Work Text:
"What does this one mean?"
Jack carefully follows the lines of the Still Alive tattoo on Joke’s arm with his fingertips.
Joke shrugs.
"Just… You know. Didn’t think I’d make it this far."
Jack raises his head to look into Joke’s eyes. Joke feels weirdly vulnerable, being seen like that, much more vulnerable than when they had sex earlier. He averts his eyes. There’s an uncomfortable sort of war going on inside his own mind: he wants to tell Jack. He doesn’t want to talk about it. But he wants to tell Jack.
"Joke? You okay?"
Joke shrugs, then he shakes his head slightly, then he shrugs again.
"Stop looking at me like that," he mumbles, turning his head away.
"You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to."
"No, I… I want to tell you."
He briefly meets Jack’s eyes, then looks away again. After a moment, he moves to rest his head against Jack’s chest to spare himself the pain of being watched while he bares his soul.
Jack immediately takes him into his arms, his skin warm and soft against Joke’s own, and Joke exhales slowly, trying to make himself relax. It’s easy, normally, when Jack holds him.
"I didn’t have that great a time as a teenager," he confesses quietly, which might be the understatement of the year, but Joke doesn’t want to come across as self-pitying. He made it, after all.
"Did someone threaten to kill you?"
Joke loves him for that question, loves him so much. Of course, that’s what Jack would think. That’s how he knows the world to be: threats come from the outside, and then you deal with them.
"No," Joke exhales slowly. "Not someone else."
It takes a moment for the penny to drop. When it does, Jack automatically tightens his embrace around Joke.
"You wanted to kill yourself?"
"All the damn time."
"But you didn’t…"
"Try? No, yeah, I tried twice."
Joke never actually told anyone: the second time, when he was rushed to the hospital, he didn’t say a word to any of the doctors, knowing that whatever he said would probably get back to his father. And his father already thought he was a failure in every regard, Joke didn’t want him to know he had actually failed at killing himself, on top of everything.
"You tried twice?"
Jack sounds horrified, his voice unusually thin. Joke shrugs again.
"Mh. But I thought about it all the time. Came up with all sorts of methods."
It had been a bit of a game at times. Just something to keep his mind occupied.
Jack’s hold on him is so tight it’s bordering on painful, but Joke likes the way that it hurts. It’s proof that Jack cares.
"But why…"
Jack doesn’t finish his sentence, seemingly incapable of understanding the simple reasoning that has always seemed rather obvious to Joke. Joke sighs against Jack’s chest.
"Everyone would have been better off. And then when I was gone maybe they’d have realized that they actually missed me."
He used to have elaborate fantasies of his family at his own funeral, crying with the realization that they actually liked Joke. That they missed having him around.
"No one would have been better off!" Jack says hotly, still sounding utterly horrified.
Joke knows that Jack truly believes that, and he loves him for it, achingly loves him.
"So anyway," Joke says, ignoring Jack’s outburst because Jack won’t understand his reasons even if Joke tried to explain in more detail, "I tried twice and I failed twice and so I’m still here. That’s what it means."
"Promise me you won’t try again," Jack demands immediately, like it would actually devastate him if Joke did, like this is the worst thing he’s ever heard.
"I promise," Joke says easily.
Ever since meeting Jack, he hasn’t made a single attempt. After that fateful night of his arrest, his whole life became about atoning for hurting Jack, and then after getting out of prison it became about loving Jack, and now it is about being by Jack’s side, and Joke would never consider taking away something that Jack wants around.
The only time he tried to leave for good it was because Jack himself told him to do so.
"You don’t need to worry," he adds, because he knows how Jack can get, "I’m not a teenager any more. I haven’t seriously considered it in years."
Jack doesn’t understand that he was Joke’s lifeline… That he is the sole reason for the tattoo. Because Joke is pretty sure that the third attempt would have been successful, had it actually come to that. Had he not met Jack at the bar that night.
But Joke is not going to tell him. That’s a kind of burden he doesn’t want to put on Jack’s shoulders.
"I love you," Jack says, quietly and sincerely.
It’s good that he can say these words without the pressure of knowing that they are the whole reason for Joke to keep going. This way, Joke will always be certain that he actually means them, that he’s not just saying them out of obligation.
"I love you, too."