Teenage Nightmare (Jalex)

Practice Makes Perfect

(Song- Practice Makes Perfect - Cute Is What We Aim For)
(TW: Talk about manic episode/panic attack)
(February.)

What a way to start February.
Alex was getting used to his routine.
Wake up at 7. Be allowed to shower or don't. Get dressed. Eat, which he was still doing in his room. He's only on his fifth day here. Get in line to take medication, opening mouth and lifting tongue to prove that it's been swallowed. Recreation time or time in your room. Alex chose to be in his room. Therapy. Free time which Alex usually used to walk around the grounds, not talking to anyone. He wasn't comfortable enough to do that yet. Then visit time or phone call time.
Rian kept his promise of visiting every day, but today was different. Today Jack was going to visit.
Rian had asked him on his second night if he'd be okay with that, because Jack had texted back to Alex, and then called Rian when he got no answer, and Rian explained everything like Alex had asked him to. 

Alex looked through the clothes he'd brought with him nervously. If he knew Jack was going to acknowledge his existence again, he might've picked something nice to wear. 
He groaned as he looked through everything, "Fuck." He muttered.
Finally, he just settled on some black sweatpants and a white v neck shirt. It sucked. It would have to be good enough though. It was better than his plaid pajamas. Maybe it wasn't. Who cared at this point.
He walked out of his room and looked at the nurse at the desk, "Hi, I'm waiting for my visitor to come... I don't know if he's here yet. Am I allowed to go down and wait?" Usually with Rian and Isobel, they let the desk know and a nurse came to get him, but he was nervous.
"What's his name?" She asked with a friendly smile.
"Jack Barakat." 
"He just checked himself in, you can go down. I'll open the door for you and walk you there." She got up and led him through the doors.
Alex turned bright red when he saw Jack standing there with a small smile on his face. The fact that he was in a fucking mental health facility and had a nurse babysitting him had him so embarrassed. Still not as embarrassed as the fact that he literally lost his mind in front of the whole school, screaming about shadow people and blood. That was on camera. He'd never live it down.

The nurse stopped Alex and told him the rules just like every time, "If you're being gifted something, show us first so we can tell you if you can have it or if we have to hold it until you're released or it goes back with your visitor to give to you later. You and your visitor may walk the grounds together, but nowhere else other than the visiting room or the grounds. Your visitor can stay until visiting hours are over. It's 3 PM now, so you have four hours." She said with a tiny smile, seeing the embarrassment on his face. He nodded at her, then looked at Jack.
His stomach was churning, and he forgot how to move. His legs felt like they had weights attached to them, holding him there. 
Jack walked over to him, "Hey Lex." He said quietly, shyly.
Alex started chewing on his bottom lip. He looked at Jack and thought of what to say. Hi sounded stupid.
Finally, he gave up.
"H-hey." He nearly whispered out.
"Wanna sit down or take a walk?" Jack asked, holding his hand out.
"S-sit." Alex took his hand. 
Jack led them to a little sofa towards the back of the room and sat down. Alex sat down next to him, pulled his knees to his chest and hugged his knees.
"How are you?" Jack asked, trying to get into some sort of conversation.
"Better...I think." Alex responded, unable to look him in the eye with how humiliated he felt.
"You can tell me about it you know, if you want. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you." Alex saw Jack looking at the ground when he said that, like he was nervous too.
"It's not your fault Jack." Alex sighed and put his knees down, leaning back against the sofa a little.
"I've been fucked up for a long time. I was born defective. I could handle it though. Then I killed my brother." He looked at Jack. Jack just looked back at him for a moment.
"Rian told me...You didn't kill your brother Alex. It was an accident." He said quietly.
Alex just laughed a little and shook his head, "Yeah, and who's the idiot ten year old who made him take me out in the first place? If we didn't go out, he'd be alive, and I wouldn't be as fucked up as I am now. Maybe." He shook his head.

Jack sighed, "Alex...You were ten. You also didn't control the car that caused the accident. Give yourself a break."
Alex sighed, looking at Jack again. "I know. Logically, I know that. Every fiber of my being knows that. Except this little voice in the back of my head that permanently lives there, that I'm always trying to shut up, tells me it's my fault. Tells me that I'm a bad father. A bad person. Tells me I should've been the one to die in that crash. I have flashbacks of it. The only thing that happened to me? My face got messed up from the airbag and I broke my arm. That's it. My brother had a metal rod going through his chest and his face was almost unrecognizable. My brain tells me that should've been me. That teeny, tiny part." He chewed on his bottom lip, rocking himself side to side a little bit. Anxiety habit. 
"I'm sorry Alex. That you go through all of this, and I'm sorry if I made it worse...I was just scared." Jack looked ashamed of himself, when he truly had no reason to be, but he was anyway.
Alex closed his eyes for a minute, then looked at Jack again, "You don't have anything to apologize for...If I was you, and that information was just thrown at me like that, I would've run for the hills. So I don't blame you for avoiding me...It's better that you did that than been mad at me to my face. That probably would've made things worse." He looked down at his hands, fidgeting his fingers.
Jack noticed all of Alex's nervous habits and took his hand. 
Alex just looked at their hands together. He missed that.
"I'm really sorry you liked the crazy one...For so long. I mean, you kept trying to take me out forever, and I always said no...Before I had Elise, it was because you looked like a douchebag...Then after I got Ellie pregnant, it was because I didn't want to do that to you or anyone else...Then after Elise was born, I really didn't want to drag anyone down with me...And now it's because I'm fucking insane. Right now Jack, behind your head there are spiders crawling down the wall." So his new medication hadn't kicked in yet. Not fully. The hallucinations weren't bad and the voices were quiet for the most part, they were just background noise, like what you'd hear when you're on the phone with someone in a crowded room, but he still saw tiny things. They just weren't scary things. 

Jack thought about that for a minute, "I don't think you're crazy. Your brain works differently. You need help with it. That doesn't make you crazy or a bad person or someone not deserving of love or care... I think you deserve all of those things." 
Alex smiled a tiny bit, "So you don't care that there are spiders behind your head, as far as my eyes can see? Or that if I listen hard enough to absolutely nothing, I can hear entire conversations in my head that no one else can, where they're all talking about me?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Well," Jack smirked, "The spiders freak me out a little. In all seriousness though, yeah I do care. Just not for the reasons you think. I care because you're still you. I care because those things are kind of intimidating for me to think about, but that doesn't mean I want to be with you any less. The fact that you have a kid scared the crap out of me, but only because if I get attached, and she gets attached, and something happens, what is that going to do to us? It'll break your heart and it'll take her down too...That's not fair. I should've just told you that but I was too much of a pussy to tell you." He sighed, looking at his and Alex's hands, still linked together.
Alex thought about that for a minute before speaking up.
"Jack...I literally flipped out and blacked out once, then I had another panic attack, then you had to watch me take my pill that clearly wasn't working in the first place and was embarrassing for me to have you see that, and then as if I wasn't fucked up enough and bad enough for you already, I passed out on Rian all day pretty much, which I'm sure you saw. I even hallucinated that I was about to walk into a person, pushed Rian out of the way so we could avoid hitting them and apologized to them, where Rian then had to tell me that no one was there, and I'd apologized to air because I saw a whole ass person. I don't even know who. Then the icing on the fucked up Alex cake...I literally hallucinated in my bathroom that some shadow person with no face to even be staring at me was staring at me, coming to get me. Cowering on the floor of a false image that my head came up with. All on it's own. Still, there are spiders behind your head when I know for a fact that there actually aren't, because they weren't there when we first sat down, and I know that there is no way that at least 50 spiders magically began crawling down the wall. So tell me, please. How much of you still wants to give being with some fucked up, psych ward, mental fuck up freak a chance? Because I don't see you wanting any of that." He looked down at their hands again. He wanted to take his hand back, but didn't at the same time.

Jack thought about everything Alex was saying, "Alex, I want to give all of it a chance. So you see spiders. So you hear background noise, and if you listen hard enough you can hear a conversation about yourself. So you have panic attacks. So you black out when they get to be too much. So you take medication to help stop it. So you have a baby. So you're pretty much always nervous. So what? I liked you before I knew all of that, and I like you after. I just needed time to realize it, and I'm sorry that I hurt you in the middle of that. I didn't mean to do that to you. I'm sorry that you feel the way you do about yourself, but I don't and you're just going to have to take that for what it is, because I don't feel like that. I don't feel like you're crazy or a mental fuck up, and you're not in a psych ward." 
Alex scoffed, "Might as well be in one." He muttered, looking around. He didn't hate it here, but he hated how restricting it was.
He pointed, "Look, a mouse." He rolled his eyes at another hallucination. Usually, he just ignored them but for the point of proving to Jack how psychotic he truly felt, he was going to be open.
"Bet if we go outside, I'll see a UFO in the sky." He sighed.
Jack rolled his eyes, "Great, so you see a mouse and you could see a UFO. I still don't think you're psychotic, and I still don't think you're insane or fucked up. I think you see things differently and your brain operates on a completely different system. We're all running Windows, you're running Mac. You're just different, but different isn't always a bad thing. So stop trying to make me think that it is, because I don't." He looked at Alex, who was now looking at his lap.
"Let's go for a walk." Alex said quietly, standing up.
Jack stood up and followed Alex out the door that led to the grass area in the back. It's cold out, but Alex didn't care, despite the fact that he shivered a little. It gave him something to feel.

Jack put his hands in his pockets and walked next to Alex on the little pathway, staying quiet for a moment.
Alex stopped at a tree that he really liked and sat down in the grass.
Jack sat down next to him and held his hand out.
Alex looked down at it, then placed his hand in Jack's, locking their fingers together.
He looked up at Jack, noticing how he looked, memorizing him all over again. His black and blonde hair with a little fringe in front, the rest spiked up into this pointy mohawk thing that he loved so much, his pretty chocolate eyes. The dark stubble on his face. The way his slightly large nose fit his face so perfectly that he couldn't imagine anything else. He tilted his head a little, taking in the little bit of dark under Jack's eyes, it was always there so it didn't worry him too much. He looked at Jack's neck, the place he'd left marks what seemed like forever ago.
He reached up and touched his own neck and collarbone. The places where he swore he could still feel the bite marks and purple marks Jack left there.
Jack smiled a tiny bit.
Alex reached his finger up and traced it down that pretty boy's cheek, down his jawline to his chin, then down his neck. He's real. 
"You're real." Alex whispered.
Jack nodded, "I am indeed real. Did you think I wasn't?" He asked curiously.
Alex shrugged, "I don't trust myself these days...For all I know, I'm still sitting in my room here, completely disassociating and my mind is just seeing all of this...So. The fact that I've been touching you tells me that you're real." He sighed.

Jack reached up, letting go of Alex's hand. He cupped Alex's face gently between his hands, leaned in and pressed a kiss to Alex's lips, pulling back just the tiniest bit.
"I'm real." He whispered.
Alex shivered a little when he felt Jack's warm breath against his face.
He leaned in and kissed Jack again, wrapping his arms around his neck. 
Jack put his hands on Alex's waist and hoisted him up so that the beautiful caramel haired boy was straddling his lap. 
Alex parted his lips and let Jack in, molding their lips together, moving in unison. Alex's hand reached up Jack's neck and into his hair, holding the back of his head there. 
Jack's arms tightened around Alex's waist. 
Alex pulled back after a moment when he needed to breathe. He smiled a little at Jack.
Jack smiled back, hugging Alex close to him.
"I want to be with you Lex...Will you just try to let me?" He asked, looking in that pretty boy's hazel brownish eyes. 
Alex nodded, "Yeah...I will. Just...Don't give up on me okay?" 
Jack smiled, "I would never." He pressed another kiss to Alex's lips.
"We'll figure it out, and we'll be okay." Jack added, his nose brushed against Alex's.
"Practice makes perfect." Alex whispered.