Chapter Text
Eric wakes up from a nightmare just after three, his pulse racing with the adrenaline pumping through his system. It’s caused him to overheat and he can feel the prickle of sweat across his chest and on his back, making him stick to the sheets despite the cool night air circulating with the soft whirr of Jack’s ceiling fan.
He lays unmoving for the space of a dozen breaths, forcing himself to inhale deep and slow, then exhale. He watches the movement of the fan above his head in the faint glow of Jack’s alarm clock. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the rise of Jack’s shoulder under the sheet where he’s rolled onto his side in sleep. Eric had fallen asleep with his nose comfortingly pressed against the back of Jack’s neck, where his dark hair curls and smells of his shampoo. He must have gotten too hot and overheated, rolling away and kicking at the sheets which are now twisted around his legs.
He knows from previous experience that it’s not a good idea to let himself fall right back into sleep when he wakes up from bad dreams. When he drifts back off again, he just ends up back in the dream: running, trapped, searching, alone.
He pushes himself up onto his elbows. He can feel he’s half-hard from the fear and arousal, which happens sometimes and feels particularly unfair and uncomfortable in this instance. Because his bad dream had been about getting caught having sex with Jack in a locker room, somewhere, by angry teammates that in his dream were guys from Samwell even though his brain told him they were Falconers. And Shitty had been yelling at him for being embarrassed, and Jack wouldn’t talk to or look at him, and now his body is a confusing mess of fear and shame and desire.
He yanks at his edge of the sheets and manages to get himself untangled without waking Jack, rolling out of bed and padding quietly into the kitchen. The sleek refrigerator has a built-in water filter and Eric fumbles in the cupboards above the sink for a glass and then presses it under the backlit nozzle so he can flush the bad taste out of his mouth. The fridge gives a motorized humm and fills the tumbler with a cold stream of water.
Standing in the kitchen helps clear his head. No one’s walked in on him and Jack having sex. No one’s actually mad at him. There’s been no yelling. He’s not trapped in confining spaces with angry, larger bodies looming over him.
He blinks the afterimages from behind his eyes, lets his gaze roam around the apartment, settling on the wide expansive windows, the shadowy trees outside, the flickering blue and green and orange lights of Jack's modem and router, laptop and printer.
Water glass still half full, he goes into the bathroom to pee and splashes cold water on his face. He steals Jack’s towel on purpose so he can inhale the scent of Jack’s shampoo and soap again. Lemongrass and cucumber and mint, he thinks, making himself recall the ingredients list on the bottle. Clean skin, open spaces, arms that have never trapped him when he didn't want to be held.
When he slips back into bed, Jack rolls over toward him. “Everything okay?” He asks quietly, not sounding particularly alarmed but alert nonetheless. Eric is learning that Jack doesn’t really do half-awake.
“Bad dreams,” he admits, letting Jack reach out and pull him close.
Jack nuzzles at Eric’s temple, pressing soft familiar kisses against Eric’s forehead as Eric tucks his face in against Jack’s chest. Limbs are awkward, facing each other like this, but Eric is starting to learn the tricks. He lets his left hand curl loosely in the space between their chests while he slides his right hand down Jack’s flank, from the ball of his shoulder over his ribs, the dip of his waist, the rise of his hip and ass, the back of his thigh to the warmth at the back of his knee.
“Do you want to tell me?” Jack asks, softly, into the silence. “When I was little, my mom used to make me tell her my nightmares. She said if you told someone, told them out loud, you took their power away.” Eric closes his eyes and concentrates on the way Jack’s hand is rubbing small circles against his back, underneath his shoulder blade. Jack’s touch is gentle and undemanding, though Eric can feel Jack’s dick pressed softly against his thigh. His body remembers Jack in the dream, remembers Jack crowding him up against the locker room wall, insistent, remembers himself wanting and worried. It hadn’t felt safe, and it hadn’t felt like Jack.
“Did it work?” He asks, finally, hearing the hesitation in his own voice.
Jack lets an almost soundless, thready laugh out into the space between them; Eric can feel warm breath ghosting across his cheek. “Sometimes,” he admits. “Nightmares are often ridiculous, eh? If you try to describe them, they turn into stories, not memories? But stories can still...be scary, I guess.”
Eric wonders what stories Jack finds scary, and almost asks. But Jack asked Eric a question first and Eric remembers the last time Jack made him promise to call if he had nightmares and how he hadn’t kept that promise. So he smooths his hand along Jack’s side a couple of times, to calm himself, marveling -- as he does every time -- how much of Jack there is to touch.
“You should always sleep naked,” he says suddenly, and Jack laughs for real this time, surprised and amused. It's obviously not what he's expecting Eric to say next.
“Oh?”
“There’s just so much of you,” Eric says, not even trying to explain really.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jack allows.
Eric slides his palm around to the small of Jack’s back and shifts his hips forward, bringing them flush together, tangling their legs. All during June, He’d wondered how they would fit together, if it would be awkward, he wouldn’t know what to do with his legs or his arms or whether it would matter that Jack had inches on him. If their noses would get in the way when kissing. If his kissing technique would be embarrassingly inadequate. If he would freeze the first time Jack touched him, despite how much he wanted Jack’s hands, mouth, everything, because people had only grabbed him there in cruel jest before.
Those worries had been forgotten, in Madison, when on that first night Jack had asked is this okay? are you okay? with each new touch and Eric had been able to respond each and every time with yes, yes, God, please Jack, yes until Jack was satisfied.
“I was dreaming that we were having sex, in a locker room somewhere, I don’t know where, maybe Faber? But it didn’t feel like our locker room. We were -- you really wanted us to, even though I kept saying no, the guys would be there any minute, but you were … I mean, I know it wasn’t you. But in my dream -- dream-you -- you pushed me up against the wall of the locker room and I wasn’t wearing anything but my jersey. And I wanted to, but I knew other people were coming and we were gonna get caught.” He’s mumbling into Jack’s collarbone, hoping Jack can hear him because he doesn’t want to say it twice. “And we did get caught, by some guys from Samwell except they were your teammates, the Falcs, and everyone was shouting and I was trying to get away but you kept -- you wouldn’t talk to me but you wouldn’t let me go and Shitty was lecturing me about how I was stupid to be embarrassed --” he’s said all of this in one rush of breath and has to pause to haul fresh air into his lungs.
“Eric,” Jack says, quietly and seriously, pulling back so he can lay a hand along Eric’s cheek and theoretically look him in the eye although it’s still too dark in their bedroom to really see properly. “Eric. Je ne ferais jamais -- I would never --”
“I know, I know, it’s not --” Eric’s shaking his head, hoping Jack can feel the movement against his open palm. “That’s why it was a bad dream. I know you wouldn’t. So it all felt so wrong ..." he hunches his shoulders in, feeling the lingering tension in his shoulders and neck.
(Although, part of his brain presents to him, not all of the dream had felt bad. At some point when Eric’s not so close to the terror of being caught naked by angry bullies he should probably go back and poke at the part about Jack propositioning him in the locker room, about how Eric in that moment had very much wanted him to.)
He can hear Jack thinking in the dark.
“Jack,” he says, pushing himself up on his elbow so their faces are level.
“I don’t want you to feel like --” Jack starts, and Eric knows he’s thinking about yesterday, about that kid at the diner, about the day before that and the exhausting meeting with the Jack’s people. Knows Jack still doesn’t quite understand that Eric being here isn’t conditional.
Eric pushes gently at Jack’s shoulder until he takes the hint and falls back against his pillows, stretching out on his back, and Eric can sling a leg over his thighs and haul himself into a sitting position, somewhat awkwardly, straddling Jack with his knees pressed into the mattress on either side of Jack’s waist. He likes this position. Jack is comfortable to sit on, the width of his hips just enough to make Eric aware of the muscles on the inside of his own thighs. Aware of Jack trapped beneath him, warm and heavy and thick. He feels Jack flex his ass just enough to lift a little closer, then release against the bed.
There, but not demanding. Eric can almost hear him holding his breath and he wishes he could reach the switch for Jack’s bedside light and turn it on to really look at Jack because he loves looking down into Jack’s face and seeing the wild vulnerability and incredulous hope that emerges when Eric does this. Like he’s realizing all over again that Eric is his.
Which, Eric thinks, is ridiculous, Jack is ridiculous, because this is Jack. Of course Eric is his.
His brain offers him, in a flash, the dream-memory of being pinned against the painted cinderblock walls of the locker room, of Jack’s body pressed him up against the cold immovable concrete, of the way it felt like and not-at-all like being shoved in the hallways at school and more like Jack checking him up against the boards, about the fact that now here he is -- here because he wants to be -- in the privacy of Jack’s bedroom.
Jack lifts his hands, uncertainly, and then lowers them lightly to Eric’s thighs, sliding them up to his waist, pressing his thumbs into the groove at the top of Eric’s thighs.
“This okay?” he asks, and Eric wants to laugh but doesn’t because this is Jack worrying again.
“Yeah,” Eric affirms, clearing his throat, “yeah. Trust me. So much more than okay.” He presses his ass down against Jack, once, twice, feeling Jack twitch beneath him, feeling how inviting his body is, open to Eric’s touches. He settles his own hands atop Jack’s and slides his palms lightly up the length of Jack’s forearms, elbows, upper arms, shoulders, letting his body travel forward after his hands until he’s leaning over Jack with his hands braced to either side of Jack’s shoulders.
“Hey, baby,” he tries, and decides he likes the way the endearment lilts off his lips.
“Hey,” Jack echoes back. “Eric. What do you want?”
Eric rounds his spine, stretching, shaking off the adrenaline itch, feeling the way his dick drags against Jack’s belly. Earlier his body had been interested when his brain was filled with no no no and now his brain wants distraction, wants a reminder how good this can feel, and his body is only slowly, slowly getting on board.
“I want to stop thinking about people being angry at us,” Eric says, softly, into the dark. Spine up, spine down. Jack’s dick against the inside of his thigh, against the weight of his balls.
“No one is angry at us,” Jack whispers back, his voice tangling with Eric’s as Eric leans down to brush a kiss against his lips.
“They will be,” Eric says, sadly. “You know they will be.”
“Those people aren’t going to matter, we won’t let them matter,” Jack says, and Eric wonders whose words he’s echoing. Maybe Eric’s own. It sounds like something Eric might say, when he’s feeling braver than he has the last few days.
“Just...stop me from thinking, okay?” Eric pleads, with a thrust of his hips that brings them together in a drag of friction that feels a bit dull and distant but slightly less distant than the last thrust; his body is growing cautiously interested in the idea of sex.
“Mmm,” Jack agrees, and Eric can hear both desire and affection in his voice. “That can probably be arranged.”