Chapter Text
When Jake wakes up, he doesn’t do it slowly. Every limb goes tense like he’s being electrocuted, his eyes fly open like he’s shoving himself out of a nightmare, and his pupils swallow his irises.
Without fail, it terrifies Steven.
Jake also has a staring problem. Whenever either of them move, Jake’s eyes snap to the culprit. He watches Steven pour himself a glass of juice. He watches Marc tap through his playlist halfway through his workout with a dissatisfied frown. He watches them curl up on the couch together, from the safety of the arm chair that mysteriously appeared the day after everything settled down and they agreed to stay together.
Steven hums as he tosses the sliced apples into his oatmeal. Then he taps in three dashes of cinnamon and stirs it all together. His bowl is pleasantly warm in his hands.
He turns around and shrieks.
Jake is sitting up in bed and staring at him.
He throws a shaking hand over his own thrumming chest as Jake snickers. “Don’t bloody do that, you know not to do that, you absolute arse!”
Jake’s wild bed head falls over his brows. His smile is sharp. “You scream so loud, princesa.”
His morning voice is gravelly and goes straight to Steven’s toes. “Shut up,” Steven huffs and stirs his oatmeal with extra force. The history channel is already playing on low volume so as to kindly let his heckling alter sleep. “You are the worst.”
Jake stretches his arms and cracks his bones in a symphony. Steven ignores the heavy sigh that sounds suspiciously close to a groan and sits on the new couch in front of the TV. He stuffs his mouth with a spoonful of oatmeal and focuses on the paleontologists.
“Where’s Marc?”
Bloody hell. His voice.
“He left last night to help Layla with a mission for Taweret. He should be home soon enough.” He says the last part pointedly, in case Jake is considering anything stupid.
But Jake merely grunts his acknowledgement and continues looking around the room with those sharp eyes. Sometimes Steven wonders if it’s odd for him, waking up to calm rather than explosions or being shot at or being crushed or whatever other shenanigans Marc has gotten himself into. Waking up everyday without thrusting himself into severe pain for their sake and just being. Living peacefully, however he wants to.
Jake’s voice rumbles an inch from his ear. “Can I have some?”
At some point, the silent devil got out of bed and crossed the room.
Steven angles his shoulder away and stirs his oatmeal. “Get your own. There’s more on the stove.”
“Yours tastes the best.”
Steven flushes, out of his control.
Jake leans even closer, the tips of his hair tickling Steven’s cheek. “You’re not eating it.”
“Get out of my space.”
Jake hums low, and Steven fights a shiver from the vibration in his ear. “Am I making you nervous?”
“Marc will be home.”
“I don’t know why you keep saying that, love, I ain’t afraid of him.”
Steven twists and aims his spoon to smack Jake’s nose.
Jake catches his wrist hard enough for pain to flash through his bones. Grinning. Steven’s breath catches, and he looks down at Jake’s mouth. Then he meets Jake’s eyes, dark and all-knowing.
Steven still has no idea how much Jake knows about him. Has he witnessed Steven’s one-man dance parties in the mirror? Has he witnessed his late night ramblings of practicing his fictitious tour guide position? Has he stared back when Steven fixed his hair in the mirror, or brushed his teeth or shaved? Has he listened when Steven practiced failed conversations from the past over, and over, and over?
Jake’s head tilts with interest.
Steven clears his throat and pulls back his arm. Jake lets it go oddly gently, considering that look in his eye. Quietly, he says, “You can have some.”
Jake keeps staring.
Steven winces. “The food, I mean.” He blushes again. “Um…”
Jake snorts and pats Steven’s shoulder with a strong hand. “You’ve got a filthy mind, querido.”
Steven sputters as Jake breezes away, and twists in his seat to glare at his back. “Me? I’m the one with the filthy mind? You’re the one wh-who, who’s stretching, and talking with your stupid voice and lounging around in your tight shirts like this is the beach! This is not the beach!”
Jake pulls open the fridge. Bottles clatter and shake. “I’m home. You’re just here to see it.”
“Well, now you have roommates. So be civil.”
Jake laughs, hoarse and raw. It’s beautiful. “Right, Mr. ‘I want Marc to rail me into the mattress.’”
Steven’s jaw drops, his shame hurled into daylight. His face turns hot as lava, and the rush of heat echoes down to the tips of his toes.
Jake’s gaze slides over to him at his silence, and he laughs again, leaning on top of the open fridge door to yet again watch Steven. “Aw, look at you. All embarrassed.”
“Wh– I— Jake—”
“Hate to break it to ya, honey, but you’re plain easy to read. Marc is just dumb.” The last part comes out affectionately, enough that a spike of jealousy tacks onto the shame, and well, it seems Steven truly is a lost cause.
“But of course…” Jake’s smile turns sharp again, those damn eyes so perceptive that Steven swears he’s see-through. “It’s not just him who you want. Greedy thing.”
Steven looks away, opting to stare into his oatmeal instead. Stiff as a rail. The shame pushes hot tears in his eyes.
“There’s nothing to cry about, Steven.”
He curls tighter into himself, wanting nothing more than for Marc to step in and tell Jake off.
He needs someone to tell Jake off.
Maybe he should hide. Go for a walk. Hell, maybe he’ll even put in a few hours at work.
“Don’t run,” Jake says, a teasing lilt in his voice that strikes Steven’s nerves the wrong way. The embarrassment thickens and shifts towards anger. Hot anger that rises in his throat, a slew of words that he could say, should say, if only they weren’t locked down by a knot of fear. He steams in his seat.
“There’s no progress if you run all the time, princesa.”
Steven stirs his oatmeal, his jaw tense as he bites his lip. Nervous energy thrums with every beat of his heart.
“No? Not going to say anything?”
Steven glares at the bowl.
“I’ve seen you, Steven. The way you look at him when he’s working out. When he’s getting ready for bed. Hell, the man could breathe and you’d praise him. And that’s exactly what you want to do. Get on your knees for him and choke yourself on him. And maybe, just maybe, you’d get a taste of praise from him too. Your knees wobble at the slightest compliment from him. Your little heart stutters and struggles to catch up with itself whenever he so much as smiles. Pathetic, Steven, truly pathetic—”
Steven tosses his bowl onto the couch, not caring if it spills as he storms over to Jake. Having no idea what he’s doing. His heartbeat drowns out all thought. “I’m not fucking pathetic.”
Jake’s eyes are glittering, his smile smug as he watches Steven get closer. Unmoving. Unintimidated. “No?”
Steven's hands shake when he grabs Jake by the shirt, kicks the refrigerator door shut, and hauls all two-hundred pounds of him into a searing kiss, eyes squeezed shut.
It’s a terrible kiss. Their lips are all wrong and their noses bump together.
Jake snorts against him and pulls away to laugh, holding his stomach with his head tipped back.
The tears that Steven successfully withheld before slip from his eyes and trail down his burning cheeks. He swiftly turns around, ready to walk out of that apartment door barefoot in pajamas.
A hand grabs his arm and tugs. Another hand grips his hip and spins him around. His back hits the fridge hard enough that it rattles, and his lost breath is swallowed by Jake’s lips slotting perfectly against his own. Steven’s eyes are wide where Jake’s are shut. And when Jake’s tongue grazes the seam of his lips, he whimpers and closes his eyes to let him in, his hands sliding up Jake’s firm arms and landing at his shoulders. Their breathing matches, their hearts pound at the same pace and Steven’s mind melts to stars and ichor.
Jake breaks away with a wet kiss and groans, “Finally.” Steven pulls him back in to shut him up. This time, it works.
Time is lost. Jake’s firm hands slide up and down Steven’s body, exploring, and Steven whines and pulls him closer, something repressed finally awakened. Hunger outweighs the terror, need so overwhelming that more tears slide down his face. His knees shake, threatening to give. Without breaking the kiss, Jake grips under Steven’s thighs and lifts him against the fridge. Steven gasps, hands fumbling but Jake claims his mouth again, pressing close. Searching. Yearning.
He never thought he could be kissed like this. Held like this. But Jake just loves to prove him wrong. So he digs his nails into Jake’s scalp and keeps him close, refusing to let him go.