Car Crash Hearts
Title: Car Crash Hearts
Author: Amanda, who goes by the aliasapodiopsys
Pairing: Jalex
Rating: R
Summary: “If I told you I could give you the last day back, would you?”
Disclaimer: do not steal etc. etc. title and cut belong to Fall Out Boy.
A/N: Um, apparently white danish rap bois can be inspiring? i was forced to listen to this on repeat and this fic is the brain baby. as a heads up now, this is not smut. at all. it doesn't even come close to smut. sorry.
tumblr is here, br0.
please please please cum tell me what you think about this or i might never post anything else again that is a lie but ukno
When he wakes up he realizes he’s in a completely white room.
It’s like, a sterilized hospital room. Everything is white, the walls, the floor, the sheets on the bed he’s sitting on. There are no doors or windows.
“Uh,” he says, and there’s a light popping noise, and then Daniel is standing in front of him, looking just like Alex remembers him. “What are you doing here?” he asks, not realizing how rude it sounds until it comes out of his mouth.
Daniel ignores the question.
“You and Jack were in a car crash,” he says instead, and Alex’s jaw drops. He remembers it: squealing tires and screaming and a bright light and then nothing.
And now this.
“Is Jack okay?” Alex blurts out. Daniel nods and Alex lets out a sigh in relief.
He studies his brother for a second, and then says quietly, “So. I didn’t make it?” he asks, throat going tight and blinking his eyes rapidly to stop the tears.
“You didn’t,” Daniel agrees, looking a little sad.
Alex is silent, letting the fact that he’s dead sink in. “Jack’s okay though?” Daniel nods.
“He’s fine. He got away with a couple of cuts and bruised ribs.”
It’s quiet for another couple minutes. “A drunk driver hit you both, there was nothing either of you could have done,” Daniel says, and Alex bites his lip.
“So, heaven exists?” Alex asks finally, looking at Daniel expectantly.
“Kind of,” he answers, and doesn’t elaborate. “If I told you I could give you the last day back, would you?”
Alex doesn’t hesitate when he nods.
“You’d still die. It’d still be a car crash, I can’t undo that. But I can give you your last day back.”
Daniel motions for Alex to lie down on the bed. “I can only give you twenty four hours. Do what you need to do and,” he presses his hand to Alex forehead, covering his eyes with the palm of his hand. “I’ll see you in a day, little brother.”
-
Alex sits up as soon as he wakes up, sucking in a hard breath. He hasn’t dreamed about Daniel in years. “Fuck,” he says quietly, and Jack stirs beside him.
“Go back to sleep, fuck face,” he mumbles, rolling over and pressing his face into the pillow. Alex turns his head and looks at the time on the digital watch. 12:01.
He rubs his hands over his wrist uneasily. Something isn’t right. His left hand touches his right wrist, and, that’s not right, no, he doesn’t wear a watch.
He looks down, and blue light peers up at him, blinking each second away. It’s counting down. 23:58:27.
It wasn’t a dream.
“Jack,” Alex whispers, pushing at his boyfriend until he’s on his back and then shifts so he can straddle his hips. “Jack.”
Jack opens his eyes and looks up at Alex. “What?”
“I…” Alex hesitates, his heart twisting. He has less than twenty four hours left to live, and he doesn’t know how to tell Jack that without sounding completely crazy.
Instead, he leans forward and kisses him, hot and sharp, his heart twisting again. He cups Jack’s face in his hands, feeling the stubble against his palms from where Jack hasn’t shaved in two days. His thumbs trace over cheekbones, their lips moving together. “I need you,” Alex whispers softly, letting their lips brush together again.
Jack lets Alex do whatever he wants, kisses him back, slow and hot and careful, pushing him to the edge and then pulling him right back in while they have sex. He whispers in Alex’s ear the whole time, sweet and dirty somethings: promises of only you and forever that Alex knows he can’t keep.
Afterwards, Jack makes a questioning noise and Alex kisses his chest, sneaking a glance at the watch on his wrist. It reads 22:39:17.
“I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to listen first and ask questions later,” Alex says finally, his expression sad.
Jack watches him carefully, listening to Alex tell him about his dream. When Alex mentions the wrist watch, he opens his mouth to say something but a look from his boyfriend shuts him up. He’s quiet for a few moments afterwards.
“I can’t see the watch,” he says finally, his voice small and scared.
Alex looks down at it, touches it, and he can feel it, he can see it. “I have twenty two and a half hours.”
“So we won’t get into a car. We’ll stay here all day.” He shakes his head.
“That’s not how it works,” Alex starts patiently, but Jack cuts him off.
“I’m not losing you!” he says fiercely, and Alex puts his hand on his cheek, turning his face so he’s looking at him. “I’m not losing you,” he whispers, and his eyes are glassy with tears. He presses their foreheads together, noses pushing against each other.
“I don’t have a choice.”
They sleep, and Alex wakes up again with the sun. Jack’s arms a curled around him protectively, and Alex watches him sleep, the sun lighting the room up and illuminating the dust particles in the air.
Jack opens his eyes as the numbers on the clock switch over to show eight a.m.
“Was it a dream?” are the first words out of his mouth, and it breaks Alex’s heart to shake his head no. “How long?”
Alex looks down at his watch. “Sixteen hours,” he whispers.
They kiss for a long while, sweet and slow, swipes of tongue and skin on skin. It’s good.
They don’t get out of bed until eleven.
“We need to eat,” Jack says as he pulls on the shirt he wore yesterday, his black skinny jeans clinging to his legs. Alex doesn’t really need to eat, not if he’s going to die anyway, but he goes along with it because Jack is trying so hard already.
The toaster is already on the counter, and Alex puts two bagels in and turns it on. Jack gets out the creamed cheese (for Alex) and the nutella (for himself)
They eat in almost silence, crumbs falling onto the plates in front of them.
“You have thirteen hours,” Jack says, pushing his plate forward. “What do we do?”
Alex is silent for a few minutes, thinking.
“I have an idea.”
-
They get in the car and Alex drives, talking about everything and anything that pops into his head. He drives to the mall, parking the car as near to the entrance as possible. “We’re going to go and buy every Blink album they have. And also a stereo and some other stuff.”
Jack stares at him like he’s crazy when he doesn’t explain himself.
“Just come on,” Alex insists, getting out of the car and waiting for him on the sidewalk. They get into the record store and Alex waves at the guy behind the counter. They’ve been in there enough times that they’re friends with the people who work there.
Blink-182 is in the back of the store, under the pop-rock B section. Alex takes one of each CD.
“Shopping spree?” Vinny asks as he looks down at the items, ringing each up. It ends up costing over a hundred dollars.
“Something like that, yeah,” Alex nods, handing him one one-hundred dollar bill and one twenty dollar bill.
Vinny grins, talking to them for a few minutes before the guy standing behind them gets huffy, shooting go away looks at them.
“I’ll talk to you guys later,” Vinny calls out cheerfully before they walk out the door. Alex pauses in the doorway, turning around to look at him.
“Yeah. See you, Vin.” Jack can tell he’s forcing the smile he gives Vinny.
He kisses him softly outside of the store, touching his wrist lightly. “So, where to next?” he asks, and Alex’s expression changes.
“Walmart.”
“Walmart?” Jack asks, eyebrows raising.
“Yes, Walmart.”
They walk to the other end of the mall, their hands linked together. They stop multiple times, peering into the windows of Bed Bath & Beyond and the Body Shop, laughing about all the crazy scents that soap comes in.
At the superstore, Alex grabs a cart, and Jack almost thinks that they’re on a grocery trip to buy regular things like vegetables and orange juice and Captain Crunch instead of Top Secret Items on Alex’s List of Top Secret Things to Buy at Walmart.
He’s confused when Alex leads him to the area with sheets and things and picks up two blankets for two dollars each.
He’s even more confused when Alex goes to the breakfast area, picking up two boxes of poptarts (one in Cookie Dough flavor and the other in S’mores) and one box of fruity pebbles. Alex hums to himself as they walk through the aisles, a carton of 1% milk and a bowl and a spoon finding its way into the cart. “Rootbeer?” he questions, holding up a gallon bottle and Jack shrugs.
“Sure,” Jack says easily, and he’s guessing that Alex wants some sort of giant breakfast feast before he dies because there’s a loaf of that weird cinnamon-raisin bread that he likes going into the shopping cart too.
They pass by the electronics, and Alex grabs a stereo system that’s on sale for forty nine-ninety five. “I think that’s it,” he says, pushing the cart towards the check out lines. Jack follows him, left hand resting on the cool metal side of the cart. He doesn’t want to think about how much time they’ve used buying food and CDs.
-
Alex doesn’t look at the watch when they put the bags of food and CDs in the back seat of the car. He doesn’t look at it when he sits down in the drivers seat. He can feel the watch pressing against his skin, he can practically hear the seconds ticking away in his head.
It goes one, two, three, four, five - five seconds closer to dying.
“Where are we going?” Jack asks, clicking the seatbelt in place. Alex shakes his head with a smile on his face - he knows a secret and he isn’t going to tell.
“You’ll see,” he says, and Jack wishes he could see into his boyfriends head, wants to know what’s going on in there.
The radio is on while Alex drives across town, towards where there parents live and Jack thinks for one crazy moment that he’s going to his parents house to have a giant breakfast feast on the day that he dies.
Fuck logic.
But no, Alex drives past their old neighborhood, past their high school and their middle school, towards the park that they used to hang out in with Rian and Zack while they jammed or played football or snuck out to in the middle of the night to hold hands and watch the stars.
Jack lets out a tiny, “Oh,” and Alex nods.
“Yeah,” he says, and okay, he gets it.
They split carrying the things, carrying two bags each. Alex chases Jack up one hill, the plastic bag banging against his leg as he runs up after his boyfriend. He drops them at the top of the hill, tackling him to the grass and pinning him down, wrists above his head.
“Gotcha.” Alex smirks, leans down and bumps their noses together. Jack smiles up at him, and for that one minute they both forget that time is working against them, and it’s innocent and sweet as Alex mouths I love you.
He rolls off of him and stretches his arm out, fingers wiggling as he tries to stretch just a little bit longer so he can reach the bag that has the blanket in it. He snags the handle with his middle finger, shouting triumphantly as he pulls it towards himself. “Help me,” he says to Jack, getting up on his feet and holding two corners of the one blanket.
Jack takes hold of the other two corners, walking backwards until the blanket is suspended between them. They both kneel at the same time, letting the blanket spread out on the grass. “Voila,” Jack says, and Alex laughs.
“Your french sucks,” Alex snorts, pulling the other bags towards him as he stretches out on his stomach on the blanket. He props himself up on his elbows, taking the stereo out of the box and putting batteries in it since there obviously isn’t anywhere to plug it in while they’re on top of a hill.
“Your mom sucks,” Jack shoots back, eyes crinkling up at the corners as he laughs silently. “Here,” he says, handing Alex their copy of Dude Ranch that they bought without him asking for it.
Pathetic starts playing at them once Alex presses the lid onto the CD player, and he grins, humming along instantly. They’re lying next to each other, pressed up side to side and humming along to Blink-182. Alex has the strongest sense of de ja vu: it’s like they’re sixteen again, alone in Jack’s room and listening to Blink while they experiment on and with each other.
It feels good.
They smile and kiss and laugh; Alex feeds Jack the poptarts, swatting at his face when he bites at his fingertips. Alex eats Fruity Pebbles with rootbeer instead of milk. Jack dips the s’mores poptarts into the rootbeer and swears that it tastes like heaven and orgasms and unicorns even though the look on his face says otherwise.
They change the CDs out when one ends and listen to them all. They have sex again under the other blanket (for the last time, but neither of them want to think about that) while Take off Your Pants and Jacket play in the background.
“I love you,” Alex whispers, over and over again, nails digging shallow cuts into the skin on Jack’s back as his hips work into him. They doze afterwards, and when they wake up, it’s dark out.
The watch reads 2:03:31.
“We should...” Jack starts, but he doesn’t finish what he was saying. He doesn’t know exactly how long Alex has, but he knows he has until roughly midnight.
“Yeah,” Alex agrees, but neither of them move. They lie there, and Jack points out the stars to Alex (gives them ridiculous names and makes up constellations in the shape of pokemon) and it’s honestly like they’re sixteen again.
Except that they’re not.
It’s only April, and it’s kind of really cold. Alex knows that he read somewhere at one point that if you’re in the cold or something you should get naked and cuddle like penguins or something, and that’s what they’re doing, they’re naked and they’re cuddling and they’re also under a stripey blanket (and it’s probably also illegal considering the fact that they’re in a public park) but it’s still chilly, he can feel the cold night air seeping in through the blankets.
They start moving at around eleven thirty. “Let’s go home,” Alex whispers, sitting up. He puts on Jack’s t-shirt, pausing every now and then for a kiss.
“You didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone else?” Jack questions when they’re in the car. Alex shakes his head, hands curled around his thighs.
“Just you,” he says softly, and then cracks half of a smile.”Besides, I’d sound crazy trying to explain it to anyone else.”
He puts Enema of the State into the cars CD player, skipping forward to track number eight. He knows exactly how long he has left, he’s trying not to count down in his head. Alex pulls the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands, blocking his view of the watch.
Five.
Alex looks over at Jack, bites his lip. He’s trying to memorize his face, even though he practically knows the other man better than he knows himself.
Four.
Bright lights. Eyes closed.
Three.
Squealing tires.
Two.
Screaming.
One.
Impact.
Author: Amanda, who goes by the aliasapodiopsys
Pairing: Jalex
Rating: R
Summary: “If I told you I could give you the last day back, would you?”
Disclaimer: do not steal etc. etc. title and cut belong to Fall Out Boy.
A/N: Um, apparently white danish rap bois can be inspiring? i was forced to listen to this on repeat and this fic is the brain baby. as a heads up now, this is not smut. at all. it doesn't even come close to smut. sorry.
tumblr is here, br0.
please please please cum tell me what you think about this or i might never post anything else again that is a lie but ukno
When he wakes up he realizes he’s in a completely white room.
It’s like, a sterilized hospital room. Everything is white, the walls, the floor, the sheets on the bed he’s sitting on. There are no doors or windows.
“Uh,” he says, and there’s a light popping noise, and then Daniel is standing in front of him, looking just like Alex remembers him. “What are you doing here?” he asks, not realizing how rude it sounds until it comes out of his mouth.
Daniel ignores the question.
“You and Jack were in a car crash,” he says instead, and Alex’s jaw drops. He remembers it: squealing tires and screaming and a bright light and then nothing.
And now this.
“Is Jack okay?” Alex blurts out. Daniel nods and Alex lets out a sigh in relief.
He studies his brother for a second, and then says quietly, “So. I didn’t make it?” he asks, throat going tight and blinking his eyes rapidly to stop the tears.
“You didn’t,” Daniel agrees, looking a little sad.
Alex is silent, letting the fact that he’s dead sink in. “Jack’s okay though?” Daniel nods.
“He’s fine. He got away with a couple of cuts and bruised ribs.”
It’s quiet for another couple minutes. “A drunk driver hit you both, there was nothing either of you could have done,” Daniel says, and Alex bites his lip.
“So, heaven exists?” Alex asks finally, looking at Daniel expectantly.
“Kind of,” he answers, and doesn’t elaborate. “If I told you I could give you the last day back, would you?”
Alex doesn’t hesitate when he nods.
“You’d still die. It’d still be a car crash, I can’t undo that. But I can give you your last day back.”
Daniel motions for Alex to lie down on the bed. “I can only give you twenty four hours. Do what you need to do and,” he presses his hand to Alex forehead, covering his eyes with the palm of his hand. “I’ll see you in a day, little brother.”
-
Alex sits up as soon as he wakes up, sucking in a hard breath. He hasn’t dreamed about Daniel in years. “Fuck,” he says quietly, and Jack stirs beside him.
“Go back to sleep, fuck face,” he mumbles, rolling over and pressing his face into the pillow. Alex turns his head and looks at the time on the digital watch. 12:01.
He rubs his hands over his wrist uneasily. Something isn’t right. His left hand touches his right wrist, and, that’s not right, no, he doesn’t wear a watch.
He looks down, and blue light peers up at him, blinking each second away. It’s counting down. 23:58:27.
It wasn’t a dream.
“Jack,” Alex whispers, pushing at his boyfriend until he’s on his back and then shifts so he can straddle his hips. “Jack.”
Jack opens his eyes and looks up at Alex. “What?”
“I…” Alex hesitates, his heart twisting. He has less than twenty four hours left to live, and he doesn’t know how to tell Jack that without sounding completely crazy.
Instead, he leans forward and kisses him, hot and sharp, his heart twisting again. He cups Jack’s face in his hands, feeling the stubble against his palms from where Jack hasn’t shaved in two days. His thumbs trace over cheekbones, their lips moving together. “I need you,” Alex whispers softly, letting their lips brush together again.
Jack lets Alex do whatever he wants, kisses him back, slow and hot and careful, pushing him to the edge and then pulling him right back in while they have sex. He whispers in Alex’s ear the whole time, sweet and dirty somethings: promises of only you and forever that Alex knows he can’t keep.
Afterwards, Jack makes a questioning noise and Alex kisses his chest, sneaking a glance at the watch on his wrist. It reads 22:39:17.
“I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to listen first and ask questions later,” Alex says finally, his expression sad.
Jack watches him carefully, listening to Alex tell him about his dream. When Alex mentions the wrist watch, he opens his mouth to say something but a look from his boyfriend shuts him up. He’s quiet for a few moments afterwards.
“I can’t see the watch,” he says finally, his voice small and scared.
Alex looks down at it, touches it, and he can feel it, he can see it. “I have twenty two and a half hours.”
“So we won’t get into a car. We’ll stay here all day.” He shakes his head.
“That’s not how it works,” Alex starts patiently, but Jack cuts him off.
“I’m not losing you!” he says fiercely, and Alex puts his hand on his cheek, turning his face so he’s looking at him. “I’m not losing you,” he whispers, and his eyes are glassy with tears. He presses their foreheads together, noses pushing against each other.
“I don’t have a choice.”
They sleep, and Alex wakes up again with the sun. Jack’s arms a curled around him protectively, and Alex watches him sleep, the sun lighting the room up and illuminating the dust particles in the air.
Jack opens his eyes as the numbers on the clock switch over to show eight a.m.
“Was it a dream?” are the first words out of his mouth, and it breaks Alex’s heart to shake his head no. “How long?”
Alex looks down at his watch. “Sixteen hours,” he whispers.
They kiss for a long while, sweet and slow, swipes of tongue and skin on skin. It’s good.
They don’t get out of bed until eleven.
“We need to eat,” Jack says as he pulls on the shirt he wore yesterday, his black skinny jeans clinging to his legs. Alex doesn’t really need to eat, not if he’s going to die anyway, but he goes along with it because Jack is trying so hard already.
The toaster is already on the counter, and Alex puts two bagels in and turns it on. Jack gets out the creamed cheese (for Alex) and the nutella (for himself)
They eat in almost silence, crumbs falling onto the plates in front of them.
“You have thirteen hours,” Jack says, pushing his plate forward. “What do we do?”
Alex is silent for a few minutes, thinking.
“I have an idea.”
-
They get in the car and Alex drives, talking about everything and anything that pops into his head. He drives to the mall, parking the car as near to the entrance as possible. “We’re going to go and buy every Blink album they have. And also a stereo and some other stuff.”
Jack stares at him like he’s crazy when he doesn’t explain himself.
“Just come on,” Alex insists, getting out of the car and waiting for him on the sidewalk. They get into the record store and Alex waves at the guy behind the counter. They’ve been in there enough times that they’re friends with the people who work there.
Blink-182 is in the back of the store, under the pop-rock B section. Alex takes one of each CD.
“Shopping spree?” Vinny asks as he looks down at the items, ringing each up. It ends up costing over a hundred dollars.
“Something like that, yeah,” Alex nods, handing him one one-hundred dollar bill and one twenty dollar bill.
Vinny grins, talking to them for a few minutes before the guy standing behind them gets huffy, shooting go away looks at them.
“I’ll talk to you guys later,” Vinny calls out cheerfully before they walk out the door. Alex pauses in the doorway, turning around to look at him.
“Yeah. See you, Vin.” Jack can tell he’s forcing the smile he gives Vinny.
He kisses him softly outside of the store, touching his wrist lightly. “So, where to next?” he asks, and Alex’s expression changes.
“Walmart.”
“Walmart?” Jack asks, eyebrows raising.
“Yes, Walmart.”
They walk to the other end of the mall, their hands linked together. They stop multiple times, peering into the windows of Bed Bath & Beyond and the Body Shop, laughing about all the crazy scents that soap comes in.
At the superstore, Alex grabs a cart, and Jack almost thinks that they’re on a grocery trip to buy regular things like vegetables and orange juice and Captain Crunch instead of Top Secret Items on Alex’s List of Top Secret Things to Buy at Walmart.
He’s confused when Alex leads him to the area with sheets and things and picks up two blankets for two dollars each.
He’s even more confused when Alex goes to the breakfast area, picking up two boxes of poptarts (one in Cookie Dough flavor and the other in S’mores) and one box of fruity pebbles. Alex hums to himself as they walk through the aisles, a carton of 1% milk and a bowl and a spoon finding its way into the cart. “Rootbeer?” he questions, holding up a gallon bottle and Jack shrugs.
“Sure,” Jack says easily, and he’s guessing that Alex wants some sort of giant breakfast feast before he dies because there’s a loaf of that weird cinnamon-raisin bread that he likes going into the shopping cart too.
They pass by the electronics, and Alex grabs a stereo system that’s on sale for forty nine-ninety five. “I think that’s it,” he says, pushing the cart towards the check out lines. Jack follows him, left hand resting on the cool metal side of the cart. He doesn’t want to think about how much time they’ve used buying food and CDs.
-
Alex doesn’t look at the watch when they put the bags of food and CDs in the back seat of the car. He doesn’t look at it when he sits down in the drivers seat. He can feel the watch pressing against his skin, he can practically hear the seconds ticking away in his head.
It goes one, two, three, four, five - five seconds closer to dying.
“Where are we going?” Jack asks, clicking the seatbelt in place. Alex shakes his head with a smile on his face - he knows a secret and he isn’t going to tell.
“You’ll see,” he says, and Jack wishes he could see into his boyfriends head, wants to know what’s going on in there.
The radio is on while Alex drives across town, towards where there parents live and Jack thinks for one crazy moment that he’s going to his parents house to have a giant breakfast feast on the day that he dies.
Fuck logic.
But no, Alex drives past their old neighborhood, past their high school and their middle school, towards the park that they used to hang out in with Rian and Zack while they jammed or played football or snuck out to in the middle of the night to hold hands and watch the stars.
Jack lets out a tiny, “Oh,” and Alex nods.
“Yeah,” he says, and okay, he gets it.
They split carrying the things, carrying two bags each. Alex chases Jack up one hill, the plastic bag banging against his leg as he runs up after his boyfriend. He drops them at the top of the hill, tackling him to the grass and pinning him down, wrists above his head.
“Gotcha.” Alex smirks, leans down and bumps their noses together. Jack smiles up at him, and for that one minute they both forget that time is working against them, and it’s innocent and sweet as Alex mouths I love you.
He rolls off of him and stretches his arm out, fingers wiggling as he tries to stretch just a little bit longer so he can reach the bag that has the blanket in it. He snags the handle with his middle finger, shouting triumphantly as he pulls it towards himself. “Help me,” he says to Jack, getting up on his feet and holding two corners of the one blanket.
Jack takes hold of the other two corners, walking backwards until the blanket is suspended between them. They both kneel at the same time, letting the blanket spread out on the grass. “Voila,” Jack says, and Alex laughs.
“Your french sucks,” Alex snorts, pulling the other bags towards him as he stretches out on his stomach on the blanket. He props himself up on his elbows, taking the stereo out of the box and putting batteries in it since there obviously isn’t anywhere to plug it in while they’re on top of a hill.
“Your mom sucks,” Jack shoots back, eyes crinkling up at the corners as he laughs silently. “Here,” he says, handing Alex their copy of Dude Ranch that they bought without him asking for it.
Pathetic starts playing at them once Alex presses the lid onto the CD player, and he grins, humming along instantly. They’re lying next to each other, pressed up side to side and humming along to Blink-182. Alex has the strongest sense of de ja vu: it’s like they’re sixteen again, alone in Jack’s room and listening to Blink while they experiment on and with each other.
It feels good.
They smile and kiss and laugh; Alex feeds Jack the poptarts, swatting at his face when he bites at his fingertips. Alex eats Fruity Pebbles with rootbeer instead of milk. Jack dips the s’mores poptarts into the rootbeer and swears that it tastes like heaven and orgasms and unicorns even though the look on his face says otherwise.
They change the CDs out when one ends and listen to them all. They have sex again under the other blanket (for the last time, but neither of them want to think about that) while Take off Your Pants and Jacket play in the background.
“I love you,” Alex whispers, over and over again, nails digging shallow cuts into the skin on Jack’s back as his hips work into him. They doze afterwards, and when they wake up, it’s dark out.
The watch reads 2:03:31.
“We should...” Jack starts, but he doesn’t finish what he was saying. He doesn’t know exactly how long Alex has, but he knows he has until roughly midnight.
“Yeah,” Alex agrees, but neither of them move. They lie there, and Jack points out the stars to Alex (gives them ridiculous names and makes up constellations in the shape of pokemon) and it’s honestly like they’re sixteen again.
Except that they’re not.
It’s only April, and it’s kind of really cold. Alex knows that he read somewhere at one point that if you’re in the cold or something you should get naked and cuddle like penguins or something, and that’s what they’re doing, they’re naked and they’re cuddling and they’re also under a stripey blanket (and it’s probably also illegal considering the fact that they’re in a public park) but it’s still chilly, he can feel the cold night air seeping in through the blankets.
They start moving at around eleven thirty. “Let’s go home,” Alex whispers, sitting up. He puts on Jack’s t-shirt, pausing every now and then for a kiss.
“You didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone else?” Jack questions when they’re in the car. Alex shakes his head, hands curled around his thighs.
“Just you,” he says softly, and then cracks half of a smile.”Besides, I’d sound crazy trying to explain it to anyone else.”
He puts Enema of the State into the cars CD player, skipping forward to track number eight. He knows exactly how long he has left, he’s trying not to count down in his head. Alex pulls the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands, blocking his view of the watch.
Five.
Alex looks over at Jack, bites his lip. He’s trying to memorize his face, even though he practically knows the other man better than he knows himself.
Four.
Bright lights. Eyes closed.
Three.
Squealing tires.
Two.
Screaming.
One.
Impact.