#for now not gonna stretch; am remaining on rita.

[witchtchr]

we're back to offer some funkin whimsy, because what the fuck are latest chapters.

also happy new year, may this year be nice to you all

[alexandenigtscreations]

Chapters: 5/7 Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel Summary:

Juno Steel and Peter Nureyev make a good team. But when a bank job goes horribly wrong, the injured pair are forced to lay low and hope the Carte Blanche can make it back to them in time.

(Note: Bold Italic script indicates Nureyev speaking Brahmese) 

Chapter 5

“God Damnit Thief!  Pick up your damned coms when the bloody doctor calls!"

"Again, apologies Vespa, I-" he coughed weakly into his hand, tripoding over his knees.

"Do you know how many times I had to call you?  Do you?"  

Nureyev sighed "Afraid not-"

"Seven !  Seven goddamn times!  Thought you were dead !  Or Steel!  Or captured or whatever!  We're in enough crap as it is without you two adding to the pile!"

“Vespa, I-”

“If you say you’re sorry one more time, Thief; I swear to god I’ll snap your scrawny neck!"

"I'm-" he caught himself mid apology, "Understood-"

"I haven't heard Steel's voice, where is he?"

"Juno's- sleeping." Which is what he himself had been doing up to the moment Vespa rang. Stupid- a rookie mistake-

"Oh?  And how sure are you of that thief?"

Nureyev wiped the sweat off of his face, "I'm sure-" it had been the first thing he checked when the beeping of the comms woke him.  Even from here he could see the frantic rise and fall of Juno's chest.  The lady wasn't doing well.  

"Completely."  He coughed harder into an elbow.

Vespa sniff on the other end of the line.  Plainly suspicious, but that was nothing new.

"Fine, now you're on, we can get back to business…."  There was a clatter outside, his head snapped towards it ".... temperature down, or it can cause…." and another- "gotta make sure he's in the recovery…" and another and confound it all Nureyev, focus!  He shook himself back to the conversation just in time for Vespa to say "Did you get that Thief?"

"Hmm?  I ugh-" he floundered.  No, no he had not gotten it, and was just about to say so when he heard voices-

Lord, not now, please not now-

"Thief?"

Nureyev limped to a window.  Even in the dim light of the street lamps, he could make out the security uniforms of Galactic Stars First Bank.  

No-

Anxiety spiked his chest, making him queasy- or perhaps he already was-

Juno was in danger.  That much, he was certain of.  To say nothing about himself.

He glanced over his shoulder at the sleeping lady.  Even with his features pinched and weary, he was beautiful-  

And vulnerable-

Plans began to formulate in his mind.  His first impulse was to find some crevice to hide in, to disappear.  But even with Juno’s help, he only just managed to get him to the sofa last time-  If they were found- well, he didn’t want to find out what they’d do to him.  

“Thief?!”

He could lure the guards inside, dispatch them quickly and save his leg the trouble-  But no, that would be too messy.  To say nothing of Juno’s sensibilities, inviting guards into their hiding spot introduced more blind variables than he’d care to gamble with.

Which left luring them away- Sharp teeth worried away at his bottom lip.  The injury would make things- challenging.  But he didn’t have to be fast.  After all, it was a fool who thought the best getaway vehicle was the fastest-  

What he needed now was a strategy; and to know how many employees he’d have to contend with.  

“God Damnit Ransom, the hell-”

“Apologies Vespa, I need Rita.”

“What?!”

“Ha-How many guards, am I dealing with- Rita?” Nureyev grimaced, pressing his back tight to the apartment's tinker toy brickwork.  Rita’s voice was going fuzzy around the edges, as though muffled.

It had been harder than anticipated to pick his way past the patrolling guards, yet alone work his way out of the safe house.

“Two, maybe four in your sector Mista Ransom.”

“Which is it? ”

“Hugh?”

“Which is it?  The- er- two, or the four?” there was a throb of pain that made his breath hitch.  Along with that ever present burning, biting its way deep.  

“Not sure but- are- are you alright Mista Ransom?”

“I- am a tad worse for wear.  Which is why I’d like to resolve this matter quickly.”

“Ohhh, ohh right!  Well Rita can help with that!”

“Thank you Rita.  Now- which way to the two or four individuals?”

He allowed Rita to guide him through the quiet streets.  She informed him that a dome wide lockdown had been initiated while the intruders were at large.  Sure enough, when he tried a few doors in passing, they refused to yield under his touch.  The citizens took the lockdown seriously.  

Nureyev made sure to make plenty of noise. He needed a show if he wanted this plan to work.  What worried him was that he was only half acting as he stumbled his way over the cobbles on a stiff leg.  He allowed himself to knock into bins and topple items into cars.  The noise he raised wasn’t loud, per say, but it was conspicuous on the quiet streets.  

“Where are these guards Rita?”

“They’ll be coming up any minute Mista Ransom, you just keep your eyes Peeled!  Make a right up here-” she directed “Peeled, hugh, ever consider what a weird thing it is to say.  That you should keep your eyes peeled?   I mean you do that and your eyes ain't gonna be good no more, least of all you.  Oh!  But there was this one stream where the monster worked its way out of a beautiful man!  Which was such a waist but what do I know about streams?  And its eyes were doing this crazy-”

“Any- minute?” he was starting to have doubts about using his own injured self as bait. He filed that deep in his mind.

“What?  Oh!  Yeah!  You got some baddies commin’ up right behind you.”

“Behind- Are you sure?” he panted.  

“Yeah of course I’m sure Mista Ransom!”

A quick turn confirmed Rita’s intel.  He was indeed being followed.  

They shouted something at his back, and Nureyev picked up his pace to a skip-hop, while his pursuers broke into a run.   A plasma bolt shot past his ear, sending a jolt of adrenaline through.  In answer he flipped over several barrels.  They cascaded into the small space, messing the ally nicely.  That should slow them down some.  It had to.

There was no time to pay attention to the ache of his lungs or the fire coursing through his leg.  Even as each step pushed him that much closer to being physically ill.  

File it away, Damn you- just file it away-

He screwed his eyes shut and pushed forward.  Forcing himself to keep moving, to keep breathing, to keep-

He plowed headlong into an old chain link fence with enough force to knock him to the ground with a strangled cry.  The traitorous links rattled and clinked all the way up to their restraints.  As if to add insult to injury, they stretched maybe ten, fifteen feet in the air.  There wasn’t a hope of making it over before his acquaintances caught up.  

“Mista Ransom?!” Rita sounded scared, she’d even stopped typing.  “What happened?”

“There’s-” he coughed “There’s a- barrier- ” There was another word, a better word, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of it.  It was taking all his effort to push upright on shaking arms, threading his fingers into the wire mesh to haul himself to his feet.  

“A barrier?  Like a wall or a buildin’ or somethin?  None of that is showing up on my schema-”

“A fence- Is there another way round?”  He took a moment to catch his breath.

“I’m sorry but, there isn’t anythin’ on the map.  Ya gotta get to the other side before ya have options.  Can’t you like, break through or somethin?”

Break through, of course, Nureyev could kick himself; it was so simple.  He extracted one of his plasma cutters from a pocket, heat humming through the blade.  In the end, it wasn’t even a good fence.  The blade made quick work of the links, slicing through them as one might margarine.  

Another blaster shot forced him through the cherry red ruin of a hole before it had a chance to cool.  He brought his arm up, shielding his face even as the sharp edges racked along his coat, hitting his leg- he hissed, nausea threatening to overtake him.  

“Mista Ransom?”

He scrambled to the other side, barely keeping upright.  

“Mista Ransom!  You’ve got more company comin’ straight at you!”

“What-” his voice cracked in exhaustion.  Through the gloom, he could just make out the second pair barreling down the narrow passage.  He could hear them barking orders at him now, probably instructing him to surrender or other such nonsense that he had no intention of following.  

“They’ve brought reinforcements!  They’re gonna’ block your escape roots!”

“Reinforcements?”

“There’s at least four more heading straight at you!”

Nureyev glanced back and spotted the first pair shoving through the debris.  Then that would make six-  Six on one, he didn’t like those odds.  A wrong step sent a jolt through him, his weakened leg nearly buckling under his weight sending him into a wall.  Again the world went fuzzy, blood rushing to his ears.

He wondered if the Carte Blanche really would come back for him if he’d got captured.  Something made him doubt it even as he shoved the ugly thought deep into a file.  

Think Nureyev.

Time, he needed time.  A had drifted to the modest arsenal on his chest.  There were a few smoke bombs he hadn’t touched, but the situation called for something more dire-

He plucked a pepper grenade from the clip, lobbing it over the fence with the practiced ease of one who’d spent hours on throwing knives.  Smoke tracked it’s flight through the air.  It struck the ground at the guard’s feet.  They yelled, scrambling back just as it erupted.  The choking fumes swallowed them in seconds.  

Nureyev was no longer paying mind to them, attention bent entirely at the remaining guards.  Four on one were more....manageable.  

He rushed the closest set, drawing a twin to his first blade wheeling them in tandem.  The man was no fighter, as soon as he got into their space, the man shrank back, his blaster forgotten.  

A tingling burn flushed across exposed skin making his heart plummet.  He’d made a mistake.  Nureyev hadn't accounted for the wind-

Spurred by the change in fortune, Nureyev dispatched the man quickly; maneuvering out of the way as he crumpled.  Life’s blood spilled over the cobbles soon obscured by smoke.

Smoke?  

Twisting and contorting, the smoke seemed to grow till it engulfed everything in its path.  Pouring down the cramped space.  The remaining guards tried to run, but were soon overtaken, same as the Thief.

Nureyev's throat closed against the onslaught.  He gagged and coughed over the very air, vision hopelessly obscured by tears.  The only good news was that he could hear his attackers do the same.  Panic began to fog his reason.  

He no longer noticed the burning of his skin or eyes, or the way his nose was running; no longer could feel the pain in his leg.  He couldn’t breathe, he couldn't breathe .  The single thought spun round and round in his brain, desperately trying to figure a way around it.  He clung to the wall with every ounce of strength he possessed.  The coughing picked up even harder now till his chest crushed in like a deflated balloon.

Try as he will, his lungs would not expand.  There was simply no more air.

“Mista Ransom?” Rita, in the coms!  Rita who was still very much with him.  There was hope!  

Just then a hand clenched around a fistful of his hair, dragging Nureyev lower still.  He’d been found, even in a place like this, they’d still found him.  The employees of Galactic Stars First Bank were more like his creditors than Nureyev liked.  Even now she was growling at him in anger.  

Though he couldn’t understand the language, he knew she was asking questions.  Her breaths were short and forced yet still she managed to talk.  Had he not been in the grips of fear, he would have found her admirable.  

“Mista Ransom?!”

Through his bleary eyes, he could make out the cyan glow of a blaster pointed down under his nose.  She meant to shoot him, but was hesitating.  At any other time, he'd wonder why-  Instead he reached up to claw, to cling at her wrist, still with a grip on his knives.  She twisted and he bowed lower, leg quaking, his hand slipped and-

“Ah!” she squealed as his plasma blade bit into her arm, flinging  him back to a wall.  The impact miraculously forced air back into his lungs.  Though as soon as he got it, his body started to cough it back up.  Furiously he clapped a hand over his mouth, trying to hold it in.

It didn't work.

“Mista Ransom!” If Rita had sounded scared before, that was nothing compared to now.  Her voice was small and tentative in a way that would break any heart.  Even so, he latched onto her voice with everything he was worth.  

The light of the guard's weapon danced before him.  She may have been hurt, but she wasn’t down yet.  What’s worse was that she seemed to be calling for backup.  

The blade sang out of his fingers, digging itself into her thigh. This time she screamed and hacked, scrambling for the off switch while Nureyev made his escape.  It hadn't been where he'd been aiming, but close enough.  With any luck, she'd have trouble moving for a time.  

“R-ita-” he choked out, managing tiny gasps, every one a massive effort.

“What’s going on!  Have you been Gassed!!!!!” thank stars he would not have to explain.

“Y-yes-” he gave into a violent coughing fit.

“Oh-Okay, you need me to show you the way out!”

“Yes-” the fight had turned him around, making it impossible to tell which way to go.  He wanted to be free of the smoke as soon as possible.

“Can Do!  Oh!  This is just like one of those Spy streams like- well, never mind that right now.  Alright Mista Ransom, I’m gonna need you to move forwards about a hundred meters.” She instructed conspiratorially.  He obliged, thankful to leave the thinking to her.  Using the wall to keep him straight.  “Be careful when you reach the fork!” she cautioned “The passage on your left has a few baddies, the one on your right is clear!”  

On his right- he could just make out two voids stretching before him.  Stealing his resolve he propelled himself right and mercifully broke through the miasma.  He crashed into a dumpster, nearly running smack into the center of another set of guards.  

It had been the wrong way.  

There would be no time to recover, no time for rest.  Furiously he wiped his eyes and gulped down recycled air.  

Rita shrieked in his ear, “Not your right, my right!” but he had no choice but to tune her out.  

The fresh opponent rushed him, their partner charging their blaster.  Nureyev stumbled back towards the smoke, just managing to use his attacker’s momentum to spin them round into their partner.  Their partner roared, firing shots off at random as they fell.  Blaster spun out of their grip on impact.  A stray bolt savaged one of Nureyev’s coat pockets, scattering it’s contents on the stones.  Hopefully there wouldn’t have been anything important in there.  

Nureyev readjusted his knife grip and threw at the tangle of limbs.  One of the figures stilled.  He hobbled towards them as fast as he could, retrieving the blade.  He’d already lost one and that was one too many.  

It was a mistake.

Pain shot through his leg making him cry out.  He fell hard separated anew from his weapon.  He’d been struck down by the spare guard.  They spat words that were sure to be insults as they disentangled themselves from the motionless body.

Nureyev gasped, twisting away towards the fallen blaster.  It had landed some distance away, but one advantage of long limbs was reach-  The guard growled and caught his foot, drawing him backwards.  He kicked out and the hands clawed higher.  It seemed they both were trying for the same weapon.

"Let go- " Nureyev bit out attempting to dislodge the guard.

"Never, scum- " they shot back in perfect Brahmese.  Before that could sink in, fingers jammed into his bandages, into the wound-  Nureyev keened, paralyzed by the shock of it.  

First rule of thriving Pete, you can't afford to be loud.

Rita shrieked all the louder.  Nureyev was at once hot and cold and utterly overwhelmed..  He knew he was hurt, thank you, he knew it!  He could do without the constant reminders.  

The guard made use of their opportunity by clambering over Nureyev.  Hand planted on his spine, pushing him down.  The thief refused to let it be that easy; scanning for something, anything he could use-

There!

His pocket knife!  

Nureyev’s arm shot out, scooping up the tool and flicking it open.  He twisted, simultaneously throwing them off and swiping upwards.  The blade bit into cloth and flesh.  They reared back startled, leaving Nureyev to wriggle free.  On hands and knees he scrambled to the blaster.  

Nureyev may not have the skills of a certain lovely sharp shooter, but at a distance like this, he couldn't miss.  

The stunner went straight to their chest and all went quiet.  He folded over, resting his forehead on the damp of the grimy street, forcing down bile once more.

"Mista Ransom!!!  Oh Mista Ransom!  Are you there?  Please say you're there, cuz I'm not sure how I could face the boss if I…."

"Rita-"

"....got you blown up or somethin, cuz know I'd miss you oh so much but Boss- oh I couldn't imagine-"

"I'm- ha- I'm fine- Rita-" he tried again, louder this time.  His voice was thick and rough, entirely unlike the persona he’d been so careful to maintain around the crew.

There was a loud clatter from the other end and a sharp intake of breath.  It sounded as though Rita knocked something over "Mista Ransom!  You ought to feel ashamed!  Scaring a girl like that!  Don’t you know that-" she cut off abruptly “Ugh oh, Mista Ransom!  You gotta get out of there, stat!  There are reinforcements on the way and I don't think they are too happy!”

Nureyev groaned and thanked Rita.  He supposed it was a lucky thing that he was so averse to capture.  It had been a long time since cold stone had been so welcoming.  

“What are you waiting’ for Mista Ransom?”

“N-nothing- Rita.  Merely -becoming acquainted with the cobble work.” he murmured.  In truth, he was drained to his core.  His head was spinning, body aching, leg burning and he was just so- thirsty.  There was at least something he could do about the last one, but not for a while, and not without getting up.  The entire distraction had taken far more out of him than anticipated.  

“Mista Ransom, you know I don’t speak nothin but Solar-” she started, but he wasn’t listening.  

Distraction.  His mind snagged on the word.

That was right, he was luring Galactic Star’s First Bank away from Juno.  Juno, gorgeous, wonderful Juno who’d taken a poison dart for him, who needed him right now.  

Nureyev had to get back to him, no matter what.  

In the end, Nureyev had trusted Rita to guide him back to the safe house.  She’d insisted after he nearly ran into another set of guards.  He was too tired to fight.  More than once considering folding himself up into a corner and waiting for the excitement to die down.  Moving in the open like this- didn't sit well with him.  

It took a lot longer to return to the grubby street of the safe house, and longer still to check and recheck he hadn’t been followed or bugged.  

“Thank you again- Rita-”  Privately he vowed to do something nice for her if and when they’d return to the ship.

“Oh and Mista Ransom?”

“Hm?”

“Take care of yourself, alright?  Ya make Mista Steel real happy- and- and I want ya both back in one piece okay?”

Nureyev was taken aback for a moment, mind blanking over the words.  It was- touching, and he had no idea what to do with that.  

He cleared his throat.  “I will do everything in my power to make that happen.” and he meant it.  

[Special thanks to Scarlet_Trust who got me excited about this again.  Please, Please go over and read their wonderful works!]

[clumsyclifford]

i typed out a Whole thing and then changed my mind but how about like lazy sunday in before the work week w t-shirt verse jalex? ily bye x

omg hello this got (1) away from me and (2) so ridiculously romantic i have no excuse. there’s just something about t-shirt jalex. also i am currently taking suggestions for what color alex’s hair should be in this ‘verse bc as of now it is unspecified. okay hope you like it x

read here on ao3

Alex is at the stove. Jack’s barely awake and this is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Morning,” he croaks, slumping forward to affix himself to Alex’s back. Alex staggers, laughing quietly.

“Good morning, my love,” he says. The kitchen always feels somehow both bigger and cozier with Alex in it, spacious but flooded with love. Love, Jack finds, smells like pancakes and tastes like Alex’s toothpaste and feels like sunlight and the cotton of Alex’s shirt under his fingers. It fits nicely into Jack’s kitchen. Their kitchen. 

Their kitchen. Jack is still having a hard time getting used to that.

“You didn’t have to get up,” he mumbles against Alex’s shoulders. “Coulda slept in.”

Alex shrugs. “Was up anyway. Thought it’d be nice to make breakfast.”

“But it’s nice to cuddle,” Jack points out, eyes still closed. He presses his nose into Alex’s neck, inhaling deeply. “Mm, you’re warm.”

Alex’s deep, gentle laugh fills the air. “You’re clingy.”

“It’s cold,” Jack slurs. Slowly but surely, the atmosphere is seeping into his senses, pleasantly waking him up. “I love you for making pancakes.”

“I know you do.”

“Gonna make tea.”

“I prepared your mug and boiled the water already. You just need to pour it.”

“Have I mentioned lately that you’re the love of my life?” Jack presses his lips to the tattoo behind Alex’s ear, lingering a moment.

“Doesn’t hurt to hear,” Alex says happily. Jack reluctantly detaches himself from his boyfriend’s body to go and make himself some tea. 

Tea is a weekend drink. Jack drinks coffee to get through the mind-numbing work days, but tea is for Sundays like this one. It’s nine in the morning and Jack can already feel the laziness of the day settling over their shoulders; they’re going nowhere today, doing nothing. It’s not often a perfect Sunday comes along, but Jack clings to the opportunity whenever it does. Like today.

Dust hovers in the beams of light stretching through the room and the apartment feels alight with a glittering January. Unlikely warmth starts in Jack’s chest and spreads outwards, something he can’t even attribute to the tea since he hasn’t begun to drink it yet.

Glancing over at Alex, humming to himself as he flips the pancakes, the warmth intensifies. Oh, Jack thinks, not particularly surprised.

It stands to reason that the love filling the kitchen would saturate his body as well.

-

Light spills over Alex, highlighting strands of hair and shining on his skin, brown eyes glowing almost as golden as the sunlight. It makes Jack wonder why he’s not a poet or something, except there aren’t words for this image, and Jack would be hard-pressed to come up with an original way to phrase what thousands of artists have already expressed.

He takes a picture. They’re worth a thousand words, if what they say is true, and that’s close enough.

Alex looks up at the movement. Jack just smiles and shamelessly takes another, catching the fond look on Alex’s face before setting his phone face-down on the table again.

“Stop it, you creep,” he says. “Help me with this.”

“Alex, I’m so fucking bad at crosswords,” Jack says, shifting his chair around the table anyway. “You know this.”

“But you know things that I don’t! Together we can solve it.”

“You could also solve it on your own.”

Alex shakes his head. “You’re overestimating my skills. I don’t think I’ve completed a Sunday puzzle in, uh, my entire life.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you,” Jack says wryly, “but I am not your secret weapon.”

Alex reaches for Jack’s hand and brings it to his lips, brushing a kiss over Jack’s knuckles. “Yes you are.”

Jack sighs. He’s a sucker for Alex and he doesn’t see that trend slowing anytime soon. “Fine. Give me one.”

“Here, I bet you know this one.” A tap of the pen against the newspaper next to the clue for 6-Down. “‘For You’ co-singer Rita.”

“Ora,” Jack says immediately. “Everyone knows that song.”

“Ora,” Alex repeats to himself, like something he should have known to know. “Actually, I didn’t. See? Already fulfilling your secret weapon duties.”

The puzzle is sparsely and randomly filled out. “Why don’t you go in order?”

“Because I don’t know 1-Across,” Alex says. “And if I stopped there it’d be a very short puzzle.”

Jack hums, skimming the list of clues for any other answers he might have. Most of the clues he thinks he could get are ones Alex has already filled in. Some are ones Jack would never have known. “What the fuck is a superlative prefix? ‘Most’?”

“Yeah, like…high school superlatives,” Alex says. “Most likely to make it big. Most likely to, uh, go to jail after graduation.”

“What the fuck were your high school superlatives?” Jack says, amused. “I didn’t know that’s what they were called.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is wrong, though,” Alex says, face drawn in thought. He’s doing the hair-twirling thing again so Jack interrupts the motion, linking their fingers together and scratching gently at the nape of Alex’s neck. Alex hardly seems to notice. “Because I’m pretty sure 4-Down is ‘prince’.”

“‘Hamlet, for one,’” Jack reads from the clues list. He shakes his head. “I’m starting to think you’re smarter than me, Al.”

“Starting to?”

Jack scoffs and stabs at the remaining pancake on Alex’s plate, mostly because he knows Alex isn’t going to finish it. “Hey.”

“I’m teasing, completely joking,” Alex says, leaning into Jack and briefly resting his cheek against Jack’s shoulder. “I’m definitely not smarter than you. I teach middle school. If anything, that automatically makes me more of a dumbass.”

“You love doing that, though.”

Alex sighs. “Yeah. You can love something and still be an idiot for doing it, though.”

“Like being in a relationship with you.” Jack giggles. “Joking. Just kidding. I’m just kidding.”

“You better be,” Alex says lightly. “I know a lot of your deepest darkest secrets, Jack Barakat, and I am not afraid to unleash a pack of twelve-year-olds on you.”

Jack would like to argue that a horde of twelve-year-olds doesn’t scare him, but it does. It very much does.

“Fine,” he says. “You win this round.”

Alex kisses his cheek. As he moves away, Jack turns his head and kisses him on the lips. “You taste like pancakes.”

“You taste like you,” Alex replies, and it doesn’t sound sweet, but it really, really is. Jack licks his lips. He’s not sure what exactly he tastes like, but it charms him to think that it’s always more or less the same, or at least that Alex finds something familiar in every kiss he steals off Jack’s lips. 

“Okay,” he says, leaning over the newspaper spread out before them. “We can do this. Who was in The Irishman?”

-

Whoever said that thing about how it’s better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all might have been onto something.

They concede to the crossword puzzle after almost an hour of staring at it. To Jack it seems pathetic, until Alex grins at him and promises that this is rather impressive considering when he tries to do it alone he only ever gets, like, ten answers, and they’re often wrong. 

Half-finished really isn’t so bad.

The rest of the afternoon and evening stretches out before them, in all its unscheduled glory, and Jack, like the mature adult he is, pulls Alex to the couch and insists they spend at least three hours of the day watching TV.

His second mug of tea is sitting, partially drunk, on the coffee table, Alex’s empty mug beside it. Jack’s is going cold but he’s warm with Alex’s head in his lap, eyes closed as Jack pushes a hand through his hair, and he can’t find it in himself to care. As a compromise, they’ve put on Project Runway, something Alex loves Jack enough to sit through but doesn’t care enough about to pay attention to. If Jack were a more petty person, he would be annoyed by this, but he’s not. Having Alex like this is arguably better, essential in the task of keeping Jack’s thighs warm and also giving Jack something to look at when the urge strikes him.

The angles of Alex’s face and the way his hair flops over his forehead are enough to keep Jack mesmerized for hours.

It’s in one of these moments of weakness, Jack gazing down at the boy in his lap instead of watching the high-stakes but decidedly less enchanting events unfold on the TV, that Alex opens his eyes. His gaze catches Jack unawares, but Jack doesn’t flinch.

“You’re not even watching,” Alex huffs, smirking. “It was your idea to watch something and you aren’t even watching it.”

“I’ve got a better view right here,” Jack says.

Alex just rolls his eyes. “C’mere,” he says, grabbing clumsily at the front of Jack’s shirt.

“I don’t think I am physically capable of kissing you from this angle.”

“Oh, is that a challenge?” Alex picks his head up and pulls Jack down, and it’s not ideal or particularly attractive, but Jack has to admit that they do, technically, kiss, thus proving Jack wrong, which is probably in Alex’s top ten favorite things to do. Only for a second, though, before Jack pulls away.

“I stand corrected, but I also kind of hated that,” he says.

Alex laughs, musical and bright. “Sorry. Let me try again.” He shifts around, straightening up until his feet are on the floor and his body is upright, and this time Jack has no complaints when Alex curls his fingers around the collar of Jack’s t-shirt and drags him in. 

Project Runway isn’t exactly the ideal soundtrack to making out on the couch, but Jack’s not picky.

A fluttering touch lands on Jack’s hip, sneaking just under the hem of his shirt to rest against his skin. Alex releases Jack’s shirt, sliding his other hand up and around to cradle Jack’s face, thumb brushing his jaw. The show in the background fades to nothing, as so often the world does when Alex’s lips are on his. Everything is Alex and Alex is everything — and maybe that’s always true, but it’s easier to sink into when they’re attached in so many places, lips under teeth and noses brushing cheeks and hands forever tracing skin, clothes, hair, whatever ends up beneath Jack’s fingertips. 

It’s looking more and more like the love in the kitchen hadn’t been confined to the kitchen. Or maybe it had never been about the kitchen, but the company. And maybe Jack has known this all along, and the love he feels for Alex follows him around like a stray dog, like a best friend, like a promise. It bleeds from him, infusing itself into the air without ever lessening in himself. Sometimes it trips off his tongue.

Often it does.

“I love you,” Jack murmurs, like he’s just a ragdoll stuffed with love who’s coming apart at the seams, another stitch undone whenever Alex touches him. He’ll keep spilling this love over them and somehow he’ll never run out, and if that makes him weak then Jack is content to be weak. 

Alex only laughs a little, but it’s not mean-spirited, just sweet. “Would it surprise you to know that I love you, too?”

It wouldn’t. This is the secret to Jack’s never-ending supply: the love he gives is the love he receives.

“I love you for making me breakfast,” Jack whispers, pressing his lips to Alex’s cheek, just outside the corner of his eye. “And for the tea. And for making me do the crossword puzzle with you. And for watching shitty reality TV with me.” With each proclamation he brushes a kiss to Alex’s forehead, his other cheek, the corner of his mouth. Alex’s smile stretches across his face, crinkling his eyes by the time Jack kisses him again, for real, though he still returns it to the best of his ability.

It doesn’t last long. “You don’t play fair, JB,” Alex breathes, then laughs again like he can’t help it. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

“You could start with ‘I love you too,’” Jack suggests, slanting a breezy smile at Alex. “That usually works.”

Alex gathers Jack’s wrists in his hands and kisses his palms, one after the other, before lifting his gaze back to Jack. In the light of the apartment, Jack has never seen anyone more beautiful. The truth of his own earlier words washes over him like a sedative, a comforting tranquilizer. 

“Doesn’t feel like enough,” Alex admits, “but I’m not sure this love can be put into words, you know?”

Jack does know.

“Though it’s worth saying,” Alex continues, sliding his hands into Jack’s until their fingers are interlaced, “that I love you for doing the impossible crossword with me, and I love your half-drunk cups of tea, and I loved you in the morning and I love you right now and when we go to sleep tonight, I’ll love you then, and every night after that for the rest of my life, you know what? I’ll love you for those too.”

Jack understands that these are big, big words, promises that are much easier to make than keep. But with Alex holding his gaze and his hands right now, sheltered from the real world or maybe creating it, he knows that Alex means every word, and Jack does too.