Chapter Text
“The hell is that?”
Before Pitch can ask what “that” is, his toast is snatched from the plate in front of him. He raises his eyebrows and looks up at where Jack is perched up on the table.
Two weeks and Jack still hasn’t learned (or bothered to care) how to properly use furniture. But it’s no matter. Pitch loves the untamed innocence of it. The odd juxtaposition of his perfectly furnished kitchen with Jack’s gleaming blue eyes and bare feet hooked over the edge of the table in a crouch.
“Well that was my breakfast.” Pitch says indulgently.
“It looks like a brick.” Jack squints at the toast like it’s something especially bizarre. Really, this was from the boy who had a habit of eating the fish before Pitch had a chance to cook it.
“I don’t know what bricks you’ve been looking at, but none of them look like toast.” Pitch reaches up to pluck the offending food from Jack’s hands, taking a moment to ruffle his hand through Jack’s hair.
Jack wrinkles his nose and leans into the brief caress, still glaring suspiciously at the toast. He never questions the touches. Never pulls away or seems especially perturbed by them. Jack will accept any pet or caress, he’ll lean into fingers running through his hair and relax into a hand sliding down his back. There have been several times where he seemed to almost seek touch out, where he would lean as Pitch walked by, as if gravity was pulling him in to seek some sort of contact.
Pitch settles back into his chair with a smile, hardly paying attention to the act of spreading jam on his toast. “Perhaps I can go into town and get you something less brick like, hm?”
No response.
Pitch glances up, seeing if Jack is perhaps still scowling at the toast, but the boy is still as stone. Jack has the ability to become so literally still that one can hardly see him breathing, not even his hair moves in the breeze from the air conditioning as he stares out the window with a fierce look.
“Jack?”
The spell breaks. Jack goes from motionless to a flurry of legs and arms within half a second, leaping down from the table so fast that he nearly knocks Pitch’s plate off in his rush to the door. Pitch’s stomach drops out, his heart wrenches up into his throat as Jack bolts for the door. He couldn’t leave! He can’t leave what was he doing?!
“Jack!” Pitch takes off after him, he’s not sure what he can do to keep Jack (he already DID what he had to do to keep Jack he doesn’t understand!) but he’ll run as far as he needs to.
It turns out he doesn’t have to run far. Jack stops at the edge of the small cliff that Pitch’s house stands on, staring out at the water with shaking hands. He barely glances over when Pitch comes up along side him, breathing hard.
“Jack, what-” He glances out and hisses out a breath when he spots what has Jacks attention.
Seals.
A small group, jumping through the water and twisting around each other as they take turns popping up to look at the shore.
Jack is practically vibrating, staring out over the water with a pained, almost horrified longing.
And things had been going so well.
Pitch glares out at the seals. The selkies. Of course, NOW they're interested in Jack. NOW they decide that Jack is worthy of their attention and concern.
'You had your chance.' He thinks viciously. Jack makes a small sound next to him, one he probably isn't even aware of, and Pitch quickly schools his features into a sad concern.
"Were they your family?" He asks gently.
Jack jumps and tears his eyes from the pack to stare at Pitch. His breath starts shortening, breaking into little bursts that make his chest flutter. "What?"
"You're not very subtle." Pitch says with a rueful smile. "I could hardly mistake you for something as base as a human."
Jack looks back out at the selkies, eyes flicking over the horizon. He swallows and takes a steadying breath, looking away from the water. Looking down at his feet on the ground.
“They...I mean they kind of were yeah.” He finally says, keeping his eyes down instead of on the selkies. “I don’t really know my original family, this pack...they took me in.”
Pitch nods to himself, looking out over the water. He had suspected as much. Jack had always seemed a bit separate from the rest of the group.
They pretended to take him in, but Jack wasn’t truly part of them.
He didn’t belong with them.
“It was your pelt, wasn’t it? That you lost?” It’s a risky question. Pitch isn’t quite sure why he asks it, but he watches Jack avidly for what the boy will do.
And oh he doesn’t disappoint. A small, delicate tremor goes up the boys spine. Barely noticeable except for the shake in his shoulders and the aftershocks moving through his white hair. Jack runs his hand through those strands as if to still them, to anchor himself in them. His hand clenches in his hair as he continues looking down at the ground.
“Yeah...yeah I...I had hoped that it was just misplaced you know? That...that it hadn’t been...” Jack takes another slow breath, tightens his fingers in his hair. He’s something on the edge, something barely put together and Pitch so desperately wants to replace that hand with his own, to pull Jack in and put him back in place. Put him back together and keep him beautiful and here forever.
“If you hadn’t found me,” Jack goes on, “I would have...I mean I guess I was only alone for a bit because whoever took it was hiding it maybe. And if they had found me,” Jack swallows, looks back at the water, and quickly away again, “I’d have to be theirs.” He finishes in a horrified whisper.
Pitch is glad for the breeze, that helps hide the shiver that goes up his spine.
“It’s a good thing I found you, then.” He says evenly.
Jack looks up then, not at the water, but at Pitch with a small smile. “Yeah...yeah it is.”
----------------------------------------------------
They went back in shortly afterwards, Jack hadn’t said anything else, he’d just turned and silently walked back into the house. The quick flurries of energy were gone from him, but even his slow, broken steps fell on the ground lightly and so evenly that he looked like a floating spectre accidentally clothed in jeans and a sweatshirt.
He went into the guest room without a sound and Pitch didn’t stop him. This was a delicate time, and he understood if Jack needed some time alone.
It makes everything quiet,makes his house seem like something ordinary. Pitch sits against the armrest of the couch with his notebook, tapping at the side with his pencil while he tries to find words. He’s taken a small break from his plays and dabbling in poetry now. Not anything that he plans on being famous for. The plays have done enough of that for him and the little scribbles he calls poems are simply a nice break.
He jots words down, crosses them out, writes different ones. Ignores the lines on the paper and simply puts his pen down wherever it may go. If he loses himself in the scratch of the tip against the texture of paper then he doesn’t have to hear how quiet it is while Jack hides away.
The hours pass and drag while slipping away all too quickly, Pitch forces himself to lose time in the writing, or else he’ll barge into the guest room and demand Jack come out. And that wouldn’t do for either of them.
Jack may be dressed and cleaned and for the most part, civil. But he was something wild and feral, he had to be coaxed out. Had to be let on his own to come out on his own, his trust was something to be brought out slowly.
Even with the supernatural push, Pitch felt that he should earn the rest of Jack’s trust.
“Um...hey Pitch?”
Pitch yanks his eyes up from the notepad, up to where Jack stands in the entrance to the hallway.
“Yes, Jack? Are you feeling alright?”
Jack bites his lip, looks like he’s weighing his options. His eyes are puffed and there are bright bursts and explosions of red on his cheeks. The flush and glaze from old tears only make his eyes so much more blue, so much brighter.
Jack takes a moment, then steps into the room, feet falling slowly and cautiously. Pitch realizes that Jack is approaching as if PITCH is the wild animal, the one who may turn and run without warning.
“Can I-...do you mind if I sit with you?” Jack asks tentatively.
Pitch doesn’t even try to hide the smile that comes to his face. He couldn’t hold it down if he tried. It’s allowed to grow, to spread over his features as his chest fills with warmth. “Of course. I don’t mind at all.”
Permission granted, Jack moves swiftly. There’s barely a heartbeat before Pitch finds himself with a small warm body pressed against his side. Jack works himself under Pitch’s arm, curls in towards him and buries his head against his collarbone, fingers tangling up in the material of Pitch’s dress shirt.
He had only let himself have the smallest touches of Jack. Had only allowed himself the brush of fingers and gentle press of his palm on Jack’s head or back. Now he’s surrounded by Jack. He can feel Jack pressed like a brand against his side, the tickle of white hair against his jaw, a hint of soft hands through his shirt and the echoes of a second heartbeat pressing against his ribs.
Pitch has to separate himself mentally for a moment, not long enough to miss anything, but just for a breath of a second while he composes himself. After that he’s calm enough to drink in the bounty lying against him.
Jack is even more beautiful this close. From here Pitch can see each eyelash lying against his cheek, can see the salt and pepper color of Jack’s eyebrows and the faint freckles and blotches over his pale skin. Each blemish somehow adds to him, makes him something MORE. Pitch lifts a hand slowly, runs his thumb over the cut of Jack’s cheekbone and sighs in pleasure as Jack moves in closer. The selkie is now practically in his lap, cheek pressed to Pitch’s chest and legs laid out over Pitch’s thighs. Jack moves his head so that Pitch’s hand is in his hair and Pitch smiles, running his fingers through it without further prompt.
“I really am glad that you found me first.” Jack murmurs against Pitch’s shirt.
He can feel the warmth of Jack’s breath through the material. Feels the echoes of the soft damp of his mouth through his shirt and onto his skin. He wants to sink his fingers into Jack and pull him down. Wants to feel that warmth against his lips and that slight, inhuman body plastered against his. Pitch wants to fall back and pull Jack onto him, to swallow him whole and take and give as much as he can.
His hand runs over Jack’s head, cradles the curve of his skull against his palm as Pitch leans down and presses his lips into Jack’s hair. He closes his eyes, lost for a moment in the smell and feel all around him.
“So am I.” He whispers against Jack’s head.