Baby, Just Hold On - Chp. 23
Title: Baby, Just Hold On
Author: Jamie jamieall_over
Pairing: Jalex
Rating: NC-17 Overall
Warnings: Mpreg
“Hey, dude, do you think you’d be fine with watching Ash and Cacity for a little bit while I go see how Alex is doing?” Jack asked Zack as he threw himself onto the couch, spreading his legs over Zack’s lap and stretching his body out along the other half of the sofa. Both babies had been put down for their nap only minutes prior, and he figured they’d be out for quite a bit-he’d kept them up a little longer than usual on purpose. Cocoa, wherever she was, probably wouldn’t even make an appearance unless food was presented.
Zack, who’d been nothing but smiles and faux high-pitched voices since the moment all three Gaskarth-Barakat’s had arrived back to the apartment and let him in, visibly faltered at the question. Jack, of course, took it the wrong way.
“It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna be, like, left alone with them or anything. They’re small, but they can be pretty intimidating, huh? If you want, all four of us can go when they wake up. Alex said something about wanting to see you again anyway,” he dismissed, shrugging casually. Really, it wasn’t a big deal to him either way.
“Do whatever you have to do,” Zack responded, patting his leg affectionately and forcing a smile. “Tell Alex I said hey, would ya?”
Anyone would’ve believed the smile to be nothing short of genuine, but Jack had known Zack since they were kids. They’d been best friends for going on twenty years at that point. What kind of best friend would he be if he couldn’t see through his own best friend’s masks?
“Seriously, bro, what’s up?” he tried, sitting up and turning his body to face the same direction as the slightly older man’s, arm reaching out to wrap around his large shoulders. “You know you can tell me anything. I’m here for you no matter what.”
Zack smiled at that, and while it still looked like he was upset about something, it was easier for Jack to accept. “It’s nothing, man. Don’t worry about me. Go down and spend some time with him; I’m sure he misses you already. I’ll call you if anything happens.”
Jack nodded, not really paying attention to what was being said as he studied the larger man. It was only a hard pinch to his thigh that had him snapping back into focus, a hiss lodging in his throat and pout tugging at the corners of his mouth as he reached down to sooth the area.
Zack laughed at his reaction, and a true grin spreading across his lips had Jack mimicking the sound.
“I asked if you wanted me to do something about dinner,” Zack said, eyebrows raising questioningly on his forehead as he awaited an answer.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Jack responded, stretching himself out a final time before dragging his body to its feet, repeating the process once he was vertical. “I can pick something up. Text me if you can think of anything you want before I get back, and I’ll stop for it on the way.”
Zack nodded, watching as his best friend moved around the living room to gather his shoes, wallet, phone, and keys.
“Thanks for doing this, man. It means a lot more to both of us than you could ever imagine,” Jack said as he did one final check to make sure he wasn’t missing anything necessary. With a quick bro-hug, he was leaving the apartment and throwing an, “I’ll see you later, dude,” over his shoulder, not a single concern in his mind.
--- ---
“Hey, baby,” Jack said softly as he walked into Alex’s hospital room. He’d been warned beforehand that his husband was still feeling some of the effects of the drugs he’d been given prior to going into surgery, meaning he had to speak slowly, clearly, and gently. “How was it? Are you feeling any better?”
Alex looked over to him from where he’d been staring blankly at the TV up on the wall when he sat down in the seat next to the bed, and the first thing Jack noticed was the glazed look of tears in his dark eyes. There was no time to ask what the problem was before the elder was sniffling and letting his emotions out.
“I’m sorry, Jay,” he sobbed, reaching out to pull his partner closer. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
The Lebanese man did his best not to panic, thinking back to what he’d been told in the hallway only moments before. “Sh,” he consoled, rubbing at Alex’s back and pressing kisses to his curly hair. “Sh, hey now, what’s the matter, baby? Huh? Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll go fix it,” he vowed.
“I’m sorry,” Alex began, stopping long enough to cough before trying again. “I’m sorry, Jay, I shouldn’t have maken you give me a blow job. I’m sorry.”
And… what?
“Maken’s not a real word. I think you mean ‘made,’ baby, and you didn’t make me do anything in the first place, but what happened? Did something go wrong with your surgery? Was the cut worse than they thought?” he inquired, leaning away to make eye contact with the slighter man.
Alex shook his head, bottom lip quivering. “I… I… You ate all those babies, Jack. All those little, tiny babies, and now they’re just gone, swimming around in your stomach.” A hand reached out to press against Jack’s abdomen through his shirt before lifting it up to catch a glimpse of the smooth skin that lay hidden away underneath, watery, brown eyes following the movement closely.
At first it didn’t make any sense to the younger man. When had he ever eaten a child, never mind multiple children? Surely that would’ve been punishable by death or something. Maybe Alex had dreamed it while he was put under? How did any of it relate to him giving Alex oral? But then everything clicked back into place.
“You’re upset because I swallowed?”
If it was even possible, Alex somehow managed to cry harder at the simple question.
“And I-I’ve done it, too. We’re cannibals, Jack. And we… we eat babies. We don’t even eat people who deserve to be eaten, like… like Hitler. We eat poor, defenseless, cute babies.”
Jack had a brief thought about recording his husband’s admissions to show him once he’d worn off the effects of the drugs, but he was honestly laughing too hard at that point to even see clearly.
“Stop, this isn’t funny. What if one of those babies was gonna be president? What if they were gonna… gonna end world hunger or… or… or do something awesome? And you ate him. Jack, why did you do that? Why do we do that?”
It took another few minutes of patient silence from the elder before the taller male was able to calm himself back down, hands reaching up to wipe his face dry of his hysterical tears. Then he tried to think of an answer. Why did they do it?
Well, you’re kind of a come-slut, didn’t seem like a very good response, not with the fact that literally anyone could walk through the door at any given second. Because it’s hot, also didn’t seem like an acceptable answer, and neither did Because it tastes good. Since he was actually putting thought into it, it just made less and less sense to him, if he was being honest, so instead of continuing with his thinking, he decided to change the subject and hope for the best.
“So, Zack wanted me to tell you that he says hey…”
--- ---
Jack walked back into his and Alex’s apartment no more than two hours after having left to be greeted by the sound of both babies giggling and the smell of chicken cooking in the oven. Really, it was as though he’d somehow traveled five weeks into the future, where Alex was fully healed and as good as new while he was spending his days away from home.
Just as he began to kick his shoes off by the door, the oven sounded in the kitchen and his children’s laughter began to drift out.
Jack followed the source of the noises, ending up in the doorway between the living room and dining room. Ashley and Perspicacity were sitting in their individual Snug Seats on the kitchen table, eyes watching their Uncle Zack move around only feet away in the kitchen.
“Dude,” the young father said, startling his best friend as he pulled the pan of chicken from the oven, “did you do all this by yourself? How were they?” Jack crossed the room to poke at his babies clothed tummies, earning more giggles from each as Zack continued on with his dinner preparations.
“Yeah, I did. They were great. I don’t get how you can see them as being intimidating. I tried to feed them one at a time like you showed me earlier when they woke up, but they weren’t hungry so their bottles are still in the fridge for later,” Zack responded, reaching up to pull plates from the cabinet to his right before stopping. “You’re hungry now, right? I wasn’t sure when you’d get home or anything, so I figured I’d cook and then just reheat it later or whatever.”
Jack perked up immediately, turning around to grin. “Yeah, definitely,” he agreed. “I was gonna stop at, like, Burger King or something since you didn’t text me, but I figured it’d just be cheaper to make a sandwich or heat up whatever leftovers I could find. Alex is gonna be upset when he finds out we ate his chicken, though.”
Zack laughed and shrugged, retorting with, “I’m sure he’ll get over it.” Two plates were piled with chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn before the two were moving over to the dining room table. When both babies were moved to be on the floor between their seats, the men sat down and began to dig in.
Jack had always known that Zack was a better cook than him, but he couldn’t help but be a little dramatic with his moaning as the taste hit his tongue. If he was being honest, he was hoping it’d make the older man feel better than he had earlier, or at least keep his mood up.
“This is, like,” he started, pausing to let out another over-exaggerated moan. “Maybe I should’ve married you instead,” he joked, laughing quietly to himself around another bite of food.
He almost missed the, “Yeah, you should’ve,” that left Zack’s mouth, except… he didn’t.
Nevertheless, he stopped to listen to the sounds drifting through the air around him just to make sure that he hadn’t somehow heard someone else speaking, maybe a little too loudly in one of the surrounding apartments. There was the blubbering of the babies in their seats on the ground, the purring of Cocoa as she rubbed up against the older man’s leg a few feet away, and the occasional click of silverware against glass.
Jack did his best to laugh it off, muttering an equally as quiet, “You’re crazy, bro,” and then shoveling another forkful or potatoes into his mouth. Surely Zack had been fucking with him; he would’ve done the same if the roles had been reversed. The only issue was the fact that his best friend had never really been that much of the joking type. He was the buff, quiet, serious man that he appeared to be on the outside.
Zack, sans being prompted to, decided to explain himself a little further. “Have you ever thought about it? Thought about us?” he inquired, dropping his silverware onto his plate and looking directly at Jack, green eyes boring through the younger. “We’ve been best friends for how long? We know everything about each other. We were made for each other, Jack.”
A silence thick enough for Cocoa’s purring to appear louder than before filled the air, and the darker-haired man didn’t know what to do or say. He’d never been in a situation where someone was… doing whatever Zack was. It didn’t make any sense at all. Was he trying to make some sort of admission? Had Alex set this up to see what would happen? Was he being Punk’d by someone else? He almost didn’t want to find out.
Sighing, he set his own utensils down as well, leaning back in his seat and looking up to make direct eye contact. “What’s this about, Zee?” he inquired, tone sounding cautious yet tired.
Zack didn’t have a single objection to clarifying, though his voice did come out strained. “This is about me being better,” he pressed, eyes pleading with Jack to understand. “I’m better for you, I’m better for the kids, I’m just better than he is.”
“Have you not met Alex?” Jack snapped back, honestly feeling the temperature in the air rise just fractionally as the meaning behind his best friend’s words began to sink in. “Do you not know anything about him? At all?”
“I know that he’s useless,” Zack snapped back, and at the point, the cat and both babies had gone completely silent. “I know you do everything for him and he does nothing for you in return.”
“You can’t even begin to comprehend everything he’s done for me; everything he’s given up just to be with me.”
A stare-down commenced, the silence between the pair prompting the children still settled snugly in their seats on the ground to begin crying. Neither man was all too sure who broke away first, but not even ten seconds had passed before they were bending down and reaching out, arms prepared to scoop up the infant closest to them.
"Don’t you dare touch her," Jack warned as soon as he realized what was happening, tone harsher than either had ever heard it. "I don’t know who told you it was okay, but you have no right, no fucking right, to come into my home and disrespect my fucking husband."
If he was being totally honest, Zack was kind of... well... scared. He didn’t know that Jack was capable of being so intimidating, even more so than the two infants could be together.
"Jack, I..." he tried to reason, but the younger man was hearing none of it.
"Get out of my apartment,” he seethed, hands finally unbuckling Ashley from his seat and lifting the child to pat at his tiny back in comfort. It would’ve probably worked, too, had the infant not been able to sense the tension in the air, the growling tint to his father’s usually so playful voice. “Get out of my apartment, and don’t ever bother fucking coming back.”
“Please, Jack, let me explain, I just-”
“Zachary Steven Merrick, I want you out of this god damn apartment, I want you out of my fucking life, and I swear to everything Holy that if I ever see you within so much as a hundred yards of my husband or my kids, I won’t hesitate to call the fucking police and file for stalking,” Jack warned, not breaking eye contact for even a second so that he’d be able to fully convey how serious he was being.
The larger man seemed apprehensive about leaving, as though he didn’t honestly believe that Jack would do such a thing to him. He couldn’t, after all. Zack was more important to him than Alex was… wasn’t he? He had twenty-years to compare to Alex’s seven. Besides, he wasn’t done saying what he had to.
Nevertheless, the cold look in Jack’s eyes told the elder that it really wasn’t in his best interest to stick around for much longer, and it was as he was standing from his place at the table that he spoke a final time, having to raise his voice over the screeches from both Ashley and Perspicacity.
“Just know that I love you, and when you’re ready to face the facts, I’ll be waiting. You know where to find me.” With those final words, the brunette was turning on his heel and gathering his things, the (rather unnecessary) slamming of the front door echoing throughout the apartment and the rest of the hall outside.
It had to be a dream, Jack realized only about a minute after the older male’s departure. There was no way his best friend had actually just admitted what he could only assume were long-time feelings for him. There’s no way he’d just lost a twenty-year friendship because the hardly-shorter man had decided to break the news that he was in love with the younger nearly a year after he got married. Surely Zack hadn’t actually thought it would be a good idea to wait until he was finally settling down with the love of his life and their kids to spill something so tremendous, something that, if not handled properly, could seriously damage the future he had with his family.
That’d be completely fucking insane. Maybe that was it; maybe Jack had just gone insane. Who’s to say that he wasn’t sitting in some mental hospital, dreaming all of it up that very second? Or perhaps he was in a coma, asleep in some hospital bed and hooked up to numerous life-support machines. Really, all of it would make sense. After all, life doesn’t just play out so smoothly for so long without hitting a bump in the road, only for the road to just end on a cliff, sharp rocks visible at the bottom.
Does it?
Either way, he knew that there was no way he’d be able to handle two babies alone, not with both of them crying like they were, and it was with great reluctance that Jack set his baby boy back in the child’s seat, buckled him up, and then reached for his phone, dialing someone’s number who he knew would never let him down… or admit feelings for him.
“Hey, mom, I was just wondering if, uh… if you’d be okay with coming to spend the next few days with me and the kids. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”
Author: Jamie jamieall_over
Pairing: Jalex
Rating: NC-17 Overall
Warnings: Mpreg
“Hey, dude, do you think you’d be fine with watching Ash and Cacity for a little bit while I go see how Alex is doing?” Jack asked Zack as he threw himself onto the couch, spreading his legs over Zack’s lap and stretching his body out along the other half of the sofa. Both babies had been put down for their nap only minutes prior, and he figured they’d be out for quite a bit-he’d kept them up a little longer than usual on purpose. Cocoa, wherever she was, probably wouldn’t even make an appearance unless food was presented.
Zack, who’d been nothing but smiles and faux high-pitched voices since the moment all three Gaskarth-Barakat’s had arrived back to the apartment and let him in, visibly faltered at the question. Jack, of course, took it the wrong way.
“It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna be, like, left alone with them or anything. They’re small, but they can be pretty intimidating, huh? If you want, all four of us can go when they wake up. Alex said something about wanting to see you again anyway,” he dismissed, shrugging casually. Really, it wasn’t a big deal to him either way.
“Do whatever you have to do,” Zack responded, patting his leg affectionately and forcing a smile. “Tell Alex I said hey, would ya?”
Anyone would’ve believed the smile to be nothing short of genuine, but Jack had known Zack since they were kids. They’d been best friends for going on twenty years at that point. What kind of best friend would he be if he couldn’t see through his own best friend’s masks?
“Seriously, bro, what’s up?” he tried, sitting up and turning his body to face the same direction as the slightly older man’s, arm reaching out to wrap around his large shoulders. “You know you can tell me anything. I’m here for you no matter what.”
Zack smiled at that, and while it still looked like he was upset about something, it was easier for Jack to accept. “It’s nothing, man. Don’t worry about me. Go down and spend some time with him; I’m sure he misses you already. I’ll call you if anything happens.”
Jack nodded, not really paying attention to what was being said as he studied the larger man. It was only a hard pinch to his thigh that had him snapping back into focus, a hiss lodging in his throat and pout tugging at the corners of his mouth as he reached down to sooth the area.
Zack laughed at his reaction, and a true grin spreading across his lips had Jack mimicking the sound.
“I asked if you wanted me to do something about dinner,” Zack said, eyebrows raising questioningly on his forehead as he awaited an answer.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Jack responded, stretching himself out a final time before dragging his body to its feet, repeating the process once he was vertical. “I can pick something up. Text me if you can think of anything you want before I get back, and I’ll stop for it on the way.”
Zack nodded, watching as his best friend moved around the living room to gather his shoes, wallet, phone, and keys.
“Thanks for doing this, man. It means a lot more to both of us than you could ever imagine,” Jack said as he did one final check to make sure he wasn’t missing anything necessary. With a quick bro-hug, he was leaving the apartment and throwing an, “I’ll see you later, dude,” over his shoulder, not a single concern in his mind.
--- ---
“Hey, baby,” Jack said softly as he walked into Alex’s hospital room. He’d been warned beforehand that his husband was still feeling some of the effects of the drugs he’d been given prior to going into surgery, meaning he had to speak slowly, clearly, and gently. “How was it? Are you feeling any better?”
Alex looked over to him from where he’d been staring blankly at the TV up on the wall when he sat down in the seat next to the bed, and the first thing Jack noticed was the glazed look of tears in his dark eyes. There was no time to ask what the problem was before the elder was sniffling and letting his emotions out.
“I’m sorry, Jay,” he sobbed, reaching out to pull his partner closer. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
The Lebanese man did his best not to panic, thinking back to what he’d been told in the hallway only moments before. “Sh,” he consoled, rubbing at Alex’s back and pressing kisses to his curly hair. “Sh, hey now, what’s the matter, baby? Huh? Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll go fix it,” he vowed.
“I’m sorry,” Alex began, stopping long enough to cough before trying again. “I’m sorry, Jay, I shouldn’t have maken you give me a blow job. I’m sorry.”
And… what?
“Maken’s not a real word. I think you mean ‘made,’ baby, and you didn’t make me do anything in the first place, but what happened? Did something go wrong with your surgery? Was the cut worse than they thought?” he inquired, leaning away to make eye contact with the slighter man.
Alex shook his head, bottom lip quivering. “I… I… You ate all those babies, Jack. All those little, tiny babies, and now they’re just gone, swimming around in your stomach.” A hand reached out to press against Jack’s abdomen through his shirt before lifting it up to catch a glimpse of the smooth skin that lay hidden away underneath, watery, brown eyes following the movement closely.
At first it didn’t make any sense to the younger man. When had he ever eaten a child, never mind multiple children? Surely that would’ve been punishable by death or something. Maybe Alex had dreamed it while he was put under? How did any of it relate to him giving Alex oral? But then everything clicked back into place.
“You’re upset because I swallowed?”
If it was even possible, Alex somehow managed to cry harder at the simple question.
“And I-I’ve done it, too. We’re cannibals, Jack. And we… we eat babies. We don’t even eat people who deserve to be eaten, like… like Hitler. We eat poor, defenseless, cute babies.”
Jack had a brief thought about recording his husband’s admissions to show him once he’d worn off the effects of the drugs, but he was honestly laughing too hard at that point to even see clearly.
“Stop, this isn’t funny. What if one of those babies was gonna be president? What if they were gonna… gonna end world hunger or… or… or do something awesome? And you ate him. Jack, why did you do that? Why do we do that?”
It took another few minutes of patient silence from the elder before the taller male was able to calm himself back down, hands reaching up to wipe his face dry of his hysterical tears. Then he tried to think of an answer. Why did they do it?
Well, you’re kind of a come-slut, didn’t seem like a very good response, not with the fact that literally anyone could walk through the door at any given second. Because it’s hot, also didn’t seem like an acceptable answer, and neither did Because it tastes good. Since he was actually putting thought into it, it just made less and less sense to him, if he was being honest, so instead of continuing with his thinking, he decided to change the subject and hope for the best.
“So, Zack wanted me to tell you that he says hey…”
--- ---
Jack walked back into his and Alex’s apartment no more than two hours after having left to be greeted by the sound of both babies giggling and the smell of chicken cooking in the oven. Really, it was as though he’d somehow traveled five weeks into the future, where Alex was fully healed and as good as new while he was spending his days away from home.
Just as he began to kick his shoes off by the door, the oven sounded in the kitchen and his children’s laughter began to drift out.
Jack followed the source of the noises, ending up in the doorway between the living room and dining room. Ashley and Perspicacity were sitting in their individual Snug Seats on the kitchen table, eyes watching their Uncle Zack move around only feet away in the kitchen.
“Dude,” the young father said, startling his best friend as he pulled the pan of chicken from the oven, “did you do all this by yourself? How were they?” Jack crossed the room to poke at his babies clothed tummies, earning more giggles from each as Zack continued on with his dinner preparations.
“Yeah, I did. They were great. I don’t get how you can see them as being intimidating. I tried to feed them one at a time like you showed me earlier when they woke up, but they weren’t hungry so their bottles are still in the fridge for later,” Zack responded, reaching up to pull plates from the cabinet to his right before stopping. “You’re hungry now, right? I wasn’t sure when you’d get home or anything, so I figured I’d cook and then just reheat it later or whatever.”
Jack perked up immediately, turning around to grin. “Yeah, definitely,” he agreed. “I was gonna stop at, like, Burger King or something since you didn’t text me, but I figured it’d just be cheaper to make a sandwich or heat up whatever leftovers I could find. Alex is gonna be upset when he finds out we ate his chicken, though.”
Zack laughed and shrugged, retorting with, “I’m sure he’ll get over it.” Two plates were piled with chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn before the two were moving over to the dining room table. When both babies were moved to be on the floor between their seats, the men sat down and began to dig in.
Jack had always known that Zack was a better cook than him, but he couldn’t help but be a little dramatic with his moaning as the taste hit his tongue. If he was being honest, he was hoping it’d make the older man feel better than he had earlier, or at least keep his mood up.
“This is, like,” he started, pausing to let out another over-exaggerated moan. “Maybe I should’ve married you instead,” he joked, laughing quietly to himself around another bite of food.
He almost missed the, “Yeah, you should’ve,” that left Zack’s mouth, except… he didn’t.
Nevertheless, he stopped to listen to the sounds drifting through the air around him just to make sure that he hadn’t somehow heard someone else speaking, maybe a little too loudly in one of the surrounding apartments. There was the blubbering of the babies in their seats on the ground, the purring of Cocoa as she rubbed up against the older man’s leg a few feet away, and the occasional click of silverware against glass.
Jack did his best to laugh it off, muttering an equally as quiet, “You’re crazy, bro,” and then shoveling another forkful or potatoes into his mouth. Surely Zack had been fucking with him; he would’ve done the same if the roles had been reversed. The only issue was the fact that his best friend had never really been that much of the joking type. He was the buff, quiet, serious man that he appeared to be on the outside.
Zack, sans being prompted to, decided to explain himself a little further. “Have you ever thought about it? Thought about us?” he inquired, dropping his silverware onto his plate and looking directly at Jack, green eyes boring through the younger. “We’ve been best friends for how long? We know everything about each other. We were made for each other, Jack.”
A silence thick enough for Cocoa’s purring to appear louder than before filled the air, and the darker-haired man didn’t know what to do or say. He’d never been in a situation where someone was… doing whatever Zack was. It didn’t make any sense at all. Was he trying to make some sort of admission? Had Alex set this up to see what would happen? Was he being Punk’d by someone else? He almost didn’t want to find out.
Sighing, he set his own utensils down as well, leaning back in his seat and looking up to make direct eye contact. “What’s this about, Zee?” he inquired, tone sounding cautious yet tired.
Zack didn’t have a single objection to clarifying, though his voice did come out strained. “This is about me being better,” he pressed, eyes pleading with Jack to understand. “I’m better for you, I’m better for the kids, I’m just better than he is.”
“Have you not met Alex?” Jack snapped back, honestly feeling the temperature in the air rise just fractionally as the meaning behind his best friend’s words began to sink in. “Do you not know anything about him? At all?”
“I know that he’s useless,” Zack snapped back, and at the point, the cat and both babies had gone completely silent. “I know you do everything for him and he does nothing for you in return.”
“You can’t even begin to comprehend everything he’s done for me; everything he’s given up just to be with me.”
A stare-down commenced, the silence between the pair prompting the children still settled snugly in their seats on the ground to begin crying. Neither man was all too sure who broke away first, but not even ten seconds had passed before they were bending down and reaching out, arms prepared to scoop up the infant closest to them.
"Don’t you dare touch her," Jack warned as soon as he realized what was happening, tone harsher than either had ever heard it. "I don’t know who told you it was okay, but you have no right, no fucking right, to come into my home and disrespect my fucking husband."
If he was being totally honest, Zack was kind of... well... scared. He didn’t know that Jack was capable of being so intimidating, even more so than the two infants could be together.
"Jack, I..." he tried to reason, but the younger man was hearing none of it.
"Get out of my apartment,” he seethed, hands finally unbuckling Ashley from his seat and lifting the child to pat at his tiny back in comfort. It would’ve probably worked, too, had the infant not been able to sense the tension in the air, the growling tint to his father’s usually so playful voice. “Get out of my apartment, and don’t ever bother fucking coming back.”
“Please, Jack, let me explain, I just-”
“Zachary Steven Merrick, I want you out of this god damn apartment, I want you out of my fucking life, and I swear to everything Holy that if I ever see you within so much as a hundred yards of my husband or my kids, I won’t hesitate to call the fucking police and file for stalking,” Jack warned, not breaking eye contact for even a second so that he’d be able to fully convey how serious he was being.
The larger man seemed apprehensive about leaving, as though he didn’t honestly believe that Jack would do such a thing to him. He couldn’t, after all. Zack was more important to him than Alex was… wasn’t he? He had twenty-years to compare to Alex’s seven. Besides, he wasn’t done saying what he had to.
Nevertheless, the cold look in Jack’s eyes told the elder that it really wasn’t in his best interest to stick around for much longer, and it was as he was standing from his place at the table that he spoke a final time, having to raise his voice over the screeches from both Ashley and Perspicacity.
“Just know that I love you, and when you’re ready to face the facts, I’ll be waiting. You know where to find me.” With those final words, the brunette was turning on his heel and gathering his things, the (rather unnecessary) slamming of the front door echoing throughout the apartment and the rest of the hall outside.
It had to be a dream, Jack realized only about a minute after the older male’s departure. There was no way his best friend had actually just admitted what he could only assume were long-time feelings for him. There’s no way he’d just lost a twenty-year friendship because the hardly-shorter man had decided to break the news that he was in love with the younger nearly a year after he got married. Surely Zack hadn’t actually thought it would be a good idea to wait until he was finally settling down with the love of his life and their kids to spill something so tremendous, something that, if not handled properly, could seriously damage the future he had with his family.
That’d be completely fucking insane. Maybe that was it; maybe Jack had just gone insane. Who’s to say that he wasn’t sitting in some mental hospital, dreaming all of it up that very second? Or perhaps he was in a coma, asleep in some hospital bed and hooked up to numerous life-support machines. Really, all of it would make sense. After all, life doesn’t just play out so smoothly for so long without hitting a bump in the road, only for the road to just end on a cliff, sharp rocks visible at the bottom.
Does it?
Either way, he knew that there was no way he’d be able to handle two babies alone, not with both of them crying like they were, and it was with great reluctance that Jack set his baby boy back in the child’s seat, buckled him up, and then reached for his phone, dialing someone’s number who he knew would never let him down… or admit feelings for him.
“Hey, mom, I was just wondering if, uh… if you’d be okay with coming to spend the next few days with me and the kids. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”