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Jack wakes up freezing.
“Goddammit,” he whispers, shivering as he rolls over to the other side of the bed.
Daniel is gripping every single blanket Jack owns to his chest like a lifeline. His hair is messy across the pillow, his face soft with sleep.
It had been adorable for a sum total of two weeks. This shit is getting old, Jack thinks, and grimaces at the thought. They’re like an old married couple, Howard is fond of saying.
He pokes Daniel in the shoulder. “Hey. Daniel.”
Daniel huffs and tugs the blankets tighter.
Jack tries to poke him again, but Daniel reaches a hand just far enough out of his cocoon to bat Jack’s hand away. Jack sighs; he knows when he’s been beaten.
He rolls to sitting and takes a long moment to stretch. The scar on his stomach doesn’t hurt much anymore, but the scar tissue tugs uncomfortably when he raises his arms too far above his head. If he doesn’t stretch in the morning and he ends up running that day, it aches all night. He reaches up until his shoulders are burning a little, and glances over his shoulder just in time to see Daniel closing his eyes. He grins and reaches up a little farther, drawing out the line of his back. Still got it.
Since Daniel refuses to move, Jack pulls on a sweater and shuffles out to the kitchen. He puts on a pot of coffee, a tried and true method of rousing Daniel from his blanket fortress, and leans back against the counter to wait. He looks dubiously at the water stain on the living room ceiling. He thinks it looks bigger than last week. Daniel tells him he’s crazy, but that’s probably because the last time Jack had complained the people upstairs had made it a point to stomp well past a reasonable stomping hour for days.
“It’s the exact same size, moron.”
Jack looks over at Daniel, who has shed maybe two blankets and gained a shirt. He’s leaning against the doorframe because he doesn’t have his leg on yet, watching Jack with sleepy fondness. Or, Jack chooses to read it as fondness, and not, like. Bitter resentment.
Probably not, though. He’s still trying to wrap his head around that, almost five months into whatever this is.
“You’re not gonna be so smug when the ceiling caves in,” Jack mutters, turning back to the coffee pot.
Daniel snorts, and Jack hears him hobbling back to the bed to put on his prosthetic.
(That had been a big step for them. For a while, Daniel had always declined Jack’s offers to stay over. Had to get to work early, the elevator operator might talk, he had to feed his cat-
(“You don’t have a cat.”
“I won’t if I don’t feed it, Thompson, Jesus.”)
Jack had complained to Peggy one morning before anyone else had managed to drag themselves into work. Even Daniel, who had ducked out the night before because he had to “catch up on paperwork in the morning.”
“He leaves every night, Marge,” Jack had said, chin pillowed on his forearms. “Right after we’re done, you know. I mean, we’re alright now, it’s not like that first time, but.” He blows out a breath that ruffles his bangs. “It makes a guy wonder.”
Peggy hadn’t even looked up. “Barring the fact that that was much more than I ever cared to know about your private life, Agent Thompson.”
It was only Agent Thompson when he was being stupid. He’d sat up.
“Have you ever considered,” Peggy had said, and even for all her nonchalance she had been choosing her words with care. “That maybe Daniel...has certain things he might be insecure to share, with a romantic partner?”
Jack had thought about it for a long moment. “He’s seen me naked, Carter, I don’t think there’s anything-”
Peggy had raised her head in exasperation. “His leg, you complete buffoon. Not everything is about you.”
“Oh.” He had frowned, long and hard. “Should I-”
“Talk to him, instead of me?” Carter had gone back to doing whatever someone three months ahead of everyone else does. “Absolutely.”
He had talked to Daniel. It had been rough, and Daniel had avoided him for a week. But then he’d shown up and stayed the night without a word, taking his prosthetic off in the dark and lying stiff next to Jack. He stays over a couple of times a week now. They’re still working through it, but it’s better. It’s better.)
He pours two cups for them and pops two pieces of bread in the toaster. It’s the second part of the formula that keeps their mornings running smoothly, proven through extensive trial and error.
One: coffee.
Two: toast.
Three: bathroom (and Jack’s bathroom is tiny, so they alternate).
Four: out the door to work.
He pulls on his jacket as they make their way down the hall. It’s always cold in this building. It used to bother him more.
Daniel hadn’t been kidding about being worried about the elevator operator, though. Jack knows him well enough, doesn’t think he’d say anything, but. It’s always a fear. He tends to slip him a tip when Daniel’s not looking. When Daniel does see it makes his hand tighten on his crutch, even as his face stays calm, and he’s always more on edge at work. It’s better to do it slyly on the way out.
A plus about the situation: Daniel’s car. Jack hasn’t walked to work in months. He thinks he’s losing some muscle, and he definitely can’t run as far. Daniel hasn’t poked at him about it, but Jack is not above blaming it on his gut wound. If it comes to that.
Jack hums on the ride over, a tune that’s been stuck in his head all week. Daniel shoots him a half-hearted glare. He’s heard this song just about as many times as Jack’s sung it.
“It’s a classic,” Jack says, rubbing his hands together to warm them up. He does not miss this walk in the snow.
“It is not,” Daniel fires back. “It sounds the same as every other song of his.”
“Daniel Sousa is a crotchety old man, who knew?”
“Just because I have a taste for good music,” Daniel says, the same as always. “Does not mean I’m an old man.”
“Of course not,” Jack says. It’s a worn argument, comfortable. A married couple, Jack thinks again, but it rolls off him a little more slowly. Married.
He’s thought about it. Not seriously, or about anyone in particular. Some old girlfriends before the war, maybe. The vague shape of a future wife, never more detailed than that. He thinks it would be nice to be married, but he knows that he isn’t ever gonna get that. Not so long as Daniel keeps putting up with him, that’s for sure. He’s in this for the long haul.
He’s afraid to ask what Daniel thinks about marriage. It’s on the tip of his tongue, sometimes, when Daniel is folding towels or puttering around the apartment, fixing shit. He can see it; Daniel as a husband, coming home after work with a kiss for his pretty wife and a smile for his cute kids. He would be a good husband, Jack thinks, and a good father. He thinks about that a lot; how he’s holding him back. He glances out of the corner of his eye at Daniel’s profile. They don’t talk about where this is going, what it means. He doesn’t know if Daniel will want this for the rest of the year, let alone his entire future. It doesn’t stop Jack from wanting.
They pull up next to the SSR building. Jack leans back to grab Daniel’s crutch.
(That was one of the things they’d talked about. Daniel had agreed to that, but had said no to opening my door, Thompson, Jesus Christ.)
Carter intercepts them before they make it two steps inside. “Meeting in the conference room,” she says, but there’s a lilt to her voice. “Ten minutes, both of you.”
Jack exchanges a look with Daniel as she walks away.
“Do you think-”
“Nah,” Jack says, though his heart is pounding. They’re always worried about the same thing, these days. “Probably nothing.” Carter would’ve warned them.
Jack only stops to drape his coat over his chair and place his briefcase next to his desk. Whatever this is, he wants to be in there first to scope out the terrain. He’ll take the fall for this if he has to.
The conference room has three places set. Jack considers taking the place at the head of the table, just to be annoying, but decides against it. Not while Daniel’s reputation is at stake as well. He sits there for what feels like hours. No, he imagines saying. No, I was alone last night and every night before that except for a beautiful woman, because of course, it was a woman and not Daniel goddam Sousa. He thinks he might have to tighten up his story.
Carter comes in next, and she does take a seat at the head of the table.
“Carter.” Jack leans onto the back legs of his chair. “Always a pleasure.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Yes, I’m sure. Where’s your partner?”
His chair drops to the floor with a thunk. “What?”
She rolls her eyes. “Your work partner.” She gestures to the files at each seat. “Did you really have the restraint not to look in these?”
“I was a little busy being panicked out of my mind,” he snaps, but the worry is ebbing away. “What is all this?”
“Assignment,” Daniel says, shutting the door behind him. “I’m also impressed you didn’t look.”
Jack fights back a thousand comments. “Thanks. How do you know more than me?”
“I told him while you were in here preparing for battle,” Carter says, and there’s something off in her voice. She opens her folder. “If we might begin?”
Jack grumbles under his breath but opens his as well.
“According to credible sources,” she starts. “There is a former Hydra scientist in the area. We only have a name, no photo: Claus Haering. We are working under the assumption that he is using an assumed name, and according to our source is coordinating intelligence drops and immigration plans for other Hydra scientists. This poses an immediate threat, but we have no way of knowing who exactly we are looking for. If you would turn to page three-”
Jack does. It’s an address. He looks back up to Carter.
“You and Daniel will be on surveillance,” she says, and there’s that lilt in her voice again. “For the foreseeable future. Posing as housemates.”
Jack knows what the lilt is now. Margaret Carter finds this funny.
“No,” Jack says. “No, absolutely not. We’ll go crazy and kill each other.”
“If you don’t you may end up dead regardless,” Carter says. Jack spares a moment to wonder if that means the Hydra scientist will kill them, or Carter herself. He can’t decide which would be worse. “Have Daniel bake something, the two of you will do just fine.”
Daniel’s jaw drops at the same time as Jack’s. “What?”
“I have complete faith in you,” Carter says, dipping her head ostensibly to look closer at the page.
“No,” Jack says. “What was the part about the baking?”
Carter smiles. “Oh, yes. You will have to make your own food, so of course, Daniel should bake something.”
Daniel is very carefully not looking at Jack.
“Hold on a second.” Jack places both palms flat on the table. “You’re telling me. That you can bake. And you have not been baking me food?”
“This is exactly the reason why!” Daniel yells, pointing a finger at him. “Because soon that would be the only thing I’d be doing, trying to keep up with your freakish appetite-”
“Do you know how much I spend at the Automat? Angie has me on a tab, I can’t afford new shoes-”
“I’d be tempted to stick my head in the oven to get away from you and that bottomless pit you call a stomach-”
“I have to ration my toothpaste to afford cinnamon rolls, I can feel my teeth starting to rot-”
“And I’d have to quit my job here to be a housewife, waving goodbye to you and then popping the tenth batch of cookies in the oven-”
“I haven’t had a fresh-baked cookie in years, I’m deprived-”
“You’re deprived of something, alright-”
“Boys,” Carter interrupts mildly. “Shall we continue?”
They startle and then move back guilty from where they’d been leaning across the table to shout. Through the window, Jack sees the chief massaging his temples.
“Thank you.” Carter shuffles her papers. “And if you had let me finish, you would have known that you will be given an expenses stipend. It should cover buying your meals, should you decline to make them yourselves.”
“So just to be clear,” Daniel says. “I don’t have to bake for anyone?”
“No,” Carter says. “But if Jack refuses to talk to you until trying one of your muffins, then I don’t believe that there is much I can do.”
Jack shoots up to standing. “You make muffins?”
“Jesus Christ.”
------
Jack continues to complain about it that Friday at Stark’s.
“My ribs are showing through, Angie,” he says, trying to look as poor and starved as he can. “And the one person I thought was on my side refuses to help.”
“Poor baby,” Angie soothes, reaching up from her seat on the carpet to give his knee a clumsy pat.
“Don’t poor baby him,” Daniel says. “If his ribs are showing it’s because his stomach is so big it’s pushing them.” He has his arm slung over Jack’s shoulders, pressed tight to his side on the couch. He’s warm, and it’s making Jack drowsy.
That could also be the booze. It might be fifty-fifty.
Jack drops his head onto Daniel’s shoulder, and it makes Daniel huff. Affection is not a strong suit for either of them; like most of this thing, it’s a work in progress. At least Daniel doesn’t shuffle him off like he used to.
Mr. Jarvis has joined them tonight, and he sits very straight up on the couch opposite them. “I don’t know you very well, Mr. Thompson, but I have seen you eat an entire tray of vegetable toasts.”
Angie and Peggy laugh. He points at Jarvis. “That was a compliment to your wife, Jarvis, don’t forget.”
“Of course,” Jarvis replies, with that aggravatingly vague smile. “Though I think she was rather confused when I put in a request for more, given that no one ever eats her vegetable toasts.”
Daniel sits up a little and Jack shifts down on his shoulder. “Nah, you want to hear something really confusing?”
“Jack Thompson?” Carter guesses. Jack tries to nudge her with his foot but she’s too far.
“Well, yes, but get this.” Daniel shifts. “It’s weird. Someone keeps leaving coffee on my desk.”
Angie snorts Howard’s good bourbon out of her nose.
Jack does his best to remain completely, entirely still.
“At work, you mean?” Peggy asks, eyes twinkling. Jack considers whether or not Daniel would be able to see him sticking his tongue out at her and decides it’s too big a risk.
“Yeah,” Daniel continues. “It started a while ago, probably over a year, now. I don’t know who it is, but a couple of times a week I’ll find a cup of coffee on my desk. No note, no nothing.”
“That is strange,” Carter says. “Maybe you have a secret admirer in the telephone department.”
“Watch out, Jack,” Angie says, slapping his leg.
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he says, an uncomfortable flush against his cheeks and the back of his neck.
“I’m curious,” Carter says and ignores Jack’s panicked eyes. “Is it good coffee?
“It’s perfect,” Daniel says, and Jack doesn’t even try to tamp the swoop of satisfaction in his stomach that wars with his rising embarrassment. Of course, it’s perfect. But he can’t let Daniel know it’s him.
He’s not sure why. It just feels important.
“Always hot, and just how I like it,” Daniel continues. “I want to say thanks, but I don’t know who it is.”
“Stay away from them,” Jack mumbles. “Probably an asshole.”
“No, all the phone girls are sweet,” Peggy says.
“Yeah,” Daniel picks up. “Nobody wearing those cute skirts could be a jerk.”
Jack flushes for a different reason. “Well, stay away from them anyway.”
Daniel pats his head, which is odd enough that it makes him look up. “Of course.”
The conversation moves on but Daniel’s hand stays on his head. Jack falls asleep in minutes.
-----
Here’s the thing.
They’ve been in this relationship thing for almost five months. That’s a decent amount of time, Jack thinks, at least with respect to his own past relationships.
And usually, Jack knows whether or not he loves someone well before this point. He knew he loved Daniel Sousa before he ever told him, in a way he’s never loved anyone else. He knows it now and he’s pretty sure he’ll know it forever. It’s not groundbreaking, except in all the ways that it is. He loves Daniel; a given, a gift.
Jack doesn’t know where they stand on the opposite side. Daniel hasn’t said much about how he feels, even now. Jack knows he’s private, that he likes to keep things to himself. He’s quiet by nature and Jack respects that. This thing, though…
He wishes Daniel would say he loves Jack, too. It’s a selfish thought, and he tries not to let himself get hung up on it too much, but. Well. There it is.
He’ll give Daniel time. He has a lot to make up for, and hoping is all he’s got left. And if Daniel has changed his mind, or never really made it up in the first place, Jack will leave.
It’s the least he can do.
----
The building they are conducting surveillance from is… comfortable.
He hesitates to think homey, because that way lies the destruction of all mental fortitude he has left, so he settles on comfortable.
There’s a living room and a kitchen, all done up in soft shades of yellow and white (“Eggshell,” he’d remarked earlier, just to see Daniel roll his eyes). There are two bedrooms but by unspoken agreement, they’d piled all of their stuff in the first one and put the surveillance equipment in the second bedroom and living room.
The bathroom is bigger. Jack guesses that they might not even have to take turns.
“You want first watch?” Daniel asks.
Jack turns. Daniel has finished setting up the cameras in the living room. He’s even gone so far as to put a lampshade on top, to make it seem less conspicuous. Jack snorts.
“Sure.” He walks over and pokes at the lampshade. “World’s best spy, and all that.”
Daniel rolls his eyes, again, like always. It’s softer than it once was. Jack knows it.
“Of course you are,” he says, and Jack refrains from saying something incontrovertibly sappy like, ‘I actually meant you.’
“How long do you think this will take?” Jack asks, instead.
Daniel gives him a long look, slow and considering before he shrugs. He goes into the kitchen and Jack can hear him moving around, the soft click of his crutch, the softer fall of his shoes.
Jack adjusts the camera and peers out into the street. They are only the fallback surveillance team, supporting other groups on the ground. They are in a good position to provide backup if it’s ever needed, and they can get a better view of the whole area. Photographic evidence as well, Carter and the chief had said, if it comes to that. Paper to be burned if it didn’t. It’s a side street, shadowed on all sides by taller buildings. A good drop point, Jack admits. The cops don’t patrol areas like this as closely because there’s never any trouble. Cars pass by now and again, but most of the traffic is people carrying grocery bags and newspapers, kids running around with toys and getting in the way of all the adults.
(Who seem to be laughing, like they’re fond. Jack’s eyes follow those interactions longer than they should. Kids, parents, families. No picket fences, but a home all the same. Daniel swears softly from the kitchen, and Jack takes a moment to sigh.)
Jack likes surveillance. He knows Daniel gets antsy if he has to stay in one place too long doing nothing, but he likes the time to think. He gets lost in it, eyes scanning the street over and over, only to be pulled out of the daze by the smell of baking. Jack tries not to appear too eager as he stands and immediately follows the smell to the kitchen. Daniel smiles at him from the stove.
“Thought that might get you in here.”
“Still can’t believe you were holding out on me,” Jack says and shoves two still slightly-very-extremely-holyfucking hot cookies into his mouth.
Daniel shakes his head, taking one and blowing on it to cool it.
The quiet is peaceful as Daniel finishes his and Jack downs three more. When he feels like he can’t eat another he flops down onto the couch, groaning into the cushions.
He feels Daniel sit down next to him. “You’re an idiot.”
Jack grumbles some more into the couch. Stops, when Daniel runs a hand through his hair.
I love you, Jack thinks. Daniel sighs.
-----
They fall into a pattern. It’s easy, so easy, that it scares him.
They eat breakfast together every morning like they used to. Daniel bakes bread, too, apparently, because they end up with three more loaves than they need every week. Jack eats a lot of toast.
Surveillance takes up most of their days. They take shifts of four hours alone, agree to overlap on one hour during the day to tamp down the boredom. They end up spending most of the day together anyway, either reading or talking or sitting in silence. Daniel starts a puzzle, which Jack thinks is the funniest thing in the whole goddamn world.
(“I’m not an old man,” Daniel says. “Puzzles are great for keeping your mind active.”
“Holy Mary, he even sounds like an old man.” It’s become a running joke; he’ll have to tell Angie, get her in on it. For now, Jack just kicks his feet off the back of the couch and onto the ground. “I can think of at least three other things to keep your mind active.”
Daniel raises an eyebrow.)
Nights are familiar. He’s used to getting up at odd hours, even more used to Daniel not being there. He takes naps during the day sometimes, too, so it isn’t so bad.
Peggy calls every morning at eight, never a minute early or late. She says it’s because any action is more likely to happen at night and she likes to be informed. Jack suspects that it’s to make sure they haven’t strangled each other overnight, and she supposes it’s more likely to happen when they’re tired.
Which isn’t fair, really. Jack gets more restless around two in the afternoon when lunch has settled and there is fuck all to do. He’d bother Daniel if he wasn’t so fond of just looking at him instead. That’s one thing to be said for mid-afternoon; the lighting is incredible.
He can feel himself itching to argue, today, though, and he doesn’t want to. Almost a month into this, coming up towards Christmas, and they’ve only really had one or two blowout fights. They’ve both settled, but he doesn’t like the way Daniel looks at him when he’s genuinely annoyed, so he stands. “I think I’ll go out.”
Daniel glances up. “Alright. Where to?”
Mostly they just go for groceries or lunch runs, because if Jack has to make nice with the old woman at the deli one more time while she stares at his ass, he is going to lose it.
“Just around the neighborhood,” Jack says, turning to grab his coat so he doesn’t have to see Daniel’s reaction; whatever it might be.
It doesn’t do much good, because Daniel’s reaction is to snort. “Right. Someone catch your eye?”
There’s something in his tone. Jack’s heard it before, more during those first few months than recently. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, even though Jack knows he’s missing something. He rubs his face; looks like he’s not avoiding Daniel’s irritation after all.
“No.” He tightens his coat and opens the door. Doesn’t look at Daniel. “No one at all.”
Once he’s out of the apartment he lets himself breathe, just leaning against the wall. Just the afternoon, post-lunch frustration. Nothing else.
He goes down the stairs instead of using the elevator, nodding politely to a family on their way up. The lobby isn’t fancy, even smaller than the one at Jack’s actual apartment, but there are drawings hung up from kids in the building and pictures of big groups, close and happy. He lingers a moment, pretends it’s to put on his gloves.
Outside is chilly, and Jack pops his collar up to protect against the stinging wind. It had snowed the night before, and it gives the street an air of unreality. Everything quiet and still, adults at work and kids at school and just Jack, standing like a ghost in the middle of it all. He can see his breath.
Then he shouts, as something slams into his back.
He whips around, hand falling to his waist for the gun he forgot to grab, seeking the source of the attack.
No one. He ducks behind a snowbank but faces back to where he had been, and-
There. Movement.
He bends down slowly, trying not to give away his position, and gathers a snowball into his ungloved hands. Then he pops up with a yell and lobs it, watching as it crests over the car parked across the street and down.
There’s a startled shriek, and then three kids are running from behind the car, snowballs already formed. The two boys run at him, but the girl hangs back.
Jack sprints to a snowbank farther down, a smile stretching wide across his face as he scoops up more snow and tries to throw it blindly behind him. A credit the SSR, he thinks, when it goes way wide.
Two snowballs whistle by him but the third hits his shoulder, and he laughs when he realizes it was the girl still way across the street. She’s building a pile beside her, handing them out to the other kids who have come out into the street to pelt him.
Jack Thompson against ten children, he thinks, laughing when he thinks about Peggy’s reaction. The kids charge.
He loses. Badly. Ends up with snow in his hair and all down his coat and shoes and even in his pockets, but the kids are laughing and so is he, and they’re all walking up after he cries uncle to pat him on the back (mostly the lower back, because they’re so short) and crush more snow against his coat.
He’s in the center of a small circle when the girl walks up to him, face composed even as all the kids around her are jostling each other and slinging loose snow. She sticks out her hand.
“I’m Rebecca,” she says, and all Jack can see is a tiny Peggy, leading tiny troops into battle armed with snowballs and strategically-built snow forts. He can see her ten, twenty years in the future, just like Peggy now. It makes his stomach hurt, a little, but he takes her hand seriously.
“I’m Jack,” he says, and then winks. “Looks like you’ve got a battle plan all set up here, huh? Real smart to have defenses ready.”
That gets a smile from her, small and quick like Peggy’s. “Thanks. Want any cocoa?”
“Thank you for the offer, but I have to decline,” he says. She nods again, so serious. “But thank you for showing me mercy.”
The kids laugh around him and it seems to make them start wanting to pelt him with more snow, so he waves quickly and says goodbye, kicking snow backward as he goes. A tactical retreat into his building is nothing to be embarrassed by.
A couple of parents who had been peering out the front windows, their cocoa safely in their hands, smile and nod at him as he reenters. He hears ‘good sport’ and ‘stupid’ being muttered in equal measure.
The walk back up to the apartment is unpleasant, his shoes squeaking and pants chafing from the cold and wet. Now that the snow in his pockets has started to melt it’s dripping, leaving a trail behind him as he walks.
He yanks his glove off with his teeth, shakes out his freezing fingers, and opens the door.
Daniel is facing him when he enters, braced against the back of the couch, and Jack freezes. There’s an expression on his face that Jack’s never seen, or seen only through the haze of blinding pain and the resultant painkillers. His eyebrows are drawn together, mouth a thin line, eyes so wide as to be at odds with the rest of his expression. He looks like Jack has done something to cause him physical pain, and doesn’t that tug right at Jack’s chest.
“What?” he asks, eyeing Daniel carefully. Daniel doesn’t move. Jack takes his shoes off, followed by his wet socks, and when he looks up Daniel is still staring.
“What?” he says again, maybe sounding more irritated than he really is, but the tension between Daniel’s eyebrows softens and he’s walking to Jack, leaning his crutch against the couch, taking Jack’s face in his hands and kissing him, soft but firm.
He pulls back. “Are you okay?” Jack asks, because this is unusual for Daniel and he isn’t quite sure what’s happening.
But Daniel just smiles and shakes his head. “You’re good with kids.” And that’s all he says, the tilt at his lips telling Jack he’s not getting any more information, so Jack kisses him back and consciously lets it go.
Later that night, alone in bed, Jack thinks about it. ‘Good with kids.’ He never really thought so, or even thought that much about it. He’s pictured Daniel as a father, but him? He thinks he’d screw a kid up, with all the issues he’s got.
But then he remembers the chill in the air as he lobbed snowballs, the bright, stinging feeling of joy that froze his fingers and warmed his smile. The kids, not afraid of him or disgusted or angry. Simple happiness, the type he hasn’t felt in a long time. Even being with Daniel isn’t so uncomplicated; they’ve got secrets between them, words to be said that never come up.
He thinks he could be a father. Thinks, maybe, that he wants to be.
Daniel doesn’t wake him up for his watch.
They’ve had such a steady routine that Jack wakes up by himself anyway. He rubs at the crust at his eyes, fumbling blindly around the bedside table for his watch. He holds it up close to his face before remembering that he hasn’t turned the lights on, and is forced to fumble again for the lamp.
He shields his eyes against the glare and looks back down at his watch.
Seven-fifty. Daniel should’ve woken him up twenty minutes ago.
It’s more likely than anything that Daniel’s just fallen asleep in front of the camera. It’s happened to both of them, when the exhaustion of constant vigilance and interrupted sleep got to be too much; god knows Daniel must be even worse of than Jack, with the trek up and down the stairs so much more tiring than their usual elevator.
Jack flops out of bed, deciding not to give Daniel shit for it. The sun is shining through the window, and the extra sleep has done more than it probably should’ve. He’s in a good mood. He washes his face and goes to the bathroom, deciding to shave tomorrow instead. He’ll make breakfast while Daniel naps, and maybe they can find a book somewhere in this godforsaken apartment they’ve been trapped in.
Jack walks into the living room.
Daniel is lying on the floor, crutch beside him. His eyes are closed.
Jack frowns. The chair where Daniel usually sits is across the room, and he’s over near the couch. Jack makes his way over, crouching down beside Daniel. He prods him gently. “Hey. Sousa, it’s time to get up.”
Daniel doesn’t respond.
Jack pushes at his shoulder a little harder. “Hey. You’re drooling on the carpet.”
Nothing.
His heart starts beating faster. He puts his ear to Daniel’s chest and his fingers to his wrist, and panics when, for just a moment, he can’t find a pulse. It’s there, though. Weak, but there. And he’s still breathing.
The blood that rushes back to his head makes him dizzy, and he almost topples over Daniel. He doesn’t, because he has to think. He has to do something, but his breath is getting faster and his grip on Daniel’s wrist is tightening. Think, Jack, holy shit-
The phone rings. Peggy.
He wastes a precious moment pressing a kiss to Daniel’s warm forehead before vaulting over the couch to the phone, the ringing bouncing around his head like pinballs. He yanks the phone up and to his ear.
“Good morning,” Peggy says, curt and polite on the official line. “Everything going well?”
Jack tries to find his words.
“Hello?” Peggy’s voice has taken on an edge.
“Peggy,” Jack says. “It’s Daniel.”
“Jack, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he says, running a shaking hand through his hair. “I woke up and he was just lying there, he’s breathing but he won’t wake up, I couldn’t-”
“Jack.”
He stops.
“I need you to focus. I’m sending the closest team to your location, but you need to keep control until they get there. You can update me when you see me. For now, you must attend to Daniel.”
“Ok,” he says. “Ok.”
“Ensure that he keeps breathing, and check his temperature. Think about anything that may have led to this, for the doctors. Now put the phone on a table so you can shout to me, and go to him.”
“Ok,” he repeats. He sets the phone down.
The world is spinning a little as he walks back into the living room, but he’s had enough practice that he can walk straight without too much trouble. He sits back down beside Daniel.
He takes his hand. What had Peggy said?
Breathing. Temperature. Alright. He can do this.
He shifts their intertwined hands to rest on top of Daniel’s chest, which is still rising and falling shallowly. He puts his free hand to Daniel’s forehead, which seems like it’s gotten warmer in the minute Jack had been gone.
“Alright, Sousa, you just gotta keep breathing. That’s what Peggy said, and she’s usually right. I’ll breath with ya, if that helps.” He thinks maybe it won’t because his breath is also short little gasps. “Just gotta keep breathing. No leaving me alone, alright? You’re gonna be ok. You’re gonna be fine.”
He keeps up a stream of some variation of those words until the door is slamming open and people are inside, people he doesn’t know at first and he’s swinging, but then their faces are ones he’s seen in the office and they’re doing the same things Jack has been doing, except they’re sharing concerned looks and lifting Daniel up, and then Jack is alone.
He’s still sitting on his heels. He shifts so that his legs are beside him because his feet are tingling. Daniel isn’t there anymore. He’s…
Shit, Jack’s gotta follow.
He pushes himself up, using the couch as a crutch, and stumbles out of the apartment after the two men who’d lifted Daniel.
They’re down two flights of stairs already, struggling to keep Daniel upright between them as they step. Heads are poking out of doors on that floor, but Jack doesn’t care. He catches them on the landing.
“Let me help,” he says, to the guy on the left. He thinks he’s in medical, at least.
The man nods. “Help him down, keep him steady. I’ll have the car ready outside so we can leave immediately.” He fixes Jack with a very steady gaze. “Is there anything in the apartment that I need to retrieve?”
Jack shakes his head. The whole mission has been a bust, they haven’t gotten a single good picture. “No. Nothing.”
The man nods. “I’ll be outside.” He goes down the stairs ahead of them.
As Jack steps, Daniel warm, burning up beside him, he thinks about the phone off the hook. He should’ve fixed that before leaving, he thinks. Peggy won’t know what’s happening.
They make it to the lobby, and then into the bitingly cold air outside. A car is parked right out front, doors to the backseat propped open. The man from before is in the driver’s seat.
They manage to get Daniel through the door and lying across the backseats, but when Jack tries to get in with him a hand to his chest stops him.
“You’re upfront,” the man attached to the hand says. “I’m a doctor.”
So they’re both in medical. Jack nods dumbly, he can feel himself making a face, and gets into the front. As soon as the doors are shut the car is lurching forward, tires skidding over the packed snow and out onto the street.
They take turns that would be sharp on a warm day, turns that are stomach-dropping with all of the snow and ice. The man driving has a loose grip on the wheel, and his face is relaxed. Jack has his hand pressed hard against the window.
He looks back at Daniel once on the drive over. His face has lost all color, and his breaths have been reduced to choking gasps. The man in the backseat is looking down at him, lips thin.
Jack turns back around.
They screech into the hospital, where other uniforms are already waiting. Jack helps as far as getting Daniel out of the car and onto the stretcher. He brushes his hair out of his face, where his forehead is on fire.
Then they’re wheeling him away, into the double doors of the hospital, the man from the backseat barking out orders. Then they’re through the doors, and everything is still.
Jack blinks a few times. Something cold brushes his nose; when he looks up it’s begun to snow. His arms feel useless at his sides, but he can’t make them move. He thinks if he stands there long enough he might be buried under the snow, a frozen fossil; thinks that maybe that would be alright.
“Hey,” a voice says.
Jack turns.
It’s the driver, the first guy, the something. He’s looking at Jack, face just as impassive as when he was making turns like a wheel. “You alright?”
“Yes,” Jack says. He’s talking about being buried under ten feet of snow, but this guy doesn’t have to know.
“You should get checked over anyway. Delay the paperwork for a while, at least.”
Jack shoots him a narrow-eyed look; that had sounded like a joke, but his mouth hadn’t so much as twitched. “I’m good. Are you going back to the building?”
The guy raises an eyebrow. Jack nods.
“I’m coming with you.”
The driver shrugs and walks back around the side of the car. Jack gets back in the passenger seat and grips the door very hard. The driver looks over at him and rolls his eyes.
“Now that your partner’s safe and sound, I’ll try to take the scenic route.”
Jack nods. It’s possible that he’s still a little bit in shock. He only woke up—he checks his watch—thirty minutes ago. He looks down at himself and is distantly surprised to find himself still in pajamas. He doesn’t have anything else, not even his badge.
The driver catches his gaze on a section of straight road. He reaches down and unclips a gun from his belt. “Here. You look like you could use something to hold on to.”
Jack doesn’t respond, thinks he would say something like this is your idea of a comfort object? He just takes the gun and holds it carefully in his lap, a jarring contrast to his red polka dot pajama pants, Jesus Christ.
It takes them longer to get back, now that they’re hovering somewhere around a respectable speed, and Jack feels his shoulders loosen at just the sight of the building. It’s only been three weeks, just over twenty-one days, and it feels like a home. His mild shock leads him to think that it has more to do with Daniel than anything else.
They park behind the building and take the service stairs because there’s a police car out front.
“Avoiding paperwork,” Jack mutters, and swears to god that the guy smiles.
He follows the agent up to his floor, lagging behind a little more each flight. He’s exhausted, suddenly and desperately. He wants to go back to bed. He wants Daniel. His head is all jumbled.
The agent stops before his door. “Just got to do a quick sweep,” he calls to Jack as he pushes open the cracked door. He makes it one step before there’s a bang.
Jack swears violently as the guy falls back out through the doorway, face slack in surprise. Adrenaline has already taken over, and Jack is scrambling back down the stairs and around the turn just in time to avoid the shot from a gun that reaches around the door and fires blindly. He hears the door slam shut, and then the thumping of heavy footsteps. The fire escape. Shit.
He goes hurtling down the stairs, loading the other agent’s gun as he dodges around the shocked gasps of other tenants. He can see the image of the guy upstairs like it's inked against his eyelids; he needs a radio, he needs backup, he needs to catch the gunman-
He bursts through the doors and skids to a stop, doing the calculation in his head. Fire escape in the second bedroom facing east, main window facing north, he needs to be…
Left. It takes him a precious second to get his bearings before he’s spinning to go to the left side of the building, but as soon as he turns the corner he freezes.
The gunman is there. So are the kids, huddled together over a snow pile.
When the guy spots Jack he reaches blindly towards the kids, grabbing an arm and pulling a girl upright. He presses his gun against Rebecca’s terrified face.
Jack’s heart stops. “Let her go!” he shouts, raising his borrowed weapon. He doesn’t know how it shoots, he can’t take this shot. He’s not wearing anything remotely protective.
“No,” the man says, accent thick and clumsy. “Move, and will not hurt her.”
Jack adjusts his grip where his fingers have begun to chill, even though his palms are sweating. “Let her go.”
For a long moment, neither of them move. Then the man is hauling Rebecca in front of him and firing.
Jack manages to duck and pull himself around the side of the building, deja vu like a wave. Glass shatters across the street. He’s breathing heavily; his hands are steady.
He peers around the side of the building just in time to see the man shove Rebecca away and turn to run down the alley.
Muscle memory. He rises from one knee, lifts the gun, takes a breath.
Holds.
Bang.
The man topples midrun, and the shot echoes around the enclosed space like a headache. The kids all flinch or scream, and several of the littlest ones begin to cry. Jack hurries past them, glancing quickly to make sure they are unharmed, and kneels next to the still body of the man he’s just shot. Tries not to think about last year, when the positions were reversed.
The man is still breathing, barely, wrathful gaze focused solely on Jack. “You vill not stop uz,” he wheezes.
Jack meets his gaze. “Who are you?”
“I am Claus Haering,” he says, struggling for each sound. “You vill not stop uz. You vill burn.”
Then his eyes drop away from Jack’s and cloud over. His chest does not rise.
Jack shakes his head, standing stiffly and going back over to the kids. He crouches next to Rebecca. “You alright?”
She nods, shaky, and is just about to speak when shouting police officers fly around the corner. Shit. Jack forgot about them.
They beeline for Jack even as he drops his gun, yanking his arms back and shoving him to the ground. He lets his eyes close.
He can hear Rebecca’s voice, high and shrill. He hears the word friend, which is probably a good sign. Carter sure as hell won’t be bailing him out of this shit, that’s for sure.
He presses his face into the slushy snow, the grit of the street etching lines of fire into his cheek as he moves. The officers are talking above him, shouting instructions and crossing wires, and the sounds wash over him. It’s just like in the bullpen. He can almost imagine Daniel pinned down right beside him, grinning that wild grin he only gets when he breaks the rules. Jack presses his face down harder.
------
Carter does end up bailing him out, even though she doesn’t come herself. Sends a new non-rate, armed with an obviously (to him) fake badge and boundless youthful optimism. Jack is convinced the cops let him go just to be free of that much-concentrated cheer.
The agent chatters at Jack as they walk, because Carter obviously feels that however much his bail was exceeds the annual ‘give stuff to Jack’ balance. It’s soothing, even if he refuses to respond with anything longer than a syllable. It fills up all the empty spaces inside his skull, places he knows would be panicking without the talking.
They reach the SSR in under an hour. Jack thinks. They hadn’t given him back his watch, dammit. The agent is still, impossibly, on a roll. Jack slaps him on the back when they reach the phone operators.
“Thanks for the save,” he says, scooting around him to get back into the bullpen.
“Anytime, sir!” he hears the agent call, then the sound of furious muttering. Jack rolls his eyes.
The whole place is a commotion, a mess of phones ringing and people flying across the room. He picks up bits and pieces of conversation as he makes the dangerous journey to his desk, spinning and twisting around frazzled junior agents and their shouting bosses.
Spy, found, poison, running, agent down, down, dead…
Jack is only able to sit at his desk for a minute before he stands again. He needs something to do, needs direction, needs Daniel-
Carter snags him as he’s making his way to see the chief.
“Thompson!” she yells. “Where the bloody hell have you been?”
“Walking back from Northside,” he gripes, trying to hold off on interrogating her. “Thanks for sending Chatterbox Charlie instead of a car, by the way.”
She frowns. “I did send a car. When it arrived to pick you up, you weren’t there, that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been scrambling-.”
Jack stops. There had been an agent, flashing a badge. He had never officially identified as SSR, but they never do to other law officers; always a different, known agency. Jack had also led the way. The non-rate following, talking, but not really saying…
His stomach drops. “Shit!” And then he’s spinning around, just in time to see the agent he’d walked back with close the door to the chief’s office.
He’s into a dead sprint before he processes what he’s doing, reaching for a gun that he doesn’t have and a plan that has only the vaguest shape. He can’t lose two people today. Not on him.
He smashes through the door in a hail of glass, body tumbling and falling over the chair just inside the door. It saves his life. The bullet goes whizzing over his head.
From his position on the floor, he sees the chief’s feet moving, the sound of another gunshot, he’s scrambling upright-
The agent is dead. The chief stands over him, panting, eyes locked on the doorway. Jack turns.
Carter is standing a foot outside, pistol still raised, not a hair out of place. Her eyes dart to Jack.
“Everyone all right?” she asks, cool as a cucumber.
Jack gives a shaky little laugh, hears the chief behind him do the same. “Not all of us,” he says, nodding to the man on the ground.
Carter presses her lips together. “Sorry. I’ll miss him next time, shall I?”
The chief chuckles. “Nice shot, Carter.”
“She was aiming for me,” Jack grumbles, which makes Peggy smile. He rights the chair he’d knocked over and sinks into it. Outside the office, the noise has increased tenfold. Jack leans back and closes his eyes.
-----
Daniel is alright.
It’s the first Angie says to them when they reach the door to his room, her hair uncharacteristically straight. Daniel is alright but sleeping, and the doctor is giving him this and that medicine, and-
Peggy is nodding beside him, so Jack lets her take the torrent of information. He looks through the cracked open door at Daniel, who is lying still and pale in the hospital bed. Jack flexes his fingers around the crutch they’d picked up from the apartment. He looks dead, almost. So unnaturally still, when Jack has gotten used to seeing his chest rise and fall in great (up-close) detail.
“He was poisoned,” Angie whispers. “Doctors are sayin’ that it was pretty close, too, you got him here just in time.”
He’d gone to the bathroom before checking on Daniel, Jack thinks, stomach twisting. He’d brushed his teeth.
“Think it was something he ate the night before. It shoulda killed him overnight, but the amount in him was too small. Thank goodness, that’s what I said. I mean, who woulda expected poison? It’s like a bad movie.”
Jack focuses back on Angie, memories pinging. “He said he wasn’t hungry last night. I didn’t have what he had, I wanted something else so I. I gave him mine, but he wasn’t hungry.” Jesus Christ. Thank god for Daniel’s dainty little appetite; if he had died after eating Jack’s, he woulda-
Peggy places a hand on his arm. “He’s alright. That’s the important thing.”
Angie takes his free hand. “You wanna see him?”
He shakes his head, just a little. “I can see him fine,” he says, nodding into the room. “Gotta get him some coffee for when he wakes up, though, or he’ll be hollering.”
Peggy purses her lips, very briefly, but then she’s taking the crutch from Jack and letting go of his arm. “Of course.”
“Hey,” Angie calls after him as he starts walking. “Bring us all a cup!”
-------
Daniel wakes up that night.
“Hey,” Jack whispers, rubbing clumsily at his eyes. He feels stiff all over, tired in a bone-deep sort of way. He can hear himself creaking as he sits up straight in the chair.
Daniel smiles at him, eyes glancing over at the now cold cup of coffee on the bed table. His eyelids are drooping, blinking open again only through sheer force of will. “Hey. Catch the bastard?”
“Yeah. Then Carter stole my thunder,” Jack huffs, aiming for annoyance and missing.
Daniel nods, sinking back into the pillow. “That sounds about right.”
Jack wrinkles his nose at him, and Daniel laughs a little. He looks more tired than Jack feels. There’s a long moment where they just look at each other, lazy and soft. Jack has missed this, even though it’s only been a day. He’s gotten used to being around Daniel all the goddamn time.
“Hey,” Daniel says again. “I had a question I was going to ask you before all this, but…”
Jack nods. “Shitty timing, I guess.”
Daniel hums. And then he pauses, avoiding Jack’s eyes completely.
Jack gives him thirty seconds. After the third time he starts and stops, Jack snaps. “Alright, spit it out. Not like you’ve ever had a problem holding back on me before.”
There it is; Daniel glares at him. But his shoulders are sinking down from their defensive hunch, and when he opens his mouth this time words come out. “You’re good with kids.”
Jack blinks. “That’s not a question.”
Daniel closes his eyes, looking very put upon. “Do I gotta spell it out?”
“You can spell?”
“Do you want kids?”
That stops Jack short. He’s been asking the same question about Daniel in his head for months. Maybe they are getting too close.
Daniel takes his silence as an invitation. “Cause the other day, when you were outside with the kids, you were really good with them, you know? And I know that you’re not as much of an ass as you seem, and so I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t, I don’t know.”
Jack just looks at him.
“Trapping you.”
Jack blows out a long, slow breath. “Danny Boy-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I think you and I have been spending too much time together.”
Daniel raises an eyebrow. Jack can see him twisting his sheets between his fingers.
“I’ve been worried about the same thing. About you, though.”
Daniel frowns. “You aren’t trapping me, Thompson. How could you think that?”
“Well, I’d like to ask you the same thing,” Jack snaps back. Honestly. If anyone has the right to be feeling trapped here, it’s Daniel. Jack hasn’t been moping for god knows how long to put up with Daniel’s stupidity on the matter. “You’d be a good husband, a good father. I don’t want to make you give those things up. And so if you want to stop this, I understand. I understand.”
Daniel is gaping at him, with no trace of his tiredness from before. “You want to end it?”
“Is that what I said?” God, when did talking about feelings get so difficult? “I don’t want you to feel like you gotta stay if you don’t want to. No pressure.”
“Jesus, Thompson, I love you. How could you not know that?”
Oh. Well. “Oh. Well.”
“Son of a.” Daniel sighs. “You really are stupid, you know.”
Uncalled for, Jack thinks snittily. It’s not like Daniel’s ever said it before, although Daniel tends not to say a lot of things. Now that Jack’s thinking about it, actually, Daniel is more of a man of action. Fixing drafty windows, painting over peeling walls. Baking more bread in a week than he knows what to do with, because Jack likes it best when it first comes out of the oven.
“Oh.”
“Oh,” Daniel repeats, running his hand through his hair. “Jesus.”
“You never. I mean, you never. Said.”
Daniel peers at him through his fingers. Whatever he sees makes him drop his hand and look at Jack, and great, they’re in a staring contest again. After a moment he reaches over and takes Jack’s hand. “I love you. I don’t want to end it, because I like being with you and dealing with all of your shit and staying in your terrible apartment. I even like how much food you pack away in one sitting, God help me.” He nods to the bed table. “I like that you get me coffee.”
Jack’s mouth is dry. “It’s just from down the street.”
Daniel shakes his head. “All the coffee, Thompson. At your place, buying for me at the Automat, when we’re out on cases.” He smiles. “The ones at my desk.”
Jack shoots to sit straight up. “You knew?”
Daniel casts a nervous glance toward the door, but he’s laughing. “I saw you about a week after you first started. I think it’s cute.”
Jack can feel his cheeks burning.
Daniel links their fingers together. “Hey. I like it. I like you, Jack. I love you. Sorry I’m not great at saying it, but.”
Jack leans over to plant a kiss on Daniel’s forehead, just to watch him blush too. “You are. I just didn’t understand, at first.”
Daniel’s eyes soften. He presses his lips to Jack’s hand, because apparently, they’re now in a competition to see who can turn the brightest shade of tomato. What has his life come to? He was going to be a lawyer.
“Is this how all of your arguments go, then?” Peggy grumbles. She glares at them from the empty bed that she’d commandeered across from Daniel’s.
“I think it’s cute,” Angie mumbles, pressing closer to Peggy and draping an arm over her. “Why don’t we have cute arguments?”
“Do you two ever argue?” Jack asks. He doesn’t think so. It’s like they’re one person, sometimes. Scary.
But Peggy just mutters something that makes Angie giggle, and Daniel is smiling at him, and his chest is so full he could burst. “I want kids, but I don’t see why we can’t have em.”
“Barring the obvious,” Peggy says. Angie snorts.
“No, really,” Jack persists over the look Daniel gives him. “Like our apartment, with all the kids there. They were like a family, even with the people who weren’t related. We could find a place like that.”
“Become the creepy uncles,” Angie slurs.
Jack rolls his eyes, but brings them back to Daniel. “We don’t have to choose.”
Daniel’s gaze is steady. He nods, slowly. “I’d choose you anyway.”
When did Daniel start expressing himself? Jesus. His eyes feel hot, so he shifts around in his chair far enough to lean his head on the bed. It hides his eyes. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Very humble, Thompson.”
“I meant him, Carter,” Jack growls, but that warm feeling is still settled in his sternum.
Daniel’s hand lands on his head, heavy and solid and warm. Jack thinks about moving, in case someone comes in. Daniel starts running his fingers through his hair.
Another minute won't hurt.
-------
“I hope you know that just because we’re not living together at the moment doesn’t mean you can stop baking for me.”
Daniel blinks at him blearily. He might’ve fallen asleep on Stark’s couch again, but it’s best to negotiate when Daniel’s guard is down. “What?”
“I work best well-fed.”
“You don’t work at all.”
“Yeah, you wanna say that after I-”
“Boys,” Peggy says, sounding as pained as possible without any real inflection.
Jack flops back into Daniel’s lap on the couch. “Two batches a week.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“One and-”
“Boys!”