Biology

Chapter 26

The next few days were mostly passed with visits to the hospital psychiatrist and playing Mario Kart with Vanellope after she swiped a game console from the play room and brought it with her to hook up in Jack's room instead. She was perhaps not-so-surprisingly good at the game, given her love of all things racing-related and the amount of time she spent in the hospital.

Jack hated going to the psychiatrist: the man expected him to talk about his feelings, to explain what was going on in his head, and that was the last thing Jack was interested in doing. But the doctor was persistent and eventually Jack just told him what he wanted to hear, only to be rewarded with the assumption that all of his problems were caused by the difficulties of being gay and out at seventeen years old. He didn't seem to listen when Jack tried to correct this, either. Finally Jack decided that it was easier to just let him believe what he wanted to, and went along with it.

Slowly, over the days he spent at the hospital, he started to feel better—physically, at least. Between being hooked to the ever-present IV and being forced to eat his meals, he was getting stronger—until, a week after waking up there, the doctors decided that Jack was up to going home again.

He was relieved to be leaving, yes, because hospitals weren't his favourite place in the world, but also a little anxious—because the few visitors he'd had while he had been admitted there probably wouldn't bother coming to his house to see him, and now school was officially out for Christmas break, so he would be utterly alone for the next couple of weeks.

At the same time... maybe that wasn't so bad. Everything would just go back to normal, the way things had always been, before he'd had friends—and before he'd met Hiccup. He could try to pretend none of it had ever happened.

Or at least that was the plan. Of course it didn't work—mostly because even at home, there were reminders of Hiccup everywhere, especially in his room. His stupid room that Hiccup had snuck into more times than he could count, where they had spent so much time together, talking and watching movies, playing video games and making out.

So even once he was away from the hospital and back where he belonged, life just continued on the way it had been doing so for the last month, albeit with quite a bit more food being choked down on his part, as North was being diligent about watching him eat all of every single meal before allowing him to leave the table and retreat back to the solitude of his room.

Over the few days following his release from the hospital, thoughts besides the idea that he didn't want to eat began to surface—ones that were frightening, made his skin crawl, but were still surprisingly tempting.

The thought that the bottle of sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet was looking a lot more friendly than usual.

The thought that his father's razor could be taken apart in seconds and the loose blades used just as quickly.

The thought that it would be easy, and then he wouldn't have to put up with what had become of his life anymore.

Finally, one day found him sitting on the edge of his bed, the bottle of pills in his grasp and a glass of water waiting on the bedside table. He had been staring at the bottle for nearly twenty minutes, turning it over and over in his hands, reading and re-reading the label—until he finally just twisted the cap open and dumped a handful of the pills out into one palm.

And it was right about then that the door to his room swung open unexpectedly.

Jack looked up, startled to see Aster standing in the doorway. "Wh—"

There was a short pause, and then: "Jesus, Jack, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Aster was across the room in three seconds flat. He knocked the pills out of Jack's hand—they scattered across the floor in all directions—then snatched the bottle up as well, pitching it into the opposite corner, where it bounced off the wall and eventually rolled to a stop somewhere under the desk.

Then the other boy whirled on him, and Jack flinched when Aster fisted a hand in the front of his shirt and yanked him to his feet.

"You listen to me, Snowball, and you listen good." The words were angry, but worry tinged the glare Jack was receiving. "You might think your life is screwed up right now, but if you ever think about doing something like that again..." Trailing off, Aster shook his head, then let go of Jack's shirt and took a step back, gesturing toward the door at the same time. "You think no one would care if you were gone? What about your dad, huh? What about your friends? Violet and Mavis and the others and, hell, even me!"

Jack swallowed hard and looked away.

Aster made a frustrated noise, jabbing a finger toward him for emphasis. "What about Haddock, then? What about him? What do you think it would do to him if you died?"

"H-Hiccup and I aren't—"

"I know, mate, he broke up with you. And he's an absolute moron for that. But you're just as much of one if you think you could kill yourself and he wouldn't care!" The other boy's hands came up to grab hold of Jack's shoulders, and Aster gave him a hard shake. "Wake up, you idiot! Haddock's still head-over-fucking-heels for you! All he does anymore is pine over you! You think he could just move on with his life if you did something this stupid? If you died—Jack, I don't think he could take it!"

"It'd be easier if I wasn't—"

Aster actually smacked him upside the head before he could even finish that one. "Easier for you, maybe, but not for the rest of us! Definitely not for Hiccup! Now, if I ever catch you doing this shit again I'll kill you!"

Jack shifted from one foot to the other, and when Aster let him go he lifted a hand to push his glasses back into place from where they had been jostled. His eyes drifted to the ground and skipped from one of the fallen pills to another, tracing an abstract pattern along the carpet.

"I—I'm sorry."

"You bloody well should be."

"I... I just..."

Aster huffed an annoyed-sounding sigh and lifted a hand to rub at his own hair. "Look, I get it, I really do. Things are tough for you right now. But come on, you can't just give up like that."

Jack shrugged halfheartedly, then slowly got down to begin picking up the scattered pills. If North came in and saw them he would have a lot of questions and Jack didn't particularly want to have to answer them. After a moment Aster shook his head and dropped down to help him, not entirely comfortable with the idea of Jack handling the medication at all at the moment.

"Why're you even here, Aster?"

"Huh? Oh. Uh, one sec." The other boy sat back on his heels and dug through his jacket pocket, producing a little giftwrapped box. "Vi made you some cookies or chocolates or something, but she's busy babysitting her brothers so she asked me to bring them by. She says Merry Christmas."

Blinking slightly, Jack took the package. He had never gotten Christmas gifts from anyone but his father before. "Th-thanks..."

A shrug. "They're not from me. Call Vi and tell her thanks, if you want to."

"Yeah, I... I'll see if Dad will let me."

"Let you?"

"I'm... still grounded." Jack looked down a little, then turned to set the Christmas gift on the bedside table. "I'm surprised he even let you in, actually."

"Good thing he did, too." Aster commented grimly, still plucking pills up from the ground.

The words made Jack flinch, and he shifted around until he was seated with his back to the bed, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. "Yeah." He muttered, not really meaning it, and leaned his head down, burying his face in his arms. "Good thing."

A few minutes later, Aster was finished cleaning up the medication, and looked up, expression unreadable. Finally he lifted a hand up to rest it on Jack's head, and when Jack looked up again, he offered a slight smile.

"Everything will work itself out, yeah? You'll see."

No. Jack didn't see. But still, he nodded anyway, and forced a smile of his own. "Thanks. I'll... I'll be alright."

Aster gave a satisfied nod and pushed to his feet, hands still full of tablets. He hesitated a little, then nodded toward the door. "I've gotta go, Snowball. Just... don't do anything stupid once I'm gone, okay?"

"Okay..."

Still: when Aster left, he took all of the sleeping pills with him.