clumsyclifford - Tumblr blog

clumsyclifford · 4 days

Note

hello okay alright so - how about some merrikat + holding the other’s chin up? bc we need more of them in the world <33333

sweet emo boys in love <3 well jack is emo but they're both sweet and they're getting through it

There's a glow through the tent wall.

Jack was supposed to put out the fire when he went to sleep. Frowning, Zack lifts his head and glances over to where Jack's sleeping bag is spread out, and there's his answer. Jack's not asleep yet; he must still be out there. Zack checks the time on his phone, which glares far too brightly in his face: 12:56 a.m.

For a second, he considers going back to sleep. Jack's an adult. He'll go to bed on his own time. He's probably fine. There's no need to worry.

Zack sighs and quietly makes his way to the door of the tent. As if he believes any of that.

The fire crackles a comforting song as Zack steps towards the pit. Lit by the flames, Jack's slouched-over silhouette is a sight to behold. He looks like he might fall asleep right there, chin in hand, staring moodily into the fire's depths as if it contains some kind of answer.

"Hey," Zack half-whispers, crossing his arms over his chest. It's chilly at night. Jack must be cold. Sitting by a campfire can only do so much.

Jack looks up. "Hi. What are you doing up?"

"I came to ask you the same question."

"Eh, couldn't sleep," Jack says, then shrugs. "Or didn't want to, or whatever. I don't know."

"It's almost one. You should try and sleep soon at least."

"I know."

Zack hesitates. "Can I sit with you?"

Jack shrugs again. "If you want. You can go back to sleep, though. I know you like to worry about me but I'm fine."

If Zack "likes" to worry it's only because sometimes he feels like the only one who does. Maybe Jack can fool the rest of the world when he says he's fine, but not Zack.

He sits next to Jack, and on reflection unzips his sweatshirt. "Here. You must be cold."

"Not really."

"Jack, take it."

Jack glances over at Zack and sighs. "You're overbearing, you know that? It's annoying."

"Yeah, you love me," Zack says, smiling a little when Jack takes the sweatshirt and pulls it on. "'Thanks, Zack, I actually was cold. I appreciate you so much.'"

"Yeah yeah," Jack says, shaking his head. He throws a leaf into the fire, and they both watch it crumple up and turn to ash.

"Nice out here," Zack says quietly. The sky above them is a kaleidoscope of stars that somehow keeps taking Zack's breath away. Tall trees with dark shadows surround their campsite. The sounds of nature fill the air, a soundtrack Zack loves, one he often misses going to school in a city. Birds, crickets, wildlife rustling between the trees; it's all music to Zack. He could sink into this symphony for the rest of his life. The city's okay, but it's nothing on this.

Jack hums his noncommittal assent. Another leaf lands in the fire. It burns up like its brother.

Silence descends, as much as it can around them. Zack enjoys the quiet, and he's come to learn that Jack does, too, in the right setting. There's a loud Jack, the one everyone sees, but there's also this Jack. The one who could probably go hours just gazing into a dying fire, lost in thought.

Zack likes Jack in all forms, but he has to admit he's never sure what to do with a quiet Jack. Usually he doesn't have to work to pry Jack's thoughts out of him; usually Jack is the first to volunteer what's on his mind, and he does so with abandon, often theatrically, making it easy for Zack.

This, though. This wordless staring contest with the campfire. Zack has no clue where to start. What to say. There's an option to say nothing — that's the option Zack usually takes — but that won't make anything better. Zack can sense something wrong here, or at least something off. He wants to make it better, but he's worried that trying and failing will only make it worse.

To his surprise, Jack breaks the silence. "Did you like fire as a kid?"

Zack considers this. "What do you mean?"

"When I was a kid, I was obsessed with fire," Jack says. "Not in a psychopath arsonist way, I just thought it was so cool. I'd get a box of matches and just light all of them. Let 'em burn all the way down to my fingertips before I'd blow them out."

"Did you ever actually burn yourself?"

"Yeah, once," Jack says. "And I dropped the match and it landed on my floor, on the rug. I blew it out so quickly. I was so scared that it would catch the rug on fire and then everything would burn down. I only liked it when I could control it, you know?" Jack sighs. "That feels true about everything now."

The wind shifts, blowing the rising smoke into their faces. Zack winces and ducks his head.

"When I first started skateboarding, it was like that," he says. "I'd lose control of the board and panic and jump off. Did that so many times before I had to accept that if I kept jumping off when I felt like I was losing control, I would never learn to regain that control. Like, it's one thing to wobble and give up, and it's another thing to wobble and catch yourself and keep going." He purses his lips. "Just takes practice, though."

"What, to be okay with having no control?"

"I guess. Or to learn to find things you can control in every situation, even if you can't control everything."

Jack hums again. He throws a fistful of dead leaves into the flames. The wind blows the smoke away from them again, and Zack looks up at Jack, whose posture seems to have worsened since Zack joined him. Zack puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Why?" he asks tentatively.

"Just feel like lately there's all this stuff happening and I can never do anything about it," Jack mutters. "Not even all bad stuff, sometimes good, just all things that are out of my control. So I'm not ready for them. And then more things keep happening even though I wasn't done dealing with the earlier things and now it's like…do I just give up? What am I supposed to do? Is it crazy to want to live a simple life of things I can control instead of this crazy life that would be so good if I could just let go a little, because I can't? Do you— do you even know what I mean?"

Zack doesn't need to ask what kinds of things Jack means. Graduation is upon them, and after that, real life; he, Rian, and Alex have started looking for work, but Jack has stubbornly abstained. Too many variables, he says. Too many things to focus on.

"Yeah, I know," he says. "Real world is scary. It just throws you in the deep end."

"It's not just the real world," Jack says, sighs, empty. "Everything is the fucking real world. I want to go to a new city, there are a million and one ways that could go wrong, all beyond my control. I want to, I don’t know, try to learn a new instrument — I don’t know if I’ll be any good, so should I even bother? Because that’s where I’m at right now, is just not bothering. And I know that’s the wrong way to go about it but I don’t like the idea that something out of my control could fuck me over so easily just because I gave it the chance to. If I’m going to get fucked over I’d rather at least be able to blame myself.”

"Have you considered that nothing will go wrong?"

"Something always goes wrong," Jack says bitterly. "Nothing stays good that long, okay. People just think things don't go wrong because other people are resilient. But I'm not resilient. If I miss my train I have a mental breakdown. It's so fucking stupid but like — everything is out of my control so I should stop pretending like I have a grip on any of it but I have this illusion that I do, and I'm not ready for when it breaks."

Zack finds himself nodding, and then catches himself. "I think you're more resilient than you give yourself credit for," he offers. “And you have more control than you know. You think you’re trapped in things, but you’re not. There’s always a way out. You can always quit. Or leave. Do something else. You’re never as railroaded as you think you are.”

“That’s easy to say,” Jack mutters. “Lot harder to do. Like let’s say I get a job after graduation. Two weeks in, I fucking hate the job. I can’t very well quit, right? Because I need an income, and I need stuff on my resume so that other places will eventually hire me, and I need people as references, and I need to seem like a reliable person so that future employers will know they can count on me, and none of that happens if I just quit when it gets hard.”

Zack sighs. He can’t articulate it — Jack won’t appreciate his saying it — but the fact that Jack thinks this way is actually one of the things Zack admires most about him. Zack wants to be content in life. When there are obstacles to that goal, he sidesteps them; when that’s impossible, he doubles back and paves a new path. But Jack’s not like that. When there’s a stumbling block in Jack’s road, he stumbles over it. Trips and gets up, and keeps going. As much as he thinks he’s not resilient, Zack knows that’s not the case. Jack is still here, and despite how clearly afraid he is of the future, he’s resignedly prepared to stumble over it. Jack is focused on the mental breakdown he has from missing the train, but what Zack remembers is Jack composing himself at last, finding a new train, and eventually getting home despite the trouble.

“Yeah,” says Zack, instead of any of that. He’ll save it for a day when Jack isn’t gazing into the fire like he’s wishing he were one of the logs. “You know what a therapist would say?”

Jack sighs heavily. “What would a therapist say,” he intones.

Zack rubs a hand over Jack’s shoulder blades, watching the firelight glow dance over Jack’s face. “A therapist would tell you that the only thing you can control in life is how you react. But how you react is the most important thing. You can let one…” He glances at the fire. “You can let one match burn up your whole house, or you can just blow it out. Accept that that could have been a disaster, and be glad it wasn’t.”

“Well, a therapist would be stupid,” Jack says.

Zack rolls his eyes. “Imagine what the therapist is thinking of you.”

“Hey,” Jack says half-heartedly. He drops another dead leaf into the flames and straightens upright as it burns, tilting his head to see both Zack and the fire at once. “You reeeeally think I should be in therapy, huh.”

“I think everyone should be in therapy,” Zack says plainly. He squeezes the back of Jack’s neck. “But I think you in particular would benefit, yes. A little cognitive restructuring and you’d be fucking unstoppable.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Jack huffs. “You could just be talking complete shit right now.”

Zack slides his hand along Jack’s collarbone, spreads his fingers so half of them graze Jack’s throat and the other half cradle his chin. Jack doesn’t protest when Zack tilts his chin until their eyes meet. He’s so afraid to surrender control, Zack notices, except to Zack. Right now Jack is completely laid bare, and yet he’s allowing Zack to maneuver him, to see him at his most vulnerable, trusting that Zack will keep this information safe and secret. That’s a lot of faith. Zack doesn’t take it lightly.

“I want you to believe in yourself more,” he says, carefully holding Jack’s gaze. The trust goes both ways. Zack hates eye contact most of the time, but rules don’t apply with Jack. “I want you to know that you’ll bounce back from anything. And I want you to know that you’re not facing the big scary uncontrollable real world alone. You have me. And Rian and Alex. And me. And did I mention myself?”

“Yes,” Jack mumbles.

Zack cracks a smile, lifts a shoulder, and brushes his thumb over Jack’s jawline. A blanket of darkness drifts down over them, dotted with stars. “Just making sure.”

He’s not going to solve Jack’s problems, because they’re not his to solve. This is the kind of thing Jack has to solve himself, and he has to really want to. There will be no epiphany, no eureka! moment.

But Jack smiles a little bit at him and angles his head to kiss the palm of Zack’s hand. He says, “Noted. And I love you, too.” He looks over at the fire, stealing Zack’s hand from off his own face to tangle their fingers together instead. He leans his head onto Zack’s shoulder and says, “I guess we should put it out and go to sleep. Or back to sleep, for you.”

Zack says, “We can sit a little longer.”

And they both fall asleep that way, tilted together, deceptively unshakeable before the flickering flames. When Zack jerks awake shortly later, Jack is already standing, pouring the cooler of water over the fire pit; maybe the sizzling woke him, or maybe the absence of Jack.

“Shouldn’t have fallen asleep without putting it out,” Jack explains in a scratchy voice.

“Yeah, that could’ve been a disaster,” Zack says. “Good thing it wasn’t.”

Jack gives him a look as the last of the water splashes over the charred wood and sputtering embers. “Not everything is a life lesson.”

“A therapist would disagree.”

This time Jack really does smile. He even laughs a little bit.

“I love you,” he says, and crosses over to the log where Zack is still sitting. “Come on. We can sleep in the tent.”

No fire left. Not even the faintest ember remains. Only the smell of smoke lingering on Jack’s borrowed sweatshirt hints at their late-night rendezvous. Zack breathes it in as he falls asleep, curled up together, and he can’t help but smile.

They could have easily been a disaster, the two of them. And every single day Zack is glad they never were.

#you know what. this fic is fire. no pun intended #i wrote a good jack here #promo #atl

10 notes · View notes