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Jack streeeeetches as he wakes up midway through the afternoon - it's his day off, who can blame him? - and eventually sits up to see an empty bed. Not super unusual, really, especially on a weekday, and a few minutes later he pads out of the bedroom. He's in just his boxers, hair still a little messy, and his first task is to seek out coffee. Barely even registering wherever his two partners may or may not be.
As he passes the doorway to Mearc's office, he hears the pitter patter of fingernails on a keyboard, which stops as he stumbles past. "What's in the pot is a few hours old. I can make fresh and feed you breakfast, if you want."
"...You'd get best boyfriend award, if you did..." Jack's voice is still a little rough from sleep, but he pokes his head around the door with a smile.
Mearc's freckles are pretty green when Jack peeks into the room. He's just wearing his cargo pants, no shirt, and is sitting pretzel-style in his chair (as usual; he is too gay to sit like a normal person), but he unfolds to walk over and give Jack a slow, gentle kiss.
Jack hums contentedly into the kiss and pulls Mearc close, wrapping warm arms around him. "How's work?" He mumbles after he breaks the kiss, and rests his head on Mearc's shoulder.
"Mmh. Can't concentrate. I had a weird dream and woke up before dawn, and now I'm sort of trying to get my ass behind me again. Bagel and cream cheese for breakfast?" He begins to steer Jack toward the kitchen, not breaking contact.
"Same's the last few nights?" Lines scrawl across Jack's forehead as he frowns in concern, and he reaches up to pet Mearc's hair. "Bagel's fine yeah, you wanna talk about it?"
"Mmm. More distinct than the last few nights." He closes his eyes when petted, red freckles slowly blossoming across his skin. "It felt like a memory from Over There. Kind of. It was different from most of everything else I've ever remembered, though. It...wasn't a dream about the City."
"...You think someone's fucking with your dreams? Or...you're just remembering shit you forgot?" Jack kisses Mearc on the cheek, and gives his waist a small squeeze.
"I don't know." This comes out quiet and uncertain. "Glitch was in my dream. I killed him."
"Oh..." Jack's voice is soft. "Are you...okay? Wasn't him him, right?"
"No, no. Not...but if it was a memory, I killed him Over There." Mearc drags his hand down his face, then disentangles to start making the coffee. "It doesn't make sense though. Because it wasn't in the City. I escaped from the City, with Lux."
"Mmm..." Jack frowns more, his ability to think hampered slightly by lack of caffeine. "How'd you get to the City in the first place? If - you don't gotta do any deep digging for memories, 's rough as hell after a dream like that."
"I was Taken from an ar..." And Mearcstapa stops mid-word, exhaling heavily. "...an arcade. When I was sixteen. Polybius--have you ever heard of it?"
"Uh uh." Jack shakes his head and sidles up behind Mearc as he works, wrapping his arms around the other Darkling and kissing his shoulder.
"The story that goes around is that it was an arcade cabinet set up in an arcade in Portland, Oregon in 1981. That it gave kids headaches, seizures, was a government testing program, was created by aliens. That it altered brainwaves, or that kids would go missing, last seen playing it."
A glance at Jack's face, and then back down at the coffeemaker.
"And kids went missing, huh." He squeezes Marc gently. "An' you got taken to the City, like that?"
"I...don't remember arriving in the City." There's a bit of a frown, his freckles turning green. "I remember being there, but not arriving there."
"Maybe whatever's missing's got something to do with all this." Jack pets Mearc's hair, his animation lazy and calm despite the sensitive subject.
"Or maybe it's just your brain being an absolute dick. A lotta traumatic shit's happened in the last few months." He doesn't sound too confident about it, though.
Mearc shakes his head, moving a little away from Jack to get a couple bagels to toast. "I...it would make some fucked up sense, I suppose...Glitch was so surprised, after I told him how I was taken, that I'd been in the City."
Jack cocks his head. "He thought you two had the same Keeper?"
"Apparently he...was taken through a CRT screen, too." There's a bit of a nod. "Later, chronologically, than I was."
"...Ah. Not...the wildest thing that could'a happened, yeah?" As soon as the coffee's done Jack pours it into a mug, and winces as he tries to take a sip.
"No, not really." Mearc exhales a heavy long sigh. "If it was a memory, if it was real..."
"Then it's still a memory. You're not...protocol anymore, an' you know that. An' Glitch knows that, whatever fucked up shit happened Over There."
He pulls the bagels out of the toaster, not saying anything aloud as he schmears them with cream cheese. His freckles remain very, very green.
Processing...
"Talk to me, lionheart." Jack takes another small sip of coffee. "What're you thinking?"
"It all makes a lot of sense. The dream, what I was. It was...it's...there's an internal consistency to everything that speaks to the influence of the Wyrd. It loops back around and rhymes with itself. Symbols carry over." He lets out a laugh with no real humor behind it. "I think I dreamed I was a panther."
"That...tracks. You being a panther over there. Even symbolically. What...d'you need? About all this? From me, from..." He gestures vaguely, "from life."
"I don't know what I need yet. Uh. Shit. I don't even know if I want to ask Glitch about it, because...'hi, did I kill you?' isn't...you know?"
"It..might be worth at least talking to him about it. If not to ask, to let him know what you're remembering. Those sorts of things...don't tend to stay secret for long. Even if it's to protect him."
"Yeah. Maybe. It...probably says something that my first instinct is to reach out to Sturm to ask her to poke it?" He wrinkles his nose, presenting Jack with his bagel, before moving to sit at the kitchen table. "As if I might just find out it's nothing, just something my head made up under stress, if I go that route, and avoid bothering Glitch that way."
"At this point it sounds like...'s more than something your head made up, lionheart." He reaches out to stroke Mearc's hair before moving to sit down as well. "What...are you worried about happening, if you talk to Glitch?"
"Things being weird because I killed him. Clarity slipping for both of us. Him hating me."
"Lux...hurt you, in the City. Right? And hid that from you?" Jack's voice is gentle.
The green gives way to a little red, a startled expression coming to his face. "...you're right. I should talk to Glitch."
"C'mere." Jack leans forward with a smile to give Mearc a kiss. "Even if it's weird, even if your Clarity slips...he knows as well as you that shit's different, here. And he's gonna wanna hear it from you, now."
Mearc smiles into the kiss. "Damn, you are stepping up as a Joyeux..."
"Doing my best. 'S easy, with you and Lux, I kinda know how both of you work." Jack shrugs, and kisses Mearc again, with a little more heat. It's short, though, and he leans back to drink his coffee and eat his breakfast.
"And now, if you do talk to Sturm, you can even say you talked to a Spring about it."
"I can. A really awesome Spring, who's good at his job and amazingly sexy." Mearc laughs, his freckles normalizing for the first time this morning.
Scribbles scrawl across Jack's cheeks, and he grins. "You're gonna do awful things to my ego. An' like I said, being a Joyeux with you two's easy, I haven't really done it much with anyone else. An' my job...'s my job."
"...I double-doggy dare you to try it with someone else, the next time there's an opportunity to." Blep.
"'Course I'll try, I just dunno how well I'm gonna do." Jack wrinkles his nose, but he's still grinning. "Dream didn't fuck with your Clarity though, did it?"
"I don't think so. Do I feel off-kilter to you?"
Jack regards Mearc for a moment. "Not really - I can try to see for sure, though?"
Mearc nods a bit. "Always worth checking, I suppose."
Jack leans forward to kiss him again, and brushes a lock of hair away from his face before running his thumb along Mearc's cheek.
He leans into the kiss easily nipping Jack's lower lip gently.
A moment later, Jack pulls back with a slight frown, looking a little defeated. "I...can't tell. Sorry. And that's something I feel like I'm supposed to be good at."
"Hm. Well, I'm not feeling like a complete blunt asshole, so I think I'm okay. But I do still plan to work on a video for the channel tomorrow. I'm going to continue alienating the part of my fanbase that thinks pen testing is a Manly Man's work. I might examine the origin of the phrase 'be gay, do crime'." There's a smirk.
"Oh...can't wait to see that. You done a bit about your tactical hairclips yet?" Jack finishes his bagel and his coffee, and runs his bare foot up the side of Mearc's leg under the table.
"Naw, if-when I do that, I'm going to reach out and see if I can work out a sponsorship deal."
Footsie? Two can play at that game, and Mearc has a whole 'nother leg--he attempts to twine Jack's foot between both of his legs, grinning.
"Solid plan - fuck, that reminds me, I gotta text Zoya today, 'bout the..." Jack trails off with a smirk and lets Mearc capture his foot - but only so he can hook it behind his legs to try to pull him forward.
And Mearc lets out a playful growl when hooked like a salmon in a stream. "About the theater backstage video? I already kinda love Zoya, she seems like an awesome person to know."
"Yeah - got full access for her, there's a bunch'a stagehands who've got shit to say too, I guess. More than I thought." Jack leans in to pull Mearc into a kiss, resting his hand on the back of Mearc's neck.
"What're we doing with the table here? C'mere 'n sit on my lap." He makes grabby hands, grinning.
"But yeah, hopefully we can get something together next month, get her backstage. It'll be fun."
Mearc moves to settle in against Jack, straddling him and pressing him back against the chair, empty lightless eyes boring into him.
"Is this what you wanted?"
Jack lets out a quiet, surprised noise when Mearc straddles him, scribbles darkening on his cheeks. "Well it's what I want now," he murmurs, his smile widening, and he slides his hands up Mearc's back. "I like looking up at you like this."
And Mearc claims a slow, hungry kiss, one hand under Jack's chin, the other with nails running slowly down his side. Not too much pressure, certainly not leaving marks, but definitely enough to be felt.
Jack shudders slightly at the nails against his skin, and melts into Mearc with a sigh. His tongue slips between the other Darkling's lips and teeth, just for a moment, and he brings a hand up to tangle in his hair.
"Fuck - I love you," he mutters. "An' I love...this."
"What about this, exactly?" Whispered in Jack's ear with a hint of purr, prying the words out of Jack. Making him say what it is he enjoys, what he wants. That's half the fun.
"The fuckin'..." Another shiver, and Jack presses his hand against the small of Mearc's back. "Domesticity of it. Sitting having breakfast, getting handsy, just...being together. Living together." His voice gets softer as he speaks. "Sometimes I'm not even scared I'm gonna fuck it up, anymore."
"You're not. We're not. We're building something that's solid. Something were even if--even when--we fuck up, we can repair it together. This isn't just a fling, Jack. This is something real."
"Yeah." He breathes it out, blinking up at Mearc with an adoring grin. "Yeah, I...'s part of what I love about it. About you. And this." A beat, and his smile falters. "I...I'm gonna go talk to Sturm, soon. Texted her too, in Baltimore, d'I tell you that? By accident, but...ended up being a good thing, I think. 'Cause that - that I fucked up. I know I've got help, though. To figure it out."
Mearc's hand traces up Jack's jawline and then across his cheeks, down to the lips. "You do have help. I dunno how much help it is, but, uh. I've stopped drinking, myself. Just to make sure I'm not going to make it harder on you."
"I gotta tell Lux - been avoiding it." Jack's gaze drops. "Thanks for...pushing me, I...there's no good time for this shit, you know? Might's well be now. Before shit gets worse, between all of us."
"If you need help having that talk with Lux, let me know. Or if you want me to give you two some alone time here to have it. Alright?" His thumb brushes lightly over Jack's lips before Mearc leans in to place the gentlest of kisses on his forehead. "However you need it."
Jack nods, and brushes Mearc's hair away from his face. "I love you. Don't feel like I deserve you, but fuck - I'm gonna hold on long's I can." He offers Mearc a smile.
"I love you too, my Jack of Hearts. I think I might be done working for the day. Did you have plans for the day?"
Is it strange, how easy it is for someone who doesn't appear to have eyes to deliver a come-hither look?
"...Pretty sure I'm 'bout to make some..." Jack's grin is wicked, and he leans away, giving Mearc a slow once-over. Scribbles dance across his skin, and his hands slide around to Mearc's chest.
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