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Jack feels restless and caged. Too big for his apartment. He should straighten it up, should read a book or text his former Hausmates, should go for a run. He should, should, should - should do something with this evening, but he can’t make himself.
Hockey’s what he’s made to do, and the ice is where he’s meant to be, but even so there are days where it really does feel like a job. Like work. So he dutifully puts in his time, working out and eating right and running drills with the rest of the team, but doesn’t stay extra; he hits the showers promptly, just a few degrees shy of abrupt, and heads out.
He gets home like usual. The evening lies open before him, like usual.
He wants to run, wants to go somewhere, wants to get out of this apartment, out of Providence, out of everything. He wants a vacation, wants a break .
Except - well.
Jack knows what he actually wants a break from, and it isn’t anything around him. Isn’t anything outside him.
Back at Samwell, in a history class with none of his teammates in it, he’d gotten to know Aaron, a history/classics double-major who carried his Wheelock everywhere and ran through vocab flashcards while waiting for class to start. They’d studied together pretty regularly, at least while they were both taking Roman civ, and helped edit each other’s papers.
Some of Aaron’s writing went over Jack’s head - he had no particular interest in the political significance of a freedman’s careful use of satire - but some of it stuck. Or, technically, Horace stuck, because Aaron tried analyzing “Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt” at his most sleep-deprived and wrote a paragraph full of meandering sentence fragments, half of them in Latin. By the time it had been ironed out into something Professor Jones wouldn’t eviscerate, Jack had “ They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea ” more or less branded into his brain.
On a night like this, that old brand twinges like a fresh burn. Because what Jack really wants isn’t a break from hockey, or his teammates, or even his home. He wants a break from being himself, from lugging around all his faults and insecurities and anxieties, from all the to-do lists and questions that hover overhead all the time. He wants to go a few days without feeling like he’s on the edge of screwing it all up. He doesn’t need new skies, apparently, just a new soul.
Whatever that means. However that happens.
This feeling is one of the worst because even the things he loves the most don’t really help. When documentaries detailing important events sound meaningless - when taking photographs isn’t enough for him to keep that distance between his head and what’s around him - when being on the ice is less like cool calm and more like clamor - he just. He feels like he’s just stepped out of rehab, because he can still feel the old tug to pop some Xanax, or some other benzo: something quick and quiet and clear, not taking the energy away but channeling it neatly. Not melting the ice except for that jagged top layer, smoothing over his noisy, fractious mind like a zamboni.
Surely that’s the closest to changing his soul anyone can get. Anyone outside of a church or a Harry Potter book, anyway.
Adding vodka to the pills made it all even quieter. Of course, it also made questions about souls somewhat less academic. Jack knows he can’t go that way again.
He steps out onto his balcony, watches the light fade, grips the railing. Considers his schedule, consults the Samwell team’s group text, contemplates a forty-minute drive in the next day or two for friends and Faber and freshly-baked pie.
Going back there is only a change of sky, and he knows it.
But maybe a change of sky can be good for the soul as well.