Kings fic: The readiness is all
So I was going to get all these, or at least the first four, written and posted before the second episode Jossed me all to hell... but then medical issues intervened and I didn't. So, the great conundrum of fanfic: Finish the pre-Jossed fic or not? All of which is to say, no spoilers for anything but the pilot, and I think I'll finish the rest of them no matter how far astray the show goes.
Five ways Jack falls in love
Part 2: The readiness is all
Not a WIP, stands alone. PG and Jack/David. 1500 words. Thanks to hilarytamar!
Or perhaps it goes like this:
As the news of Gilboa's financial problems breaks, the markets of the kingdom spin into insanity. Samuels' voice echoes from every radio that the destabilizing currency and plummeting treasury securities are evidence of God revoking his favor from Silas.
Oh the phone, William says only, "Hang in there, Jack. Give it one more week to bottom and then we roll you out."
So Jack is trapped, impotent and inconsequential in the palace, waiting to be trundled out like a trophy while the middle class of Gilboa see their retirements go up in smoke, and only the effort he puts into his façade of ruthless nonchalance can keep at bay the voice of what have I done?
David is there for breakfast again. They were supposed to eat on the patio, and Michelle is sitting there now, shawl pulled around her shoulders and legs tucked up under her for warmth, the way she used to sit as a little girl. David sits next to her, golden and sleepy-eyed under the slanting sun. It's a shocking difference from how he carried himself in this palace less than two weeks ago; he sits like this grand panorama, the brilliant green lawn leading out to the sea, is as much home to him as his mother's front porch.
Jack always feels dwarfed right here, with four stories of stone looming behind him and the vastness of ocean in front of him. David reaches his legs out in front and his arms up above him, stretches in a long and sensuous and utterly unselfconscious motion, bringing his arms out in front as though his fingertips could touch the horizon.
"He won't be done for ages," Michelle says, and leans over to snap off the radio. "Let's eat."
On that radio, Silas has been saying things like "temporary and necessary reallocation of resources--" and "we should not let uncertainty affect--" and "this brief period before a new equilibrium--" She catches him right in the middle of "this kingdom, built upon the cliffs of our land and the rock of our God, must not be allowed to falter because of our faithless and fickle--" and Jack thinks he sees a tiny savage grin of satisfaction on her face.
So they eat, and Jack lets himself go numb to the sounds of forks clicking and scraping. He only dimly registers that David is telling a story, and even more dimly what that story is. But he hears the end of the story-- hears David say, "so many of them, and they didn't weigh anything at all. It was like they were made of light..."
Jack has to force himself to chew and swallow. Under the table, his nails dig painful crescents into his left palm.
He doesn't look up. He doesn't want to see the look on David's face-- doesn't want to see that it's the same look that used to animate his father, light him up from within with breathless, wondering awe. The look that made everyone believe him, that Jack knows he can never reproduce.
If he doesn't look, he can pretend he doesn't know.
David's face must be beautiful, like that.
"Don't tell that story," Michelle says, and she sounds choked and tight.
"Well, no," David says. "I know better than to tell that to the press. Not yet. Silas would go crazy."
"Not ever," she says.
David's brow crinkles, and he turns to face her full on. "You don't think--"
"It doesn't give you any right," she says with more fierceness than Jack can remember from her in years. "It's not a basis for a kingship."
"It is for your father."
"No. It's not. Excuse me." She stands, twitches her shawl back over her shoulders, and heads back inside. Along the way she brushes David's cheek and pats Jack's shoulder, absent-minded gestures of affection at odds with what looks like a storming out. Her face is tight.
"Asshole," Jack says, all his self control leaving in a rush. David starts to stand.
"I didn't mean to upset her."
"Asshole. That's not your story. That's not your fucking story."
Jack braces himself for what David will say next, for the words that will tip them from uneasy, circling truce into outright war. Jack doesn't know if he'll win that fight, but he wants it; he wants David to say it's not your story either.
Instead, what David says is, "It's not a story."
Jack stares.
David reaches out and grabs him, long delicate fingers meeting in the hollow above his wrist bone. Jack feels like he's being burned (too off-balance, too far deviated from the script that is the only way he knows how to deal with David; what now, and why will the boy not leave him in peace?).
David hauls him down the lawn, not quite at a run. The morning dew chills Jack's bare feet and leaves the bottoms of his pants wet and clinging, and their paired footprints stay clearly marked in the damp grass. They hit the fence at the bottom of the lawn headlong, and Jack wonders for a moment if David will just keep going, over the lush floor of treetops and into the vertiginous sea.
"Right here," David says, a little breathless. "Right here. They came out of the air, all around me, swirling. I don't know why it happened, but it happened right here."
Jack was right: David's face is beautiful, suffused with wonder. He feels dizzy. It takes a minute for him to identify it, the feeling of expectations and fear and insufficiency lifting from his shoulders.
For twenty-five years he has alternately longed for and dreaded, alternately reached for and run from, the idea that he will one day tell this story. He has been pushed and prodded by too many hands trying to form his unruly clay into a vessel to contain that kingship, until he no longer knows what his natural shape is.
The weight lifts and Jack goes light, and then light-headed, and then almost nauseated with fear. He wants to grab that weight, haul it back down on himself, and only barely keeps from clutching the railing. For twenty-five years he's lived with the cold nugget of certainty that he will never be able to tell this story and be believed, and here comes David, new-minted from the fields of Gilboa, and the light shines out of his face.
"What do you want from me?" Jack asks.
"Nothing. I just wanted to show you," David says, and Jack realizes David is still holding his wrist. "I wanted you to believe me."
Jack stares at David, at the color of his lips and the intense line between his eyebrows and the way he squints in the glare off the water, and he lets the weight go.
"I believe you, sir," he says, and sinks down to one knee.
The gesture is absurd, bizarre, archaic-- never used in Gilboa's recent, modern monarchy, only dimly recognized from countries abroad, but it somehow feels like the only thing he can do, under the enormity of releasing that weight. The dew and mud form a damp spreading stain on his right knee. David reaches down to catch him by the shoulder and draw him up, frowning and awkward.
"Don't do that. Please, don't-- we're friends. I mean, aren't--"
Jack could laugh, because whatever he and David are (whatever they were before, whatever they will be now), it isn't friends. He could laugh, because his entire life has inverted and titled and spun in an insane new direction, and David is brushing him off and fussing at the mud on his pants.
So he does the only thing he can do: he reaches out to catch David's face between his hands and kiss him, once, softly, on the lips.
David freezes until Jack drops his hands, and then they both turn very carefully and lean back against the railing, their backs to the hugeness of the sea. For the first time, standing next to David, he doesn't feel small beside it.
"I can't," David says.
"Kissing the king's daughter makes you a king," Jack says. "The king's son, not so much." The strange thing is that he says it utterly without rancor. He doesn't need to sleep with David; that's fine. But he has no idea who he is, in this new life spreading out before him, and he needed to start with this much honesty at least.
David looks up, across the green lawn and at the hulk of the palace looming on the crest of the hill. Beyond it, hidden in the valley, are the shining spires of Shiloh and the highway that leads south to the farmland around Kardos and north to the heights of Gath.
Jack's cellphone rings. It's William. He hangs up on him.
After a long time, David turns to him again. "Fuck it," he says, casual and easy. "If it's supposed to happen, it'll happen." Then David kisses him, tentative at first but then so dirty that it makes Jack's knees go momentarily weak.
They walk together back up the sloping lawn.
Part 1
Five ways Jack falls in love
Part 2: The readiness is all
Not a WIP, stands alone. PG and Jack/David. 1500 words. Thanks to hilarytamar!
Or perhaps it goes like this:
As the news of Gilboa's financial problems breaks, the markets of the kingdom spin into insanity. Samuels' voice echoes from every radio that the destabilizing currency and plummeting treasury securities are evidence of God revoking his favor from Silas.
Oh the phone, William says only, "Hang in there, Jack. Give it one more week to bottom and then we roll you out."
So Jack is trapped, impotent and inconsequential in the palace, waiting to be trundled out like a trophy while the middle class of Gilboa see their retirements go up in smoke, and only the effort he puts into his façade of ruthless nonchalance can keep at bay the voice of what have I done?
David is there for breakfast again. They were supposed to eat on the patio, and Michelle is sitting there now, shawl pulled around her shoulders and legs tucked up under her for warmth, the way she used to sit as a little girl. David sits next to her, golden and sleepy-eyed under the slanting sun. It's a shocking difference from how he carried himself in this palace less than two weeks ago; he sits like this grand panorama, the brilliant green lawn leading out to the sea, is as much home to him as his mother's front porch.
Jack always feels dwarfed right here, with four stories of stone looming behind him and the vastness of ocean in front of him. David reaches his legs out in front and his arms up above him, stretches in a long and sensuous and utterly unselfconscious motion, bringing his arms out in front as though his fingertips could touch the horizon.
"He won't be done for ages," Michelle says, and leans over to snap off the radio. "Let's eat."
On that radio, Silas has been saying things like "temporary and necessary reallocation of resources--" and "we should not let uncertainty affect--" and "this brief period before a new equilibrium--" She catches him right in the middle of "this kingdom, built upon the cliffs of our land and the rock of our God, must not be allowed to falter because of our faithless and fickle--" and Jack thinks he sees a tiny savage grin of satisfaction on her face.
So they eat, and Jack lets himself go numb to the sounds of forks clicking and scraping. He only dimly registers that David is telling a story, and even more dimly what that story is. But he hears the end of the story-- hears David say, "so many of them, and they didn't weigh anything at all. It was like they were made of light..."
Jack has to force himself to chew and swallow. Under the table, his nails dig painful crescents into his left palm.
He doesn't look up. He doesn't want to see the look on David's face-- doesn't want to see that it's the same look that used to animate his father, light him up from within with breathless, wondering awe. The look that made everyone believe him, that Jack knows he can never reproduce.
If he doesn't look, he can pretend he doesn't know.
David's face must be beautiful, like that.
"Don't tell that story," Michelle says, and she sounds choked and tight.
"Well, no," David says. "I know better than to tell that to the press. Not yet. Silas would go crazy."
"Not ever," she says.
David's brow crinkles, and he turns to face her full on. "You don't think--"
"It doesn't give you any right," she says with more fierceness than Jack can remember from her in years. "It's not a basis for a kingship."
"It is for your father."
"No. It's not. Excuse me." She stands, twitches her shawl back over her shoulders, and heads back inside. Along the way she brushes David's cheek and pats Jack's shoulder, absent-minded gestures of affection at odds with what looks like a storming out. Her face is tight.
"Asshole," Jack says, all his self control leaving in a rush. David starts to stand.
"I didn't mean to upset her."
"Asshole. That's not your story. That's not your fucking story."
Jack braces himself for what David will say next, for the words that will tip them from uneasy, circling truce into outright war. Jack doesn't know if he'll win that fight, but he wants it; he wants David to say it's not your story either.
Instead, what David says is, "It's not a story."
Jack stares.
David reaches out and grabs him, long delicate fingers meeting in the hollow above his wrist bone. Jack feels like he's being burned (too off-balance, too far deviated from the script that is the only way he knows how to deal with David; what now, and why will the boy not leave him in peace?).
David hauls him down the lawn, not quite at a run. The morning dew chills Jack's bare feet and leaves the bottoms of his pants wet and clinging, and their paired footprints stay clearly marked in the damp grass. They hit the fence at the bottom of the lawn headlong, and Jack wonders for a moment if David will just keep going, over the lush floor of treetops and into the vertiginous sea.
"Right here," David says, a little breathless. "Right here. They came out of the air, all around me, swirling. I don't know why it happened, but it happened right here."
Jack was right: David's face is beautiful, suffused with wonder. He feels dizzy. It takes a minute for him to identify it, the feeling of expectations and fear and insufficiency lifting from his shoulders.
For twenty-five years he has alternately longed for and dreaded, alternately reached for and run from, the idea that he will one day tell this story. He has been pushed and prodded by too many hands trying to form his unruly clay into a vessel to contain that kingship, until he no longer knows what his natural shape is.
The weight lifts and Jack goes light, and then light-headed, and then almost nauseated with fear. He wants to grab that weight, haul it back down on himself, and only barely keeps from clutching the railing. For twenty-five years he's lived with the cold nugget of certainty that he will never be able to tell this story and be believed, and here comes David, new-minted from the fields of Gilboa, and the light shines out of his face.
"What do you want from me?" Jack asks.
"Nothing. I just wanted to show you," David says, and Jack realizes David is still holding his wrist. "I wanted you to believe me."
Jack stares at David, at the color of his lips and the intense line between his eyebrows and the way he squints in the glare off the water, and he lets the weight go.
"I believe you, sir," he says, and sinks down to one knee.
The gesture is absurd, bizarre, archaic-- never used in Gilboa's recent, modern monarchy, only dimly recognized from countries abroad, but it somehow feels like the only thing he can do, under the enormity of releasing that weight. The dew and mud form a damp spreading stain on his right knee. David reaches down to catch him by the shoulder and draw him up, frowning and awkward.
"Don't do that. Please, don't-- we're friends. I mean, aren't--"
Jack could laugh, because whatever he and David are (whatever they were before, whatever they will be now), it isn't friends. He could laugh, because his entire life has inverted and titled and spun in an insane new direction, and David is brushing him off and fussing at the mud on his pants.
So he does the only thing he can do: he reaches out to catch David's face between his hands and kiss him, once, softly, on the lips.
David freezes until Jack drops his hands, and then they both turn very carefully and lean back against the railing, their backs to the hugeness of the sea. For the first time, standing next to David, he doesn't feel small beside it.
"I can't," David says.
"Kissing the king's daughter makes you a king," Jack says. "The king's son, not so much." The strange thing is that he says it utterly without rancor. He doesn't need to sleep with David; that's fine. But he has no idea who he is, in this new life spreading out before him, and he needed to start with this much honesty at least.
David looks up, across the green lawn and at the hulk of the palace looming on the crest of the hill. Beyond it, hidden in the valley, are the shining spires of Shiloh and the highway that leads south to the farmland around Kardos and north to the heights of Gath.
Jack's cellphone rings. It's William. He hangs up on him.
After a long time, David turns to him again. "Fuck it," he says, casual and easy. "If it's supposed to happen, it'll happen." Then David kisses him, tentative at first but then so dirty that it makes Jack's knees go momentarily weak.
They walk together back up the sloping lawn.
Part 1