Work Text:
1. He doesn’t do emotion
“Adam! Get your fucking shit off the kitchen table!”
Adam, sprawled across the futon with a towel slung loosely around his hips, awoke with a start to the sounds of Jamie’s anger.
“I was going to-” he protested as he jogged into the kitchen clinging to the towel.
“-always leaving your shit around. Clutter-”
“-after I got out of the shower, but I fell asleep-”
“-how you can be so inconsiderate-”
“Jamie! I just got involved in a project. I was going to clean it up as soon as I reached a stopping point.”
“It’s been two days!”
“I hadn’t stopped till just now- Wait, two days, really? No wonder I fell asleep on the couch.”
“Yeah, and you haven’t eaten or slept, which makes you only get messier and more careless, you idiot. Nimrod!” Jamie stormed toward his workshop and slammed the door.
Adam sighed and started to gather his project. Counterintuitivly, Jamie tolerated more mess at home than he did in the shop, although he was still miles neater than Adam. Adam suspected it had something to do with the farmboy ethic of “keep your work space clean” having been ingrained into him. Similarly, someone had made him believe that real men don’t show their emotions, and they certainly don’t talk about them. As a result, Jamie had never learned to talk about his feelings.
Adam’s pet theory was that when Jamie felt a strong emotion he didn’t know how to express it, and when he didn’t know how to express himself he got frustrated, and when he got frustrated he lashed out. He reacted the way teenagers do when they feel the first swells of the new and terrifying range of emotions adulthood brings. Driven by fear and confusion his outbursts had ranged from attempting to shock Adam with an electric fence zapper to slamming doors to malicious and reckless damage to Adam’s property.
Although Adam wasn’t beyond seeing the irony of him being the adult for once in their relationship, he wasn’t able to really appreciate it. Jamie was broken in a deep, fundamental kind of way and Adam wasn’t sure how to fix him.
2. He isn’t invincible
Jamie gets crippling migraines a couple of time a month, always in the late afternoon. Adam had been completely confused the first time he came home to find the mighty Hyneman lying on the futon in a dark, silent house with a wet cloth over his eyes and a bucket by his head. Jamie had denied anything was wrong, and by the next morning he was miraculously healed.
When it happened again a couple of weeks later Adam didn’t have to be a doctor to diagnose Jamie with chronic migraines. He let Jamie keep his pride and didn’t offer help or ask what was wrong. He just kept the lights off and stayed in his room until hunger forced him into the kitchen. He was making a sandwich by cell phone light when he heard Jamie weakly call his name from the living room.
“Adam,” he said again as Adam came around the futon.
“Yeah,” Adam said softly and touched him on the arm. “What do you need?”
“I need you to help me get to the bed. I’m done throwing up, but I don’t think I can walk.” He spoke in fits and starts, like he was having a hard time forming thoughts into words through the pain.
“Yeah, okay. Start by trying to sit up.” In the end he had to swing Jamie’s legs off the sofa while Jamie gritted his teeth. When he levered him into a sitting position Jamie actually gave a short, choked cry. Adam refused to believe that there were tears around Jamie’s eyes.
He finished making his sandwich while Jamie equilibrated to sitting up. Then he supported him on one shoulder and led him down the hall, barely noticing in time to steer him away that Jamie wasn’t navigating around the coffee tables.
“The pain whites out my vision when I move,” Jamie explained once Adam had him tucked in bed in his room. Adam shut the door softly and went to empty the puke bucket and maybe eat the sandwich. He hadn’t ever seen anything more wrong than Jamie Hyneman unable to walk or see from a headache, and he sincerely hoped he never would.
3. He doesn’t wear the white shirts at home
Jamie Hyneman in his home is an entirely different creature than the Jamie at work. Which really shouldn’t surprise Adam nearly as much as it does.
Prior to moving in he’d seen Jamie in a t-shirt only slightly more times than he’d seen him in his briefs. Now, he sees him in one every day. As soon as he gets home from the shop Jamie takes off the white shirt and either hangs it up or places it into the laundry hamper depending how dirty it is. Next he puts the beret over its metal form on the dresser, then he usually showers and emerges wearing a t-shit and sleep pants, which he wears for the rest of the night.
“I don’t want to get my white shirts any dirtier than they have to be, and I don’t want to get grease or something from the shop on my furniture, so I change when I get home,” he explained to Adam once, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Jamie is anything but simple.
His favorite t-shirts are solid grey with no print and snug cap sleeves that emphasize his muscles. They all look the same, but Adam figures he must have at least half a dozen of them. His favorite sleep pants are brown and green plaid with a drawstring. Adam notices these things.
4. He’s self-conscious
“Stop messing with it, you look fine!” Adam said for the billionth time as Jamie attempted to straighten his collar yet again.
Adam resisted the urge to let go of the steering wheel and slap Jamie’s hands away from the abused tie and collar. They were already late for the banquet. Adam wasn’t sure why they had been invited to go but he was happy for any excuse to dress up in his tux and go out. Jamie was another story.
“It does not look okay,” he inspected himself in the visor mirror. “My neck looks thick.”
“What?” Adam snuck a glance a Jamie just to confirm that his neck looked no thicker than usual. “You look great. What is wrong with you?”
“I just hate getting dressed up. I just look short and bald, and the clothes never fit right.”
Adam bit his tongue against bringing up a tailor, yet again. He knew a childish rant when he heard one, and it was best just to let these things run themselves out. He tried a different tack.
“Well if you’re fat I must really be tipping the scales. Because I know you’ve got me beat for fitness.”
Jamie made indistinct grumbley noises and stared out the window sulkily.
Adam had noticed that whenever Jamie had to wear something besides his usual white shirt and work pants getup he got very uncomfortable. What he couldn’t figure out was why - if Jamie thought he looked okay in those clothes - he thought he looked any different in a tux, or a latex body suit, for that matter. Adam wasn’t even about to deny he’d been checking Jamie out during that little dress up adventure.
Someday, Adam hoped, he would get the chance to convince Jamie, thoroughly, how gorgeous he was every day.
5. He secretly likes to be touched
Adam always thought that Jamie hated to be touched. He certainly managed to radiate ‘Don’t fucking touch me’ vibes that kept the build team and the crew well out of his personal bubble.
Adam had never really respected the bubble, but he did respect Jamie. So, after a few awkward embraces early on in filming, he limited himself to enthusiastic high fives and shoulder punches where Jamie was concerned. Now, after the drunken soul-baring and cuddling that led to his moving in, he felt slightly off balance. Maybe some boundaries had been shifted, or maybe he was just reading too much into things.
The day Jamie helped Adam move all his stuff over, after they finally closed the garage door behind Jamie’s truck and collapsed on Adam’s futon, which was temporarily parked in the kitchen, Jamie said, “Well, welcome home.”
Adam suddenly felt complete acceptance and utter gratitude. He wanted to hug Jamie, not just an impulse but a longing, and so he did it. He leaned over a little awkwardly and wrapped one arm around Jamie’s shoulder, clasped him tightly before letting go.
“Thanks, man. Thank you,” Adam said.
Jamie didn’t return the hug, he was stiff until Adam released him. But when Adam pulled back and looked at his face he had a little bit of his off camera smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Adam thought he looked surprised, and pleased.
Jamie coughed, like he was embarrassed, and then went to start sorting Adam’s things. Interesting.
After that Adam started to notice that it seemed like Jamie was standing a little closer than usual when they were at home. Adam once turned around from the fridge to find Jamie leaning against the counter behind him. Not doing anything, just there.
One night while they were watching football he experimentally eschewed Jamie’s proffered touch-down high-five in favor of a hug. This time Jamie did react. He clapped Adam on the back, awkwardly at first, and then with sincerity and confidence.
It was a brief hug, although perhaps longer than celebratory football etiquette really allowed, but Adam found it was long enough to confirm his suspicion: Jamie liked hugs. He liked to be hugged, but he didn’t know how to ask for them and he reacted like no one had ever hugged him before.
Adam wondered, not for the first time or the last, what kind of a family Jamie could possibly have grown up in. Knowing Jamie, he’d probably never find out. Those details weren’t important now anyway. Adam wanted to show Jamie all the ways that he could escape from the past, all the new things to do and feel. He resolved, for starters, to give Jamie more hugs.