Pick your poison

[Brayden Smith]

"Not today."

Not 'not ever' but certainly not today! Bray was too tired and hungover for that kind of thing and besides, how old was Luka? He had to be in his early twenties. It seemed improper somehow, like taking a kid to bed. And yet, Bray had a sinking feeling that Luka probably had more experience than he did in the bedroom. That was a little sad...

Ready to move on, Bray nodded as he finished the rest of his toast. It was good; the pepper flakes really added a nice kick of heat to an otherwise bland meal. But Jack's was definitely better, he could admit, so he took bites of it between his own toast. "I do like the things you make more than takeout," admitted Bray, whose little hermit heart felt warmed any time he could sit down to a simple meal with a loved one. Fast food and takeout didn't evoke the same homey feel or draw up memories of sitting at the dinner table with his parents and feeling like a family.

As for where Jack learned to cook... Bray's smile softened. "Off a TV show?" He had no idea where a love-starved child might learn to cook, honestly.

[Jack Ripley]

Jack could accept that. Not today. If it ever happened, he'd be surprised. Brayden didn't strike him as sexually adventurous and he couldn't be that easy to get physically close to, either. Jack was just bold. Most people wouldn't touch a man they barely knew the way Jack touched him. Even a lot of close friends weren't so touchy-feely with each other and Jack could tell early on that Brayden was one of those people. He seemed to easily grow used to Jack's physical affection. Dare he say it, but it even rubbed off on Brayden a little, too.

But he appreciated that Brayden wanted to give him hope. It just... wasn't that big a deal. Jack had a boyfriend now. It was okay to just have a boyfriend. And they were still in the glow of the honeymoon phase. They'd barely done anything together sexually. And what did happen was one-sided... both in the nature of it and in the memory of it.

So he was fine with it. Holding off on adventures. Holding off on bringing other people in.

It was nice. When it was just the two of them. Even in public, it often felt like the rest of the world faded away into the background whenever Brayden was around.

"Nope." He smiled like a kid who knew something stupidly small that they were stupidly proud of. "Home ec! I mean, I learned a little on my own before that but it was shit." Back then, he basically lived off boxed foods or shit that came out of cans. Nothing from scratch, ever. "In junior high, they offered home ec classes. It opened my eyes to all kinds of things I never even tried before and Mrs. Hoffman was the sweetest lady you'd ever meet. She let me stay after school. Taught me things outside of class. She was a huge inspiration for me."

[Brayden Smith]

"Home-home ec? Oh. That makes a lot of sense..." Where else would Jack get access to ingredients, equipment, someone with the knowledge and time to teach him? That was such a strangely endearing mental image, of a young Jack hovering around a stove with a bunch of his fellow students... Bray lowered his head to hide his laugh. He wasn't laughing at Jack, or at how absurdly pleased with himself Jack seemed. He laughed because of the real, genuine joy that showed in Jack's eyes and expression. To think that the man who professed to be haughty and stuck-up, who was a hedonist by his own admission, could have that kind of innocent look in his arsenal...

"She'd be proud of you if she could see you now." There was no higher honor, Bray thought, than to make someone proud. He reached across the table to take Jack's hand, brushing a thumb over the back of it. Bray laughed again, still thinking about spindly-legged Jack busying himself at the stove, slaving away over bubbling pots and sizzling pans.

"I wish I'd known you when you were younger. What were you like? Were you mischievous? Did you get along with the other kids at school?"

[Jack Ripley]

His smile widened. Yes, that was his him. The kid who stayed back to learn how to cook. He was tired of the disgusting cardboard he'd been living off of. Hell, he was lucky if even that was in the house when his mother went on a real bender. Then he'd have to steal her money to buy something from the grocery store himself.

"Mm."

Maybe she would be. Jack hadn't seen her in such a long time but she was the kind of woman who didn't lack maternal instincts. Cooking, sewing, cleaning, these were things she genuinely enjoyed doing. Over time, Jack learned not every teacher enjoyed what they did. Or even liked kids, for that matter.

But he laughed--not unkindly--at the idea of Brayden knowing him when he was younger. If he met Jack during junior high... "You wouldn't have wanted to know me back then." He took a drink of his orange juice. Sweet but not too sweet. "I hated myself. My so-called friends were much older than me and they took advantage of that. I looked up to people like Mrs. Hoffman... I wanted to be more like her. But really, I was just following in my mother's footsteps."

He tapped the side of his glass.

Drugs, alcohol, sex. Anything to pretend real life didn't exist. Never in his life did he empathize more with his mother and never more in his life did he despise her for it. Nothing mattered except herself, her feelings, and her needs. They weren't just put first. She didn't just put Jack behind her. She really wished he never existed and for every moment of his life with her, she made damn sure that he knew it.

"I wasn't so self-actualized then as I am now." No, he was anything but self-actualized. "But so few of us are at that age..."

He looked up at Brayden. It was nicer to look at his face than it was to look into the face of his childhood. Setting his chin in his hand, he smiled, imagining the kind of kid Brayden Smith must have been.

"But what about you?" His smile grew. "Were you still a shy little super nerd? Do tell."

[Brayden Smith]

He hated himself? Bray wished that Jack could have elaborated on that but given their current setting... maybe it wasn't the right time or place for it. All of these admissions gave him a better glimpse into the turbulent life that a young Jack RIpley led but what he discovered made his heart feel heavy. If Jack could so easily and freely admit that he hated himself as a child, what other things would he reveal in time? What other, worse things did he endure to get to where he was today?

"You mean you weren't self-actualized at fifteen?" Bray's turn to inject a little humor into the situation, mostly because he didn't quite know what to say. He needed time to think about what Jack was telling him, time to digest the small pieces of information and unpack the large pieces of Jack's past that were being unveiled before his eyes. His heart hurt for Jack, though he tried hard not to show that, and smiled softly across the table at him as his fingertips brushed the side of Jack's arm.

"Shy super nerd sounds about right," he said wryly, pushing the food away now that he'd had his fill. "I was... I guess I was always too cautious. Too serious. I wanted to fit in but I didn't know how to, so I ended up being that satellite circling around every group. I don't think many of them wanted me around but I'd still try to fit in." Bray shrugged. "When you're a kid, you don't want someone to tell you what not to do. You don't want a voice of reason, you know?"

Although he supposed that he was still like that; old habits died hard. Bray was still too serious and almost too mature in some ways—though depressingly not in others. He didn't have as hard a time getting along with people but he still felt like a satellite, like he was on the outside looking in. Bray tapped his fingertips against the table as he tried to put young Jack and young Bray into the same scene together.

"I think we might have gotten along. Neither of us really fit in, did we?" Young Bray would have been overly eager to please, as he was now, and maybe young Jack needed someone to need him, someone who looked up to him and tried to look out for him. Bray smiled, though his heart ached. "My mother would've loved you." And he wished that he could have brought Jack home to her, to introduce him to her, because she—like Bray—recognized people in need of love and she would have provided the kind of support and care that Jack needed better than Bray ever could have.

"She—you know the time I told you I saw her in my dreams? I spoke to her. And she told me..." Bray's gaze was far away, looking into the past. "Be patient. Wait... and stay with you, and you'd let me know how to love you and take care of you. I think she was right."

[Jack Ripley]

Nope. He only smiled at the joke because really, who was self actualized at fifteen? Hell, who was really self actualized ever? It took so many years to carefully craft the person you wanted to be and even then, one sometimes fell short of that.

Jack could quite easily imagine Brayden as a child, even more so as Brayden described himself. It sounded like a lonely existence, merely revolving around others and not really being involved with any of them. Honestly, the other kids sounded mean, if they saw Brayden on the outskirts and just left him there. But kids, they didn't really know better, did they? And they didn't know why Brayden was there on the outside. For all they knew, that was where he wanted to be.

Oho, he wanted to say. He fit in--just not with the right people. Jack wasn't a satellite, even if he was lonely and in pain on the inside. Outwardly, he was just another jerk asshole of a kid. If little Brayden met him, he wouldn't have liked him, wouldn't have wanted to be him or be like him. And little Jack would have just been an asshole. Because that's what he was, there was no getting around that. He was an asshole.

But he was glad he didn't say it because Brayden's next words unexpectedly struck a dagger into his heart. His mother would have loved him. Well. What did he even have to say to that? Nothing, because he was struck dumb. Mothers did not love Jacks. Mothers wanted their kids away from people like Jack. But mother and love, those two words together. They never failed to hurt him.

Jack swallowed hard.

Was that something his mother would have said if she were alive? Did she speak to him through dreams because they were magic? Connected even through the veil of life and death?

"...and what are you learning?" His voice came out rougher than he would have liked; he hated showing real emotion when he didn't want to show it. He was supposed to sound flippant. At ease, unbothered. Instead, the tiny little cracks in his armor were showing.

[Brayden Smith]

Looking back on it now, Bray thought that as a kid, he didn't really know the extent of his own loneliness and isolation. As a kid he just... kept trying. There was a lot of hope in him that somebody might take notice of him and extend a friendly hand. Ali was always there, though. Ali tried to include him but he also had his own life, his own friends, and couldn't always look after Bray. A lot of the time Bray just accepted that he was the geeky weirdo that didn't even fit in with geeky weirdos. But he kept trying.

His mother helped him through that difficult time; she was his best friend, his closest confidante. Bray always had her in his corner and no matter how rough of a day he had—for a kid—he could always count on a warm hug and a warm bowl of soup. Listening to Jack's description of his own mother and childhood, Bray was struck by how fortunate he really was. Being bullied and excluded wasn't anything on not having enough to eat, or being taken advantage of by older kids. Young Bray had that happen to him too but... strangely, even those older kids found him too depressingly mature for their tastes.

There were parts of them that didn't fit in, he supposed was what he was trying to say. Snotty little kids weren't supposed to like cooking—that would have gotten Jack laughed out of every group in school here. Too-serious, thoughtful weird little kids weren't supposed to foolishly keep pursuing people who clearly wanted nothing to do with him—that wasn't logical. Parts of them didn't line up, but that was... kids, really. Kids were weirdly resilient things.

Adults, not so much. A lifetime of abuse and being battered took its toll. Bray saw that, lived it, first-hand. He watched the motion of Jack's throat as he swallowed, and as words finally deserted him. Jack, the perpetual chatterbox, out of words? Speechless? Bray made a miracle happen—but he wasn't laughing. He breathed in slowly, shallowly, as though afraid to make too much noise and stir Jack out of his currently vulnerable state. The walls were finally down.

"I'm learning," he replied slowly as his fingers slid under Jack's tie and curled around it, "that behind this shiny, distracting armor is someone who... who needs to be loved for who he is. He doesn't need another person to put him on a pedestal and tell him that he's... perfect." Bray tugged gently on the tie even as he stood, leaning across the table. Ooh, he was—he was crazy. Insane for doing it but in the moment there wasn't anyone else. There was only Jack, and the pain he saw through the cracks in that easy-going facade. Bray's heart responded to pain; he knew it when he saw it. He identified with it.

"Because he's not perfect..." His lips touched Jack's. It wasn't a hungry kiss, not a kiss that was meant to draw attention. It was just a small, simple, loving kiss. "And I love him more for his flaws than ever before. Young Bray might not like young Jack, but... I love Jack. Not the armor. Jack." That was what his mother meant, he now knew. The longer he waited, the more he saw past the armor. If he stayed long enough, Jack's pain would show; he would tell Bray how best to help him heal, instead of heaping compliments on someone who was already made out to be perfect.

That person didn't need another admirer—but the one behind the mask, he did.

[Jack Ripley]

Strangely accurate. Very accurate. It felt like Brayden was looking directly at him now and as much as he longed for and waited for somebody to do that very thing, it was possibly the most frightening thing in the world. To have one's soul bared. At the heart of him, Jack was exactly that. Imperfect. He told himself--and believed in it for so long--that he didn't want anybody to sneak this close.

But then, he hadn't admitted to these things to anybody. The fact that he didn't come from money, the fact that he came from a broken home, the fact that he wore his perfect clothing like armor. Nobody knew because Jack didn't want them to. Yet he was strangely compelled to tell Brayden. Like he could trust him with anything, even his broken heart and his worn out soul.

As frightening as it was, it was also liberating. Brayden's soft voice echoed in his head as his eyes closed over a helpless, stinging heat of emotion. The touch of his lips was almost too much, as if Brayden touched raw nerve, too sensitive to touch. He wished it not to be true but when he opened his eyes, the emotion spilled over. He could feel it on his face.

How could somebody see into his soul and still see something worth loving? How could anybody love Jack and not the armor he presented? It was absurd, it wasn't real, it couldn't be real. Was this another nightmare? Tormenting him with would-be scenarios that could never come true? It was worse, really, than any of the others, because it touched right through to the core of him, by-passing every other problem he had with himself, everything he managed to fix or paint over.

Love, he knew, was supposed to be unconditional but for Jack, there were always conditions. For his entire life, he had to work for what passed as love. But really, people only loved the idea of Jack. He set himself up for it, for failure. He knew that. But he didn't want to open himself up, either. To reveal the nothingness he knew he really was, for the ugliness and the neediness and the loneliness.

There was nothing in Brayden's eyes or his expression or his tone that indicated he thought any less of Jack for what he'd heard... so far. But he still knew so little. It was too good to be true. Eventually, the other shoe was going to drop.

Jack lowered his head, turning his face away from the counter, suddenly too aware that they were in a very public place and he was... crying. He pressed a hand to his face, to scrub away the tears. God, he must look like a fool.

"Just so you know, this is not how I imagined our first date turning out," he said to the window, which was no better than looking at the counter. Either way, he was going way too public with this vulnerability thing.

[Brayden Smith]

There was more, Bray could tell. This little tidbit of Jack was only his childhood—there were tens of years after that still left to be explored but now he was ready for it. This wasn't as bad as it got; they hadn't even touched on the nightmares or the blood that Bray saw in the one he unwittingly passed through. That was okay. Bray was accepting; he loved not for what he could get in return, but what he could genuinely, honestly offer of himself. That was his way of being noticed, of being accepted, and it was enough for him even if others still called him a doormat because of it.

He smiled through a veil of his own tears—though unshed—as Jack's emotions overflowed. Discreetly he passed a thumb under Jack's eye to swipe away a tiny little drop, blurring the path it took down his handsome face. "Let's get out of here," Bray said softly to him as he stood fully and rounded the table, using his body to shield Jack from that overly friendly young person behind the counter.

Jack was right—what Luka saw was only the armor. Bray, he knew Jack.

"Do you want to go to the park?" He passed a gentle hand over the side of Jack's head the way his mother used to do for him. Yes, she would have loved him. It was she who taught Bray to look past the exterior, to see the person inside. She would have realized that young Jack was in pain, and that his behavior was symptomatic of something deeper than 'a kid being a kid.'

[Jack Ripley]

"God, yes."

Anywhere but here, really. The idea that the kid behind the counter was witnessing this whole thing was embarrassing enough. Jack was dramatic, true, but he was dramatic in a calculated way. This was beyond his control, the entire situation slipped out of his control at some point and he couldn't seem to get a handle on it.

Brayden seemed to sense his unwillingness to share his little breakdown with the world at large--or even just the kid working in this cute little cafe--because he stood between them like a shield. Funny, that. Jack's armor just started to crack and somebody was there to act as his shield in its place. The idea warmed his heart. Here Brayden thought he was boring and ordinary but he was the warmest, most giving person Jack had ever met. It still felt unreal, like a person of this caliber couldn't exist beyond his imagination.

But if this was his imagination, he certainly wouldn't have chosen to start crying like a bitch in the middle of a public space. Thank you very much.

He needed to get out. Outside. With the fresh air. Jack turned his head into the hand against his head, then kissed the inside of his wrist. "Let's go," he whispered, before sliding out of his seat. He could not get far enough away from that cafe.

[Brayden Smith]

"Come back again soon cuties!" Luka called to them from behind the counter, waving energetically as they made their way out of the cafe.

To Jack—but mostly to himself—Bray muttered, "Never." It was too weird now to come back, when he knew that the waiter wanted to sleep with them both, and that they'd had a public heart-to-heart and cried and laughed and generally made a scene. Luckily the cafe wasn't packed so their secret was safe, but Bray knew that there were other cute cafes. There had to be other cafes; this couldn't be the one and only place they could go to for over-priced brunch.

Outside where it was chilly but brisk, a mild wind felt refreshing on Bray's face. It was too nice a day to stay cooped up indoors, otherwise he would have suggested going home to finish the rest of their conversation. The park downtown was a man-made space but it was still nice and green even at this time of the year, and if another meltdown happened, there wouldn't be too many people to see it. They could hide behind some trees and cry it out if need be.

Bray hooked his fingers around Jack's and smiled up at him as they walked. The park was maybe a block and a half away—nice thing about small towns was that nothing was ever far away. "Are you okay?" He asked, then added with a touch of mischief himself, "I have tissues in my pocket if you need them..."

[Jack Ripley]

Ah, fresh air. Jack felt like he could breathe again. The cold air stung his face but it felt good. He felt... alive. At least... he did until Brayden offered up tissues. Alarmed, he brought his free hand up to his face, where he could still feel the moisture of his own tears. Shit.

"Is it that obvious?"

He looked over at Brayden and the mischief written all over his face.

"Oh, you little..."

Change didn't happen overnight, okay? Jack still had a carefully crafted reputation to uphold. He didn't want people looking at him with pity in their eyes. That was a huge part in why he crafted all that pretty armor in the first place. If people were going to look--and it was hard not to notice a tall man such as himself--then he was going to make it on his own terms.

"I can't believe the audacity of that kid." And then he realized that Brayden held onto the napkins and he turned to him with feigned betrayal. "Or the audacity of you! You kept them? Are you planning to give him a call after all?"

[Brayden Smith]

"Yep." Hey, look—the tables were turned. For once. Bray liked being the one doing the teasing, and his was a gentle form of it anyway. He wasn't nudging Jack in the ribs with his elbow and guffawing about how he'd just bawled out in the middle of a cafe, right out in the open for everyone to see. That, he thought, was something an asshole would do—and he was not, nor had he ever been, an asshole.

Jack realized his joke and he couldn't help but laugh as it finally sank in. But it was cute. Jack was cute, even if all he wanted people to see was how amazingly fashionable and incredibly refined he was. And he was those things, but he could also be vulnerable, soft, weak—which was okay. Bray was here to act as his shield when he needed one, and he knew when to step back when Jack didn't. That was the beauty of a partnership; their burdens were cut in half because they could share them with each other.

He shrugged a little in the face of Jack's feigned outrage. "Well... no," Bray admitted, before that mischievous spark was back. "I'm giving him two calls, because I have two napkins."

He dropped Jack's hand and made a run for it, laughing. The park was up ahead anyway; Bray made a beeline for it (Beeline... haha), for the swings he could see were empty. He used to love the swings; they made him feel like he was flying. Bray ran to one and slid his butt into it, kicking off with that same old swoop in the pit of his stomach that felt a whole lot like falling in love.

"Come on! I bet I can go higher than you!"

[Jack Ripley]

"What?"

Brayden was off like a shot and Jack stood for a minute like an idiot before he raced after him.

"That doesn't even make sense!" he shouted. Two calls! For some reason, Jack could only imagine Brayden dialing the number and hanging up. Twice. Which was amusing. And probably true to life, because what would Brayden even say to the kid when he called?

Plop! Right into the swing, a little awkward, though, given his height. Swings were generally made for kids and his legs were too long. Jack couldn't even remember the last time he'd sat his ass in a swing. Probably in his high school days, but not to swing higher than anybody. Just to wait for a dealer in the middle of the night.

Now he felt like he was back in kindergarten again, when everything was still shaded through the eyes of innocence. Jack used to swing on his belly like a little moron, twirling in circles until he got dizzy. Now he was swinging with his legs out in front of him.

"I'm way too tall for this shit, B," he said, as a couple of kids walked by with big, wide eyes.

[Brayden Smith]

Jack was a little too tall for the swings, wasn't he? It looked like his feet kept wanting to touch the ground when he swung out and that wasn't how it was done! Had he never swung before? ...or maybe that didn't suit his image, to be gripping tightly onto the metal links holding the swing up, with the hair whipping in and out of his face.

Bray laughed as he jumped off mid-swing, stumbling a little. "Wait. Wait I'll push you." He saw the kids staring at them and he... didn't care. For once. He was out on a first date with a man that logic dictated was far out of his league, they cried in the middle of a cafe (where Bray also kissed him in plain sight of everyone), and now here they were. What was the judgmental stares of two kids compared to that list of incriminating actions?

Or maybe they were just staring at Jack, who was dressed like he was going to a fancy ball, swinging away in the kids' play area.

He ran around behind Jack. "Hold on tight!" Bray grasped the sides of the seat and ran forward with all his energy, pushing him off as hard as he could. He ducked out of the way as Jack swung back and pushed him again, grinning, having fun even if he wasn't the one hurtling through the air.

"Doesn't it feel like you're flying?"