Harmless Things (Jean Hobbs AU)

Part one

A/N: Lyric credit goes to Panic! At The Disco, song in the side. 

Jack P.O.V.

 Now I'm of consenting age to be forgetting you in a cabaret

Somewhere downtown where a burlesque queen may even ask my name

As she sheds her skin on stage

I'm seated and sweating to a dance song on the club's P.A.

The strip joint veteran sits two away

Smirking between dignified sips of his dignified peach and lime daiquiri

Brendon Urie's singing voice started blasting out my phone and without moving the rest of my body, I threw an arm out to the side and yanked my phone off charge and silenced it. I peeked at the time and sighed, realising I wasn't going to get the pleasure of going back to sleep for another half an hour or so since I had slept through my earlier alarms. It had to be said that I was a deep sleeper but almost always my last alarm that screamed at me at 8am on weekdays wakes me up, but on weekends, the hour doesn't exist and my days begin at 1pm earliest if I find the energy to get out of bed.

I threw the duvet off me and walked over to the speakers and turned on some music to make me more alert. It was a routine since I didn't have anyone to do it for me — I was an only child and my parents practically lived at work, appearing in the evenings where they would usually shower me with money and gifts that I didn't need. In a lot of ways it felt like I lived alone, but I hardly cared since I usually had friends round after school and went out on weekends. I hated being lonely, and my huge number of friends proved it.

I put on my school uniform and brushed out my hair, wanting to look good since it was the first day back since the Christmas holidays. It was Wednesday 7th January and I was hating myself for the terrible sleeping pattern I had adapted over the few weeks we had off school since I was now exhausted after falling asleep at 4am.

4 hours later falling asleep I was stumbling downstairs with the polo shirt on which had the school's logo that looked something like a tree embroidered on it and it was layered with my own hoodie to keep me warm in the freezing month. I had my usual bowl of cereal and grabbed my bag from the utility room where I had dumped it somewhere in the middle of the previous December and hadn't been touched since. I threw out loose sheets of paper and forgotten undone homework and set off to school, the time now nearing 8:15am.

I only lived a 5 minute walk away from school, but I always left early because I didn't want to be late. My attendance and punctuality was near perfect, which was probably unusual for boy of my type at 14. I wasn't a huge fan of school and learning, but I kept my good report, since according to my parents that I hardly saw, employers and universities like that kind of quality in someone.

I always avoided the university topic if I could but when it was brought up at the dinner table and I was being stared down by parents about what I wanted to do, I would feel pressured to say something that required intelligence and got good pay in return and would mumble something about being a lawyer or a doctor and that I hadn't quite made up my mind. Then they would say something along the lines of me getting into Cambridge or Oxford University and I would just keep my head down, biting my tongue as hard as I could so I wouldn't laugh. I didn't want to be a lawyer or a doctor or anything boring, I wanted to do something that was creative like film-making or directing, but they would never approve.

A lot of the time I felt I was forced to be someone I wasn't, the power and expectations of my parents forever looming in my choices and the back of my mind and taking place in conscious often. I didn't want to go against they said and be different from their ideal perfect son, so I played football and worked hard at school, getting trophies in sports and high grades in tests with plenty of guy friends and crushes on girls.