#lovers death

[that-one-english-nerd]

a nysm text post??? in the year of 2025??? whattt???

[mentallyillmindmeld]

NYSM how I love you

[lab-trash]

Henley: And Danny, don’t you dare hurt him! Daniel: *laughs* I won’t. Merritt: Don’t laugh. Daniel: Merritt: She means it. Daniel: I- I won’t. Henley: Seriously. Don’t hurt him. Daniel: Okay, I’m not planning on hurting him. Dylan: You better not be! Daniel: I’m not! Lula: Hey, Daniel, you best watch yourself. Daniel: Why would any of you think I’d hurt Jack? You’re all my friends too! Merritt: Eh.

[paperbackparagraphs]

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, what’s an album worth?

Henley gave Jack and Danny polaroid cameras as their Christmas gifts. They take pictures of each other more than anything else. Neither seems to notice. They both think they’re just overthinking it, thinking they’re just too busy to see them take the other pictures, and chalking it up to wishful thinking.

Jack finds Danny’s photo album first. Because of course he does. It’s late September, so theres quite a few of them in the album. Birthdays, shows, down-time minutiae. It takes him until the final photo to accept that they’re all of him. Every last one. He doesn’t say anything. There must be an album each of Henley and Merritt somewhere, right? His was just on Danny’s nightstand for… some reason… must be a good one. Danny doesn’t do anything without a good reason. He hadn’t even meant to be in there. He was looking for a pair of scissors to cut something he’s long since forgotten about and knew Danny probably had a pair, but couldn’t remember why. It was open on the nightstand and the Sleight just couldn’t help himself.

Danny doesn’t see Jacks album until Henley shows it to him, mid-October. Jack had been difficult to deal with for about a couple weeks. Which is when Henley suspects Jack happened upon Danny’s photos. Danny was seated on the couch, jaw and shoulders tense, as Henley just sort of flips errantly through the photo album. She had asked Jack to see it because she “wanted to find a good one to show her mom” or something like that, and Jack, the gullible baby he was, handed it over without a second thought. It was mostly Daniel. With a few loose pictures of Hen and Merritt tucked between pages and pages of Danny. He hadn’t meant to look over her shoulder but it happened. His googling for something he’d since forgotten about had been on his nerves and he needed something else to focus on and Henley and the album were just so conveniently right there next to him.

Danny sprung off the couch with all the energy he’d been holding in his limbs and nearly slipped on the rug in the hallway to Jack’s room.

“He’s on the roof, Danny.” Merritt calls out from his room across the hall and Danny shifts his momentum without acknowledging him.

Jack is lost in thought looking out over the skyline, and never hears Danny enter the roof top. He’s counting the lights on in the building opposite theirs just so he has something solid to focus on that isn’t the ache that settled in his chest days ago.

Danny stops halfway across the roof and just looks at him. Silhouetted softly by the city lights. He wishes he had his camera but he’s out of film anyways.

“Why so many of me, Jack?” Danny asks into the air between them.

“What?” Jack turns to him, slowly, as if he’s moving through water. He’s half shocked to see him here and half happy to see him at all. He realized in that second, he’d been skillfully avoiding him.

“First, you start avoiding me like-like I have a plague or something, and then Henley is looking through your photo album and it’s all me! Well. Not all of them but most of them? Like a lot of them…” Danny is much closer to Jack than he had been. When had he moved?

Jack looks like a kicked puppy. “Mine? Yours is ALL of me! There isn’t a single picture of Merritt or Henley or anyone else! Don’t come at me sideways when you’re no better.” Jack turns back around, unable to handle being so close.

“Jack when… actually, that doesn’t matter. Will you look at me?” Daniel sits next to Jack, facing him, sitting too close. He’s nervous that Jack will hear his elevated heart rate but he doesn’t move. He sees Jack shrink away from him a little and it stings.

“Jack. Why? Why me more than anything?” Daniel asks. Jack scoffs, and Daniel notices him fidgeting with a deck of cards.

“Why do you think, Atlas? You’re the genius, you tell me.” Jack’s jaw is tense, his eyes focused somewhere far away but on nothing in particular.

“I need to hear you say it. It’s… it’s not real until *you* say it.” Daniel’s eyes drift to his lap where he is fidgeting with a bit of detritus on the make shift bench they’re on. He can’t bring himself to keep staring at the man in front of him.

“Daniel. I’m fairly certain I’ve been in love with you since the day we met. It was a crush prior to that, but meeting you sealed the deal. Henley calls it ‘pining.’” Jack closes his eyes for a second and turns to look at Daniel. Daniel looks up when the movement catches his eye, and the two men lock eyes. “Is that enough for you, Atlas?” Jacks jaw is still clenched tight.

Daniel doesn’t back down from the intensity of Jacks gaze. “Looks like I’m a little behind, then. The attraction was immediate, I mean.. you- well you know what you look like. The crush formed when you picked the lock. I didn’t realize I’d fallen until…” Daniel’s gaze wavered and he dropped it back to his hands again, his knuckles balled into tight fists. “It would have been nice if Dylan had given us… given *me* any kind of heads up…” Jack notices a tear fall and softens immediately.

He places a hand on Danny’s knee and sighs. “You know why we couldn’t Danny… but… I *am* sorry…” Jack puts his hands on top of Danny’s. The Showman slumps a little, and looks up.

“I know, Jack… I know.” Danny smiles wearily. “It just took a lot out of me… realizing I was in love with you and being too late to say it all in the same second that I lost one of my best friends… and then getting you back… I couldn’t bring myself to say anything on the chance that it….” Danny had begun to tear up again.

Jack took Danny’s face in his hands. “I know. Why do you think I never told you? I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you either…” Daniel chuckled quietly, and put his hands on top of Danny’s. “You know what this mean’s right?” Jack furrowed his brow and shook his head, waiting for Danny to explain.

“Do you remember, back around Christmas… Henley put mistletoe on like, every door frame? Merritt kept joking it was to catch me under it but….”

A knowing smirk split Jack’s face. “You think she knew and was trying to-“

“Set us up? Yeah, I do.” Danny interrupted.

Jack got that sparkle in his eyes that Danny so loved and they both nodded. “I’ll go in first and you-“

“Thirty seconds, I know.” Danny finished.

———————————

Jack stormed down the hallway into the kitchen, face red with anger. He pulled a glass out of a cupboard and slammed it on the counter.

“Of course. Typical. Handle your emotions with alcohol instead of words.” Daniel bit walking into the room about thirty seconds after Jack. Jack spun, his eyes widening. “You’re one to talk, Atlas! I didn’t hear from you for a week after I faked my death. I thought you would at least be happy to see me.”

“Why do you think that is, Jack? Perhaps I was angry that I lost my best friend, but wait! Just kidding! It was part of the illusion! Hope you didn’t grieve too hard!”

Jack took a deep breath and huffed it out. He opened his mouth to speak again but was cut off.

Merritt sauntered into the room clapping slowly. “Bravo! You know, I’d have believed you both if you didn’t sound like an old married couple, suddenly. Jack since when do you drink gin?” The two men in the kitchen looked at each other and sighed. “I told you it sounded too intimate.” Danny huffed. Jack gawped, “Liar! You said it sounded like a bit, but if we were loud enough they might take it.” Jack pouted a little.

“Oh, don’t be so sore Jacky boy.” Merritt rolled his eyes. “Henley and I knew it was all coming to a head. We uh… planned it that way.” He beamed as Henley joined him.

“It went perfectly! You both played along so nicely.” Henley and Merritt did a little celebratory hip bump and looked at the two confused men in front of them.

Jack and Danny both opened their mouths to speak but were beat to the punch.

“Christmas.” Henley and Merritt said in unison.

Jack shook his head. “No we figured that out,”

“It was more than just the mistletoe?” Danny finished.

Henley nodded, a proud smile gracing her features. “Oh so much more. The cameras for a start. Carefully orchestrated movie nights.” Henley listed, and Merritt chined in with,

“The spin the bottle at Jacks birthday!”

Henley lit up, “Oh! All the “only one bed” tricks we pulled? Those took some bribing.” Merritt was rolling with laughter thinking back on it.

Jack and Danny looked for all the world like most of their audiences, wide eyed, and pouring over all the details they missed that had lead to them being so thoroughly fooled.

The two had been rendered speechless, and Merritt and Henley had dissolved into a fit of giggles and congratulations while Jack and Danny just puzzled over it all. After a moment, Henley grabbed her purse from the living room, and handed Merritt his coat from a nearby chair and they headed for the door.

“Where are you going?! You can’t just drop all of this on us and then leave!” Jack wailed indignantly.

Danny was still a bit shell shocked but nodded in agreement.

Henley and Merritt just kept walking out the door, tossing a couple ‘be safe’s and a ‘don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’ in there for good measure and locked the door behind then.

Jack turned to complain but dissolved into giggles himself at the look on Danny’s face. “Alright master Showman. I know it’s hard being the one taken for a ride for once. Let’s go sit on the couch, yeah?” And gently grabbed his hand to guide him to the living room.

That seemed to snap Daniel out of his stupor and he just mumbled “the hotel rooms… all of them? All of them! For months! I knew it was suspicious…” and he plopped on the couch.

Jack plopped next to him, “so dramatic, Danny. But yes. All of them.” Jack tapped him on the shoulder, “Look at me for a sec?”

Danny looked at Jack and his body language shifted. His whole focus was on Jack now, and Jack knew it. He smiled at Danny and when he spoke it was quiet, just for the two of them even though they were alone.

“Daniel?”

“Jack.”

“Can I… would it be alright if I kissed you?”

“Please do, Jack.”

They both leaned in without hesitation. The kiss was soft, and to both men it felt like finally coming home. The kiss deepened and at some point Danny ended up on Jack’s lap. Much later, Jack was lying on top of Danny. They spent quite a while kissing, but had both decided, without speaking a word, that they would take this slow. Almost as if getting to know one another all over again.-After a while, the two ended up cuddled together on the couch, just basking in the closeness.

Danny raised his head from where it had rested on Jacks chest, “Jack?”

“Mhm”

“I love you.”

A smile a mile wide split Jack’s face before he responded, “I love you, too, Danny.”

They both fell asleep there on the couch, and that’s where Merritt and Hen found them the next morning when they returned from their matchmaker’s celebration.

When Danny and Jack woke a few hours later, they found two new polaroids on the coffee table. Two identical photos of them asleep in each other’s arms, one for each of their albums.

—————————————————————

(Forgive me it’s been ages since I wrote anything let alone something I finished! Please be kind (also if you see typos please lmk and I’ll fix em!) anyways I hope you enjoyed this spur of the moment image/fic combo!)

[dylbobaggins168]

now you see me loversdeath spies are forever curtwen au

[sunflowervoidz]

I saw they changed jack and henley’s cards…

If they change daniel’s ‘the lovers’ I’ll be so sad..

Did they just kill the loversdeath ship name or whatever it’s called 😞

Further more.. if they don’t change Daniel’s and merritt’s does this mean lovershermit canon /hj

[sellotaped-cookie-crumble]

I need someone to edit the Andrew In Drag song to lovers death. I BEG PLEASE I HAVE NO EDITING SKILLS!!!