Jack Monroe

Jack enjoyed playing pretend. Acting, in particular, was one of his preferred outlets for it, though so far he hadn't even yet been paid for it, done it professionally. Not as the job. Sure, some of his jobs had certainly required that he act in service of his end goals, but that was different. While yes, "act good, get better pay" may be also true of professional acting as well as stripping, bartending, turning tricks, or any other numerous things he did for a day or two, he had never felt quite so free with the latter types of acting. Being on the stage, however? Reciting words written centuries ago, something he could burn into his memory, try and become that character? It was something else entirely. It felt freeing. Even just in rehearsals, with some others who didn't take it quite so seriously. Hell, Jack enjoyed that there was someone (the director) who told people off if they weren't pretending hard enough. So far, the director had had nothing but good feedback for him, enough so that he knew people were giving him side-glances, either out of jealousy or suspicion that he was screwing the director. They didn't believe this young man had any experience acting, especially when he had no resume to speak of. But he had practice. Practically a whole life of it, in fact. He barely knew who he was underneath it anymore, it had been so long since he had let his walls down.

He'd had to pretend when he didn't hear his drunken father's yelling, his mother's crying. Hell, he'd gotten so good at pretending that both his parents were dead that sometimes he accidentally thought it. After experiencing several months of being bullied for being the freak at his temporary housing, he begged his new guardians to let him simplify the story. He was 12 the last time that he was truthful to someone about his parents. Some might call that delusion, but for Jack, it was a defense. He could be harmed by the truth. People were too careless throwing it around, and so he built a carapace out of pretending. He'd lost count of how many different excuses he had about the partial deafness he had in one ear, for example. He'd had a baseball hit him there, he'd been born like that, he got too close to some firecrackers going off, he'd had such a bad inner ear infection as a kid that it permanently wreaked havoc on his eardrum. He'd lied about so many innocuous things, but also some very serious things. His age, when he was too young. His relation to the man he was found close with in a spot the police often looked for people turning tricks. Where exactly he got that jacket, that watch. For a good while, he hadn't even thought about turning his pretend into anything serious, but he'd snuck into a theater to evade some people he really didn't want to catch up to him and everything about the experience had made him fall in love. The lights, the world, the raw emotion. It was even more rapturous to be on the stage, the one standing in those lights.

Not all of his acting was so far removed from him, though. The mournful audition monologue of his spurned love had truth in it, but he was just grateful to be able to use that experience for an improved acting experience. While he knew what his character was feeling, he no longer attributed that pain to his own experiences. He was able to leave it behind when he set aside the character at the end of rehearsal. Jack would just smile and thank people when they complimented him on how real he made those feelings seem, but he was never enticed into making any kind of confession, sharing stories that he drew from. The real life didn't matter, not when it was now just in service of art.

For those moments of acting, when the focus was on him, he stopped being Jack, and became whoever the script required him to be. He embodied that role, locked in and kept the real him shut away until the time when the director told them scene, or when he went away off stage. Hell, sometimes, he didn't let go of the character between scenes, even when he wasn't on the stage. Sometimes he would let himself linger in it, mentally put himself through the hoops that his character would be going through in that off-stage time, to get into that mindset.

Sadly, community theater could not pay the bills, so he had had to find other ways to keep a roof over his head. The roof may have been a large house rented by several other people, each paying for their own room and part of the utilities, but Jack was used to living like that, regardless. It reminded him of his foster family, though obviously he was not quite as close with any of the people in Toledo. He didn't have trouble charming people into making friends with them, at gigs, in theater, or among his roommates, but there would always be a shallowness to it. There was never a Jack without at least one wall up at all times. Luckily, he was good enough at masking that, that most people didn't realize if he wasn't being completely himself. After all, what did "completely himself" even look like? Literally no one knew, so it wasn't hard to imagine that a few people he felt close to genuinely thought they knew.

One such person was Shani, a woman about eight or so years older than him, who had helped him find his current residence and was acting in the same community theater as him. Juliet's maid. He, of course, was Romeo. The woman playing Juliet felt a bit aloof to him, sweet but too serious, and definitely not the type to accept invites to club nights, like several others were, including Shani. He enjoyed wing-manning for her and sometimes vice versa, and sometimes when she was quite drunk, she would lament to him over the loud music that he was totally her type, and if he was interested in women, she'd be all over him. Most of the time, though, that never came up, and she was generally his biggest supporter. She had been so curious, even encouraging, when he'd told her he generally felt genderfluid, not particularly one way or the other, up to and including going out shopping with him and teaching him make-up tricks much subtler than theatric stage make-up. Things to make his eyes pop, accentuate his cheekbones, or draw more attention to his lips. He liked to think he could easily play Romeo or Juliet, and if he ever found a troupe that did all male casts of Shakespeare like they were originally done, he probably would audition for a leading lady.

"I really thought it was over for him and me... I thought I could never have him back, ok? And I love you, that wasn't fake! Nothing I said or did was fake! You healed me in a way I could never have even hoped for... but I think he's the love of my life, Jack. I would regret it forever if I didn't try again with him, and you deserve better than that."

Any despair he'd been feeling turned into a steely rage. On the outside, his eyes had dimmed, lost their light, and while he could feel his face wasn't betraying any emotion, Col still winced at the look in his eye. At least he had that power, still. This shouldn't- couldn't be easy for him. Jack wouldn't allow it. Sure, he wasn't going to suffer even half as much, but there was no way in hell Jack was going to make this easy on him. He didn't deserve easy. Especially not when every new sentence seemed like a fresh cut.

"Not everything is about you."

No. That was sort of the problem though, wasn't it? Perhaps if more things had been about him, he wouldn't have all gotten so fucked up.

Jack could trace that line of thinking back to his childhood, to his earliest memories. Maybe if his dad had cared more about him. Maybe if his mom had thought about the situation her being in prison put Jack in. Maybe if family on both sides had been less concerned with who was "right", "good," "bad," and focused on loving Jack? Maybe if the foster family hadn't had too many kids, that the quiet one wouldn't have fallen by the wayside.

Of course, if he said any of this out loud, he knew the kind of response he'd get. It would be a lot like that one, actually. Not everything is about you. If not that, then perhaps something about him wanting everything on a silver platter? Everything catered to him? And yeah, so fucking what if he did? How would it take away from everyone or anything else for him to have some time with that silver platter? Why couldn't he find the silver platter meant for him?

He just wanted to feel special, paid attention to. Like he had been at the start of this now ruined relationship. Jack should have known that it was too good to be true at the beginning. He had kept telling himself to pinch himself because he had to be dreaming, and now he knew, a little too late, that that had been the truth. At the very least, he had managed to hold that thought in his head. He'd never truly allowed himself to believe it, and maybe that's why he wasn't destroyed.

A more trusting, delicate Jack would have been destroyed by the fact that what he had thought had been going to be his future had had no substance behind it. One could argue that him holding it a breadth away from his heart might have contributed to its dissolution, but one would be wrong. Jack would not take any blame for the other man's mistakes or folly. He wouldn't take blame for believing someone when they said they wanted to be with him. That they loved him. That there was no one else.

Only a cynic would tell Jack it was his own fault for having hope of a good thing. And only an asshole would tell him, after he reacted badly to a break up, that not everything was about him. This was. It was supposed to be. And the fact that it wasn't was part of the problem. So yeah, Jack could be angry, he could be distraught if he wanted to.

It didn't linger with him. He kind of refused to let anything break him, on principle. He'd allow himself to fall apart, but once he picked himself up again, that was it. He wouldn't allow it that power over him anymore. It didn't deserve any more of his energy.

Jack let his eyelids slip shut, blanketing his world in darkness as he took a few deep breaths. He was just outside of the apartment now, he'd turned the corner and leaned against the wall when he felt far enough away from it to break. I can't wait for you to be mine. He swiped a tear off his cheekbone with a calloused thumb, swallowing thickly against the lump suddenly in his throat. He then dropped his hand down to press it over his bruised heart, hidden under his ribcage and yet susceptible to the second worst kind of damage. Why had he allowed himself to surrender? Why had he given himself over like that? Shouldn't he have known this could only go one way?

Choking on a sob, he brushed away a couple more tears and fished a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapping the bottom against his palm before taking one out and putting it between his lips. Fuck, it was so cold out here... maybe it'd be less cold if he went to the waterfront?

He started up walking, holding his hand over the lighter's attempts to ignite, to keep the wind from knocking it right back out. As soon as he had set the end burning, he pocketed everything, including his hands against the cold. Even if he hadn't been in Toledo long, he knew roughly the direction of the bay, so he headed that way. Jack wished dearly that the cold against his cheeks and the burning in his lungs as he took a drag from the cigarette was enough to keep his thoughts swirling around the recent heartbreak. Because that's what it was, wasn't it? He could call himself bruised, but the fact of the matter was that he was young, in a new city, and just had had his dreams dashed. His reason for being here. Hell, part of him wanted to stop at "being." For a month or two, that's what it had felt like.

Jack had been so ready to be Col's. Well, so ready minus the little voice in the back of his head telling him it was too much, too soon. Too good, too perfect. That had been there since the moment it seemed like the older man was interested in more than just sex. Not that Jack didn't think he was compelling enough to want to be around, he knew he was, but there had been an edge there. A little warning, he could tell himself, after the fact. Like Col had laughed a little too much at his jokes. Had been hyperbolic about Jack's looks too often. Anyone would want that kind of behavior to mean something, though, surely? Without having felt true devotion not tainted by outside forces, it had been like a drug, and maybe he had known that just like a drug, it wouldn't last. And that it could hurt him when it was out of his system.

Not that he knew too much about drugs and their affects. At least, not on a personal level. He'd seen a couple people waste away because of their dependence, so he liked to think he'd never allow that to happen to him. Was that why he was kicking himself now? He felt he should have known better? Everyone had always treated him like he was older than he was, that he should know better... when did he become one of those people that did that too? Why should Jack have known better? Why couldn't he believe in one good thing happening? Why'd it have to prove every bad thing right once again?

The air felt warmer, fresher, by the bay, even as he continued to take drags from his cigarette until it was next to nothing. He took the butt from his lips and looked at it, musing darkly that he had a couple places on his body that he could put it out on. Scars of the same variety, given to him so many years ago... but honestly, no one deserved his pain. He wasn't going to torture himself because of someone else's fuck up. People did that enough to him already throughout his life, so he didn't need to help them out any. He crushed it against the railing keeping people from falling into the water below and made sure it was good and smothered before stuffing it into his pocket for the nearest trash. He could so easily make the world which had never treated him well a worse place, but what was the point? Let someone else do it. They already were anyway, didn't mean he should take part in it.