|
Jack spent the evening out, and returns home quietly, letting himself into Mearcstapa's apartment with as little noise as possible in case anyone's asleep. Boots off at the door, work bag set next to them, and he pads into the living room, stopping to peek his head into Mearc's office on his way. Boyfriend should not be working this late.
Boyfriend is going over blueprints for an office building. The door creaks as Jack peeks in, though, and Mearc turns to face the boyfriend with a sheepish little smile. "Hey, my Jack of Hearts."
"What're you doing, oh lion of my heart..." Jack shakes his head in (mostly) fake exasperation and trots over. Leans over the back of Mearc's chair to nearly brush his lips against his neck, but then pulls away.
"No kisses 'til you stop working."
"But...baaabe." This comes out as a dramatic whine as he spins in his chair to track Jack's movement with a pout.
"No butts, either..." Jack smirks and drifts his fingers down Mearcstapa's arm, tugging on his hand.
"C'mon. Have you eaten dinner?"
"...Uuuh. I had a meal around 3pm. Is that dinner or?" He lets his arm be tugged, sighing.
"Baaaaaaabe. You're worse'n me..." Jack pulls Mearc up, and into his arms, sliding his hands up the back of his shirt.
"...You've stopped working...guess that means kisses, yeah?" Jack grins and teases his lips close to Mearc's.
Mearc steps in toward Jack and slowly walks him back against a wall for a slow, steamy kiss, punctuated with a sound that's almost a growl.
Jack chuckles into the kiss, melting against the wall and running his hands across Mearcstapa's back.
"Fuck, I love coming home to this..." he mutters, and catches Mearc's bottom lip in his teeth for a second before leaning into another, equally intense kiss.
Perks of working from home, Mearc, amirite?
Mearc curls a hand into Jack's hair, holding onto it firmly, but not tugging too hard.
"Eating me for dinner doesn't count, though," Jack breathes, flashing Mearc a grin and sliding a hand down to squeeze his ass.
"I'll make you something, what d'you want?" He murmurs in Mearc's ear, pressing a gentle kiss just in front of it.
"...you." He moves so his arms are on either side of Jack, pinning him in, but his smile is playful instead of intense.
Jack's laugh is all kinds of breathless, but it's joyful too, and he gives Mearc a hard kiss.
"You can have me for dessert. I wanna hear about your day, and tell you 'bout mine. And get your feelings on...an interaction?" His hands rest on Mearc's hips, still holding him close.
"My day was mostly quiet. I did smoothies with Lux while they tiled the master bathroom at the house. And then came here to do work for this red team exercise coming up. Pharma, should be a breeze."
"Ooh. Hopefully just difficult enough to be interesting? The job, I mean, not the smoothies and Lux. I'll have to stop by tomorrow, I bet it looks incredible..." Jack absently rubs his thumbs against Mearc's hips as he talks, leaning against the wall.
Mearc laughs. "I dunno, I think you could describe Lux as difficult enough to be interesting sometimes, in the best of ways. Meanwhile, I'm just hard right now."
Jack, look at what you have done.
Scribbles explode across Jack's cheeks, and he grins as he rakes his eyes now Mearc's body and then up again.
"Noticed..." Jack pulls him in for another long kiss, and is still smiling when he comes up for air.
"...Tangentially related, Sigrun and I got to talking about you, when I was up helping her in Allentown. Both'a you have hard-ons for competence."
"...am I supposed to read something into you getting me all hot and bothered and then bringing up Sigrun?" Mearc's freckles immediately begin pixeling in toward the green.
"...Didn't do it on purpose, no." Jack chuckles. "The hard thing just reminded me." He gestures vaguely. "We can talk about it later, 'f you'd rather...?" One hand starts to tug up the hem of Mearc's shirt to finish the question.
"Naw, because now I'm going to be thinking about her. You know, she left me a present at the Scrivener's cottage." He takes a step back. Playtime is now over.
"She's as starry eyed over you as you are over her." Jack keeps a casual hand on Mearc's hip, the scribbles on his cheeks faint, like they've been hastily erased.
"Starry-eyed?" His freckles rapidly shift red. Like nyooooom.
"Not in so many words, but...she got a little flustered when I mentioned how much you appreciate how well she can do the shit she does." Jack reaches up to caress Mearc's cheek.
"Good flustered. Just not anything she expected, I don't think."
"...maybe I ought to go out of my way to appreciate her more verbally in person." He glances aside, the red not dimming a single watt.
"You maybe oughtta, yeah." Jack takes the opportunity to kiss his cheek.
"She left you a present?"
"The venom sacs, venom ducts and fangs of a hedge-spider of some kind. Along with this." He pulls a drawing out of his pocket, unfolding it to show Jack: a dead spider on its back and missing its head while a cartoonish chubby little viking girl drags it away with a proud upturned chin and jutted out lower lip.
"That is...adorable." Jack grins at the picture. "You...are gonna keep all those spider bits in the Hedge, right? Not in the house or anything?"
"No, Jack, I'm not going to store spider venom in our shared fridge." He sighs heavily. "Thank you for asking."
"Didn't think you'd do that. I just don't like spiders. 'S all." Jack shrugs. "Who knows what kinda weird shit's gonna end up in all our rooms, you know?"
Mearc's freckles begin to normalize again. "So, uh. How do you feel about me and Sigrun? Just to check."
Another shrug. "I don't got a lotta feelings about it, I don't think. 'S your deal, even if I kinda sent the ball rolling. She doesn't expect you to act on anything, or anything. But..." There's a pause, and another shrug. "Kinda boils down to 'she's not my type, but have fun'?"
"I mean. Just checking that you're okay with it in theory if, uh. If I were to...something."
"I mean, at one point you weren't comfortable with we and DA doing any sorts of somethings, right?"
"Right. Though...I don't feel that way anymore. If Lux decided to do something with Teagan or if you..." There's a long hesitation. "...no, you and Glitch, I don't think would be compatible at all, now that I really sit down and think about it. But the point is, I feel really secure with you two now. Like...I believe that no matter what, our home is together."
"Don't think so?" Jack's eyebrows go up a little at the mention of his compatibility with Glitch, a smirk sketching across his face for a moment before he gets serious again. He pulls Mearc forward into a tight hug when he's finished talking.
"...Didn't realize how much I needed to hear that. You two're home for me, it...the reminder that it's mutual's good." Most of it's muttered into Mearc's shoulder.
"I don't mind. Whatever something you get up to with Sigrun, 'f it makes you happy, go for it."
"Look, you're welcome to explore whatever you like with Glitch, but I'm pretty certain of that." He laughs, one hand slipping down a back pocket of Jack's pants and cupping his ass. "But yes, yes you're home. I am working on a house that will be my home with you and Lux. I'm working on a life with you and Lux."
Jack wiggles his ass back into Mearc's hand with a grin, and kisses him gently. "I'm so fucking excited to have a real home, and that it's with you and Lux. And I'm glad you're feeling secure, with all our shit. God knows I'm a fucking mess sometimes, but I'd be hypocritical as fuck if I had an issue with you doing shit with other people. Seriously."
"I think we're all messes, but. Like. We balance out in ways that work. And it's amazing. Speaking of ways I'm a mess, I'm really hungry for some reason."
Mearc looks somewhat sheepish.
"...Wonder why that is..." Jack raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, making a show of looking extra disappointed.
"I think there's a pizza crust in the freezer, and we've got cheese...and I can probably scrounge up something else to put on it...?" Jack doesn't often offer to cook, but he does have a decent sense of what tastes good together.
"That sounds like food. But honestly, I'd be good for even like a sandwich right now. Or a bagel and some cream cheese. Or...food."
"Egg and cheese on a bagel?" Jack pushes away from the wall and starts to pull Mearc with him toward the door.
"C'mon. You sit on the couch and I'll make you dinner and I can tell you about my day."
Mearc allows himself to be thus pulled, laughing. "Egg and cheese. And I think we still have some ham that could go in there, too. Unkosher, but fuck it."
"Fuck me - but you gotta eat dinner first." Jack grins wickedly at Mearcstapa and pulls him into a deep kiss in the doorway, dragging his teeth against Mearc's lips and grabbing his hair by the roots.
One sharp tug, and he disengages entirely, turning to saunter toward the kitchen.
Mearc lets out a distinct moan when his hair is tugged and all but floats to the kitchen. "If you insist. But first, my love. Tell me about your day."
"Woke up late, which I gotta stop doing 'cause then both of you are gone and it's depressing, stopped by Aurelio's studio before work and had..." Jack trails off as he rummages around in the fridge for eggs and cheese and butter and ham.
"Dunno 'f it's just cultural differences or what, but I can't tell if we're looking for the same thing."
"Mmm. I need more words to understand what you mean by that." Mearc sits down at the table, freckling green again as he watches Jack.
"I've flirted with him on and off, thought I made my intentions pretty clear. 'S hard to tell if he's...into it? Like...I thought he was, but then he says he likes my company 'cause I'm easy to talk to and have helped him with some shit." Jack cracks eggs into a bowl and scrambles them with a fork, maybe a little more forcefully than is entirely necessary.
"But he wants my number. Maybe just 'cause I'm a Joyeux, and that's fine, there's just...overtones. An' I dont really wanna be his fuckbuddy and his therapist, you know?"
"Mmm, that...does sound like a pretty big conflict of interest. I admit, I don't know Aurelio at all really. In fact, I think most of what I know about him, I know because of Raphael." There's a small gesture and then a shrug. "But like...mm. Yeah, no, I get where you're coming from."
The eggs go into the pan, and the bagel goes into the toaster, and Jack sighs.
"He's an artist and damn good at his job, and he's decades out of time. I have a type." He spreads his hands, looking a little sheepish. "And I mean...I guess I could do both, I don't really have a problem with it, but being told he likes me around 'cause I'm...helpful 's...I mean it kinda felt like a rejection. Which...fine, but then he took my number anyway. So I don't get it."
"You do have a type. Or a couple overlapping types, perhaps. I'm not all that much of an artist." Mearc rests his chin on his hand. "Jack, I hate to tell you this, but you might need to be direct here."
"Fuck..." Jack draws out the word, almost to the point of a whine. "I'm no good at that, got fuckin' mostly nowhere with - Drake..."
"Yeah, but that one almost certainly was a Deaf versus hearing culture thing on some level. You heard he left town, right? Drake, I mean."
"Yeah." Jack fusses with the eggs as they cook, keeping them from burning.
"Didn't hear it from him but that doesn't surprise me much, there was always a little weirdness there. We might'a worked past it eventually, I dunno." A shrug, like it's not a big deal.
"God why isn't this easy anymore? I feel like navigating any sort of interpersonal anything 's got so fucking complicated."
Mearc laughs aloud at that question. "You want an actual answer to that, Jack, or is that entirely rhetorical?"
"...I dunno, how much are you gonna hit me over the head with something that should be obvious?" Jack looks over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised.
"You're not actually looking for pure 'fuckbuddies' anymore. At least not within our community. Especially not after your experience with Jasper. You're actually in search of connections, in search of something meaningful where you can get it, because you don't have your head wrapped up around the idea that fuckbuddies is all you can get or all you deserve."
"...Jesus, babe, straight for the jugular on that one, huh?" Jack shakes his head with a huff of a laugh. "You're probably right. I do kinda wish I could settle for casual shit, it'd make life a hell of a lot easier. That's what Lux was supposed to be...wouldn't wanna change it now though."
"And you and I were just supposed to be metamours." Mearc grins, showing off all the teeth.
"That worked out real well..." Jack flashes Mearc his own teeth and brings the sandwich over to the table.
"Wouldn't change this, either." He sets the plate down and leans in, cupping Mearcstapa's chin as he gives him a heated kiss. "Wouldn't change a single thing."
It is a very hungry kiss, but eventually breaks so Mearc can dig into the food, because BIG HONGR. "What's that line from that one Suzanne Vega song?"
Jack flips around one of the other chairs so he can straddle it, and shakes his head. "No idea, babe."
He hums a few bars. "Buh-buh badda...'I think it's called my destiny, that I am changing.' And there's the crux of it. We're all changing. Growing. Together. And I think it's for the better, for all of us."
"I sure hope it turns out okay. All this - us, growing, changing - 's making life...worth living, and not just kinda surviving. Y'know?" Jack runs a hand through his hair, looking a little embarrassed at that declaration.
"Even if it isn't okay every moment along the way, it's all stuff we're going to face together. That's the point." Mearc lifts the sandwich so Jack can have a bite if he'd like. "Or one of the points. The steamy sex is another point that bears mentioning."
"Mentioning and repeating," Jack nods with a smile and takes a bite of sandwich. "You should think about what you want for dessert, I had plans to shower, but I can change them..."
"We can shower together after I get done with you." Mearc winks, his freckles reddening slowly, pixel-blinking like little fireworks.
|