kings | drabble meme
Earlier this week I opened a Kings drabble meme, to celebrate the show's return. This is an archive post for all the resulting drabbles-well, the ones I wrote, anyway. Ratings, pairings, and length will vary-check tags for warnings. Welcome back, Kings, for whatever it's worth. :D
gen jack, michelle, silas, stuck with a flat tire.
jack/joseph clandestine ; breakfast.
jack/david surprises ; full house at the farm ; jealousy.
Kings | Jack/David | 500 words | mild | unbeta'd. For gaviotas.
Jack/David; surprises.
The first time Jack sees David in the morning after, he’s got bags under his eyes and appallingly tousled hair, a bruise across his waist and an enormous hickey glaring from his neck like the world’s largest tramp stamp. He’s also wearing pants which are clearly not his own, and about three sizes too big: they hang dangerously low, barely catching on his hipbones, and very obviously do not cover any sort of underwear.
It’s an utter shock-and worse, disturbingly hot. Jack looks away and tries to pretend David didn’t just come out of his guest bedroom with an enormous sign that said I HAD SEX OF THE PROBABLY GAY PERSUASION. He takes a desperate sip of his coffee.
“Ughhh,” David says, intelligently. He wobbles forward a step, and stops to lean against the couch, rubbing his eyes. “Why’re you up.” It doesn’t qualify as a question. It barely qualifies as intelligible speech.
“Apparently, you’ve discovered third base.” Jack tries not to sound too incredulous, talking around his scalded tongue. “Frankly, I was prepared to wait until you were thirty at least. Surprises will never cease.”
David frowns at him. “...uh?”
“You had sex,” Jack informs him, a touch more accusatory than he intended. “If the lack of total shame is anything to go by.”
David looks down and seems to realize his pubic hair is showing, whereupon he makes a hasty and mortified grab for his pants, while simultaneously craning his neck to look back into the darkened room, where his partner is supposedly still out for the count. He staggers back to the doorway-a dangerously uncoordinated ordeal-and re-emerges after a few minutes, very pale in the face.
“I, uh,” he says, then stops.
“Yes?” Jack wills himself to follow through until the end of the conversation: David should have someone to get him through his Big Gay Epiphany, even if it’s only for cynical comic value. Think of the blackmail material, he consoles himself, and feels slightly mollified.
“It’s.” David peers back, as though a third glance would magically change the identity of his one-night stand. “It’s this guy.”
“Unaccountably.” Jack is practically ready to feed him the excuses: I’m not gay, I was really drunk, he looked like a girl, and so forth indefinitely. To David’s credit, if Jack recalls half the amount of alcohol that was passed around last night, at least one out of three is true.
“But, no, you see.” David is starting to look really desperate now. “I hadn’t planned on, I mean, I’m not-this isn’t what I-”
“Yes, you were probably hoping for a pretty girl, weren’t you? Well, that’s too bad, Shepherd.” Jack slants him a look over the rim of his coffee cup, annoyed. “That’s what you get for falling over total strangers.”
“But I didn’t mean to-” Shepherd is babbling now, unthinking, “-I mean, I thought he was you.”
Jack spit out his coffee, and David looked instantly horrified at himself, the blood draining from his face faster than water from a burst pipe.
And that’s how the morning starts.
Kings | Jack/Joseph | 460 words | mild | unbeta'd. For duckgirlie.
Jack/Joseph; clandestine.
The streets are very dark this time of night, very lonely, and he’s not even entirely sure of the way. It’s a district he doesn’t frequent often, and he’s half convinced a police car will suddenly pull over and detain him for suspicious loitering, or soliciting, or something. That’s what you get for standing around in a long black trench coat, wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night. Some people can pull it off, and he’s not one of them.
Of course, at that exact moment footsteps ring out in the dark alley, and the one person who can pull it off finally makes an appearance. Against all odds, he’s wearing jeans and a casual jacket over a plain shirt-looking staggeringly, unabashedly normal.
Jack takes one look at Joseph’s getup and promptly cracks up in peals of uncontrollable laughter.
“What the-hey! No!” Joseph can’t help it: he hisses. Someone might overhear. “Why’re you so-you told me to be clandestine!”
“Oh, Joseph.” Jack shakes his head, snorting down laughter. “I meant discreet. Looking like an after-hours pedophile is not discreet.” He glances up at Joseph’s getup for a second and he’s off again, helplessly, like it’s the most hilarious thing in the world.
“That’s what they do in spy movies,” Joseph mutters. (Unbeknownst to him, this remark will prompt Jack to buy him The Essential Noir Classics film set for his birthday, a year hence.)
“I’m sure they do.” Jack seems to have calmed down somewhat, at least. “But here, let me show you how they do it in real life.”
Then he’s pushing Joseph back, rough and demanding, until he hits a wall. Jack keeps moving forward, closing him in, and there’s a brief moment where Joseph feels his breath puffing against his cheek, and then Jack’s kissing him, slick and easy. He does it with all the inborn confidence of a royal, as though he can just saunter up and take something because it’s his. Through the hazy mist of arousal which the sudden thought brings-of being taken, being owned-Joseph privately concludes that Jack, with his swagger and his brazen grin, would make an excellent noir detective.
The coat is pushed to the ground, the glasses discarded, and Jack draws back momentarily to survey his handiwork.
“That’s better,” he says. “You actually don’t look entirely ridiculous now.”
“Funny,” Joseph says, but he slings his arms around Jack’s shoulders anyway, arcing up against him. He tries to scowl, and fails. “I thought we were being discreet?”
Jack nuzzles at the dip of his cheek and the corner of his mouth, proprietary. “Ah, but you see.” His grin is sharp in the brackish light from the street outside. “The first lesson of camouflage is how to hide in plain sight.”
Kings | Jack/David | mild | 1100 words | unbeta'd. For artemisphoenix.
Jack/David; at David's family farm, full house.
“So what brings you up north, Highness?” Jesse Shepherd’s voice could have chipped solid ice.
“Please, call me Jack.” He took a sip of his coffee, hoping it wasn’t poisoned. You never knew, with rebels. “Generally speaking, we’re doing a tour of the land. The king wants to personally inspect every estate liable to be affected by the peace treaty. All very low profile, which is why we couldn’t rent a hotel.” He looked earnest. “Thank you for having us.”
“Not that we have much choice,” one of David’s six million older brothers-Jack didn’t even try to remember the name-spoke up bitterly. “Hell of an entrance you made, taking over the farm like that.”
“Our servicemen arrived ahead of us in order to secure the premises,” Jack conceded. “David notified you of our arrival, didn’t you, David?” He clapped a friendly hand on David’s shoulder, right next to him on the couch. David visibly startled, nerves strung out like a tightrope, and his eyes darted to Jack in alarm before riveting back to his mother.
Jesse sniffed. “Of his arrival. He failed to mention he’ll be bringing along such esteemed company.” She made ‘esteemed company’ sound like ‘cow manure’. Jack couldn’t help but admire the pure vitriol in her tone.
“We’re very sorry to encroach,” he said smoothly, and smiled. “Your generosity shall not go uncompensated.”
“We don’t want none of your stinkin’ money,” spat one of the younger brothers-possibly a Nathan, or maybe a Simon. “Just for you to stop stealin’ our la-”
“Daniel,” Jesse snapped, and the boy quieted sullenly. She turned to Jack. “Shall I get you anything else to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Jack turned to David. “How about a small tour? Out in the fields, perhaps-let’s not bother your family more than necessary.”
“Yes, absolutely,” David looked like a drowning man being offered a lifeline. “I’ll show you the... tractor.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by the country life,” Jack lied to Jesse as they got up from the couch. “You miss out on a lot, living in a city.”
Jesse’s gaze as she watched them exit the living room said exactly what she thought Jack was missing out on-namely, morals, a heart, and any semblance of humanity-but she didn’t say anything as they left the house.
“You were sitting way to close,” David hissed to him as the front door closed behind them. “And touching me like that-they barely accepted us as it is, do you want to get us thrown out entirely?”
“Worried they’ll notice?” Jack purred, sliding a hand up David’s chest, fingering the smooth lapels of his uniform. “Don’t worry, I’m a diplomat. We know how to look innocent.”
“If Ethan had been here my mom probably wouldn’t have allowed us past the threshold,” David persisted in a low tone. “They’re furious at me for bringing you anyway. One wrong move-”
“Like this?” Jack leaned in close, lips brushing the tip of David’s ear, and relished the tiny stutter of his breath. Shepherd was so easy, especially since that night he’d fallen into Jack’s bed, and ever since they started fucking he’d been pliant as hot wax in Jack’s hands. It was worth it to keep up the pretence of caring for him just for that-although the fact he gave shockingly good head didn’t detract any points, either.
Of course, at that exact moment the door opened and four of David’s brothers tumbled out in a heap, causing David to break away with a dead guilty expression and probably give himself a small heart attack. Jack, for his part, turned to them smoothly, bland as though he’d been doing nothing more innocuous than smelling daisies.
“David.” One of the young brothers, the one who’d snapped at Jack earlier in the house, glared at them balefully. “Mom told us to join you and keep an eye on the prince, and also to make sure he doesn’t poison the well.”
“Daniel.” Another brother elbowed the first, hard, and glanced at Jack in a way which was not at all apologetic. “Sorry about that, Highness. He means to say we’ll be accompanying you.”
“Excellent,” Jack said. Clever, clever Jesse: apparently the rebels thought of the royal family in much the same terms as the royal family thought of the rebels. The brothers were eyeing him and David suspiciously, as though they were wondering what had been going on before their arrival, but Jack knew that if he acted as though the odds were in his favour they would, inevitably, tip that way soon enough.
“Uh.” David coughed lightly. He was tugging the lapels of his uniform into place in the guiltiest manner known to mankind, and quite possibly messing them up further in the process. “Jack, you don’t know my brothers-?”
“I’m Nathan,” the largest, standing near the back, supplied. He had to be at least six feet, with shoulders like a grizzly bear, and had been eyeing Jack with the most suspicion so far. Jack beamed at him sunnily.
“I’m Simon,” the tall, gangly one said, all messy straw-blond hair and bony elbows. The one next to him, who had accused Jack of flagrant well-poisoning, muttered something unintelligible about being named Daniel, and then the last one, clearly the oldest, nodded to Jack and said, “Oz, Highness,” stoically.
“Please, call me Jack.” His grip was firm as he shook each of their hands, though it was obvious they were reluctant to return the courtesy. A stark change from the fawning masses of Shiloh, and rather refreshing-although of course, it helped that the Shepherd clan seemed to consist entirely of tall, blond country boys with handsome faces and muscles like steel. “Where shall we go first?”
“Are you sure you want to go out?” David asked meaningfully. “I mean, the farm gets pretty dirty. And it’d be a shame about your suit. And the shoes-”
“Nonsense,” Jack said cheerfully, and David got this look on his face like he wished, very fervently, to be struck down by lightning at the soonest possible notice. “Seeing your farm is more important to me than a pair of old shoes. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He clapped David on the shoulder again, just to be perverse. “You said something about a tractor?”
“Yeah.” David took a shaky breath, resigned, and waved a hand vaguely towards the back of the house. “It’s out back.”
“Then let’s go.” Jack didn’t even have to fake his enthusiasm as he followed the Shepherd cabal down their porch steps. This was going to be fun.
Kings | Jack/David | 500 words | burn | unbeta'd. For ashdoode.
Jack/David; jealousy.
It always starts with Jack pushing David down, climbing atop him like a lion, hands fanned against his chest or fisted roughly in the lapels of his suit. Sometimes he straddles him; sometimes he just forces him against the floor, neck stretching long and bare. Jack would thread his fingers in David’s golden-spun hair, lean forward with his lips close to the skin, open his mouth and bite.
David clamps down on his lip or muffles the cry into the carpet, eyes wide with pain, dark with arousal. He’ll reach up to grip Jack’s shoulders or slip under his shirt, but Jack will slap his hands away, snarling.
“On your knees, Shepherd,” he’ll say, voice frigid. “Not a word.”
And David will obey, for reasons known only to him: infatuation or machination or misguided sympathy, Jack doesn’t really care. He’ll pin David to the floor and fuck him, open and raw, David’s pants crumpled near his ankles and Jack’s hand tight over his gasping mouth. Every place he touches he makes sure to leave bruises, vivid and ugly on David’s smooth skin, mottled across his ribs and scapulas. He hurts David to the bone, so that no matter what he does afterwards it’ll hurt, and he won’t be able to sit or stand or lie down without the ache spreading dull and heavy through his limbs, ever-present.
“You’re mine,” he’ll whisper into David’s ear, fingers hooking into the collar of his shirt and pulling so that David chokes, breath catching sharp. “Mine. Not my father’s. Mine.”
Yes, David will gasp, or perhaps it’s just another noise forced out of him with each of Jack’s thrusts, too rough, making his back scrape against the floor and giving him carpet burn all across his spine.
Jack will come with renewed aggression, nails digging into the concaves of David’s torso and teeth sharp at his throat, hips moving in-out, fast and slick. David is open to him like an unbound book, scattered to the winds; he takes deep, shuddering breathes beneath Jack and holds on tight and tries simply to weather the storm.
Then later, the night or the day after, they will both stand in the main council room, immaculately dressed, David at Silas’s right hand and Jack delegated to his left. Jack will watch as Silas looks upon David, proprietary and fiercely proud-father to son-and invite the foreign dignitaries to hear Shiloh’s golden boy play the fortepiano. David will smile, and shyly deflect attention from the medal gleaming bronze-bright at his chest: Gilboa’s highest honour, bequeathed by the king himself.
And Jack will know, no matter how many times he breaks David apart and puts him back together crooked, Silas will love him regardless. The one thing he wants-kingship and his father’s blessing, nothing else, nothing but this, just this-will only be defined by its absence.
The next time he sees David, he shoves him against a wall harder than ever, relishing the gasp of pain. Jack knows he’s working on a tight schedule. He’s got only until the coronation, and then the tables will turn.
Kings | Jack/Joseph | 960 words | mild | unbeta'd. For inthekeyofd.
Jack/Joseph; breakfast.
Jack wakes up to an empty bed (unsurprising) and strange muffled sounds from outside the room (surprising; very alarming). He scrambles into a pair of pants and bursts out the door, ready to run or hide or duck for cover, but all he meets at the front hallway is a very confused bodyguard.
“The hell, Davis?” he says, but the guy just shrugs, nonplussed.
“I offered to escort him out,” he says in a low voice. “He said he’ll go in a bit.”
Jack groans. Occasionally he’ll pick up the kind of joker who thought he could sleep with the prince then blackmail him using incriminating evidence, and while they were dealt with easily enough, the initial confrontation is always a pain in the ass. But this guy had been checked before they’d gone up; he was safe, or at least that’s what Jack had thought last night. He makes a mental note to fire his current intermediary: if Jack’s going to have a bad morning, someone else is going to have a bad week.
“Stay here,” he says, and sighs in resignation. “I’ll deal with him.” At least it beat being shot at, which had been his first guess upon waking up. Then everyone would have to be fired.
The sounds are coming from the kitchen, so he heads there. Three feet away and he’s hit by an odd smell: something cooking, pervasive and savoury. A faint sound of sizzling can be heard from within. He opens the door cautiously and steps in, fully prepared for a hot pan to the face.
The sight that confronts him is miles removed: last night’s fuck, already dressed and showered, standing by Jack’s state-of-the-art induction stove and calmly making pancakes.
“Uh.” Jack rarely has trouble finding something to say at any given moment, but this is simply beyond the pale. He stares.
Last night’s fuck turns around. “Oh!” he says, pleasantly surprised, and smiles. It’s not a bad smile: he looks different from how Jack would describe him last night, if pressed to do so, but not any less attractive. He’s also suspiciously lacking in the menace department. “You came just in time-the first batch is done.”
“Is it,” Jack hears himself say faintly. Last night’s fuck bustles around, setting two plates and heaping pancakes onto them, ransacking the kitchen for maple and butter and a jug of orange juice which Jack wasn’t rightly aware he previously had in his fridge. He’s clean and fresh-faced, and suddenly Jack is acutely aware of his messy bed-head, the stains of semen visible above the low waistline of the pants. Usually nobody sees him in the morning after except people very highly paid to see everything but him.
As though reading his mind, last night’s fuck looks him up and down, casually, and grins a little. “You probably don’t remember,” he says. “My name’s Joseph. It may sound ingratiating, but you look even hotter in real life.”
You’ve already seen me in real life, Jack wants to say, but it’s not true, not really: the nights before are always neon-tinted, seen through spotlights and raver lightshows and the heady throbbing press of bodies. It’s impossible to get a guy’s true measure, especially not when you’re tripping high as a kite and busy falling into bed with him. Instead he says: “You’re right-it is ingratiating.”
Joseph laughs and sits down at the table, beckons at the other chair. “Well, I’ve already made you pancakes, so I figured I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
Still no sign of blackmail. This is an unprecedented surprise. Jack briefly considers alerting Davis and erring on the side of safety, signing off the whole thing as a particularly elaborate trap, but he’s not yet his father and he refuses to let paranoia rule his life. Instead, he sits down and takes a sip of orange juice, then digs into the pancakes. They’re remarkably delicious.
“This is delicious,” he says, and keenly notes the way Joseph’s mouth curves upwards in a smile and his eyes crinkle, pleased.
“Thank you,” he says, and ducks his head a little. “It’s my mum’s recipe. And I thought it was only right of me, sleeping in your bed and all.” He pauses. “Not to mention I needed some way to stop the guard from throwing me out. I think he was ready to drag me by the collar.”
“Davis is very thorough in his duties.” Jack takes another bite of pancake. “Why are you still here?”
“Um?” Joseph looks at him as though he doesn’t understand the question. “I wanted to say good morning, thank you for last night. You were great, and not just the-you know.” He breaks off, suddenly unsure. “Was I not supposed to?”
“For a given value of ‘not’.” Joseph looks worried, as though he just now realized that maybe Jack Benjamin, heir to the throne, might not actually want his company-and suddenly, Jack has to keep himself from laughing. Most fucks would take off like a shot, counting their hush money before they were even out the door, but Joseph made Jack his mum’s pancakes and stayed to thank him for the sex. “Let’s say it’s not exactly common practice.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think; if you want me to go-” Joseph is getting up, hastily collecting the cutlery, face a bright red.
Jack stops him with an upheld fork. “No,” he says. “Stay.” And then, when Joseph tentatively sits back down: “These really are delicious.” He smiles a little, and Joseph looks vastly relieved. Jack has a meeting later that morning and he hasn’t even showered, much less reviewed the material, but for now he tarries. The morning really is full of surprises.
Kings | gen |800 words | mild | unbeta'd. For roga.
Jack, Michelle, Silas; stuck with a flat tire.
One of the perks of being royalty is driving around in the best and sleekest cars, with the most skilled, professional servicemen imaginable, and never having to deal with gas shortage or leaking motors or detestable reverse parking.
Which is why, when the unbelievable happens, it is completely ridiculous.
“A flat tire?” Jack says. “Seriously?” He turns to stare at Michelle. “This is completely ridiculous.”
“Don’t tell me,” she snaps, checking her silver pocket watch. They’re going to be late, all of them, and for the same meeting, no less. “You’re the man, you go fix it.”
“That’s so stereotypically derogatory, I can’t believe you’re enforcing heteronormative gender norms!” Jack mimics her voice, like he did when they were little. It gets a rise out of her every time.
True to form, Michelle flashes him a dirty look. “That wasn’t funny when we were five,” she informs him. “And guess what? It’s even less funny now.”
“Children,” Silas sighs from the front of the car, long-suffering. “If it didn’t amuse you when you were five, think what it was like for me.”
“Well, you’d think he’d grow up after twenty-one years, but apparently not.” Michelle starts tapping the fingers of one hand on the knuckles of the other; a maddening habit Jack could never stand. He’s painfully reminded of hours-long family trips, flying from one capital to the other, standing in the back with Michelle while their parents negotiated peace treaties for the cameras. She looked so angelic on the screen, but she had an iron grip and she used to pinch him real hard when other people weren’t looking. Same as their adult relationship now, basically, except they stopped resolving conflicts via rounds of hair-pulling around age seven. Jack sometimes wonders if the old ways weren’t better.
“When are they all coming back?” Michelle is asking. “The servicemen, I mean. And where would you find this sort of tire anyway?”
“I don’t know, puppy.” Silas stares out the window pensively. He looks like he’s trying very hard to immerse himself in a peaceful state of mind and avoid reverting back to two decades ago, when he was still a young parent-king and his kids had been the country’s worst enemies. “You can ask the guards if you like.”
Michelle peers out the window at the unmoving servicemen stationed in a circle around the car, backs ramrod-straight, staring outwards and away. They aren’t allowed to open the doors or roll down any of the windows, for fear of an assassination attempt. Privately, Jack wonders whether it's simply so that the guards didn’t have to listen to their unbearable bickering. He doesn’t fancy it much himself.
“Hey,” he says, for lack of anything better to do in this whole unbearable, dreary, unbearably dreary scenario. “Remember that game we used to play when we were kids?”
“No. What?” Michelle frowns, but Silas, against all odds, looks up interestedly.
“You were insufferable,” he says, but fondly. “You would carry on for ages. I used to hate every second of it.”
“Good,” Jack says cheerfully. “Then let’s play. And this time you're definitely going to lose.” He clears his throat theatrically. “When I’m king...”
“Oh, I remember!” Michelle snaps her fingers. “I’ll pass all the health care bills that Daddy’s been blocking for no good reason.” She says it almost sweetly, except for the way her eyes narrow at Silas.
Their father, for his part, is largely unfazed. “There’s a reason I do that, you know, puppy,” he drawls. “The bills rely on unreasonable taxes which you can’t afford to burden the economy with. Angry citizens protest having to waste their money on the slim 2% of the population who actually benefit from your laws. The financial system collapses and your government goes bankrupt.”
“But-” she starts, except Jack waves her into silence.
“No, he's right, you lose,” he says. “My turn now. When I’m king, I’ll surrender the southern borderlands for a general peace treaty, and achieve a state of ceasefire on all fronts. We know the people of Simeon are willing.”
Silas snorts. “Good luck dealing with the same jokers who are currently making a racket about the Port Prosperity deal. That’s land we don’t even rightly need; think what would happen if you go further south. They’ll set your palace on fire.”
“Besides,” Michelle adds, “giving up territories doesn’t necessarily mean a mutual peace. We’ve been at war with our neighbours for so long that we might not be able to stop.”
“Aye, there’s that,” Silas nods gravely. “Good thinking, puppy.”
Jack scowls. “At least I won’t bankrupt my government.”
She darts a quick look at their father, then sticks a tongue out at him. “My turn again.”
Turns out they manage to while away the time, after all.
All characters © their respective owners; I claim no right nor profit.
gen jack, michelle, silas, stuck with a flat tire.
jack/joseph clandestine ; breakfast.
jack/david surprises ; full house at the farm ; jealousy.
Kings | Jack/David | 500 words | mild | unbeta'd. For gaviotas.
Jack/David; surprises.
The first time Jack sees David in the morning after, he’s got bags under his eyes and appallingly tousled hair, a bruise across his waist and an enormous hickey glaring from his neck like the world’s largest tramp stamp. He’s also wearing pants which are clearly not his own, and about three sizes too big: they hang dangerously low, barely catching on his hipbones, and very obviously do not cover any sort of underwear.
It’s an utter shock-and worse, disturbingly hot. Jack looks away and tries to pretend David didn’t just come out of his guest bedroom with an enormous sign that said I HAD SEX OF THE PROBABLY GAY PERSUASION. He takes a desperate sip of his coffee.
“Ughhh,” David says, intelligently. He wobbles forward a step, and stops to lean against the couch, rubbing his eyes. “Why’re you up.” It doesn’t qualify as a question. It barely qualifies as intelligible speech.
“Apparently, you’ve discovered third base.” Jack tries not to sound too incredulous, talking around his scalded tongue. “Frankly, I was prepared to wait until you were thirty at least. Surprises will never cease.”
David frowns at him. “...uh?”
“You had sex,” Jack informs him, a touch more accusatory than he intended. “If the lack of total shame is anything to go by.”
David looks down and seems to realize his pubic hair is showing, whereupon he makes a hasty and mortified grab for his pants, while simultaneously craning his neck to look back into the darkened room, where his partner is supposedly still out for the count. He staggers back to the doorway-a dangerously uncoordinated ordeal-and re-emerges after a few minutes, very pale in the face.
“I, uh,” he says, then stops.
“Yes?” Jack wills himself to follow through until the end of the conversation: David should have someone to get him through his Big Gay Epiphany, even if it’s only for cynical comic value. Think of the blackmail material, he consoles himself, and feels slightly mollified.
“It’s.” David peers back, as though a third glance would magically change the identity of his one-night stand. “It’s this guy.”
“Unaccountably.” Jack is practically ready to feed him the excuses: I’m not gay, I was really drunk, he looked like a girl, and so forth indefinitely. To David’s credit, if Jack recalls half the amount of alcohol that was passed around last night, at least one out of three is true.
“But, no, you see.” David is starting to look really desperate now. “I hadn’t planned on, I mean, I’m not-this isn’t what I-”
“Yes, you were probably hoping for a pretty girl, weren’t you? Well, that’s too bad, Shepherd.” Jack slants him a look over the rim of his coffee cup, annoyed. “That’s what you get for falling over total strangers.”
“But I didn’t mean to-” Shepherd is babbling now, unthinking, “-I mean, I thought he was you.”
Jack spit out his coffee, and David looked instantly horrified at himself, the blood draining from his face faster than water from a burst pipe.
And that’s how the morning starts.
Kings | Jack/Joseph | 460 words | mild | unbeta'd. For duckgirlie.
Jack/Joseph; clandestine.
The streets are very dark this time of night, very lonely, and he’s not even entirely sure of the way. It’s a district he doesn’t frequent often, and he’s half convinced a police car will suddenly pull over and detain him for suspicious loitering, or soliciting, or something. That’s what you get for standing around in a long black trench coat, wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night. Some people can pull it off, and he’s not one of them.
Of course, at that exact moment footsteps ring out in the dark alley, and the one person who can pull it off finally makes an appearance. Against all odds, he’s wearing jeans and a casual jacket over a plain shirt-looking staggeringly, unabashedly normal.
Jack takes one look at Joseph’s getup and promptly cracks up in peals of uncontrollable laughter.
“What the-hey! No!” Joseph can’t help it: he hisses. Someone might overhear. “Why’re you so-you told me to be clandestine!”
“Oh, Joseph.” Jack shakes his head, snorting down laughter. “I meant discreet. Looking like an after-hours pedophile is not discreet.” He glances up at Joseph’s getup for a second and he’s off again, helplessly, like it’s the most hilarious thing in the world.
“That’s what they do in spy movies,” Joseph mutters. (Unbeknownst to him, this remark will prompt Jack to buy him The Essential Noir Classics film set for his birthday, a year hence.)
“I’m sure they do.” Jack seems to have calmed down somewhat, at least. “But here, let me show you how they do it in real life.”
Then he’s pushing Joseph back, rough and demanding, until he hits a wall. Jack keeps moving forward, closing him in, and there’s a brief moment where Joseph feels his breath puffing against his cheek, and then Jack’s kissing him, slick and easy. He does it with all the inborn confidence of a royal, as though he can just saunter up and take something because it’s his. Through the hazy mist of arousal which the sudden thought brings-of being taken, being owned-Joseph privately concludes that Jack, with his swagger and his brazen grin, would make an excellent noir detective.
The coat is pushed to the ground, the glasses discarded, and Jack draws back momentarily to survey his handiwork.
“That’s better,” he says. “You actually don’t look entirely ridiculous now.”
“Funny,” Joseph says, but he slings his arms around Jack’s shoulders anyway, arcing up against him. He tries to scowl, and fails. “I thought we were being discreet?”
Jack nuzzles at the dip of his cheek and the corner of his mouth, proprietary. “Ah, but you see.” His grin is sharp in the brackish light from the street outside. “The first lesson of camouflage is how to hide in plain sight.”
Kings | Jack/David | mild | 1100 words | unbeta'd. For artemisphoenix.
Jack/David; at David's family farm, full house.
“So what brings you up north, Highness?” Jesse Shepherd’s voice could have chipped solid ice.
“Please, call me Jack.” He took a sip of his coffee, hoping it wasn’t poisoned. You never knew, with rebels. “Generally speaking, we’re doing a tour of the land. The king wants to personally inspect every estate liable to be affected by the peace treaty. All very low profile, which is why we couldn’t rent a hotel.” He looked earnest. “Thank you for having us.”
“Not that we have much choice,” one of David’s six million older brothers-Jack didn’t even try to remember the name-spoke up bitterly. “Hell of an entrance you made, taking over the farm like that.”
“Our servicemen arrived ahead of us in order to secure the premises,” Jack conceded. “David notified you of our arrival, didn’t you, David?” He clapped a friendly hand on David’s shoulder, right next to him on the couch. David visibly startled, nerves strung out like a tightrope, and his eyes darted to Jack in alarm before riveting back to his mother.
Jesse sniffed. “Of his arrival. He failed to mention he’ll be bringing along such esteemed company.” She made ‘esteemed company’ sound like ‘cow manure’. Jack couldn’t help but admire the pure vitriol in her tone.
“We’re very sorry to encroach,” he said smoothly, and smiled. “Your generosity shall not go uncompensated.”
“We don’t want none of your stinkin’ money,” spat one of the younger brothers-possibly a Nathan, or maybe a Simon. “Just for you to stop stealin’ our la-”
“Daniel,” Jesse snapped, and the boy quieted sullenly. She turned to Jack. “Shall I get you anything else to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Jack turned to David. “How about a small tour? Out in the fields, perhaps-let’s not bother your family more than necessary.”
“Yes, absolutely,” David looked like a drowning man being offered a lifeline. “I’ll show you the... tractor.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by the country life,” Jack lied to Jesse as they got up from the couch. “You miss out on a lot, living in a city.”
Jesse’s gaze as she watched them exit the living room said exactly what she thought Jack was missing out on-namely, morals, a heart, and any semblance of humanity-but she didn’t say anything as they left the house.
“You were sitting way to close,” David hissed to him as the front door closed behind them. “And touching me like that-they barely accepted us as it is, do you want to get us thrown out entirely?”
“Worried they’ll notice?” Jack purred, sliding a hand up David’s chest, fingering the smooth lapels of his uniform. “Don’t worry, I’m a diplomat. We know how to look innocent.”
“If Ethan had been here my mom probably wouldn’t have allowed us past the threshold,” David persisted in a low tone. “They’re furious at me for bringing you anyway. One wrong move-”
“Like this?” Jack leaned in close, lips brushing the tip of David’s ear, and relished the tiny stutter of his breath. Shepherd was so easy, especially since that night he’d fallen into Jack’s bed, and ever since they started fucking he’d been pliant as hot wax in Jack’s hands. It was worth it to keep up the pretence of caring for him just for that-although the fact he gave shockingly good head didn’t detract any points, either.
Of course, at that exact moment the door opened and four of David’s brothers tumbled out in a heap, causing David to break away with a dead guilty expression and probably give himself a small heart attack. Jack, for his part, turned to them smoothly, bland as though he’d been doing nothing more innocuous than smelling daisies.
“David.” One of the young brothers, the one who’d snapped at Jack earlier in the house, glared at them balefully. “Mom told us to join you and keep an eye on the prince, and also to make sure he doesn’t poison the well.”
“Daniel.” Another brother elbowed the first, hard, and glanced at Jack in a way which was not at all apologetic. “Sorry about that, Highness. He means to say we’ll be accompanying you.”
“Excellent,” Jack said. Clever, clever Jesse: apparently the rebels thought of the royal family in much the same terms as the royal family thought of the rebels. The brothers were eyeing him and David suspiciously, as though they were wondering what had been going on before their arrival, but Jack knew that if he acted as though the odds were in his favour they would, inevitably, tip that way soon enough.
“Uh.” David coughed lightly. He was tugging the lapels of his uniform into place in the guiltiest manner known to mankind, and quite possibly messing them up further in the process. “Jack, you don’t know my brothers-?”
“I’m Nathan,” the largest, standing near the back, supplied. He had to be at least six feet, with shoulders like a grizzly bear, and had been eyeing Jack with the most suspicion so far. Jack beamed at him sunnily.
“I’m Simon,” the tall, gangly one said, all messy straw-blond hair and bony elbows. The one next to him, who had accused Jack of flagrant well-poisoning, muttered something unintelligible about being named Daniel, and then the last one, clearly the oldest, nodded to Jack and said, “Oz, Highness,” stoically.
“Please, call me Jack.” His grip was firm as he shook each of their hands, though it was obvious they were reluctant to return the courtesy. A stark change from the fawning masses of Shiloh, and rather refreshing-although of course, it helped that the Shepherd clan seemed to consist entirely of tall, blond country boys with handsome faces and muscles like steel. “Where shall we go first?”
“Are you sure you want to go out?” David asked meaningfully. “I mean, the farm gets pretty dirty. And it’d be a shame about your suit. And the shoes-”
“Nonsense,” Jack said cheerfully, and David got this look on his face like he wished, very fervently, to be struck down by lightning at the soonest possible notice. “Seeing your farm is more important to me than a pair of old shoes. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He clapped David on the shoulder again, just to be perverse. “You said something about a tractor?”
“Yeah.” David took a shaky breath, resigned, and waved a hand vaguely towards the back of the house. “It’s out back.”
“Then let’s go.” Jack didn’t even have to fake his enthusiasm as he followed the Shepherd cabal down their porch steps. This was going to be fun.
Kings | Jack/David | 500 words | burn | unbeta'd. For ashdoode.
Jack/David; jealousy.
It always starts with Jack pushing David down, climbing atop him like a lion, hands fanned against his chest or fisted roughly in the lapels of his suit. Sometimes he straddles him; sometimes he just forces him against the floor, neck stretching long and bare. Jack would thread his fingers in David’s golden-spun hair, lean forward with his lips close to the skin, open his mouth and bite.
David clamps down on his lip or muffles the cry into the carpet, eyes wide with pain, dark with arousal. He’ll reach up to grip Jack’s shoulders or slip under his shirt, but Jack will slap his hands away, snarling.
“On your knees, Shepherd,” he’ll say, voice frigid. “Not a word.”
And David will obey, for reasons known only to him: infatuation or machination or misguided sympathy, Jack doesn’t really care. He’ll pin David to the floor and fuck him, open and raw, David’s pants crumpled near his ankles and Jack’s hand tight over his gasping mouth. Every place he touches he makes sure to leave bruises, vivid and ugly on David’s smooth skin, mottled across his ribs and scapulas. He hurts David to the bone, so that no matter what he does afterwards it’ll hurt, and he won’t be able to sit or stand or lie down without the ache spreading dull and heavy through his limbs, ever-present.
“You’re mine,” he’ll whisper into David’s ear, fingers hooking into the collar of his shirt and pulling so that David chokes, breath catching sharp. “Mine. Not my father’s. Mine.”
Yes, David will gasp, or perhaps it’s just another noise forced out of him with each of Jack’s thrusts, too rough, making his back scrape against the floor and giving him carpet burn all across his spine.
Jack will come with renewed aggression, nails digging into the concaves of David’s torso and teeth sharp at his throat, hips moving in-out, fast and slick. David is open to him like an unbound book, scattered to the winds; he takes deep, shuddering breathes beneath Jack and holds on tight and tries simply to weather the storm.
Then later, the night or the day after, they will both stand in the main council room, immaculately dressed, David at Silas’s right hand and Jack delegated to his left. Jack will watch as Silas looks upon David, proprietary and fiercely proud-father to son-and invite the foreign dignitaries to hear Shiloh’s golden boy play the fortepiano. David will smile, and shyly deflect attention from the medal gleaming bronze-bright at his chest: Gilboa’s highest honour, bequeathed by the king himself.
And Jack will know, no matter how many times he breaks David apart and puts him back together crooked, Silas will love him regardless. The one thing he wants-kingship and his father’s blessing, nothing else, nothing but this, just this-will only be defined by its absence.
The next time he sees David, he shoves him against a wall harder than ever, relishing the gasp of pain. Jack knows he’s working on a tight schedule. He’s got only until the coronation, and then the tables will turn.
Kings | Jack/Joseph | 960 words | mild | unbeta'd. For inthekeyofd.
Jack/Joseph; breakfast.
Jack wakes up to an empty bed (unsurprising) and strange muffled sounds from outside the room (surprising; very alarming). He scrambles into a pair of pants and bursts out the door, ready to run or hide or duck for cover, but all he meets at the front hallway is a very confused bodyguard.
“The hell, Davis?” he says, but the guy just shrugs, nonplussed.
“I offered to escort him out,” he says in a low voice. “He said he’ll go in a bit.”
Jack groans. Occasionally he’ll pick up the kind of joker who thought he could sleep with the prince then blackmail him using incriminating evidence, and while they were dealt with easily enough, the initial confrontation is always a pain in the ass. But this guy had been checked before they’d gone up; he was safe, or at least that’s what Jack had thought last night. He makes a mental note to fire his current intermediary: if Jack’s going to have a bad morning, someone else is going to have a bad week.
“Stay here,” he says, and sighs in resignation. “I’ll deal with him.” At least it beat being shot at, which had been his first guess upon waking up. Then everyone would have to be fired.
The sounds are coming from the kitchen, so he heads there. Three feet away and he’s hit by an odd smell: something cooking, pervasive and savoury. A faint sound of sizzling can be heard from within. He opens the door cautiously and steps in, fully prepared for a hot pan to the face.
The sight that confronts him is miles removed: last night’s fuck, already dressed and showered, standing by Jack’s state-of-the-art induction stove and calmly making pancakes.
“Uh.” Jack rarely has trouble finding something to say at any given moment, but this is simply beyond the pale. He stares.
Last night’s fuck turns around. “Oh!” he says, pleasantly surprised, and smiles. It’s not a bad smile: he looks different from how Jack would describe him last night, if pressed to do so, but not any less attractive. He’s also suspiciously lacking in the menace department. “You came just in time-the first batch is done.”
“Is it,” Jack hears himself say faintly. Last night’s fuck bustles around, setting two plates and heaping pancakes onto them, ransacking the kitchen for maple and butter and a jug of orange juice which Jack wasn’t rightly aware he previously had in his fridge. He’s clean and fresh-faced, and suddenly Jack is acutely aware of his messy bed-head, the stains of semen visible above the low waistline of the pants. Usually nobody sees him in the morning after except people very highly paid to see everything but him.
As though reading his mind, last night’s fuck looks him up and down, casually, and grins a little. “You probably don’t remember,” he says. “My name’s Joseph. It may sound ingratiating, but you look even hotter in real life.”
You’ve already seen me in real life, Jack wants to say, but it’s not true, not really: the nights before are always neon-tinted, seen through spotlights and raver lightshows and the heady throbbing press of bodies. It’s impossible to get a guy’s true measure, especially not when you’re tripping high as a kite and busy falling into bed with him. Instead he says: “You’re right-it is ingratiating.”
Joseph laughs and sits down at the table, beckons at the other chair. “Well, I’ve already made you pancakes, so I figured I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
Still no sign of blackmail. This is an unprecedented surprise. Jack briefly considers alerting Davis and erring on the side of safety, signing off the whole thing as a particularly elaborate trap, but he’s not yet his father and he refuses to let paranoia rule his life. Instead, he sits down and takes a sip of orange juice, then digs into the pancakes. They’re remarkably delicious.
“This is delicious,” he says, and keenly notes the way Joseph’s mouth curves upwards in a smile and his eyes crinkle, pleased.
“Thank you,” he says, and ducks his head a little. “It’s my mum’s recipe. And I thought it was only right of me, sleeping in your bed and all.” He pauses. “Not to mention I needed some way to stop the guard from throwing me out. I think he was ready to drag me by the collar.”
“Davis is very thorough in his duties.” Jack takes another bite of pancake. “Why are you still here?”
“Um?” Joseph looks at him as though he doesn’t understand the question. “I wanted to say good morning, thank you for last night. You were great, and not just the-you know.” He breaks off, suddenly unsure. “Was I not supposed to?”
“For a given value of ‘not’.” Joseph looks worried, as though he just now realized that maybe Jack Benjamin, heir to the throne, might not actually want his company-and suddenly, Jack has to keep himself from laughing. Most fucks would take off like a shot, counting their hush money before they were even out the door, but Joseph made Jack his mum’s pancakes and stayed to thank him for the sex. “Let’s say it’s not exactly common practice.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think; if you want me to go-” Joseph is getting up, hastily collecting the cutlery, face a bright red.
Jack stops him with an upheld fork. “No,” he says. “Stay.” And then, when Joseph tentatively sits back down: “These really are delicious.” He smiles a little, and Joseph looks vastly relieved. Jack has a meeting later that morning and he hasn’t even showered, much less reviewed the material, but for now he tarries. The morning really is full of surprises.
Kings | gen |800 words | mild | unbeta'd. For roga.
Jack, Michelle, Silas; stuck with a flat tire.
One of the perks of being royalty is driving around in the best and sleekest cars, with the most skilled, professional servicemen imaginable, and never having to deal with gas shortage or leaking motors or detestable reverse parking.
Which is why, when the unbelievable happens, it is completely ridiculous.
“A flat tire?” Jack says. “Seriously?” He turns to stare at Michelle. “This is completely ridiculous.”
“Don’t tell me,” she snaps, checking her silver pocket watch. They’re going to be late, all of them, and for the same meeting, no less. “You’re the man, you go fix it.”
“That’s so stereotypically derogatory, I can’t believe you’re enforcing heteronormative gender norms!” Jack mimics her voice, like he did when they were little. It gets a rise out of her every time.
True to form, Michelle flashes him a dirty look. “That wasn’t funny when we were five,” she informs him. “And guess what? It’s even less funny now.”
“Children,” Silas sighs from the front of the car, long-suffering. “If it didn’t amuse you when you were five, think what it was like for me.”
“Well, you’d think he’d grow up after twenty-one years, but apparently not.” Michelle starts tapping the fingers of one hand on the knuckles of the other; a maddening habit Jack could never stand. He’s painfully reminded of hours-long family trips, flying from one capital to the other, standing in the back with Michelle while their parents negotiated peace treaties for the cameras. She looked so angelic on the screen, but she had an iron grip and she used to pinch him real hard when other people weren’t looking. Same as their adult relationship now, basically, except they stopped resolving conflicts via rounds of hair-pulling around age seven. Jack sometimes wonders if the old ways weren’t better.
“When are they all coming back?” Michelle is asking. “The servicemen, I mean. And where would you find this sort of tire anyway?”
“I don’t know, puppy.” Silas stares out the window pensively. He looks like he’s trying very hard to immerse himself in a peaceful state of mind and avoid reverting back to two decades ago, when he was still a young parent-king and his kids had been the country’s worst enemies. “You can ask the guards if you like.”
Michelle peers out the window at the unmoving servicemen stationed in a circle around the car, backs ramrod-straight, staring outwards and away. They aren’t allowed to open the doors or roll down any of the windows, for fear of an assassination attempt. Privately, Jack wonders whether it's simply so that the guards didn’t have to listen to their unbearable bickering. He doesn’t fancy it much himself.
“Hey,” he says, for lack of anything better to do in this whole unbearable, dreary, unbearably dreary scenario. “Remember that game we used to play when we were kids?”
“No. What?” Michelle frowns, but Silas, against all odds, looks up interestedly.
“You were insufferable,” he says, but fondly. “You would carry on for ages. I used to hate every second of it.”
“Good,” Jack says cheerfully. “Then let’s play. And this time you're definitely going to lose.” He clears his throat theatrically. “When I’m king...”
“Oh, I remember!” Michelle snaps her fingers. “I’ll pass all the health care bills that Daddy’s been blocking for no good reason.” She says it almost sweetly, except for the way her eyes narrow at Silas.
Their father, for his part, is largely unfazed. “There’s a reason I do that, you know, puppy,” he drawls. “The bills rely on unreasonable taxes which you can’t afford to burden the economy with. Angry citizens protest having to waste their money on the slim 2% of the population who actually benefit from your laws. The financial system collapses and your government goes bankrupt.”
“But-” she starts, except Jack waves her into silence.
“No, he's right, you lose,” he says. “My turn now. When I’m king, I’ll surrender the southern borderlands for a general peace treaty, and achieve a state of ceasefire on all fronts. We know the people of Simeon are willing.”
Silas snorts. “Good luck dealing with the same jokers who are currently making a racket about the Port Prosperity deal. That’s land we don’t even rightly need; think what would happen if you go further south. They’ll set your palace on fire.”
“Besides,” Michelle adds, “giving up territories doesn’t necessarily mean a mutual peace. We’ve been at war with our neighbours for so long that we might not be able to stop.”
“Aye, there’s that,” Silas nods gravely. “Good thinking, puppy.”
Jack scowls. “At least I won’t bankrupt my government.”
She darts a quick look at their father, then sticks a tongue out at him. “My turn again.”
Turns out they manage to while away the time, after all.
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