‘ hey, i’ve got you. it’s okay. ’
VERY RARELY DID JIM CRY. in part, it was something of a fragile masculinity thing -- he didn’t want anyone to see him break, didn’t want anyone to know that there was something beneath the projected layers of APATHY he’d been perfecting for so many years of brokenness. it was also, however, the fact that jim oftentimes found no REASON to cry. of course he had many reasons to be SAD, but it was as if the connection with his tears was based in a more LOGICAL side of him. crying could never / WOULD NEVER save him: it only made things worse. so he held it in and ducked his head into searching for SOLUTIONS instead, putting that determined nature to use until that tearful feeling subsided into the NEXT DILEMMA.
but consider this. your name is jim, and you’re a young adult / in your ‘20s. you’ve spent the last several months getting bit by mosquitoes / itching sweaty, humid skin and staring with wide, terrified eyes into a dark jungle, listening to the quiver of plants and the cry of some animal. sometimes you sit outside with your gun tucked ‘tween your knees, the only things in the WHOLE WORLD existing for you being the SHIVER of your own breath and the absolute, inky VOID of the night. you’re pretty sure you’re LOSING YOUR MIND, until one morning your superior comes to you with sympathetic eyes to tell you that YOUR PARENTS HAVE DIED IN A TRAGIC ACCIDENT ----- and suddenly you remember that there’s a world outside of the war, that there are people who cared about you. that there were diners and white picket fences and dogs and families and food and hawkins and high school and bob. there was still bob.
( your eyes are out of focus when they ship you away, back to the states. even when you change into jeans and a t-shirt, you still feel like you’re in uniform, like it’s something under your skin that can’t be TAKEN AWAY, now. it lives inside you. it’s never going away. )
jim didn’t like to let anyone see him cry. he’d never liked it. but when he encountered bob at the airport -- only a pathetic duffel bag to his name -- he felt something wicked and horrible overtake him. EMOTION. like suddenly he remembered everything that’d been stripped away from him. his home, his family, his normal life, everything. he was bad luck, he was cursed, he was a black hole. if he hadn’t been born at that certain time, maybe he wouldn’t have been drafted. maybe he could’ve been there. maybe they’d be alive and bob wouldn’t be looking at me with those stricken goddamn terrified eyes.
he doesn’t know when or how it happened, but suddenly, his arms are around bob and his head is tucked into the crook of his neck and he’s crying, god, he’s weeping over everything he’s lost. bob is consoling him with soft, sad words but jim can’t hear him. all he can hear is grief ringing like a terrible bell in his ears and his own sobs. “shit,” jim whispers in a hiss after a moment, skin SLICK with tears. he has half a mind to kiss him. the words escape his lips through shuddering gasps, and he only pulls away to grasp the other’s face with an expression that is desperate and so terribly, terribly MELANCHOLY. “-- fuckin’ missed you, bob, jesus, i missed you so much.”