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“Smile, Sportsy!” Dave called out from behind his dingy disposable camera.
Jack was just opening the door to a bar– certainly nothing worth photographing– and he paused to shoot Dave a look. His hand tightened on the handle and he huffed a sigh.
They were in Vegas. They had just taken an absurdly long walk down the strip in search of a decent bar and were dressed in wrinkled clothes with the tags still on. All in all, not a very flattering look.
Jack reluctantly let go of the handle and turned to Dave, who was posing with the camera near the entrance.
“Seriously, dude?” he sighed out.
“C’mo-o-o-on, Sportsy,” Dave called back, practically bouncing on his feet in excitement. “Ya gotta smile!”
With that, he went back to squinting down the lens and getting into photographer-position like he wasn’t handling an incredibly cheap disposable camera that they’d stolen out of a trash can. God, it was almost endearing.
“Fine,” Jack sighed out. Somehow, he found it in him to turn up the corners of his mouth in something vaguely adjacent to a smile.
“I meant a real one,” Dave said, tilting his head, very obviously having not taken the photo yet.
“Can it. Just take the damn photo already.”
“You’re no fun.”
Jack did not drop his semi-smile, but he did narrow his eyes slightly. “I’m in Vegas.”
“Pfft.”
“Wh–! What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dave rolled his shoulders and said back, “It means, you’re actin’ like I dragged us to the state prison with how broody you’re lookin’.”
All this back-and-forth made Jack crack a real smile without really realizing.
Suddenly, there was a click, a flash, and Dave had swung down the camera to look at the photo coming out from the bottom.
Jack sighed through a smile, already crossing over to Dave as he excitedly watched the image slip out of the camera and fade into color.
“Aww, Sportsy, look,” he said to him, photo already in hand. “Ya look jus’ plain precious!”
Jack shook his head with an amused huff. He did not like looking at pictures of himself, and certainly not ones taken in some dingy city where he was wearing tacky gift-shop clothes. “Really? Precious? Standing in front of some lousy bar is precious?” Jack asked sarcastically.
“Only when you do it.” Then he brought the photo right up to Jack’s face, so close that he had trouble focusing his eyes on it. “Look!”
He indeed took a look, and, well, there he was. Standing on that sidewalk, with the Vegas skyline in view. Hands at his sides, a very tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Nothing crazy. Dave acted like it was a masterpiece.
But, jeez, was that really how he looked at Dave? All happy and smiley?
How very unlike him.
Jack’s eyes then flicked down to Dave’s hand, which was holding the photograph up between his thumb and forefinger.
And Jack never really realized how intricate his scars got– wrapping around his fingers and knuckles in a neat pattern. Sad, sure, but rather pretty. His own scars were either too light, healed, or covered in makeup to take note of in that way.
Dave’s voice made him realize he’d been staring. And not at the photo, either.
“Um,” Jack finally said, snapping his eyes up and clearing his throat between his words. “Yeah. Good… Good photo.”
“Well, thanks,” Dave said brightly, pulling the photo back to stare at in his own hands. “I'm a fan of yer good looks, too, Old Sport.”
“Not what I meant.” He sighed. “Well, at least now you can’t say I’m broody. You’ve got picture proof otherwise.”
Dave shrugged and tucked the photo back into his pocket. Then he smoothly stepped ahead of Jack– easily enough, given how much taller he was– and swung open the door, holding it ajar with a smile.
Jack rolled his eyes and flipped Dave off as he stepped through the door, swallowing down a laugh as he did.
—-
The bar was loud. Big. It reminded Jack more of a casino, with all the gaudy decorations and blaring TV screens hanging from the ceilings.
Jack could’ve sworn he heard Dave snap a photo as he slid into a stool. Whatever. He brushed it off and waved a bartender over.
“Man, quit it already. Tell me what you want to drink.”
“You know me well enough. Take a guess.”
Unfortunately, he sure did. Wines made him sad, beers made him talkative, and whiskeys were a general wild card.
“Two whiskeys, on the rocks.”
“Hell, that’s a strong order to start us off, ain’t it, Old Sport?”
“Meh. Whatever. It’s late. I intend on passing out in our room soon enough anyway."
“Whiskey, though?” Dave asked, leaning an elbow on the counter.
“Why not?”
“It’s jus’ that you always get kinda sad whenev–”
“–Shut it,” Jack hissed out, rubbing his eyes. He glanced up long enough to see Dave put his hands up in surrender.
Dave shrugged. He took a napkin and started folding it, hands moving in a calculated and decisive way. “I’m jus’ callin’ it how I see it, Old Sport.”
“Right.” Jack replied, but even he wasn’t able to completely hide the smile growing on his face. That was happening more often, infuriatingly enough. He watched Dave
It was always fascinating to see Dave, usually casual and laid back, melting into this precise machine– for lack of a better word– whenever he began working on something. Crisp lines appeared and folded away onto the napkin, fingers smoothing and pinching at different spots in the paper.
Jack watched, puzzled. He didn’t understand what he was making until a rabbit appeared in the shape of the napkin, sculpted from just that piece of cheap napkin paper in Dave’s hands.
Dave didn’t address it, either. He was too busy talking about maraschino cherries or something, mindlessly fiddling with the edges of his newly-sculpted napkin.
Huh, Jack thought to himself.
—-
As the night went on, more and more people packed into the bar, chatter and laughter filling every empty space. Drinks slid across the country and people filled every open stool.
Both Jack and Dave, who were trying to ignore the increasing commotion, for the most part, were not as drunk as they looked when Dave eventually spoke up.
“It’s gettin’ way too loud in here,” he said, leaning close enough to Jack’s ear that his warm exhale made him shiver.
Jack hoped he was able to smother the flinch he was about to make at the proximity. Usually, he could only handle being close to Dave if he had several warnings and a minute to think about it.
“Th– There’s no alternative, man,” Jack said back, raising his voice in lieu of Dave moving closer to him. Mostly he didn’t have the mental strength for it. “Unless you wanna sit around our shitty hotel room.”
Dave was thinking, tilting his head to the side. Then, something seemed to dawn on him; there was a look on his face that usually preceded murder or some other catastrophe. This time, he pulled out the photo from his pocket and pointed wordlessly to it, raising his eyebrows at Jack.
“What?” Jack said loudly, trying to be heard. “Is this some pick-up line of yours?”
Dave rolled his eyes and shook his head once. He tapped at the photo again, and this time Jack noticed that he was pointing to a building in the background. He glanced up at Dave, confused.
This time, he leaned closer, an obvious smile playing in his voice when he said, “Whaddya say we haul some bottles and our asses up t’ the rooftop?”
Jack narrowed his eyes, confused. “...Why?” he mouthed.
“Do we gotta have a reason fer it, Sportsy?”
He gave a slow blink in reply before shrugging. Dave must have taken it as the reluctant agreement that Jack meant it as, because a terrifyingly endearing smile spread across his lips in response. With a sigh, Jack knew there was no backtracking out of this one. Not with that look on his face.
—-
Dave ordered a stupid amount of bottles, scooped them all up, and promptly rammed a handful into Jack’s arms, before all but shoving the two of them out of the bar. Before he was bluntly interrupted, Jack was providing a fake credit card for their tab.
Dave was gentleman-y enough with it, though– even propping open the door for Jack with his foot on the way out. A handful of halfway-sober patrons made some attempts to stop them, but Jack and Dave ran out before they could so much as take a glimpse at their faces.
They emptied out into the Vegas strip, breathless and with their handfuls of glass bottles clinking and sloshing in their arms. Jack didn’t fully realize he was smiling in the pure thrill of it all.
Dave seemed to know exactly where to go. He led them into an unassuming alley and crossed closer to a building. Jack followed, watching as Dave pushed open a door with his back and motioned him inside with a tilt of his head.
Up and up the winding custodial stairs they went, clearly unused or at least very unkempt with all the rust on the railings and the general griminess. Laughter and occasional comments of “Oh, we’re crazy, aren’t we?” echoed through the dim stairway.
They reached the top, and it was only then that they stopped to catch their breaths. Dave momentarily paused at the door that let out onto the rooftop, and Jack swore he winked before pushing it wide open.
Jack expected a shock of sunlight, but was pleasantly surprised to find the very beginning of a sunset; casting a warmer glow along the sky. The air seemed clearer up here, and all the chaotic noise of the Vegas Strip was confined to a faint buzz down far below.
The rooftop was nothing special and Jack liked that. It was a break from the general noisiness and color that Vegas seemed to never be in short supply of.
All he spotted on the rooftop was that flat concrete, assorted grates, and pipes sticking up in some places. It must’ve been a hotel roof that Dave picked, because they were decently high up. Dave set down his bottles with a cacophony of clinks and immediately went over to Jack, who was contemplating how to set his own handful down without shattering them entirely.
Dave went over to him and took them from his arms with ease, setting each bottle down on the ground. Er, roof, Jack supposed.
Jack nodded slightly in his way of thanks, and Dave in return only replied with another one of those maddening smiles. Maybe it was just the adrenaline from their run here, but as he looked Dave over, all mussed hair and messy collar, Jack thought he looked…
No, no, he wouldn’t dare finish that thought.
Instead, Jack walked around their bottles and to the edge of the roof, and let out a low whistle. “This is pretty high up.”
He looked out as far as he could dare to and saw the tops of people’s hotel balconies winding all the way down into little squares down to floor-level.
He heard Dave speak from behind him in a teasing tone, “What, scared of heights, Sportsy?”
“Uh. No.” He lied, swallowing hard as he continued looking out over that edge, hands a bit clammy. They were a lot further up than he realized.
As soon as the thought passed him, he felt Dave reach and put his hands on Jack's shoulders. Before he could react, Dave laughed quietly and tilted him forward ever so slightly, just enough to make cold fear rush into every fiber of Jack’s body.
He knew it was a joke, and he knew Dave was just trying to get under his skin, and above all he knew Dave would never hurt him, but he panicked all the same.
“Woah, woah, no, no— No—” Jack mumbled shakily.
It was that feeling of pure panic that made Jack scramble backwards, away from the ledge and directly into Dave’s chest, thankful to be against something solid.
“Jesus, dude—” He stumbled through saying. “Don’t do that, man.”
“Oh. My bad.” He said meekly. Dave leaned around to face him, concern in his voice and face. “Aw, shit, Old Sport, yer voice went all shaky.”
He hardly realized it himself, blinking. “No duh, idiot!” He cursed out loud, squeezing Dave’s hand in— wait, what?
Jack whipped his head around to look behind him, and went still when he realized that he’d been clutching Dave’s hand the whole time. It could hardly be called holding hands, really; just a panicked move for any sort of solid touch and comfort.
Still breathing heavily, Jack stared at their hands, then up at Dave’s face, then at their hands again before quickly letting go.
Having to let go of that warmth made him almost regret it. Just a twinge.
Dave just shot him an odd look, letting his hand drop to his side again. “O-o-okay,” he said eventually. “We’ll jus’ stay away from the edge, then. No prob.”
Jack nodded dully and followed close behind as Dave went to their assortment of bottles.
They found themselves sitting further from the roof's edge and leaned against a vent that stuck up enough to rest against. Dave pulled enough bottles together to keep within arms reach.
Once Jack sat beside him, Dave asked, “This a good distance?”
Jack could only hope that the unamused look he tossed him was enough of an answer. Although the small show of kindness sent him reeling with all sorts of stupid sentiments, he would never consider voicing them out. Not for a second. He settled for rolling his eyes and picking up a bottle, fumbling with the bottle-top.
“Aw, c’mon,” said Dave, who must have known him and his sulky silences too well. “I jus’ wanna be nice to ya.”
Jack immediately turned back to his bottle and hurried up with trying to open it. Way to go, Jack, you certified asshole.
He was working on the stubborn cork for a while, cursing himself for forgetting a bottle opener of any kind, when Dave spoke up.
“Sorry.”
That was, funnily enough, exactly what Jack was planning on saying.
Jack looked up. “For what?”
“The roof thing.”
He lowered the bottle and mindlessly ran a thumb atop the cork. He supposed it was a crappy thing to do, but he knew Dave didn’t mean to hurt him. He knew that he’d never hurt him, not intentionally.
Jack still hadn’t said anything in reply, mostly because he’d never been apologized to before. Dave took his silence as a chance to add on, “But, hey, why’d ya agree t’ my dumb plan if ya hated heights?”
Jack slowly turned back to his bottle and said, “I would never pass up an opportunity to get drunk.”
“With me, ya mean?” Dave sweetly attempted to correct.
“In general.”
With that, Dave reached over and lifted the bottle out of Jack’s hands, then took out a pocket knife from his pants and stabbed it into the cork.
Jack watched as he skillfully popped off the cork with a tug. “Though,” Jack began, “I guess you’re not the shittiest company I can think of.”
With a smile, Dave passed the bottle back over into his hands. “I’ll take it, Old Sport.”
—-
One of the perks of being a functioning alcoholic– of which there were very little, to be honest– was being able to hold your liquor pretty well. Dave, unfortunately, did not hold this same skill, and therefore sank into drunken spiels way before Jack even came close to it.
They were passing a number of bottles between them, sipping and never finishing any of them. Even though they were both tipsy, Jack never got used to that jump in his heartbeat at pressing his mouth to the same bottle top that Dave had just sipped from.
“Y’ever eaten glass, Sportsy?” eventually blurted Dave, mostly out of the blue.
They were sitting in that same spot against a metal vent, but had shifted closer to one another, touching shoulders whenever they reached to pick up a bottle.
Jack blinked, sipping at his bottle. “No.”
“I’m jus’ thinkin’ of what we’re gonna do with all these bottles when we’re done with ‘em. I’m definitely not carryin’ them all back down.”
“Uh-huh. Eating them was your first thought?”
“Yeah.” Dave made some sort of hiccup sound, and turned to face Jack more directly. “I guess… I guess maybe we can throw ‘em down onto the unlucky schmucks down below when we’re done with ‘em.”
Jack glanced over their array of empty and almost-empty bottles. “That’s kinda shitty.”
“Meh,” Dave drew out. “We’d almost be doin’ them a favor.”
“Yeah? What if we hit some kindergartener in the head?”
“We’ve killed kindergarteners, Sportsy.”
Jack pointed to him with a bottle in his hand. “Not with empty tequila bottles. That’s kinda cruel.”
Dave, clearly growing close to irritation, took the bottle that Jack was holding and took his own long gulp from it, much to Jack’s glare.
“Oh, what’s the point, Sportsy? They’re all jus’ trudgin’ around their own lives ‘til they’re gonna drop dead. If they die in their sleep ‘r get hit with a bottle of Hessen– Hen– Henns–”
“Hennesy,” Jack provided helpfully.
“—Right, hit with a bottle of Hennesy– Well, who cares? ‘S all meanin’less, ‘s all the same stupid race with the same ol’ ending. The least we can do is make the photo finish a little more interestin’. Amirite, Sport-O?”
Jack, who had been thoroughly confused for a while now, just said, “Don’t call me that. Also, what?”
There was a delirious sort of focus in Dave’s eyes as he rambled on. “Sportsy, Sportsy, lemme ask ya somethin’. Say you’ve got the chance to become the best ever. I mean, you can achieve all yer dreams, all those hopes an’ all those wants that’re spinnin’ around in that head o’ yers. An’ somebody can help ya achieve all that… an’ maybe he’s hard on ya— in a tough love kinda way— but he helps ya, an’ they drag ya out of so much shit…”
Here, Dave paused, and at that point his words had flattened into something distant and almost foreign. He drew in a shaky breath, and when Jack glanced down at his hands, they had tightened around his bottle.
“He saves ya from yerself,” Dave finished. “Would you take that chance, Sportsy?”
Jack narrowed his eyes slightly at the odd choice of words, trying to chalk it up to Dave’s general drunkenness but finding it hard to do so. “Well, what’s the catch?”
Dave looked him over, eyebrows drawing together in puzzlement. His facial features always did seem to exaggerate when he was drunk. “What?”
“There must be some kinda catch, man. I mean, all my hopes and dreams? Hell, nobody’s that nice for free.”
Gesturing to Jack, Dave said, “You’re nice t’ me.”
“That’s different.”
“Different how?”
“It’s…” Jack sighed. “It just is. I don’t want anything from you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Jack looked over to him, with that odd tugging feeling in his chest that came whenever he lied to Dave. “What, is this news to you or something?”
Dave shrugged his shoulders, searching Jack’s expression for a few uncharacteristically quiet moments. “Kinda. I don’t know anythin’ about any of this. Hell, Sportsy, I’ve never met anyone like ya before.”
On any other day, Jack would have brushed this off as a drunken, nonsensical stray of Dave’s impaired brain. Unfortunately, there was something annoyingly sincere in his voice and eyes– those damn eyes of his, half-lidded but focused totally on Jack.
He sighed, looking away to scuff his shoes against the roof concrete. “Well, it’s true, idiot. I don’t want anything from you. Nobody’s above anyone here. It’s just the concept of… well, you know.”
Friendship, he was going to say. But it didn’t seem totally correct.
Dave— God bless him and his uncanny ability to read Jack’s lack of emotion— seemed to understand how to pick up where he left off, though, because with a small laugh he said, “Ah, okay, Old Sport. I think I get it. Don’t hurt yerself findin’ the words, now.”
Jack’s voice dropped into a mutter, grabbing the bottle from Dave and putting it up to his mouth again. “Oh, shut up.”
“But would you take that deal? If it was up to you?”
He scoffed, wiping his mouth. “Ack– Again with this deal. Damn, Dave, are you talking from experience or something? You had some kind of fucked up math tutor as a kid?”
“No,” Dave replied quickly, before adding on, in a quieter tone of voice, “Kinda. A little.”
Jack cooed out sarcastically, leaning a little closer to him, “Awh. Did little Davey have that much trouble with fractions?”
Dave stiffened at his sarcasm, and the passing glance he threw to Jack was enough to make his smile sink. He set his bottle down messily and grabbed Jack by the shoulders. “Sport, c’mon, I’m really tryna b’ serious here,” he said earnestly, and Jack felt guilty for ever bugging him about it. “Would you take that deal?”
With how close he was to Dave, there was nowhere to look but his almost desperate eyes. Jack blinked and dropped his teasing tone. “No,” he said honestly. “I wouldn’t.”
Nobody else would have noticed it, but Jack saw a silent sort of dismay in Dave’s features. “Why not?”
“Well, shit, dude, I think I’d rather get what I want by myself.” And with that, he leaned out of Dave’s grip, taking another sip from his own bottle. Dave dropped his arms and let those words hang in the air.
“I think we’re pretty different in that way, then, Old Sport.”
Jack didn’t reply to that. As that silence stretched, in that rooftop air where things were silent, Jack and Dave found that they could actually think about the words they said to one another, instead of chasing the words down with the sound of casino games or the clinking of cocktail glasses.
Dave spoke up again after a few moments in a plain tone of voice. “I know what ya want.”
Jack doubted it. But he’d humor him.
“...A-a-and what’s that, exactly?” he asked skeptically, expecting a pick-up line of sorts.
“Change.”
That was… not on the list of things Jack expected him to say. Not so plainly, either. And especially not when he was this drunk.
“Sorry?” Jack asked him, craning his head to look at him in earnest confusion.
Dave was grinning, now, gesturing over to the city skyline with his bottle in hand.
“That’s it– Change! Why else would ya come t’ Vegas with me? Why else wouldja strangle all those damned toddlers with me? You’re sick of yer job, you’re sick of yer life. Y’ wanted to muck things up, and I was right there offerin’ ya the golden opportunity t’ do so!”
Jack glanced away, eyes stuck on the edge of the rooftop as he thought. Dave was so terrifyingly close to the truth that it made his heart race.
And that reminded him that he even had a heart after all– not like Dave, who’d confessed that he was missing his own many a drunken night ago, in the backseat of a taxi when they had drawn far too close to one another and Jack pointed out his odd lack of a heartbeat.
Maybe Dave was right, to an extent. Jack did want change at first, but any subsequent wants changed and blurred as quickly as they’d arrived in Vegas.
Was it still something you wanted if you didn’t even know you wanted it? If it lay dormant and scraped at your heart when you saw him make another annoying joke or ramble about poker chips?
Jack didn’t put it into words; not because he didn’t know how, but because he was terrified to. He was supposed to strangle a bunch of kids and piss off the bear deity. Not have his breath hitch at the sight of his rather irritating partner in crime.
“See? I know ya,” Dave said, after letting Jack sit in silence for a while. “If I had asked anybody else t’ come with me, they’d have told me t’ fuck right off.”
Despite all his wants, Jack couldn’t resist a healthy dose of his usual sarcasm. “You literally had nobody else to ask, Dave.”
“Exactly. Sportsy, we’re like two damn peas in a pod.” He grinned wider and got to his feet somewhat unsteadily, all the while with Jack’s wary eyes on him. Dave pointed between the two of them when he said, “It’s like… You’re Juliet, and I’m Romeo.”
“How come I have to be the chick?”
He sighed, palms up in surrender. “Fine, I’ll be the chick. But that’s not the point. The point… The point is, uh…”
“Wants.” Jack provided, for the second time now.
Dave had begun pacing a small section of the rooftop, still staying in earshot of Jack. “Yeah. We were talkin’ about what ya want.”
“Change, as you said.”
“So? Was I right?” Dave asked, eyes curious.
Jack said nothing in reply. Frustratingly enough, he knew that his silence served as a perfectly good answer to Dave.
He watched as Dave walked closer to the edge of the roof and cautiously– which was not at all, for Dave Miller– peered out down onto the city sprawling below.
Jack cursed himself mentally and felt his heart quicken in something like panic. “Damn it, can you c’mere?”
Dave turned his head back to face him. “What?”
“You’re drunk like all hell, and I’m scared you’re gonna tip right off over the edge and break your stupid neck.”
Dave tilted his head to the side, seemingly amused. “What, and leave you all alone up here?”
“Shut up.” Jack said, all the bite in the words long gone with just how much he said those two words. “Come here.”
Dave’s smile widened somewhat, and obligingly he stepped away from the edge and back over to Jack. He slumped down beside him again, resting the back of his head on the metal vent behind them.
“How come you always smile whenever I tell you to shut up?” Jack blurted out. But he’d been wondering that for a while.
“Oh. I dunno.” Dave reached over and took the bottle right out of Jack’s hands yet again, taking a long drink himself. “Guess ‘cause it… feels like home?”
“Huh?”
“Home is familiar shit, right? Somethin’ ya feel nostalgic for? So, there ya go. That’s home t’ me.”
“Huh?” Jack breathed out again, just parsing through his words and all the history that must’ve come with them. “No, no. That’s not it. Who… Who was telling you to shut up?”
Dave did not reply. He kept the bottle clenched in his hands, eyes cemented to the rooftop ledge ahead of them. His features were blank, his laugh hollow. “Whaddya mean?” he asked quietly.
“That’s not home.”
“Easy fer you t’ judge. You had a home. I only thought I had one.”
“I… Had one, yeah,” Jack admitted, and he wouldn’t have humored the question for a second if it were anybody else asking. “My little sister, mostly. She was a little shit– I told you all about that, right? We always did crap like call each other names, fight over who got to push the shopping cart. But it was never for real. It was just for shits. Y’know what I mean?”
The contemplative look on Dave’s face reminded Jack that, Right, no, he doesn’t know what I mean.
As a final word, Jack said, “Nobody at home tells you to shut up. Or if they do, they don’t… mean it.”
Dave was looking down, picking at the hem of his shirt, obviously thinking. Jack wondered if this was the first time he ever talked to anyone about this sort of thing. It was certainly Jack’s first time.
“I get it,” Dave said, oddly careful in how he spoke his next words. “You are home.”
Jack froze, not realizing that he’d been leading up to that this whole time. All of a sudden, he became acutely aware of how close Dave was sitting, or how his shirt felt brushing against Jack’s arm.
On any other day, he would’ve immediately shot back with a sharp No, Dave, you touch-deprived idiot and a half, I am not your home, I’m just some guy you slaughter kids with and you smoke alongside.
Despite this, he didn’t. He didn’t even think that. There was not much flitting around his mind to begin with, except that Dave’s hand, resting between the two of them– the same hand he’d seen smash beer bottles over people’s heads and the same hand that strangled necks– seemed like something Jack wanted to now intertwine his fingers with.
He wanted to help. He wanted to squeeze his hand and, in some silent way, to undo even a fraction of the pain that had carved its way into him. Jack’s fingers twitched, but he didn’t move them just yet.
He settled for just staring at his hand as he asked, not really joking, “That math tutor really fucked you up, huh, man?”
Dave’s voice was very quiet. “Yeah.” Dave sighed quietly, and it sounded like one of exhaustion more than anything.
Something scarily close to sympathy always twitched in Jack’s chest whenever Dave spoke about this.
He spared a quick glance to Dave’s face, who was still looking very miserable. Combined with how drunk he was– well, he looked positively pathetic in Jack’s eyes.
“I’ll stop telling you to shut up. Okay?” Jack said to him quietly.
Dave didn’t say anything in reply, he just looked at Jack and let something implacable wash over his face. Something like relief, if the softened look in his eyes was any hint.
Dave had taken his boring life, grabbed it by the ankles, gave him a new perspective, and made him confused to no end. It was no wonder that he was ingrained into every aspect of Jack’s life. Every slip of detail and every moment somehow orbited back to Dave– Dave would like that store, Dave would like that whiskey, Dave would find that dog’s haircut funny.
Because he was always with him. They fit each other like puzzles that were never meant to be sold in the first place. Where Jack was brash and blunt, Dave was bright and stubborn.
Jack’s hand twitched, and he found that it was taking a lot to not just grab Dave’s hand and hold onto it just for the hell of it. Combined with his mental willpower draining from the alcohol– well, it was something just waiting to happen.
“I don’t think this could’ve happened with anybody else,” Jack blurted out.
Dave asked, “What?”
“This. Us.”
The two of them stared ahead, not saying anything. Jack knew they were in perfect agreement on what he’d just said. Despite it, only silence and more silence was all that strung between them.
And before Dave could cut through that silence with another drunken blurt or joke, Jack reached a hand over without looking and set it atop Dave’s.
Immediately, Dave shifted his fingers to wrap around Jack’s, warm and secure. And they still did not look at one another.
“Can I ask ya somethin’, Sport?”
“Hm?”
“Am I a good change?”
“What?” he asked, the word slipping out of his mouth despite knowing exactly what he was asking. Dave’s hand squeezed his.
They just stared at one another for a while, exhales tangling in the cool air between them. Maybe Dave was drunk, but he was being scarily real right now.
The noise of the Vegas Strip melted into nothing.
“Yeah,” Jack finally said, not breaking his eye contact, which was usually so hard to hold with someone as intense as Dave. “The very best, I’d think.”
Then, there was this focused tinge to Dave’s otherwise drunken gaze that made Jack’s mind buzz with the fact that he knew Dave would’ve picked Jack over anyone else a million times over. They knew the word for it, obsession, but Jack didn’t mind it. He curled into the very word and found an odd type of home in its meaning.
“Can I try somethin’?” Dave breathed out, so quietly that Jack mostly had to read his lips to understand the question. Sometime in between all the silence, he’d leaned closer to him, or maybe, Dave was leading him closer.
Jack nodded.
They both leaned close, and Jack was honestly expecting a kiss, but was instead yanked into a bone-crushing hug, his arms wrapped tightly around Jack’s. And for a moment, he thought he might lose his breath.
He had never been a person who allowed himself this kind of closeness, but here it felt strangely natural.
Dave, the same man who he’d seen fight and kill and mangle, now looked so vulnerable and so unabatedly unafraid to be holding onto someone.
Their bottles sit forgotten, their conversation tapered into silence. From where his hand laid on Dave’s shoulder, Jack quietly, soothingly rubbed his thumb there and just let him be held.
They stayed like that for a very long while, until all of Dave’s tremors– had he been shaking this whole time?– eased into steady breathing and relaxed shoulders.
Eventually, Jack realized that Dave was mumbling something, just a whisper at first before it formed into something like words. Jack had to strain his ears to make out his mutterings.
He only caught the word home.
If it was even possible, Jack pulled Dave just a bit closer.