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threedimensionsTimeline: May 2017
Title: to wish or long for
Summary: Brandon and Jack talk a little the first night after everything changes; about Mark and about how their relationships might soon change.
~2.5k
It was almost two o'clock in the morning, but Jack wasn't surprised when the bathroom door opened and Brandon was there; he looked exhausted as he shut the door and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. Jack shut the water of the shower off—he had just been thinking that he was through with it for the night and might try to sleep—but then Brandon looked at him.
"Hello," Jack said, greeting this past version of the greatest love of his life. It still didn't feel real, except that it felt too real to deny. He was wet, after all.
Brandon smiled slowly. "Turn that back on."
Jack did so, adjusting the temperature while Brandon stood and began removing his clothes. He got into the shower and Jack stepped back to give him room to stand under the spray, but Brandon stepped with him, put his arms up on his shoulders and his hands on the back of his head, and kissed him. It was very nice. Jack couldn't even remember the last time Brandon had kissed him in the past/future. Even his smiles had become too quick and performative. Jack couldn't remember the last time his eyes had smiled...but he remembered the feeling of looking at him and knowing he was happy. It had been a very long time.
"I love you," Brandon said softly.
Jack smiled, and then Brandon grinned, glad to see it, as it wasn't something Jack could do often. Jack was glad to hear him say so—to his experience, it had been quite a long time since he'd said it as well. Or that Jack had said it back. One thing he perhaps needed to learn, to internalize this time, if it was still reality, was that he needed to try harder himself. Somehow, the two worst things he'd ever done had been unmade. He could not allow that to go to waste.
"I love you too," he said softly.
Brandon blinked a few times quickly, and then he sighed as he leaned forward and let his forehead fall on Jack's shoulder. "I'm tired," he mumbled. "This was such a fucked up day."
"How is Mark?" Jack asked. He'd seemed all right at dinner—quiet and wary, but he'd eaten a lot, which could have either been an optimistic sign of a good appetite, which he looked like he'd been missing lately, or merely something for him to do while clearly awkward in their house.
"Okay. Better. I just showed him a bunch of the ideas I had for new songs and helped him clean up and re-string guitars he brought or had left here, since he hadn't been playing and they were all dusty and nasty, and we had a smoke and watched The Good Place. He said he was tired too, which is why we came up." He paused, then said, "I think he's going to be okay here, at least—at least for now. He knows I'm going to be watching him. I have never—"
He stopped, and by the way his arms tightened, Jack thought that he was struggling to keep a hold on himself. He put his arms around Brandon and held him, one hand gently rubbing his back where the water warmed his skin, and Brandon leaned into him again.
"I've never been that scared in my life," he went on quietly. "When I got there, he was...writing it. He tried to hide it, and he ripped it up before we left, but." He turned his head slightly so that his face was pressed into Jack's neck instead of his shoulder. "I hugged him again for a minute before I let him go into his room just now. He picked the one just off the stairs. We came up and he was just like, 'okay, goodnight', and went to go into his room, but I grabbed him and held him again. He let me, and I don't even know how long it was because I just...didn't...want to let him go." Pause. "You're okay with that?"
"Yes," Jack said. He would have been okay with more. They needed—he wanted them to have everything they'd missed before.
Brandon sighed heavily, stood up, and moved back a little. Jack let go of him and watched as he ducked his head under the stream and wet his hair, then tipped his face back and wiped the water out of his eyes. "I got your email," he said, looking up at the shower head. "I've seen people talk about it, and I read the link."
Jack didn't reply to that, not yet. He was coming to it on his own and did not need to be led.
"You wouldn't have sent it just...incidentally," Brandon said quietly. "That's what you meant when you said to get him."
"Yes."
"I don't know if he'll go for it."
"Perhaps not."
Brandon looked at him then, and when Jack glanced at his face, he saw that Brandon had heard his forced nonchalance and knew it for what it was. "You think he will?" he asked after a moment. "I didn't mention it—not yet, it's way too soon. He needs time to—to calm down and get his feet back under him."
Jack quite agreed with that; he'd only made mention of it so that Brandon would have confirmation of his intention, so that he would know that he had permission and approval. The rest, coming as he determined was the right time and the right way to approach it, would be up to him. Jack trusted him. And he owed them.
"And we need to talk about it more," Brandon went on. "He and I do. And you and I do. But I'm kind of too mentally and emotionally exhausted to get into it right now."
"All right."
He turned so that his back was to the water and he was facing Jack. "I love you and nothing's going to change that," he said solemnly. "This...whatever it is, or will be...I don't know what's going to happen. All I know right now is two things: that I love you...and that I can't lose him."
"I know," Jack said gently. The last time, there had been no coming back. But now...they already seemed to be on quite a different path than before, and he was interested to know where it led. "He will agree...once he is better, and once he is satisfied of our consent. He loves you."
Before, that had been the damning piece of evidence, the one that had sent them all through hell. This time, perhaps, it would be the trigger aiming them at a different target. Something was happening on Brandon's face, and Jack looked at him curiously, trying to figure out what it was. Was he...happy, but upset about it?
"I love him, too," he said then, his voice unsteady.
"I know," Jack said again.
There was wetness on Brandon's face, but it could have been from his dripping hair. Jack thought that it was time enough for them to go to bed as well; he was very curious to find out whether or not this reality continued once he slept and awakened again. He reached forward to turn the water off for the second time, and this time Brandon didn't protest, but stepped out onto the mat and selected a towel.
When they went into their room, Brandon wanted sex, despite his weariness, and Jack was glad for it; it also had been a very long time for that in his memory, and the last few times he specifically remembered, it had seemed out of duty versus desire. Although he had been tired as well, he enjoyed this time very much, not only due to Brandon's enthusiasm, but his own, the feeling of which he had almost forgotten.
Afterwards, Brandon got up to get some clothes to sleep in, having left the day's clothes on the bathroom floor (Jack didn't mind—he would pick them up in the morning). While he was doing that and brushing his teeth, Jack sat against the headboard with his phone, partly to find more current indicators of time so that he could better remember when he was (he had determined earlier that he had not yet made one of his best-selling games, and he was trying to decide if recreating it constituted 'cheating' at this second chance of a life) and partly to look at the date on the calendar for a little while longer. Impossible...but actually, evidently, not.
He saw that he had half a dozen text messages, and he opened the app to check if they were time-sensitive. The first two were from his property manager, a high-energy woman who kept erratic hours that was not shy about texting at any time of the day, which did not bother Jack as he was often available in the early hours. He read them both and replied that he could meet with her tomorrow, and while he was opening the picture sent with the third message (an online friend who was showing off a baking accomplishment), her answer popped up in a banner notification before settling to the bottom of the list. Jack glanced down at it as the animation played out, and as he did, he saw the two messages before it. He let the admirably uniform cookies go unanswered and skipped entirely over a text from Andrew to tap on the first in a previously almost non-existent thread with Mark Allgeyer, the first received almost an hour ago.
Thanks, the first one said. And then: I'm really going to try not to let you regret this
Try—because he was still too deeply in it for promises. Smart enough to recognize that and use the correct word, to get to the root of what he was actually saying. Jack contemplated an answer for several minutes while Brandon finished up in the bathroom and came back out in lounge shorts and a Foo Fighters tee.
He almost let it too go unanswered, at least until the morning—and when he could convince himself that this really was happening—partly to think more on what he wanted to say and partly because surely Mark was asleep by now. However, as Brandon got into bed, laying back and stretching before reaching for his own phone, Jack realized that he didn't have to think, to consider, to compose. The answer to this was simple, perhaps as simple as the answer to the entire problem, once he let it be so. If the barriers existed, they were the ones that had set them in place, and they could also remove them.
I will not, he sent back. I am glad for this.
For Mark being all right, for the possibility that their lives would be different, for the chance for all of them to be happy, yes. Because he would be happy, actually pleased versus merely content, when Brandon was fully happy again, and Jack knew that he would be soon. He was right that Mark needed some more time, but he would hopefully talk to him before very long—once he and Jack had ironed out the details on their end—to lay it all out and allow him to take it as he would. Jack was confident that he would. He did not seem the sort to become tangled in arbitrary societal trappings if he could otherwise live safely and more happily.
Brandon yawned, turned to put his phone on his nightstand, switched the lamp off, and lay back. A few seconds later, he glanced at Jack, who slowly mirrored his actions; once he was also lying on his back, Brandon turned on his side, laid his head on his shoulder, and put an arm across him. Jack shifted enough to be able to put an arm around his back and hold him, and Brandon sighed contentedly.
"I'm going to have to spend some more time reading up on it," he murmured after a moment. "If I'm going to have both of you, it's going to be important to talk to others that have the same thing going on and figure out where the pitfalls lie so that we can avoid them. If this—if we're going to do this, all of us, then I want...I want it to be for good. You and I have pretty much already decided we're forever, so..."
"Yes," Jack said. It wouldn't be any other way, not really.
"It's getting more common now—I should be able to find some good stuff. Do you want me to send any to you, or do you want to look on your own...?"
"We will both research," Jack said. "And compare results."
"Okay." He was quiet again for a moment, and then said, "I wonder how long it'll take. For him to be ready."
Jack didn't know, but he knew something else, and remembered that while it was much more difficult for him to say, it shouldn't always fall on Brandon to say it first. He had never seemed to doubt that it was true, but perhaps now, and in the days and weeks to come, it would bear repeating. "I love you," he said softly.
"I love you too," Brandon said back immediately. "Will you help me keep an eye on him? At least for the next few days, or whenever, until we think he's not in danger any more? If I have to be somewhere, can he hang out with you?"
"Yes."
"Thanks," Brandon said, and he sighed deeply, finally letting some of his worry and anxiety leave him, and a few moments later, he was asleep. Jack listened to the silence, thinking that it was a different silence than he'd gotten used to in his other life, his past life—his before. This one was not so empty, even though Brandon had been with him both times. This one, at least right now, had something in it. He was pretty sure that something was hope.
WARNINGS