Chapter Text
It’s dark in Jack’s office. And quiet.
Nothing but a dim, yolky lamp to warm and light the room, and nought but the sound of pen on paper --real old-school and traditional, as he signs some documents. Jesse is on the other side of the desk, curled in on himself slightly in an eames chair. He’s got a beer on the table closest to him. It’s off-hours for him, so no harm done.
Even if it weren’t, he wagers Jack would smile easily and pretend not to see. And what a smile he has, too. Pretty as a picture. Jesse’d know. He saw Jack’s face on posters before he ever met the man, and thought there was no way anybody could have such pretty eyes.
He doesn’t mind being wrong so much.
It makes him smile to think about, and the expression catches him as he looks up at Jack again, who’s just about done signing off on some paperwork. It’s for Fallowfield, he thinks. Clearance to have some of his field memories wiped, and Jack is the one who signs off on everybody.
He’s just dotting his ‘i’s and crossing his ‘t’s when he looks up and noticing Jesse staring, and smiles all of his own.
“Something wrong?” He asks, in a hushed and warm sort of tone. It feels --intimate. It is intimate. Even if they’ve never breached the boundary of heated glances yet.
“Nothin’ wrong.” Jesse says. He picks up his beer and considers it, for a second, before adding, “Jus’ thinkin’ about somethin’ I was readin’, and about this procedure and all.”
Jack’s face twitches ever-so-slightly in the orange light. His hands move and he takes an almost imperceptible moment to right himself before looking back to Jesse with a patient, kind sort of peace. “What were you thinking about?”
Jesse drops his head for a second. Tries to remember the line. Wants more than anything for Jack to think that he’s smart. “There’s this line that goes, ‘Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better’--”
“--’even of their blunders’.” In a quieter voice, Jack speaks. Cuts him off only to finish the line for him. “That’s Nietzsche, isn’t it?”
“Sure is.” Jesse huffs out a laugh. He leans back in the chair. “An’ here, I thought I could tell you somethin’ you didn’t already know.”
“You could tell me lots of things I don’t know.” Jack says, earnestly. Ever-earnestly. He always sounds so sincere. “It’s a --it’s a good quote. I’m glad we both know it.”
Jesse drops his chin into his hand. He sighs, breathlessly. “Yeah,” He agrees, quietly. His smiles wavers slightly, but not completely. “I came with a spare. T’be sure, y’know.”
Jack lifts his head. He looks genuinely surprised. “A spare?”
Grinning, Jesse lifts his chin out of his hand and swigs his beer. “Another quote. You, uh --you like quotes? Like famous quotes?”
On the end of a gentle breath, Jack nods. He keeps his eyes on Jesse thoughtfully. “Sure.” He says, quietly. “Lay it on me.”
“‘No man is rich enough to buy back his past’.” Jesse straightens in his seat. He feels smart when he says it, but that feeling quickly loses his appeal when he watches Jack’s face grow serious for a second with some emotion that’s difficult to discern. Regret, is it? Mournful? It’s so sudden and melancholy that Jesse has to say something else --anything at all to stop Jack looking so rueful. “You like Oscar Wilde?”
Jack blinks, slowly. He doesn’t say anything. He just nods.
“He was listed under the database as ‘Wilde, Oscar’, an’ I was so convinced I’d get his name wrong tellin’ you about it.” Jesse laughs. He says it in the hopes it’ll make Jack look a bit happier, and it’s to his utter relief that it works. A brief look of humour flashes over the man’s face as he closes the file: manila, stamped so officially and prettily. To see them always makes Jesse sad, but he doesn’t really know why.
Reaching across the desk to replace his pen in the pot, Jack’s hand lingers over a trinket on it --one of the only trinkets on the desk. An old, genuine bullet for a colt revolver. Jesse thought it was the neatest thing he’d ever seen the first time he spotted it, and still does. Jack seems to take away something different, and as he leans back in his seat, he asks Jesse, “Which do you agree with more?”
“What?” Jesse asks, with a mouthful of beer.
Jack smiles in earnest at that. “I mean, which quote do you think is more true.” He drops his head again, but looks at Jesse with sideways, fond eyes that are too pretty to be fair.
“I don’t know.” Jesse murmurs, after a second of thought. “I guess forgettin’ isn’t the worst thing somebody could do.” His mind runs over what Oscar wilde had wrote, and he shrugs. “Some things are probably better left forgotten, I reckon.”
He moves his head to look at Jack directly, then, his eyes scanning over the volume of Jack’s face. It’s lineless and timeless. Jack has seen so much and still looks so young, and hale. The only darkness or advance of age that’s even visible is in those pretty blue eyes that suddenly look so heavy with sorrow that Jesse is getting up before he can help himself, and reaching across to take the side of Jack’ face in his hand.
Surprised, Jack looks up at him with sudden caution, scanning Jesse for something --something unknown to Jesse that he doesn’t find.
Jesse’s eyes sort of close anyway. He feels bold enough to lean forward. “You’re so--”
But they open when they receive no warmth or kiss. Instead, with Jack’s hand on his heart, tender, but extended, pushing him away. “You should--” With a cough that feels stifling and loud, Jack turns his head. He looks away again, drawing in a sharp and knifelike breath. “It’s late.” Lamely, it’s all he can say.
Jesse’s hand falls to his side in resignation. He feels heat suddenly cloud his face, and then even he can’t look at Jack despite the sight being so mesmerising and wonderful. “I’m --I’m sorry.” He says, quickly, swallowing on a throat no bigger than the head of a pin. “I --I shouldn’t’ve done that. I can--”
“It’s alright.” Jack’s voice is surprising in volume. His hand reaches out to tap Jesse’s wrist in some kind of gesture of intimacy. “Maybe --maybe best you get some rest.”
Jesse’s nostrils flare. He swallows again. “Alright, chief.” he says. Tries a watery smile as he looks up at Jack again, and then leaves the room quietly. He doesn’t look over his shoulder. He doesn’t see Jack open his top desk drawer.
He treads down a half-known hallway quietly, and sneaks into bed with the warmth of Jack’s breath still present on his face.
He doesn’t want to forget it.
-
Jesse’s never been to Iceland before.
Regardless of firsts, he dislikes it all the same by the end of the first day, as his trembling hands shake in the wind to try to light a cigarette. It’s practically futile. The wind abducts the flame of his lighter, and his lips are blue around the filter. His teeth chatter enough that he actually drops his first, and abandons it to the snow, lacking the nerve to subject his fingers to the rawness of the snow directly to pick it up. At least one of his arms is spared the feeling of cold.
It’s miserable until he feels a sudden whisper of warmth fall on him as the fire door behind him opens and he hears two voices track themselves out into the snow. He doesn’t have to turn to recognise them, but does so anyway on account of his manners, and finds Commander Reyes sharing a lighter with Jack --the Strike Commander.
He looks at Jack first, in a genuine, gleeful surprise, and Jack smiles back at him with the same sort of pleasure. Then Reyes is looking at Jesse, so he masters his expression into a more neutral one, and nods, respectfully.
“E-evenin’, Commanders.” He shivers out the words in staccato bursts. “Lo-lovely weather we’re havin’.”
Reyes, who despises the cold more than anybody, smiles at that in this cool, detached sort of way. Jack looks --well, earnest, to say the least. He looks at Gabe with a knowing sort of look as the man shivers. Jesse remembers he said once about the sunshine making the blood thin, and maybe that was why neither Jesse nor Reyes can much stand the cold.
“Getting much good outta that?” Reyes interrupts the thought with a dour expression, probably from the cold. He withdraws from Jack once his own cigarette is lit, and stands between the two with his fists shoved awkwardly into his pockets.
Jesse shrugs as casually as he can, stiff as he is from the chill. “Sure am t-tryin’.”
Jack laughs at that, around his own cigarette. Jesse doesn’t recall having seen him smoke before, and as much as it’s a bad habit, his mouth looks awful pretty wrapped around it. Not that Jesse looks too much. Reyes stands between them like some sort of barrier with his arms folded tightly.
Probably for warmth. Hopefully.
Maybe he’s just trying to stop Jesse from embarrassing the unit. God knows he has the tendency to be easy with people --especially Jack. Reyes says it doesn’t reflect well on Blackwatch. Something about him showing ‘a lack of respect and procedure’. To himself, Jesse doesn’t think that’s it at all.
He thinks it’s jealousy. Everybody knows that Reyes and Jack used to be close. Real close, and even if they’re friends now, and things are different, Jesse doesn’t think it’s so impossible that it gets to his commander to see Jack laughing at his jokes or drinking coffee in one of the kitchens or conversing with a free, almost intimate geniality.
It’s not an ugly sort to jealousy, though. Reyes doesn’t seem bitter about it. More --more wistful. When he sees them sharing a joke or standing too close together, he interrupts it. Gives Jack this funny, thousand-yard sort of look that makes the Strike Commander suddenly busy real quickly.
Jesus, maybe they are still fucking. Maybe Jesse’s had the wrong idea about it this whole time. But that doesn’t mean he can’t look at Jack. Or talk to him. Or --or think about him, and how his nose wrinkles when he laughs or how he looks with only his undershirt on.
He finishes the cigarette pretty quietly as he thinks on it. It helps him not to focus on the terrible cold, or the fact that Reyes and Jack are happily talking to eachother. It’s not intimate or anything. They don’t laugh much. There’s something unsaid. Some distance there. Jesse shouldn’t be pleased by it.
Deep in his own thoughts, he doesn’t realise his cigarette is still burning in his fingers until it burns him, and he drops it suddenly into the snow with a bright curse. If he'd have been holding it with his other hand, it wouldn't have been a problem.
“You alright there, kid?” Reyes asks him, turning with a sort of smirk on his face despite how much he’s still shivering. Jesse sucks on part of his finger and shrugs.
“Most a’ me.” He says, sniffing. He watches Reyes crush his own cigarette under his heel and nod.
“Alright. See you bright an’ early tomorrow.” Reyes says, clapping a hand roughly on his shoulder, before turning to Jack. “You comin’?”
Jack’s mouth opens. He blinks, one eye closing prematurely of the other before mustering. “I was, uh --I’m fine out here.”
Reyes looks at him silently for a second. Then he cuts his eyes quickly to Jesse like he doesn’t know Jesse can see him, before looking back to Jack, sucking on his teeth like he’s finding something difficult to swallow. “You sure?” He asks, brusquely. “It’s pretty cold.”
Jack sounds a bit more certain now, He squirms a bit under Reyes’ gaze but nods, trying to seem above it all. “I’m sure. It’s fine.”
“Alright then.” Reyes nods. Nods for a few seconds, actually, like he’s trying to consider something. Only after that pause does he turn, looking at Jesse very seriously. “Coming in?”
Jesse shakes his head. A fumbling hand pats the pack of cigarettes in his top pocket.
“Those things’ll kill you.” Reyes tells him, in that same serious voice. Like he wasn’t just smoking all of his own. Like he gives a damn about Jesse’s health and isn’t just unhappy with the prospect of leaving him to talk to Jack.
Jesse sucks the burnt part of his finger, “They’re sure trying.” Reyes roll his eyes --but Jack laughs, in the corner of Jesse’s eyes. It’s small. He would’ve missed it if he wasn't paying attention. Still, the Commander turns heel, and Jesse says, “Night, boss.” in the nicest voice he can.
Reyes doesn’t reply. He treads quietly back towards the door, and Jesse watches him go nervously. Enjoying the thrill of the slight disobedience. Enjoying Jack’s company --and only Jack’s.
When they’re finally alone, Jesse reaches into his top pocket and struggles with the carton until he has another cigarette between his lips. He speaks around it, clumsily, when he looks up at Jack with a smile. “Y’want one?”
Jack looks at him. His gaze fixes on the cigarette before moving up to Jesse’s eyes. “That’s okay.” He doesn’t even sound like he feels the cold. His voice is as steady as rising steam. “I normally just take a few drags from when Gabe smokes.”
Jesse pats himself down for his lighter. “I don’t mind sharin’ if you don’t.” He brings the clear zippo out and tries to light it a few hands, but it’s empty anyway, and doesn’t get beyond a spark.
He’s about to be frustrated when Jack’s hand comes forward with a metal lighter of his own, snapping it open and coming up with a long, bright flame on the first try, strident and beautiful. It illuminates the hand holding the lighter. Makes Jack‘s skin look golden. The action is so bold that Jesse looks up in surprise, finding Jack’s eyes.
After a drag, he takes it from his mouth, and holds it out, murmuring, “Ain’t you prepared?” He exhales a plume of smoke. “That’s a neat trick for a guy that don’t hardly smoke.”
Jack smiles easily. He tils his head. “It’s always useful to have one to hand.”
Jesse lets out a laugh. “Sure it is. Y’get your smokes for free.”
“There are other reasons.” Reaching out, Jack takes the cigarette that Jesse’s holding out. Their fingers brush. Jack feels warm. “But that’s a pretty good one.” He takes in in his pretty mouth and Jesse feels almost rude for watching, but he can’t help himself. There’s no Reyes to gatekeep the sight, and lord, Jesse wishes he was the damn cigarette so that Jack would let him in and love every minute of it.
But Jesse can’t well say that, so they both end up in silence. An extending silence, and it wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t catch eachother looking at the other a few times. They pass the cigarette to and fro without disrupting the quiet. Jesse tries to think of something witty to say, but he finds himself coming up empty.
After a while, Jack says, “You’re quiet tonight.”
Jesse doesn’t know if he understands the word ‘tonight’. They rarely spend much time together. Almost never alone --like this, and Jesse’s already fouling it up with his silence. “I guess I’m jus’ tryna avoid the bossman cuttin’ into me about the way I talk t’you.”
Almost immediately, Jack says, “I like the way you talk to me.” Then, stifled, he frowns. “I mean, I don’t think it’s anything that needs disciplinary action.” He passes the cigarette to Jesse. “I won’t tell Gabe if you don’t.”
Gabe. Jack always calls him that. Even though he’s been serving with Miss Ana and some of the others for just as long, probably, he never calls any of them by their first names. Nobody else gets to have that.
Crestfallen, Jesse shrugs. “Maybe I jus’ can’t think of anythin’ to say.”
“Oh.” Jack blinks. He nods. The silence returns, a napalm sort of emptiness that twitches like fire. Jesse tries to think of something to say, but all he can think about is Reyes, now. The way Jack says ‘Gabe’ so easily, like it fits in his pretty mouth just fine.
And the more he thinks about it, the more it begins to bother him. He has to ask.
Jesse takes the cigarette when it’s extended to him. As he does, Jack says, “You think of anything to say yet?”
Jesse coughs gently and stuffs his fists into his pockets. “As a matter a’ fact, I did.” He says, awkwardly. “But, uh --you--” He looks at Jack briefly. “You’re uh, you’re the boss and all, so I don’t wanna offend you or anythin’.”
Maybe it’s just a trick of the nerves, but when Jack takes the cigarette back, his movements are less precise. Like he’s intending to brush Jesse’s hand more. “That doesn’t sound like the normal, mindless, boring getting-to-know you spiel.” He laughs. “It sounds like you’ve actually got something to say.”
“I do.” Jesse says, quickly, reveling in the way Jack had just sounded --refreshed. Intruiged. “I really do, I jus’ --it’s like I said. It’s --it’s jus’ you gotta promise not to be offended.”
Jack laughs again. He huffs it out with a cloud of smoke and Jesse realizes that they’ll both smell the same after this. They’ll both be wearing that scent of his brand of cigarettes. “But I don’t know what you’re going to say.” He says, frowning playfully. “You can tell me to brace myself, sure --but you can’t ask me to promise something like that.”
Jesse smiles himself. He shakes his head. “Maybe jus’ forget it, then.”
Jack is offering him the cigarette when he hears that, and suddenly draws it back in like he’s withholding it. “I don’t think so.” He says, cooly. “It’s too late. I’m already intrigued.”
“Is that a fact?”
Jack looks at him again. He smiles so candidly. Jesus, Jesse doesn’t know if he can get through the sentence if Jack keeps looking at him like that. So he looks away, and tries.
“Alright, here goes.” Swallowing, Jesse looks towards the cigarette. He could use the courage. “What d’you make a the bossman thesedays?” Jack turns his head and looks at the other man. He doesn’t look affronted at all. Neutral. Maybe even wistful. “You, uh --you particularly close?”
Jack’s eyes move to a patch of snowy ground. He tilts his head. “Sure.”
Jesse goes to ask, but stops himself. He doesn’t know how to phrase it, or even if he wants to know, really. Apparently he does, because before he can really stop himself, he says, “Reyes.” Awkwardly, he scratches his cheek and coughs again. “You two, uh --you used to go around together, yeah? Y’were real close?”
Jack’s nostrils flare for a second. He takes another drag. His mouth looks warm and gentle when he opens it to say, “Is that a fact?”
It doesn’t look like Jack was expecting this topic of conversation at all. The heavier things have made the air feel colder. That playful geniality has shriveled up and Jesse wishes in his own way that he’d never said anything. But then he’d just be wondering about it, and driving himself crazy.
Never could keep his fingers off a scab.
“Naw, it ain’t like that.” Jesse says, eventually, trying to sound neutral. “Jus’ somethin’ I heard.”
“Who told you?” When he looks up, he can see the tiny stub of the cigarette being offered to him. Maybe it’s the cold, but Jack looks like he’s ever-so-slightly trembling. He’s smiling this thousand-yard smile that Jesse recognises from Reyes.
Jesse shrugs. It wasn’t one thing or person. Just lots of little things. Just the strange sort of stifled intimacy he sees between the two of them. So he says, “Oh, y’know. ‘ They ’.”
Jack’s eyes roll. He’s still sort of smiling. “ They talk a lot, don’t they?”
At that, Jesse laughs. Jack joins him, and for the strained nature of the conversation, that moment in itself is worth it. Jack is laughing --he’s alone with Jesse, and wanting to be there, even if he can’t think of anything to say and just says, “They sure do.” As he crushes the dying cigarette beneath his heel.
Then the laughter peters off, and Jack looks suddenly stricken before he draws his arms in and turns towards the door. “I’m --I’m going to head back inside.”
He walks himself to the door, too, and Jesse thinks that the conversation is just going to end like that, and he’ll have to stand there in the cold and think about how instead of keeping things lighthearted and actually having a real conversation with Jack, he went straight for the femoral artery.
But Jack turns, before the door, and asks him, “Staying out?”
He nods. “You’re s’posed to be able to see the Northern Lights when it gets later, and I ain’t never seen them before.” Words are a bit harder to fathom when Jack turns back around to face him.
Looking, of all things, devastated.
“I, uh, I hear they’re really something.” he says, uselessly. “Better than--”
“Better than fireworks.” Jack finishes for him, weakly. He still looks so tragic that Jesse feels awkward to laugh.
“How’d you know I was gonna say that?” He asks, trying to keep them talking. Trying to bring back the moment when they were laughing together. “You some kinda psychic?”
Jack does laugh, too. Almost bitterly. A single, sad little sound as he shrugs. “Something like that.” He turns again to go back inside and Jesse practically goes after him, reaching out but becoming self-conscious when he splutters.
“You don’t wanna stay? For the, uh --for the lights, I mean?”
Jack lets out a very tight breath. “I’ve seen them before.” He says, quietly. “Goodnight, McCree.”
Not Jesse . Not like Gabe .
So Jesse says, “G’night, Jack.”
The dissent, if you could call it that, is noted. Jack hesitates when he hears it.
But he lets it be, all the same.
-
Jesse hisses through his teeth. He hears a warm noise of mirth.
It’s by his ear, but he can’t see the mouth it feel from. Not from where he’s sat slumped, his forehead against a bare shoulder. There’s a hand on the back on his neck, too, and working over his cock and every point of contact is hotter than the sun and so much more radiant.
Jack’s breathing is fast and hard, too, like he’s the one getting this treatment. Jesse can feel his exhalations on his own shoulder as Jack’s twists his hand ever so slightly and strokes Jesse firm and good like he’s savouring the sensation. It’s enough to have Jesse biting his lip to keep the noise in. He’s so fucking hard he wouldn’t be surprised if Jack can feel his pulse.
Then Jack twists his hand again and Jesse grinds out the word, “ Fuck .”
Intimately, in a hot whisper he hears Jack give another pleased hum. His pace continues, unrelenting and gorgeous. Jesse feels practically lightheaded. He can’t feel anything but the points of contact between them --can’t see anything but Jack and the way he moves his hand that makes Jesse’s stomach go tight and hot. Jesus, he can barely breathe.
It feels so sudden when Jack shifts to bite him. Nearer the back of the neck, brazen and hard enough that Jesse’s mouth opens again and he whines, “Jack--”
“That’s it, Jess.” Jack breathes. God, he sounds so fucking pleased with himself, his voice is like steam and Jesse is evaporating under his touch. He doesn’t think he can last much longer. Not with the way Jack is working over the head of his cock with a little twist. Not with the way he grips the base nice and tight and tugs up with this hungry sort of desperation that might literally kill Jesse. “Fuck --you’re so--”
Jesse’s eyes squeeze themselves closed. “I’m gonna--” he pants.
“Hang on.” Jack’s voice is even more ragged when he speaks again. His pace doesn’t let up, and god, Jesse doesn’t even think he’ll get to hear the end of the sentence without finishing like a fucking teenager. “Just a little longer, Jess, I got you.”
Jesse whines again. His jaw clamps itself shut. His balls are tight and it’s taking everything he has not to cum suddenly, all over Jack’s chest and his, so that they’d be matching, and Jack would smell like him --alike, like a couple of cats in heat.
“Jack,” He coughs out again, uselessly. He feels like he could burst at the seams, begging like this.
Jack understands --but doesn’t relent. He sucks where he’d bitten, feeling Jesse shiver and reveling in it when he murmurs, “Just a bit longer.”
Even his voice is overwhelming and far too present. Jesse thinks a feather could knock him down. His skin burns with the intensity of it --like he’s one live wire, electrified but still as all hell as Jack keeps going. He’s getting faster, and even with his eyes closed it’s audible and it’s so gorgeous that Jesse thinks he must be melting.
He shakes his head when he knows he can’t hold out any longer. When he’s certain --voice wrecked, coming out of his pin-hole throat when he hisses, “I can’t--”
Jack whispers, “That’s it.”
Jesse doesn’t even cry out. He doesn’t have that in him, and just huffs out a weak, overstimulated groan as he comes, at long last, every cell in his body suddenly illuminated by paradise as he finishes in two hot spurts, making a mess of himself and Jack and nearly collapsing backwards at the relief of it all, of the pleasure that’s so intense he feels render useless by it.
The hand on the back on his neck pulls him forward, though, not backwards, and as he breathes through his comedown he feels the warmth of Jack’s chest against his face. He can hear Jack’s heartbeat --racing, but even and salient. He can smell the other man’s skin, too, faint sandalwood beneath the sweat, enough to make the mixture masculine and refined.
Jesse tries to get his breath back. He feels top-heavy and wrecked. The invigorated part will come in a few minutes. For now, he’s spent.
Eventually, the hand on the back of his neck starts to pet his hair affectionately. He hears Jack murmurs, “You good?”
Jesse nods. He clears his throat. “You gotta stop edgin’ me. I ain’t gonna survive.” He lets out a weak laugh, after, and Jack laughs, too.
“Oh, you’re fine.” He says, warmly, moving to kiss Jesse on his jaw, and then on his cheek. His voice is all breathy and excited. It’s so arresting. He can feel Jesse smile against him, easing into it, practised as they are with this.
Practised enough that Jack doesn’t have to check the manual lock on the door anymore, or even glance over at it, and relaxed enough that he’s happy to watch the younger man sprawl out on his back like a cat in a patch of sunlight. No longer a cameo lover, secreted in and out of Jack’s room and affections. A fixture.
Where he lies, Jesse doesn’t even bother to clean himself up. He doesn’t look like he’s got a worry in the world. Jack uses the edge of a sheet to brush himself down, at least, before he comes to lie on his side next to Jesse. The younger man feels warm, still, not feverish, but like the pleasant glow of sitting by a fireside.
Eventually, Jesse turns to his side to curl into Jack, and he murmurs, “You’re gonna get the sheets dirty.”
Jesse huffs out a laugh. “They’re already dirty.”
“Dirt ier .” Jack’s resistance stops there, really. He is helpless but to have Jesse move his hands, bring Jack back to him, closer than before, so that they both end up as filthy as the other. “Mature.” He mutters, and doesn’t mean it in the slightest.
Still, it’s worth it to hear Jesse let out another breathless laugh, nudging Jack with a toe, vying for even more attention. “Y’love it.” He croons.
For a second, the air sort of stills. It’s not a word either of them have yet breached --a dangerous frontier that, when crossed, would force them both to realise what they’re putting on the table.
Jack’s never been scared of much, and even if it takes him a second, he drops his head into Jesse’s shoulder and nods fondly. Trying to breathe the other man in. To remember the moment and every detail that compromises it. Maybe he can.
“I love you,” He says, gently. Then, just to be difficult. “Even if you’re a pig.”
Jesse laughs again. One of his hands is stroking up Jack’s back. “Well, hey, I love you too.” He says, sincerely. “Even if you’re an ass-aching puritan.”