Chapter Text
It's not that they aren't out, as a couple. Zoe and Jo know, obviously, as does Alison – all three pretty much from day one – and anyway, it's impossible to keep anything unclassified a secret long in Eureka: everyone talks.
At least half of Global, Fargo informs Nathan one day in a misguided fit of transparency, thought they'd been fucking pretty much since Nathan got back into town.
Henry takes one look at the two of them, the first time Jack and Nathan walk into his garage together, and snorts in amusement. So there's that particular cat out of the bag.
And then there's the fact that at least five people saw them making out after the dance, while they were so focused on the newness of each other that their peripheral awareness was nonexistent, so really even before they'd finished their coffee the following morning a good quarter of Eureka's citizenry knew that Nathan Stark and Jack Carter were an item.
But Jack doesn't touch him in public.
At least, not like he does in private: casually proprietary, gentling and tender, insistent and wanting. When they're alone together, Jack actually seems to find it difficult to stop touching Nathan: he'll drop a hand on Nathan's thigh, press against Nathan's shoulder, slide his palm up to cup the base of Nathan's skull, run his fingers across the curve of Nathan's ass, press a kiss to Nathan's temple, squeeze his fingers around Nathan's hand.
It's like oxygen, Nathan's starting to believe, for all that he's only been getting it for – three months? About three months, now. It's become necessary – which accounts for the fact that Nathan notices when it doesn't happen.
Which is whenever they have an audience.
Like when they're having breakfast at Cafe Diem, for example, which they’ve been doing several times a week, even if they haven't managed to spend the previous night under the same roof (something they're orchestrating more and more, though they haven't talked about it yet).
Breakfast at the bunker – or, more occasionally, Nathan's cabin – involves a lot of casual bodily contact: kisses, caresses, Jack bumping up against Nathan's shoulder, reaching down to give Nathan's ass an appreciative squeeze. He's the most tactile of any lover Nathan's had, physical without being demanding, just communicating: I'm here and Later, when we have the time …
But when they meet at, or travel together to, the cafe for coffee and food, Jack pulls back. He's not chilly, not closed off, just keeps to his space, doesn't initiate.
When they’re at GD, Jack’s only ever hands-on in private which -- yes, okay, Nathan also feels constrained there: it’s work, after all, and they should at least attempt to be professional adults, but -- on the (virtual) baseball field? At the Saturday Farmer’s Market? At the Friday night screening of Gamera: The Invincible, complete with Mystery Science Theater riff tracks, to which Jack had dragged him in late September? Jack had chastely kept his hands to himself until after the lights went down, and even then only leaned into Nathan, shoulder to shoulder, which was reassuring but not the sort of darkened movie theatre groping that Nathan had half anticipated.
This Public Jack is such a contrast to Private Jack in this regard that Nathan isn't sure what to do.