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D felt a fluttering of uncharacteristic worry in his gut. Supposedly such things had been trained out of him, but his rusty emotional core still sent up the occasional signal flare.
Jack shrugged. “It’s just...” He sighed. “I’m starting to see words like ‘accessory’ and ‘accomplice’ floating around my head.” D barely reacted. “How about ‘dead on arrival?’ You like that better?” Jack nodded, pressing his lips together. “Get more ammo. Ammo is good.”
Lolll
He willed his mind to go blank, which wasn’t such an easy task given the graffiti all over it.
Jack watched his profile, the stillness there, the control of every muscle and tic down to the roots of his hair, each strand standing up at regimented attention, brutally cut off when they got long enough to bend their own way.
“Well, if something’s eating away at me it must be getting awful hungry, cause there can’t be much left of me to eat.”
He took a breath and held it, then slowly stretched out his pinky finger until it just grazed the side of D’s hand, a tiny stroke of tentative contact. D didn’t withdraw; instead, his hand flinched a little closer. Emboldened, Jack covered D’s hand with his own; D turned his palm up and their fingers slid together, interlacing and fitting against each other like they’d been waiting for nothing else but the chance to do so.
Crazily, D almost asked him to stay. Just sit on the side of the bed, okay? Maybe pull up a chair? Don’t gotta say nothing or do nothing. Just please...don’t let go of me. But Jack had let go, and D had let him, because what else? Nothing else.
Real fucking close. Too fuckin close. To think I almost put a bullet between them eyes and took that life that now I’d die to save, and I never would’ve known what he was in the world, and who he was or could be, and I woulda never even known what I was missing, nor known how right it could feel just to lay my fingers alongside his.
“You just keep prying and nosing and I know you mean well, but...” He sighed. “I kept things locked up my whole life and it ain’t so easy. Them hinges are rusted damned near shut.”
“We understand each other?” “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t come find you and put you down like a dog.” “I’ll give you two. You can’t, and you shouldn’t.”
Car rented under a false name, two bodies without ID, you know the drill.” “Well enough to sing along.”
Jack felt arousal spiking through him, clouding his mind with the wanting, wanting this man, all of him, black and tarry, rotted with disuse, glorious and fractured and spilling out of the cracks.
“You know, your fear-me-for-I-do-not-exist routine is getting pretty fucking old.”
“Maybe...to see if I’d do it.” “They must think you won’t.” “They’re wrong, then. I been ready to die to save his life from the first.”
mirage now, that nothing affected him. He was goddamned bedrock, and everything rolled right off without leaving any trace. But Jack Francis was like a million years of rain, carving channels and caverns all through him, sinkholes down into the dark depths that he never thought would see the light of day again.
“Shhh,” D said. “Just...” He hesitated. “Just let me hold you for a minute, okay?” he whispered. Maybe if he were quiet enough, it wouldn’t really be him saying it. “Don’t ask me no questions. Just let me feel you’re safe.”
He flattened his palm against D’s skin and slowly ran it down the outside of his arm. “You...” D rasped. Jack sighed. “What?” There was a long pause. “You deserve better,” he finally said, almost too quiet for Jack to hear. Jack’s heart broke a little. “So do you,” he murmured.
“Shh,” Jack said, putting a hand on his chest. “Let me, okay?” D nodded, sighing in relief. You wondered if he felt anything for you? Well, look at this, Jack. He’s letting you see him like this. What more do you need to know?
He just persisted, touching D where he’d like to be touched, caressing the tension from his muscles, urging him on with his hands, trying to tell him with his body it’s okay, it’s okay to want me, it’s okay to feel it, it’s safe to show it.
D was pouring himself into Jack’s arms, his body, and the deluge was fierce; Jack clung to him like a barnacle, holding him fast in his arms. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. The thought ran over and over in his mind as D’s chest heaved great swoops of breath past Jack’s ear, swoops that had sobs caught at their dregs, as if he’d found something old and unexpressed at the very tidal bottom of his lungs now dragged into the open air by the exertion. I’m not letting go of you.
“Jack...Jack...” D breathed, the name sighing out on each exhalation as if it had gotten inside him and was escaping like steam from a pressure cooker.
He let his hand linger on D’s shoulder, his thumb sweeping across the skin over his clavicle. D was facing forward, his eyes lowered to the tabletop; all by itself, his hand slid up and over Jack’s hip, slipping beneath the hem of his shirt to rest against the small of his back. Jack watched D’s profile, but his expression didn’t change. The intimacy of the touch sent warmth radiating from the point of contact, but Jack didn’t try anything.
Brow furrowed, he inhaled. Jack saw his eyes flutter closed and his features smooth out as if he were falling asleep right where he stood, falling into a daydream or a memory.
Actual tears?
His mind barely skirted up to the edge of the thought that D might be a part of that life before skittering away again. Too soon, way too soon for that. And pointless to even consider it because it was just too...too. Too everything.
Being intimate in a bedroom, in the dark, during and after sex, was one thing. Casual intimacy in daylight, clothed, during ordinary activities was something else. It implied something else, something that had a name, a name no one had spoken or even dared allow to pass through his mind.
“I can’t need nobody. Not again,” he said in a rush. “I can’t take it.” He turned around and met Jack’s eyes. “It ain’t in me no more.” “That’s not true.” “Has to be. Better be goddamned true cause I spent ten years making it true.”
“I am fucking damaged goods, Jack. You got no idea how little’s left in here.
“Shush. I don’t care if you’re damaged, or if you’re not strong inside. Guess what? Nobody is. Whatever you have left is enough.”
Explaining to the CO, leaving out the most important bit, no sir he just come at me, no idea why, maybe the heat’s just baked his brain like a damned pot roast and he’s all peas-and-carrots upstairs. Not too many questions asked. Shit happened. Tough old world, tough old war. Going back then to business as usual. Eyes front, soldier.
He relaxed, exhaling and blinking away the remnants of the nightmare. It wasn’t the first. As always, it didn’t stay still to be examined but fled back into his subconscious, leaving impressions in his mind like footprints.
“My grandma always had chocolate-covered cherries,” D said, his tone curled at the edges, like he’d surprised himself with the memory.
Suddenly D drew back and grasped Jack’s face in his hands, an intent expression in his wet eyes. “Why?” he demanded. “Why’s it like this with us?” Jack struggled for a good answer but came up blank. “I...I don’t know.” D nodded. “Good. Me, neither.” He sighed. “Ain’t never been nobody like this for me, never.” Jack smiled, a little shaky, lifted his hands to D’s face. “Me, neither.”
He’d pushed so much of the reality of his situation far from his mind so he could concentrate on other things, like surviving, but now in this place that was starting to feel safe, it was creeping back.
D watched Jack storm out of the house, a little relieved. Jack had been Mr. Okay-With-It nearly since he’d met him, cracking wise and coaxing D out of himself to a degree he would never have believed possible, and that was bound to get old sooner or later. It was good to see him feeling it, whatever it was.
language and everything about Jack’s was saying “Fuck you, fuck me, and fuck off.”
And how do you really feel? Like I’ll never draw another breath without half of it being a wish for him.
D cupped his cheek and lifted his head to meet his eyes. “Someday,” he said, low and implacable.
My HEART
“You take care of him,” D said, unable to keep the hoarseness from his voice. “You take care of my Jack.” He was laying himself bare, more than he’d ever done, but it somehow wasn’t as scary as he’d always thought it would be.
Jack couldn’t fathom being done. This testimony had loomed so large and so all-encompassing over him for so long that it had reshaped everything about his life. The idea that it could just be over and done with in one afternoon seemed ludicrous.
He was sorely tempted to add a smart-ass Anything else? but he thought he’d made his point and rubbing it in would just make him look like a smug jerk.
say it BADDIEEEEEE
Face me, D. Whatever you mean but don’t say, face me.
I thought I’d fear you, and I should have hated you, but somehow you made me love you.” D blinked up at Jack’s face, his steady blue eyes not letting him go. “Yeah, you heard me,” Jack whispered. D shut his eyes before Jack saw inside. “Jack, I...I’m not...” “Shh,” Jack said, pressing his forehead to D’s. “Just let it be.”
Jack rose up and straddled D’s hips, easing himself down, their fingers intertwined, oh God his body was the only heaven D would ever know, when they were joined like this he wanted to be Anson, go back in time and do it all over, do it differently and then come find Jack as a different man, a whole man with something to give him, a man who could have told Jack that he loved him, right down to the murky dregs of his rotted soul.
“Uh...yeah, I guess I did,” he said, color slamming into his face.
D loved Jack. Loved him so much that he’d lay down his life without a second thought. It hung around him like a cloak cut to fit another; it did not rest easily on his shoulders, as if it were stolen and he feared its rightful owner would appear and snatch it away again. He was probably telling himself he didn’t need to wear it because he didn’t feel the cold, he could put it from him and trudge on unprotected, except that was no longer true. His skin had known warmth again, and it remembered, and it couldn’t take the bony chill anymore. The cloak would have to be made to fit, and if it
...more
She drew a deep breath, rocked back, and threw herself forward, planting her feet hard to flip her entire body, chair and all, the front rung landing across Petros’s neck.
Ok baddie
“Oh my God, what the fuck happened to you?”
LOOOL
“It felt real at the time. It was just him and me against the world. Not in some Kerouac, misunderstood way but a very real, bullet-ridden way, and everything was polarized and refracted, and it had to be one way or no way. I had to love him so I wouldn’t fear him. I had to make him love me or he’d desert me.”
“You’re going to tell him what you did.” “Of course I fucking am, what do you think? I’d just say, ‘don’t worry your pretty little head, it’s taken care of?’” “I mean...kinda?”
Lmaoooo
“Hey, darlin.”
Im crying fml
