Ch. 7
"Jack! What the hell are you doing up there?" Eric crept closer, eyeing Jack warily. He was panting and shirtless standing on the short wall of the bridge. There weren't any cars on this bridge at this hour usually. "Jack?" No response.
Jack panted, tears streaming down his cheeks unnoticed. His legs were shaking and he could feel his blood pumping furiously. He laughed, the wind making his loose pant legs flap rapidly. He shook as he laughed, not knowing where this urge had come from. He hugged himself tight, staring down at the stop in the woods directly underneath him. It wasn't such a long fall really.
Eric watched in shock, not knowing what to do but worried about how close Jack seemed to be to the edge. "Jack? Are you okay?" He got a shaking chuckle as Jack turned to face Eric, his chest heaving as his breath sped.
"Okay? Am I okay?" He shook his head slowly. "Something makes me hate everything… everythin's shit, Eric. I'm drowning 'n so much… shit." He shrugged, a hopeless expression coming over him. He backed and inch closer to the edge and Eric hurried forward, his heart in his throat. He stood directly below Jack on the bridge.
"Jack!" He called, urgency in his voice that Jack just didn't seem to hear. "We shouldn't be up here."
"There's so much to do and I can't… it's taking over my life." He laughed sadly, the hollow tone of his voice chilling Eric to the bone. He couldn't figure out who this person was. He didn't sound like Jack and but he'd know those eyes and that voice anywhere. "I thought I was invincible. That nothin' could… nothing could hurt me. But I was stupid. And I know that now… I was trying so hard to be better. For you… for him- I don't know. I just don't understand how he can still control me. After all this time and after… he told all those lies. I can't even tell what's real anymore." He eyed Eric warily from above, a challenging smile on his face.
"And you, you think you know me. Everything I do, the lying, the secrets I kept. I did that to protect you. Because just the thought—the thought of me ever hurting you, more than I had already, would've killed me. I never told you all of the shit he made me do. Or just how fucked up I am. I'll carry that shame to my grave." Jack distanced himself from the railing, disappearing from Eric's view for just a moment before he stumbled back towards the edge. "I'm weak, I'm… useless. I'll never understand why you loved me." Eric stood motionless as Jack's body shook with barely controlled hysterics. "He managed to take the one thing, the one thing that ever really mattered." He swallowed, moving inches closer to the edge. "But this… this I can control."
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"So, how is everything today Mr. Hunter?" Eric was shaking himself out of another memory as Jack smiled softly at the nurse. It'd been a week since Shawn decided to give up on keeping Eric away from Jack. He'd followed Shawn's lead and decided not to tell Jack everything that had happened. That need to keep Jack's stress level low was still engrained in the back of his mind. Granted Jack didn't have a lot to be worried about; he was still on break from school, he usually only received calls from his mother lately, and his boss had generously keep Jack's position ready.
"Good. Better, now that Shawn stopped playing my mother." He smiled at Eric before a puzzled look took over his face. "Eric, what's wrong?"
The hollow look that usually painted across Eric's face after the memories of that night commonly took about fifteen minutes to go away. Eric ran his hands down his face in an effort to gain composure, wary of Jack's worried expression. "I'm good, fine. Just tired is all."
"Well if the doctors would just send me home already, you'd be able to sleep in a nice, comfortable bed every night." Jack stated, eying the nurse playfully.
She laughed and made a few notes on her clipboard. "You aren't quite ready for discharge, yet. But soon, soon. We just need to monitor your progress for a little while longer." She excused herself and left the room just as Shawn and Cory entered.
Shawn sat down in the chair on the left side of Jack's bed and deliberately ignored Eric's presence. "Jack, how are you feeling today?"
"Shawn, you don't have to ask me that every time you see me. I'm okay. Well not completely. I really wish you guys would tell me why I'm here in the first place. I feel like I have a right to know."
Eric opened his mouth as Shawn shot him a threatening look. "Look—"
"How would you feel if you woke up in a hospital, hear that you've been in the hospital for five weeks and have absolutely no recollection of what happened to put you in the hospital? Pretty fucking confused right?"
Shawn winced, Jack only swore on rare occasions. His parents had brought him up believing those words were for the lower class.
Jack looked as if he was going to continue yelling but Eric interrupted. "Jack, you have to understand that you did what you did because you were under a lot of pressure. I'm not even sure why you were under so much stress in the first place. You used to put so much pressure on yourself; so much so that you started having panic attacks. I'd come home early most days to look after you. It got so bad that I considered calling your parents—"
"Which I never knew about." Shawn interjected, a betrayed look on his face. Cory sighed, at some point Eric had mentioned this.
"But, I knew you would've killed me if I'd done that." Eric sighed, studying the black and white tile on the floor. "I pretty much had to look after you on my own, day after day. It seemed like every night, I'd wake up to find you freaking out about something you forgot to do or hadn't done well enough. You never slept, you never ate. Eventually, I stopped sleeping, stopped eating and… then we were pretty much destroying ourselves together."
Jack was silently, watching Eric with a disbelieving look on his face. Shawn looked somewhat apologetic. Cory's frown deepened. "I… found you that night."
"Found me?" Jack smoothed his sheets and looked up at the two men expectantly.
Eric sighed, steeling himself. "You tried to kill yourself. The night of Cory and Topanga's wedding. The bruises, the black eye and the cracked knee cap… I helped."
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Eric was in semi-panic mode. Jack was on the phone and had settled into the defeated posture he gained from speaking with his step-dad. As far as Eric knew, Jack had received graded midterms and he'd gotten two B's and four A's. Eric would kill to get those kinds of grades but he knew Jack wouldn't view them that highly. According to Jack, his step-father couldn't have them and therefore he couldn't have them. Eric was pretty sure everything Jack had ever done was deemed not good enough. There had to be some reason why Jack could never be proud of anything he'd done. While Eric had grasped this, he didn't quite know just how far this belief went. As the phone calls from home increased, Jack's panic attacks became more frequent. Until the point when Jack was having them three times every week.
Eric still hadn't told anyone.
Eric sat on the leather couch and listened quietly as Jack walked into the other room. As quietly as possible, he walked over to the other cordless phone and managed to hit the 'talk' button without Jack noticing.
"You've been lazy. You got all caught up in whatever it is you get up to with that… that boy and you got careless. You know what, sometimes I wonder if you care about your future Jack. Cause I am so sick and tired of being the only one in this family looking out for you. If you wanna blow it all to have a few good laughs with that low-class charity case, then go right ahead. I spent all this time and money to help you prepare for a good life and imagine my surprise and disappointment when I find out it's all been for nothing. You can't ride through life on money and looks alone. After that summer, I'd expect you to remember that." Eric heard Jack make a small whimpering sound.
"I won't tolerate it Jack. You don't follow my advice and then you do the exact opposite. I told you to settle down with a nice girl, I would've settled for Rachel. And what do you do, you run your relationship into the ground decide to live with him. Even after I stopped paying your rent. I'm not going to ask what sort of work you've been doing to keep up. So, no, you can't call again until you decide that you actually care about your life. This is the last time you come to me to fix your failures. Next time, call Mason."
Eric stood there dumbstruck for a while, holding the phone to his ear. When he heard Jack hang up, he set the phone gently into the cradle. Jack walked out, a brush of his hand over his face. His eyes were red but other than that, he looked completely normal. "Hey, so, you had ideas for dinner?"
Eric nodded solemnly, trying not to let what he had heard show on his face. He understood enough to know that Jack definitely did not want to talk about it. He tried to keep his mouth shut but it was like his head would explode unless he got answers. "Jack, you got a job?"
Jack blinked a few times, a confused look on his face. "How'd you know? Did Shawn tell you?"
Eric sighed, running a hand through his hair. "No, I-"
"Then what?" Silence. "Eric?"
Reluctantly, "I listened to you and your Dad. I'm sorry."
He barely choked out his apology before Jack exploded. He stepped so close, his flushed face glaring and practically seething. "Eric, that was private!"
"Jack, you got a job so that you could continue to live here when you could've easily just listened to your step-father and found another apartment. That doesn't sound like you at all!"
"Well maybe I've changed. I like it here. I like living with you, Eric." He said somberly, shuffling over to the couch to sit down. He refrained from looking Eric in the eye as he tried to quickly gather how much Eric could've overheard.
"Why?" Eric countered, a determined look on his face. He just wanted to hear Jack say it. He just wanted to hear it once.
"You know why."
"I want hear you say it."
"This is so fucking ridiculous. And you don't get to be mad at me. You listened to my phone call. My personal phone call." It was silent for a while before Eric dared to break the silence again.
"Who's Mason?" Eric watched while Jack's entire spine appeared to straighten itself into a tense posture. His eyes seemed to shutter into a closed off, blank face. He pulled his knees into his body and shifted into a tense position on his side on the couch.
"Leave me alone." He muttered.
"Jack."
"Eric." A warning.
"Who?"
"Just a guy that my stepfather worked for. Owned half the block where my parents live. Old friend of the family." He sneered the last bit, avoided Eric's eyes.
"Your dad wanted you to ask him for money?"
"No, he wanted to remind me who owns me." He spat out.
"What?"
"Eric, there are some aspects of my past that you wouldn't understand. And when I say that I don't want to talk about it—"
"Please."
Silence for a long moment while Jack tried to predict what would happen if he told Eric the truth. He'd been lying and avoiding Eric ever since his arguments with his step-father had grown more frequent and, for the first time in six years, violent. He decided to take a chance and tell Eric something true to make up for the lies he'd been shamelessly inventing the past few weeks.
"When I was fifteen, my step-father caught me with one of my friends fooling around in my room. I thought he'd yell at me but he didn't say anything. He didn't seem to care. A week later, he sent me to work for Mason. A summer job to teach me responsibility. I remember he put me to work with his secretary in his private office."
Eric interrupted, "Do I want to hear the rest of this?" He'd already gathered a sense of where this was going to go.
"The first six weeks were amazing. He gave me light tasks to do. Filing, typing memos, gathering coffee and lunch for everyone. Sometimes, he would give me tips on business and occasionally he would slip me brochures for colleges. I remember liking him because they were always for colleges out of state and far away from my parents. He knew how much I hated my step-father. He sort of became the father-figure I never had. We had lunch everyday in his office. At first, his secretary would join us. Somewhere along the line I think he told her not to. I don't remember how I felt about that. I just remember thinking that it was really nice to have this guy, this really rich and busy guy taking time out of his day to talk to me. He just actually seemed to care about what I thought and how I felt about things. I'd never had that before, you know?"
He smiled ruefully at Eric, his eyes a little glassy. Eric frowned, feeling sorry for his comment earlier. He watched as Jack slowly, slid his body lower down the couch until he was lying on his side, his knees still held tightly to his chest.
"I mean, what did it matter that occasionally, the way he looked at me made uncomfortable? And sometimes, the things he said made me feel dirty. And sometimes, when he touched me, my hair, my face, my back, my legs or when he used to…" he swallowed, the memory making his blood flow speed. His face scrunched up and he hissed the rest through tightly clenched teeth, "When he used to brush up against me or… I played dumb, for a long time. I mean," he grinned at Eric a little manically, eyes glassy. "I finally got the one thing I'd wanted so badly my entire fucking life. A real dad, even if it was only temporary. I started going into work early and leaving late. I became obsessed with him. And I think that I was actually under the delusion that he felt the same way about me." Jack let out a choked laugh, tears finally rolled down his cheek. "I was actually under the delusion that anyone could feel that way about me."
Eric shook his head and uttered "Jack," in a hollow tone. Jack shook, as if suddenly remembering that Eric was there.
"I was stacking boxes of files and I'd just gone into the supply room to get more tape when I heard the door close. I looked up to see Mason locking the door. He took a couple of steps closer and before I had time to blink, he was right in front of me. Instincts told me to run but… I had my stepfather's voice in my head telling me that I better just do whatever he wants. So I just stood there, watching him looking over me like a piece of meat. I was fifteen and he was thirty-seven. It wasn't like there was much I could do anyway, right? He brushed his fingers against my face and I dropped the tape I was holding. I hadn't really been with anyone in that way before, except for Wes, you know? And he was so close and I could feel my blood flowing everywhere. He leaned closer, I tried to move away but he gripped my chin and held me in place. He whispered in my ear, I still remember it exactly, 'Do you know what you do to me? Here?' He grabbed my hand, held my chin still and he moved my hand to his dick and held it there. I kept quiet… trying to figure a way out without pissing him off. He was scaring me but I still didn't want to lose him. I needed him. He meant… a lot to me. But then he started… touching me; my ass and between my legs. And then… I knew I shouldn't have, I had my stepfather's voice telling me not to…"
"You went for it?" Eric demanded, a look of barely contained disgust on his face. He was determined not to show any emotion, at the risk of making Jack shut himself away again. But this was harder than he thought it'd be. He couldn't predict the end of the story anymore.
"I tried to get away from him. I said anything, anything I could think of to distract him. I think I even told him that I would feel more comfortable doing this in his office and could we please, please, go there instead. He just… laughed at me. He laughed, said 'We're fine right here.' And he started to unbutton his slacks. I started to beg. I hadn't realized just how much bigger than me he was. I gave up and I begged him to stop and let me go." Jack buried his head in his knees and his shoulders shook jerkily. At first glance, he appeared to be crying but when he lifted his head again, Eric realized that he was actually laughing. Laughing hysterically as the remnants of the memory painted his face.
"I actually said 'please'. 'Please', I said—I said 'Please, let me go. I won't tell anyone.' He laughed at me again, and started massaging me through my pants. I remember feeling so… weak and pathetic. I was hard and the feeling made me sick to my stomach. And his cologne… his fucking cologne was everywhere. All over me, all over my skin. I felt like it was suffocating me until, after a while, I felt like I was going to throw up."
Jack paused for a moment, brushing a hand over his throat, as if he was struggling not to throw up even now. " I tried pushing him away but he slapped me across the face, told me to stop fighting and he started ramming me into the shelf with his body; mocking my reaction, saying that he could feel that I was hard and did I know what it felt like to be… to be fucked by a real man. It wasn't until he started to stick his hand down my pants that I lost it. I wasn't thinking, I just felt so… degraded and worthless. I kneed him. He fell down and smacked his head on the metal shelves behind me. I ran for it, I ran out of the room and I was so scared I took the stairs from the fourteenth floor. I didn't go home that night. I was so terrified. I didn't know what Mason would tell my dad and I knew that I couldn't risk it. I stayed at a friend's for three months, told him to ignore my father's calls. Knowing full and well that ignoring him just made him angrier."
"What happened when you went home?" Eric asked, crossing his arms.
"My dad yelled at me for hours. Mason wasn't stupid enough to sue me; he knew I'd tell the truth. But he also knew, no matter how much evidence I had or didn't have, my father wouldn't believe a word against him. So he called my dad and told him some far-fetched story about me assaulting him and how he'd been questioning my mental stability. My dad actually paid him hush money. And he never let me forget it. I still owe him eight hundred."
Eric sat next to him on the couch. He tentatively reached a hand out to touch Jack's hair, waiting for Jack to signal that it was okay. He gently ran his fingers through Jack's hair, trying to concentrate on Jack's next words. "Jack, you did the right thing."
Jack laughed bitterly, shaking his head. "You'd think so. That night, he threw me into my bedroom wall so hard I fell down and broke my arm. Merry Christmas to me."
"Jack." Jack winced. Eric sounded so pained, so broken. Eric made a move to stop touching him but stopped at the fearful look on Jack's face. "I can't… I don't know what to say."
It was silent as Jack lay there on his side stiffly, trying to push away the relief he felt from getting his story out. It wasn't worth it for Eric to sound so small.
"But do you want to know what the best part of all of it was?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I told my mom what happened, two months later. Somehow, he overheard. He knew, the whole time. It was the reason he got me the job. He said, 'If you're going to be a fag, you might as well get paid for it.'"
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Eric unlocked the door to the apartment, taking in the smell of dust and the hardwood floor. He hadn't stepped foot inside this place except to get clothes and even then, he hurried as fast as he could because it didn't feel right. It just felt wrong without Jack. He held the door with his foot as Jack shuffled inside.
"Everything's the same. It's like I never left." He grinned brightly and Eric tried to smile in return but as he scanned the apartment, he kept noticing the remnants of those weeks of hell Jack created for both of them. The spot where the mug they'd filled with dirt and plant Mr. Feeny had given them was missing. The loose hinge on the cabinet third from the right. Hidden in subtle corners, more reminders lay ready to show Eric they still mattered.
"What's wrong?" Jack asked, leaning into Eric's side.
"Nothing." Eric assured, setting Jack's duffle bag on the counter. "Let's get you settled, okay?"
Jack had been discharged on the condition that he still came in for check-ups at least once a month and that he take it easy or at least another three weeks. Eric was happy to have Jack home but not all that convinced that he, himself, was ready to have Jack home. Jack was due to return to school the next week and work the week after. Jack wouldn't be able to avoid his parents forever now that he was home. It would be hard for Jack to catch on all the work he had missed. He'd have to take summer classes. All of this had the potential to create the Never-ending Cycle again.
"Hey, check it out.' Jack said, rushing over to the table where Eric had dropped the large pile of mail. "Mr. Feeny kept his word. It's all my coursework from school. If I try hard enough, I can be caught up by Tuesday."
"Three days? Jack, I think you should give yourself a break. You just got out of hospital—don't overwork yourself—" Eric was trying to keep the fear out of his voice. Jack pulled himself to Eric's height and kissed him quickly but fluently.
"Eric, stop worrying, I'll be fine. I've been on break for long enough. The old Jack would've died if he let himself get this far behind." He smiled, piled the work in his arms and started to the bedroom.
"He almost did." Eric whispered to the empty room.
