For once in his disorderly life, Jack Merridew didn't know what to say. He didn't want to scare Ralph any more than he already was, but what if he was right? What if this was never really going to end? Word could get out, and he'd be known as that kid who led an island of military boys to ruin for the rest of his life. What if the investigation found them guilty for the deaths on the island? What if there would always be new articles on them and what happened? What if they would turn on the TV, and the news programs never stopped talking about it? What if the internet never stopped talking about it? What if a mere five months of their lives would define them forever?
Jack sat up and scooted himself over a couple feet so he was right beside Ralph. He laid back down and pressed his forehead against the side Ralph's head, and laced his arm around the brunette boy's waist. Ralph turned his head to face him a little more as he clutched onto Jack's arm.
"Even if it's never over, you'll never be in it alone" Jack whispered delicately, his warm breath hitting Ralph's neck as the brunette trembled with relief.
"Who's to say we'll always be friends? We weren't for a while, if you've forgotten" Ralph pressed.
"Because as annoying as you were on the island, I missed you. And even though I felt strongly about most things I did, there was still part of me that wished you were in it with me" Jack struggled to admit, but simultaneously couldn't help it.
Hearing the words made Ralph's stomach knot up with both confliction and exhilaration. His eyes found Jack's easily given there was hardly any space between them at all. He could feel Jack's warm body pressed against the side of his own as he struggled to resist the urges that were building inside him.
Unable to hold back any longer, Ralph pressed his eyes shut tightly as he grasped onto the side of Jack's face and kissed him softly but desperately. He felt Jack sink into it beneath his touch, stretching the arm that had previously sat limp on Ralph's stomach around to grasp the brunette boy's back to pull him closer. Ralph turned himself on his side so he was fully facing Jack now, he too trying to press Jack's body closer to his, despite the fact that there wasn't an inch of space still between them.
Jack rolled away a couple minutes later to catch his breath. His chest rose and fell heavily as he found himself back on his back, staring up at the ceiling and its glowing stars.
"Jack?" Ralph asked as he stayed looking at him, the smaller boy cradled up on his side.
"Mhm hm?" Jack replied through heavy breaths.
"Are we ever gonna talk about this or are we just gonna keep doing it?" Ralph bravely asked.
Jack turned his head to meet Ralph's eyes. He stared at him longingly for a moment before he moved a little closer to press a short but gentle kiss to Ralph's swollen lips. "Keep doing it, I hope" the blond chuckled a little.
"You don't think we should talk about it?" Ralph moved away a little to say.
"Where's the fun in that?" Jack scoffed.
Ralph could see the part of Jack that broke from the group and start his own all-for-fun tribe on the island a little now. He couldn't forget that even though they were in a different reality now, Jack was still the same person. Even when it seemed to Ralph that he was different now, deep down, he was still Jack: chief of the hunters. It'd always be part of who he is; the kid who got himself thrown into military school as a punishment, the kid who was capable of resorting to violence under the right circumstances.
"Not everything in life can be all fun and games" Ralph tried to get through to him.
"But this should be" Jack countered, reaching his hand out to softly stroke Ralph's face.
As exhilarated as he was by Jack's touch, Ralph couldn't shake the nauseous feeling from his gut.
"What about Emma?" he found himself asking.
"What about 'er?" Jack shrugged as he turned his gaze back up at the roof, tension filling his words.
"You're still with her, aren't you?" Ralph questioned.
"Yeah" Jack admitted, sending a strong dose of hurt and uncertainty through Ralph's body. "But it isn't the same" he added after a moment.
"Same as what?" Ralph forced Jack to admit.
"As this" the blond confessed, begging himself to keep his gaze fixed on the roof, to avoid Ralph's betrayed and pained brown eyes. "I don't know what it is with us. And I like Emma, but she doesn't make me feel like you do. She doesn't know me, and if she did, she wouldn't still be with me. But you know me, most of me. And for whatever twisted reason you got going on in that perfect head of yours, you still want me. You know what I am and yet you don't look at me the way everyone else does."
"You're not a bad person" Ralph said quietly as he tried to contain his emotions.
"Liar" Jack replied, continuing to stare at the ceiling.
"I'm not—" but Ralph stopped himself from speaking. Deep down, he wondered if part of him was lying. Jack may not have meant to kill Simon, he might not have been involved in Piggy's death, but he did coordinate an attack on Ralph's life. Up til now, Ralph tried not to think about what would've happened if the marines hadn't shown up when they did. If they arrived even five minutes later. What would Jack have done? He'd never knowingly killed another person. Ralph and Jack were friends before; before everything fell apart. But would that have counted for anything?
"Did you really believe what you said?" Ralph found himself asking after a few long minutes of thought.
"What are you talking about?" Jack wondered, missing whatever was going on in Ralph's head.
"All that shit about never getting rescued. About eight million islands and why should they find this one. About telling Peter we were never going home. From day one, you insisted we had to learn to live with ourselves... out there. Did you really believe that or did you just want to believe it?"
"What's that got to do with anything?" Jack diverted the question.
"Everything" Ralph turned his head to look at Jack's motionless body, the latter's head stuck on the roof above him.
"If you haven't noticed, optimism isn't one of my shining qualities" Jack responded after a moment spent thinking on it.
"You still didn't answer my question" Ralph insisted, his need to know fueling him with the confidence to keep pushing.
"I really believed it" Jack sighed.
"You really thought—"
"Yes, I didn't think any of us were gonna get taken off that island" Jack cut in to confirm. "I thought that was it, the rest of our goddamn lives. Why do you think I was so determined to hunt?"
"Carelessness?" Ralph guessed honestly.
"Shut up, dipshit. That was rhetorical" Jack scoffed. "You saw rescue as our best chance of survival, while I saw hunting as our only chance of survival. I thought you were wasting time. We weren't anywhere near an actual continent. Hours gone from home and still hours to go before we reached the U.K. Smack dab in the middle of fucking nowhere. The odds weren't in our favour, man. So to answer your question; yes, I really thought I'd never see my family, or my house, or the academy, or America ever again."
Ralph responded with nothing but a simple stare, his head turned so his cheek was practically resting against the carpet; his eyes fixated on Jack's shadow in the midnight darkness.
"I don't want talk about this anymore" Jack admitted after a heavy sigh.
"I'll drop it then, but only if you answer my last question. And honestly, or there's no point" Ralph pressed on determinedly.
"Fine."
"Did you really hate me?" Ralph's voice seemed softer and higher somehow as he said it.
"Hate you?" Jack repeated as if it were a dumb question to begin with.
"You were gonna kill me, Jack. Why? You hated me that much that you decided the island wasn't big enough for the both of us?" Ralph pressed as he felt his body begin to shake with the pain of the memory, and of the betrayal and heartache he hadn't realized he experienced on the island when Jack turned on him.
"I never hated you" Jack admitted, trying to keep his voice level as to keep Ralph from seeing how hard it was for him to hear pain in the brunette's voice.
"Then why?" Ralph was nearly in tears now and Jack could hear it clear as day.
"It was what I was expected to do. With Piggy and Simon both gone, and you the only one left on the other end. Roger told me that the others would start to question my authority if I didn't show them what would happen to those who did doubt me, like you did. And Roger was right. I didn't have a choice" Jack confessed shamefully as he too began to struggle to control the emotion in his voice.
"That's it? You were willing to do to me what you all did to Simon simply to ensure a bunch of elementary school boys would see you as a tyrannical militant? We were friends for two years, Jack. A few unsupervised months and you were willing to end my life to prove yourself to a bunch of kids you didn't know the last names of and certainly didn't care about? Your reputation was worth more to you than my life? How am I supposed to get past that?" Ralph cried, his voice poisoned with anger.
"That isn't true" Jack insisted. He too was feeling overwhelmed, but he did a much better job of hiding it in the dark than Ralph did.
"Bullshit" Ralph cried, "it's exactly true."
"You were one of the most important people in my life, Ralph, even before the island. Even after we became divided out there" Jack shot up so he was sitting now, anger and sadness seeping through his voice as he turned his body to look down at Ralph. "But you're missing the key word here; my life. I lost that life the second that plane started going down. I thought we all had, and that we were never going back. The island was our life now, and me and you, we didn't work out there. I didn't think we'd have our old lives to come back to. Not to mention I didn't have anyone important to go home to every summer, I lost all my friends from before I transferred to the academy, none of 'em were even allowed to go near me after finding out why I was forced to go. The academy was all I had, and you and Roger were my two best friends. Roger understood who I was out there and why, but you didn't. And you didn't talk to me, all you did was beg me to follow your stupid little rules and your obsession with a rescue I never thought was coming. How could I have protected us when you couldn't stop thinking about your rescue plan for twelve fucking seconds to realize that I needed you? I didn't want to kill you, Ralph, it really fucked with me, but I didn't see another way. The life you were so important to me in was over. At least I thought it was. I was angry at you. Going after you made more sense than it should've. I would never have done it if I saw the world the way you do. Everything you've ever been taught made you believe that rescue was possible. Everything in my life told me that it wasn't. I never had safety, stability, security; all that shit that you had. Nobody ever fucking came to rescue me when my mom left. Nobody ever fucking came to rescue me when my dad started beating my ass or sent me to military school so he wouldn't have to look at my stupid face or put up with my stupid shit anymore. Nobody ever came to rescue me. Period. But you? You had it made. Your parents taught you that there were people out there who would stop at nothing to rescue you. So forgive me if I tried to forget about everything and everyone I cared about before the island. As far as I was concerned, you were already dead the second we got to the island. And so was I. So I'm sorry, Ralph, I really am. But I didn't expect to ever have to say it to you, no matter how much it hurt me to hurt you."
Ralph was stunned to silence. He could hear the tears in Jack's voice as he spoke. Ralph could practically feel him shaking in anger, pain, and frustration. Ralph felt hot tears strolling down his own cheeks as he realized how different he and Jack were, and how differently their outlooks on life were both now and on the island. Nobody had ever given Jack a reason to believe that things would work out okay. It broke Ralph's heart as he recalled how much he relied on the thought of going home to his loving parents and community to get him through their time on the island. He wondered how Jack survived without that.
Ralph sat up a little and crawled over to where Jack sat a foot away. He threw his arms around the boy's slim figure, pressing his face firmly into the crook of Jack's tear-stained neck. Jack didn't resist; he let his head fall against Ralph's as his body shook, as he cried softly.
"Hey" Ralph whispered gently after a few moments, pulling himself up a bit so he could meet Jack's eyes. He wiped the tears from Jack's face before he finished. "I will always come rescue you."