Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Um. I ran into a stop sign writing CHYI, so I wrote this to tide JakeXSpud lovers. :)
People thought he was crazy. Spud supposed he could understand this notion, but it did not stop him from feeling a deep, blue sadness. They could never understand simple concepts. These people who gave him wary looks when he proclaimed a truth or laughed at him as if it was all a joke would never understand the world.
But that was not why he felt so bad for them. Spud felt blue because they would never know what it was like to love someone unconditionally. The kind of love that makes you cry and feel tired, but still loved in the other person's arms. The kind of love that makes you feel humble but mighty. The kind of love where you could share you darkest secret and they would only smile and kiss you, saying it wouldn't change a thing... That was real.
Spud could see why people hated the idea of real love. The masses wanted to enjoy their perverted fantasies. The ones where sex equaled love and saying I love you was a way to calm or shut the other person up. Spud also saw, though, that it was safe. These lonely people believed each other because they did not want to hurt; they just wanted love.
The real love, Spud mused, had a habit of turning even the toughest man in the world into a wondrous child and the world's weakest person into the strongest. This love tore people apart, changing them into what they were and not what the black world made them. It was like an automatic Get Out of Hell card – and it was scary. Some people spent years building up barriers and facades. They did not want to tear them down now.
To be fair, he had been as lost as they all were. He had been quite happy to live in his world of thrills. Spud had felt some satisfaction in chasing the untouchable, such as Stacy. It had been intoxicating when what he had wanted was just out of his reach... It made him powerful and powerless, and it had made him a sick man. Mind games became common with him. He would lock his heart away and instead loved with his brain.
Loving with your brain was not so great. It had been like that with every girl he had been with: he was forcefully manufacturing his feelings. Spud knew that regular boys - who did not chase trolls at night - loved the flowery smell of perfume and the plastic taste of lip gloss and the smooth curves, so he forced himself to like these things too. It had not been hard until the day he learned this was not real love.
Real love he found pinned against a wall. He inhaled and re-inhaled. He tasted and re-tasted. He sought the perfume. He sought the plastic. He sought the curves. And lacking all these things, he fell in love because sometimes you had to let go.
Letting go of his preconceived views of the world had freed him.
Labels blurred together into nothing. Boy and girl did not mean a thing. Gay and straight meant zip. Old men and women drifted away. Christians were shipped to Lilliput. Marriage left port and sailed away. Skater and brainy went to Timbuktu. Hero and villain merged. Popular and outcast jumped out a window.
Only once he lost his confusion over it being Jake did he start to see the world.
He found this new alien love. It empowered him to drive Jake into a frenzy under the sheets. It made him strong when Jake had his head in his hands and tears in his eyes. It made him breathe to brush the other boy. It stripped him bare into the open when he revealed every dirty and criminal secret about himself. It made him feel loved when those eyes sparkled with dragon fire. It made him invincible to hear Jake shout and insult him when all he could do was remain calm and pleading.
It was a complicated love affair, but worth it. Every single second and every single tear and every single murmur of words.
Spud did not mind anymore that they called him nuts, gay, and stupid. Because he knew one fact: they would never know what it felt like to be loved until tears reached your eyes and your heart clenched.
Spud loved Jake for real, and that knowledge makes him yellow instead of blue.