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In the months and years that follow, Jack and Nathan are never able to agree on exactly how they got from A to B, what happened between their first acknowledged kiss on the sidewalk of Main Street and a brief moment of clarity they both remember several hours later when S.A.R.A.H. politely interrupted proceedings to indicate that a hot shower might be in order.
“Okay, that's disturbing,” Jack remembers Nathan saying. “Fargo in falsetto is not a sound I anticipated ever accompanying an activity like this.”
“S.A.R.A.H.!” Jack remembers groaning, rolling onto his back with an embarrassed forearm over his eyes, “We've had this conversation, remember? About when it is and is not acceptable for you to monitor my bedroom?”
“I apologize Sheriff Carter, Dr. Stark.” S.A.R.A.H. had failed to sound at all apologetic. “I was unaware that the parameters of your instructions included the presence of another human as well as when you engaged in such activities alone.”
Jack and Nathan both agree, when recounting the story to one another in the quiet intimacy of late-night conversation, that it had taken Nathan a good five minutes to stop laughing and Jack a solid ten to get over his flushed embarrassment enough to remove his head from beneath his pillow.
There are some things, after all, that seem a little too private for a first date.
Although “date” is probably a misleading term for what had followed from first one kiss and then another, and had turned into a solid quarter of an hour of intense and old school making out, wherein Jack found himself grinding up against Nathan and the solid bulk of the wall behind him, wherein Nathan's initial watchful stillness had rapidly given way to hungry action, his hands on Jack's face, chest, hips, ass, pulling him closer, hitching Jack up against his own body, half-holding the smaller man's weight as they clutched and clung and tongued and tasted.
“Fuck,” is about all Jack feels capable of saying when he finally breaks for air, aware that he's trembling all over from adrenaline, from the relief of resolution, from the slow build of deeper and more complicated want: outside of the privacy of his own bedroom where, yes, okay, he's spent a not inconsiderable time over the past few months imagining how this could go, Jack hasn't thought past this moment, tonight, beyond first touch, beyond the overwhelming relief of finally – finally – resolving the itch that's been beating against the inside of his skin, ever more insistent and distracting, since Stark had looked at him as he reached for Allison, and Jack had seen confirmed the suspicion that Nathan rarely did anything by halves, and as implausible as it might seem, the bright burning star that was Nathan Stark wanted – and thought he couldn't have – Jackson Ian Carter.
Under his palms, spread across Nathan's chest, under his coat, up against the thin cotton of his dress shirt, he can feel Nathan's lungs heaving, heart pounding.
Against his own belly, he can feel the press of Nathan's erection filling out his dress trousers, and he's aware of his own pulse, hard and almost painful, beating in his groin.
“I didn't--” Nathan's half gasping against Jack's skin, the words more a shape of lips against temple than sound in Jack's ears, “I thought – Allison –“
“-- told me I'd have to make the first move,” Jack murmurs back against Nathan's ear.
Nathan's chest hitches in rueful laughter.
Jack pulls back: “Listen. I haven't – it's been – awhile, for me. In every sense. But – you like to come back to the bunker for a drink?”
The left side of Stark's mouth climbs upwards in a quirk of a smile, and what Jack can see of his eyes in the shadows are warm and full of promise.
“Zoe?”
“Allison's promised to make sure she gets home.”
“Enabler.” The word on Nathan's tongue is wry and affectionate.
“I think,” Jack says, rueful in turn, “she just got tired of being the one caught between the two of us, watching me hang back while you ate your heart out.” He pushes, not without regret, away from the warmth of Nathan's body and reaches for the keys to the land rover.
On the drive to the bunker, Nathan reaches over and puts a hand on Jack's thigh, a move that nearly causes Jack to swerve off the road. Fuck.
They stop on the steps down to the front door, Nathan on the step below him offsetting his height just enough that Jack can meet him nose to nose, press kisses down the shadowy stubble across Nathan's cheekbones. He's testing himself, he knows, every time the lust momentarily clears: Does this feel the way he imagines it would? What is it like to be touching and moving like this with someone who isn't Abby?
S.A.R.A.H. lets them in, raises the lights and lights a fire, offers a nightcap, a disorienting presence in an otherwise empty house. Dimly, Jack remembers that Zoe will be coming home but can't think beyond the fact that Nathan is here and crowding in against him, undeniably needy yet something isn't – isn't – if Jack could only clear his mind for a minute, lower the buzz of want want want in his ears so he can listen to his gut, he'd be able to –
“-- Stark. Nathan, hey,” he puts a hand up to Nathan's cheek, hoping skin against skin will help him make sense of – “you okay?”
In the dark on the sidewalk Nathan had been there, wary yet focused and present, an enthusiastic participant, and then on the drive over, in the stairwell, he'd been humming with – with something that wasn't so clear, was subtly – off – as if he's found a flaw in his equations, as if he can see a disastrous outcome barreling toward them, but has decided to take a calculated risk, a reckless gamble, and possibly sacrifice himself in the process.
This isn't exactly the mood Jack was hoping to inspire.
“I'm.” Nathan drags in a breath. “I just.” He's turned inward, Jack can see, the way he does under pressure. “Sorry. Need a minute.” He steps back, giving Jack room to shift sideways and put some space between them (which he does). Nathan swipes a hand across his face and Jack can see his hands are shaking.
“Hey,” Jack’s stomach is knotting in a less pleasant way than it was a few moments earlier. Were they taking this too fast? “Hey, can I – get you anything?” He's trying to remember back – God, it's been so long since there's been a first time, someone whose tells he didn't know intimately, whose boundaries and limits and needs and wants he'd been able to at least halfway anticipate. He'd thought he was doing pretty damn well, for all of that, but clearly something's –
“No, I just--” Nathan fists his hands in his pockets, shoulders tense, and leans against the kitchen counter. Jack gives him space, tossing his jacket across a chair and sitting on the stair that leads up to the second level (where, he thinks wistfully, his bed with its inviting duvet and feather pillows would be a perfect location to continue what they started back at the hall; he has no idea where it will go from there, but knows he doesn't want it to stop).
Nathan looks up at him, eyes more gray than blue, troubled. “It's been awhile. And--” he clears his throat. “I – I don't know what to do with you.”
Jack blinks at this. Of all the difficulties he's considered, this is not one of them.
“Um,” he fumbled, “look, I don't have a lot of experience myself, but--”
Nathan waves this away, “No – yes, fuck, Carter. Jack. That's not what I mean. I mean –“ he stops again. “All of the guys I've been with – and it's not that many, you know, but three, at least, four if you squint – all before Alli, and all of them – they always knew what they wanted from me. Or, at least, knew what they thought they wanted. And if there's anything I'm good at, it's delivering on other peoples' expectations.” He shrugs, looking suddenly lost and – although he's physically larger than Jack – diminished, somehow.
Jack sucks in a breath and blows it out into the silence. He squints up into the middle distance above Nathan's left shoulder, waiting for inspiration to strike.
It was never easy, was it? No matter how simple everything seemed beforehand. People were sucky, complicated, fucked-up bastards.
Not that he'd ever imagined this would be an uncomplicated – what was the phrase Zoe used? – fuck buddy sort of situation. He and Stark were already too entangled for that. It was just that no matter how much you thought you were prepared for the damage you never could be, not entirely, and there was no manual for this shit, as much as people like Abby and her fellow therapists were trying to write one.
You were always scrambling, improvising, and hoping like hell you were quick enough on your feet that it didn't all irreparably go to hell before you hit on a duct-tape-and-paperclip solution.
“C'mere,” he hears himself say to Nathan, reaching out a hand, wriggling the fingers in a gesture, God help him, not unlike that he used to use when Zoe was small and he wanted her to stick close and hold on tight.
Nathan pushes himself away from the counter and crosses to Jack, slotting his fingers in between Jack's, pushing his palm up against Jack's, calves bumping up against Jack's knees.
“I've never been good at performing without clear expectations,” Nathan offers apologetically, with a verbal shrug though his shoulders stay hunched with unhappiness.
“I,” Jack starts, “-- it’s not a -- is that what you think this is? A performance?”
“That’s what it’s usually been before,” Nathan points out and Jack has the sudden urge to phone a few friends at the Fed, call in a few favors, and track down those sons of bitches who’d made the prospect of sex mean this, mean the prospect of failure, and make them --
He takes a steadying breath and waits for the rage to clear from behind his retinas, waits until he’s seeing Nathan again, and not the ghosts of Nathan’s loser boyfriends past.
“Let's--” Jack feels officially out of his depth, not an unfamiliar feeling in relation to Nathan Stark. He stops. “What if we were improvising?” he asks. “We do that all the time here, right?”
“You do that all the time,” Nathan corrects, but the line of his shoulders looks slightly better, and his face unfolds into a slight smile – one that also reaches his eyes. “I take calculated risks based on the evidence at hand while you act recklessly.”
“And save the world,” Jack goads.
“Mmm.” Nathan won't concede the point in words, but his eyes have shifted back to blue, and he's leaning toward Jack in a promising incline.
“So let's improvise a little,” Jack offers, rising to his feet without letting go of Nathan's hand, and pulling him up the stairs, one step, then another. “C'mon, I'd like to find out what it feels like to have you get me naked.”
Nathan shivers, and holds on tight.
Up in the bedroom, S.A.R.A.H. – without comment, thank the Lord, – has turned the lights on to what he's come to think of as the “auto-soothe” setting, the level of light and degree of warm yellow glow she uses when it's clear he's upset or wound and needs to calm down. The temperature up here is a few degrees warmer than it was down in the kitchen, warm enough that he'll be glad to take off – have Nathan take off – his suit.
It's Jack's turn to shiver.
They make it through the bedroom door, which shushes shut behind them, enfolding them in privacy (Zoe will be home eventually), and Nathan's still with him, so Jack turns pulls Nathan into a kiss: gentle, exploratory. Nathan yields, more passive than he'd been back in town, following rather than leading, letting Jack mouth him open, lick kisses against the corners of his mouth, trace his tongue lightly over Nathan's teeth, nip gently at Nathan's delectable bottom lip.
Nathan lets out a little sound, then, the first noise he's made since they climbed the stairs, a wanting sound that makes Jack want to climb straight into him and push deeper, see if he can tease out more of the same. He takes Nathan's hands, enfolds them in his own, his palms warm against the dry, cool skin across the back of Nathan's knuckles. “Here –” he manages, pulling Nathan's hands to his own chest – “please – I want you to touch me, please, Nathan, anywhere, anything, just – don’t stop touching me.”
He's surprised by the strength of this, how – having pushed through the barrier of mutual reticence between them – he's overwhelmed by the need to have Nathan against, wrapped round, beneath, perhaps even eventually in. It's not just the growing pulse in his dick – though there's that, too, the rekindled demand that had subsided in the drive from town once again plucking at his nerves. This is something deeper, more basic, the part of him that's been dormant since things went south with Abby (slowly, painfully, inevitably) the part of him that's been craving – though he had been aware of it as such until now – craving the skin-against-skin closeness of another human being. He's suddenly shaking with the awareness that for the first time in nearly four years he's going to get naked, absolutely starkers, and crawl into bed with someone – with Nathan – and that maybe, hopefully, they'll wake up still together the next morning.
He's aware, in some part of his brain, that there will be explaining to do (this isn't a conversation he's had with Zoe, exactly, though she's known about the men in his history since she was brave enough to come out to him and Abby in seventh grade), but right now he's consumed by the need to have Nathan and keep him and – oh my God how has he managed since... – never have to sleep alone again.
He knows rationally – even as Nathan is undoing buttons, bending to press kisses against the newly exposed line of skin down the center of Jack's chest – knows that there are no guarantees. They may decide they can't stand each other, that the spark of lust once satisfied leaves nothing much to build on in its wake. Nathan might decide he still wants Alison, Jack himself might decide that he doesn't –
“Oh, fuck, Nathan, please – ” Jack clutches at Nathan's shoulders to steady himself as Nathan pulls Jack's shirt out of his waistband and skims his (no longer shaking) hands along across newly-exposed skin. Jack feels his hips jerk forward, seeking resistance. “Sorry – ” he gasps, knowing he'd meant to take it slow, meant not to overwhelm.
“Sorry. You okay? You – ” he plucks at Nathan's collar, then, flicks open a button or two, enough to slide his fingers under the starched cotton, place a steadying hand at the back of Nathan's neck.
“I'm good, I'm good, I need – ” Nathan presses his forehead to Jack's, hands dancing restlessly across Jack's exposed chest, ribs, belly, hips, “I just need – is it okay for me to – ?” He's got his hands on Jack's belt.
“God, please.” Jack can't fathom why Nathan feels it necessary to ask. Isn't it obvious?
Nathan moves them, walking Jack backward, never losing contact, to the foot of the bed. Jack stumbles over his own shoes, falls backward, lets himself flop on inviting expanse of mattress while Nathan drops to his knees and undoes the knots, tosses Jack's shoes aside, then the socks; does the same with his own. Then slides his hands up the underside of Jack's calves and just ... holds him there –
– Jack clutches at the sheets, arches ineffectually against the contact, “Damn it, Stark!”
Nathan laughs unexpectedly, a delighted sound: as if the something painful in his chest has begun to crumble and give way. “Jesus, Carter, I had no idea you’d be this easy!”
He's up on the bed, then, knees firmly to either side of Jack's hips, hands framing Jack's head, leaning over Jack, eyes searching.
Everything feels close, hyperreal, and Jack’s heart is pounding in his ears.
“I – me neither?” He sounds bewildered even to his own ears. Not that Jack's a stranger to wanting sex, enjoying sex. But the power of want in his body has taken even him by surprise tonight. Has his memory of the early days with Abby really dimmed so much? Or is this something altogether different? Always before he'd assumed his interest in men took a backseat to his awareness of women, the automatic dance of flirtation and tension, but he's had to revise that assumption in the face of his growing response to Stark, to the way Nathan's presence is both comforting and distracting, his touch calming and electrifying.
And now this -- this tide of longing that’s robbing him of the words to even say please, I want you, now, I want you, want this, know, know this, know we can have this.
Nathan settles his weight slowly, agonizingly, across Jack's hips, bends to brush kisses against Jack's ear, jaw, collarbone, tasting, visibly cataloging Jack's responses.
Jack feels his hips jerk again, up against the pressure of Nathan's ass. His trousers – why hasn't Nathan taken them off like he promised to? – are feeling increasingly uncomfortable, confining, and maddeningly not enough at the same time.
“Impatient,” Nathan whispers against his ear.
“Improvisational!” Jack gasps back, scrabbling at Nathan's shirt, working to undo the rest of the damn buttons, keeping him away from Nathan's rapidly heating skin. Shirt finally pushed away, he lifts himself up from the hips to press his hot face against the curve of Nathan's neck and collarbone, one hand clumsily working beneath Nathan's waistband, fingers grazing the edge of dense curls, the hollow groove at the top of Nathan's thigh.
Nathan groans, now, into Jack's touch, his own hips jerking forward, his teeth finding Jack's neck, biting down hard.
Without really knowing how – who moves what, when – they're rolling across the bed and Jack's on top, now, Nathan pulling at his belt buckle, fumbling at Jack's buttons and zip, sliding hands authoritatively around to – “here, lift, there” – he's suddenly all efficient instruction: lifting, shoving, pulling. And then Jack's naked, finally naked, a blessed relief, against Nathan's trouser-clad legs, the fine fabric suddenly feeling like almost too much friction against over-sensitized skin.
(Nathan sometimes insists that at this point Jack made a positively unholy sound; even though they never tell this story in public Jack still blushes to the tips of his ears remembering, but doesn't deny it.)
Jack's about to settle back down against Nathan's hips and thigh – he's never gone this far with another man before, but if the position works for him he figures they can extrapolate for two – except Nathan has other ideas, rolling back over and pinning Jack to the mattress with a leg slung across Jack's thighs and a hand firm on Jack's cock.
(Jack may have made an even more unholy sound at this point, but Nathan usually allows him to slide past that particular noise in the retelling.)
“Can I just – I just want to look at you, for a minute,” Nathan whispers.
Jack whimpers; hopes Nathan doesn't expect anything more coherent than that from him. It's been so fucking long since any hand but his own has touched him just there that he nearly comes on the spot from the shock of it: Nathan's hand on his dick.
Nathan is silent and still for so long though – or what feels like so long – that Jack blinks open his eyes, finds Nathan's regarding him, a deeper blue than he's ever seen.
Wordlessly, Jack reaches over his own body and places his right hand on Nathan's chest, noticing against his palm how the tiny, dark nipple sits in a tangle of fine, dark hair.
“You feel better than I ever imagined you could,” Jack says, honestly, the first thing that comes into his head. It sounds like a line from a cheesy romance novel and he'll find time to be embarrassed by it later, but right now he has no brainspace available to be embarrassed because Nathan leans forward to capture the words in a kiss, and finally begins to move his hand in efficient, relentless strokes.