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Jack pulls in behind Nathan’s cabin. There’s a distinct smell of woodsmoke, and a light in the kitchen window, so he knows Stark has -- as promised -- left GD not too long after eight that evening and made his way home to rendezvous with Jack for their usual Saturday-night-into-Sunday-morning … thing. Jack refuses point-blank to refer to it as “date night” (he and Abby had tried those once and they were a miserable failure), but they do both try -- barring apocalyptic scenarios that, okay, yes, do happen with relative frequency in Eureka -- try to set aside their phones, PDAs, laptops, and just be together without the demands or the buzz of constant information overload.
He pauses in the kitchen to toss the fish Vincent had wrapped in butcher paper into the fridge. En route to the back door he snags a couple of Rogues from the stash under the kitchen counter -- a Mocha Porter for Nathan and his own favored Dead Guy Ale -- and pockets the bottle opener from the drawer.
Then he heads down to the lake.
For a minute, Jack thinks he’s misread the signs, that Nathan’s decided the late September air is just the wrong side of comfortable and rather than having gone out to the dock he’s down in the basement lab or up in the second floor spare room that passes for a library or maybe in the shed looking for some implement he’s decided they need to grille the salmon steaks. Nathan’s started the coals burning in the grille on the back deck, but left them to a slow burn, banked against the evening breeze. There’s no other sign of recent activity.
Then there’s a splash to his left, like a fish jumping, and as Jack’s eyes adjust to the long shadows of the evening he sees Nathan’s discarded robe and worn Birkenstocks at the end of the dock, and realizes his boyf-- that Nathan’s gone swimming.
A shiver crawls involuntarily across his skin in instant sympathy.
“Hey Stark!” He calls into the darkness, in the general direction of the the splash, “What good are you gonna be to me if you shrink your dick in glacial runoff before we fuck?”
“And here I thought you loved me for my pretty eyes.” There’s another splash and Nathan’s head and shoulders appear, slightly darker against the inky blue of the water that’s starting to sparkle in the moonrise. Nathan hooks his forearms over the edge of the dock and hangs there, dripping, letting his eyes trail up Jack’s body. Despite the fact that it’s Nathan who’s currently lacking in the clothes department, Jack can feel his pulse climbing and has to fight the urge to turn and … hide himself away from a gaze that, even in moonlight, is sharp and piercing and proprietary: mine.
Was he Nathan’s? Did he want to be Nathan’s? Nathan’s things didn’t, after all, have the very best track record for survival.
He drops to his heels, sets down the beers on the dock, and pulls the opener out of his pocket. “Wanna drink?”
“Probably shouldn’t mix drinking and diving,” Nathan quips. He sinks back down slightly into the lake, then pushes himself up and out of the water and -- oh, yeah, that’s -- yes. Jack now has confirmation that Nathan has, indeed, been skinny dipping.
Nathan drops himself down on the edge of the dock, legs dangling, and reaches back for the towel he’s left beside the discarded robe. Rubs his hair in that way Jack finds embarrassingly adorable -- and so embarrassingly sexy that if his pulse weren’t already racing from the naked-dripping-wet-boyfriend situation it would definitely be hammering from the adorably-mussed-damp-hair situation.
Crouched on a dock fully clothed is not the most comfortable position to be in either way.
He puts out a steadying hand and settles onto his right hip, left knee cocked, then picks up the porter and pops the cap with a fizzt! before handing it to Nathan.
He clears his throat. “To Saturday night.”
Nathan lifts the bottle in salute before taking a swig. “To Saturday night -- and not-the-end-of-the-world.”
“Right. That always.”
“You left your phone in the house?”
“I left my phone in the house.” Jack opens his own beer and puts the bottle to his lips, sucking down a mouthful of mostly-foam. He rolls his head a couple of times, trying to loosen the muscles of his shoulders still tight from the long day. A breeze shivers across the water. “Ahh. God, what a night.”
“Harvest moon,” Nathan observes, draping the towel across his thighs, leaning back on his elbows and looking up at the sky. For a man who constantly complains of being too cold in bed, Jack thinks with exasperation, he’s being utterly too casual about damp skin exposed to the autumn night air. Jack can see Nathan’s nipples dark and tight from the icy water, standing out from the scatter of hair on his chest. For fuck’s sake, does the man want him to --
Oh.
Jack sets down his beer, stretching his arm so the bottle will be well out of harm’s way, and then rolls back toward Nathan, understanding now what this is about: the kitchen light, the wood fire, the coals on the grille banked to last, the late-night skinny-dipping, the fact that it’s been five minutes since Nathan emerged from the lake and his bathrobe is still an arm’s length away --
When his hand, warm in comparison to Nathan’s skin, hits the curve of Nathan’s thigh Jack feels the man shiver beneath him, suddenly quiet, slightly unsure. Jack still isn’t used to this, isn’t used to the way Nathan naked is, well, naked -- vulnerable, skittish, seemingly amazed by every one of Jack’s gestures of affection, desire, need. Jack never thought about nakedness, as such, before Nathan. He’s always been a casual kinda guy, stripping without thought in the gym showers -- well, okay, sure he did a little comparison here and there, a little casual checking out (who didn’t? c’mon), but with Nathan -- with Nathan clothing is protection, so nudity is never casual.
Which means tonight is deliberate.
His imagination suddenly presents him with a mental picture of Nathan arriving at the cabin in the waning sunlight, climbing the stairs to the loft bedroom one hand at his throat to unknot his tie. The careful removal of every item of clothing, the re-cloaking of nakedness in the tatty bathrobe he kept on the peg by the bathroom door, the way he’d moved outdoors and stood poised at the end of the dock before undoing the bathrobe tie and letting it fall to the weathered boards.
Jack shivers again, but this time not from cold.
He leans in, leans down, and presses his lips around Nathan’s nipple, the taste of the ale in his mouth mingling with the taste of the lake and the tang of Nathan’s skin. He pulls, ever so slightly, letting his lips and tongue create suction, feeling the tiny nipple rise in response, feeling Nathan’s hips mirror the forward motion, moving against Jack’s hands, silent, tentative.
Jack pushes his hand up under the damp towel, finds the groove of Nathan’s hip, thumb brushing against the tangle of wirey hair there, the edge of his palm and wrist aware of the bloom of heat and the steady pulse just a hair’s breadth away.
“Jack--” Nathan hitches, and Jack knows what Nathan wants just as surely as he knows that, soon enough, Jack will give it to him. But first, he thinks intently, mouthing his way up to the pulsepoint on Nathan’s neck, first Jack’s going to lick every drop of water on Nathan’s skin away.
The salmon steaks can surely wait.