Chapter Text
As the plane turns and tilts for the final descent into Logan airport, Eric shifts in his window seat so he can watch the harbor islands pass by beneath the wings, the Boston skyline pulling into view against the sunset.
This morning, he’d woken up in his childhood bedroom in Madison, had breakfast with his parents and attended church with his suitcases in the back of the van. After the service, his parents had driven him up to Hartsfield-Jackson. It had surprised Eric how hard it was, this time, to say goodbye. He’s done this before -- two or three times a year for the past two years -- but this time leaving had felt imbued with a finality that previous departures had not. He’s always, before, been leaving home for awhile; half-dreading, half-anticipating the next return. This time, he knows he’ll be back in Madison, sure -- maybe at Thanksgiving, maybe at Christmas, maybe a week next summer -- but he isn’t living there any longer.
The balance of home has irrevocably shifted.
He wants it to, he needs it to. He can’t wait until he lands at Logan and has New England beneath his feet and Jack within arm’s reach again. But knowing that hadn’t made it feel any less like an elbow to his side when he’d hesitated in front of his parents and realized that they, too, understood this time was different than all the times before.
They’d waited for him to hand over his checked bag and call up his boarding pass on his phone and then there’d been nothing left to do but say goodbye. He’d hugged his mom and gotten a side-hug from Coach, promised to text when he landed in Boston, and headed for the security with a final wave over his shoulder.
A two-hour delay and a three hour flight later, the wheels hit the runway at Logan and Eric is back on Massachusetts ground. He pulls his phone out of his backpack while they’re taxiing toward the gate and sees a series of texts from Jack:
At the airport.
You had a checked bag right?
I’ll be down by the luggage carousels.
Here.
When you get here.
Eric texts him back -- Here! Taxiing FOREVER ugh -- then texts his mother to let her know he’s on the ground and Jack is here to pick him up. The two women next to him, on their way to a business conference or expo of some kind, are discussing dinner plans. Though he knows it's unwarranted, their obvious visitor status makes Eric feel smug. He finds himself looking for an opening to lean over and make it clear he gets to walk off the plane into his boyfriend’s arms. I belong here! he wants to tell everyone on board. This is where I live now!
He sees Jack a second or two before Jack looks up from his phone and sees Eric, a smile lighting up his face and oh Lord help him but Eric will never never never get enough of making Jack smile. He’s found an out-of-the-way bench to sit on, behind an arrivals board and next to one of the Dunkin' Donuts stands where people walking by will be looking for food rather than professional hockey players picking up their boyfriends. He’s wearing his glasses and the Camp Oconee cap that Eric had bought him as a kinda-sorta joke (but mostly not because seeing Jack wearing it makes Eric melt just that little bit more inside).
They hadn’t talked about this, but Eric takes a chance as he walks up to Jack and reaches out with his free hand to pull Jack to his feet and into a kiss. And it must be okay because Jack comes willingly, arms sliding around Eric’s waist to steady him as Eric lifts up on his toes to lean in for a kiss.
“Hey,” Jack murmurs against Eric’s mouth and, God, yes, please Eric’s missed this. He’s barely stopped thinking about kissing Jack since putting Jack on his own flight back to Logan three weeks ago. And still his memory hasn’t done justice to how good and right it feels to be in Jack’s arms. Ten seconds in and he’s already wondering, with a slight edge of panic, how he will get through the school year to come without Jack on every roadie, without sleeping under the same roof.
Jack lets go and steps back to ask, “How was the flight?” as if Eric hadn’t complained his way through the flight delays on his phone. Eric suddenly remembers the last time he was in Logan. How he’d stepped shakily down from the Samwell shuttle and nearly forgotten to wait for his suitcase on the curb. How he’d been gripping his phone so hard he accidentally turned it off twice and had to fumble it, desperately, back on to ensure that the texts from Jack were still there. How he’d made it through security and then stumbled into the closest restroom where he could close himself in a stall for a short but messy crying jag.
His skin, then, had felt paper-thin and bruised all over. It doesn’t feel that way now.
“You hungry?” Jack asks. “We can stop somewhere for food.” But Eric shakes his head. “Can you just take me h--” he trips over the word home and corrects himself, although he couldn’t say why, “-- back to your place? Would that be okay?”
Jack smiles. “Yeah, that’d be okay.”
They collect Eric’s checked baggage and tow everything out to Jack’s car in the parking garage. Then Eric folds himself into the passenger seat and slides a hand over Jack’s thigh just because he can, feeling Jack's muscles tense and shift as he puts the car into reverse and then drive and navigates their way out of the garage and then the maze of airport roadways into the Ted Williams tunnel and eventually onto I-93 where they get caught in post-game traffic heading south out of the city..
“Afternoon game against the Rays,” Jack says.
“Seems they lost, 4-3,” Eric says, looking it up on his phone. No wonder the drivers seem irritable. Or maybe that's just Boston.
The snaking traffic crawls slowly past the exits for Roxbury, Andrew Square, Columbia Point, Quincy. Jack is a quiet driver, focused on the road, and Eric enjoys watching southeastern Massachusetts slide by in the gathering twilight. Jack has the air conditioning on in the car, but they’re traveling at a slow enough speed that Eric rolls down his window to enjoy how not-suffocating the summer heat is here compared with the last few days back in Georgia. He’s not going to need a shower before bed tonight...although, he thinks, glancing over at Jack, he might want one. It’s been a long three weeks.
He slides his hand down Jack’s leg to the hem of his shorts, running light fingers over the coarse hair on Jack’s thigh, then back again up the warm inside of his --
“Driving,” Jack reminds him, clapping a firm hand on Eric’s wrist -- though he's clearly amused. “You distracting little shit.”
Eric rolls his eyes. “We’re going thirty miles an hour.” But he drags his hand back up to the top of Jack’s leg, near where the seat belt crosses over his hip, and stops his teasing. Safety first. Sex later.
“So what do you want to do for your birthday?” Eric asks instead, to distract himself as much as Jack. He’s never been around for Jack’s birthday before. “I mean, besides cake which I will obviously make for you.”
“You’re gonna make me a cake?” Jack sounds both both happy and slightly wary. As if no one's ever made him a birthday cake before. Eric wonders what Jack's childhood birthdays were like -- probably a lot different from the water balloon fights and family feasts of his own childhood.
“Honey,” Eric pats Jack on the leg, “of course I’m baking you a cake. What sort of boyfriend do you take me for. What’s your favorite?”
“Maple apple?” Jack’s teasing him now.
“Cake, sweetheart. Not pie. Although a maple-apple cake would be...”
“What about something with cinnamon,” Jack says. “I have some of that cinnamon I brought down for your mom. Kind of a lot of it.”
“Mmm...” Eric thumbs open the browser on his phone and keeps himself busy all the way to the I-95 junction looking for something to bake featuring Jack’s amazing cinnamon.
The sun is all but set when they turn into Jack’s apartment building, so Eric only has a fleeting impression of a quiet street and massive trees, a deeper darkness in the direction of the river Jack tells him flows below the north face of the reclaimed factory building. The night sounds here, as they climb out of the car, are Samwell night sounds in Eric’s ears.
Jack helps him unload his two suitcases and backpack, locks the car from the key fob, and guides Eric with a little more touching than strictly necessary across the parking lot to a side entrance lit by a single bare bulb.
“Here -- there’s a security code for the main entrance,” Jack says. “It’s your birthday backwards.” He punches in 5-9-5-0 into the box and there’s a beep and a click as the door unlocks to allow passage.
Eric follows Jack inside, “My birthday...backwards?”
“I was a captive audience for all of Dex’s rants about online security on the team bus last year,” Jack reminds him dryly, over his shoulder, as they step into the foyer.
“Jack, my man!” calls the young man behind the desk across the lobby by the main entrance. “Package came in for you while you were out.”
“It’s Sunday?” Jack says, like it’s a question, but the guy waves the point away like it’s irrelevant.
“I dunno man, FedEx International -- they deliver seven days a week if you got enough to pay for it. Who do you know in...” he picks up the flat, rectangular box and peers down at the shipping labels, “...Turin?”
Jack snorts. “That’ll be my parents.” He walks across to the desk and collects the package. He tucks it under his arm and then hesitates.
“Lester, this is Eric,” he says, gesturing to where Eric is standing by the luggage. “Friend from college. He’s crashing with me until the semester starts. Eric, this is Lester. Staffs the desk on weekends. If you need anything and I’m out...”
“Nice meeting you, man,” Lester says, putting out a hand.
Eric steps forward and leans over the faux marble counter top to take it. “Pleasure to meet you as well,” he says, sweetly, to cover the twist of pain of being introduced as Jack’s friend from college. While technically true, and the explanation they’d settled on together, for now, to buy themselves time, it still feels like an erasure of what being here with Jack means to him. Means to both of them. And damn, does it hurt.
While Eric is shaking Lester’s hand, Jack picks up the larger of the two suitcases. He tips his head toward the stairs and starts walking so Eric doesn’t try to make further small talk. He just nods to Lester and follows after.
He’s seen Jack’s apartment over Skype and in pictures, but even a webcam tour can’t capture the feeling of an unfamiliar space the way actually standing inside of it does. He hadn’t understood, from the cam images, how light and airy the loft would feel, even in twilight.
“Jack, this is lovely,” he breathes, standing in the entry space and taking it in. The bedroom and bath to his right, the kitchen area to his left, and straight ahead the living room with its floor-to-ceiling windows facing the darkness and twinkling lights across the river. The pendant lights over the kitchen island that Jack has turned on provide a dim glow by which he can see the odd mix of compulsively tidy and lived-in that he remembers from Jack’s room at the Haus. There’s something slightly...odd about the arrangement of Jack’s things in the space, but standing in the doorway he can’t quite put his finger on it and chalks it up to the hasty tidying you do before someone comes to stay.
He hears Jack close and lock the door behind them, the chink of keys hitting the counter top. And then there’s Jack’s warmth and weight behind him, hands and arms sliding possessively around his waist, lips soft against his neck.
“Hey,” Jack says again. “I’m really glad you’re here, Bits.”
“Me too, sweetheart,” Eric says, feeling the prickle behind his eyes that’s the relief of letting Jack hold him. “I love you and I missed you.”
“I missed you and I love you,” Jack murmurs against the curve of Eric’s throat, nipping just hard enough to pinch but not leave a visible mark. Movement catches Eric’s eye and he looks up to see the two of them reflected in the living room window, himself cradled in Jack’s arms with Jack’s face pressed against his neck. Well fuck, he thinks, that's surprisingly...hot. He watches himself slide his own hands down Jack’s forearms to his wrists, turn into Jack’s kisses, and it’s mesmerizing to look at himself as one half of a couple.
“Tell me I’m your boyfriend, Jack?” he says, suddenly, twisting in Jack’s arms to look up at him.
“You’re my boyfriend,” Jack says, obediently and without hesitation. “Was that a question?”
“Not...not really,” Eric admits. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
"You're my boyfriend," Jack repeats, "and I'm your boyfriend."
"Mmm," Eric agrees, contentedly, leaning back against Jack's chest and letting Jack take his weight. It's a peaceful sort of silence. Until Eric's stomach decides it's a good time to let out a loud gurgle of protest.
Jack snorts. "Shall we order a pizza?"
"Yeah," Eric agrees. "Let's order a pizza. And then I've got plans for that couch."