(Untitled)

[__jack]

[Later that morning.]It's the little things, right, like the way your shoe fits snuggly against his under the formica table, or how you realise this is already the second time you watch him order from a waitress, and how he gets with other people, friendly but almost a little reserved, always devoting all of his attention to the person he's

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[_johnny]

The table's wide but they both have long legs and Johnny finds that if he slouches just so, curves his spine and slides lower on the bench, he can brush and bump and rub knees with Jack. The obscenely self-satisfied grin on Jack's face makes Johnny's cock perk up and his belly flop; he grins back, because it's impossible not to.

The waitress puts their coffee down and Johnny says, "Thanks, sugar," flashes her a wink that makes her blush, makes Jack's eyes narrow in amusement.

"I know," Johnny says with a shrug and a smile. "I know, I'm a terrible flirt. Can't help it." He takes three packets of sugar and shakes them down, tears off their tops all at once and empties them into his cup. "I guess it's... I have a friend, old roommate actually, called it a symptom of my Southerness." He picks up three more packets and repeats the process before stirring and sipping. Perfect. Black as sin and just as sweet.

Under the table, Jack's knees trap one of Johnny's and squeeze.

[__jack]

Jack wraps both hands around his cup and rests the back of his head against the top of the seat, which he can do comfortably in the slight slouch he's in. Gives Johnny's knee another light nudge and smiles down his nose at him.

"Where is it that you're from, anyway? You have a peculiar accent, you know that? Like you're carrying around a bit of everywhere you've been."

[_johnny]

"I'm just a good ole boy," Johnny drawls, and Jack's laugh delights him. He grins, sinks a little lower in his seat, rubs the bony bit of the outside of his knee against the inside of Jack's. "Seriously, I grew up in Kentucky, but not, like, Derby country, not, um, mint julep and manicured lawns and sipping tea on the verahhhhhhhhhnda." He takes a thoughtful sip of his coffee, smiles back at Jack's encouraging nod and wonders briefly why it is that it's so easy to just spill to Jack.

"Actually, so, yeah. My Kentucky was more, um, soybeans and tobacco sheds and mud and blood and Schlitz. You know? Like the Dukes of Hazzard only not cleaned up for the network, where Cletus would've raped Daisy when she was fourteen and Bo would've gotten beat up for being too pretty."

He has to look away for a second because Jack's just gazing at him with this look of empathy and understanding. Johnny shrugs, lowers his head so his hair falls in his face. "So. Um. Yeah. I'm actually only half good ole boy, I'm half Cherokee, too, and when Kentucky

[__jack]

Jack nods, doesn't press it when the tilt of Johnny's head hides his face from him for a moment. Reaches out to bump a knuckle against Johnny's hand (sun-kissed and worn smooth), curbs the impulse to wrap his own around it.

It's hard to wrap his mind around Johnny's description of Kentucky; Jack's knowledge of America is limited to what the media, culture, and a good education has fed him through the years, which he's certain must be lacking in the finer details.

"Seeing the world then, eh? Haven't done much of that. Haven't even been to America."

He smiles kindly, keeps his voice low and the curl of his mouth just for the two of them when Johnny looks back up at him.

"Is your family still in Kentucky?"

[_johnny]

"Presumably," Johnny says, and for a moment the whole restaurant is silent, one of those weird supposedly-every-seven-minutes silences; it sounds so horrible, just hanging in the air there, and none of the explanations will really make it sound less horrible. He lowers his voice a little to match Jack's, keeps his tone warm. "I left home pretty young, you know? My, um, mother passed away a couple years ago, and my old man and I aren't close."

Saved by the order-up bell, the waitress arrives with their plates and asks if they want their coffees warmed up. Johnny inclines his head, says, "Sure, darlin'" and wonders if his accent came back in the last ten minutes or if it'd always been this way and he just didn't notice.

"What about you, man?" he evades, but he does it with a smile and he does want to know, really truly, he wants to know everything about this guy, and what Jack doesn't say Johnny figures he can lick off of his skin later.

[__jack]

Jack deflects Johnny's sudden grin by forcing himself to at least glance at the content of his plate. He shakes a bit of pepper on his scrambled eggs and bites into a bit of toast, shifting his ankle distractedly against Johnny's

[_johnny]

"Not at all," Johnny says, and he's not faking the warmth in his smile this time, not even a little bit. "It sounds like you had a pretty good childhood, yeah?" At Jack's nod he smiles again. "Maybe I envy it a little."

He shakes salt over his eggs thoughtfully, not even looking at his plate. "I have an eleventh grade education," he admits, "and I'm not ashamed of that fact, you know, I do pretty goddamn well for a dropout. I wanna start my own business some day, I'm there, I'm really close, I just need a backer, seed money. I've got a hell of a long resume. I..."

Johnny stops, worries at his lower lip with one eyetooth. "I'm really glad I met you," he blurts out, and feels so very twelve years old that it actually hurts.

[__jack]

Jack was truly about to comment on the school thing and the business thing, really he was, but instead he's left with his mouth open and half a breath out when Johnny tosses out the last unexpected bit, looking more unsure that Jack's ever seen him yet.

Jack's hands itch, empty, on the tabletop, and he curls his fingers him to keep them in check. What do you say to that? You smile, and you say something as incriminating, put out there in a way that can be used for or against you depending on how things go.

"Not going back to America just yet, eh?" he murmurs. "London wants your business."

[_johnny]

For a moment, Johnny thinks about answering honestly: Yes, and if I've got any choice in the matter, London will get all of my business for the forseeable future. You can take that to the bank, big man.

But god, oh god, it's too soon for shit like that, and Johnny's eggs are going cold. He reaches out, drags a fingertip across Jack's knuckles.

"More coffee?" the waitress asks.

[__jack]

Sod the fucking coffee, but, "Sure, thank you," and he's got a cupful again when what he really wants is tea and lazy midday sex on his couch with this bloke across the table from him baring a mouth of white teeth in the goddamn sexiest hopeful twist of lips he's ever had directed at him.

Jack takes advantage of the waitress' brief presence to swallow the invitation, and by the time Johnny's attention is fully on him again, he's found something relatively safe to say, safer than the brush of knuckles he can't quite pull away from yet.

"What's this business you want? More films?"

[_johnny]

Johnny stares blankly at the coffee cup, at the steam rising from the top, tickling his nose with its aroma. He adds his other fingers, one by one, to the back of Jack's hand, so now they're touching ankle to ankle, knee to knee, hand to hand. He strokes slowly, left right left right.

"Um. Yeah. A freelance director, what I do, it's not so much my work, see, it's what the studio wants, it's what the producer wants... I can take something to a studio and say, I wanna make this, um, I have enough of a name for that... but they can always say no, so... if it's my studio and my people and my money, I can make any movie I want, it's my art, you know? And it is, some times, when it's right."

He flattens his hand and curls his thumb under, tracing the lines on Jack's palm.

"When it's right it's just..."

[__jack]

"Yeah." He gets that, he does, even though the world in Johnny's imagination is a universe away from his; he gets it. It's easy to, the way Johnny speaks of it.

"Johnny, listen--" And he wasn't about to say it now, but they're both restless sitting here and they're rapidly approaching the point where you either say thanks for the shag, man, see you around, or you just go for it and see what happens. He looks down at their hands, the slight difference in skin tones and shape, the smudges of ballpoint on Jack's fingers versus the ink permanently etched on Johnny's. "I mean it. Don't go. Stay today, stay the week, stay however long you want, I don't care, just... just stay."

And there is it, and once it's out it's impossible to swallow back in. It hovers, big and important, between the both of them, and Jack makes himself look up from the tabletop; squints, unsure, at Johnny, whose face has gone soft but unreadable in the grey glare of morning.

[_johnny]

Johnny is one of those impulsive people who likes to say, after the fact, that he knew what he was doing the whole time, that he weighed all the options, calculated lift and windsheer and trajectory, said his prayers and wore his crash helmet.

The truth is that he has never once, not once in his life, looked before leaping.

Sometimes he's landed hard, broken parts of himself he didn't even know he had. And sometimes, man, sometimes, he's fucking flown.

His hand closes convulsively over Jack's on the tabletop and he's pulling, damn the public, damn the waitress, fuck it ALL, man, he pulls and he leans and Jack's right there, right there.

"Yes," he says against Jack's lips. "Yes yes yes yes yes."

[__jack]

Next thing he knows he's halfway over his breakfast and Johnny's hand is holding him solidly a kiss that's not really a kiss but a messy mash of mouths, and to shut him up (though Jack'd listen to him say yes for hours if he could find the way) he deepens it into a proper snog, a quick but hot slide of tongues, a warm intake of each other's breath before gravity does its thing and Jack gets an elbow in his eggs

[_johnny]

The laugh catches sideways in Johnny's chest and turns into an ache. He opens his mouth, closes it again, bites his lip and nods.

Okay, okay, I take this ride with you, I take this chance, I do I do I do...

He nods again.

"Yeah," he finally rasps, levering himself up with his hands on the edge of the table, and Jack gets up as well, grabbing at his jacket and fishing bills out of his wallet. He comes around the end of the table, tugs Johnny out of the booth.

"Coming?" Jack says softly, next to Johnny's ear, and Johnny tilts his head, turns his cheek up for Jack's lips.

"Yeah," he repeats, and for a moment he feels the cliff edge crumbling beneath his feet.

Jack walks toward the door; Johnny follows.