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There is nothing worse than sitting on a plane with nothing to do. Nothing at all. Jakes mind was fixed on each and every thing that he had been working so hard for the last six months not to think about, to try and keep from entering his mind with all the success of trying to hold flour in a sieve. He was settled on a Boeing 747 transatlantic flight from Paris back to Texas via a fairly lengthy stopover of seven hours in Philadelphia. It had been the cheapest way to manage the flight, and though he had a little money to spend thanks to the last will and testament of his sadly departed grandmother, he wasn’t exactly flush. There was a lot to be said for saving and careful spending after all, as much as it might hamper ones explorative leanings. There had been enough to send him off on the travels he had so badly wanted to undertake at least, which worked both to satisfy his own adventurous urges and the powerful need to put a certain someone out of his thoughts. That one particular someone that he just couldn’t stop thinking about right at that very moment as the plane cruised along blandly at thirty three thousand feet.
Dirk was... well. Dirk. It was very hard to describe the blonde without giving into the urge to gush theatrically about his finer points. They had known each other a long time. Lived near each other and had been even been school mates. They had been in the same class for right from the beginning, and friends regardless when their class schedules differed. In the final years of high school there had been more than a little something extra between them as well. After all, at sixteen who didn’t feel the urge to fumble about just a little... or a lot with that special someone they were just oh so shockingly attracted to? It had been a clumsy little confession really, nervous on Dirk’s part despite all of his carefully laid out thoughts and plans and more than a little surprised on Jake’s... but all in all it had worked out into a rather satisfactory settlement between the two of them, landing them exactly in a place that they soon discovered they very, very much wanted to be. They worked well together. Dirk helped keep Jake a little more down to earth than the flighty green eyed young man would have been if left to his own devices, and Jake to his credit knew that he was the one that made Dirk smile.
God he loved it when Dirk smiled. Just the very slight lift to his lips and those very gentle laughter lines at the corner of his eyes which he knew the blonde tried to hide but that always gave him away. And... well. He couldn’t think of anything which suited the blonde better. Dirk could wear anything he liked... or nothing at all as long as he wore that smile. Come to think of it the smile and nothing at all was actually qui- no. Nope. Not happening. He really needed to not do that. With some effort to change the direction his thoughts had been rushing off in Jake leant back into the uncomfortable economy seat and squeezed his eyes shut. He really couldn’t keep entertaining thoughts like that. They were just... well. They weren’t helpful. This was especially the case when you were stuck in one of the window seats in the middle of a huge ruddy aeroplane with two sleeping people between you and the aisle tens of thousands of feet above the Atlantic ocean! He sighed. Dirk... he just couldn’t get him out of his thoughts, no matter how he tried the blonde just slipped back in. It was worse than trying to hold water in a tissue he swore.
It had been a few days over seven months since he had seen the blonde now. They had parted ways on good if slightly saddening terms. There was no point in trying to deny that the two of them had worked very well as a couple. Things had seemed sunny enough and they hand both been genuinely happy. They were very, very fond of one another, falling quite readily in love as it were, but of course any path worth walking has its rocks and roadblocks, and they had the misfortune of running into one of these before too many years of happiness had had a chance to play out. They both had ultimate designs on going to college, but of course money wasn’t always as easy to come by as might be hoped and it wasn’t a cheap endeavour to undertake, all that college business.
Being as both of them were relatively scot free; alone in the world aside from each other as it were by this point, not a lot was really there to keep them in one place. It was because of this sense of freedom that they had settled on the idea that maybe some work with the military wouldn’t be such a bad idea. There was the potential for posts abroad, adventure and a fair degree of creature comforts, health insurance and access to shops and such on base. It was a sound idea... or it had been until Jake’s poor eyesight let him down. He wouldn’t have made the grade as a pilot, which was something he had really set his heart on... it was something of a deal breaker really. That or nothing. Dirk had suggested he might as well pull out along with Jake, as if one of them couldn’t make it why should the other? But Jake had rebuffed the offer. Why should one lose out because the other was being stubborn? No, no it was far better Dirk took the chance, he could make it work for him, they both knew he could. Jake would manage himself after all. Doing odd jobs was enough to help him get by, and of course he had his grandmothers’ inheritance to put towards the cost of whatever ambitions the two of them ended up following in the long run.
Till then he had already decided that whenever it happened that Dirk was posted away from home he wouldn’t trail after him like a love sick puppy. No indeed. Instead of that he would make his own way off on some of those wild adventures he had craved for so long. It would only be a shame that he wouldn’t have the blonde there to enjoy it with him. In fact... as far as it went it was a shame that he didn’t have the blonde with him at all...
They’d had an argument.
That hadn’t been what had ended them, not at all. It was actually about the fact that Dirk wanted to implement some manner of termination. Things had cropped up, namely the fact he was being reposted. He was going off for a year. He had been posted to the Middle East to take care of this and that as it were. Jake’s interest in proceedings only really carried as far as the fact that it meant Dirk would be away from him, he hadn’t really taken in exactly where he was going or what he was going to be doing. That was all secondary nonsense in comparison to the fact that Dirk wasn’t going to be around. He had told himself the whole time it would be fine. They would be fine. It wasn’t going to be an issue. Couples faced this sort of distance all the time after all! However... as soon as it became reality, as soon as he found himself faced with the fact the man he really was falling in love with was going to be leaving him, he found that he wasn’t as okay with it as he thought he was after all. It was actually an utterly horrible idea and nothing could possibly be good right and sunny with the world if they were apart.
Of course the initial dramatics wore off after a while. He knew he could accept it... it had just been a kneejerk reaction to being told that it would be 12 months until they were able to see one another again, with Dirk spending a lot of that time in real terrible and in fact genuine danger. How was he meant to take it well? But Dirk had apparently taken a degree of Jakes distress to heart. That was where their argument had kicked in. Dirk had suggested that maybe Jake would be better off if they were no longer to be a couple. Jake had insisted he had very, very different feelings on the matter. But as they talked and talked it out he found it harder and harder to refute the fact that Dirk might be right. They were both going to be apart for a long time... and if something did happen, not that he believed it would, it would be worse if they were together. A year was a long time after all... he had to agree.
So that was that.
They were over.
Broken up... or on a break to take up the horrendous clichéd terminology.
He pulled a face which earned him a strange look from a passing flight attendant and he smiled in an attempt to brush it off. Of course nothing had happened. Not a thing. No one could replace Dirk and he honestly believed that when the blonde came back he would confirm that he had felt exactly the same way, that to him... no one would ever be able to replace Jake. Five months, he reminded himself. Five months. That was it. That was all he had to bear, in five short months, less than the time he had already dealt with he would have Dirk back. They were still in touch of course, barely, rarely, but it was better than nothing. Anything was better than nothing. Besides, he had a lot of time to make up, what with being away for so long he certainly had to get down to seriously finding another job, he needed to make back some of the money he had spend on his travels after all.
On top of that though it would help him pass the time, sitting and doing nothing at all would do him no favours. He was already struggling to keep Dirk from his thoughts. At least he didn’t have to worry too much about somewhere to live. His grandmother, a very savvy woman despite appearances had put a great deal of effort into paying off the house they had lived in together so that when the worst happened, well. He would still have somewhere call his own and to keep a roof over his head. Despite that comfort however, he just couldn’t help but wonder what the next five months were going to be like?
The simple answer to that question was tedious.
Regardless of that fact however Jake had managed it. He found a job after a few weeks, nothing much, but it was enough to pay the bills and put food on the table. He worked as a driver for a relatively successful parts supplier his grandmother had known when she had been alive who had been happy to help out the grandson on someone he had respected so much. He had let Jake know when he’d been hiring and had taken him on in short order. Jade as it happened had a liking for technological tinkering after all, even well into her eighties, so it was really no surprise that she stuck in the minds of a few people she had met over the years as a rather quirky oddball. The fact she had a heart of gold helped endear her to them as well, which meant that a fair amount of the kindness she had earned had been thrown back onto her grandson as well.
The job was relatively kind, Jake had to use his own car, a fairly patched up second hand number he’d bought while still in high school with his grandmothers help but some allowances were given for fixing it up when small failures occurred on top of his insurance. His fuel expenses were paid and it meant that he wasn’t tied to a desk or a till. He didn’t mind spending hours at a time on the road after all. The only real downside was that he did have a shocking amount of time on his hands during which his thoughts were more than able to wander... and wander they did. Just as they had whenever he’d had too long to spend on a plane, being stuck behind the wheel of his car was just as good a situation for encouraging his thoughts to slip and slide all the way back to the tall, muscular blonde frame of Dirk Strider.
One some level however, at least it proved to him that he was true to his own beliefs. Despite the clear frustrations of being a young man with a rather healthy... appetite as it were and the absence of his other half he stayed true. Despite the fact that he only had his own hand for company, his thoughts still hadn’t strayed. Dirk was still the only one for him, the only one who slipped into his thoughts at both the best and worst moments. It was clear to him that even without Dirk there, without the ability to reach out to touch him or even look around to see him, well. He knew that each and every day, week and month that had passed he had fallen more and more in love with the blonde, and in the end his waiting, his devotion and his longing were well rewarded.
The day Dirk finally told him he had a return date Jake had actually cried. Not a great deal just a few tears of relief and honest happiness which had clung to his dark lashes and burnt his eyes a little. He... well. He had just missed Dirk to an all but unnatural degree, and the thought of him coming home just pulled Jake all over the place with a rush of delight. He secured the day off of course, and a few days afterwards as well. He... had the distinct feeling that they were going to need it and sometimes really was better to plan in advance. Dirk, he thought with a grin, should be proud of him. Forward thinking wasn’t usually key in the life of Jake English, but some things certainly made it worth it.
There was no way in heaven hell or any fucking other place that one night was going to be able to make up for twelve months apart. Dirk would be honest to God lucky if Jake actually let him leave the bedroom the day after he got home. The dark haired young man certainly had no intention of letting the blonde too far out of his reach. Twelve months of separation was more than enough thank you very much, and if Dirk took issue with it, well. There were some things Jake was more than willing to scrap with him over, and getting a damn good hug off of him was certainly one of those.
The final six days dragged by more slowly than any before them had. Each hour felt like six or seven at least, as each one took to trailing along even more slowly than the one before had seemed to. Jake wished he could have spent more of his time locked in the blissful unknowing hold of sleep, sleep would have passed the time more easily, more quickly at the very least, but five hours of broken naps seemed to be the most his body would allow him. Nerves and excitement thrilled through him... it had been so long, so very long now! What if they didn’t work anymore? What if they weren’t as good together? What would he do? What would they do? Every night the thoughts assaulted his mind. It was infuriating, but his optimism won out. They would be fine. He loved Dirk. Dirk loved him. He was certain. It was going to be just as perfect as it had been before. The little squabbles and the disagreements would be there, sure, but they’d be more than able to go back to just simply being them.
The very moment he saw Dirk again, he knew he was right. Without a doubt he knew he was right.
He was back... and he was just utterly gosh damn blasted perfect.
Jake had foolishly gotten to the airport early which had given him no choice but to stand about the place and wait, but even that was made worth it by the sight of the blonde walking out through the arrivals gate. He just looked wonderful. His legs were hugged as was often the case by clean black jeans, a fairly loose, too loose for Jakes taste white shirt covered the musculature of his chest and shoulders and the delightfully well toned stomach that he just couldn’t wait to run his fingers, palms and ideally his tongue over again before the day was out. The shock of blonde hair of course, pale even against the somehow still pale skin. He supposed that some people just didn’t tan... he couldn’t help but smile at that little realisation. God. There was a lump in his throat. He couldn’t believe he was here, only a few meters away from Dirk once again... though the distance was unbearable.
With a laugh catching in his throat as the lump there all but choked it off he dashed forwards, his slightly chaotic run taking his straight up to the ever so slightly taller blonde. The moment he reached him he lifted an arm, flinging it up and around his neck as he made to either pull himself up or pull Dirk down, either, both, anything. He just needed him closer. He needed to touch him, hold him and make sure that Dirk knew as clear as the brightest fucking summers day that there hadn’t been a single moment of a single day when his mind had been fixed on anyone but him. Without waiting a moment he let his other hand shift to grip the flat metal of the dog tags that hung around the blondes neck, catching them and the ball link chain that held them up in his hand before tugging them up and over the blondes head, holding them tightly in his hand. He didn’t want them there, he wanted no reminder at all of the distance between them. A moment later he felt his breath catch.
“Hey... Jake. I need to ask you something.” Dirk had started speaking and for some reason Jake just knew that whatever he had to say he didn’t want to hear. It didn’t matter that the smooth tone was sweeter than honey and sugar together to him right then, he just didn’t want to know. The blonde seemed tense. He could feel the taught way he was holding himself under his arms. That wasn’t what he wanted, that wasn’t what he wanted at all, and he certainly didn’t want to hear the cause of it. Without any further hesitation he leant up and in, no long trying to pull Dirk down he merely used his hold on the blonde to lift himself up, pressing his fingers hard into his beloveds back as he pressed his lips equally soundly, almost pressing too firmly against Dirks. The kiss wasn’t elegant, it actually relatively close to being clumsy in its desperate execution but he just needed this. He needed Dirk. He needed the closeness and the comfort of something so familiar as the blondes lips just then, and he needed Dirk to know that he was still his entirely. I love you. I love you. I love you. The words rattled around his mind over and over again as he brought his other arm up once again. He curled it around behind Dirk’s head, using it to pull the blondes head closer as he felt the kiss slowly being returned, Dirk’s lips gently beginning to move against his before gradually pressing more firmly. He was trying to take control. Jake simply sighed, the sound as muffled against the harsh kiss as his subsequent attempt at words was.
“I love you...I love you I love you I love you.”
He didn’t care if Dirk could understand or even if he wanted to reply or not. All he wanted to do right then was kiss the holy fucking hell out of the blonde right there in the airport.