Chapter 15

   A chime errupts across the otherwise quiet house as Ethan strides across the livingroom, a bowl of cheezits in one hand and a yet unopened energy drink in the other. He sets them down on the coffee table before rushing to answer the door with mild curiousity about the late night visitor. Opening the door, his curiousity only grows as he finds Jack standing on the other side, a weak smile on his lips.

"Jack?" Ethan questions chipperly, his eyes running laps around the bags in his fists and weak smile, and around him for any sign of Mark, quickly finding none. Despite his strained expression, Jack greets Ethan in return with an easy going tone.

"Hey Ethan. I was just wondering if I could take up your offer and crash here for a bit?" He asks casually, recieving a confused but easy smile from Ethan in return as he slings the door open further.

"Of course, come on in." He says warmly, immediately removing one of Jack's bags from his grip, seeming to relieve Jack of some of the tenseness in his being.

"Thanks." Jack's voice cracks, but he clears his throat, a desperate attempt to cover the weakness in his tone.

"The guest room is downstairs." Ethan explains, mentally looking for a way to ask all the questions that have begun piling on top of eachother. Why is Jack here? Where's Mark? Why does he look so tense and upset? Did Mark tell him how he feels? Did Jack reject him? Why? Did they get into a fight of some kind?

"Hope you dont mind that its right next to my recording space." Ethan continues to Jack's silent nod as he follows him down the steps and into a cozy looking bedroom.

"No, no thats no problem. Thanks again, dude." Jack offers kindly but it seems token at best. Ethan smiles but it also seems less than authentic as he places Jack's bag onto the bed, inviting Jack to do the same.

  He immediately seems relieved upon setting it down, as if symbolically releasing an unseen weight with it, before spinning himself back toward Ethan and sitting himself on the bed as well.

"Sorry to drop in on you randomly. My phone died at some point during the day and I didnt notice until I wanted to text you a heads up." Jack apologises and explains with a notched chuckle, his blue eyes searching the carpet for a more sincere smile than he currently wears.

"No need to apologise man, I'm more than happy to hang out with you." Ethan tries, but upon witnessing the weak and lazy smile he recieves, he instinctually attempts rescue mode.

"Its gonna be fun! We could stay up late eating junk food, drinking, playing games- or, hey, we could have a movie marathon? Whatever you want man." Ethan chatters eagerly, searching the man in front of him for any sign of protest or agreement. Jack swallows but lifts his eyes from the floor, and for the first time Ethan notices the red lining around them, making them look pale and glassy.

  Ethan stands over Jack looking all too sincere, and it feels like someone plucking away all the hastily made stitches Jack had worked so hard to create. Surely he can see through Jack's façade, and surely Jack could do better at trying to explain away all the weirdness, but his brain hasnt worked since he closed Mark's front door behind him.

  Standing outside, he took a deep breath and swallowed all the tears he could manage, a few rebellious ones painting his face a pale shade of pink to match the whites of his eyes. He pulled his phone from his back pocket, initially meaning to text Vi about the whole thing, wanting anyone to know how badly it all hurt. But clicking the screen on, it flashed a low batery sign and refused to cooperate with anything Jack needed. So, with an angry huff, he tossed it into his bag, made note of his surroundings, and picked the only direction he recognized.

  He only knew where Ethan lives because of their brief chat the other day. He jokingly made a mental note of the address and brief directions, 'just in case'. He never thought he'd have a reason to need them, and he's surprised he remembered it all as clearly as he does, especially after all the brain filling events of the past hours. 

"I'd like that." Jack states, pasteing a plastic smile across his expression that only seems to solidify that his words were a lie. Ethan opens his mouth, but flounders slightly, unwilling to call him out, but also not wanting to force Jack into something he doesnt really want to do. The plastic smile stretches painfully wider as Jack stands, striding across the small room purposefuly despite looking like a puppet lead by strings and nothing more.

"Mind if I use your bathroom first?" Jack questions, already having stepped out of the room and toward the stairs. Ethan shakes away the heavy confusion to follow on his heels, belting out an easy 'of course' as he trails Jack up the steps.

  As Jack uses the bathroom, Ethan sits on the couch, questions muddling through his brain with seemingly no answers to them. What happened between him and Mark? Because Jack is about as plastic as a Barbie doll right now, but Ethan doesnt want to shove his nose into business that truely isnt his. He'd only merely stumbled into all of this, and as far as Jack knows, he's supposed to be clueless about it all. He cant exactly go proding Jack for an explaination just because he's curious. But it hurts him to see his friend so broken looking, masking it behind casual visitation.

Ethan leans back into the couch, chewing thouhtfully on a cheezit. Did Mark kick him out? Or did he leave on his own accord? Why? If neither of those options, why the hidden heartache? In short, whats going on? And whatever it is thats wrong, can it be fixed?

  Jack scrubs his face with the coldest water the sink could run, numbing the previously heated cheeks and washing away all the remainders of the tearstains. After gently drying his face, he glances up at his reflection disdainfully. He looks just as torn up as he feels. He swallows, forcing a fake looking smile in place. It falls away when his eyes find his own in the reflection. They show no joy, no happiness, no reason to smile. All he sees is Mark staring into those pathetic pleaing eyes, and turning them away. Jack shoves himself away from the counter and quickly out the door.

  Ethan huffs to himself, tugging his phone from his sweater pocket, debating briefly on sending a questioning text to Mark. He flips the phone face up and down for a moment in his hands, his mind still trying to rake through possibilities on his own before sighing defeatedly, and opening his phone to Mark's messege thread. He stares at the text box for a while, his fingers dancing above the keyboard aimlessly.

What is he going to say? 'Whats up?' 'You ok?' 'Hey' and wait for a response? He huffs again, hearing the door open down the hall before his fingers begin to rapidly cross the screen.

Ethan: Jack's here. Whats going on?

   He quickly hits send and places his phone in his lap just as Jack strides into veiw from the hallway, wearing the same light smile and heavy demeanor as before.

"So whats the plan, Doc?" He jests coarsely as he sits himself beside the younger man. Ethan feigns a smile, but it twitches slightly as he does his best to gauge the man beside him.

"I was going to grab us a drink and ask you the same question." He does his best to answer as he normally would, but its impossible to see beyond Jack's act. Jack makes a pleased hum at the statement, meeting Ethan's eyes with his own wildly unreadable ones.

"You must be some kind of genius." Jack chuckles, "I would love a drink, but after that the fun is up to you." He states matter of factly. Ethan nods replying automatically, his mind elsewhere.

"Alright cool."  He stands from the couch, phone clutched tightly in his hand as he strides toward the kitchen, hoping it would go off and Mark would be able to provide even an ounce of context.

"Whats your poison?" He questions loudly to the man in the livingroom, jumping with a start as the response comes from right behind him as he opens the refrigerater door.

"I'll take one of those beers there." Jack smirks, pointing round Ethan's side into the open fridge. Ethan chuckles jaggedly and hands one to Jack's extended hand, accepting his 'thank you' and taking one for himself and cracking it open, watching as Jack does the same shortly after.

  A moment of silence falls across the two as they sip on their newly opened beverages, Ethan still trying to decifer the puzzle before him, Jack still trying to hide all the pieces to said puzzle.

"Nothing better than a cold beer after a long day." Ethan notes aloud in an attempt to break the quiet streak, casually leaning back against the counter as he lifts the bottle to his lips again.

"You said it." Jack agrees, taking a larger sip, his eyes steadfast on an empty spot across the room.

  And with that the silence ensues again. Ethan wishes the strained atmosphere is simply awkwardness, but it's all the weight Jack wears that he refuses to show. He feels like hes walking on eggshells, but he hasnt said much at all. He doesnt know what could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and its stressful. Like watching a bomb count down to one and get stuck there. When is all of that walled off emotion going to flood forward?

  Ethan rolls his shoulders, willing away the tightness in his muscles and spinning back to the enigma of a human standing beside him.

"How does Mario Kart sound?" He forces himself to question evenly without absorbing the shakey atmosphere pooling from Jack.

  Jack meets Ethan's eyes. He hasnt been blind to the confusion and empathy fueling Ethan since he opened the door. He expected it. He expected questions and, if he could manage to answer them, he expected pity, but he didnt expect Ethan to blatantly ignore all the happy pappy bullshit he shoves forward.     He prefers it this way, honestly. He prefers Ethan's method of overloooking all the nonesense to indirectly comfort him with gentle distraction. It prevents him from once again reliving the painful moments.

  Like he did the whole walk here.

  Each autopilot driven step dragging across the concrete only drove Mark's words deeper into him, wounding him further. He hates that they're still so fresh, that he can still hear them in all the silence in this room. He loathes the bitter taste left in his mouth from defeat and that the frustrated and heartbroken tears stained his cheeks. He hates that he barely managed to pull himself together before reaching Ethan's door. He hates that his fingers still shake, longing to clasp onto Mark's. He despises that he secretly wants to drop to his knees and beg away all the cruelty in Mark's dissmissal. He would give everything he has for Mark to change his mind, to kiss it better like it never happened, and it makes him feel sick.

   It aches, knowing that this is where he ended up. After months of patiently biding his time and planning, and fantasizing about a cotton-candy sweet lie. Now, he stands here, a wreck of a man wearing a patchwork costume of 'happy' thats slowly rotting away before his friend's eyes.

   A set of blue eyes connect to his for only moments but it feels like an eternity of Jack silently pleading not to be ripped open and examined, despite Ethan making no such attempt. What stands before him is simply a friend being here for him in his time of need and he cant even feel grateful because the one thing he truely wants doesnt want him back.

  Acid pours into the back of Jack's throat as he swallows the mouthful of words and replaces them with a smile that feels like a large tear in each cheek. A solitary tear escaping and cascading down his face despite his best attempts to hold it back along with the pain in his voice.

"Sounds great."