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The last thing Finn really wanted was for his vacation to be interrupted, but that was apparently asking for far too much, considering who he had decided to be friends with. Still, as he read the text sent from Jack, he found that he actually somewhat appreciated that the other man was giving him a little update on what was going on back on the island.

And also made Finn even more happy not to be there.



Finn had no idea over texts (and actually in person most of the time as well) if Jack was being sarcastic or genuine, but he would have answered the same either way.



Because obviously whatever it was had to be Jack's fault. Entirely.

It was a while before he texted again. He was debating whether or not he really wanted to know.

Finn was busy, so his replies didn't always come right away. He was on holiday, after all, and while he was curious enough to have decided to be interested in what was going on, he apparently did not feel the need to have all of the information laid out in front of him as soon as possible. The text's Jack would receive next were at least an hour after the last.

Finn waited for anything further from Jack, but after about five minutes of waiting he gave up and went back about his own business, which, at that moment, meant spending the next two hours getting his a** handed to him in a vigorous afternoon of paintball.

Afterwards he checked his phone again.



He wasn't his ******** boyfriend. He didn't ******** care about that kind of s**t.

As he read over the rest of the texts, however, he frowned. His last encounter with Chel had been less then pleasant, and now, with this new information, he had no idea if the Chel he had seen last had even been her.



That was, he felt, like an absolute understatement at this point.

There would be radio silence from Finn's end as he processed all of this new info. In retrospect, texting Jack back while sitting in the backseat of a taxi with Ripley, which was taking them back to their hotel room so that they could get ready for the rest of their day and evening, had probably been a bad idea. He wasn't in private, he couldn't react the way he wanted to, which was a simultaneous urge to beat himself over the head with something for being so stupid, and putting his fist through several walls because <******** that stupid b***h for telling Jack.

And if she had told him, who else had she spilled to?

He felt that the boiling anger within him was not even in the slightest bit misplaced. What had happened between he and Chel had been a private thing. If she'd felt the need to spill, she could have done so without giving his name. She was, without a doubt, a careless, inconsiderate idiot, and now, nothing would change his mind about that fact. In the hollow black void that was his anger, he found himself staring at the other texts without reading them, only one sentence glaring back at his cold, empty stare.

The same one where she tried getting you to have sex with her.

Maybe it wasn't as bad as he thought. The word tried could have meant a great many things. It could have meant that she told Jack that he'd simply rejected her, not that she had ******** cried and he had left. He clung to this last shred of his hope, and lets face it, at this point dignity as well, and finally let himself take in the rest of the texts.

And then, at least fifteen minutes later, as the taxi was approaching the city limits, he texted the other man back.



He felt at least some small sense of validation, though now knowing that she had cried because of Jack of all ******** people, was sickening, for more reasons than one.



Finn would know all about crazy ex s**t. He had been that person, once.





Finn was saying this all as Jack's bro, his supposed "best friend", as somebody who, to some extent, could dig deep and find the capacity to care when it suited him.





Maybe he was being a little more harsh than he might have been if Chel had kept her mouth shut about what had happened between them, or maybe this was exactly how Finn would have reacted either way. Chel was a friend, but Chel wasn't his best friend. He felt bad for her, in a way, but he also knew that she had dug her own grave.

The anger had ebbed away anyways, short lived, stifled and packed away to some dark recess of his mind. All he felt again, as he often did, was a cold indifference, the same that was nearly always reflected in his gaze.

The replies he got from Jack in return were much what he actually expected, though perhaps a bit more on the soft side than Finn was used to. Making excuses for Chel seemed to be the theme, but no matter what Jack had to say on the matter, there was one thing that was now clear to the moon intermediate.

He now knew that he couldn't trust her, instead of just guessing that he couldn't, as he did with everybody else. In a way, it made him feel almost vindicated in his own suspicious and cynical ways.

As for Jack...Finn had said all that he meant to say on the matter. It wasn't his job to convince the other man or make his decisions for him. He wasn't his babysitter.



And then, inexplicably.

Jack's reply was almost political in just how very carefully it was phrased. It did not come straight out to say that he trusted Finn implicitly, and for that Finn was actually relieved. If the other man had done so, the moon intermediate would have believed him to be lying, or, barring that, to be very very foolish indeed.



He read the follow up text with an almost bemused expression on his face. He had expected as much, but to be fair he had also expected Jack to just say no, but of course the answer could not be so cut and dry, nor so black and white. Apparently, with Jack, there were shades of grey.

Unfortunately, that might have altered Finn's answer a little.