#well i'm queuing it on oct 30 at 4:01am

[clumsyclifford]

i don't know if it's rude to request more than one thing (i hope it's not) but "44. Tender kiss" with jalex? -fiancee

oh my god so happily, fiancee. this fic is the result of me listening to my we’re gonna be alright playlist (actually now it has a fun new name but that’s not important). would like to say for whatever it’s worth that i looked up the definition of tender to be sure i was getting the correct vibes so if you have questions you may direct them to the google definition of tender dgkjgsklj

ao3 link!

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“I’ll make some tea,” Alex says. Jack blinks at him on the threshold. 

“I don’t like tea.”

“Yes you do,” Alex says, but he doesn’t say it in a mean way. It’s just true, and Jack always forgets.

“Oh,” Jack says. His mouth curves into a tired, tired smile. “You know me better than I know myself.”

“I know,” Alex says gently, reaching for Jack’s hand. “Come on. Come inside.”

Jack comes easily, pliant under Alex’s touch. Alex leads them both to the kitchen, and when Alex lets go of his wrist to fill the electric kettle, Jack just stands there, looking a bit lost. “When’s the last time you swept?”

“Yesterday,” Alex says. He turns around in time to see Jack crouch down and sit cross-legged on the tiled kitchen floor. “Okay, then.”

“You should get chairs in your kitchen,” Jack says half-heartedly, leaning heavily against the fridge. His posture’s all awry, shoulders slumping over, and after a minute he shifts his legs so one is extended across the floor and the other is bent at the knee, drawn up to his chest. On this one Jack rests his chin, and finally looks up at Alex as Alex is setting the water to boil.

“Okay,” Alex says, but he won’t. Even if he had chairs, Jack would sit on the floor. There’s something about the floor that makes Jack feel grounded (pun not intended but, well, logical) — Alex gets it. Sometimes he sits on the floor, too, just to press his palms against the linoleum and absorb the chill, just to remember that he’s here, a person, feeling things. Also, it’s nice to be low to the ground, instead of towering above it like they both so often are.

“What kind of tea do I like?” Jack asks listlessly, smushing his cheek against his knee.

“Raspberry,” Alex says. “With honey.”

“You put honey in it?”

“Of course I do. You can’t have herbal tea without honey.”

“I didn’t know you did that.”

“Now you do.”

“Now I do,” Jack echoes. There’s a reverberating silence in the kitchen as the kettle becomes static background noise. Alex reaches for the cabinet with the mugs and takes out Jack’s favorite one — nothing obscene, just a custom mug Rian had made for each of them, printed with a picture of the band after Warped one year. Jack is between Alex and Zack, one arm slung over Zack’s shoulders, the other hand grabbing Alex’s face and planting a kiss on his cheek. Rian’s face is over Jack’s and Zack’s shoulders, million-dollar smile giving the photo an extra shine. Zack has his patented look of patiently controlled joy, while Alex looks elated at being kissed by Jack.

That checks out, Alex supposes. He’s always thrilled to have Jack’s lips anywhere on him.

The picture doesn’t pull him off-course. The mug goes on the counter and Alex’s usual mug — emblazoned with the Orioles logo — goes beside it, followed swiftly by the honey and two teabags.

“What kind of tea do you like?” comes Jack’s voice. Alex turns. He’s not moved at all and is just watching Alex putter around the kitchen.

“Depends on the day,” Alex says. He’s certain they’ve had this conversation before, verbatim, but it’s not like he wouldn’t humor Jack even if Jack remembered it, which he surely doesn’t. When the world grows too big for Jack, he zeroes in on the small things. Things like the kind of tea Alex likes to drink, and the chairs he does or doesn’t have in his kitchen.

“What are you having?”

“Lavender chamomile.” Alex tears the teabags open, Jack’s first and then his own, and sets them in the mugs, then turns to lean against the counter and return Jack’s gaze. “Do you want me to wait until the tea is done to ask what’s up?”

Jack takes a moment. “Yes,” he says quietly.

Alex crosses to him and crouches low. Jack’s eyes flit away and drop to the floor, where he picks at a fraying thread on his Converse. “Okay,” he says. “Are you too hot?”

Jack shakes his head.

“Cold?” Alex asks, and Jack hesitates, then shakes his head again.

“Not cold,” he says. “But if you have a hoodie, I wouldn’t…wouldn’t say no.”

“Let me grab one,” Alex says. He reaches tentatively out to brush a hand over Jack’s shoulder, then makes for his bedroom. Jack definitely has some favorites among Alex’s hoodie collection, and it takes Alex a moment to locate the most reliable one, a plain black zip-up with white drawstrings. He shakes it out and circles back to the kitchen. The kettle clicks just as Alex drops the hoodie into Jack’s lap, and Jack looks up at him, grateful.

While Jack drapes the hoodie over his shoulders, Alex pours the bubbling water into their respective mugs. It’s comforting to make tea; it reminds Alex of random Sundays at home, back before he’d ever been Alex Gaskarth, when he was just Alex, sometimes Lex, occasionally — to his mom and only his mom — Lexi. Afternoons sitting at the dining room table while his dad put the kettle on, carefully crafting the perfect cup of tea for the two of them to share, occasionally a third one for his mom also. (“It’s a splash of milk, Alex. This is a science. You’ve got to get it right. You ruin the tea, you lose your British citizenship. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. I’ve seen it happen.”)

Alex wonders how his dad would feel now, knowing he mostly drinks herbal tea when he has it at all.

The tea is done steeping by the time Alex pulls himself from his reverie; he dips the teabags once, twice more, retrieves a spoon and squeezes the excess water out of each one, then throws both in the trash and stirs the honey in. 

“Are we drinking it on the floor?” he asks as he approaches Jack, a mug in each hand. Jack’s pulled the hoodie on, and the sleeves fall over his hands so he has to push them up his arms. It’s a sweet picture. Alex takes a mental snapshot.

Jack nods in response to the question, so Alex kneels slowly. A smile crosses Jack’s face when he sees the picture on his mug. “I love this mug,” he says.

“I know,” Alex says. It never tires him to remind Jack how well Alex knows him, and Jack never seems tired of hearing it.

“Thank you,” Jack says humbly.

Alex carefully seats himself beside Jack, back against the fridge, shoulders brushing. “‘Course,” he says. They sit in the quiet for a minute, both blowing away the rising steam off their drinks. Jack’s arm winds around his right leg, so Alex pulls his left towards his chest and knocks their knees together. Jack gives him a reserved smile and takes a tentative sip from his mug.

“Okay,” he finally exhales. “You can ask.”

Alex gives it another moment, until he, too, takes a small sip of his tea. It’s still too hot, and scalds the tip of his tongue, but he’d expected that. Part of the tea-drinking experience is burning your tongue on the first sip. Satisfied, Alex sets it aside for now and stares out across the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

He feels rather than sees Jack shrug, shoulder grazing Alex’s as it rises and falls. “You know.” That’s vague, but Jack always starts vague. Alex has learned to be patient. It takes patience to get to the heart of the problem, but it always pays off. Jack never wants to wallow. It’s why he shows up at Alex’s doorstep at midnight, too willing to concede to the notion that he likes tea despite having no memory of enjoying it. They’ll solve this problem tonight. One way or another, Jack will be okay in the morning.

Alex takes another sip from his tea. It’s still hot, but notably less so; in just a minute or two, it’ll be at a bearable temperature for steady drinking. Beside him, Jack sighs deeply.

“So I opened my phone,” he begins, balancing his mug out in front of him. “And I had all these Twitter notifications. Which I always do. So I don’t know why suddenly I was like, woah, that’s a lot of notifications. And, like, that’s a lot of people trying to get my attention. So I turned off my phone, went on my laptop, got a text from Rian saying he’d sent me an email with some link to something, because Rian’s like fifty million years old. You know.” Alex breathes a mild laugh. “So I opened up my email, and I had so many emails. Have you ever cleaned out your inbox, Alex? I have never once in my life cleaned out my inbox. You don’t even want to know how many emails there are.” His fingers tighten around the mug, and Alex leans gently into him, a silent I’m here and so are you. Jack breathes unsteadily out. “It’s, like, in the ten-thousands. I think. Maybe hundred-thousands and I just can’t count high enough. And, like, you know. I’m never going to get through those. I’m never —” He breaks off and a hysterical laugh escapes his lips. “I’ll never get to all the people who are trying to reach me, I’ll never have zero unread emails, I’m never going to be free from it. Neither of us will. Sorry, not to, like, stress you out about it —”

“It’s okay,” Alex murmurs, “doesn’t bother me.” And it doesn’t. Alex knows some tricks to mass-clear his inbox, and he turned off most Twitter notifications a long time ago. Jack just likes to be plugged in. Alex admires that, that he always wants to know what’s going on, what the fans are saying to him, which of them are going to thank him for saving their lives, but somewhere in the darkest point of Alex’s life he’d made the executive decision that he could know it in theory without having to know it in practice, and to date it’s one of the best decisions he’s ever made.

“Okay, well, it bothers me,” Jack says, working himself up with it. Alex flattens his palm against the top of Jack’s knee, fingernails scratching lightly against his jeans as Jack inhales. “I just don’t understand — I don’t know how to get out of it. I don’t know how to not feel like it’s going to — to crush me or swallow me up or how not to feel like an asshole for ignoring texts from people because I already have so many I need to answer that I don’t have the energy to get to the ones I want to answer.”

“Start with a deep breath,” Alex suggests, delicate. Jack does, inhaling like his life depends on and holding it until he can’t anymore, until it comes rushing out of his mouth, deflating his chest and shoulders. “I can help with the emails. There are ways to delete a fuckton at once. We can do that together.”

“Thanks,” Jack says wearily.

“You should turn off your Twitter notifications,” Alex continues, although he knows Jack won’t. “You can still check it whenever you want, but this way you won’t have it hanging over your head.”

Predictably, Jack shakes his head. “I know you say it’ll make me feel better, but I don’t think it will. I think I’ll still know there are people trying to get to me and I just won’t know exactly who, or how many, and that’s worse. That’s worse.”

“But you should try,” Alex insists. “Just see how you feel. If it’s worse, it’s worse, and you can always turn them back on. You know they’re not doing you any good like this, so you may as well try.”

Jack sighs. “Maybe.”

Well, maybe is a step up from no. Alex decides that counts as a victory. He can press the matter later, when Jack’s a little more sure-footed.

“The rest…” Alex bites his lip, pensive. “You’re not an asshole, by the way. I don’t know if I said that, but you’re not.”

“Contrary to popular belief,” Jack says, a taxing inside joke that makes Alex huff a laugh.

“Contrary to popular belief,” he agrees. “You’re just a rock star. You don’t owe anyone shit.”

“Maybe you’re the asshole, talking like that.”

Jack is teasing, so Alex inclines his head and humors him. “Maybe,” he says. “But when’s the last time I showed up on your doorstep at midnight, huh?”

“Other than to get drunk and binge-watch Say Yes To The Dress?”

Alex nudges him with his elbow. If Jack is cracking jokes, he’s already feeling better. “Yes. Other than that. My point is that you should come first. If too many people are texting you, you can ignore some of them.”

“I just don’t want to,” Jack complains. He sets his mug on the floor between his legs and leans his head on Alex’s shoulder. “I wish we could just stay like this forever and no one else existed. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Alex lifts his left arm up over Jack’s shoulders. He plays with the cotton at the seam of the familiar hoodie. “That’d be great.” But they can’t, of course they can’t. And they wouldn’t even want to, not really.

“I don’t really want to,” Jack mumbles, as if he’s reading Alex’s mind. He turns his head to bury his face in Alex’s neck. When he speaks again, his voice vibrates across Alex’s skin. “I just prefer being with you to anyone else. In the world. Ever. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

A shrug. “You know I’m not good with words like you. You just make me feel…I don’t know. Peaceful. Comfortable.”

Alex sighs. “Oh. Well, it’s probably because I love you.”

Jack makes an indecipherable sound and leans slightly away, picking his head up to look instead into Alex’s eyes. “Yeah?”

Alex smiles, wry. “Yeah.”

“Oh,” Jack says, as if it’s some big reveal, and not something Alex tells Jack every single fucking day. “In that case, don’t stop.”

Alex rolls his eyes and reaches up to cradle Jack’s face in his hand. “You say that like I’ve ever stopped loving you in the, like, eighteen years I’ve known you.”

The corners of Jack’s mouth tug upward. “There must have been once. I was a shithead in high school.”

“So was I,” Alex points out. “Well, I was a shithead well into my twenties.”

“Sorry, Jack,” Alex says. “I loved you then, I love you now, I’ll love you forever.”

“Big talker all of a sudden,” Jack murmurs, and Alex smiles.

“It’s an easy promise to make,” he hums, and it feels far too easy to close the gap between them, closing his eyes and kissing Jack softly, fingertips tilting Jack’s face the slightest bit. It’s hard to remember, in this moment, if they’ve never kissed before or if they’ve kissed a thousand times; Alex suspects that no matter how many times they do it, it’ll always feel like the first.

His eyes flutter open as they break apart. Jack’s stay closed; he drops his forehead onto Alex’s shoulder, and Alex presses a kiss into his hair. “Thank you,” Jack whispers. “I think I’m okay now.”

“Good,” Alex says. “You want to finish the tea and go to sleep?”

“Long as you don’t send me home,” Jack says, yawning. 

Alex shakes his head in disbelief. He can’t say it, because it’s too cheesy for words, and Jack would rightfully make fun of him for it, but there’s no way Alex could ever send Jack home by sending him away. Jack says he’s no good with words; if Alex is, then the word Jack is missing is home. Nothing else could keep them coming back to each other, eighteen years down the line.

“Of course I won’t,” he says instead. “What’s mine is yours. Mi casa tu casa. You know.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I know.” He sits up and reaches for his tea, and Alex reaches for his own; together they take a long sip, and Alex smiles, content. The warmth diffuses itself in Alex’s bloodstream — it’s finally the perfect temperature.