand between his shoulder blades. “This was the problem.” He taps at the right column.

“This is the dumbest fucking problem ever,” Alex says, glaring at the single bullet point in the column.

“It matters to you,” Rian says quietly. “And it matters to him. Look, it’s not about where you live. I mean, it is, but it’s also about compromise, you know? In relationships, sometimes you compromise, sometimes you don’t. That’s why dealbreakers exist. You just didn’t realize you had one until now. You’re allowed to prioritize things other than the relationship. With the right person, you won’t have to choose.”

“Stop it,” Alex says, screwing his eyes shut. “Stop, please stop. I don’t— stop being logical. I don’t want to hear it. You can’t tell me Jack was the wrong person for me. No. He wasn’t. If— if anything, I was the wrong person for him, okay? He was reasonable, and I was stubborn. I almost didn’t let him go. And if he’d stayed, this would have come up over and over, like he said it would, and it would have fucking wrecked us, so yeah, he left, or I let him leave, but not because he wasn’t the right person. He was. He is. We had to choose between being in a relationship or preserving our friendship, and this was the right choice.” Sharp inhale, shaky exhale. Alex digs his teeth into his lower lip, awash with despair. “Because if Jack was the wrong person for me, then— then it doesn’t even matter. Nobody’s going to be better. I’m never going to love anyone like I love him. I know that.”

“Okay,” Rian says. “Okay. Sorry.”

“No, it’s— it’s fine.” Alex grunts. “I’m not handling this well, am I?”

“You want me to answer that?”

Alex chews his lip. “Actually, yeah.”

Rian takes a moment, pressing his lips together. Alex watches him gather his thoughts. “You’re handling it the way I would expect you to. Or anyone in your position to. To me, you’re handling it just fine. There’s no good way to handle a breakup. That’s what I think.”

“Really?” Alex says dully. “Even though I’m so deep in denial I’m practically at the Earth’s core?”

“Yeah. Because at least you’re aware. That’s the first step, man.” Rian gently claps Alex on the back and gets to his feet again. “I’m gonna go start some dinner.”

“Thanks,” Alex says wearily. “I can…if you need help—”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Rian. “I’m on it. You can help tomorrow.”

The lenience is going to wear thin soon. Rian’s patience will run out. It’s lasted surprisingly long, but unless Alex starts giving a little, it’s bound to expire any day now.

Rian leaves the room. Alex’s gaze flickers to his phone, dark screen face-up. It would be so easy. Every inch of him is urging him to grab his phone and dial. They could figure this out. There must be something they can do. Some agreement they can come to.

(But if that agreement existed, they’d have come to it already, in any of the many times they’d cautiously touched on the topic. Sometimes you compromise, sometimes you don’t, Rian had said. Neither of them could compromise on this, and that means it doesn’t matter how much back-and-forth they do; they’re never going to solve this. This isn’t a problem they fix, or work around. This is a problem they surrender to.)

Resignedly, Alex takes the pen to the page again and writes one more thing into the right-hand column.

• we aren’t anymore.

***

Rian leaves a couple days later. An emergency arises that requires Ricky, who's been house-sitting for Rian, and Ricky gone leaves nobody taking care of Rian's place. Rian tries to insist it doesn't matter, but Alex knows that's for his benefit, and he counter-insists that Rian go.

"I'll be fine," he says. "I promise to eat and everything."

Rian looks skeptical — Alex doesn't blame him — but he yields, and soon thereafter he's standing outside his car, Alex wrapped up in a hug.

"Please take care of yourself," Rian murmurs. "Call me. Every day."

"Ri."

"I know I sound like a helicopter mom, but seriously. You have to know I'm worried."

"I'm—" fine, he almost lies, but then remembers that he can't lie to Rian about this, especially not now. "Okay. I'll call."

"And you won't call Jack?"

Alex breathes out. "How long will it be before I can? We work together, you know."

"Until absolutely necessary," Rian says, then sighs. "Look, I don't know. I just don't want this to hurt more than it does for you, and you tend to be masochistic for no reason. I'm sorry. This is weird for me. I don't know what to say."

"I'll try," Alex says, swallowing and pulling out of the hug. "Don't know how successful I'll be, but I'll try." Rian is right. Alex does have a masochistic streak. But worse than that, he hasn't gone this long without talking to Jack in years, probably, and Alex misses him. Plain and simple. Combined, Alex doubts he'll even hold out another three days.

(Jack's voice on the phone is still stuck in Alex's brain and he can't stop thinking about how it's his fault, how he could fix it, how Alex had sounded to Jack, if Jack knows that Alex is as shattered as Jack is. He must. He has to. Alex is the one who called.)

"The point is, be nice to yourself," Rian says gently. He kisses Alex's cheek. "Love you. I'll call when I get back."

"Drive safe," Alex says. "I love you too. Thank you for— everything."

"Always," Rian says, something soft in his eyes. And then he slides into the car, door slamming shut with finality, and Alex watches him drive off before slowly re-entering his house.

And Alex is alone again.

It’s not as bad as it was. As it could be. Alex is lonely, but not quite as much as he’d been, and at least the whirlpool is at bay for the time being. He sleeps alone in the guest room and somehow gets up the following day. He calls his mom back and they carefully sidestep the topic of Jack; he actually cooks, for the first time since Rian’s arrival, and he takes a long shower and watches the news even though it sucks and makes him depressed because anything he could stream would just remind him of Jack and he’s trying, he’s trying. He doesn’t want to make this worse for himself. Rian’s concerns are grounded in reality, but for once Alex would like to prove him wrong.

And he's so, so good. 

But it’s not him who caves.

***

The buzzing is loud in the quiet of Alex’s bathroom. His screen lights up on the vanity and Alex’s toothbrush stills in his mouth.

Jack Barakat.

Fuck.

Alex spits out his toothpaste and rinses his toothbrush at lightning speed, fumbling with his phone in his free hand. This is a bad idea. Maybe. But they’re going to have to talk eventually. And Jack is calling.

Jack is calling.

“Sorry, Rian,” Alex mutters, and then he answers the call. “Jack?”

“Alex.” Fuck. It’s actually Jack. He sounds better. So there’s that, at least. “Um— hi.”

“Hi,” Alex says, tensing his jaw. “Is…is everything okay?”

A strangled laugh on the other end. “I can only call if something’s wrong now?”

“No, that’s— it was a dumb question.” Alex squeezes his eyes shut. “Sorry. I don’t, um…I don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “But we can’t not talk. I don’t want that.” 

“You didn’t—” Alex shakes his head. “Never mind. Are you still at Zack’s?”

“Yeah, but I’m leaving soon. Um, I can’t stay here forever.”

Alex tries, honestly, not to say anything, but his habit of complete transparency with Jack hasn’t waned and without meaning to he blurts out, “This fucking sucks, Jack. I fucking hate this. Is this how it’s gonna be with us from now? Awkward? We’re supposed to unlearn our entire relationship?”

Jack’s voice sounds underwater through the call. “I don’t like it either,” he says quietly, hesitantly. “Actually, yeah, I fucking hate it too. But—” He cuts himself off, and for a second there’s silence. Alex doesn’t know what to do with silence. If Jack won’t break it, then Alex will. 

“I’ve never—” He shouldn’t say this. This is exactly the kind of thing he shouldn’t say, the reason Rian wouldn’t let him call. They’re not together anymore. It doesn’t matter how Alex feels, and he certainly shouldn’t say it to Jack, because maybe Jack has started moving on (but oh God the idea of Jack moving on stabs Alex straight in the gut), and Alex knows, objectively, that Jack isn’t his anymore, that there’s no room for guilt in a breakup that already hurts this much, but Alex also lacks self-control, in general and especially when it comes to Jack. “I’ve never known you without being in love with you,” he says, his voice raw. “Honestly, Jack, I don’t know how. So if I’m supposed to just figure out how not to love you, it’s gonna take a while. You have to know that.”

The short pause that follows lasts forever.

“Alex,” Jack finally says, nothing like the way he used to say Alex’s name. This one is more pleading, more helpless. “Look, I’m— I’m not trying to make things harder, okay? I just. I miss you. This fucking sucks for me, too. I know Zack talked to you last week. He wasn’t lying. I cried for almost a week straight. I’m not trying to pretend that this is different than it is. But it’s— it’s also, you know, real. We were together, and now we’re not, and we’re still in the band and we’re going to be in each other’s lives, and that’s how it is now. Like it or not.”

Burning cold pierces Alex’s heart, straight through his chest like a spear. The deep well of denial he’s been swimming in starts to drain, and it’s only as Alex’s feet hit the ground and the water recedes that he realizes just how much he’d staked on maybe, somehow, reversing this. Fixing it. Only now does the truth really sink in. Not only are he and Jack not together anymore, they’re not going to be. Ever.

The Jack-and-Alex chapter is closed. They’re exes. That’s real. 

“I—” He takes a deep, shaky breath, hoping Jack can’t sense its instability over the phone. “I know. You’re right.”

And even though that’s the right thing to say, the pause on the line makes Alex wonder if Jack had hoped to hear something else. 

“Okay,” Jack says. Crackling on the call means he’s just exhaled, hard. “So, um…is Rian still there?”

“He left yesterday,” Alex says. Swallows. Underneath the swell of pain, a familiar right-ness is settling into Alex’s bones; he’s spend countless hours catching up on the phone with Jack. This isn’t normal, but it can be more normal. It can be their first step towards normal. “Ricky was house-sitting and then something came up with him.”

“What in Rian’s house is valuable enough to house-sit for?” Jack wonders aloud. “The only thing Rian values enough to protect is his Tesla, which I have to assume he drove to you.”

A laugh startles its way out of Alex’s throat. “Yeah, fair point. Beats me. Maybe he’s just trying to keep up appearances of being very wealthy.”

“Still angling for that Colgate sponsorship, I bet.”

“One day he’ll get it,” Alex says, and impossibly, uncharacteristically, he realizes he’s smiling a little bit. It feels so bizarre on his face, stretching muscles he can’t remember feeling. 

As he traipses out of the bathroom and back into his room, Jack says, “Well, Zack has been, um, trying to get me to go to the beach with him. Help with some of the cleanup stuff. Although I suspect he started adding the cleanup thing as a guilt tactic after I kept saying no.” 

Alex laughs, again. “Very Zack of him.”

“Yeah, no, very.”

“Are you telling me you’ve been in Hawaii two weeks and haven’t been to the beach once? Come on, Jack.”

“Excuse me for having other things on my mind,” Jack says, and there’s an uncomfortable break in the flow of the conversation. Alex wonders if this is going to be their reality. There’s no way to talk about their lives now without either mentioning or blatantly dancing around the topic of the breakup. But they both know it happened. It’s not like they really gain anything from pretending it didn’t. This is the deal; either they never talk at all, or they face the elephant in the room head-on.

After all, Alex has always been honest with Jack about everything. This shouldn’t be different.

“Don’t blame you,” says Alex. He clears his throat, kicks at stray socks on his rug. “This, um, is hard.”

“I know,” Jack says, sadness woven through the words. He sighs. “It was just, um, it was hard not talking to you, too. There was always— I’d have something to say and realize I didn’t have anyone to say it to.”

Alex closes his eyes. “Yeah. Me too.” Usually something like I’m sorry or please tell me you still love me. Stuff I’m not supposed to say. But he knows the feeling, and he’s not surprised it’s mutual. “We’re still…” Still what? Friends?  What a cruel and reductive oversimplification of their relationship now. What else? There’s nothing else to still be, because nothing’s changed except the label. Alex can’t say still in love when they’re not supposed to be, but they are. He knows they are. This would be so much easier if they weren’t.

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Jack says weakly.

“I didn’t really know how to,” Alex confesses, and a cracking sensation he’s become all too familiar with reforms in his chest. 

“I don’t know what,” Jack starts, and then fails to finish it. “Never mind.”

“No, me neither.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m, um…” Alex glances at his bed, and, sighing, leaves his bedroom and makes for the guest room. Not yet. “You caught me at a bad time. I’m about to go to sleep.”

This had never been cause to hang up before, but they’re not in the before anymore.

“Oh,” Jack says. “Fuck. I forgot— the time difference.”

“How long have you been a touring musician?”

“Fuck off, we haven’t been on the road in a long time.”

Alex breathes a laugh. “Excuses, excuses.”

“Besides, I’ve never had to remember time zones before, I always had you to do it,” Jack says in one breath, like he’d have cut himself off at an inhale instead of finishing the sentence. 

And it’s not like that’s going to end. When tours come back, Alex will once again be the band clock, permanently equipped with answers for his bandmates’ various questions of “What time is it in—?” That hadn’t been a favor to Jack specifically. 

Still. Still.

Fuck, this is hard. No matter how they approach it, it’s going to be so hard, the kind of challenge that can’t be bypassed or cheated on, just an obstacle for Alex to claw his way through, friends offering help but unable to pull him past it. And the worst part is that Alex can see to the end of the road, and Jack’s not there.

So why should he bother getting through it, anyway? What does he win by moving on? In what world is losing Jack supposed to feel like a victory?

“Yeah,” he says, too late. And then, “Look, I…missed talking to you. But—”

“I know,” Jack says mournfully. “For me too.”

“Maybe we can talk tomorrow or something. When it’s not midnight.”

“It’s just, the way I see it, if it’s gonna hurt either way, we might as well at least…” Jack pauses. “I don’t know what. Like, um, we’re the only people who get it. I know how you feel, you know? You don’t have to tell me. And you know how I feel, too.”

“Yeah,” Alex breathes. “So we’re allies, or whatever?”

“Uh. Yeah. Or whatever.”

Like they’re at war. Like they're enemy countries who’d assaulted each other only to find themselves both victim to a third, stronger country. Suddenly they need each other, to nurse the wounds they’d inflicted. Fucked up, maybe. But also the only logical solution.

“Okay,” Alex says. “I mean, that makes sense. It’s just— sorry, but knowing that you’re feeling as shitty as I am doesn’t make me feel much better. That’s, um, that wasn’t the goal.”

“Yeah, well. Same.”

“There wasn’t a good way for this to end, was there?” Alex says in a whisper.

The longest pause Alex has had to wait through lingers on the line. Finally, Jack breaks it, sounding tired and hollow. “No. I don’t think so.” 

Not when I love you this much.  

“We’ll talk another time,” Alex says quietly. “I’m gonna go to sleep now.”

“Yeah. Good idea. It’s probably dinner soon, so.”

“Goodnight, Jack.” I love you is on the tip of his tongue, seconds from spilling off it. Only colossal self-discipline suppresses the instinct. It’s as natural as breathing to tack it on.

“‘Night, Alex.”

Jack doesn’t say it either, but Alex hears it in the white noise that follows his words.

Then white noise yields to silence, and Alex fails to fall asleep in it for far too long, unable to get comfortable in the darkness. There’s a new, foreign ache spreading through his body, starting in his chest, and all he hears in the emptiness of the room is Jack’s voice, everything he’d said and everything he hadn’t, the void where love you too would have been. 

Somehow he’d managed to forget the waves until they’d overtaken him again, and now he’s drowning anew with nothing to grasp at. 

Desperate, he tries in vain to think about anything except Jack, anything to make this hurt a little less, or at least hurt a little different, hurt more like it did before Jack called than how it does now. This is where he’s at. Yearning for a pain that’s familiar instead of unpredictable, knowing he’ll be hurting no matter what.

Only way out is through, he thinks dimly, pulling the blanket up to his chin and curling up with his eyes closed. Come hell or high water. 

(It feels like hell and high water, but, Alex figures, the punishment should fit the crime.)

***

Except Jack doesn’t call the next day.

And it’s not that Alex is waiting desperately by the phone, but he so, so is. It’s pitiful, the way he starts at every vibration only to find they’re just texts from Rian, or his parents, or random Instagram notifications he doesn’t want but can’t figure out how to turn off.

No phone call crosses his screen all morning.

Rian Dawson: Status update?

Right. Alex had said he’d call.

If he calls, he knows for absolutely certain he won’t be able to lie to Rian about talking to Jack. Rian will pry, and Alex will crumble like a sandcastle torn under the tide. Lying to Rian is not among Alex’s top skills. He doesn’t like to make a habit of keeping secrets from his friends.

But he needs to sit on this one. Rian will create all kinds of concerns, and Alex has enough as it is. Wondering when Jack will call. If Jack will call. Feeling like the biggest idiot on the planet for wondering, like some teenager at his bedroom window craning his neck to the ground below only to find it empty. 

Jack hadn’t promised. In fact, Jack hadn’t even said he’d call. It had been Alex who'd suggested they talk another time.

Like a blow to the chest, Alex wonders if Jack had actually intended to call. 

And yeah, it hurt to talk to him. It was always going to. They’d agreed this was going to hurt no matter what, and there’s no way around that. Still, somehow hearing nothing from Jack is worse. Hurts more.

Just once, Alex would like something not to hurt. He’s tired of this all-encompassing ache.

He can’t talk to Rian. Can’t admit this all. Rian doesn’t need to know every detail, especially not when the details involve some arguably masochistic decisions on Alex’s part, exactly the kind Rian had begged him to avoid. 

Alex Gaskarth: Got out of bed I promise

Alex Gaskarth: Not feeling a call. Think I’m gonna put on bad TV and chill

Rian Dawson: Ah yes Alex Gaskarth professional chill-er

Alex Gaskarth: I’m the chillest mothafucka you ever met

Rian Dawson: Lol okay vanilla ice

Alex Gaskarth: Ice ice baby

Rian Dawson: Call if you need me

Rian Dawson: Or if you just want to talk

Alex Gaskarth: Yeah I will thanks ♥

Alex Gaskarth: Love you

Rian Dawson: Love you too

This is followed by an uncomfortably close selfie of Rian making a kissy face at the camera, which unexpectedly makes Alex smile.

Most of the afternoon he manages to stay busy taking care of the animals. He even brushes Maverick, mostly on autopilot, crushed beneath the silence that somehow follows him even when he’s not inside the house. The weight is heavy on his shoulders, and the whirlpool follows, looming just out of sight, a permanent threat.

Alex just sighs. “Wanna trade places?” he asks Maverick, who just whinnies. “Yeah. I don’t blame you.” He sighs again, coming around the front of Maverick to look him in the face. “Who am I kidding. I bet you miss him, too.”

Maverick watches Alex serenely, and Alex rests his forehead against the plane of the horse’s muzzle. The sting of almost-crying pricks at his eyes. “I know, buddy. But it was between him and you, and I couldn’t leave you, could I?”

He knows he couldn’t leave Maverick, just like he wouldn’t be able to leave any of the animals, but the words make his heart sink like a stone. It’s not like leaving Jack had been any easier. The only difference is Jack had understood, and these animals wouldn’t.

Alex goes inside. The color drains from his world a little again, and he blinks as he stands in the doorway. His house is so empty. 

His house is so… lifeless.

“Okay,” Alex says. It echoes too much for a house with no echo. “Let’s get drunk.”

He knows it’s a bad coping mechanism. Even worse because Rian’s not here. Nobody present to act as Alex’s conscience. No one around to confiscate his phone. And there’s no point pretending: Alex cannot be trusted not to call Jack. Even now, sober, the only thing keeping him from dialing is the knowledge that Jack had already done it, and Jack hasn’t done it today, and there must be a reason for that. There must be a reason Jack doesn’t want to talk to Alex today.

But Rian’s not here, and Jack’s not here, and nobody is here, and holy shit, Alex is so lonely he can’t handle it. 

His house has never felt this desolate. The whirlpool is coming closer with every second and Alex is starting to think it might be nicer in there, just so he doesn’t have to exist in such a wide-open space filled with nothing and no one. If it annihilates him then so be it. If it kills him then he’ll die.

He grabs a half-empty bottle of gin from the kitchen and takes a long, awful drink from it, grimacing as it goes down.

Unsurprisingly, straight gin does not take long to hit. Running only on the sandwich he’d pieced together several hours prior means that by the time Alex can feel how unpleasantly the drink sits in his stomach, he’s already far enough from sober that it takes him a couple tries to turn the TV on. There’s no reason for the TV to be on, but no reason for it to be off, either. Maybe there will be something good on. Something sufficiently distracting. 

The light from the screen is whoa very bright, Alex thinks with an aggressive squint, and then realizes the lights are still off in this room. He’d never turned them back on. Sure. Fuck it. Why not? Why shouldn’t he sit in darkness? This feels about right. The sun has already started setting, and gray light turns the room into a staticky TV screen itself.

Caught between the pixels, Alex wonders why he suddenly can’t find himself in a place he calls home. Why won’t his pixels resolve into the Alex that lives here? When did he start losing himself? Where is he, if not home?

What is happening to him?

More alcohol. That’s what this situation needs. Alex keeps drinking, forestalling his next move. He knows his next move, and it’s supposedly a bad one, and if he’s going to make it — and he knows he’s going to make it — he’s going to need to be significantly more drunk.

Half an hour passes, pathetically. Alex’s phone taunts him on the coffee table, though Alex has situated himself on the floor between the couch and the table, staring at the TV and registering nothing. It doesn’t help that if he doesn’t focus with all his might, the entire screen blurs. This is not an interesting activity. This is boring. Alex doesn’t feel any more at home than he did when he started drinking. 

It’s not working. Something’s not working. What usually works? What feels like home?

Oh.

Oh.

Alex reaches for his phone. No, this makes sense. Of course Jack feels like home. No fucking wonder the house feels so empty. It is empty. Fuck. How could Alex ever believe that a place was more important than a person?

Shit. Fuck. 

The phone rings. It keeps ringing. Nobody picks up. “Jack,” Alex says loudly. “Answer your phone. It’s important.” But the line keeps ringing until it starts reciting Jack’s voicemail message.

“Jack!”

…after the beep. 

The beep is piercing, unexpected. It startles Alex into dropping his phone onto the rug, and he paws clumsily at the screen as he starts to speak.

“Jack,” Alex says, and now he’s hyper-aware of the slur in his voice, tries his hardest to keep his consonants clear. The TV is so bright and flashy and Alex can’t think. He closes his eyes, trying to block out the sensory overload before it makes him incoherent. “Jack, the TV is on. And it’s in the house. But the house is empty. Where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone? Jack?” Right. This is a voicemail. Because Jack hasn’t picked up the call. Jack hasn’t even contacted Alex all day. Alex frowns suddenly. His heart pitches unsteadily in his chest. “You didn’t call. Why didn’t you call? I thought we were going to talk. And be normal. And not— and— but I don’t want to anyway. I hate it here. And this isn’t normal. So we shouldn’t pretend. Jack. Jack.” The name falls so smoothly off Alex’s tongue; he can’t stop saying it, doesn’t want to. “Listen, Jack. You should call me. I think— I think we should talk. I think…I’m wrong. About everything. Please tell me I’m wrong. Please— please pick up the phone.” And there’s an ocean in his lungs that leaves Alex gasping for his next breath as the tide wells up. “I miss you. I miss you being here. Jack, I miss you so fucking much. I’ll come to you. I’ll live in L.A. Just don’t— just—”

Fuck. Fuck. He’s dangerously close to tears, but he can’t leave a message if he’s crying. Alex blinks as he opens his eyes, expecting his screen to display the phone call, Jack’s contact in big letters across it, but instead it only shows him his recent calls. There’s nothing to indicate that he’s on the phone or leaving a message.

Wait. Where is the call? What is he doing? Has he even left a voicemail?

The newest entry into his call log reveals that an outgoing call to Jack Barakat ended a minute ago. Ended. 

“Jack?” Alex says meekly, lost and confused. Obviously Jack isn’t here, but— but Alex has been talking to him. He has to know— he has to hear — 

What the fuck happened? Did Alex leave Jack a message? If their call ended a minute ago — two minutes, now — that means ended ended. But how— how would it— 

As Alex flips his phone in his hand with fumbling ineptitude, fingers pressing into the screen, he remembers the blind grab he’d made for it when he’d dropped it before.

Fuck. No. Fuck. There’s no way he accidentally hung up on the call. Besides the fact that that’s clearly what fucking happened. Fuck.

Alex’s words haven’t been preserved. Not digitally. But they still ricochet around his mind, resonant and unavoidable.

I’ll live in L.A.

The realization hits like a freight train. Yeah. Alex would. He’d live in L.A. He’d live anywhere to live there with Jack.

Fuck. He needs to tell Jack. Jack needs to know.

Rian’s voice surfaces in Alex’s addled mind. He’s saying something like don’t tell him now, don’t tell him drunk, it means nothing to say it drunk. People will say anything when they’re drunk. If you really mean that, you have to mean it when you’re sober. Mean it when you’re sober. Mean it when you’re sober. Rian is echoing a lot. The acoustics inside Alex’s head are insane.

Unfortunately, his point is clear enough. And true enough. Annoyingly true. Alex clenches his jaw, slowly puts his phone back on the coffee table, and then lets his head fall until his forehead makes sharp contact with the tabletop. “Ow,” he groans. The alcohol in his system is feeling worse by the minute. No more. It’s done its job. Alex has diagnosed the problem and he knows how to fix it.

Wait. Yeah. He knows how to fix it. Of course he does. Because if Jack won’t come here, then— then— 

Then Alex will just have to go to him.

When you’re sober, Rian repeats. Sober. When you’re sober.

Fuck. Yeah. It has to be, because when Alex tries to turn the TV off it takes him a minute of searching to locate the remote control and another long, concentrated moment to identify the power button. No way he could get anywhere, or accomplish anything, in this state.

Stumbling, he returns the decidedly-emptier bottle of gin to the kitchen, and instinct guides his feet to his bedroom.

The sheets are clean, untouched. Alex collapses on top of them. Future Alex will despise Present Alex unless he takes some Advil and brushes his teeth, but Alex is down and he doesn’t foresee himself getting up again. No. He’ll just have to sleep in his jeans. The sooner he sleeps, the sooner tomorrow comes, and the sooner Alex can be sober and make sober decisions that he will not regret because finally, finally he understands where he’d gone wrong, this whole time.

He’d been thinking that anything could be more important than Jack. 

Nothing is. Nothing matters more than the two of them together. To believe otherwise had been foolish, had been fatal.

Sleep drags Alex under, but for what might be the first time since the breakup, it doesn’t feel like he’s drowning. This dip beneath the waves is temporary, and Alex, inches from a lifeboat, will break the surface again.

Tomorrow he’ll save himself, and then he’ll save Jack. The waves won’t claim them both. Not anymore.

***

The bed is empty, and Alex is alone.

Alone. He feels around, but he’s definitely alone. This is his bed, not the guest room bed where he’s been camping out the last couple of weeks. There are few things Alex hates more than waking up alone; in the guest room, untouched by Jack’s presence, it had been bearable at best, but here, the site of too many memories involving Jack tangled in the sheets, fast asleep with his glasses on the bedside table…

Here it hurts. A fucking lot.

Ah, and Alex’s heart isn’t the only thing that hurts. He sits up and his head violently protests this motion. A loud groan from his lips breaks the silence in the partially-sunlit room. Even with the blinds closed, daylight always manages to sneak in, something Alex has never minded enough to remedy. Fortunately it’s noon — holy shit it’s noon — which means that at least the sun isn’t directly out the window. Alex takes a slow breath and calls the previous night to mind.

What returns to him isn’t words or memories so much as a string of thoughts, one he remembers having the night before. It’s the kind of logic that would normally make no fucking sense sober, but Alex, cross-legged under the sheets with his head in his hands, runs over it again and again and fails to find fault.

The house doesn’t feel like home. Jack feels like home. Home is wherever Jack is. If Jack won’t come here, then I have to go to him. 

Fuck. It still makes sense. And he definitely means it. Alex would give up anything, honestly anything, to call Jack his again. 

Even the farm, if that’s what it takes.

Okay. Hangover comes first, because Alex will accomplish nothing as long as this ten-ton truck keeps rolling over his skull. Advil, Pedialyte, food, shower. Before Alex can get anywhere, he needs to restore human status to himself.

And. Well. He should maybe, possibly, probably call Rian.

But if nothing else, this new determination has revived him, kicked him into high gear. Alex is a solutions person. He doesn’t fucking give up. Whatever happened with Jack, Alex is confident he can fix it. This will fix it. Fix them.

(As long as Jack still loves him — and he has to, he has to, there’s no way he wouldn’t, not when they just talked.)

Dealbreaker, Rian had said, but that’d been wrong. Alex doesn’t have dealbreakers, not with Jack. He’d only thought he had. The true dealbreaker is losing Jack, and now that Alex knows that, he’ll move to fucking Los Angeles if that’s what it takes to bring them back. Jack will hear him out. He’ll have to.

The breakup is a mistake, Alex’s mistake — Alex can see that now. But that means it’s also within Alex’s control to make it better.

He kicks away the twisted sheets, determined never to sleep in them again unless Jack is there, too. 

***

Characteristically, Alex’s first call to Rian starts like this:

“I fucked up.”

“What? What did you do?”

It’s late. Alex has recovered from his hangover. The sky is dark, and Alex knows if he stepped outside for a moment he would see a vast array of stars overhead. There’s no word from Jack, no text to ask about the call Alex is pretty sure he’d placed last night, even if he’d failed to leave a voicemail. Alex is sitting on his bed, mentally running through a packing list in his head.

Even though he’s already made his choice, it can’t hurt to have Rian in his corner. In fact, Alex would feel a hell of a lot better with Rian in his corner for this.

“No,” Alex says, “I mean I fucked up letting this whole thing happen. Letting Jack go, letting us break up.”

A noise of understanding passes through the line, followed by Rian saying, “Alex—”

“No, no, don’t— whatever you’re gonna say, don’t,” Alex says. “This was the wrong decision. Okay? Sometimes people in relationships make the wrong decision, and this was one of those times. I need you to be on my side for this, Rian.”

Rian says, “How sure are you?”

How sure.

“Sure that I would give up the farm for him,” Alex says quietly. “A thousand percent sure, Ri. Obviously it’s not an easy choice, but life’s full of hard choices, that’s what makes them worth it. I just made the wrong choice. And now I need to make the right one, if it’s not too late.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“To tell me you have my back,” Alex says. “Because I trust you to tell me if I’m delusional. Please don’t tell me I’m being delusional. Tell me the truth, but— but back me up. Please.”

Distantly, there’s a knock at the door. 

Alex snaps his head up. Who the fuck is knocking at this hour? In fact, who the fuck knocks at Alex’s door, ever, these days?

“I don’t…I don’t think you’re delusional, but I don’t want you to regret it,” Rian says, as Alex rises and slowly exits his room, moving towards the front door.

“Too fucking late,” he says as he approaches the door. It occurs to him that he maybe shouldn’t open the door to what could potentially be a complete stranger. “I already regret it. I regret this decision. And if I’m going to regret a decision anyway, I’d rather make the one that keeps him with me.”

Shutting one eye, he peers through the peephole, and his heart stops.

“Well—”

“Uh, Rian?” Alex says breathlessly. “I’m— um— I’m actually gonna have to call you back.”

“What? Are you okay?”

“Later,” Alex says, hanging up before Rian can say anything else, and with a pulse he can feel in his fingertips he turns the handle and pulls the door open.

“Jack?”

Jack stares. Alex stares back. He steps outside and shuts the door behind him, tongue-tied with too many questions.

"What— how are you here?" he finally asks. "I thought you were going home."

"I did," Jack blurts out. "That's why I'm here." 

And before Alex can form a proper response to that, or say anything like fuck, I feel the same way, how do we always feel the same way , Jack is talking. Words spill from his mouth like they’ve been building up and have only just toppled the dam.

“Please don’t tell me to leave,” he says beseechingly, “and please don’t tell me that I can’t do this because we’re not together anymore, even though that’s what I said to you and it’d be only fair, but please, please don’t say it. Just hear me out. Please. I’m— I’m sorry for suggesting that we break up. I’m sorry I ever fucking mentioned it. I’m sorry I even thought it. You were right, okay, and I was wrong — I gave up. It was giving up. But I regret it, and I just— I love you.” Jack inhales and Alex does too, unconsciously; he hadn’t realized he’d stopped breathing. “Look, I love you. I’m sorry. I got mixed up. You’re the most important thing in my life and, fuck. I don’t care where I live, okay? Just as long as it’s with you. I thought it mattered so much, putting down roots, having a place that was mine, but I was wrong. You’re all I want. Anywhere. The farm or New York City or the fucking moon.”

“No, no, Jack, wait.” This can’t be happening. This is supposed to be Alex’s move, not Jack’s. It wouldn’t be fair to put the responsibility of the farm on Jack’s shoulders, and Alex has made his peace with the sacrifice. The wall between them splinters as Alex reaches through it to grasp Jack’s hands in his own, stepping closer. “You don’t have to do this, okay? I don’t want you to have to choose.”

“I already have,” Jack returns, tightening his fingers around Alex’s. His eyes are golden and the porch light reflected in them looks like an eternal flame. “I just fucking chose wrong the first time. I can get another apartment, I can live somewhere else, but I’m never going to find this again. I don't want to find this again. You’re it for me, Alex.”

Alex opens his mouth, but Jack keeps talking like he can’t quite figure out how to stop. “You know I stayed with Zack, and every time he’d suggest I go home my mind would go to you. Not L.A. But I went back anyway, yesterday, because I thought maybe— maybe it would feel right, once I got back, and maybe the fucking insanity of this breakup would finally make sense to me, but it made less sense than ever.” Something in Jack’s face changes, folds. He swallows hard. “I missed you. God, so fucking much. I was at my place in L.A. for less than a full day and it felt all wrong. I missed stargazing with you and taking walks without worrying that I might get mugged. I missed getting drunk and watching National Treasure or drinking tea and just talking. Jesus, Alex, I missed talking to you, real conversation that wasn't awkward and painful. And I missed your fucking horses and your goats and— and I missed you, and I love you, and I—”  

“Jack, stop it,” Alex murmurs roughly, leaning his forehead against Jack’s so his head blocks the light, and Jack breaks off, holding Alex tighter than he ever has. Like he’s scared something will pull them apart. Like he’s scared that thing will be Alex. “I’m not going to let you make this sacrifice for me.”

“I already—”

“We’re going to talk about this,” Alex says, fighting for breath, for coherence, to not melt like wax and let Jack throw himself on his sword for a feeling they’re both having, that they both caused. “Figure it out in a way that doesn’t mean we have to break up. That was so fucking stupid. I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” The fingers of Jack’s left hand encircle Alex’s wrist as his right moves to cradle Alex’s face. “I shouldn’t have even said it. I don’t know why I did.”

“We were both fucking idiots,” Alex concludes, and Jack nods vehemently, teeth digging into his bottom lip. “But I want us to figure it out together. A solution we both want, not a solution because we don’t want to be apart. There has to be a middle ground. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“Good, because I’m not saying it,” Jack breathes, and then his lips meet Alex’s, fire on fire, and Alex realizes, impossibly, that he can finally breathe again. Searing heat chases across his skin like wildfire; Jack might as well be branding his fingerprints into Alex’s wrist, his jaw, the nape of his neck, but inside Alex’s chest, nestled into his ribcage, oxygen fills his lungs. No shards of ice pierce the walls, threatening a collapse. No dripping water makes it impossible for him to take in air.

Fractionally, he pulls away, and Jack’s quiet inhales are music to Alex’s ears.

“Thank you,” Alex gasps, “for coming back.”

He licks his lips and then kisses Jack hard, crowding in close to wrap his arms around Jack’s waist, to eliminate the space between them as much as he can. The two of them are done with space. Space is overrated. Alex has had enough space to last him a lifetime.

Jack’s arms slide around Alex’s shoulders as he tilts his head, wordlessly urging Alex to adjust, as if somehow in two weeks Alex will have forgotten how to kiss Jack. As if Alex could ever forget a thing like that. Everything about this moment is terrifying and familiar and wonderful and perfect. Subtle desperation underscores every touch; as much as Alex knows that this is real, that Jack isn’t going to leave again, that they’re going to tackle this problem as a team and not make the same mistakes, he can’t help the way he inhales against Jack’s mouth like he’s going to forget how to breathe otherwise, or the way his fingers twist sharply into the black cotton of Jack’s shirt.

The way Jack’s teeth catch on Alex’s lip, clumsy and keen, Alex knows it’s not just him.

They’ve both been idiots of epic proportions, and fixing it won’t erase it. The truth is out there now: Jack Barakat and Alex Gaskarth are capable of being dumbasses. Even they aren’t perfect. A team that was once unbeatable has been bested. They’ve managed to get back up, but the loss is forever in their books. Going forward, they’ll have to address it. Figure out what went wrong, where they were weakest, what tore them apart, so they can patch it up stronger just in case.  

But they have something now that they’d never had before, and Alex wonders if Jack senses it, too, blossoming behind his sternum. It’s resilience, borne of trials, pulled from its oven and plunged into ice water just to see if it would crack. Resilience of this thing, the gravitational force that pulls Alex to Jack across bodies of water and landmasses alike. Their love is passionate and delicate, explosive and intentional; now it proves itself resilient, too. Capable of withstanding a breakup. Capable of repairing one.

They’re stronger now for having been apart, maybe. But what that really means is that nothing could possibly tear Alex from Jack’s side now. He’s learned his lesson. They both have.

Jack whispers, “I missed you so much.”

“You’ll lose this argument,” Alex returns, leaving a lingering kiss on Jack’s lips. “I missed you more.”

“Keep dreaming.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m dreaming,” Alex says, catching his breath. 

Jack gives him a small, self-conscious smile. “I figured out the problem,” he says. “When I went back to L.A., I kept trying to understand why it felt so fucking wrong. Like, it wasn’t even the same place. And then it just hit me out of nowhere.” The smile begins to grow, lifting his face. “It’s only ever felt like home because I had you. I just didn’t realize. Home to me is wherever you are, Al. Especially here, but anywhere. Anywhere.”

A stumbling breath almost chokes Alex. Somehow, even when the book is being put through the shredder, he and Jack find themselves on the same page. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “You too, JB. You’re always home for me. It felt empty here without you. I only just realized last night — and I tried to call, but—”

Jack abruptly grimaces. “Oh, fuck, I totally forgot to turn off airplane mode.”

Of course he did. How unbelievably Jack of him. Alex grows warm at the familiar idiosyncrasy. “That’s okay. I was, uh, pretty…very drunk.”

Jack huffs a laugh. “Makes sense.”

“I was going to come to you,” Alex admits. “When I realized. I was literally planning my trip when you knocked. I’d do it, you know? I would move to L.A. for you.”

Jack exhales. “Alex,” he says, just that, like the name itself is enough. “That’s— but I don’t want that.”

They could talk themselves in circles like this for hours, but this time Alex knows better than to get them started. “Yeah, I get that now.” He lifts a shoulder. “The point is that I would do anything. You’re it for me, too. It seemed insane that I would have ever traded a person for a place, especially when the person was you.”

“Yeah. Same.”

“Mav missed you,” Alex says. “He told me.”

Jack’s whole face softens. “Fuck, I missed Mav. Not joking, I was thinking about how much I missed him.”

“Yeah? More than me?”

“You wanna start this again?” Jack raises his eyebrows, almost smirking as he kisses Alex. His voice is low when he pulls away. “Almost as much as you. A very close second.”

“I’m okay with that,” Alex says. He scans Jack’s face, slowly taking in the shine of his eyes and the curve of the smile tucked in the middle of a scruffy, unkempt beard. Alex has matching scruff he hasn’t bothered to clean up; Jack’s definitely looks nicer. At any rate, he likes it way more on Jack, although he likes most things on Jack. “Feels right to have you back here.”

“Well, good, because I’m not going anywhere,” Jack says delicately. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

Jack could stay here until they both died and it still wouldn’t be long enough. “You wanna come inside?” Alex asks. “Have some tea and talk?"

Jack nods, shoulders lifting as he inhales. “Yeah. I do.”

The warm air blankets them as they enter Alex’s house, and when Jack laces their fingers together, all Alex can do is smile.