clippers (javey)
a continuation of my two trans canon era davey oneshots! part one here, part two here! the plot of this is based off of a poll i put out, which pretty much ended up fifty fifty so i tried to include both answers!
without further ado, the gays.
HAPPY PRIDE!
.....
It had honestly been an accident. A total and complete accident– Jack was wandering a different route and ended up stumbling across the Jacobs family on the way to Shabbat service at the synagogue. All five of them at once, and poor David amongst them, looking more miserable than Jack had ever seen him before.
He felt uncomfortable, like he was breaching Davey’s privacy, seeing him so tense and miserable, masquerading as someone else with a skirt and a bow. It was then, during that chance meeting (which Jack awkwardly and desperately tried to make brief), that Jack noticed how long Davey’s hair was getting. Shaggy curls that looked soft as hell and reached just beneath his jaw, framing his face. Didn’t look like Davey, and Jack guessed by the tension in his best friend’s shoulders that it didn’t feel like Davey, either.
Jack Kelly was not going to let that discomfort continue.
The very next day, when the sun was just barely peeking above the smoggy city sky, Jack met David and Les on their way to the circulation square. Jack didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before– the hunch in Davey’s shoulders, the way he kept awkwardly running those elegant hands of his through the mop of too-long curls– but now that he had made the connection, the discomfort was clear as day. Thankfully, Jack Kelly was nothing if not desperate to solve other people’s problems.
“Dave! Les! How are my favorite Jacobs’ boys?” He crowed, jogging up to his lanky friends and dropping a heavy hand on his shoulder as a means of greeting.
“Jack.” Davey responded, rather tightly, and gave Jack’s elbow a squeeze. “We’re well.”
“Yeah! We got fried eggs for breakfast! I could run a whole mile!” Incredibly chipper (as always), nine year old Les beamed up at Jack. Jack’s eyebrows jumped when he noticed that one of Les’s top teeth was missing. “And my tooth fell out while we was eating dinner!”
“Were eating dinner.” David corrected, gently, running a hand through Les’s tightly cropped head of dark curls. “While we were eating dinner.”
Les scoffed and batted his brother’s hands away, in a manner that made Jack’s chest ache for something he might’ve had long ago. “Ain’t that what I said? Jack?”
“Yeah, pretty sure he said whatever you said, Dave.” Jack grinned easily, stuffing his hands into his pockets and thoroughly enjoying the agitation creeping onto Davey’s sharp, lovely features. He had the furious scrunch of the other boy’s nose memorized to a science– playful agitation.
“You are a horrible influence, Jack Kelly.”
“Nah, we just don’t speak the Queen’s English around these parts, is all. We leave that up to you, right, Lessy?” Jack earned a gap-toothed, dimpled smile from the kid– stupidly precious with his round face and dimples– and couldn’t resist the urge to mess up Les’s already untamed hair. “Hey, you said you could run a mile, right?”
Big, brown eyes seemed to light up with excitement. “Yep!”
Jack crouched to meet Les’s eyes, producing a perfectly shimmery copper penny from his back pocket. He flipped it between two fingers before holding the prize out to Les. “How fast can you get to the circulation center? If you can get there in less than five, I’ll give you a whole penny. Run ahead a’ me and Dave, and time yourself. Okay, Shortstack?”
“You got it, Jack– I’m gonna win that penny, by the way!” Little Les called over his shoulder, already off like a rocket.
“Sure you are, kiddo!” Shouted Jack in response, easily standing to his full height and tucking his hands right into his pockets. Now he was alone with Dave, putting the plan he’d spent the night formulating into action as he wheeled around to face his best friend. “Dave, I was thinking–”
“You’ve got lipstick on your neck.” Davey responded very dryly, eyebrows raised to create an expression of either disappointment or disgust.
Jack’s stomach jolted, suddenly feeling inexplicably guilty about the evidence of a morning spent with his girl. Dave always got weird when Jack tried to chat about his courtship with Kath. He was probably upset and wanting a girl of his own, or something, but Jack wasn’t gonna put words in the guy’s mouth. He tried to avoid the subject since it was seemingly sensitive, and he hated the judgemental and unhappy expression on Davey’s face. Quickly, he rubbed at his neck, which only earned him an eye roll from the other boy.
“No, you goof. Other side– no– ugh, just let me.” With pursed lips, Davey whipped a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and stepped impossibly close, sort of roughly rubbing the handkerchief against the very place Kath had sensually kissed just an hour or two ago. His hand was cold against Jack’s skin, and for some reason, Jack’s words died in his throat as he stared at the other boy. Davey’s expression was tight. Almost pained.
Typically, Jack was excellent with people. He could read emotions better than he could read words, knowing how a person was feeling just by glancing. Davey was, by far, the hardest individual to decipher. A real closed off guy. For some reason, he had Jack all jittery with his lipstick cleaning.
“There. Done.” As quickly as he started, he stopped, stepping away and shoving his own hands into his pockets. He did not look nearly as relaxed and casual as Jack when he performed this gesture, posture ramrod straight.
“Thanks, Dave.”
Another tight expression, and then: “Of course. The boys would poke fun at you for hours if you waltzed into the circulation yard looking like that. Now– why did you spend a whole penny to get me alone?”
“Oh, right. ‘Cause you need a haircut.” He grinned, suddenly remembering his plan (which he was awfully excited to carry out.
He did not earn the reaction he was expecting– Davey seemed to deflate, shoulders hunching and eye contact dropping within seconds. Davey didn’t do eye contact a lot (he did it mostly with Jack, which Jack was awful proud of), but when Jack lost it like this, he knew there was a problem afoot. “N-not that your hair looks bad like this, Dave. Y’look great. Y’always look great, Davey, but, uh, it just looks longer than I know ya like it.”
“It is longer than I like it. That’s the problem.” He jammed the toe of his spit-shined black boot into a crack in the sidewalk, the two of them pressing closer towards the wall of a nearby building to avoid bustling passerby. “My Ima refuses to let me cut it again, since she’s convinced we’ll go back to school in the spring. Says I can’t go with short hair.”
“But… you don’t like it long, right?”
“I hate it long.” He mumbled quietly– it was very rare for Davey to offer such insight into his emotions, and Jack was eating up every last crumb. He stepped closer, just to hear Davey’s quiet voice. Davey’s subtle body heat was also welcome amidst the late autumn chill. “Ima used to make me keep it all the way down to my ass. It was a nightmare to care for.”
Honestly, Jack couldn’t picture that. “Down to your ass?”
“Yeah, and it’s curly. Took me hours to care for every day.” Beautifully green eyes rolled miserably at bad memories, and Jack failed to create a mental image of Davey with long, raven-black curls.
Jack couldn’t picture Davey as anything but a boy, quite truthfully, and that was how it should be. Davey was a boy, after all, damn what his Ima and Aba might think about the situation. He felt himself frown, wishing he could march right up to Esther Jacobs and ask her why she couldn’t just love Davey for Davey. Jack did it perfectly easily– after all, Davey wasn’t hard to love. “Bet she lost her shit when you first cut it, huh?”
“It was horrible. She threw a fit like I’d never seen before. I guess because she loved my hair. It was the only thing I had that Sarah didn’t. Perfect, long, hair. But that’s gone now. Or, it was. Now Ima’s forcing me to grow it out, and she won’t let me near a pair of clippers.”
“Yeah… would be a real shame if I walked you home today and spent dinner laughin’ about a mishap with Racetrack and a big wad of chewin’ gum…”
“What?”
“You remember, don’t’cha? How Racer’s gum ended up all tangled in your hair, so’s I had to cut all the gum out. I’ll tell Mrs. Esther I’m real sorry about the mishap, but I didn’t want a pal of mine going home with ruined hair. So I cut it nice and short to get all the nasty stuff outta it, and that’s the end of the story.” Jack could scarcely contain his own excitement, and he bit down on his lip to hide his growing smile as Davey’s big green eyes seemed to brighten considerably.
“So you cut my hair, and not me. I didn’t get near it with the shears.”
“Exactly. You didn’t have no part in it, and ya certainly didn’t want your hair cut, but I insisted.”
“Oh, Jack…” Then, Davey was smiling cheek to cheek, brighter than the summer sun. Jack felt like he was flying, heart thumping like a battering ram against the confines of his chest. “You’re the best.”
He tried to shrug the stupidly complicated feelings off, sending his best cocky smirk Dave’s way. “So I’ve been told.”
That’s how they found themselves in the Lodge’s bathroom. Jack was an inch away from losing his mind, because Davey was sitting here shirtless in front of him with soaking wet hair. He had his wrappings or- maybe bindings, Jack couldn’t remember the word– tied tight around anatomy that Jack probably shouldn’t see, but even the gentle slope of his freckled shoulders was driving Jack crazy. Davey didn’t have the right to be this attractive. Constellations of freckles, pale skin, dark hair– Jack was kicking himself for thinking the guy was so fucking gorgeous. It was messed up. Those thoughts should’ve been saved for Kath alone.
But he had the Lodge’s haircutting scissors in one hand and a strand of wet, dark hair in his other, and he was desperately trying to focus on anything but Davey’s excited face in the mirror.
“You’ve done this before?” He asked, right as Jack chopped the majority of the long curl off.
Jack glanced up at their reflections before giving a distracted nod. “Yeah. Yeah, me and Mush take turns playin’ barber. Normally I just buzz or trim, but I’ll– I’ll do ya right, Dave.”
“Of course. I trust you.” Davey said, oh-so-casually, and Jack wanted to melt.
Instead, he cleared his throat and got to work, trying to banish any ridiculously unacceptable thoughts from the recesses of his mind. More and more curls dropped onto the towel around Dave’s shoulders, and Jack stared fixedly at the hair and not at the shoulders, or pale lower stomach that was just barely in his vision, or the way Davey’s thighs looked in his trousers. Something was wrong with him today. He was so caught in his head that he scarcely heard Davey speak up, rather meekly.
“Um, Jack?”
Blinking himself out of a stupor, Jack reminded himself to speak aloud. “Huh?”
“Is it, uh… is it supposed to be this short?”
Jack glanced up, and realized with budding horror, that he had cut the left side of Davey’s hair far too short. A little bit more and he could’ve nearly had a buzz. Shit. There was no way Jack was going to be responsible for fucking up Davey’s good looks with a shitty cut. He had to improvise.
“Uh… yeah. It’s… it’s just somethin’ new I’m tryin’. You gotta trust the process, man.”
Davey pursed his lips together, said ‘alright’ very quietly, and Jack thanked God he hadn’t gotten to the front of Davey’s head yet. His curls were still perfectly untouched, damp and hanging over his forehead. The back and right side had also been spared, so Jack had plenty of hair to correct with.
He trimmed down the other side and the back until it was all just about even and much neater, leaving a lovely crop of short curls atop Davey’s head. Jack was careful, more careful than he’d ever been with a haircut, constantly glancing back and forth between the mirror and the dark hair in his hands. He worked diligently and slowly and made sure not a hair on Dave’s head was harmed, and thankfully, the cut turned out great. Jack let out a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding as he brushed Dave’s shoulders off (his skin was warm and unfairly soft) and gave him a gentle pat.
“There. You’re all done.”
Davey stood and pushed a hand through his newly cut hair, joy practically radiating off of him. He was smiling uncontrollably, green eyes bright and cheeks rosy, and Jack wanted to die. He thought Davey was incredibly handsome, and he definitely should not have been thinking such a thing.
“Gosh, Jack, this… this is amazing. You did an amazing job. I love it.”
“Yeah?” He asked, feeling uncharacteristically bashful as he brushed his hands off on his thighs.
Then, Davey directed the full force of that smile at him. “Yes. Absolutely. You– you’re the best friend I could’ve ever asked for, Jack.”
“Wh– and– and you’re my best pal too, Dave. You gotta stop thankin’ me for doin’ the bare minimum.”
“What? No! This isn’t the bare minimum. You cut my hair for me. That’s going above and beyond.” Davey bit his lip, obviously considering his next move. Then, without warning, he lurched forward and threw his arms around Jack. “Thank you so much, Jackie.”
Immediately, Jack wrapped his arms around the other boy and held him tighter than necessary. Davey. Shirtless. Hugging him. Jack had feelings that needed to be examined and promptly repressed. “Y-You’re welcome, man. Hey– I think– I think you look handsome.”
He couldn’t help himself, ruffling Davey’s head of dark hair. Davey seemed to glow with excitement, his expression softening. He looked at Jack like Jack was the only person in the world. “You do?”
“You… you always look handsome, Davey.”
“Oh.” A pause. Long, tense– Jack nearly burst out of his skin, unable to pull his eyes away from the beautiful green in front of him. “Thank you, Jack.”
“Of– of course, buddy. Let’s, uh… we need to get to sellin’ or your pa’s gonna be upset about our earnings for the day.” Jack quickly stumbled back, kicking himself for letting whatever that was just happen. Katherine, Katherine, Katherine, he reminded himself, because he did love her. He was obsessed with her. He'd felt as much that very same morning. So why the hell was he feeling so entranced with Davey, just hours later? Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he decided to shut his inner monologue up and stop asking unanswerable questions.
Davey seemed equally stilted as he yanked his undershirt back on, redressing rather clumsily. “Right. Obviously. Let’s go.”
And if Jack watched him redress far too closely, neither said a word. There was something about Davey– something about his hair, eyes, cheekbones– the way he carried himself– it was clear to Jack that Davey wasn’t just a friend. Jack admired him. Perhaps even romantically. That was a thought that made him inexplicably nervous in regards to their future, but his worries could wait. Davey’s newfound brightness, just because of a haircut, kept Jack happy throughout the rest of his evening.