author's note. I don't know where this AU came from, but here it is. Happy Halloween, everyone. xD

disclaimer. I think it's pretty obvious that I do not own anything relating to Lord of the Flies.

Every time Jack started to think there was nothing more he could learn about his roommates, something like this happened. He had woken up at four in the morning one day in September to the sound of thumping outside the house. Assuming there was a burglar skulking about, he gingerly got out of bed, crept over to the closet, and grabbed a baseball bat that belonged to Ralph's nephew. He went downstairs, fully prepared to save all their lives (or at the very least, their belongings), and saw not a home invader but Simon, carting an enormous pumpkin from Roger's truck to the stoop.

"What the hell," he said.

Simon looked up from the pumpkin. "Morning, Jack!" he said cheerfully. "Why've you got Billy's baseball bat?"

"I thought you were a burglar! What are you doing?" Jack exclaimed, shooting a glare at the oversized orange vegetable as if he blamed it for the disturbance. Simon just stared at him for a moment, apparently under the delusion that this was normal behavior.

"I'm decorating! Halloween is only two months away, and we need to get a head start on all the neighbors."

Of course the Christ figure would be the one who loved Halloween. Of course.

Jack had spent the past two months in one holiday supply store after another. Not a single weekend had passed without Simon dragging the entire household to some kind of autumn harvest fair, which almost no one really wanted to attend. While Ralph and Simon darted from stand to stand, Jack ranted to Roger about "the things I do for these people." The twins showed up and wandered off to try to pick up girls.

Now, on the morning of the damned holiday, Jack was actually starting to get excited, if for no other reason than because Simon would stop carving pumpkins, getting the gloop all over Jack's beautiful kitchen, and refusing to clean it up. They had about seventeen bags of candy sitting next to the front door, and Simon was parked in a nearby chair. He didn't seem to be planning on moving from that spot all day.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" Jack asked wearily.

"There are more important things in life than such menial labor," replied Simon, sounding greatly affronted. He was still in a huff because Jack had vetoed his plan for them all to dress up as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Well, three dwarves; five if Sam and Eric decided to forgo the Halloween party at Tom's Pub and help their strange friend hand out candy to passing children (unlikely).

"You are a lunatic," said Jack, grabbing his jacket and heading off to his job at the cafe. Simon ignored him.

When Jack returned from work, thoroughly tired of making pumpkin lattes, he found Simon still sitting in that chair. He had apparently put all the candy in one large bowl. Ralph was in the kitchen, cooking pasta. "Happy Halloween, Jack," he said pleasantly, stirring a pot of sauce on the stove with a smirk.

"Oh, sod off," Jack sighed.

The frustrated redhead finally collapsed on the couch next to Roger, who was watching horror movies on their little television. He did his best to ignore the intermittent knocking on their door as costumed children came to the house.

This went on for some time; Ralph, seeing that Simon was too preoccupied, Jack too tired, and Roger too engrossed in gory special effects to come to the kitchen, ladled out pasta and sauce onto plates and handed them out. He then went back to the kitchen and ate his own plate, occasionally making loud comments about how his horrible, insensitive roommates were forcing him to eat alone. It was a testament to how tired Jack was that he did not at any point call Ralph out on behaving like a nagging housewife.

At some point during the night, the terrified screaming from the TV must have lulled Jack to sleep, because when he awoke on the couch at three in the morning, the house was dark and Roger and Ralph were nowhere to be found. Grumbling to himself about selfish people who left you sleeping on the couch all night, he got up and was on his way upstairs, when out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a figure next to the door.

Maybe he'd been watching too many horror movies. Maybe the ungodly hour was playing tricks on him, or maybe he was hallucinating from exhaustion. Whatever the case, Jack was immediately convinced that a serial killer had broken into the house and was about to murder them all in disgusting, brutal fashions. He looked wildly around in search of a weapon, and only found his dinner plate. He sighed. Of course.

Brandishing the plate threateningly, he rushed towards the door and let out some attempt at a quiet war cry, trying not to wake Roger and Ralph. Jack was the best hunter of the bunch; the others would only get in the way. "Get out of my house, you - Simon?"

The young man in question was still sitting next to the door with his giant bowl of candy, watching the street outside with bloodshot eyes. "Shh!" he muttered frantically, flapping a hand in Jack's direction. "I think there are more children coming!"

"Oh, bloody hell," Jack whisper-shouted, "it's three in the morning! There are no more children coming!" Simon stubbornly refused to acknowledge him. Finally, Jack clapped a hand to his forehead and sat down next to him.

They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Jack said, "It's kind of funny that you of all people would be this invested in Halloween."

"And why is that?" Simon asked, raising an eyebrow and looking slightly offended.

"I mean, you know... you're the Christ figure of the book and all. The Christ figure obsessed with a pagan holiday, it's amusing."

Simon exhaled sharply. "Oh. Well, I'm glad I'm just a symbol to you," he snapped, clumsily unwrapping a square of chocolate and shoving it into his mouth.

"What?" Jack responded, entirely bewildered. He had assumed that living in an all-male house would mean he wouldn't have to deal with this kind of PMSing, but apparently that was not the case.

The younger boy swallowed the chocolate square and frowned at him. "You don't get it," he said flatly. "Ralph knows what I'm talking about!"

Jack sighed again. For some reason, the prospect of being second-best to Ralph still annoyed him years later. "Yeah, well, Ralph is asleep right now. What don't I get?" he asked, too tired to argue.

This seemed to take Simon by surprise. "Well, it's like..." he began, then stopped to collect his thoughts. After a pause, he continued, "It's like, some guy wrote me as the symbol of goodness in his novel, and now I can't do anything less than saintly without someone telling me I'm acting out-of-character! Like how Ralph has to take care of us and listen to all your ideas - which by the way, are terrible."

"Thanks," Jack said sarcastically.

"Anyway," Simon said, ignoring his interruption, "it's because he symbolizes democracy and leadership. He can't just tell everyone to shut up, because that would be undemocratic. So he puts up with it. You've got the easy part - you're anarchy! You can do whatever you want! It's just... being one-dimensional really takes a lot out of you. I'm more than just a stand-in for Jesus, you know!"

"Believe me, I already knew that," Jack replied, smirking at him. Simon shot him a withering glare. "But I... uh. I... I see what you're trying to say, I guess."

Simon's glare melted into a wan smile before returning to its usual pseudo-innocent look. "You're really bad at apologizing," he commented.

"Who said I was apologizing? I'm anarchy, I do what I want. God, why do you always have to believe the best about people?"

Seeing the stricken expression on Simon's face, Jack gave a tired grin and stood up. "Happy Halloween," he said, ruffling the boy's hair and going upstairs.

The next morning, Jack thanked Ralph when the fair-haired man pushed a plate of pancakes across the table to him. Ralph looked taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered before he drowned Simon's breakfast in maple syrup. It seemed that things were finally back to normal, Jack thought contentedly, flipping through the newspaper...

A crash sounded outside in the front yard.

Jack sprang out of his chair, clutching the rolled-up newspaper like a sword, and went outside, Simon right behind him. Even Ralph put down the pancakes and followed them.

There was a ladder lying in the grass, and next to it, Roger was tangled in a long cord dotted with small white lights. "What are you doing?" Jack exclaimed, making confused, furious gestures with the newspaper.

"Decorating," Roger said, staring up at him as if Jack were the crazy one. "Christmas is less than two months away!"