Jeff raised his eyes calmly, sitting cross-legged on the floor. "I'm cool, thanks."
If Jeff can do it, I can do it.
And maybe, maybe if Jeff let himself hope again, he could be okay.
Only once had Nick fallen asleep while he was locked away and he had woken to darkness with no light switch in grasp and it wasn't his room and it had been the worst. He had freaked out and begun screaming until his father had shown up, looking actually worried himself, and gotten Nick out of there. There had been no punishment for a few months after that - clearly the terrified screams had knocked a little sense into the man, at least for a short amount of time.
After all, what kind of guy would like him? The outcast, the laughing stock, the boy who hated life and his own life so much that he would go to such desperate lengths to try and escape? Jeff had never imagined that such a person would exist, someone who could look past the flaws or even stare right at them and see that Jeff was a human being, someone worth caring about and loving.
He was stronger than this.
He hadn't lied when he told Nick he loved him yesterday. Maybe it wasn't love like the way he loved his parents or his parents loved each other or even the way Blaine and Kurt loved one another. But it was love in its simplest form - because Nick meant more to him than any other boy ever had and Jeff had already known for awhile now that he wouldn't be able to walk away from this camp and never see the boy again. Now it had simply developed on so many more levels.
He had a decision to make.
