For most of your life all you care about is yourself. You're lived to long to believe that giving a shit about something is going to help you. And when it comes right down to it the world's too much of a mean bitch.
So when Evelyn takes you in and one by one brings you your brothers, you only care to a certain amount. You love Evelyn because she saved you, you love Jerry because he's the good guy and you love Angel because he's as pure as they come. But the love you have for them is as guarded as the love you have for the rest of the world. You want to love them honestly and completely…but the scars of the others times you tried that are still ever present.
Then one night Evelyn brings home Jack. Your Jackie. And just like that you lose all your guards and restrict. Any hope of concealing some of yourself, protecting yourself, vanishes when he smiles at you.
You resist at first. You resist for a long time. You fight against every desire and craving to open to him.
It's almost funny to you. You spend hours with him getting him comfortable around you, you keep asking him questions and getting to know him. You make him feel like you're the one person he can trust, the one who won't let him down. And you are. But you're still to scared to let him see you.
It's years later. Jackie is still recovering from his past life, still slow to open to you. While you're not even allowing your defenses to budge.
He's laying beside you in the bed that you're not suppose to be in. Your mother's stop telling you to leave him alone, she understands what's going on between you and accepts it. The snow is coming down so hard you're almost excited that you're going to be stuck in the house all day with him.
"Bobby," you hear the tone of his voice and just like that you're stomach drops. You know you're in trouble.
"Yeah?" You answer, your hand is resting under him as a pillow and only then do you realize that you're completely venerable to him.
"Why do we never talk about…before?"
It's kind of funny how your lives before don't need anymore of a name. Just saying before is even to unsettle you both.
"You can talk to me about it anytime you want. I'll listen," You say, because it's true. You'll listen to anything he has to say and never judge him…
"What about you? Why don't you ever tell me anything about yourself?" he asks in a small voice.
You close your eyes and try not to let the fear of it all over power you. "Nothing to talk about."
He lifts his head off your shoulder a second later then rolls to his side, away from you. You give a mental groan and resist the urge to grab him and push him back to where he had been.
"Jackie-" you slip an arm around his waist.
He doesn't respond to either your touch or your voice. And you know there's only one way you're going to get him to look at him.
"I'm scared." You say it in such a small pathetic voice you're even disgusted with it.
That caused him to turn, his eyes are wide with surprise.
Your arm around his waist tightens and he lifts a hand to settle on your chest. "Of what?"
You look behind him into the dark room, you glance at the ceiling, at all the rock posters and the guitar littering the room. You look at everything and anything but him.
You're not ready for this…you're still far to scared. You…you can't tell him the truth. You can't tell him who you were, you can't tell him what you were. You can't tell him the truth because the moment those words leave your mouth you've lost him.
And no matter what else…you can't lose him.
Silence seems to speak louder then any word could have. It seems enough for Jack, at lest for now. He inches closer and buries his face in your chest. It's an apology and a devotion all in one.
"It's Ok." He says carefully.
You know it isn't. You know that as long as he's with you, you know as long as you stay close to him. It'll never be OK.
But for now, with him so close the world stops mattering for a just a second.
For most of your life all you care about is yourself, but the second he came into your life everything changed. And when you hold him like this, you know you changed most of all.