(no subject)
Title: Audience of One
Characters/Pairings: Junior, Jack Mercer [crossover with Four Brothers]
Wordcount: 782
Summary: Junior and Jack make for an odd friendship.
Junior and Jack make for an odd friendship. They're from different worlds, different universes. Junior is on the fast track to being the best programmer in the country, and Jack says that back home he's known as a world class fuck up. Junior wants to crush every single person who ever said that. He's fiercely protective of Jack, ironic, given their disastrous meeting. Junior only feels uncomfortable about the class gap between them, class chasm, really, for a little while but Jack doesn't seem to mind. He pours all his money into his art, and he's fine with that. He tells Junior about times when there wasn't enough money for a roof, for food.
Jack likes to watch Junior code. Jack is useless when it comes to technology. He can figure his way around a cellphone, a toaster, and an oven, and that is about it. Coding is turned into a spectator sport, with oohs and aah. It never even occurs to Junior to feel annoyed about it. He enjoys sitting at his computer with Jack off to the right, hunched forward, elbows on his knees, trying to keep up. Junior has never known anyone so enthralled with him.
Junior likes to watch Jack play. He likes the way that Jack's fingers brush along the strings, how he fingers the fretboard. He likes how Jack will splay back and lie the guitar along his body and play it like he's discovering the music instead of making it, channelling it. He likes how Jack will tip back his head and rest his neck on a swoop in Junior's headboard, close his eyes, and just feel his way around a song. Jack has talent, and he doesn't know, but he loves that someone is watching him, hearing him.
They don't go out often, and when they do, it's usually to open mic nights and karaoke bars. Jack says that he had a full band outfit back home, but when he jumped a freight to LA, he left it all behind. The story of how Jack got there is so out of Junior's world on so many levels that he gets Jack to tell it often. He needed a change, though, and Junior can appreciate that, because sometimes he needs change too. But he isn't brave enough to take a wad of cash, a guitar and a backpack and jump on a train halfway across the country, he's barely brave enough to consider his own apartment right now.
They start to spend more and more time together, between Junior's classes and Jack's work, they spend many a night up until dawn. Jack is a voracious reader, so he'll read whatever Junior puts in his hands, and they talk about books. Junior knows next to nothing about music, so Jack will lend him Cds and try to get him to think about the music, the emotion, the composition. They're a venn diagram, two separate circles slowly merging together.
There is a low burn in Junior, a flame kept down since they met not all that long ago. He has quarantined this feeling, these urges. To work his way into Jack's clothes, to twine his fingers in Jack's hair, to push Jack up against a wall and feel him there, warm and solid. He wants Jack, and he knows that he can probably have him.
But he doesn't want to spook Jack, who has obviously had some serious issues in the past that Junior and his wah daddy is a criminal psychoses can't come even close to touching. He remembers the scars on Jack's body from the night of the bar fight. He sees the way Jack flinches away from the touch of strangers, but has started to lean into Junior's whenever they do make contact. He can see the push/pull in ways that Jack obviously can't, or won't see.
Junior is smart. He has spent his entire life working towards a bright shiny beacon of light future, and occasionally he had to manipulate people to get there. He understands people, and how they work. He knows what he'd have to do in order to entrance Jack. And he doesn't. He is so tired of being so fake with everyone, so sculpted and perfect, that he just goes with his instinct gut reaction around Jack. He puts a leash on his attraction, and he revels in being himself for the first time in a long time.
But he can't keep Jack all to himself forever, especially with the amount that he talks about him. So one day they're at Junior's dorm, the window open with balmy May heat drifting around, Jack mindlessly playing, and a motorcycle weaves in from the distance.
Characters/Pairings: Junior, Jack Mercer [crossover with Four Brothers]
Wordcount: 782
Summary: Junior and Jack make for an odd friendship.
Junior and Jack make for an odd friendship. They're from different worlds, different universes. Junior is on the fast track to being the best programmer in the country, and Jack says that back home he's known as a world class fuck up. Junior wants to crush every single person who ever said that. He's fiercely protective of Jack, ironic, given their disastrous meeting. Junior only feels uncomfortable about the class gap between them, class chasm, really, for a little while but Jack doesn't seem to mind. He pours all his money into his art, and he's fine with that. He tells Junior about times when there wasn't enough money for a roof, for food.
Jack likes to watch Junior code. Jack is useless when it comes to technology. He can figure his way around a cellphone, a toaster, and an oven, and that is about it. Coding is turned into a spectator sport, with oohs and aah. It never even occurs to Junior to feel annoyed about it. He enjoys sitting at his computer with Jack off to the right, hunched forward, elbows on his knees, trying to keep up. Junior has never known anyone so enthralled with him.
Junior likes to watch Jack play. He likes the way that Jack's fingers brush along the strings, how he fingers the fretboard. He likes how Jack will splay back and lie the guitar along his body and play it like he's discovering the music instead of making it, channelling it. He likes how Jack will tip back his head and rest his neck on a swoop in Junior's headboard, close his eyes, and just feel his way around a song. Jack has talent, and he doesn't know, but he loves that someone is watching him, hearing him.
They don't go out often, and when they do, it's usually to open mic nights and karaoke bars. Jack says that he had a full band outfit back home, but when he jumped a freight to LA, he left it all behind. The story of how Jack got there is so out of Junior's world on so many levels that he gets Jack to tell it often. He needed a change, though, and Junior can appreciate that, because sometimes he needs change too. But he isn't brave enough to take a wad of cash, a guitar and a backpack and jump on a train halfway across the country, he's barely brave enough to consider his own apartment right now.
They start to spend more and more time together, between Junior's classes and Jack's work, they spend many a night up until dawn. Jack is a voracious reader, so he'll read whatever Junior puts in his hands, and they talk about books. Junior knows next to nothing about music, so Jack will lend him Cds and try to get him to think about the music, the emotion, the composition. They're a venn diagram, two separate circles slowly merging together.
There is a low burn in Junior, a flame kept down since they met not all that long ago. He has quarantined this feeling, these urges. To work his way into Jack's clothes, to twine his fingers in Jack's hair, to push Jack up against a wall and feel him there, warm and solid. He wants Jack, and he knows that he can probably have him.
But he doesn't want to spook Jack, who has obviously had some serious issues in the past that Junior and his wah daddy is a criminal psychoses can't come even close to touching. He remembers the scars on Jack's body from the night of the bar fight. He sees the way Jack flinches away from the touch of strangers, but has started to lean into Junior's whenever they do make contact. He can see the push/pull in ways that Jack obviously can't, or won't see.
Junior is smart. He has spent his entire life working towards a bright shiny beacon of light future, and occasionally he had to manipulate people to get there. He understands people, and how they work. He knows what he'd have to do in order to entrance Jack. And he doesn't. He is so tired of being so fake with everyone, so sculpted and perfect, that he just goes with his instinct gut reaction around Jack. He puts a leash on his attraction, and he revels in being himself for the first time in a long time.
But he can't keep Jack all to himself forever, especially with the amount that he talks about him. So one day they're at Junior's dorm, the window open with balmy May heat drifting around, Jack mindlessly playing, and a motorcycle weaves in from the distance.