While some of you will undoubtedly know this, I hope those of you who do will forgive me as I reiterate: It has always been my intention that once the plot of Luxor Season 2 reached its conclusion, and the summer was finished, I would be officially retiring from group rping on tumblr. This means that all of you here were a part of the conclusion of what has been a 7+ year journey for me; and really, I don’t think I could have chosen a better place to end off.

Sora: In response to the inquires of King Isaac of The Kingdom of Luxor,

The Royal Highness, Queen of Carnifex, Sora Kim, has to say that you have most certainly reached out to the correct person regarding the matter of how to spend your afternoon. One, there is not, nor will there ever come a day, where Queen Sora will claim that an afternoon at the beach is a bad idea. When in doubt, sipping mimosas while watching the waves crash in is always the answer, never the question. Heretofore, Queen Sora ascertains that King Isaac should, indeed, spend his afternoon at the beach. ( Before or after enjoying noodles because a King always need his energy. ) And as such, she would like to inquire whether he will be in need of company on his outing? If only because she is exhausted of watching over her subjects and in need of a break from royal duties herself.

If yes, please respond at your earliest convenience,

Sora Kim, Queen of Carnifex

King Isaac: From the hand of King Isaac's most trusted advisor,

My Lord wishes me to inform you that he has chosen to take Your Majesty's most worthy advice, and will be spending the afternoon at the beach by the lake. Furthermore, he wishes me to express the sentiment that Your Majesty's company would be most welcome on this outing, should you still wish to grace him with your most royal presence. He regrets that he cannot write this correspondence himself, as he is too busy getting himself prepared for this outing. He hopes that Your Majesty will therefore be receptive of my writing to you on his behalf. Should you still be of the inclination to join my Lord at the beach, please send word, either by your own hand, or by the hand of one of those who serve you dutifully.

With the utmost respect,

Isaac: Let's go on an adventure!

King Isaac:

To The Esteemed Majesty, Queen Sora Kim of the Kingdom of Carnifex,

It is my sincerest hope that my electronic correspondence reaches you at a time that is most convenient to you. My reason for writing is that I find myself in need of the counsel of a fellow royal, and so, naturally, I have turned to the very best. I find myself in the midst of dilemma with regards to determining in what manner I should spend my time this afternoon, and hope that you could offer your advice on the matter. I hate to bother someone of your importance with such trifles, but if I am to rebuild myself as a ruler, then I must follow the best possible example; anything lesser would be doing a disservice to myself, as well as to my kingdom. Therefore I humbly ask for your input on making this decision, so that I may be guided to making the choice which is most befitting of a King; should I spend my afternoon at the beach by the lake, or should my afternoon be dedicated to the pursuit of perfection with regards to my fencing techniques? Or, is the answer, perhaps, that I should not do either or these things, but something else entirely? Should you choose to bestow your wise judgement upon me, I shall be most grateful to you.

With Most Excellent Regards,

Isaac: Hey I'm thinking about going home next weekend. You in?

Isaac: Maia quick! I'm watching Jeopardy right now and I need to know which planet is the heaviest!

When: Late Sunday afternoon during Family Weekend

Esther King had never been the type of woman to feel much pull by the world which Luxor Academy was a part of. She preferred a simpler life, and with everything that she knew had happened in the lives of her two grandsons in the five years that they’d attended the prestigious boarding school, it was easy to be reminded of why that was. It wasn’t as though there was no drama when you lived in the country; small towns could have their share of scandal too. It just seemed to her like those scandals were fewer and farther between, and certainly not to the level of severity that the scandals some of these kids were dealing with were. Esther rolled her eyes to herself, knowing that her daughter-in-law had always been thrilled by the fact that her children attended such a school, but for her part, Esther couldn’t help but feel that they might have been better off if they’d gone to school somewhere else.

Speaking of her daughter-in-law, Esther was more than a little relieved to find herself in a moment away from Vanessa’s company. Esther wasn’t sure where the woman had gone, but if she had to guess (and this thought was accompanied by another roll of her eyes) she would assume that Vanessa was off making calls in an attempt to try and repair the damage that had been done to Isaac’s reputation the previous afternoon. Time which would surely be better spent trying to repair the damage done to her son’s heart and soul from that same experience, though Esther knew that Isaac had shut himself away for the time being.

Ceci had been sitting right next to her sister when she began to hear the snickering around her, the overall whispers lifting the entire volume of the crowd at graduation. Her eyebrows furrowed together as she recognized it, her mom asked her what was going on as Ceci just shrugged, she was wondering the same thing, her attention drew to the pamphlet everyone seemed to be focusing on, it had to be the cause of all the whispers. Flipping through the she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, until she found her sister’s name towards the end, and eventually got to the words that practically choked the girl as she read them. She looked over to where her sister had been sitting right next to her and she seemed to have already be gone, her eyes moving to her mom, the tears already building. “Sabias esto?” The girl could barely get the words out, as she pointed to the portion of the page, but she saw the pain on her mom’s face the moment she read it and couldn’t even stomach sitting there in that moment. Ceci rarely expected anyone to be a good person, her expectations of people were always very low, she’d bee disappointed too many times to think highly of just about everyone. However, not for a second did she question her sister, she was the one person Ceci trusted with absolutely everything. 

She’d been thrown enough by the fact that her dad was on campus and looking for her, she hadn’t actually seen him but the fact that he was there had her already on edge. “I’m leaving.” She said firmly, although she wished it was to Isa and not to her mother, who she was sure was going through her own emotions in the moment, but she couldn’t bear being strong for her in that moment. Her head began to spin as he stood up, sure she could be hurt by the fact that her father found a way and even wanted to be apart of Isa’s life now yet still never reached out to Ceci, but that was the same situation she was in when she was a child and he left, Ceci gave up expecting anything from him long ago. What hurt most was that her sister was out there building a relationship with him and didn’t so much as mention it to her. 

As she walked away from the crowds of people she found a set of stairs tucked away from everyone, needing to sit down to even process what she’d been running away from. She’d wanted to do anything but cry, yet her face was wet from tears regardless, she began to wipe them away as she heard steps, not bothering to look up, “Please. Not now…” 

@luxorstarters​

The moments between reading his secret being revealed to everyone, and finding himself walking hastily through the hallways trying to find somewhere to be alone were something of a blur to Isaac. It was almost like he’d been sleep walking, and had suddenly awoken to find himself there. For now they were just words, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before The Crusade made sure that every person at Luxor and beyond saw the video itself. It had been made so long ago, that he couldn’t even remember exactly what he’d said, but he did remember how he’d felt in the moment of recording it, and that alone was enough for him to know that once this video went public, his entire life as he knew it would be over. He knew that there was practically no hope that he could hide away from everything for long once that moment came, but at the very least, he needed to find somewhere to sit down and try to mentally prepare himself for the storm that was about to come.

Having headed for one of the staircases on campus which was rarely ever used these days figuring it would be a good place to hide for a few minutes at least, the last thing that Isaac ever expected was to find that someone else was already occupying it. He felt a wave of shock when he realized that person was Ceci, and that she seemed to be crying. He had no idea what it was that was bothering her, having only gotten as far as reading his own name and the attached secret, but he felt fairly sure that the source of her distress had come from the same pamphlet which he still held crumpled in his fist. Swallowing hard on the lump of unease and discomfort that had risen in his throat from seeing Ceci in such a state, he nodded his head slowly at her words. “Yeah, no..I uh...was just looking for a place to hide out, but..”He trailed off and shook his head, realizing that an explanation didn’t matter, and that she almost certainly didn’t want to hear it. So, instead, he grabbed a hold of the railing and took his first two steps up the stairs, intent on hopefully finding an empty classroom on the next floor where he could use as a place of refuge, so that he could leave Ceci to hers.

WHO: @theisaacking​ WHEN: Saturday, after the graduation ceremony WHERE: Somewhere in the halls of Luxor

Typically, family weekend was something the young man couldn’t be bothered with, it always posing as an occasion where he would be forced to associate with the relatives he saw as less deserving of The Addington status. However, with Alek’s disappearance and this finally being her side of the family’s chance to thoroughly investigate the school and speak with the staff about where she might have gone, Milcom felt hopeful that family weekend could actually just be about his parents coming in and praising him for how well he had been doing in the last several months.

There was something particularly amusing about Alek’s disappearance to him. It was really the same old shit, and he couldn’t wrap his head around why everyone in his family had seemed so surprised when she had up and left just before finally doing something that could have actually made her worthy of the Addington name. It was laughable. And to Milcom, it just went to show how pathetic Lilith, Roman and that entire extension of the family really was, how terribly they raised their children, and he felt tickled pink with the continued discussion around the shock of Alek’s ghosting of the wedding.

Just when he thought his weekend couldn’t get any brighter, he spotted Isaac from afar, a mischievous sort of grin pulling at his lips even at the sight of him. Of course he knew who Isaac was despite having not paid one single ounce of attention to him while he had been lucky enough to be involved with anyone of his family’s status. But with the extra pep in his step, and with the abundant knowledge of Alek having left, he felt a sort of change of heart. “Heh, you’re Alek’s ex, right?” He spat, closing space between them just enough to shove on Isaac’s shoulder upon his greeting. “No, no… don’t tell me,” he insisted, pointing loosely in Isaac’s direction and bouncing the hand up and down as though he were actually trying to remember his name. “Ian? No… Isaiah? Oh man, I can’t keep up with all of Alek’s men anymore…” he yammered on more to himself than to Isaac, and continuing before Isaac could have a chance to correct him.

“How you coping, man? You know… I’ve had a lot of nasty breakups but,” he began to chuckle lightly through his words, “I dunno if I can say I’ve had any full-on run away on me like that.” He nudged Isaac again as though he were being playful but his tone and the plastered grin to his lips easily suggested otherwise. “I couldn’t really figure out why everyone was so shocked when Alek ran away. I figured maybe they were thinking she would have stayed for you but,” he scoffed humourously, and shook his head a little, “boy, were they wrong, right?” The grin left his eyes, a certain level of needless distain and perhaps even disgust finding his eyes as he peered at Isaac, feeling disgusted by the idea that he had ever been so closely tied to any one of his relatives.

Isaac could hardly fathom how things had managed to fall so far, so fast. He had already been reeling plenty from his breakup with Alek and her subsequent departure, without everything else that had happened to him since then being piled on top of that. He could only find a small amount of a bitter sort of solace in the fact that, surely, it was impossible that things could get any worse than they already were, right? 

Wrong. The instant that his eyes fell on the face of the Addington approaching, Isaac felt his body fill with dread. He didn’t know a lot about Milcom, but what he did know was more than enough to know that this conversation was going to be anything but pleasant. Sure enough, as he heard the other male’s words, they seemed to pierce through whatever pitiful defense Isaac had left, like icicles through paper, filling Isaac with the same sort of icy chill that would come from being stabbed by such a thing. It was as though this boy knew exactly what to say, in order to cause Isaac the most amount of distress possible. In a sick sort of way, it was almost impressive; The Circle and The Crusade could surely learn a thing or two from this twisted mind. 

Swallowing hard on the large lump that had risen in his throat throughout the male’s speaking, Isaac nodded his head. “Guess they were.” He replied simply in a defeated tone, shrugging his shoulders and avoiding the icy daggers that were Milcom’s malicious eyes. Isaac’s fist was clenched tightly at his side, and a part of him would have loved nothing more than to hit the Addington boy, but in all truthfulness, he was much too afraid of him to dare to try. He couldn’t even verbally defend himself because of this fear, so any physical defending of himself was almost entirely out of the question, no matter how much Milcom had pushed his buttons to the point where he wanted to. Remarkably, Isaac’s sense self preservation was somehow still in tact, despite the fact that, really, there didn’t seem to be much left in his life that it was worth preserving at the moment.

@urkingbby

After the video had been released by The Crusade, Isaac had wasted no time in putting as much distance between himself and everyone else as quickly as he could. As he found a spot in the rafters above the stage in the auditorium to hide, he was sure that there were people who were looking everywhere for him, looking to interrogate him, and he frankly wanted nothing to do with that until he could process how he was feeling about it all. 

If he was being completely honest with himself, he had always figured, ever since learning that The Circle had their hands on this video two years prior, that it was only a matter of time before it saw the light of day. With each subsequent secret reveal that had happened in the time since, first by The Circle, and then by The Crusade, it had felt like he was existing on borrowed time, that feeling only getting more and more prominent as more and more reveals occurred. There was something almost comical about the fact that in basically that exact same span of time, he had been living on borrowed time with Alek; now that their time had expired, it was fitting that the clock would finally strike twelve for this as well. 

It was strange to him, but not surprising, that he felt a certain amount of relief surrounding the fact that his feelings surrounding Disney were now out in the open, and could not be mistaken. He could only hope that people who watched it would hear him speak a bit about some of the things he’d experienced while working for The Mouse, and would maybe think twice about whether or not they should be supporting them. He could also only hope that some of the people who he had worked with at Disney would see the video and know that it was because of them that he had made a video blasting the entire company.

But that was really where the positives ended.

Certainly Isaac had fans that were every bit as terrible as he had claimed them to be in the video, but he also had some wonderful, and very supportive fans, who were now going to think that he hated them as much as he had said he did. He could, and most certainly would, issue an apology to them, of course, but he couldn’t help but think that there were bound to be some who he had let down beyond repair by saying the things that he’d said, who wouldn’t come around, or be inclined to forgive him. And really, how could he blame them? He had lashed out at all of his fans, simply due to the actions of some of them, so what did that say about him as a person? In a way, it was almost worse that he didn’t hate everyone, but had said he did, than it would be if he truly did hate them all.

And then there was his career, and Isaac could feel his lip trembling as his thoughts came around to this aspect. At the time of that video being made, Isaac had been on the verge of quitting the industry completely, his passion for acting being essentially all dried up. How remarkable was it then, that five years later, he had more passion for acting than he had ever had in his life? And how tragic was it, that there was a good chance that he might never get to do it professionally again after this? The only solace he could take from this, was the fact that he had found passion in something else, in teaching, and that it had already been his intention to make that his career. But it had also always been his intention to continue acting while he did so, and now he wasn’t sure if that was going to be possible the way that he had been envisioning.

It took him a few seconds to register the fact that he could hear his Mother’s voice calling out, and although it had almost always been his impulse to turn her away, he felt something very different in the wake of all of his reflecting; a yearning to be close to her. Lowering himself down from his spot in the rafters, he approached her with eyes that were heavy and full of tears. He had no doubt that she was furious with him for having made that video, and while that surely would have drawn his ire normally, there was a certain vulnerability he was feeling at the present moment that made such a feeling impossible. “I...No one... was ever supposed to see that. But now they have, and...it’s ruined everything...” He said choking out the last of these words as his tears spilled from his eyes.

“Hey guys, it’s Isaac! I just wanted to come on here and say that I FUCKING HATE all of you.”

Kenzie grabbed two cold drinks and headed up to pay when she noticed Isaac. By the fact she had seen him without Alek at prom, she could make an educated guess of what had happened. Hugging the drinks to her chest, she came up behind Isaac and tapped his shoulder with her own. “Long time no see. I thought you had forgotten about me,” she teased him with a small smile. “So, are we buying comfort food? I could be down for that.”

Isaac felt his heart sink when he felt someone tapping his shoulder, and as he turned to find that it was Kenzie, it didn’t really bring it up much. Even putting aside the fact that he didn’t want to talk to or spend time with anyone as it was, the fact that he hadn’t really talked to Kenzie much at all in the past year was a cause for him to feel a great amount of guilt. He wasn’t exactly sure how you explained to someone that the reason you hadn’t spent much time with them was because you had known that your relationship with your girlfriend was an over-turned hourglass, and that you had wanted to spend every free second you had with her before all the sand had fallen to the bottom. Hearing her say that she thought he had forgotten about her, joke or not, only really served to make him feel worse about it. “I didn’t forget about you, Kenz. Of course I didn’t. I..it’s just...it’s complicated.” He winced as these words left his lips, knowing how it sounded. And yet, what other word was there to describe the situation he had found himself in for the past year? At her question about buying comfort food, he flushed a bit, before shaking his head. “Not food. Just whipped cream..” He muttered, speaking only loud enough for her to hear. The last thing he wanted was for everyone to know that he was existing on a diet that was composed entirely of aerosolized dessert cream.

Anytime that Sora felt down in the dumps, so to speak, there was one thing guaranteed to make her feel better– and that thing was performing. She was beyond exhausted feeling like someone who actually had a heart, because god forbid she let herself feel anything real, of course. She practically danced her way into the auditorium and wasted no time in jumping up onto the stage, dramatically curtsying for her non-existent audience. Taking out her phone, she laid it on top of the piano and opened iTunes, before blasting the soundtrack from Cabaret. She was in the midst of belting Maybe This Time when she happened to notice that she wasn’t alone, her gaze briefly falling on Isaac. However, his presence didn’t deter her from finishing her performance. It was only after the song came to an end that she shut off the music and moved toward the edge of the stage, taking a seat and letting her legs dangle over the edge. “I hope you enjoyed that free performance– honestly, I should make you pay for getting to witness such impeccable talent,” she said teasingly, lips twitching as she tried to smile, though the effort was more difficult than she was willing to make obvious. “Was it my fantastic voice that drew you here or are you just here to de-stress, too?” Her tone was still laced with teasing as she asked the question. “Not that I’m stressed, obviously, because Sora Kim does not get stressed, but…” She let the sentence trail off, as she was, for once, unable to make herself sound even the slightest bit convincing because of course she was stressed. 

It was hardly a secret by this point that Isaac and Alek had broken up, and despite his very best attempts to avoid talking about it at all with anyone outside of Jackson, people had now taken to showing up at his dorm in attempts to cheer him up. This meant that if he wanted to be left to sulk in peace, he had to find somewhere else to do so, which, for the past couple days, had turned out to be the auditorium. The room had of course been a place of comfort to him many times in the past, with the stage it housed being the very stage that had played an integral role in helping him recapture his passion for acting in the days that had followed leaving Disney. Now, once again, this room served as his place of refuge. 

Though it was hardly the first time since he’d began coming here to be alone that someone had come to use the space themselves, it was the first time that it was someone he knew. He strongly considered leaving because of this fact, but then it was Sora, and he could hardly imagine that she would feel so inclined as to get him to talk about his feelings; that just wasn’t her speed at all. So, he stayed put, not really paying attention to what she was doing, and simply existing within his own world, which he was only pulled out of when he realized she was speaking to him. “What? Oh. I wasn’t really paying attention honestly, but I’m sure that it was great.” He said with a nod and a shrug. At her words about being stressed, he raised his brows ever so slightly. “Well there’s a first time for everything, Sora. And if you don’t believe me, let me repeat that I wasn’t paying attention to your performance. Me. Not paying attention to your performance.” Letting out a bitter chuckle, he shook his head and sighed. “And if that’s possible, then I think I’d say you being stressed out is also possible. Especially these days.”

Jackson lightly scoffed with Isaac’s response, immediately averting his eyes away from him. Yelling wouldn’t have been an issue for Jackson, not over this, not these days, but with Isaac suggesting Jackson hit him, Jackson simply did not have it in him. At least, he didn’t have it in him to hit Isaac for Callie approaching him to apologize. Even if he could feel his insides churning at the thought of it, even if a certain level of restlessness was already beginning to build up inside of him as he was given the time to dwell on the idea that Callie felt ever so inclined to make peace with Isaac and not so much as skim over how he could possibly have felt about the betrayal. Hadn’t it been a betrayal of him? Did he really have to continue sitting there and accept the fact that Callie had only ever cared about Isaac through any of this? He didn’t want to be thinking about this anymore. He didn’t want to have to revisit the feelings it elicited inside of him. Especially because of the uncomfortable feelings of guilt it brought up, still being able to feel so deeply upset about the situation now that he was with Maia. Although, he knew that it wasn’t only about Callie. It was about so much more than simply Callie.

 He turned his head off to the side as Isaac continued to speak and only when he finished speaking, did he turn his focus back to him. And probably to Isaac’s dismay, Jackson hadn’t exactly taken in a single proper thing Isaac had said to him. “It’s not your fault Callie hasn’t thought twice about me through any of this.” He concluded simply, but the coolness in his tone was very evident. “It’s not your fault that she thinks about you every time the chance arises either.” He said, widening his eyes in annoyance and turning his focus away from Isaac again for a moment. After a bit of silence, Jackson turned his eyes back to him. “Why is she even apologizing to you…” he muttered bitterly. He focused in on what she could possibly even say as an apology, finding his anger only building at the thought. “Why is she even apologizing to you.” He repeated, though this time it was more rhetorical. Jackson felt it was obvious why Callie would think to apologize to Isaac rather than him. The very thought causing his eyes to roll back into his head, his eyes closing begrudgingly. Reopening his eyes, he remained silent for another few seconds. “She just came up and gave you an entire speech about how sorry she is for everything?” He said flatly. “What did she say?”

Well, Isaac had been fully aware before he’d started speaking that there was a pretty good chance that Jackson wasn’t going to listen, so when he heard his brother’s response, he was far from surprised by it. Still, he couldn’t help but exhale a sigh of exasperation anyways. “Jackson, she wants to apologize to you too. In fact, the only reason she didn’t apologize to you last night, is because she didn’t want to ruin your prom. She made that very clear in our conversation.” Isaac said, nodding his head. Now that he was seeing his brother’s reaction to all of this, Isaac couldn’t help but feel like he’d perhaps made an error in judgement by encouraging Callie in thinking that the previous night wasn’t the time for apologies to be made. But then again, it was hard to predict how having that conversation would have effected Jackson’s mood. 

The question that Jackson posed actually prompted a small scoff to rise out of Isaac’s throat as he shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, that’s basically what I said too. She apologized for...what we did, said that it was wrong and that she should never have done it, and I think she was sorry for getting mad after I told you the truth. But I told her that I was never mad for myself, and that we had both participated in wronging you, and that she didn’t really have anything she needed to apologize to me for. Then she told me that she wanted to apologize to you, and that the only reason she hadn’t was because she didn’t want to ruin your prom, like I said before. And that was it.” As Isaac concluded recounting the interaction that he’d had with Callie to the best of his memory, he exhaled a sigh and shrugged his shoulders again. “Look, I don’t wanna ruin your day any more than I already have, so I think I should just go, but...she did want to apologize to you Jackson. She did. A lot more, I think, than she wanted to apologize to me. She just....I think she just figured that since I wasn’t there with...with Alek, that my night was already ruined anyway, and so she wasn’t going to be able to make it any worse. Whereas you...you actually had a shot at having a good night, and you deserved to be able to have it without any interruption.”

“It was the MoMA,” he corrected eagerly, an unintentional giggle escaping his lips before he had the chance to stop it. And took a few seconds to sift through the memories of that experience as well, honestly being too excited in the moment about the following things he had wanted to share with Isaac about his night that he hadn’t felt the subtle hints of regret he usually felt around that event. When Isaac went on to begin sharing a bit of his own night, Jackson pressed his lips together, a grin still playing at his lips despite knowing that Isaac’s night wasn’t going to be nearly as peachy as Jackson’s was. At the mention of Isaac’s night being interesting, Jackson anticipated hearing something about Daphne, or at least about the absence of Alek. Instead however, and something that he could never prepare himself for, was the sound of Calliope’s name emerging from his twin brother’s lips. His expression dropped, feeling as though the moment between Isaac saying her name and before getting to the point of what he was going to say was an eternity, his throat already closing in on itself. Why was Isaac mentioning Callie when bringing up how his night had gone, why had Isaac been with Callie during prom, what was he about to hear as a follow-up to his hesitation. 

When Isaac finally revealed that Callie had apologized to him, Jackson’s gaze remained straight on Isaac’s face. He was unsure what he was even supposed to do with this information. And before Jackson could decide what to do with the information, his mind started to race through the possibilities of what had prompted Callie to apologize, what Isaac would have felt when she did, were they alone? Jackson thought back to the brief interaction he had had with Callie earlier in the night, wondering if she had been planning to speak with Isaac even then. Had she been still thinking about Isaac regularly? Thinking about their encounter all those years ago? Had she even thought twice about what she had done to him when it had finally come to light.

Jackson felt a strange tightening in his stomach when Isaac mentioned forgiving her; his jaw inadvertently clenching at the thought. His gaze drifted a little, began hovering just below Isaac’s as he tried to press down the thoughts of, oh, of course it would be so easy to forgive Callie for sleeping with you. He knew that Isaac had been hurt by Callie too, he knew… but resentment simmered inside of him, goosebumps covering his arms momentarily with the sudden emotion moving through him. He momentarily found himself dwelling on the idea that Isaac had to remind Callie of him. Before too long, Jackson brought his eyes back to Isaac’s and lifted a shoulder uncomfortably, his brows lifting somewhat abruptly before falling back down. “Glad you worked things out.” He said curtly, swallowing thickly against the irritability he felt begging to evolve into full-fledged anger.

It was just about as bad as Isaac could have imagined it would be, had he allowed himself to indulge his imagination beforehand. Not for the first time, he felt himself wishing that Jackson would just come out and express the anger that Isaac knew he was holding onto; whether that came in the form of yelling, or preferably, punching Isaac in the face. Isaac knew that he deserved it, he knew that he hadn’t even come close to paying penance for what he had done, and while a punch wasn’t enough to make them remotely close to even, at the very least it would be likely to bring Jackson some small amount of relief and satisfaction. But no matter how many times Isaac implored his twin to strike out with that anger that Jackson seemed so intent on repressing, he had never managed to break through, and he couldn’t see any reason why this time would be any different; that didn’t mean he wasn’t still going to try though. “Jackson....you know that if you want to yell, or...hit me..or, whatever, that you can.” Isaac said quietly, after a moment of silence that had followed his brother’s words. “You...you don’t have to keep taking the high road, okay? You don’t have to hold it all in. I don’t want you to hold it all in. I mean, look, I deserve a whole Hell of a lot worse than a punch in the face for...for what I did, but at least if you do that then you..you did something. It doesn’t make us even, but at least you’ll know that you didn’t just let it slide.” Shaking his head, he sighed. “I...like I told Callie, I could tear my heart out of my own chest, and show you how full of remorse and regret it is, and it wouldn’t be enough. Nothing that I do is ever going to be enough, and I know that I deserve that. I deserve to live with that. And yeah...you yelling at me, or punching me? It’s not going to be enough either. But I deserve that too, and it’s...it’s gotta be better than nothing, Jackson. It’s gotta be better than nothing.”

@luxorstarters​

“Hey, do you have a sec?” Jack offered a reassuring (well, as reassuring as he could manage) smile in the direction of the other student as he held out the clipboard, having ambushed them in the middle of the courtyard. “I’m doing a survey. It’s for science,” he said earnestly. “How did you lose your virginity?” ​

God, the last thing that Isaac wanted right now was to be stopped by anyone; and although he didn’t personally have any real issues with Jack, he felt like the Brit was amongst the worst people to be stopped by on campus. As he heard his question, he scoffed a bit, shaking his head. “I tell you that, and I might as well just call the tabloids and give them the details of how it happened right now. Because if I were to tell you, they would find out, and they would not rest until you sold them that information. Guaran-damn-teed.” Isaac replied, bitterly rolling his eyes at the thought.