Eyes Open ✰ Jalex

10 // Open Your Eyes

Hello it's my birthday so this is my present to anyone reading. So far, this is my favorite chapter that I've written and I'm fairly sure that this is my favorite track off of this album. It's kind of short but it's a kind of short that is just really good and every word is necessary in this chapter so please please try to enjoy it.

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// take my hand, knot your fingers through mine

// and we'll walk from this dark room for the last time

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Everything was on fire.

Not literally, but Alex's mind registered the bright orange burst of sunlight brimming over the horizon as fire, and he didn't hesitate to start telling Jack exactly what he thought about the colors streaking across the sky. Alex loved color, and it had become extraordinarily obvious to the other thing he loved. Well, this thing was actually a person who was named Jack Barakat who was sitting criss-cross-applesauce (something that Jack hadn't heard for ages that Alex had said the other day which struck him as fucking adorable and amazing that he still remembered the kindergarten phrase) on the hood of his parent's old car, sitting up tall and watching the sky with bright eyes that were far too awake for the very sleepless night he had endured.

Before the sun had made its long awaited (or maybe not really, Jack and Alex hadn't had the worst of nights) arrival, the sky had been a lavender purple color that had turned a reddish pink, the purplish color that matched the hickey on Jack's neck, the reddish pink that matched the color of Alex's lips.

But their early morning daze of color and love hadn't necessarily been ruined by the rising of the sun, it had just distracted Alex, and then they were back to discussing the color of the sky, which wasn't a bad thing either. Jack loved listening to Alex talk. Alex was always so careful with his words, choosing exactly the right ones to describe what he was seeing, and Jack got lost in the way he spoke all of the words, emphasizing some of them, letting others flow together in a huge collection of brilliance.

Alex looked more adorable than usual, if that was even possible, that morning. His hair was messy, sticking out on the right side but flattened against his head on the left. Due to the cold morning air, his face was pale, but two wild roses of color bloomed in his cheeks. The bruise around his eye hadn't magically disappeared overnight, and still hung there on his face as some sort of cruel reminder that they weren't going to be watching the sunrise on the hood of Jack's car forever, and that the real world still existed. Alex's lips were only slightly swollen, the soft pink color of them only disturbed by the black scab of where his lip had been cut against his teeth when he had been hit the previous day. He sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around himself, only sometimes sliding down the hood of the car. The blue blazer from the funeral was still hanging off of him, giving him a form of sweaterpaws that Jack would laugh and call "blazerpaws" if he felt allowed to break through Alex's words about comparisons to how the orange sky was a lot like the 365 days that humans, like Alex, considered a year on the planet of Earth.

So Alex finally trailed off when the sun rose higher, and he and Jack sat and watched the colors of the sky change drastically in an eerily short amount of time. Jack couldn't stop smiling because he was just so happy. There had been too much drama, too many mistakes, too many things gone wrong and everything just seemed so right right then. But as the uncharacteristic colors of the sky faded into a trademark blue, Jack regretted to tell Alex that they should probably be heading back home.

"Y'know, people will probably be wondering where we are," Jack told Alex. Alex giggled a tiny bit, bringing back memories of their laughing attacks the previous night.