Chapter Text
Jackson had never been one who was short on affection. Platonic or not, he would never shy away from touching the people he was around, pushing their personal boundaries in a way that even the most reserved person would welcome. Jackson was a man who made anyone feel loved, important, worthy, his friendliness leaving you content and wrapped in warmth for hours after he’d gone. So, it only made sense that when Mark had found himself acquainted with the man, his feelings bled into something more than a friend was meant to harbor for another friend. Especially one with a boyfriend.
Lingering, absent-minded touches turned into the longing for electricity. Mark dreamt about the way Jackson’s lips would feel folded around his, their hands intertwined, and bodies rubbing against each other. He’d wake up in a pool of sweat among something else, cheeks flushed and chest heaving, wishing for the drag of another man’s fingers along his arm, summoning him back to sleep. And the worst of it was when he realized his dreams weren’t just about desire, they were about love. Mark could handle desire, a few tugs in his hand and he’d have everything under control, but love was something complicated. No matter how many times he found himself in bed with someone who wasn’t Jackson, his thoughts always came back to him. How he wished it was Jackson in his bed. How he wanted so badly to be in his boyfriend’s place. And how obvious it was he would have neither.
Thus came the hard part. Acting like these feelings didn’t exist.
“Hello?” Mark grumbled into the receiver of his phone, groggy from having been woken up in the middle of the night by its loud ringing.
“Mark!” a high pitched shriek replied. He immediately winced and pulled his phone away from his ear and checked the time on the clock by his bed.
“Jackson, it’s 1 am.”
“Oh, sorry, did I wake you up?” Jackson sounded concerned before switching back to his normal bubbly tone, “it’s a Saturday night, what were you doing asleep anyway?”
“Nights are meant for sleeping, what else would I be doing?”
“ Weeknights are meant for sleeping, Mark, not the weekends. Besides, you stay up all the time playing that game Overplay or whatever.”
“You mean Overwatch?”
“Yeah, yeah, same thing! Anyways, since you’re awake now, you wanna stay up and talk for a bit?”
Mark didn’t have to guess to know exactly where this conversation was headed. His best friend had been on and off dating some guy named Jinyoung for a while now, and he could never seem to keep the boy’s name out of his mouth for long whenever they spoke. He sighed quietly to himself, careful to make sure Jackson wouldn’t hear before replying, “Yeah, I guess, what’s up?”
This scene was habitual, something Mark was used to, expected almost. Jackson would call, sometimes at a reasonable hour, sometimes not, but he would call eventually. Mark would answer because he always answered for Jackson, and they would talk the way they always have before the subject would shift, emotions arising and intimacy stringing along the telephone line. Jackson would begin relinquishing his want--no, his need--for love, how he felt lonely sleeping in Jinyoung’s bed but could never see himself without him. He talked on and on about how right it seemed that he’d met Jinyoung when he had, yet somehow felt the timeline was skewed in some way, like there was a tear in it and they’d skipped forward five years without realizing.
Mark’s heart would hurt. Because it always hurt for Jackson. And he would try his best to offer advice that would resolve his best friend’s problems with glassy eyes and fingers picking away at skin, but he would keep his answers short, afraid if he spoke too long, he’d blurt out something he wasn’t meant to say.
Tonight was different, though. Jackson went quiet at the mention of Jinyoung, something entirely foreign to Mark since the moment Jackson met the other man. He waited a moment, hoping the silence would coax some words out of his best friend’s mouth, but the line remained dead. If Mark hadn’t known better, he would’ve suspected Jackson had hung up.
“...Jackson? You okay?”
“Will you meet me? At 24th St or something? We can sit on a park bench and talk?”
Mark sat up in bed, a feeling boiling in his stomach that didn’t sit well. His eyes scanned his room, flicking back and forth at the door and his shoes before making up his mind.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you in 10, okay?”
This time, the line went dead.