The Sickness Is the Cure (Jalex)

34 - Terrible Mess

*December 19*

Alex hated Christmas.

Normally, he was all for stringing up twinkling lights, dotting evergreens with baubles, crappily wrapping presents in tacky paper, sipping peppermint hot chocolate, and making snow angels while soaking his favorite fingerless gloves through with frost. But, like most current things, that year's extraneous circumstances had changed his opinion of the usually jolly holiday.

As it was, Alex had only gotten a tree after endless nagging from Zack (the muscular man knew that his friend would eventually regret going without) refrained from putting up any decorations besides the wreath on his door that was about as old as Alex himself (it wasn’t fair to limit his neighbor’s Christmas cheer just because things had been recently shitty for him) and eaten even more candy canes than usual in hopes of the minty jolt distracting him from… well, everything. And, in the case that Jack decided to pay him the respect of actually responding to one of his infinite messages sent through practically every medium possible by saying that their ‘thing’ was over, than he could probably sharpen the end enough to stab himself with. In his forlorn state, Alex couldn’t help but imagine everything as an out from the depressing life he was currently suffering in.

Zack had taken it upon himself to make Alex not waste the entire winter season, and had, therefore, dragged his best friend to an assortment of holiday events. After realizing that making the heart-broken blond attend public spectacles only increased his anguish, since there were usually about a dozen happy couples with hands clasped together in coat pockets mulling around, Zack had resigned to mostly forcing his friend out of Alex’s apartment and into his own. When the man was in his house, Zack found, it was that much harder for Alex to run away when he started offering unwanted solutions to the current Jack situation.

The one downfall of this recently implemented system was that about half of Spencer’s wardrobe was now scattered around Zack’s apartment, and the younger man never failed to notice the painfully longing look Alex’s eyes assumed whenever he caught one of band shirts that he knew was too small to fit over Zack’s muscular torso draped over random furniture. Zack had been doing his best to make everything less painful for the despondent man, but him and his boyfriend could barely tell their clothes apart anymore. Unfortunately, this also lead to Alex practically crying the last time he saw Spencer, since he’d been wearing a slightly too-large Orioles tee that, in fact, had been given to Zack by Alex as part of his last birthday present. Then again, the list of things that triggered Alex’s recent near emotional breakdowns was too lengthy for all of the items on it to possibly be avoided.

But Zack was doing his absolute best, and had thrown every article of clothing that he could find deep into his closet before coaxing Alex over earlier that day with the promise of gingerbread cookies and a movie marathon. However, this had turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, considering that Alex had stubbornly refused to budge when insisting that they watch Love Actually. It was a disastrous choice, and caused Alex to be curled into Zack’s  side, sniffling nose tucked into his best friend’s neck, dirty sweat pant covered legs trembling in his lap, the red blanket resting around their shoulders tangled through Alex’s arms and around Zack’s head.

Zack sighed, scowling at the TV and pressing mute to cut off the cheers being called at the couple who just got engaged and instead focusing his full attention on the man causing the salty stain on the shoulder of his shirt. Zack deftly tossed the remote to the side, less than caring about the inevitability of it falling into a crack and disappearing for the next week as he wrapped his arms around Alex’s waist, pulling him closer and trying to soothe him. Zack mentally berated himself, making an internal promise to start putting his foot down and not let Alex do whatever he wanted when he was aware that certain things would only make him feel worse.