Ignoring the acerbic bite to his tone, I go on as if he eagerly agreed to participate in today's sharing circle.
"Okay, here's the opening gambit. Once upon a time, my aunt Anabelle came to me for relationship advice."
Jack pulls a face, wrinkling his nose like he smells something horrid in the air. He glances off to the side as if needing a moment to process.
"I don't know what's more disturbing about that, the idea Snow has a love life of any description, or that she would involve you, the self-proclaimed romance failure. I mean"—he turns back to me, his troubled look deepening—"that's a choice."
"Hey, my romances don't simplyfail!" I proclaim, offended by the suggestion. "They crash and burn like planes flying into a mountain."
Jack's lips curve up on one side, and he gives a short nod of approval. "Nice metaphor."
"Felt it was appropriate," I reply amiably, suppressing a smirk at having drawn him into a conversation. Success!
Jack offers one of his softer smiles, mouth curling at both corners, a mix of fondness and reluctant amusement. The sight of it makes my heart give an extra-painful thud behind my ribs.
I shouldn't have slept with Jack last night. It was a mistake to have sex that first time, a mistake we both acknowledged as such before it happened. I told myself in the following weeks that our only option was to minimise the damage by making sure it was an isolated fuckup. This second incident was downright reckless of us both. It's almost certainly kick-started our inevitable downward spiral as partners, let alone friends, which is what I hoped we were genuinely becoming.
Sex doesn't have to mess things up between mates; Damon and I are proof of that, but things with Jack are so much more complex than they were with Damon. I knew right from the off what my feelings were when we slept together. With Jack, I have no fucking clue. It's so messy between us already, and we've only known each other a handful of months. What's going to happen if we keep doing this shit, complicating everything, giving in to thiswhatever-it-isneither of us wants to admit exists between us?
Something changed in the middle there, too, last night. He was making his best effort to be gentle, or at least Jack's version of gentle, at first. But then it was like a switch got flipped in his head, and he tried to initiate a very specific kind of self-destruct sequence. I could have predicted it happening, but somehow, I still found myself surprised by the vehemence with which he dedicated himself to radicalisation. He took me harder than he should've, bashed up against my limits with all the power and force of an ice hockey player getting shoved into the boards by his long-standing nemesis.
I'm weak for him. Last night proved that if nothing else. I let Jack push me around, let him shove me to my knees and choke me with his thick cock like that's what I wastherefor. It's like he was trying to punish me for making him want me, which was startling and somewhat familiar. I remember that feeling from being one of the few out teenagers in my school and dealing with shit from the closeted queer people who got jumpy and frightened and aggressive when I made them realise how muchlikemethey were.
Coming out as bisexual as a teen was a nightmare, honestly. It confused people. People, if you're not aware, do not like being confused. It makes them afraid and frustrated, which in turn causes them to act like dickheads.
I spent a great deal of my teenage life annoyed or pissed off at the arseholes surrounding me. Got kicked out of one of my schools for fighting withanother out queer kidwhen he loudly proclaimed to me that my sexuality was invalid because I got “caught” kissing a girl. Some people do not know what the words they use mean, and I'm getting pretty fucking sick of it, to be real with you.
Things still aren't that great now I'm an adult either. People remain confused, somehow, and not just the cis-straight lot either. The LGBTQI+ community needs to get their act together, maybe, because I've gotten just as much, if not more shit, from gay people. People either think I'm pretending to be gay or pretending to be straight because, you know,bisexual people don't exist, which is so obviously ridiculous I can't even deal with it most of the time.
Of course, it's not the same thing with Jack as it was with the closet cases I dealt with in school. He isn't afraid of people thinking he's queer. I don't think Jack has the capacity or social exposure to give a flying-fuck biscuit about something like that. Heisscared, though. He's scared of how I make him feel, which is similar enough. It comes from the same place: being afraid of yourself, of your lack of control over your own body and emotions.
I recognised his desperation to push me away, to make me angry or hurt, to force me to shove back and hate him, like he seems determined everyone should.
My only viable recourse was to hold firm and show him I won't be so easily frightened off, to make it crystal clear to him that a bit of rough sex isn't going to do shit. Ilikedthe sex. It was as explosive and intense as our first encounter. The sex itself wasn't the problem. Jack's reason for driving us to that edge was what I took issue with.
I'm willing to take a lot from Jack, both physically and emotionally; I've prepared myself for a struggle, for an uphill battle that might never even out completely.
If he needs time to get his head around the fact I'm in this for the long haul, to fully compute he's important to me, and I won't be giving him up as my partner unless he flat out tells me he wants someone else, I'll give it to him. I would have to let go if he asked me to, though. It's not in me to ignore what he wants, not after all the personal agency he's had taken from him in his life. But I'd be doing it under very loud and expressive protest.
"Go on, then," Jack prompts, offering me a surprisingly tolerant look. "Regale me with the campfire horror story that I'm sure Director Snow coming to you for romantic advice is bound to be." He slumps in his seat a little and crosses his impressively muscled arms, his posture suggesting he's resigned himself to whatever nonsense is about to come down the line and smack him in the face at full speed.
"Right, well," I begin with enough enthusiasm to probably add fuel to the fire of Jack's belief that he's going to regret not jumping from the plane to escape this. "I was thirteen years old and—"
Jack makes a choked noise of horror. "Oh, my fuck, this just got worse; how is thatpossible—"
I go on, undaunted by Jack's apparent avid devotion to overreacting. "Anabelle fancied someone from the psych department."
Jack makes another sound like a wronged ostrich. "Jesus Christ, ofcourse, she did."
"She was afraid to ask them out because she thought it might put the other person in an awkward position due to them technically working under her."
I play the memory out inside my head, remembering how uncharacteristically off-balance Anabelle had seemed that day. I'd never seen her care so much about something personal.
Jack pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a breath, like he's bracing himself to be dunked underwater for a prolonged amount of time. "I mean, we all know Snow would be the top in any relationship—"
I didn’t want to know how his sentence was going to end, so I interrupt. This ismystory, goddamn it. "So she asked me if I thought it was ethically acceptable to fire someone just so you could ask them out."
Jack is shaking his head now, eyes a little wide and lost. He looks haunted. "I am fucking terrified right now; what the fuck, you and Snow are insane, I was raised in alab, and even I know the answer to that question is—"
