Inspiration
Series: An Artist’s Touch
Title: Inspiration
Pairing: Jack/James
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: None - AU
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Dedication: A belated gift for the lovely halfdutch, who requested a visit with these two!
The door falls shut gently and James knows that Jack must have eased it closed.
James, he usually lets it fall shut with a loud, shocking bang. That makes Jack uneasy, like allowing it to slam will encourage the lock to snap into place all on its own and leave them stranded on the rooftop with no hope of rescue or escape.
James can hear each one of Jack’s tentative footsteps toward him. It’s so eerily quiet this far above the street that every noise seems heightened, while the screeching tires and honking horns of the city below are nothing but a distant, comfortable murmur.
The lights of the skyscrapers and apartment buildings are twinkling yellow as beautifully as the stars sparkle white up above; taken together, they’ve always made him feel both large and small, both part of something and also completely alone.
With Jack standing a few paces behind him, shivering in the brisk night breeze, he feels less split, less confused by the immensity of it all, even despite all the worries currently clouding his mind.
“I couldn’t sleep.” He answers Jack’s unasked question and he feels rather than sees Jack nod. Unfolding his arms from across his chest, he breathes in deeply. The air always smells cleaner at this hour, something cool and pristine about it when the daily bustle has whittled down to late parties and night shifts. A plane passes by overhead and James wonders where it’s going. “You want to take a vacation?”
“Sure.” Jack closes the space between them and James smiles despite himself when Jack wraps his arms around his waist, settling in warm and steady behind him. Jack rests his chin on his shoulder, presses a gentle kiss to the side of his neck. “Though I think this will all be waiting for you when we’d get back.”
Jack trails his hands down James’ forearms and folds them in along his, along his stomach, twining their fingers together. Jack rubs a thumb over the streaks of drying clay on the back of James’ hand.
“I think I need to try working this with metal,” James sighs. “Something sharp and hot, rigid. This organic thing, this…shape that’s forming just isn’t me.”
“No one says that it has to be you, James.”
“Henry Moore I’m not, I guess.”
“Would you even want to be?” Jack asks softly, words fluttering over his skin. James closes his eyes, admits it to himself before admitting it out loud.
“I don’t know what I want to be.” He can’t really breathe, too warm in Jack’s hold. James pulls away from Jack’s embrace, shrugging him off, and walks to the ledge. He sets his hands flat on the cool concrete. It’s rough under his hands, sharp ridges catching on his skin.
He hears Jack shift and something changes, almost imperceptibly, but James can feel it acutely like a muscle twinging.
“I’ll…I’ll be downstairs then.” Jack’s voice breaks and James hates the sound of its shatter, hates the fissures he so thoughtlessly sends splintering between them. Jack backs away and then turns, going for the door.
James knows better now than to let the cracks become caverns. Unattended, unexplained, he’ll find himself on one side and Jack on the other, unable to reach one another when he finally decides to try.
“I don’t know what to do,” James blurts out and turns. Jack stops and turns as well and James is flooded with relief when his eyes lock on Jack’s. He’s beautiful in the dim light, shivering in his white undershirt and loose navy pajama pants, bare feet arched and toes curling in that way Jack has when the tarred rooftop is too uncomfortable against the soles of his feet.
“I have nothing. It’s just…empty.” James forces the words out. He’ll feel better once they’re no longer his own personal torment but a shared problem between them. “I think you’ve done me in, Jack Shephard.”
“Excuse me?”
James laughs a little. Said aloud the idea seems silly and ludicrous, a poor excuse for an artistic meltdown, but he knows it’s the sad truth.
“Everything I’ve ever painted is about turmoil, Jack. Loss. Pain. Working through shit.”
“Okay…”
“So what the hell am I gonna do now that I’m happy? I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. There are only so many times I can draw or paint you before people are going to stop giving a god damn and write me off as a sappy lunatic.”
“James…” Jack smiles like he wants to hide it and James scowls.
“I know that this don’t seem like a real problem to you, Doc, but it’s a big deal, all right? If I can’t find something to get me going again-“
“James, I’m not laughing at you, I’m just relieved.”
“Relieved?”
“Yeah. If your problem is that you’re happy, I’m relieved. I was worried that it was otherwise.”
James pauses, letting Jack’s words sink in. Jack continues though, giving him even more to think about.
“You haven’t been sleeping, you’re barely talking to me, I thought…”
James sighs, runs a hand through his messy hair. Some of the strands seem matted together and he figures paint or clay must have found their way there again.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, feeling guilty. Jack closes the space that he’d just put between them, taking James back in his arms.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” He starts to protest but Jack’s lips cut off his attempts at furthering his apology. Jack tastes like sleep and he kisses slowly, taking his time, tongue tracing lazy over the roof of his mouth and the ridges of his teeth. It feels like Jack is melting into him, warm and pliable, a forgiving material that he can mold and smooth every mistake away from. He’s pressing fingerprints into Jack’s skin, shaping Jack to fit against him.
“Come back to bed?” Jack’s question is breathless and he barely pulls away to speak it, resting his forehead against James’ and fitting his palms over James’ hips, pulling him closer.
James answers Jack’s plea by sinking down to his knees like a man giving penance, hands smoothing up Jack’s thighs and then wrapping his arms around Jack’s body, pressing his face to him and breathing him in.
It’s been a long week not knowing how to take this, or how to receive it. He’d thought this happiness had cost him his inspiration, his art, his everything. James can’t imagine life without paint under his fingernails, eraser dust on the heel of his hand, but now, he realizes, he needs to touch Jack and for Jack to touch him just as badly, if not more, than the sensation of a brush in his grasp.
James lifts Jack’s shirt, kisses his stomach, clings to him without regard for how desperate he may seem. His fingers curl over Jack’s waistband and his mouth finds Jack’s cock before Jack even has time to react. He’s soft when James closes his lips around the head, swallows him down, but he twitches and thickens against his tongue quickly, catching up to where James is.
“Always with the fix-it sex,” Jack mumbles but James hears no anger there. It’s almost amusement, a warmth lilting in Jack’s tone. James laves his tongue eagerly up and down the underside of Jack’s rapidly hardening length, hand circled firmly around his base and holding.
Maybe this isn’t the best way to apologize for a week’s worth of distance, but it’s always been his way and besides that, he wants it. God, does he want it. Returning to bed every night and resisting gathering Jack in his arms, slipping out of bed in the morning to avoid the morning kisses…he’d hated every minute of it, even if at the time he just couldn’t deal with all that it meant.
James licks and sucks until Jack is throbbing, until he can taste the come leaking from his tip, and then licks and sucks harder, taking Jack down his throat and placing his hands firmly on Jack’s ass, encouraging him to fuck his mouth, to let him take it.
When Jack sinks bonelessly to the asphalt, James follows him, covering Jack’s body with his, rocking and rutting until Jack is begging James to come, to let go, hot and wet all over his stomach. James wants to hold out, wants to get downstairs and lay Jack on the bed, do it proper, but he can’t wait. He spills over Jack’s t-shirt, over the bare strip of stomach where the fabric has rode up, over the crease of his thigh just above his hastily shoved down pants. Jack groans like he loves it and James knows he does.
James holds himself about Jack, taking in the sight of his frantic explosion. He wants to remember this, this image of Jack with the night sky reflected in his eyes. He wishes he could paint this, this flush of happiness, this rush of blood and the pounding of his heart, this shortness of breath. He wishes he could capture exactly how this makes him feel.
He doesn’t want to show the way Jack looks, but the way Jack is. Abstract and powerful, something that can’t be explained but that overwhelms you with the sensation of somehow, deep down, knowing what it means anyway.
“What is it?” Jack asks, and James realizes he’s fallen silent, staring at Jack with dazed eyes and a slack expression. He breaks into a large grin.
“I think I know what’s next.”
Jack raises his eyebrows.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” James stands up, helping Jack from the ground. Jack adjusts his pants, glancing down at his ruined shirt.
“So what’s next?”
James smile turns sly, cocky, and he grabs Jack by the waist, turning him and backing him toward the door, back down the stairs to the loft.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. I still need a bit more inspiration.”