John James Searle (inneedofrepair) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-02-01 20:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 33, jacklyn baker, john james searle, | jack and searle |
Week 33 - Saturday
Characters: Jack and Searle.
Location: Jack’s/Molly’s room.
Summary: What looks like a potentially huge blowout brings Jack and Searle closer.
Rating: PG
Jack had been lost and already returned by the time Searle heard about the incident. Nonetheless, he’d gone up to her room shortly after hearing about it, only to pause before knocking on her door. He could hear voices from within, and it didn’t sound like Jack was talking to Molly. Not wanting to disturb Jack and Jed, Searle had turned around and gone back outside.
Later that evening, he found himself back at Jack’s door, his ear pressed close to the wood. There were no sounds he could hear inside, so he knocked and hoped that Jack was alone. Searle wasn’t sure what he even wanted to say about Jack’s little misadventure, but he did want to check to see if she had gotten in trouble.
Jack’s surprise at finding Searle knocking was written all over her face when she pulled open the door. “Oh. Searle. I thought maybe you were Jed again.” Bosie was much more welcoming, pressing forward to push his nose into Searle’s hand and wagging his tail. Searle took Bosie’s face in his hands and rubbed him, but didn’t take his eyes off Jack when she appeared in the doorway.
“I heard you were missing for a while today and everyone was worried,” he said. “Did you get yelled at?”
“No,” Jack answered carefully. She didn’t want to Searle to know she liked him, especially now that things were back to normal. “Jed was worried something happened to me. He wasn’t even mad.”
“That’s good.” Searle smiled, thinking to himself that Jack’s relationship with Jed had come a long way from what it used to be, especially in Vegas. “Where’d they think you went, though? There’s always someone on guard duty. I hope stuff out there isn’t more dangerous than they’re telling us.”
“I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “Jed was just all, ‘what if someone else had found you?’ I was only at the river.”
“They should know you need some privacy,” Searle said. “We have to share rooms and everything. It gets too close sometimes.”
“That’s what I said.” She was relieved at the way Searle understood. “I just wanted to be by myself for a little while.”
“Maybe if you told someone next time,” he suggested. “The river’s not that far away.”
She nodded. “Drew said he’d give me an alibi...for next time.” Her voice was more hesitant and no matter how Jack tried to keep things normal, it was hard to keep all feeling out.
“Drew’s cool,” Searle replied, smiling warmly if not a tad sheepishly at the memory of talking to Drew the day before. “You should take him up on it. It seems like everywhere I try to go for privacy someone is there … or wants to come in after I’m there.”
“Yeah.” Jack couldn’t help but think of the reasons she and Searle had needed privacy and that he’d need that now with Nevaeh. “Were you going to say something about you and Nevaeh?”
The question caught Searle entirely off his guard, and it showed. His whole body froze, and then seemed to melt slowly as he gained motion back in his limbs. Searle shook his head, then thought better and stopped. “I was going to say something,” he said, though his eyebrows drew together a moment later. “Wait, what do you mean?”
Jack waited a second before answering; she didn’t want to lose her cool. “I saw you guys kissing.” Her voice went too far into the opposite direction from emotional and came out kind of flat and emotionless.
“Oh,” was all Searle could think to say at first, and he was tempted to ask Jack what kind of kissing, but he realized that was a bad question. That, and it didn’t matter what kind. “I was going to tell you.” The guilt in his voice was evident. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
She stared down at the floor. “It hurts my feelings when my best friend keeps secrets from me. And ignores me,” she added.
“Hey,” Searle protested, “I wasn’t ignoring you.”
That got Jack’s attention and she looked up at Searle, eyes narrowing. “You haven’t talked to me since they got here.”
“I’ve just been busy, and I haven’t seen Nevaeh in a long time.” He wanted to cop and attitude with Jack, but held it back. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you.”
Jack exhaled, trying not to be angry. “Well, don’t. I don’t like it.”
“Sorry, I’ll try harder,” Searle said, but his voice was flat. “Nevaeh is my-- we’re together, so I’m going to spend more time with her while she’s here. After the traders leave,” he fought hard to keep his tone level, “I’m all yours.”
For a second, Jack couldn’t speak just because she couldn’t believe Searle would say anything that stupid. So it was okay just to ignore her because Searle and Nevaeh were kissing? It wasn’t!
“You can be a jerk sometimes,” she told him coldly. Jack pulled Bosie back inside her room and slammed her door in his face. Searle stared at it, the muscles in his shoulders tensing with anger. Jack just didn’t get it, and it annoyed him enough that he wanted to make her get it. The doorknob turned with ease, and he pushed it open to follow her inside, though he did stop after just passing the threshold.
“You don’t get it!” His voice was raised, but he wasn’t quite yelling. “After the traders leave, I might never see her again, and if I do it’ll be in months! If there was someone you liked in their group, you’d want to be with them a lot, too. It has nothing to do with you!”
“Well, sorry,” her voice was dripping with sarcasm, “but I didn’t know I was only supposed to want to be your friend until you found somebody better!”
“We’re still friends!” Searle retorted. “We’re still going to hang out, Jack, but my time with Nevaeh is limited so I want to be with her. That’s all I’m saying!”
“No, it’s not!” she shouted back. “You’re saying that I’m not supposed to care about being ignored however long they’re here for because you like her more than me! I don’t like being some fallback for when you don’t have anybody better!”
“That’s not true.” Searle’s voice lowered, as did his volume. “Did I give Nevaeh my parents’ IDs? I didn’t give them to Bridget, either. I gave them you you for a reason.”
Jack turned her back on Searle to check on Bosie, running her hand over his head. “Maybe you would have. She wasn’t here.” Jack was talking a lot about Nevaeh but the truth was she wasn’t even mad at the other girl. She was upset at Searle for kissing her just because he was horny and for ignoring her when he found someone else to do stuff about that with.
“No,” Searle said, lacking any trace of aggression anymore. “She didn’t save me like you did.”
Jack ran Bosie’s velvety ear through her fingers. Her lip was trembling and she didn’t want Searle to see. “You’re older than me,” she said quietly. “You want, like, all this grownup stuff. I don’t want to be some kid you used to be friends with.” She didn’t want to be left behind but as much she hated feeling younger, she could see how that would happen. If Searle had a girlfriend he wouldn’t need her for anything anymore.
Hearing that made Searle’s chest feel heavy. “That’s not going to happen. I don’t not want to be friends with you anymore,” he sighed. “I know you must think I’m a crappy person right now, I sort of do too.” There was a pause while Searle gazed at his feet, unable to look at any part of Jack - even the back of her head. “I feel like I’m being pulled in too many directions, and the only one I want to go in is the one that makes me feel the best.” That was Nevaeh, but Searle didn’t say it aloud. “But that doesn’t mean I want to leave you behind, I swear. I don’t know how to explain it, but … no one will have with me what you and I have.”
Jack couldn’t help it; she sniffled. She turned and sat heavily on her bed next to Bosie. “I don’t mean to fight with you. I just don’t want to be forgotten.”
“Why do you think I can forget you so easy?” Searle wasn’t sure he’d ever understand, but he wanted to try. He pushed the door closed behind him despite the rules Tom had laid down, and approached Jack on the bed, but didn’t sit. “That’s not happening, Jack.”
“Cause...” Jack wasn’t sure she could explain, it just made sense. “I thought being somebody’s girlfriend meant having a best friend you could kiss. And now you have a girlfriend you won’t need me anymore.”
Searle hadn’t thought it possible for Jack to make him more guilty over their brief relationship, but he’d been wrong. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly, “because what if you have a fight with your girlfriend? You need a best friend to have your back.” Silently, the girl just shrugged.
“... I told you that I used to live in Vermont, right? And that my dad took me and my mom to an evacuation center in Maine?” Searle wasn’t sure what he’d told to who anymore, or if he’d said anything at all. There had been a time when all of that had been much too upsetting to speak about, but that time was over. “Well, I didn’t know anyone there - just my parents, and they died pretty quickly. Pretty much everyone did.” He closed his hands into loose fists, unsettled by the vividness of the memory.
“I was by myself, and I thought ‘It’s gonna get cold here,’ so I learned to drive and I headed for Florida. I stopped in New York City and met a girl there. She was the first person I’d seen in what felt like forever, but it wasn’t that long, I guess. Anyway, she told me to leave after a while, so I went out west. I didn’t think I’d ever stop being alone. Then,” he said, “I met you.
“No one can replace that. You stuck with me, and even after we fought you came back for me. You introduced me to Jed, and I found Alice, and - there’s no way I would be here right now without you, because I was planning to blow through Vegas for California. I’d probably be dead now without you. So, when I say I won’t leave you I mean it, because, really, I owe everything to you.” Searle breathed deeply through a tightening chest. “I know I’m not showing it, you wouldn’t be mad at me if I was, but that’s how I feel.”
Somewhere in there Jack had started crying and she wiped her eyes messily. “But...but I didn’t even do anything. You’re so nice, not like me. Anybody would’ve been your friend.”
Searle shook his head. “You trusted me and shared with me; you hung out with me more than once, and you never … pulled a gun on me or anything like that.” The latter part of the sentence was strained, and Searle closed his eyes briefly. “You’re the nice one. Back then, it’s like you said: I didn’t know anything.”
“You were sleeping in the mall like a dummy,” Jack said with a breath of a laugh, which got Searle laughing too. “I didn’t think there’d ever be anybody my age. There was just Jed and Alice and they’d get old and then it would be me all by myself forever. And you’re nicer than me. I’m always fighting with somebody or getting into trouble. You always try to do the right thing with everybody. I’m not like that.”
“You fight a lot, but you’re not bad,” Searle pointed out. “If everyone was like me we wouldn’t be very safe, because I had to be convinced guns were okay. Everyone needs to be different, right? Besides, I think you’re good the way you are. It’d be boring if we got along all the time.” A small, almost experimental, smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Jack smiled back, just for a moment. “I’m just...I’m scared of being alone. I told you before you’re the only person who never tried to get rid of me and I don’t want to be by myself again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Searle slipped his hands into his pockets. “I told you.”
Jack didn’t know if this was a good idea after how much she’d tried to get things back to normal with Searle without all the touching but it wasn’t normal. Honestly, it was nice to feel close to somebody. Jed had been good about that lately but it wasn’t the same. Touching had been normal for them and that’s what she wanted. Tentatively, Jack got to her feet to hug him, and Searle didn’t hesitate to hug her back.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said again.
Jack stopped arguing. “Okay. Me neither.” She pulled away to wipe her eyes. “I’m not going to hate her. Just so you know.”
“Thanks, that means a lot,” Searle said. “All of us can hang out sometime … and I won’t ignore you anymore.” He scratched his arm. “I wasn’t trying to, but I’ll be more aware, or something.”
“Thanks.” That was all she wanted. Searle might never like her the way he liked Nevaeh but maybe they could be a different kind of good.