He had pushed too far this time, too hard, and he couldn't take it back. Usually, for him, the things that should have been irrevocable missteps weren't. He felt no consequences. He had calculated the risk of toying with her too quickly, missing the most important part: in the end, it was all on him. Everything they had become, the worst of it, that was on Jack. It was what he had done, staring at Cate caught off guard by the rejection. Everything he touched he destroyed, inevitably, and staring at her, waiting for her to physically push him out since he couldn't move, he understood that. He had been warned of his destructive power by numerous people over the years, since he was student being yelled at by teachers to sit down and shut up, but only now did he fee how right they had been.
Jack wasn't meant to be here. He shouldn't have come when she called. He should have stopped this thing they'd become and stopped himself and he shouldn't have reached out to touch her again as he lied, again. He had no excuses. Being selfish and jealous and ambitious and hungry wasn't enough of one, it was who he was. People who felt the need to excuse their personalities were generally on the losing end of their battles.
He almost opened his mouth to ask her if him leaving was what she really wanted when they had been at an impasse for the past few minutes, something she wouldn't have stayed at if she didn't want him to stay too, but that would have been dangerous and it was time to stop doing dangerous things around her. “Fine,” it was more reassurance to himself, acknowledgement, than a concession to her, “I need to get home before it starts raining again anyway. Happy birthday.”
Jack shouldn't have said it, and he shouldn't have looked back at her and placed his hand on the door, but he had made his bed on things he shouldn't have done and now he was lying in it. The other things he could have said, the other conclusions—“I'll see you this weekend, then” or, even better, nothing, leaving their goodbye as unfinished as it should have been, a precursor to Saturday or Sunday or whenever he next saw her. He had never said goodbye before, much less sealed it with a kiss, or a hand on a hip, or a finger on a lip.
Happy birthday. He was a few weeks late, and he hadn't given her anything she wanted, but he had said that, at least. There was something final about telling Cate that now, his concluding argument, like this was the last birthday she would celebrate with him, like they would never see his. Maybe they wouldn't. Unfinished had worked for them, never having to say goodbye because someone had to go and they were both sweat-soaked and exhausted and there just wasn't enough time, they'd have to say it the next time they met—to him, it meant they would always be back where they lay, but now, it was uncertain. At least, if Keaton had come home he could say it was definitely over.
This was clouds of doubt and seriousness and lips pulled taut and looking away as he slipped out, back thudding against the wall of the elevator with the same sound he had made when she pushed him against her wall earlier. It felt like months since they had gotten anywhere, since he had kissed down the length of her body and pried her thighs apart and her legs had wrapped around him.
Fuck.
Jack wanted immediately for it to be the weekend, for his job to be done and over and his bosses off his back and to see Cate at his door, forgiving him. His heart thudded in his chest, so distracted he forgot to look for Cate's—for Julian when he emerged in the lobby.
He’d backed himself into this corner, physically and not, and her hold on him, physically and not, was only getting tighter. Jack was tired of fighting. It seemed impossible, that, that he might ever grow tired of fighting anyone, but now he had been faced with formidable enemies—time, Julian in the distance, himself, circumstance, Cate—he wanted nothing more than for the blows to stop. Cate. The second he stepped out of line, the second he misspoke, Catherine Archibald had her claws in him, digging deep, drawing blood. Jack Bass was known as a man who always got what he wanted, and she wasn't giving him anything. The woman he was staring down might have had a face like heaven, but there was all the fire of hell behind her. What usually made his pulse, and certain other parts of him, rise was now nothing but irritating.
He could take her game and twist it back on her, since they were being cruel now, and taunt her about pulling away because of bruises she had definitely seen before. He had come to her with the intention of putting that indiscretion in the past, and more than atoning for his sins, but if she wanted to play this way, her fingers digging into his hip, for God's sake, so be it. There were definite grounds to twist that into her mistake instead of his. He was tired of fighting her at her door, halfway between coming and going, not of winning.
He ran the risk of saying something he couldn't come back from, especially if the words came out as an allegation, an accusation he knew was false, a crooked finger pointed to the wrong person. But Jack's mind was on holding the upper hand, or at least on some semblance of fairness: she was holding today against him—he was the cruel one—and he would hold their last failure against her. It was petty, a grudge even if he had felt she deserved blame.
“Come now, I think you know what I’m talking about, Catherine.” Jack punctuated his words with a lopsided smile, and looked down at her pointedly, an alpha-male attempt at dominance. He'd lost all his inhibitions the second she had called his bluff, all sense of time and duty and fear and liking her vanished in the weight of a single breath. “You came over uninvited,” he forced disdain into the word, still maintaining that charade out of habit, “And put that mouth of yours to good use.” Now, Jack let go of her hand, reaching up to run his thumb over her bottom lip, dropping down to trace a line down her throat, ending with his palm against her chest, mirroring where hers had been before he'd forced her off. “Only to leave me alone without what either of us wanted. If that wasn't cruelty, I beg you to tell me what is.”
He walked a dangerous line, touching her back like this, slipping back to his old character—who he really was, before her, heartless and ambitious and womanising. He was seconds from undoing all of the work that had brought them to this point, buttons and zippers and pulling. This had been what he needed. Not liquid courage, motivation. A game to win. Their old one, the one that entailed they meet in dark corners and pretend they didn't know each other until no one else was around, that wasn't enough anymore.
When there were stakes he cared about, matching her, getting what he wanted, he became a different person entirely. The right person, who would have had to force himself to even say the words 'goodbye' and 'I'm sorry', and would have choked on them. If Cate had held back from him first, at her door, the way they had always done it, they wouldn't be at a standstill over a goodbye kiss.
Jack pushed aside the single treacherous thought in his head, the one that said if she had held back first, he would have done something as terrible as telling her the truth or far worse, certain they would repeat the daylit hours in his house a few weeks past. There was no time to think anymore, really. He wouldn't let Cate hold him tighter and lean in further—the space between them was closing rapidly—without playing dirty too. It was her mistake to ask what she had done, anyway.
Everything he had built up from the moment he had pulled himself from her bed, the confidence, the certainty, that little bit of excitement, even, disappeared in a second and suddenly, he knew nothing again. If anyone was cruel, it was him. They'd reached an impasse, standing in a place where nothing could be forgotten and nothing could be forgiven by either of them. Jack had barely felt her hold on him as she’d mocked him, encouraging a false sense of security and assuring him that this encounter wouldn’t end as a complete disaster and he hadn’t gone too far asking her for a kiss goodbye, but now Cate’s palm laid against his chest was like lead, heavy, and it felt important, and he couldn’t shake her. But far worse—her looking up at him, seeing what he couldn’t—all of the doubt that had flooded back into his head crossing his expression, panic turning his self-satisfied smirk into something flatter and unamused.
Slowly, like he was trying not to startle her, or, more accurately, himself, there was no way he would recover quickly from something so true, Jack drew up his own hand and placed it over hers, still resting against his shirt, ignoring the other at his waist. That was an almost normal place for her to be, and he was only capable of focusing his attention on one place at the moment. He slid his hand under Cate’s, prying her fingers apart and locking them together with hers, an awkward attempt a diffusing his sudden fall from conviction.
“You’re right,” it almost pained him to say that, even with everything else he, of all things, felt for her. “You haven’t been cruel. If we can forgive—well, I don’t want to bring it back up, forgetting is the first step to forgiveness.” He was bluffing, but Jack had always been talented at maintaining a façade. He could force his way out of a confrontation like this, because that’s what it was, Cate confronting him with all of his damn stupid mistakes in the last few hours, in a few heartbeats, with a few bats of his lashes and holding her hand for good measure. “But I’m willing to let it go if I get what I asked for. As for your birthday, I’m sure I’ll have something like what you wanted by Saturday.”
Every time he thought he was done, going past the brink, when his legs weren’t just shaking but the ground was collapsing under him, he recovered. She could delay him, push him to inadvisable places, to do idiotic things and profess his feelings for her, but no one had the ability to keep Jack down for so long he couldn’t come back. He always failed to recognise that.
He shifted uneasily, inadvertently squeezing her hand, unsure now of what to do, of what else, if anything, he could tell her. The last thing Cate was was slow, she was as quick and sharp as he was, and he waited for the next blow. He’d faked his way out of her accusations and right back to his own demands, she could call him on it, tell him ‘bullshit’ or how much worse he was, comparatively, to her imagined fault. All he could do was make things up, until there was no shred of truth for him to give her in response, when it wouldn’t be playful or flirtatious. Maybe it wasn’t either of those things now, and he’d woefully overestimated the strength his own bravado. Jack forced himself to keep breathing, and focus on her.
Maybe there was still time to make it up to her. Both times, two in a row, both times were on him. First, for being an idiot and getting himself into trouble again, second for pulling away, physically and emotionally, because of a few errant thoughts. The weekend seemed to far away, but too close too, not enough time for him to sort his head. He had a job. He was torturing himself with this self-imposed idiot’s celibacy. It wasn’t like Cate didn’t have someone else, she didn’t need him. At this point, Jack didn’t need Jack.
He stroked the inside of her thumb with his own, looking down at their hands instead of her eyes again. He just needed to stop thinking, that was the solution to everything. Maybe he needed to down a bottle of Macallan before he saw her again. Surely, with liquid courage flowing through him, he wouldn’t fuck up again.
Nevemind that drunken sex was something he’d left with college, and there was no way Cate would sleep with him if she thought he was incapacitated—by a bruise or by a single malt.
He’d moved closer to Cate impulsively, and now Jack regretted it, because what had come between them was heavy and uncomfortable. Now that she’d put her wish into words, he could only disappoint her—’bruise-free is a good look for you’—that wasn’t happening, even if he could lie again and say he’d be perfectly unblemished the next time he saw her. “I’ll keep that in mind, then.”
He gave her a half smile not unlike his smirk, considering for a second whether he could really be doing this, standing not-quite with one foot and one out on what counted as her doorstep, making empty promises he knew he wasn’t going to keep, and didn’t really care about keeping. Except, something was stirring in his head. Guilt, maybe, that he was telling her the exact opposite of what she wanted—or, rather, what he was telling her wasn’t the truth but what she truly wanted to hear, that he would play nice at ‘work’ and not say things that would get him beaten up by the other kids, like a good little boy.
He didn’t like this habit of thinking he was falling into, overanalysing every one thing she said or he said and all of that silence. He had never had a conscience. It was what had allowed him to be who he was supposed to be, with that name and that father and that always quick, too clever for his own good mind. At this point, everything around him was screaming at Jack to leave and stop doing this, stop working his way into these tight spaces where he had no chance of saying the right thing. But he was a masochist, and the rational thing didn’t appeal to him in any way. He was going to draw this out, since, really, he was the one in control here.
Just like Cate had made the decision to leave too quickly at his house, he was the one who decided not to go fast enough now, courting the danger of Julian coming home sooner than expected. It was a weak danger, and he probably had awhile before she would really push him to go, but the idea of Cate’s boyfriend coming home to see him was, to put it in the simplest of terms, an idea that excited him. Part of him wanted to reach out and touch her and start all over again and get them caught, but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right, not now, and once she got past the momentary shock, or maybe not, that he would try to fuck her again when he was supposed to be leaving, she would stop him. Jack had lines he didn’t cross, he wasn’t even close to the villain he thought he was.
Still, he couldn’t resist trying something, full-on smirking and pushing back on his short hair, an absent-minded, bored gesture on him. “Do I get a goodbye kiss to seal the deal? I’ll try very, very hard not to get in trouble, just for you. Don’t make me wait.” He didn’t intend it to sound like a threat, and he hoped desperately for a second she wouldn’t take it that way. Fuck. He had to go, he was losing his cool the longer he kept her in his sight, by the time he left he wouldn’t be able to do anything with confidence, at this rate.
“You know, soldiers getting seen off to war always get a goodbye kiss. For centuries, that’s how the civilised people have done it.” Fuck. He’d told her, if inadvertently, he was going to war. He backpedaled immediately, like she’d done a few minutes earlier: “Then again, I’m not going to war, so really, all I can do is beg you not to be cruel.” The idea of him begging for anything was still laughable, even if, somewhere in his head, he knew that was precisely what he was doing to draw out his time, and it showed on his expression, cocky and amused with himself. He’d managed to recover—maybe. She had to kiss him first.
Wait. The single syllable was the excuse he’d been seeking to keep from going and not looking back like he should have, evidence she still wanted him even though they were now at a stalemate . Jack hadn’t been sure everything would turn out alright — or relatively so, alright for them — until she’d stopped him where he stood. It was one word, but a powerful one. Like love, or hate, or death. Wait. He turned back to Cate, eyes reflexively sweeping the length of her body, lingering exactly where they shouldn’t have. That was all they were now, shouldn’t look at her like he was still hungry when he had refused to eat and shouldn’t go now and shouldn’t not go, for god’s sake he needed to leave before Julian’s key turned in the lock, in a state of complete ruin but only desperate for more.
He felt cold, the feeling creeping up the back of his head and he almost reached up to make sure there wasn’t leftover rain dripping down from his hair. If they were anything else he might have asked to borrow an umbrella with that downpour, but he couldn’t have anything that belonged to her. He couldn’t give her a jacket or blanket or anything to keep her from shivering either, it wouldn’t be just something to keep her warm but hard physical evidence he cared about her for anyone to see. Maybe her doorman, if he was on-duty, he usually stayed away from Jack, had one. Or he could stop being a baby about a little water and a little cold, cold he would miss when summer hit, and bolt when he was out of her door.
Sorry. Another small, powerful word, and he stopped all together. He’d been in-between running and staying with her ‘wait’, practically still in motion, just at a pause, but her apology shut him down. His first instinct —and his impulse, which was what was so damn wrong —was to apologise straight back to her, to tell her it would be alright and reassure her he was just working and give her another one of those awkward embraces he’d been trying so hard to pull off lately. But that wasn’t right at all, and he was setting things right.
Jack stuck his hands in his pockets, looking down before back at her. He was always on his toes, always running without any regard for the ground he covered, but now he was very, very aware of where he stood. He followed Cate’s eyes to the window, away from him and away from her —it had stopped raining, he hadn’t been paying close enough attention. He wouldn’t need to sprint now. He might want to anyway, even if, or maybe especially if, she couldn’t see him from her high and expensive perch. Jack needed to get out and away from her before he became another one of her cursed boys. How had he not seen it before?
He knew about Eric, he’d tried to encourage her grieving long after she needed to stop so she’d never try to love someone else — him, Jack, that someone else — her father, her brother. He’d never connected himself to them because he hadn’t wanted to admit to being the same as anyone else. And now she wanted him to lie to her. Cate wanted him not to be like them and here he stood, still as he could possibly be, chest barely stirring with his breaths, going home to gun running mobsters who wanted him to help them smuggle in a shipment of the drugs that killed boys like Eric. Boys like him, who weren’t serious users, only taking the edge off with something harder to add to their drinking habits, and then suddenly were, half-dead with needles in their veins and traces of white on their lips. Fuck.
Crossing his arms and tilting his head almost inadvertently, he tensed, meeting her gaze. And then all of the bizarre feelings and impulses he’d been caving too lately dissipated and Jack was left with who he really was: his lips spread into a slow, easy smile, not a smirk but something charming and natural, and his shoulders fell as his muscles relaxed. If she wanted him to lie to her, that was what he was good at. That, and fucking her whenever Julian wasn’t around, those were his original duties as her... as whatever he was. Listening and encouragement and feelings and apologies and the truth and liking her weren’t what he owed her. They never had been.
“It’s just work. Boring but hardly dangerous. You’ll see me this weekend. Assuming I haven’t managed to get punched by someone for taking their girlfriend, and even then I could always use someone to help me with the ice,” now he allowed himself to smirk, something cheeky and poking fun at her so she’d think he meant it. Just work. That didn’t mean anything for him anyway. There wasn’t a name for what he did except illegal, most of the time. “So...” He trailed off, his head buzzing, his thoughts a bizarre combination of who he thought he was and maybe who he really was, who just wanted to tell Cate the truth and run away with her.
and all the people say
“you can’t wake up, this is not a dream
you’re part of a machine, you are not a human being
with your face all made up, living on a screen
low on self esteem, so you run on gasoline”
He wanted to see her tomorrow so much so that he had to choke the words down: Nothing, I’m not doing anything. He was doing something. He couldn’t forget... what was he doing? Work. Four seconds and a zipper to forget, another four seconds and pulling it up with a usually-satisfying hum to remember. Jack was still quiet, more distracted by what he could possibly say than thinking any more about the fact he was helping her get dressed and not the other way around.
From the looks of it, it was a task she could have done herself, even. He was still there for show only, her toy now that he’d fucked up for the last time and repented for everything that had come before. Or had, at least, tried to repent. She wanted him to stay these next few moments so he had. She wanted him to help her with a zipper she could do herself so he had. Maybe he’d always been her toy, and it had taken him this long to realise it.
Jack resisted his instincts, refusing to linger any longer, to abruptly change directions and push her against a wall and undo all the work he’d just done. He was always a glutton for punishment, but he just knew he shouldn’t try anything, that it would turn on him and even if she accepted his advance and kissed him back they’d end up doing something even more unthinkable: exposing their affair. Leaving her now was better. Keeping her waiting for him was better. He might have been her toy, but he was one that bared its teeth and resisted.
“I’ve got work tomorrow. Noon to midnight, probably.” He wasn’t going to explain the hours, or that it was probably more like the minute he got home today to the minute he got home in a few days, so he hoped she wouldn’t ask.
“But the weekend, I might be... available.” He turned around, looking over his shoulder for his shirt before remembering he’d hung it up again, moving it from one chair back to the next. He left Cate in the door frame, messing up his hair as he pulled the shirt over his head, finished dressing and effectively ending any hope of their tides turning. Jack didn’t even bother to end ‘or not’ to the end of that thought. The afternoon was over. The palpable tension meant nothing; it was always there, heavy enough to push them together over and over again.
“I can make time, I’m sure. If that’s what you want.” He didn’t even think, just said it, realising a few seconds later the full implications of that sentence. He’d make time for her. God. Where the fuck had Jack Bass gone? The real him, who just wanted to fuck someone else’s girlfriend, who wanted the empire that was meant for him and wouldn’t be distracted by a blonde with long legs and somewhat surprising talents. He would have used her and moved on. This was so... he shouldn’t have kept feeding whatever they had become, a distraction, but he couldn’t pull the words back to his tongue to never be said again once he’d already said them.
He was losing his edge, becoming more and more blunt each time he saw her, and not in the way the socialites he knew were. That was cattiness. He was a weapon that was losing its power to kill. Jack crossed his arms and tilted his head in the direction of the door, at her. “So... I’ll see you, then. Weekend or... whenever.” Tomorrow, he wanted to say, but short of her appearing suddenly on his doorstep before noon, that wasn’t happening, and maybe not even then. Besides Cate wasn’t a rule breaker, and surprising each other, that was against the rules.
He wanted her to surprise him tomorrow more than he could say, instead, he looked away.
There really wasn't anything more for Jack to do except sigh and run his fingers through his hair absentmindedly, a habit left over from the days when it was far longer. He eased onto his elbows, then moved forward until he was sitting up completely, stretching a body that had gone still with resignation. As much as he liked being contrary, playing by his own rules, he knew when not to push someone. He usually ignored that knowledge and pushed and pushed anyway, but he couldn't do it to Cate. Not now. Not when she didn't want him fighting back. He wanted what she wanted, when it came down to it. All of the fight in him, renewed by his deliberate disobedience when she had suggested he leave, dissipated the second she touched him. He was so damn weak.
This had been a fucking disaster and the momentary break from—he didn't know what it was, exactly, all those questions he had about Cate's feelings and his own, besides madness—had ended far too quickly for it to be worth it. If he hadn't been such a greedy, selfish idiot, they might have been coming down with her lips at his ear, bodies tangled together, their climaxes not in conversation, in reaching the most still and quiet they could be, but in innuendo.
Jack sighed again, but much softer this time, closer to a heavy exhale than the connotations of a sigh. Helping her get dressed was the exact opposite of what he wanted. Had wanted. Still, on some level, wanted. They'd gotten so close to getting over their—his—last fuck up. Jack hated admitting mistakes, hated taking responsibility, but it had been his fault. Mostly. This, now, it was definitely on him. "Yeah, sure. Just let me get dressed first."
He hesitated before standing. He'd never been embarrassed by his body before in his life, not with all the girls who succumbed way too easily to his sculpted chest and impressive biceps during high school parties, begging to see his carefully maintained abs just once in college, but now he felt like exactly what he was: naked. Self-conscious wasn't a word associated with him, ever, but he definitely felt it now. He knew he only got undressed with her once: there weren't second chances. If he slipped back into those stupid sweatpants now, the afternoon was well and truly over and it was well and truly a mistake. But once he was up, it was easier, even when he was forced to leave her behind to go retrieve the clothes he, or more accurately she, had left behind on their way to her bed.
He didn't put his shirt back on yet, there was no reason to. On some level it was a selfish reminder to her, on another, it wasn't like Julian had gotten home. Keys, wallet, he had everything except that. All that was left was her. It felt domestic, promising to help her get dressed. Jack couldn’t remember if he’d ever done it. Usually, he was asleep, or pretending to be, when Cate slipped out. It was instinctual, he never had to say goodbye to her, or anyone he’d ever shared a bed with, if he did that, that cool nonchalance after he’d gotten what he wanted. It probably made him a player, if everything else about the way he lived his life didn’t make him one.
“So... just call me. When you want to come over.” Like usual, except nothing felt like that anymore. He shifted awkwardly on his feet, realising how little time he spent standing around her, of all things. How could he think he knew her when so much, all, practically, of their time together was spent on their backs? He rubbed his jaw, tight again, looking away from her and at the floor, waiting for her to ask him to zip her up or stay or something.
For someone who had wanted her to say exactly that—you should probably go, smiling—just moments earlier, it hit him harder than he expected. But if there was anything to describe their afternoon, it would be that: fulfilled expectations that still stung somehow. He turned on his side, the motion edging him closer to covering the space between them, the exact opposite of her suggestion.
Jack honestly couldn’t remember whether there was something he needed to do, anything urgent. He knew there was a few things he wanted to do, or had wanted to do, before she had told him to leave in that polite way of hers, but they weren’t really necessary or pressing, were they? He had an entire night to prepare for the job, it wasn’t like he slept before these things anyway. He didn’t know when he’d see her again anyway, when later was, if they’d ever have ‘more’ time.
He shifted away again to stretch his arms over his head lazily, having grown far too comfortable at her side. Because Jack was Jack, he was going to say exactly what he was thinking now, when it served him, not bothering to stop and think about whether or not he would sound like an idiot or desperate or both. “The thing is...” so many fucking pauses between them still, he was making himself bored, “Dammit.” Or maybe he wasn’t going to say what was on his mind at all, not when it didn’t have any self-serving purpose. All he could think about was that one quote from Fight Club, in between the shots of the same kind of violence he thrived on now: You met me at a strange time in my life. And the response he’d been given once: When is it not a strange time?
Jack stopped talking, stopped thinking, stopped stretching, ruffling his own hair as he brought his arms back down. “I don’t know when we’ll ever have more time, for anything.” They’d never needed whole-night, whole-day amounts of time until now. The idea of having enough hours with her to figure what the fuck was going on in his head was impossible, another fantasy about Cate that had somehow found its place among some decidedly kinkier ones. “I don’t know if we’ll ever have more time.”
If he had just done what was expected of him, not just today, but the last time they’d been together, he wouldn’t have had to say it and remind himself all over again just what this was. Cate lived with Julian, she saw him everyday, he could call her any time and tell her stupid things like ‘I like you’ without setting off a disastrous chain of events and now more than ever Jack hated him, despised him, wanted to be in his place. He was jealous. He’d never really been jealous of Keaton before, just fleeting moments when he’d wish that he was gone so he could do whatever he wanted with Cate whenever he wanted.
Fuck. She was right, it was time for him to go. “So I just—you said stay. Earlier. We don’t have to figure anything out now. We don’t have to... talk.” He’d already fucked over any sense of morality left him by fucking her in the first place, and his treatment of her feelings when it came to him being reckless were far, far past questionable, but now he was losing any last bit of sanity he had when it came to her. What was worse, he didn’t even want to try and stop it.
He didn't know what to say to that, mostly because it was true and there was nothing else to say. They—they, he wanted to reach over again and shake her and ask if she had really meant that, us, we, instead of you, Jack—had fucked up somewhere, somehow, one of those nights in soft light and softer sheets, or maybe over several of those nights, each one leading them further and further away, straight into ruin. The problem now, their problems were so goddamned neverending and so fucking complicated with at least several hundred facets, apparently, was that they knew they had fucked up, and yet neither Jack nor Cate had moved away. Yet. Still. They were closer, even.
Just laying on her bed approaching stillness, just talking in half-sentences and questions. There was something almost romantic about this place he had found himself in now, a lot more like star-crossed forbidden lovers than fucking around with someone else's girlfriend.
He didn't know what else there was to say anymore but he knew he didn't want to leave and his head was going in circles, repeating itself, all of the uncharacteristic panic and the quick highs that came from telling her something true and the immense confusion and more than anything else, her. Her, her, her. Cate. Catherine.
He needed to leave, God, he needed to leave so badly, Julian had to be coming home soon and as much as they'd always prepared for it, he wasn't ready to be shoved in the closet when they heard the key in the lock a little too early. And tomorrow, he still had a job tomorrow, even if he'd never tell her what it was he hadn't lied about it, he needed to be home to prepare for it.
The only thing remaining for them to do that seemed logical at this point, pulling her sheets around them and curling up and sleeping the afternoon off—that was still as impossible as ever. They weren't upstate, or even in his bed, where she could call her boyfriend and give him an apology for the luncheon that had turned into staying over with her friend to talk about the always intimidating and always unquestionable ‘girl things’ for the night. Leaving was the last thing remaining he needed to do. But—Jack had just told her he wasn't going, and he kept his word, usually, since he gave it so rarely. He sighed, the rush of giddiness that she felt the same way he did past, leaving him in reality.
“What do we do now?” It was a heavy question. He didn’t expect either of them to have the answer to it, so he kept his voice low and his eyes down, off of hers. The urge to go back, to hold her again, touch her somehow while she watched over him, was growing.
She sounded exactly how he felt. Confused, at best. Hurt, tired, angry at worst, that neither of them knew what they were doing, that he had told her he liked her and to shut up and that he was still here, not reaching out to touch her, not doing what he was supposed to be doing. The blind leading the blind, grasping desperately for resolution. He always got himself into these tight little holes, walls collapsing down and trapping him before he had to sense to crawl out. Jack hadn't planned on being the fucked up one, on lying next to her breathing steadily, no sense of urgency pounding in his head. By now, if thing had gone to fucking plan, they would have been lying together breathing hard, legs intertwined, coming down before they started all over again.
That was exactly the fucking problem: planning. It always came down to control with them, didn't it? Who was hungrier, who important was being left behind so they could sleep together, who could bring the other to their knees. That's what they lived for, being better than each other, digging nails into skin and kissing with more than a little anger alongside their passion. If he couldn't force himself to stop talking for fuck's sake and go back to what they did best, the only thing they should have been doing, he had lost not just her, not just that little competition of theirs, but his mind. His way. Everything.
How long had it really been since he made his way up her thighs and across her hips? Since he had kicked off his sweatpants and grabbed Cate’s hips and attempted to avoid making too many little red marks on her soft skin? It felt like hours, but god, no, it couldn’t be, not if it was still raining. Manhattan rain came and went, darkening the skies and then lightening them up again as soon as people started complaining about having to pull out their umbrellas. These drawn out pauses, where neither Jack nor Cate spoke, they were just that. Pauses. Not days, hours, half-hours. For the first time in a long time, it felt like time was for him. He could fix this. He’d said what he needed to, it was over, he could touch her back without bursting into flames that would consume the both of them, without getting caught up in his head and saying the wrong thing too soon.
Slowly, deliberately, cautiously, he reached out and pulled her into something like a hug. It was different than the last one he had given her, that one had been born out of fear, the need to tell her everything he couldn’t with words, but each had their own desperation about them. Everything about this one was awkward, a reminder of everything they weren’t doing, but eventually Jack’s shoulders finally stopped tensing, and his jaw finally stopped clenching, and his fingers unfurled against Cate’s skin, pressing down softly and holding her close. It was more of a gesture for him than her, reassurance that she was still there, that she would let him touch her even in this small way still.
“I don’t know what we’re doing either. God, I wish I did, but I—everything is different and I... I don’t understand any of this—fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know anything except... except—I know what this feels like. And I know I can’t leave you like this and I shouldn’t have told you to leave me and—” He knew everything except the words for what they were, but that wasn’t anything he could tell Cate. Jack exhaled against her shoulder, head dropping and pressing against her. He needed to let go, soon, and not just of her waist. That wasn’t going to happen. He couldn’t just walk out. He had to accept that.
This was ridiculous. When the realisation hit, he pulled away, shifting only his back and staring at the ceiling again, a smile that verged on his usual smirk turning up the corners of his mouth. He laughed, not loudly, something soft and to himself, breathing out again and summing it all up in four words and nineteen letters: “What the fuck happened?”
There were so many things he wanted to say to her—he meant it, so much more than anything else, he missed her, and he liked her, and it was real, with the way his heart thudded in his chest it couldn’t be anything else—but the words stuck in his throat and he choked on them, the space between them something vast and horrifying. He hadn’t meant to drive her away, she was supposed to tell him she missed him too and she liked him too and then she would kiss him and ask him to come back and tell her again when her boyfriend wasn’t coming home, so she could spend the night with him. Jack had managed to construct an elaborate fantasy in his head from the second she pulled away and it had come crashing down when she breathed out seconds later. The place she had rested her head against his arm felt cold with the sudden air striking it, and, more than that, empty.
He didn’t want to think about what that meant, that he knew what he wanted her to say to him, that when she didn’t it hurt deep in his chest. He had always accepted that he didn’t control anyone. Certainly, it would have made his life a thousand times, two thousand times even, more pleasant if he controlled his cousins, his father, his uncle, all of those people who had left him when he fucking needed them to come through. But he knew exactly what he could and couldn’t do and it had always been one of his better traits, a reluctance to force anyone into anything. He knew he couldn’t get Cate to do anything just like she couldn’t get him to do anything—he could sweet talk, or, more accurately, dirty talk, cajole, bribe her to give him what he wanted but in the end she ruled herself—and still, he was desperate for her to have said something, anything else.
He was going crazy. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, manic depression, psychosis, it had to be one of those. Was he hallucinating? Lying in the dark home alone imagining a conversation he thought he wanted to have and convincing himself it was real? No. No hallucination could be as real as this, the hollow feeling in his head, the emptiness in the small expanse of bed that separated them, and before that, the heat of her bare skin against his.
Jack needed to go, he needed to get dressed and walk out and not say anything else to her, ever again. He exhaled, a deep, steady breath, he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Is that what you want? Upstate? Holding hands in the park?” He deliberately ignored the first thing—he had come far too close to telling her everything before, and if she said she truly wanted to know what the hell he was doing, he might have told her. He wasn’t moving further away or getting up and pulling his pants back, nor was he shutting up, like he should have been. The hole was only getting deeper, threatening to collapse in on itself.
“I really fucking like you.” He didn’t know what else there was to say but what he had already said. “I like sleeping with you and talking to you and I like all this maneuvering bullshit and I like being the bad guy but more than any of those I really, really fucking like you. This isn’t easy for me to admit, fuck’s sake Cate, this is the hardest fucking thing I’ve done in God-fucking-knows how long because I know what this is supposed to be and I know you can’t reciprocate and I feel like a fucking idiot lying here and telling you I like you like a little boy with a playground crush. So please, take your own damn advice and don’t say anything now.”
He didn’t know what he was going to say after that, and he wanted her to say something else. Jack always wanted what he couldn’t have.
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