#★. ─── JACKSON RHODES : ANSWERED | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

apcthetics · 3 years ago

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closed starter for GISELLE ( @overwhlcmed ) location: jackson’s apartment ? grace is throwing hands if he was at her apartment so this is the best we’re gonna get.

★. ── jackson had never once celebrated valentine’s day. even on the years where he was technically obligated too, his time matched with ‘ girlfriends ‘ ( in the loosest sense of the term ), he would spew some nonsense about capitalism and the ploy to sell flowers and chocolate and leave it at that. it wasn’t that he was really anti-romance ( though he claimed he was, if someone were to breeze through the worn novels that made up half the clutter in his apartment, they would see plenty of underlined quotes that would prove him otherwise ) ; just that the concept of a day where you were obligated to make showy displays of affection to prove your love to other people felt ridiculous. he refused to participate, having never quite grown out of the the immature, stick-it-to-the-man attitude that he had developed in high school ── and because if love was real ( like he quietly wished it was ), then surely it wouldn’t be the kind of thing that was only celebrated once a year.

it made sense, though, that giselle would be born on the one day that was officially dedicated to bouquets of red roses and pink boxes full of chocolate and all the things the every day person associated with love. she was so full of adoration and hope for the world that it could be seen spilling out of her all the time ( so had giovanni, although his manifested itself in a different, less obvious way ) and when someone learned that her birthday coincided with february 14th it always seemed to just click. it also worked out that jackson didn’t have to ask much more than what she was doing on her birthday. it was a perfect excuse when luvena or bowie had questions for him that he didn’t know how to answer ── she had visited him, after all. it would be rude to not return the favour.

there were implications between them now. the longer time went on, the harder it was getting for jackson to plaster the label of “ friends “ on whatever the hell him and giselle were doing when asked by other people. it was easy, at first, to brush off every encounter with light excuses that gave no hint at what was actually happening under the surface. but now, months down the line, they were still pretending, and every time they did things got more and more dangerous. it was getting easier and easier for jackson to ignore the guilty conscious that told him to pull away when they were lingering too close to each other.

“ oh ── that’s, um, that’s for you, by the way, “ at a momentary pause in conversation, jackson jerked his chin towards a plainly ( and poorly ── he hoped she wouldn’t look too closely at the seams ) wrapped box sitting to the side of his table. he was hoping that giselle wouldn’t ask too many questions ── that she would unwrap the book and the shitty little usb and that would be the end of it, until she was by herself and could find the old photos tucked inside the pages and the recordings and jackson wouldn’t have to answer for them. he spent an embarrassing amount of time re-learning chords and parts for songs he wasn’t even sure that she still liked, and talking about it was dancing a little too close to talking about the invisible line that they kept blatantly stepping over. without looking up from the carrot he’d been cutting, he shrugged his shoulders, acting ( in typical jackson rhodes fashion ) as though it didn’t mean anything. “ you don’t have to open it now. it’s not anything important. i just didn’t want to forget. “

#★. ─── JACKSON RHODES : THREAD #★. ─── JACKSON FT. GISELLE

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