Chapter Thirty-Six #2
Jack began to answer, but at the creak of a door behind them, Ger’s numb limbs flooded with icy adrenaline.
He had the door open and both of them shoved into the tiny box room before he could wrap his head around the decision.
Jack let himself be herded without much fuss and even turned to helpfully close the door behind them.
But when he started to speak again, Ger clapped a hand over his mouth and watched those soft brows pitch.
“Benan,” he whispered, and though Jack rolled his eyes, he didn’t fight Ger’s hold on him.
They listened together as Benan made his way down the hall, pausing to belch outside Ger’s door before the solid slap of his big feet faded into nothing.
Ger felt the tension seep from his limbs and allowed himself a full breath.
A pity, then, when that breath caught in his lungs at the sight of Jack’s warm, brown eyes on his.
“Um,” he said, fumbling to get a grasp on his own thoughts and only remembering to remove his hand from Jack’s mouth when the porter huffed a small laugh beneath his palm. “Sorry.”
“That’s alright. I didn’t much feel like chatting either.”
“I just didn’t want him to know you were here.”
Ger’s heart gave a too-sharp pulse of alarm.
“Not because it’s you,” he added hurriedly, and Jack’s lips twitched. “Because, you know, it’s him and he’s—”
“Benan.”
“Yeah,” Ger said lamely.
He hadn’t backed up a single step, and it occurred to him how very close they still stood.
Close enough that Jack had to tilt his head back against the door to meet his eye.
Close enough that Ger could smell the warm flour-and-spice scent of the kitchen clinging to the porter’s knitted sweater.
Close enough that Jack’s lips curved into a smile, and Ger knew he'd been staring at them. Intently.
“So,” he said, a little loud in such intimate quarters. “Why, er—why are you here?”
A soft rustle was what it finally took to break the mesmerising hold of Jack’s smile. He let his eyes be dragged away, landing on the small linen bundle waving in the porter’s raised hand.
“You didn’t come for your broth yesterday, or in the morning,” he said. “And I never did deliver your parcel that day, so—”
“You were waiting for me?”
Again. His heart tumbled from one beat to the next.
Jack sighed.
“I think you should know by now,” he said, still half-smiling. “I’m always waiting for you.”
Ger felt the press of the linen bundle in his palm, but the answering swoop of his belly didn’t feel like hunger.
At least, not the kind that could be sated by nuts and berries.
He tucked the parcel into his pocket, gaze drifting to Jack’s lips on purpose this time.
They were not smiling now; they were parted. Plump.
Waiting.
And though his heart made every effort to beat a hole through his ribs, Ger didn’t move with any of the clumsiness of the last time he’d had this chance and fumbled it.
He stepped in. Raised his hand, slowly, to cup the porter’s jaw.
His breath shuddered in the space between them, but his aim was sure as he bent his head and finally touched his lips to Jack’s.
Soft at first, but not uncertain. He wanted this; he was brave enough to reach for it.
He remembered now how to move, how to listen for those sounds, both audible and not, that told him what a partner wanted.
What Jack wanted. The shared rumble of a groan was the only encouragement he needed.
Ger sucked that full bottom lip between his teeth and in the space of a moment, they were lost to tongues and hands, fistfuls of clothing and hair.
“Ger,” Jack gasped, hands to his chest like he’d push him back, then curling into his shirt like he’d never let him go. “Are you sure?”
Ger did pull back then. Stared at him, brows bowing.
“I’m sorry I ever made you think I wouldn’t be.”
The chilly little box room was warmed by their breath and the heat rising between them, and Ger was coming to think that that was simply Jack’s way; warming the smallest, coldest spaces and filling them with his light.
Because he was alight. Glowing as Ger tugged him away from the door and backed him into the room, face lit with something close to rapture.
It made Ger want nothing more than to brighten that glow, feed it, fuel it.
He pressed Jack toward the bed and followed him when he fell, moving over him fluidly until their faces aligned again.
Ger held his weight on one hand and with the other, took Jack’s face and traced a thumb beneath his straight lashes, his sharp cheekbone, his thick, curving smile.
“I’m an idiot,” said Ger. “I let my fear get on top of me, and there’s been a lot of it to fight lately. But you’ve made it seem possible. You’ve made it all bearable. And I’m not afraid anymore.”
He tilted Jack’s head back and pressed a kiss to his throat, sinking more of his weight against him when he sighed and arched his neck in offering. Jack’s hands found the hem of his shirt, tugging urgently, and Ger sat up at once, reaching back to yank the whole thing over his head.
The look on Jack’s face could’ve ended the whole thing right then and there.
Warm, ravenous tension coiling within him, it was all Ger could do not to groan at that unadulterated longing.
Jack had once told him that all he’d been looking for was Ger’s attention, and he’d believed him.
Welcomed and revelled in it. But he was not sorry to see the way Jack watched him now, chest stuttering, cheeks flushed the same deep pink as his well-kissed lips.
Ger would give him all the attention he wanted; he would shower him with it.
He made himself grin, far more steadily than he felt.
But Jack swallowed.
“I don’t—I don’t look like that,” he said, as though it were a warning. “I don’t look like you.”
“I don’t want me,” said Ger.
Jack flushed—but when their lips met this time, it was he who guided Ger’s mouth to his.
He who ripped the sweater over his head and shifted their shared weight until he landed astride Ger’s hips, both of them gasping at the way their bodies met.
Ger stared up at him, openly panting at the feel of his warmth and weight and the sight of his bare skin.
He didn’t look like a gard, it was true; he was softer, lithe where Ger was thick, his body not carved by torturous mornings in the training yard but built of a different strength entirely.
His skin so smooth that Ger’s tongue felt heavy with the need to taste every inch of it.
He swallowed, aware that his mouth was quite literally watering at the thought.
“I could stare at you for hours,” he rasped, but his hands moved independently of his mouth, palms flat to Jack’s smooth chest and running a slow, determined path down his abdomen.
Jack grabbed him by the wrist, his whole body heaving with the weight of his own breath. Ger stopped at once.
“You wouldn’t regret this?” he said, one last time, fingers firm around Ger’s wrist.
Ger winced; it stung, even now, to know what damage he’d done with his careless rejection, no matter how noble his intentions might have been.
He didn’t know how close he’d come to not having this moment at all, this one chance to make it right, to own up to how he felt and what he wanted.
He didn’t know how many more chances he would get—what would happen tomorrow, what Adeline had planned, what Avette might do to any one of them, or every single soul under this roof.
He was sick of being scared. He was tired of being a coward.
He wanted to be brave. He wanted to be happy.
He turned his wrist in Jack’s grasp and laced their fingers.
“The only regrets I might have,” said Ger, slowly, searching the depths of those warm, brown eyes on his, “are the moments I wasted pretending I didn’t want this. I want this. I want you. I want anything you’ll give me, Jack. Anything.”
Jack’s eyes softened. And when he guided Ger’s hand to his skin once more, gave in to his touch, it wasn’t a frantic tearing of clothes or a quick and sweaty rutting. It was deliberate, slow. Every move between them intentional and all the more intimate for that care.
It all came so easily, Ger thought, because every moment with Jack was like this. Easy. They found their rhythm through that same intentional touch, and as they moved together, Ger’s pulse was steady. His lungs were full. His mind was entirely present.
He was precisely where he wanted to be.