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Eggs Benediction

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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.

Chapter Text

“You two are like a flashback to my most awkward years in High School,” Henry observes dryly at one point, after watching Nathan stand hands in his pockets and nod Jack off on town sheriff business before returning to the work table where he and Henry were dis-assembling a gidget that Fargo had stumbled upon in Storage Room 13-Z. It appeared to be hydro-powered and potentially fatal.

Nathan sighs, “He won’t -- he’s standoffish when there are people around. I don’t want to push him.”

“Mmm.” Henry’s non-committal. “Have you talked with him about it?”

Nathan flushes. Henry hadn’t known Nathan during the Tom era, but had watched the drama of Richard (the one who’d come after Staci and just before Alison) unfold from a front-row vantage point. Richard, Mr. Being Gay Will Ruin My Brilliant Career. Mr. I’ll Be Gay With You Three Counties Away. Mr. Touch My Ass in Public And I’ll Be Angry For a Week.

He’d known how to pick ‘em, back then.

“No,” he allows. “I don’t -- it seems kinda --”

Henry sighs, “I get that it’s none of my business, Nathan, so I’m only going to say this once and then leave the ball in your court, but. You’re allowed to ask him for that. Ask him to acknowledge what’s already an open secret in this whole damn town. How much touchy-feel-y shit goes on after that’s between the two of you, but I think you know as well as I do what happens when two people can’t bring themselves to actually say, in so many words, what’s going on between them.”

“Yes sir,” Nathan sighs, lightly mocking. But he also feels relieved, grateful that Henry is backing him up on this point. He’s been rationalizing the whole situation for weeks now, trying to deny that it bothers him. But now Henry’s said it in so many words, it’s hard to deny that his frustration matters.

It’s just that, the last time he’d had this conversation with a partner -- the last time he’d worked up the courage to say that openly acknowledging the relationship was a deal-breaker for him -- well, that had been that. And Richard had been gone. Theirs’ was a relationship that never would have lasted, true, but the knowledge of that, even at the time, hadn’t made Richard’s decision that Nathan wasn’t worth coming out of the closet for any easier to live with.

A couple of hours later, he leaves Henry to his calculations and his tinkering to drive back to GD, where he sits in his office and writes emails for three hours with half his mind while the other half tries to consider -- without hitting the neural nuclear fallout panic button -- what to do next.

As a good scientist, he thinks, he should at least test his hypothesis before making a determination regarding how to proceed. He’s been letting Jack call the shots, he realizes. He’s been assuming Jack would make the first public gesture when he was ready.

He’s been trusting Jack to be ready, and to know what to do -- just like he has so many times in the past few months -- to get past the difficult First Time.

But maybe it’s time for Nathan to step up and ask for what he wants. Though maybe not with actual words, because he doesn’t think he can do that, risk that, risk Jack saying “no.” So he’ll test his hypothesis first, and maybe if Jack’s been waiting on him, waiting for him to make the first move this time, the conversation can be avoided altogether.

Chapter Text

Nathan's opportunity arises the following morning.

He’s spent the night at Jack’s (His hand gripping the back of Jack’s thigh, pulling Jack's leg flush against his own hip...) where they had the privacy (Jack’s left forefinger slipping down the crease of Nathan’s ass in a question...) created by a late-night theatre rehearsal at the high school (The sweat that gathered along Jack’s sternum as Nathan pressed close, a thigh between his legs...) to continue learning one another’s curves and crevices.

It’s been one of those nights that clings like a sweet-scented residue on their skin, even after showers and fresh clothes and breakfast.

(Nathan may or may not admit to failing to scrub beneath his nails, leaving the scent of Jack lingering on his fingertips, such that he catches it faintly on the air every time he lifts his coffee to his lips while driving the three of them, Zoe dozing in the back seat of his SUV, back down to town.)

Maybe, the caffeine whispers through his bloodstream, Maybe you’ve just been waiting when you should be offering.

So when he pulls into an open parking spot outside the sheriff’s office, instead of just saying his goodbyes in the car, he unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car.

“You want something from Vincent, Nathan?” Zoe calls back over her shoulder from halfway across the street.

“Uh, sure! Revenant with an extra shot, please, Zoe -- need cash?” He reaches for his back pocket but she waves him off, don’t bother, and disappears through the front door of the already-bustling cafe.

“You free tonight?” Jack’s shrugging his jacket on, not looking at Nathan while he talks, eyes sweeping the street and then shifting toward the window of the station, checking to see if Jo’s car in the space next to Nathan’s means she’s already in the office or if Zoe will have run into her across the street.

He’s checking, Nathan realizes, to see if anyone’s watching them. Nathan feels a little colder than he had a minute ago, in the mild September air.

“Dinner?” Nathan tries for nonchalance as they wait for Zoe to re-appear with caffeinated beverages in hand.

“Yeah.” Jack rubs his hand across the back of his neck, a gesture that Nathan’s learning means he’s uneasy.

Nathan moves around the front of the car on the pretense of easier conversation, watching Jack maintain a foot or two of space between them, though he rocks forward slightly on the balls of his feet as if at least some part of Jack wants to be closer.

“Want me to bring anything?” Nathan’s riffling through his mental catalog of the wine stored in his cellar. He’s been buying steadily for several years now, with little occasion to actually indulge.

“Uh--” Jack shrugs, “Coupla beers? S.A.R.A.H. leads to lazy cooking.”

“How are you on Côtes de Sambre?” He can tell the term doesn’t mean anything. “Wine? It’s a Belgian variety. I think I have a nice merlot, and maybe a pinot noir?”

“Sure. Something I should ask S.A.R.A.H. to magic up to go with it?”

“What’s her track record on Italian?”

“I’m a fan of her four-cheese mushroom lasagna?” Jack seems to have relaxed a little, with Nathan leaning against the car, not moving closer. He’s got his hands in his coat pockets and his shoulders have dropped although he hasn’t stopped scanning the sidewalks. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan sees the front door of Cafe Diem swing open. Jo and Zoe appear, each with a takeaway beverage in both hands.

Jack sees them too, and nods toward Jo: “Jo and I have a date with Taggert for target practice out at the Henderson’s,” he says, “But we should be done by six.” His clears his throat and adds, almost below the register of human hearing, “I’ll probably get home sweaty and covered in grease-paint if you’re interested in helping me clean up before dinner.”

Nathan grins, “I’ll plan on it,” and just as Jo and Zoe reach the curb sees his opening and inclines toward Jack, angling for a goodbye kiss. But before his outstretched palm can make contact with Jack’s hip, before his mouth is anywhere near Jack’s lower lip (which Nathan has a definite thing for), Jack’s slipping away from him, shoulders hunched again, eyes searching everywhere but where Nathan’s standing.

“I’ll, um --” Jack gestures with the ring of keys he’s fished out of his coat pocket, “I’ll just go -- here, Jo! I’ll go open the door since your hands are full. Have you unlocked yet?”

“Jack--” Nathan starts, but Jack’s brushing past his shoulder, face turned away, already gone.

Jo and Zoe exchange a look which is then turned in concert on Nathan. He shrinks back at the force of their combined powers of observation. Jo grimaces over her shoulder at the sheriff’s retreating back, then shrugs at Nathan in sympathy before nodding her goodbyes to Zoe and trotting off after her boss.

Zoe hands over Nathan’s Revenant (extra shot), watching his face thoughtfully.

“Thanks,” he says automatically, although the coffee already in his stomach is roiling unpleasantly.

“No problem. I gotta--” she nods her head toward the school. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, realizes who he’s talking to, and shakes his head to refocus his brain. It doesn’t work. Still, he manages a smile and salute with the coffee cup. “Yeah, it’s fine Zoe, don’t worry.”

She hmms at him, unconvinced, but hauls her book bag out of the back of his SUV and makes her way down the street without another word.

Chapter Text

Nathan's phone chirps in his pocket halfway through the afternoon, as he and Fargo are going over the latest readings from the oscillating quantum resonator. He pulls the phone out, and pulls up the text: Pick me up @ school. 3:45. Told Dad I had a thing. UR taking me 4 fries @ CD. Z.

“Dr. Stark?” Fargo's finger is hovering over a line of code on the screen, something to which Nathan's obviously expected to respond.

“Yeah, Fargo, I'm here. Just give me--” He thumbs the keypad and replies: I'll just cancel that meeting with the Joint Chiefs, then. 3:45 it is. S.

He'd had some trepidation, at first, about Zoe because, well, teenage girls. And second, he's already sharing parenting responsibilities with Allison -- and until he and Jack have sorted out what this is and where it's headed, he's not sure how involved he should get. They didn't write protocols for shit like this.

Also, he was the interloper, here: Zoe was her father's daughter, true, but she was also her mother's daughter, and while his own parents had stayed together – he thought happily so – until his father passed away in 2004, he'd been privy to enough “kids of divorce” drama among his cohort at MIT to know that sometimes teenagers were really pissed when their parents split. And sometimes that meant they really resented anyone their parent was even kinda-maybe interested in dating.

But this was beyond dating, now. It was starting to feel necessary. And it's Zoe, not him, who’s texted him and imperiously arranged a … well, he wasn't sure what to think. Was this going to be a dramatic dressing down? A gimlet-eyed debriefing from under that truly frightening eye makeup of hers? A consolation soda and commiseration over the difficulty of reasonable communication with Carter senior? A polite invitation out of their lives?

He shifts his weight, a little, suddenly feeling slightly nervous, almost cowed, by the possibility of this particular scrawny teenager on a mission.

The phone chirps again and he glances down. Cya.

He sighs, and slips the phone back into his back pocket. “Okay, Fargo, sorry. Scheduling thing. Can you repeat that from the top?

Chapter Text

“So, the first thing you have to know is that my dad, like, totally doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to dating.” Zoe takes a long sucking drink on the straw of her lavender-sea-salt milkshake, her knobby elbows braced on the table, her hands folded around the base of the tall glass.

They're sitting outside and Stark's trying to effect nonchalance, like he regularly takes his boyfriend's daughter out for after-school carb-and-sugar inhalation. Like he just happened to have this afternoon off and, you know, offered to do Jack a favor.

He sits back in his chair, takes a sip of his afternoon cappuccino, and raises an inquiring eyebrow. Her small frame seems galvanized with a torrent of words poised to fill the space between them.

“Seriously. You realize you’re the first person since Mom, right? And they were together since they met in college --” to a fifteen-year-old something in the far-distant past “--so, like, his skills are rusty. Plus,” she pauses for another draw on her shake, “I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Avoiding you? Like, when you reach for him when we’re out for dinner? Or when you go to kiss him goodbye, like you did this morning? I think he’s doing it without thinking, like, assuming he can’t. Or, I don’t know, probably worried someone’s gonna freak out about it? He’s told you you’re his first, right? Like, first time in a same-sex relationship? And it’s not like he’s hung out in a lot of accepting spaces.”

Nathan blinks. It’s not like this is the first time he’s run into the country’s frightening new breed of queer youth: the ones who’ve been out and proud practically since they transitioned out of diapers. But it’s slightly daunting to be given relationship advice by a kid who’s still on her learner’s permit.

“You’re saying he’s … scared?”

She dips a handful of fries in Vincent’s signature chili-lime catsup and chews for a moment, looking at him thoughtfully.

“I’m saying he thinks he’s protecting himself. And you.” She swallows. “There was this guy he used to work with in L.A. Another marshal. Paul. They’d sometimes go to Dodgers games together and Dad would invite Paul home for dinner. After they’d been doing this for, I don’t know, three years? Paul’s partner Teo would come to. They’d been together for ages, like thirty years or something. But no one at Dad’s work knew, except Dad. They were that deep in the closet. In L.A.” She shrugs. “I’m not saying -- probably all the marshals there woulda been cool with it? But federal marshals work all over, and Paul knew if he was out it’d hurt his career.”

“So you’re saying Jack’s worried that being with me will jeopardize his job?” Something unpleasant clenches in Nathan’s stomach; he’s not sure he wants the espresso any longer.

“No! I mean, not consciously.” She leans forward earnestly. “He’s gonna be appalled when you point it out to him -- or do you want me to do it for you?” She offers.

“As tempting as the thought is--” Nathan begins dryly, figuring this isn’t a conversation to delegate.

“Okay. Just be prepared for epic defensiveness is all I’m saying.” She picks up another handful of fries. “What some?” He shakes his head, squints across the street at the (currently empty) sheriff’s office, considering.

“Okay,” he says, half to himself. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Nathan waits until Jack is three-quarters of the way through his glass of pinot noir before bringing it up. He figures this will give him the best possible chance of getting through this without the kind of raised voices that bring on the taste of fear in the back of his throat and set his hands trembling with adrenaline.

He’d considered asking Jack while they were in the shower before dinner, rather leisurely removing greasepaint from Jack’s extremities, but that had seemed like an ill-timed ambush. So he’d focused on the easy closeness of Private Jack and let the question of Public Jack bide its time.

(Once more before … whispered the voice in the back of his head, before he shoved it away.)

“So,” he clears his throat after Zoe’s made noises about an Advanced Astrophysics quiz and disappeared up the stairs with a Meaningful Look in his direction (he also suspects her bedroom door has been left open for eavesdropping). “Jack, you didn’t let me kiss you this morning. I’d like to know why?”

It comes out slightly more pleading than he’d hoped to muster.

“What?” Jack’s clearly startled, but the flush up his neck isn’t entirely due to the wine, and he can’t quite meet Nathan’s eyes. “I--what do you mean?”

“This morning, by the car? I tried to kiss you goodbye and you -- dodged.” Nathan clears his throat, finds himself looking down at his own wine glass instead of at Jack. “I’ve been noticing. You’re uncomfortable. I’d like to know why. If there’s something I’ve--”

“I didn’t dodge.” Zoe had been right. Jack’s voice is edged with embarrassment at being caught out doing something. Something he’d only half-acknowledged to himself he was doing. “I’m not uncomfortable.”

He doesn’t ask what there might be to feel uncomfortable about, though, so Nathan knows the thought had crossed Jack’s mind.

Nathan swallows against his own rising pulse, forces himself to look up, stay calm. “Jack. You did, you are. And it’s not -- it’s not the first time. And I’m not the only one to notice. Zoe and Jo saw it too. I just --”

“I’m not--”

“Jack.” Nathan takes a deep breath. He just needs to say this, he reminds himself firmly. “You need to know that I can’t do the closeted thing--”

“I’m not--” Jack tries again, but Nathan has to get this out before he loses courage.

“-- I’ve tried and it’s toxic. It’s not like I’m asking you to run a rainbow flag up the pole outside the station or make out with me on a float in Eureka’s next pride parade, but -- I’d like, I need, not to feel like I’m offending you by acting like we’re a couple in public. Because we are.”

“I’m not--” Jack tries for a third time.

“Yes, you are.” Nathan squeezes his eyes shut, remembers Jack saying over a month ago, I seem to be falling in love with you. Tries to remember the gentleness of his hands, mouth, the weight of him, close and sure. “You don’t treat me like your boyfriend when we’re out in public. You don’t touch me the way you’d touch someone you were dating. You don’t kiss me hello or kiss me goodbye, or make plans with me when anyone but Zoe or Jo or Alison is within hearing distance. You haven’t introduced me as your boyfriend to anyone--”

“I thought --” Jack looks bewildered – “I didn't want – I thought you wanted privacy. You've never touched me in front of other people!”

“The couple of times I’ve tried to introduce you as my boyfriend you’ve cut me off before I can get the words out of my mouth, Jack!” He can hear his voice rising, slightly panicked, and reigns it in with a breath. “Contrary to some of the rumors at Global Dynamics, I'm not a complete asshole. I'm not going to out you without your permission. I don’t think you get to blame me for this. I'm telling you that the closeted relationship thing is toxic. It'll eat what we have together. Alive. And I don't know about you, but what we've got? It's brilliant and terrifying and hard as fuck but I want you, want to keep you, and I don't think I'll be able to believe I can if we do this thing where you're not mine the minute someone else is looking.”

Jack's leg is going like a jackhammer under his clenched fingers, and as Nathan runs out of words he's up from the table, pacing, hands scrubbing through his hair, small inarticulate noises emanating from the back of his throat.

“Everyone knows, Dad,” Zoe offers, from where she’s re-emerged from her room to stand halfway down the stairs. (Nathan had been right about the bedroom door.)

“You stay out of this, Zoe Evelyn Carter!” Jack sounds more weary than genuinely angry.

“It's my life too, Dad. Like, I get that you're having some sort of midlife post-divorce bullshit identity crisis, or whatever. And, like, I get that it's scary. You don't think I'm scared sometimes, being out? You remember when Kelsey Stephens used her lipstick to scrawl 'lezbo bitch' on my locker in 7th grade? And the time Mr. Ashworth told the class homosexuality was a genetic disorder they were gonna be able to cure someday? Or all the guys I've had to fucking deal with who think 'bisexual' just means 'asking for it'? There are times when being out totally sucks. But you're happy, Dad. Happier than you've been pretty much since I can remember. And he's part of it.” -- she jabs a finger at Nathan, who can’t help jumping slightly in his seat -- “Please, please don't fuck this up. Don't fuck our life in Eureka up just 'cause you're afraid your marshal buddies to cut you. If they do they're not fucking worth it.”

“And anyway,” she adds, with endearing adolescent certainty, “everyone here in Eureka's gonna have your back. They won't dare come after you.”

Nathan wisely keeps his council while father and daughter glare at one another in obstinate silence for a moment or two. He counts his pulse as it hammers against the wineglass he’s holding unreasonably tight. He forces himself to unclench his fingers, lean back in his chair.

“I’m not-- I don’t--” Jack swallows, looking back and forth, first Zoe, then Nathan. Then, abruptly, he turns on his heel and walks out the door, leaving a draft of cold air in his wake.

Nathan feels a bit numb. He stares at the doorway blankly, not hearing Zoe until he’s repeated his name several times.

“--Nathan! Hey. You okay?” She’s come down to the dining room and is waving a hand in front of his face. “Don’t freak, okay? He just needs some time to think. He’ll sort himself out.” Again: that adolescent certainty. Nathan wishes he could summon some of that up from his own past, on cue. “He’s just mad at himself and he’s gotta walk it off.”

She begins gathering dishes up to load them into the dishwasher. Nathan pushes his chair back mechanically, moving to help. The wine is souring in his stomach, now, and he’s not sure what to do. He hates the lack of resolution, a problem left unsolved. He’d almost rather Jack had -- no. He doesn’t wish Jack had broken up with him, he reminds himself.

But it feels almost like he has.

Chapter Text

Whatever Jack needs to think about takes him two hours. It’s nearly ten when he comes back in. Nathan’s at the dining room table on his laptop going over the reports he needs to review before the delayed conference call with the Joint Chiefs, rescheduled for the following afternoon. He’s managed to take some of the edge off his anxiety by making Zoe hot chocolate and sending her back up stairs to complete her homework, and then stress-baking a batch of chocolate-oatmeal-raisin cookies, despite the fact that Jack has the wrong kind of oatmeal and inferior Toll House chocolate chips.

Following the stress-baking, he’s stress-eaten half a dozen cookies and has another half-dozen on a plate at his elbow, along with a shot of espresso, when Jack’s footsteps sound in the stairwell and the lock on the door beeps, presaging his arrival.

“Welcome home, Sheriff Carter,” S.A.R.A.H. intones, “Dr. Stark has made some chocolate chip cookies if you are hungry, or I can prepare a wide variety of other late-night snacks.”

“Thanks, S.A.R.A.H., I’m good.” Jack says, accompanied by the sound of his keys on the table by the door.

Nathan considers for a moment before turning around, and then once he has finds no words of greeting, reconciliation, challenge, or much of anything at all have come to mind, so he settles for watching in silence as Jack kicks off his shoes and hangs up his coat.

“I’m sorry,” are the first words out of Jack’s mouth. He pulls out a chair and drops it down in front of Nathan, where he takes a seat and reaches out for Nathan’s hand. Nathan let’s him take it, feels how cold Jack’s fingers are from the October night. Still isn’t sure what to say.

He considers and discards It’s okay (because it isn’t) and Don’t worry about me (because he was done saying shit like that) and circumventing the conversation by initiating sex (because he’s promised himself no more avoidance sex.)

Instead, Nathan lays his free hand over the top of Jack’s hands, where they’re folded around his own, tries to warm Jack’s night-chilled skin between his own hands, palms that smell of cinnamon and coffee, and waits.

Jack takes a deep breath and, this time, looks up until he’s caught Nathan’s eyes: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have walked out but I needed -- I say things I don’t mean when I’m angry, sometimes. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“I understand,” Nathan tries the truth, and finds it fits.

Jack clears his throat. “I didn’t. Mean. To be hiding. In a bad way.” Long pauses between each phrase as he forms words to form sentences to explain. Nathan waits.

“It’s--Zoe’s right. I’m happy. Because of you. You’re a big part of it. I don’t want to fuck it up. Us up. I just.” He shakes his head. “I think I thought somehow this was not fucking it up.”

“How is not coming out part of not fucking us up?” Nathan’s not sure he means the question to be rhetorical, but regardless Jack answers.

“It’s not. But I guess. It seemed -- safer.”

“Safer how?”

Jack shrugs. “You know as well as I do: it’s not easy being out. Maybe Zoe doesn’t remember how she refused to go to school for three days after Kelsey Stephens graffitied her locker, and how the school administration refused to take the harassment seriously, but I do. And the ongoing bullying her mother and I couldn’t get the school administrators to address. And maybe you think there aren’t homophobic cops down in gay L.A. but I’ve heard the way the guys talk about the openly queer agents when they aren’t in the room, and about their partners. Maybe no one’s getting fired for being gay, but. They’re not bringing their husbands and wives to the annual Fourth of July picnic either.”

Nathan feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth: “The U.S. Marshals down in L.A. have an annual Fourth of July picnic?”

“You get what I’m saying.”

“I get what you’re saying, but Jack--”

“The point is,” Jack squeezes Nathan’s hands: Just let me finish this. “The point is, -- and have I ever told you about the time my friend Casey nearly had to drop out of school when his parents found out we were sleeping together? March of freshman year, we’d planned to go to Florida for Spring Break and somehow his folks found out -- they drove three hours up from central Kentucky and emptied his dorm room. Took everything they’d paid for, including his clothes and textbooks and the sheets off his bunk, and packed it into the back of a U-Haul and drove away. They haven’t spoken to him in over two decades.”

“I--” Nathan’s not sure he has an adequate response to that.

“The point is,” Jack pushes through, “I don’t ever want to be the cause of something like that again.”

“Jack, you aren’t responsible for--” Nathan begins, but Jack cuts him off:

“I’m not saying I’m responsible -- not in that way. I get that Casey’s parents were bigots, that if it hadn’t been me, there’d have been someone else the next year, or five years after, I just--” He leans in, “It was bad, Nathan. I don’t think I even told Abby how bad. I mean, she knew Casey, too, a little but -- I mean, it’s different. When you’re the guy whose dick the kid’s parents are thinking about, while they -- And when you’re the guy who gets the look when you’re standing there. Watching ‘em box up his polo shirts and running shoes.”

“Jack, I--” Nathan begins, licking his lips.

“I’m not making excuses. I just want you to know why,” Jack says, reaching up to cup Nathan’s jaw in his hand. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like you weren’t mine, somehow. I think I was just trying to keep you -- us -- safe. For a little longer.”

“It’s just that you don’t--” Nathan tries again.

“I know. I’ll do better. I promise.”

Nathan let’s the words sit between them for a breath or two, considering. Does he just want that to be enough, out of sheer relief, or is it actually a genuine resolution? Probably not a question that can be answered this evening. So Jack’s promise will have to do. He's willing to let it do.

“Okay.” He says. And then, to make himself feel better, “I’m holding you to that.”

Jack grins: “I’m counting on it.”

Nathan reaches over and pulls Jack into his lap, sealing the deal with a kiss that turns … complicated.

Upstairs, in Zoe’s room, S.A.R.A.H. observes sotto voce, “It is recommended that you not venture down to the first floor of your home for the next hour, Zoe Carter.”

Bent over her notes, Zoe smiles.

Chapter Text

In the morning, despite the late night, they’re up early enough to grab breakfast at Cafe Diem before Zoe has to be at school. They drive into town in two separate vehicles this time, since the SUV and the Sheriff’s jeep are parked at the bunker.

When Nathan pulls into an empty space a few doors down from the cafe and kills the engine, he sees Jack on the sidewalk waiting on the sidewalk for him.

“Zoe and Jo grabbed us a table,” Jack says, when Nathan’s in earshot. He reaches out a hand: “Let’s do this thing.”

Before Nathan can ask what, he’s being pulled into the restaurant by Jack, whose fingers are threaded through his own. They pause inside the front door, eyes adjusting to the light inside. Zoe waves from a booth on their right.

Nothing else happens.

Nathan suppressed a grin

“Hey, guys!” Vincent calls from the counter, “Zoe’s got a table over there. The usual?”

“Yup,” Jack says, still hand-in-hand with Nathan, as they thread their way through the maze of tables to where the girls are sitting.

“Morning,” Jo says, raising an eyebrow at them, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. “You two’re lookin’ fine this morning?”

“Yeah, we’re--” Jack glances at Nathan as he says this, squeezes his hand in a slightly sweaty grip, “We’re good.”

And then, before Nathan can interpret the look in Jack’s eyes, Jack’s leaning in, crowding into his personal space, hip to hip, and sealing the deal with a meaningful kiss.

There's a moment of universal silence before the restaurant erupts into applause; Nathan feels Jack’s whole body relax, and his mouth against Nathan’s lips turn up in a tentative smile.