Ralph settled down on his bedroom floor later that same night after he and his father returned home from the grocery store.
The truth was that Ralph didn't really want to go to the store, but he did want to get away from Jack. After the latter had shut him down when he tried to talk about the previous night, Ralph felt... rejected. Though, he wasn't planning on admitting that to Jack. He'd considered asking to stay in the car when they arrived at the store, but that would've just raised more questions. So Ralph followed his dad into the store and grasped onto the man's hand. And brave as he was, Ralph kept his eyes closed almost the whole time, letting his dad act as his seeing eye dog. If Jeffery noticed this, he never said it.
The sound of Ralph's bedroom door creeping open was enough to bring him out of the sleep he'd been slowly drifting into. He shot up, on guard, a habit he couldn't break after he'd formed it to protect his life during his last days on the island.
"Hey" Jack's groggy voice came from the dark silhouette standing in the open doorway.
"Uh, hey" Ralph's equally as groggy voice responded. "What are you doing in here?"
Jack didn't answer, he just stepped out of the doorway and closed the door behind him before venturing over to where Ralph was sitting on the floor. Jack plopped down beside him, leaning his back against Ralph's unoccupied bed.
Ralph waited for an explanation, staring at Jack in the dark as he held his weight up on his tired arms.
"What are you doing in here?" Ralph asked again, the hurt he'd been holding against Jack all day coming to the surface a little.
"I don't fuckin know" Jack admitted lazily but frustratedly.
Ralph scrunched his eyebrows with confusion. Jack's response didn't answer his question, it only raised more.
"I talked to your mom" Jack spoke into the bitter silence again.
"About us?" Ralph asked worriedly.
"No, dipshit!" Jack scoffed rudely. "About me. Me staying here and whatever."
"Okay" Ralph said slowly. "And?"
"And nothing. I just thought she hated me."
"She doesn't hate you" Ralph insisted.
"She used to" Jack argued.
"Why do you think that?" Ralph wondered cluelessly.
"I can just tell. Grownups have hated me my whole life, I got good at picking up on it" Jack explained.
Ralph was puzzled by the way Jack tended to tell sad stories in the tone of voice one might ask for the time or to borrow a pencil in. Ralph didn't know what to say; he never did.
It was silent for a few, awkward minutes. Ralph still didn't know what to say to Jack, or why the blond boy had snuck into his room after 2200 hours.
"I let it out on purpose" Jack said seemingly out of nowhere.
"What?"
"The fire watch."
Ralph was sitting up properly now, eyes bugging out of his head, confusion and anger boiling inside him, his blood flowing through his veins at what felt like a temperature of a hundred degrees. "You did what?!" he finally found the words to shout.
"On the island" Jack elaborated unnecessarily. "I knew the fire was gonna go out and I just... let it. I told my tribe the hunt was more important."
Ralph, as angry as he was, was wondering why Jack was telling him this now.
"Why would you do something so stupid? On purpose nonetheless" Ralph resisted the urge to continue shouting, but didn't want his parents to wake up and find Jack in here.
Jack didn't immediately respond, and Ralph's frustration started to slowly increase.
"Because I didn't want to be rescued."
The last time Ralph had been this taken back was when the plane started going down all those months ago. He was torn by the thought of Jack not wanting to be rescued, and how he'd hadn't figured it out earlier.
"You better start learning to live with yourself cause we ain't gonna get rescued"
"A plane goes down in the middle of the ocean, there's no wreckage, who's gonna find us?"
"Jack says we're never gonna be rescued"
"There's like eight million islands out here, why should they find this one?"
Ralph had been aware of Jack's blatant pessimism about getting rescued, but it never occurred to him that Jack might've been hoping he'd be right.
"You're just saying that" Ralph thought, but he only half believed it.
"Yeah, you're right. I'm just saying that. I'm admitting that I let the fire go out on purpose and that I was the only freak on the island who didn't want to get rescued because I'm so fucking eager to give you a reason to punch me 'cross the head. As if I don't get enough of that shit as it is..."
As dramatic as Jack was being, he was right. Ralph couldn't think of a reason Jack would say something so insane if it wasn't the bitter, unpleasant truth.
"I don't get it" Ralph admitted. "I mean I know you don't have it made at home or anything like that... but you really hoped we'd never be rescued?"
"You don't get it. You don't understand what I had out there" Jack vaguely explained.
"You mean like dirty water, fly infested meals, a single torn up pair of briefs, and a bed made of sand?" Ralph insinuated half heartedly.
"I mean like people who listened to what I had to say, people who cared about me, people who confided in me and wanted me. I know it sounds crazy but I belonged there, among the hunters. I had a sense of purpose. I mattered to people other than myself. I didn't have what you had to come back to" Jack explained, his truth tugging at Ralph's heart.
"You mattered to me" Ralph spoke hesitantly.
"Bullshit" Jack scoffed.
"It's not. We were friends, Jack. You spent half the summer at my house. We watched movies in my room at the academy. We stayed up for hours after lights out outside in front of the fire pit together, talking and messing around. I always cared about you, since we first became friends back in what? 5th and 6th grades?"
"And then the island happened" Jack retorted, "and we weren't friends anymore."
"And I still cared about you anyway" Ralph bravely admitted.
Jack burst into a moment of laughter. Ralph sat and stared at him quietly, clearly less amused than the blond boy was. Jack's laughter died down quickly and awkwardly as he cleared his throat.
"You shouldn't" Jack said suddenly.
"Shouldn't what?"
"Care about me" Jack clarified.
"Why not?" Ralph pushed.
"Because I don't deserve it. Especially not from someone like you" Jack turned away from Ralph, even though it was too dark for him to be seen clearly by the other boy anyway.
"I don't believe that" Ralph countered gently but firmly.
"You know what I'm capable of" Jack reminded the brunette. "Don't do that to yourself."
"And who knows what I would've been capable of had your wish come true, if we hadn't been rescued and were still out there" Ralph said to the troubled boy in front of him.
"I got sent to the academy as a punishment" Jack admitted unexpectedly.
"A punishment for what?" Ralph asked as he remembered overhearing something similar about Jack back on the island.
"I was pissed at my dad... he decided I couldn't go to this concert I'd planned to go to with my friend from school. We'd planned it months in advance, saved up for the tix ourselves. Then the night before, my dad revoked his permission because he was angry at me, as usual. So after he went to work the next day, I took the keys from under the neighbor's doormat and used their car to drive to the concert. Or at least, I tried. I got busted on the drive there. Speeding. My big shot asshole of a father and his deep pockets got the charges dropped. But still, military school was his way of getting rid of me and all the problems I created for 'im."
"Were you really going 80 on the highway?" Ralph asked after taking a moment to process.
"When did I say I was?" Jack wondered aloud.
"You didn't. The twins did. On the island. I overheard them talking to Tex about it" Ralph confessed.
"How'd they know?" Jack raised his voice a little.
"Tony, I think" Ralph tried to recall.
"Hell, people need to learn to shut their goddamn mouths" Jack rolled his eyes.
"So you were? Going 80, I mean" Ralph reiterated.
"Yeah" Jack sighed. "At least."
Ralph tended not to believe every rumour he heard. His parents had always told him to take anything said about a person when they weren't around with a grain of salt. Maybe he didn't know Jack as well as he thought he did. Or worse, maybe he knew exactly who Jack was, and it failed to change how he felt about the troubled boy.
"Well guess what?" Ralph broke the silence.
"What?"
"You still matter to me" the brunette said softly.
Jack felt his heart pick up at the tenderness of Ralph's words and in his voice. Jack started to panic a little as the closeness they shared last night crept up on him. He couldn't go there. Not again.
"You're insane" Jack declared, somewhat jokingly.
"That's what it means to care about someone, Jack. It's not conditional. I see why you don't understand that but it's true, at least for everyone else it is. If you let yourself be scared of being cared for for the rest of your life, you're never gonna be happy. It'll never be enough. Those kids followed you out of fear and uncertainty on the island, Jack. You might've mattered to them but not for the right reasons. You're not unworthy of love, not because you resorted to violence on the island, not because your dad's an ass and not because your mom left."
"Shut up" Jack responded, but his harsh words came out more emotionally than the blond had intended for them to.
Ralph didn't take offense. Instead, he scooted over closer to Jack, and pulled him into an embrace. Jack didn't resist, he helplessly let Ralph comfort him. Ralph held himself in front of Jack, sitting up on his knees, his arms wrapped around the boy's neck as Jack sat up against the bed. Jack felt his body become warm and tingly inside as Ralph gently rubbed his back. He didn't want to like it, but he couldn't help that he did.
Jack pushed Ralph back a little to put a small, insignificant amount of space between them. His eyes found Ralph's brown ones glistening from the moonlight that peaked through the crack in the curtains. Ralph stroked Jack's face with the back of his palm before he kissed the older boy as delicately as he could. Ralph brought his tongue to the edge of his lips and used it to trace Jack's. He felt Jack tremble at the touch, as the blond tried to resist the urge to deepen the kiss, to deepen his touch, to feel and explore Ralph like the hungry animal inside him wanted to.
But he didn't.
Jack broke from the kiss, unable to get the thing out of his head that was holding him back.
"What? What's wrong?" Ralph asked as he reached out to take Jack's hand, to keep him close as he tried to resist the feeling that the other was pulling away.
"Ralph, I... I have a girlfriend."