Work Text:
A gust of cold, wet wind chased Gerry the rest of the way into the flat, and he shut the door before it could follow him inside. Standing in the entryway, he sighed in relief as the warm air thawed the numbness from his fingers and the tip of his nose.
It was getting late, but the light was on in the bedroom—Jon must have waited up for him, or at least tried to. He hadn’t called out to him, so he was either asleep or too distracted with work to hear the door open.
Gerry left a trail behind him on the way from the front door to the bedroom—his boots in the entryway, still damp from the puddles; his equally wet coat, thrown over a chair at the kitchen table; the extra jacket he’d worn underneath it on Jon’s insistence, in a rumpled pile on the couch that Jon would grumble about later. His face still felt chilled, and his fingers tingled as the warmth returned to them.
Jon was awake, sitting on the bed surrounded by a nest of papers. He was wearing one of Gerry’s shirts, worn soft by years of use, the neckline loose enough to slip down over his collarbone.
The sight warmed him more than the heater ever could.
Jon made a token noise of protest when Gerry pushed some of the mess aside and slipped in beside him, careful to nudge the papers into neat stacks rather than shoving them off the bed entirely. Then Gerry tucked his face into the crook of Jon’s shoulder and pressed his cold nose into his neck, and the halfhearted grumbling leapt to a yelp.
“Jesus, Gerry, you—!”
“Mm, quit squirming.” Gerry wound his arms around Jon’s waist and pressed close, merciless. “You’re warm.”
“I’m not warm, you’re just freezing, good lord—” His breath stuttered when Gerry pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw, and his arms slid up and around Gerry’s shoulders, pulling him closer.
“What’re you working on?” Gerry asked, slipping words in between kisses.
“I—mm. Bit of research for Gertrude.” Jon sat back into the nest of pillows, pulling Gerry down with him. “For the Unknowing—there’s a, um. A lot of components to it, a lot of players, and we’re trying to work out what, and who, will be involved in the next attempt.”
“Anything fun?”
Jon pulled a face. “There’s a lot of skin involved, very little of it attached to a body.”
“Hm.” Gerry kissed the crease between his eyebrows, satisfied when it smoothed beneath his lips. “How urgent is it?”
Jon frowned again in the direction of his mess of research, indecision warring on his face. “Well… I suppose the world won’t end yet if I take a small break.”
Gerry kissed him before he had the chance to change his mind.
Kissing Jon was—had been—would always be—a lesson in experimentation. In cautious trial-and-error, driven by questions, guided by yes and no and all the myriad ways to say them. There were things Jon liked, things he didn’t, thinks he might be alright with depending on the day, things he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. With every touch and kiss and awkward question, Gerry learned something new and added it to the shifting map in his head. Some days were cautious, testing the waters, probing gingerly at the edges of his knowledge before carefully expanding it.
And some days, Gerry kept to well-trodden ground, reveling in the things that he knew Jon loved.
They were:
Kissing, naturally. On the lips, on the forehead and temple, along the line of the jaw. There was a spot on the side of his neck that made him shiver (in a good way!) and another in the hollow of his throat where Gerry’s lips fit perfectly.
Gerry’s hands. In his hair, combing through it, playing with it, curling locks around his fingers (Jon loved having his hair played with). On his face, gentle around his neck, guiding him into each kiss. On his shoulders, running down his chest, skimming over ribs before settling on his hips—no lower than that.
Warm, comfortable pressure from above. Jon was the one who introduced him to the luxury of weighted blankets, and it didn’t take Gerry long to realize that a warm and enthusiastic boyfriend achieved much the same effect.
And as for Gerry—
God, Gerry just loved him. He never knew he could love being touched like this—the warmth of skin on skin, the roughness of chapped lips, the pressure through the thin barrier of cloth. The gentleness of fingers running through his hair, braiding it away from his neck to make room for a kiss.
He didn’t need to have tasted the Lonely’s chill to know how weak it was to the hearth fire of another person.
Now, Jon’s arms were crossed over the back of Gerry’s neck, holding him close. His fingers were in Gerry’s hair again, caressing it like it was soft as silk instead of dried out and brittle from too much cheap dye, knotted and split from getting caught on things (or by things). The feeling of Jon’s hands in his hair used to fill him with an unfamiliar thrill, like danger, like standing on the edge of something and bracing to be pushed off. But now it was a comfort, and it left the same feeling as an I-love-you whispered into his skin.
Lips on the shell of his ear made Gerry shiver in anticipation, but what he got instead was “How are you still freezing?”
Gerry breathed out a laugh. “Means you’re not working hard enough, love.”
Jon kissed him soundly again. “Oh, I see,” he murmured back, too close for Gerry to see his smile but close enough for him to hear it. “So I’ve got to do all the work myself, then?”
“You’re the workaholic.” There was a rustle of paper, followed by a telltale flutter of several pages finding their way to the floor. “Case in point.”
Jon stopped kissing him—which, rude—to crane his neck toward the edge of the bed. “Oh, that’s going to be a nightmare to organize again.”
Gerry snorted. “You say ‘again’ like it was ever organized.”
“I have a system!”
“Sure, Jon.” With his head turned like that, Gerry could only kiss his cheek. “Hey. Pay attention to me.”
Jon barely turned his head to look at him again. “And if I don’t?”
Gerry paused for a moment, considering, then slid his still-ice-cold hands beneath Jon’s shirt.
Well. His shirt, technically.
“Gerry!” Jon squawked, voice jumping several octaves, and Gerry laughed himself breathless.
He was still laughing when Jon’s hands, still tangled in his hair, curled into a proper grip and gave a playful yank in retaliation.
It was playful. It was all in fun, and he’d understand that later, when he was in the right mind to understand anything. But in the moment, it didn’t really matter.
He came back to the sound of numbers.
He was already following them, even though he couldn’t remember when they’d started—when he’d started. Or stopped, as the case may be. He clung to the numbers with instinct born of habit—the rest of him was swimming in panic, lost and adrift with no up or down or left or right, but numbers he could follow.
One, two, three four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
In. Hold. Out. And repeat.
The world materialized around him again. First the numbers, then Jon’s hand, then the knowledge that he really shouldn’t have been gripping Jon’s hand that hard, then the rest of Jon and the rest of the room.
His breathing smoothed out, slowly, until he could cast off the numbers at last. His head ached, but he preferred the pain to the drifting. The tunnel vision widened, and the first thing he saw was Jon, and how terrified he looked. In spite of the death grip Gerry still had on his hand, Jon was holding it at arm’s length, like he was trying his best not to touch him.
(That was no good; how was he supposed to keep from drifting again if he didn’t have more to hold onto?)
“Gerry?” Jon’s voice barely shook. His hand shifted in Gerry’s grip and he held tighter, afraid that Jon was about to pull it away.
His lips tried to form the words I’m alright, but they just wouldn’t come.
“I’m sorry,” Jon went on, voice pitched with held-back panic. “I’m—I’m so sorry, I should have asked, I didn’t know—” A pause, to swallow. “I won’t do it again. I promise. I—” His voice caught. “I didn’t know.”
“’S alright.” Gerry’s own voice came out hoarse. He hoped he hadn’t cried out. That would’ve been embarrassing. Would’ve scared Jon, too. “’M okay. ‘M fine.” He took another deep, shuddering breath. “It’s good. Now we know.”
“Do you need anything? I can—d’you want water? I can make tea, but it’d take some time—”
Gerry was loathe to let him go, but his throat was parched, and he couldn’t talk without it sounding rough and crackly. “Water’s fine.”
Jon was back in almost no time at all, pressing a glass into his shaking hands, helping him steady it. Once he was back within reach, Gerry wasted no time taking his hand again, leaving only one free for Jon to put the glass on the bedside table.
“Anything—anything else?” Jon asked hesitantly. “I can—oh.”
Gerry was already pulling him close, burying his face in his shoulder, curling around him for as much contact as possible. Jon hugged him back like he wasn’t sure he was allowed anymore, even though Gerry was the one pressing him in, desperate for closeness. He kept his hands low on Gerry’s back, avoiding his hair, and that wouldn’t do at all. Gerry took his hand again, just long enough to place it against the back of his head.
“You can touch it,” he said, muffled against Jon’s shirt (his shirt). “I like it when you touch it, don’t know why you like it so much, not like it’s nice to begin with, just—just don’t pull it.”
“I won’t. I won’t, I promise. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“That’s still no excuse—”
“I didn’t know.”
He didn’t. If Jon had asked him first, he probably would’ve said yes.
Though—wasn’t it obvious? It should have been obvious. He’d had his hair pulled before. It made a convenient handhold for the things that wanted him dead, or just under control.And when Jon started touching it—not pulling it, just touching, playing with it, like it was anything worth admiring—it had felt like a trust fall. Like he was putting his beating heart in his hands, not his hair.
“Right,” he murmured. “Kind of obvious, put like that.”
“What?”
“Last few people to pull my hair were trying to kill me. If you stretch your definition of ‘people.’” He hesitated. “And the person before that was, you know, my mum. Again, depending on what you mean by a person, heh.” Damn, that had sounded less miserable and more funny in his head. “So. Guess it makes sense after all.”
Jon was silent.
“Jon, please say something.”
“It’s—I don’t—you’re right, I suppose.” Jon’s hand skimmed down his back again, more delicately than he had ever done before.
“I know you wouldn’t,” Gerry blurted out. “Hurt me, I mean. Not like you could if you tried.”
(And that wasn’t true at all—Jon had a better chance of hurting him than any monster he’d ever faced in his life. If Jon turned around one day, knife in hand, Gerry wouldn’t even know to react before the blade was drawing across his throat.)
“But I know you wouldn’t try,” he said. “You know that, right?”
The silence continued.
“Jon?” Nothing. “Jon, you know that, right?”
“When you pulled away,” Jon said softly. “You looked at me like you thought I was going to.”
Oh.
“I don’t remember doing that,” said Gerry.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jon whispered. “I don’t ever want to make you feel that way again.”
“Okay.” He tried, but he couldn’t think of anything he could say to reassure him. Nothing meaningful. Nothing that would sink in.
With a sigh, Gerry lay down against the pillows, without releasing his hold. Jon made a muffled noise of surprise as he went with him. When they were finished rearranging themselves, they were lying on their sides, eye to eye on the same pillow. Jon shifted his head, brushing aside a few errant locks of Gerry’s hair that had ended up trapped underneath.
“Ever think about getting it cut?” he asked, settling down again. “Not—not that I don’t love your hair.” Gerry snorted. “I do. But just—for safety’s sake. One less thing for a monster to grab.” He raised an eyebrow. “Since you’re not about to give up your long, trailing coats.”
“Hey, my coats are lovely.”
At last, one corner of Jon’s mouth quirked up into a smile. “Lovely, and a grabbing hazard.”
Gerry rolled his eyes at him. “Fine. And, I dunno. I cut it whenever it’s long enough to be really risky, but I’ve never gotten it properly short, you know?”
“You cut your own hair?”
Gerry snorted. “Yeah, ‘cause having a stranger wield sharp objects in the direction of my neck sounds like my idea of a great time.”
“…Oh.” Jon was still looking at him, faintly troubled.
“Wouldn’t mind if you did it,” Gerry murmured.
Jon blinked. “You—what?”
“It’s like I said. I know you wouldn’t hurt me. So if you had to wave a pair of scissors near my jugular for ten minutes, it wouldn’t bother me any.”
He meant it as another joke, but the troubled look on Jon’s face had shifted to a thoughtful one.
Silence stretched between them again, more comfortable this time. The frantic energy of panic had finally bled out of him, leaving only bone-deep weariness behind. He could probably fall asleep like this—hopefully he wasn’t lying on top of any of Jon’s research.
“How short would you want it?” Jon asked.
“Dunno. Short as yours, maybe?” He ran his fingers through Jon’s hair, testing the length. He hadn’t gotten it cut in a few months, and it was just long enough to start covering his ears. Not short short, but certainly shorter than Gerry’s had ever been, after he stopped letting Mum near it. “Just to see how I like it, maybe.”
Jon hummed softly, deep in thought. It was still technically a frown, but without the horror and fear and shame, his face was so much softer to look at.
I could fall asleep like this, Gerry realized, and eventually did.
“You’re sure about this?” Jon asked, for at least the fourth time.
Gerry finished wrapping the towel around his shoulders and freed the last few strands at the back of his neck. “You’re the one who’s been marathoning Youtube tutorials,” he said airily. “I’m not sure about anything except that it’ll grow back no matter how bad you fuck it up.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Jon said in a long-suffering voice. “Ready?”
“My life is in your hands,” Gerry said gravely, and smiled when he heard the huffy little noise Jon always made when he pretended to be annoyed.
Jon cutting his hair for the first time was a lot like Jon touching his hair for the first time. The thrill it sent through Gerry’s gut was not an altogether pleasant one, but it wasn’t panic, either. He felt each cut in the gradual loss of weight on his scalp, until finally the cold press of metal against his neck made him twitch. Jon stopped to whisper an apology, and Gerry nodded stiffly.
And then Jon’s hands were in his hair, sliding the shortened locks between his fingers—careful, always careful not to properly pull. His hands pressed close to Gerry’s scalp, skimmed lightly over the bare skin on his neck, gently maneuvered his head this way and that for a better angle, and Gerry found himself leaning into the touch without meaning to.
(“Will you be careful?” Jon muttered fondly, withdrawing the scissors to drop a kiss in the whorl of hair at the top of Gerry’s head. “If you keep moving, I might cut off something you don’t want to lose.”)
And then, eventually—and it did take a long time, with Jon being as careful as he was—it was over.
“Alright,” Jon said hesitantly, stepping away to deposit the scissors on the bathroom counter. “I think that’s about as far as I’m willing to go—if I mess with it any further, I’ll ruin it.”
Gerry turned around to the mirror, and—
Oh. Huh. That was… different.
It was a bit uneven in certain spots. Not crew-cut short, but it stopped at the back of his neck, and his ears were out in the open for the first time in years. It looked—nice. Certainly nice enough to make all those Youtube videos worth it.
Didn’t account for the tightness in his throat, though. It took a moment for Gerry to realize what that was about.
“Gerry?” Jon prompted, a little nervously. “What do you think?”
The moment Gerry found his voice again, he said, “Holy shit, I look like my dad.”
Jon opened his mouth, then closed it. “Is that… uh, good?”
“Think so,” Gerry said, slightly strangled. “It’s, uh. Actually—funny story. Mum didn’t keep any pictures of him around. Don’t think she cared enough to. But that—that also meant she didn’t care enough to really get rid of them.” Why were his eyes stinging? He wasn’t even upset—he genuinely wasn’t. It looked nice. Jon did a good job. “Found one when I was—I dunno, fourteen, I think? First time I ever saw what he looked like. Dark hair and everything, not—not like me.” He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Dyed my hair for the first time that night.”
“…Oh,” Jon said quietly.
“Did a shit job of it. This looks a lot better.”
Jon was silent for a moment more. “Well,” he said at length. “Seeing as I’m not fourteen, I should hope so.”
His arms settled around Gerry’s shoulders, pulling him into a loose hug from behind. Moments later, Gerry felt lips behind his ear—oh. That spot was out in the open, now. No hair in the way. That was interesting.
“Think you’ll keep it like this?” Jon asked.
“Dunno. Maybe? Might just grow it out again.” He took a deep breath, settling himself again. “But—but it’s different. It’s good, for right now.” He craned his neck to look at Jon over his shoulder. “I like it.”
“Happy to help.” Jon pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth.
And then, because Gerry wouldn’t like him nearly as much if he weren’t at least a little bit of a bastard, he ran his fingers through Gerry’s short hair (gently, gently, careful not to pull) and ruffled it into a mess. With a yelp of mock-outrage, Gerry tossed the towel aside stood up to pull him into a proper kiss.