BACKSTORY: 13 February 1995, London

[_johnny]

mirrored from here

He comes from a place where people buy wedding gifts at the drugstore; where the course of true love is a rutted red-clay road that washes out even in a drizzle, littered with broken beer bottles and blue Wal-Mart bags. Verity of sentiment is frequently punctuated by the full-stop pop of a nose or eye-socket exploding under the

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[__jack]

There is blind comfort in the habitual and the ritualistic, and when Johnny does his very best to extricate himself from the warmth of the sheets and that of Jack's arms (it can take hours on a good day), Jack takes refuge in the things he occupies himself with when he's alone in a space meant for two. It's the things that kept him happy for years before Johnny came along, too; before Johnny, by the simple fact of his existence, became a habit a little harder to break than tea and a comfortable robe, ratty from use but ugly from the start, on a grey Saturday morning.

It's already nearly afternoon by the time Jack drags himself out of bed, not quite willing to abandon the scent of Johnny and sex on the tangle of sheets, and he slips it on, the robe, over t-shirt and boxers frumpy from too much sleep. He shuffled barefoot to the kitchen, putting the kettle on with a yawn. Takes out two mugs by habit; goes to put one back but changes his mind, leaving the gawdy pink and yellow ceramic of Lithuania is for lovers! by the sink in case it's needed later on. It usually is, whether or not Johnny will admit to his growing dependence on the well-steeped cups Jack feeds him silently. Jack taps a lazy rhythm against the edge of the bench with a ballpoint he finds in the pocket of his robe. There were three, one black and two red, their caps gnawed but firmly in place. He tucks the red one he'd been playing with behind his ear when the kettle sings.

He takes the steaming mug to his desk by the window, in the crammed corner of the lounge where the telly used to be before Johnny did something unspeakable to it one night (Jack can't been arsed to replace it). There is a thick stack of loose-leaf papers, stapled by threes or fours, presiding over everything else on the cluttered surface of Jack's desk. Jack takes a few idle minutes to mindlessly follow the generous loops of Anna Kincaid's childish handwriting weaving with gusto between the lines, telling of the adventures and tryals trials of a Jane Austen protagonist of a still unclear identity.

Jack perches his feet onto the wrecked arm of the lounge chair that used to be sat on before books took it over, and props the stack of book reports on his thighs; he takes a mouthful of scalding tea and sinks into the desk chair, the red pen back to its usual spot (thickened skin worn smooth) between thumb and fingers.

[_johnny]

It's like when you're a little kid, right, when somebody tells you a good secret and you wanna tell so bad, man, it bounces and flips around in your gut and makes the hairs on your arms stand on end with the best kind of shiver. And when you do tell, finally, the anticipation leaves your body in a rush along with the words and it's a kind of release that's almost like coming. Except when you're eight you don't know about orgasms, but it's the same kind of feeling, childish and sexual and mainly about love and not wanting to disappoint anybody and really really wanting to please somebody and...

And all Johnny has to do it put his key in the lock and he can tell. He can share. He twitches from foot to foot, rubs at the bandage on his arm.

Jack'll be up and about by now, he'll be lapping at his tea and fussing with his papers and Johnny'll go in and he'll plop himself into Jack's lap and give him a thorough kissing, maybe a nice grope, before he shows off his surprise. Yeah, yeah, good plan, snog him off-guard and then voila.

The excitement bubbles up so fiercely that he can hardly breathe. He dances back to the other foot and pokes his key into the lock, leads with his head.

"Hey, big man, I'm home," he calls out, and shuts the door quietly.

Jack looks toward the door with a dazzling smile.

[__jack]

Norman Ferguson will be happy to get this not entirely justified B+ on his very much mediocre expounding of... something or another, who bloody cares when the door has just admitted a roomful of fresher air and a smiling bloke who looks an awful lot like he's been up to something. Which is moot, because Johnny's pretty much always up to something.

The grin is particularly wicked this time, and Johnny's pulling at the sleeves of his jumper like he wants to wriggle out of it, and from experience that may very well happen at any given time. Johnny's hands are empty, however, and Johnny's hair (thick and dark and longish enough to hide your face in) is intact, and Johnny is definitely up to something.

Jack stops himself from getting up and turns to face Johnny, who's only just walking into the room, entrance-like. Jack slumps into his chair cosily and eyes Johnnny with amused suspicion.

"What's going on," he tries sternly, but the spastic look in Johnny's eyes, threatening to bubble over any moment now, wrings a chuckle out of Jack.

[_johnny]

Johnny works his thumbs into his cuffs and he shrugs his shoulders; "Nothing," he answers, bright and transparent, and he grins back at Jack.

Jack, fuck, Jack whose slouch is rapidly becoming a somewhat more obscene sprawl, just... Jack. Yeah. He feels his smile soften, warm. Sometimes he thinks about getting those long lines and perfect curves on film, but mostly he's perfectly content to have them all to himself, to know they're his.

Mine mine you're mine and I'm yours yours, us it's us.

He shrugs again and stuffs his hands into his pockets, crosses the room the plan, man, stick to the plan with a long stride and stands tilting his head, just smiling smiling smiling and Jack returning the brightness watt for watt.

"Hey, big man," he repeats, and his voice is gone all husky. He steps closer, so they're just about knee-to-knee. "I got a surprise for you."

[__jack]

Jack offers a token quirk of his eyebrow in not-surprise, but the truth is that he's beginning to know Johnny enough to be aware of the fact that he'd rather, more or less metaphorically, not take the next breath than pass on what Johnny is offering, whatever it is.

He puts the essays away gingerly, piling them atop his desk and balancing the red pen on top before turning back to Jack and encircling a thigh (Johnny's jeans are always so soft, so old, so worn-in and thoroughly loved there are spots where Jack isn't sure if he's touching cotton or skin) with his arm. Johnny stumbles closer, standing over Jack, the look of glee he'd walked in with now tainted a bit with interest, just as familiar.

Jack tugs him closer still and rubs a hand along the back of Johnny's thigh, one, twice, eyes up and on Johnny's face, on Johnny's smile going lopsided. "What," he prompts patiently, and while the breath thing was an acurate metaphor, he's almost just as happy watching Johnny be like this, look at him this way, the way that means slow, loving sex later this afternoon and hard, claiming fucking tonight.

[_johnny]

He can't help it, it's automatic, reflexive, Jack's face is right there and Johnny's hips roll in a lazy circle as he looks down on his lover with a fondness that seems to press all the air from his lungs.

Jack's eyelids flutter as Johnny sinks down; he bends his knees until he's sitting fully on Jack's lap and he presses his open mouth to Jack's, tastes a hint of sugar and the tang of tannin before Jack's own taste crowds out the others. Jack's hands rest wide and warm on the small of Johnny's back and he rocks forward into Jack's lap, into Jack's mouth, then back into Jack's hands.

Everywhere he goes it's just-

"Jack," he sighs. "Love you."

Jack responds in kind, says the words with heat and depth and presses them to Johnny's throat. Johnny nods and pulls back a little and Jack looks at him curiously while Johnny balances, braces his booted feet on the floor, raises his hands over his head to pull his sweater off.

It'll still be red under the gauze but he picks at the tape, hair falling in his face. He feels Jack's hands tighten on his waist.

[__jack]

Yeah, off the sweater goes, and Jack would laugh and say something about Johnny being unable to keep his clothes on in his presence (which would be funny were it marginally untrue) but the tingle of Johnny's spit on Jack's bottom lip is always distraction enough to allow for Johnny's next move, which is almost always a surprise, one Jack would welcome with his eyes closed were he not so preoccupied with the sudden view of moving muscles and bones under Johnny's skin.

It takes a moment for Jack to tear his eyes off the slightly curled tips of Johnny's hair hanging over Johnny's face to focus on what Johnny is doing, and as soon as he does there's a warm clench in Jack's chest, the kind he's been getting almost daily for near eight months now, the kind that snakes down into his belly.

There is already ink adorning Johnny's skin here and there, on his shoulders and chest and hands, some a few years fresh, other blurred by age and, Jack hopes, other hands on Johnny's skin. But the tattoo revealed when Johnny finally peels away the gauze still shines black, some of its loops and angles lined with faint crimson, the skin around it pink and slightly irritated.

And Jack does stops breathing, right then, for the space of a heartbeat or ten (who's counting).

Jack squints and chuckles a little shrilly to squash the sudden and disconcerting urge to tear up. But there's his name, Jack's, right there on Johnny's arm, inches above his wrist, and Jack could stop and think about the meaning behind the gesture, but all he can think of touch and he slides a thumb carefully over it. It comes away smudged charcoal and red-brown when he reaches up to get Johnny close enough to kiss again, teeth in skin.

When he breathes once more; it comes out a little shaky.

[_johnny]

It's good, it's great, it's better than great, Jack's thumb stroking in feather-light wonder over the line of the tat, and his other hand rubs possessively over Johnny's side. He wants to arch into both touches at once, he wants to taste all the things he sees shining in Jack's eyes right now.

Jack doesn't say anything but he doesn't have to - just like Johnny knew he wouldn't have to explain, like Johnny knew Jack'd see it and know and understand.

Jack breathes in, a broken sound, and Johnny lifts Jack's hand off his arm. He shifts forward, wraps his arms around Jack's shoulders to bring him up, forward, together. He presses his lips to the top of Jack's head, lets Jack shake a little and when Jack says his name-

"Johnny"

-he shakes too, they rock and they tremble with the hugeness of this tiny moment.

Johnny's lips find their way downward, kissing across Jack's brow, his eyes, his cheek, finally to Jack's mouth.

"Yours," he says against Jack's lips, and in the same breath Jack hisses, "Mine."

[__jack]

The shaky need to crawl inside, to soak this up down to its atoms, to every iota of what's making it hard to breath like this, is quickly superceded something hungry and much less delicate. Jack's fingers curl around Johnny's wrist and his teeth sink into the corner of Johnny's mouth, eliciting a groan.

Jack pulls and Johnny slides closer, bodies flush and awkwardly balanced in this position. One takes hold of Johnny chin, fingers digging into his jaw; the other tightens around Jack's wrist before releasing it and cupping the hard bulge in Johnny's loose jeans. Jack thinks Johnny's urgent moans, like these, actually taste.

[_johnny]

Everything stutters to a halt for a moment, Johnny's hands and his brain and his body and probably the traffic on the street below; a single second balanced on a razor's edge and then Johnny breathes in, swallows - suddenly all Jack's urgency is roiling in Johnny's gut. Makes the room spin, makes his skin flush, makes his fucking eyeballs feel hot, man; he moans and he scrabbles at Jack's bathrobe, fingers sliding over the fading flannel.

Jack twists and his mouth crashes into Johnny's again, his fingers tangle up into Johnny's hair and his teeth are scraping at Johnny's lower lip while his other hand, fuck, god, man, his other hand presses and squeezes just this side of too hard.

"C'mon, yeah," Johnny gasps, moans again when Jack's hand finds its way up and over and in, warm palm slipping and stroking over hotter skin. He shudders and groans and rocks into Jack's hand; the chair overbalances and they hit with floor with a loud hollow smack.

[__jack]

The impact knocks the wind out of Jack's lungs and he breaks the kiss on a breathless laugh, Johnny's weight pressing into him. The back of the chair is digging into Jack's back and he pushes away from it, up into Johnny, groaning with a smile when his erection, not so restrained by the loose material of his boxers, press into Johnny's hip.

He gives Johnny's cock--nearly fully hard already, hot in his palm--a tight squeeze and a slow tug. Johnny uhs into Jack's smile and Jack kisses the sound off his mouth, sucks him back in, fisting a handful of hair, out of their eyes, out of the way.

"Want to fuck you. Let me fuck you, Johnny..." Because Johnny's body is taut over him, tight and straining, and Jack wants to imprint it, to hold it still while he does.

[_johnny]

He hears Jack's words but they take a second, two, three to register and then Oh Jesus, oh God heat zings through Johnny's body and his cock throbs and twitches in Jack's hand. He nods and moans and quivers, and Jack's kisses are more fierce now, both of them breathing in broken gasps in between.

Johnny can't - he has tried and failed - put into words what it means that he lets Jack fuck him, that he lets Jack bend him and fold him and take him any way he pleases. But he's sure that Jack must know because he always asks: in harsh desperate tones or in warm sleepy murmurs, in half a hundred different voices and sometimes with just a touch, but he asks and Johnny can't say no.

"Yeah, yeah," he moans against Jack's mouth, "Yeah, please, fuck me, please." He thrusts hard into Jack's fist.

[__jack]

Jack pushes his fingers through the loose knot of Johnny's hair until his hand curves around the back of Johnny's neck, fast and strong.

"I just--" He stops himself because the words are coming out a little desperate, strained and forceful. "I just want to climb into you, fuck, I don't know. It itches not to be touching you. It, it aches not to be inside," he murmurs haltingly in lieu of the hopeless plea.

He doesn't know how to say that sometimes--too often--he wants to be held in and smothered and not come up for air long enough so that the ache stops making sense and is just this brilliant, fierce feeling he doesn't need or want to examine but just live it. He doesn't know how to explain that it has little to do with wanting to fuck Johnny, with wanting to be physically inside, but he supposes maybe this time it's the same thing. He wants to claw his way in and look out from the inside.

The sofa is thankfully close enough to only require a slight push from Jack for Johnny to pull away, lingering reluctantly in Jack's grasp. Jack isn't in a hurry to loose the grip either, thumb slicking over the head of Johnny's cock. "You know?" And he hopes Johnny does, he hopes the look on Johnny's face as Johnny moves away is aching empathy rather than loss.

To make sure, he takes Johnny's wrist again, right under the, fuck, right under the curled script of his own name, and Jack's cock pulses unbarebly, suddenly; he tugs to get Johnny's eyes back to him, and prompts quietly, Yeah?

[_johnny]

He knows everything that Jack thinks because Jack's face is like glass, you can see his soul not just in his eyes but in his lips and his brow and the lines around his mouth and the ones around his eyes that crinkle when he smiles.

He knows and he feels Jack's hand, possessive on his arm, grip and release, he sees the pleading heat in Jack's face, begging for Johnny to read him right and understand.

"Yeah," Johnny says softly, "Yeah, man, c'mere, okay, it's good." Jack sighs heavily, nods and squeezes Johnny's arm again, thumb stroking over the name there.

He lets Jack manhandle him to his feet, dance them backward to the sofa while they lose layers of clothing, what feels like layers of skin, too.

"Jack," he says. Jack Jack Jack. "C'mon."

[__jack]

Despite the breathless want, Jack is laughing again, snickering in Johnny's hair as he drops his hands to Johnny's hips and presses Johnny flush against the front of the couch.

"Like this," he states a little shakily, and brings both hands around Johnny's waist to undo the jeans completely; pushes them down until Johnny's bare arse is pushing against the front of his boxers. Jack breathes in to calm the ache to take and wraps both arms around Johnny, lingering in the closeness, in the feel of his cock just pressed against Johnny like this.

Then he reaches up to push Johnny's hair away from the side of his Johnny's neck and presses his lips and teeth to the warm pulse there, half-biting before lapping slowly, then pulls away a bit to put his free hand in the small of Johnny's back and pushing. Johnny, quiet and compliant suddenly, bends over the couch, elbows coming to rest on the plump cushions.

Jack swallows thickly and reaches for Johnny's cock again, fitting their bodies together again.