#ilitw mc: jaxon harris

[diamondchoices]

The Truth Hurts

[shows up two weeks late with starbucks and one fanfiction. but hey, this time it’s It Lives instead of HSS, though I do have three fics started for that...oops.]

[MC: Jaxon Harris (ILITW), Kita Vance (ILB)]

             The day was overcast, gray clouds in the skies and the colors of the town dulled as he made his way down Main Street. He was nervous—really nervous. His right hand was fiddling with the whistle at the end of a long chain.

             You can do this, he thought to himself. You need to do this; if not for them, then for yourself.

             He rolls his bottom lip—already chapped and skin cracking where he’s repeatedly bit and picked at—between his teeth. How will they take it? Will they hate him too, for keeping it to himself for years? His thumb rubs against the whistle with a little more force. Their faces, hurt and twisted and pained, flash through his mind on a loop, cycling from friend to friend to friend. Andy’s face—at homecoming, in the woods facing a zombified Tom, in the ruins facing down Jane—in particular, came to mind more often than the others.

             He’s…not sure what he would do if Andy were to hate him, to never talk to him again, to break up with him.

             But it was everything he was expecting to happen.

             “Yo, Jaxon!”

             He turned around, wide eyed with hand wrapped around the whistle in a white-knuckled grip and saw the very person on his mind.

             Andy was jogging on the sidewalk behind him, one arm waving in the air and bright smile on his face. The hood of his sweatshirt bounces with his movements. He looks a bit like a kid again, and Jaxon has to laugh a little at the sight. He waits for the other to catch up with happiness in his heart and dread heavy in stomach.

             “Hey,” Jaxon greets softly, threading his fingers between Andy’s and bumping his shoulder lightly. “Long time, no see.”

             “It was, like, three days!” Andy laughs.

             “Three days without your pretty face?” Jaxon teases. His free hand reached up to rest against the side of his face, thumb rubbing across the swell of his cheekbone. “Too long.”

             “Smooth,” Andy muttered, leaning up the inch to press a gentle kiss to the corner of his boyfriend’s lips.

             “Well, I have to keep up with you somehow,” Jaxon muttered, head tilting so that their lips met in a proper kiss. One kiss turned to two, two to three, three to four. Between each, one would insist that they should get to the arcade bar and the other would draw them back into another kiss while agreeing the need to leave. It was a sweet distraction for Jaxon, even though with each kiss the weight in his stomach dropped lower, lower, lower. He couldn’t help but think that this would just make the pain to come worse as he fell a little more in love with the man in front of him.

             Eventually, though, they managed to move forward down Main Street to the town’s recent addition of an arcade bar. It had come highly recommended from Tom. Jaxon was hoping its atmosphere would offset the truth he had to share.

             They were able to find their friends at a corner table—the largest offered—with almost everyone present. Lily and Lucas were just setting down a pitcher of the latest batch of Graveyard while Dan and Stacy laughed. He could only smile at the sight. It was far from their senior year of high school, but each time Jaxon saw his childhood friends all together in one place enjoying each other’s company, he was reminded all over again of both his loneliness during their time apart and his thankfulness that they’d been able to come back together. And, more importantly, that they’d been able to stay together.

             “Hey guys,” Jaxon greeted. Stacy and Lucas smiled while Dan raised a hand in greeting. Lily came around the table and gave him a hug that he returned with just as much enthusiasm. She moved to hug Andy as Jaxon embraced Lucas, then Stacy, then Dan. He then took a seat next to Dan and pulled out the chair on his left for Andy.

             Jaxon bit the inside of his cheek, fingers tapping on the tabletop and stomach turning inside out as his nerves took control again. Both Andy and Dan noticed this and tried to catch his eye with their concerned gazes, though he just shook his head and gave them a tight smile whenever they managed to make eye contact. He heard Andy sigh beside him before a warm hand rested on his thigh, thumb moving in soothing ministrations over his jeans. He moved his arm to rest across the other’s shoulders and turned just enough so that he could place a firm kiss to his boyfriend’s temple.

             “Gross,” a monotonous voice came from behind them.

             He looked over his shoulder and smiled at Ava.

             “Aw, Ava, you do care,” Jaxon teased. Ava rolled her eyes though one corner of her lips twitched upwards. “Uh, anyway, are Connor and Tom coming?”

             “Connor’s working,” Stacy informed.

             “Tom’s not gonna make it either,” Andy announced, fingers moving quickly over his keyboard to reply to a text. “He’s got a date with Kita.”

             “Well if he’s going to ditch us, I suppose it’s okay because it’s a date,” he sighed, though the smile on his face contradicted his tone of voice. “In all seriousness, they deserve it. From what I heard, things in Pine Springs was insane.”

             “Oh yeah! How’d all that go?” Stacy asked. “Were they able to…you know?”

             Andy nodded as he slid his phone into the pocket of his blue hoodie.

             “It went about as well as you can imagine with the Power involved—monsters, life or death situations, lake ghost hellbent on revenge. Turned out that there was a secret cult too. They tried to sacrifice Kita and use her as, like, an anchor or something.”

             “What?” Lucas asked, eyebrows furrowed and face scrunched with worried.

             “Yeah,” Jaxon jumped in. “The lake ghost turned out to be the spirit of Kita’s grandmother.”

             “Damn,” Ava said after a low whistle, slightly raised eyebrows the only indication of shock on her otherwise neutral facial expression. “Think I’d be able to get a firsthand account for my research?”

             He rolled his eyes while the others laughed, and Andy told her she could ask Tom herself. The group lapsed into idle chatter, catching up on the summer weeks spent apart: the girls in Stacy’s summer gymnastics class are learning quickly, Andy is training as hard as ever and progress through the process of transitioning has slowly but steadily been made, Ava went out to Cora’s abandoned home again to poke around and clean it up, Lily and her girlfriend met for coffee on Saturday to brainstorm the story for her next game, Dan is volunteering with the local Boys & Girls club and has become a Big Brother to a boy named Benji, Lucas is making time to relax and destress but also helping Andy organize his training schedule as well as researching for an environmental group on his college’s campus. And Jaxon…

             Jaxon had holed himself up in the woods trying endlessly to help Noah.

             Everyone’s eyes fell on him; it was his turn to share. The question was swimming through their eyes: what about you, where have you been, what have you been doing. Even Andy, who had arguably seen the most of him among their friends, seemed curious. He took a long drink from his glass of Graveyard. His only attempt at stalling the inevitable. Then all that was left was the ice in his cup and the strange sour aftertaste of the drink.

             “I’ve…actually got something I really need to tell you guys,” he said, only just loud enough to be heard. “I…I’m not—I’m not sure how you’ll take it. I don’t want you all to hate me.”

             Andy squeezed his hand. “Jaxon, babe—”

             “No, I—I just need to get it all out at once. I’ve been…visiting…Noah,” his voice tapered off as Andy’s hand grew slack in his grip and silence befell the table. “He’s still in there! And despite everything he did, I…I want to help him. Find some way to, to, to separate him and the Power, or keep him aware of his humanity, his memories at the least. And there’s been progress! He remembers who he is, he mostly knows right from wrong, he understands! But—but above all, he’s…he’s still Noah, he’s still…still our friend.”

             He took a deep breath and kept his eyes down. He focused on the slightly sticky tabletop, the water coalescing around the bottom of his cup, the small scratches worked into the wood. Anything, anything, but his friends’ faces. His ears were assaulted by the silence of his friends and the cacophony of noise coming from the rest of the bar. The weight in his stomach has spread to his limbs, rendering them heavy, thick, and useless.

             Then there’s the sharp scraping of a chair on the floor followed by heavy footsteps moving away from the table. And then the scraping of another chair, another set of footsteps.

His eyes are beginning to burn.

Another chair, more footsteps.

His vision has blurred, tears pooling in his eyes.

Another.

His throat closes.

Andy’s hand is still limp in his hold, slowly, painfully, slipping…slipping…slipping until there’s nothing but air and regret in its place.

But the chair doesn’t move. There isn’t any scraping of wood against flooring, but it’s impossibly worse. Andy hadn’t gotten up and left but he still felt further away than he’d been in a very long time. It’s what pushes him over the edge; tears spill—from the corners of his eyes, fat drops dripping from his lashes. His breathing is shaky. He sniffles, and his nose starts to run.

He must look like a mess.

And then there’s a hand, hesitant and gentle, that rests against his cheek, thumb sweeping warm water away. He leans into it, and next thing he knows is his head is on Andy’s shoulder, a wet spot quickly building. It isn’t until his breathing starts to even out—still shaky, but stable enough that he felt less like he was falling apart.

“Why?” Andy asks. His voice is quiet, carefully controlled. Jaxon doesn’t look up, just sags further into him. “Why didn’t—why didn’t you just tell us? Tell me?”

He breaths out a half-hearted laugh.

“The guy literally forced us into the ruins at knife point to play the game…I mean, there was definitely some manipulation on Jane’s part, but…I think a lot of it came from a place of unrealistic hope that—that he could fix it. He wanted to believe he could fix it, save her, at any cost. Even if…even if it was one of us. And I want to believe that I can save him too. But…”

Jaxon finally looks up, bloodshot eyes meeting watery ones.

“I’m not willing to lose you. Any of you.”

“Fuck, man,” Andy huffed, hand rubbing away the tears in his own eyes. “I love you, Jax, but you are the sweetest dumbass I know.”

Jaxon chuckled, pressing his face back into the crook of Andy’s neck.

The bubble around them that blocked out the rest of the arcade bar broke when someone cleared their throat. They looked up and Jaxon turned in his seat to find Dan looking uncomfortable and shifting in his seat.

“That was cute and all, guys, but should we…talk to the others?” Dan asked.

Andy snorted…which caused Jaxon to giggle…which made its way into Dan’s system until the three of them were laughing.

They’d talk to the others; they would work out the tension. They’d come up with a plan of some kind. Jaxon had to believe that—wanted to believe it—and if anyone was going to do the impossible, it may as well be them.

[and there you have it folks. not sure how much I like the ending but oh well. hope you liked it <3]