Work Text:
Jack stared at his phone without moving. He was so motionless, one might mistake him for dead. His eyes were locked on a text sent by one of his brothers, simply titled: “WHAT”.
The screenshot of the tweet enclosed said, “So excited to be out spending the day with the love of my life,” and underneath of it a selfie that had been taken earlier that day. In it, Jack was mid-laugh, his eyes squeezed shut, while Mark’s lips were pressed against his temple. They’d taken it on Mark’s couch while watching some crappy romantic comedy. The picture had been great, sure, but Jack hadn’t wanted it shared with the entire Internet.
His breathing was coming short and fast now. “No, no, no, no, no!” he moaned to himself, scooting back in his chair and burying his face in his hands. He’d never had a panic attack before and wondered if this was what it felt like, because his chest felt too tight to breathe and he was one step away from chucking his chair out of the window. The situation might’ve been okay if the tweet had come from a random stranger, (at least then he could pretend like it was some kind of Photoshopped hoax), but this had come from Mark himself.
After Jack had taken a few deep breaths, he was just barely calm enough to close his texts and get onto various social media: Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, etc. Sure enough, his notifications on every single website were filled and pinging every minute as Mark’s stupid tweet circulated the fandom, and just one Google search yielded hundreds of results depicting their “unexpected coming out story”. Jack wanted to scream. Without warning, he threw his phone hard against the door on the opposite wall and succeeded in hitting the doorknob.
“Goddammit, Mark!” he roared, sticking a fist in his mouth to muffle his voice. It didn’t feel like enough. Jack was boiling over with anger and confusion. “Fuckin’ dammit to all hell, fuckin’—”
The door to the office flew open and Mark strode in wearing a wrinkled tee and boxers, probably on his way to bed. “Jesus, what’s the matter?!” he demanded, his voice etched with concern.
Jack’s heart was pounding so hard he feared that it might fly out of his chest. “Do you want to explain to me what you’ve done?!” he said lividly, jumping out of his chair so fast it banged hard against the desk.
Mark froze defensively. “What’re you talking about?” he asked slowly, as though talking to a rabid dog.
“Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about!” Jack shot back, his pulse roaring in his ears. “I asked for one thing, Mark, and it meant a lot to me—”
“Okay, Jack, I’m sorry,” Mark said, almost begging. “I know what you’re gonna say, and I’m—”
“It was one simple, stupid thing!”
“Look, I really just—”
“And you couldn’t even do that for me!” Tears stung in Jack’s eyes, but he clenched his teeth and refused to cry. “I wasn’t ready!”
“I know, I know, but I just—” Mark cut himself off, groaning, and he tugged on his overgrown hair with frustration. “It was eating me alive! I wanted to tell my family, Jack; I wanted my friends to know about us!” He looked imploringly into Jack’s eyes, clearly at his wit’s end. “You know I hate keeping secrets!”
Jack broke off the stare, because he was afraid he’d cry if he kept looking much longer. “I don’t care,” he cried, realizing he sounded like a petulant child but not caring about that either. “Maybe you’re ready to bear all for the entire fuckin’ Internet to see, but I’m sure as hell not! It was literally the only thing I asked when we got together. I was willing to put up with anything else! And you couldn’t even respect this one decision—!”
“Jack, c’mon, please don’t be so angry!” Mark interjected, racing forward and grabbing his shoulders. He hit him with another piercing, puppy-dog stare that made Jack want to kick him and hold him all at once. “I know I promised, and I wanted to keep it, but people always ask me about us, and you come down here to visit me and I’m just so happy to see you, I…I hate keeping that to myself, because you know me, you know how much I love you, and you know that I hate keeping secrets from the people I love….”
A lump formed in Jack’s throat, but he refused to be in the wrong. He looked down and shoved Mark off him roughly. “The people you love are one thing,” he snapped, “but the entire fan base?! Have you seen Tumblr lately?! They’re all freakin’ the fuck out! They all want me to say something, they’re pissing themselves, and it was already bad enough seein’ all the fan art and the porn and the—”
“But why does that bug you so much?!” Mark demanded, his brow furrowing in annoyance. “I mean yeah, the porn’s a little much, but it’s just because people know we like each other and that we’d be a good couple.”
“Then let them think that! They were perfectly happy the way they were! Things were fine the way they were! I didn’t wanna change anything!” All of Jack’s anger was being spent, and now he just felt hollow and vaguely sad. He stared at Mark and shook his head. “I asked for one thing, Mark, and you couldn’t even give it to me.”
Mark seemed to go a few shades paler as he read Jack’s face. “I said I was sorry,” he lamented, his voice cracking. “I am, Jack, I’m really sorry. Please don’t—”
“I asked you to wait until I was ready. That was it! Why was that so much to ask?”
Mark didn’t answer. He just stared at Jack in distraught silence, his mouth partially open.
“How am I supposed to trust you now?” Jack accused, standing up. “How can I expect you to respect any of my wishes if you couldn’t even do this for me?”
“I’m sorry, Jack, really! Please—”
“I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry!” His voice sounded raw, and Jack knew he might cry if he stuck around. “Bein’ sorry doesn’t change anything!”
He spun to the door and threw it open, practically running down the hall, stopping in the living room to grab his suitcase and wallet—he didn’t know why, didn’t know where the hell he expected to go—and shoved his way through the front door.
“Jack!” Mark cried out behind him, and despite himself, Jack looked. Standing in the living room, seemingly on his way to his knees, was Mark wearing a tortured expression. Seeing so many emotions on one man’s face was enough to make Jack want to burst into tears, but he didn’t. He shook his head once, feeling like the most cold-hearted bitch to ever walk the Earth, and slammed the door shut behind him.
Because Mark’s apartment was on the first floor, it was a quick walk from there to the McDonald’s down the street (although nowhere in America was far from a McDonald’s, Jack had quickly realized). He chose McDonald’s because he figured that the employees had probably seen weirder things than an Irishman with a suitcase on the verge of tears order a McDouble with a large black coffee.
He chose the booth closest to the bathroom, hoping that no one would be able to find him there. It didn’t happen terribly often, especially at this time of night, but he didn’t want to risk getting recognized by someone. The way that Mark’s tweet was circulating the Twitterverse, he’d be surprised if there were any of his fans that hadn’t seen it by now.
“God,” he mumbled aloud, sounding pathetic even to himself. What was he supposed to do now? He’d been a dick back at the apartment, but he had every right to be. It had been a simple request, and it wasn’t like it required much effort: “Let me decide when to go public with this, please. I’m not ready yet. Let me tell you when I am.” He’d known it had discouraged Mark, but it wasn’t like Jack asked for a lot. He wasn’t a complicated man; a few Facebook messages a day and maybe a Skype call were all that it took to appease his long-distance relationship needs, and in return he even made the effort to come to L.A. once or twice a year to spend a week playing games, getting coffee, and (*ahem*) catching up on the physical side of his relationship with Mark. Hadn’t he been good to him? Didn’t he deserve just this one little thing?
After throwing away his cold coffee and uneaten McDouble, Jack wandered down a few more streets until he found a hotel. He rented the cheapest room he could afford on short notice and, once inside, took a shower that mostly involved sitting dejectedly under the spray and wondering where he’d gone wrong. The week had been so incredible leading up to this point: he and Mark had frequented Starbucks, had fun dicking around on Mario Kart, watched movies while Mark laid his head in Jack’s lap and let him play with his hair…how had everything turned to shit so quickly?
Jack sighed, got out of the shower, picked up his jeans off the floor, and reached into the pocket to check on the social media circus again. He wondered what Mark had had to say in response to what was probably an absolute massacre of notifications. But the pocket where he normally kept his phone was empty.
Frowning, Jack patted the other pocket. His wallet was there, but his phone was not. The back pockets were empty too.
With growing concern, he looked around the sink, the floor, and called the front desk to ask if they’d seen it, but no luck. Jack sat down on the bed and tried to remember when he’d last seen his phone, then remembered with growing nausea that he’d thrown it at the door to Mark’s office and hadn’t grabbed it on his way out.
“Goddammit!” he groaned. He couldn’t just leave it there, but going back to the apartment was completely out of the question. He was much more comfortable getting a hotel for the night, buying a plane ticket to Antarctica early tomorrow morning, and beginning his life as a polar bear where he’d never be asked if he was buttfucking Markiplier ever again. Still, he needed his phone to book a flight (and his passport, which he suspected was in the pocket of yesterday’s jeans that he’d, well…“abandoned” on Mark’s bedroom floor). There was no getting around retrieving it.
But no way was Jack knocking on Mark’s door and asking for it back. That would invite questions, and angst, and more fighting, and it was likely that he’d cry if he got into another fight tonight. That would be the worst part, because Mark would either hate himself for making Jack cry and cry along with him, or he’d be super taken aback and not know what to do, and the situation would be awkward as all hell.
Muttering curses under his breath, Jack threw open the hotel room door and stalked out into the street without a clue of what he was going to do. He would get his phone back one way or another; no way in hell was he leaving it here in America while he went off to start his new Antarctic life. But how did he plan on getting it? Jack was never very good at making a good plan.
He reached the complex, walked down the hall, and stared at the door leading to Mark’s place. There was no light coming under the door, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was sleeping, and Jack didn’t want to wake him.
Sighing, he walked back outside and around the side of the building where the windows were. It was a creepy thing to do, but he could always look in Mark’s window to see if he was awake, right? It wasn’t like he was stalking him, so it wasn’t wrong just to peek, was it?
Mark’s window was dark, meaning he’d probably gone to bed. “Figures,” Jack grumbled to himself, not sure if he was relieved or not. As he turned to go, however, he noticed something odd. He turned back and looked closer: the window was open. When had it been opened?
An incredibly stupid idea came to Jack that he immediately shoved down. “No, no, that’s the worst possible thing I could do right now,” he snapped at himself, “not to mention illegal.”
But he didn’t turn to go. It was too tempting, too easy. He knew Mark’s apartment like it was his own; he could be in and out of there in five minutes or less.
Jack continued to stare at the window, thinking through his options. What other choice did he have?
* * *
Mark was lying in bed and staring at the ceiling like a basket case, his fingers drumming anxiously on the comforter. The room’s total silence and the empty space in his bed were more significant than ever, despite the fact that he spent at least fifty weeks a year sleeping alone.
For someone who didn’t regret their actions, he felt incredibly guilty. Yes, he’d broken a promise, but he couldn’t take it anymore! It had been almost six months since his first real date with Jack, and in the heat of the moment he’d agreed to keep their relationship a secret. He’d known from the beginning it would be hard for him to stay quiet about it, but he’d never have guessed it was this hard. He’d had no idea it’d be this burning secret he wanted to scream to the world, because how could he be so in love and still unable to tell anyone about it?
Jack had his reasons, yes, and Mark should’ve respected them. He understood where some of those reasons originated after seeing the massive shit storm that followed the tweet he’d made. (Not that he hadn’t expected some response, but seriously, it was ridiculous.) But why was Jack so strongly opposed to going public? It had been understandable for the first month or two, but afterwards Mark felt worried, and eventually downright offended. Was Jack ashamed of their relationship? Was there some kind of ulterior motive? Those things had been going through Mark’s mind when he made the post. He knew he’d be opening a nasty can of worms by going behind his boyfriend’s back and outing them, but he hadn’t expected him to leave the apartment with unclear intentions of returning.
If nothing else, Mark thought to himself, he’ll at least come back for his phone. It was sitting on his nightstand, now cracked from being thrown at the door. Jack’s passport and a pair of his jeans were still here too, so it was almost guaranteed that he’d be back. But what would he say when he got here? Mark turned onto his side, sighing fretfully. Would he want to fight? Would he be in and out without a word? Would he listen to Mark’s apology? Mark was fully prepared to apologize as many times as it took to convince Jack not to leave him. The idea of losing him was enough to make him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
The quiet of the apartment was practically deafening, which made it very easy for Mark to hear the sound of a window being opened. He opened his eyes and frowned, craning his ears to make sure it wasn’t his imagination. Sure enough, another squeak wafted through the house, and a moment later he heard a human grunt. Was someone breaking in?
Mark waited a few more seconds to make sure he wasn’t being paranoid, but he heard another grunt and a soft thump, as though someone had hit a wall. Moving slowly, he reached under his bed and grabbed the aluminum bat he kept for emergencies and swung his legs onto the floor. As quietly as possible, he opened his bedroom door and tiptoed into the hall, moving past the kitchen and poking his head around the corner into the living room.
It was too dark to see much, but there was definitely someone crawling through the window—and they were doing a pretty bad job of it, too. Mark watched for a few moments as the intruder wiggled like a worm through the tiny opening, bumping their arms and hips against the glass. Every so often he could hear a muffled curse.
Mark took a moment to ask God why on tonight of all nights he had to be getting robbed before he gathered his nerve, flipped on the light switch, and threw himself into the living room.
The intruder’s head snapped up as the light came on and he stared directly into Mark’s face. As soon as they made eye contact, his face flushed red.
Mark froze. “J…Jack? The fuck?”
Jack’s long, skinny body was half-in, half-out of the window, his arms out in front of him to hold his torso off the ground. His face got redder as Mark said his name, and he said nothing, but he couldn’t seem to break his gaze away from Mark’s WTF?! stare.
The longest five minutes of Mark’s life ticked by while he tried to figure out why the fuck Jack was breaking into his house before the latter finally said, “Well…um, I was just, y’know, I was…well, see, I left my…and I came to…I-I came to…ugh, fuck it, I don’t have an explanation for this.”
Mark might’ve laughed if he wasn’t so confused. “Should…should I be calling the cops?” he asked, his bat still poised to strike.
Jack gasped and frantically tried to pull himself the rest of the way in the room. “No, no! I wasn’t—I wasn’t gonna steal anything! I just came back to get my phone, ‘cause I left it here when I, well—”
“Stormed out on me?” Mark supplied, his voice edged with anger. Jack flushed again and nodded, dropping his gaze to the floor.
Another few beats of silence passed in which both men stood awkwardly without knowing what to say. Mark guessed he should probably try to apologize, but he had to ask, “Why didn’t you just knock on the door? What fucked-up reason did you have for breaking into my house?”
Jack sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands wearily. “I don’t know, I’m sorry,” he moaned sullenly. “I was…I was too embarrassed to see your face…I didn’t know what I’d say.”
“So you opted for B&E?”
“No! …Okay, yes.”
Mark stared at him for a few moments before blurting, “Dude, you’re fifty shades of fucked up.”
Despite himself, Jack giggled, and Mark’s heart swelled. “Yeah, I know. God, I’m an idiot.”
“You are, honestly. Who breaks into someone’s house instead of just ringing the doorbell?”
Jack’s small giggle turned into a full laugh. “I don’t know, someone really stupid?” He curled up a little, his eyes crinkling, and Mark was overcome with the urge to wrap him in his arms and listen to him laugh for hours on end.
But the laughter subsided, and Jack’s face fell again. “I’m…sorry,” he mumbled. “For, y’know, breakin’ into your house.”
Mark nodded, and then he sighed. “I’m sorry too,” he replied, his voice lowering a few decibels in embarrassment. “I just…I don’t know, I knew it was wrong, and I really do feel guilty, but I just…I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Jack looked at him. He was obviously very hurt, and it broke Mark’s heart. He hadn’t meant to offend him so deeply; he’d never imagined Jack would take the tweet so personally.
“I know you were just excited to tell everybody,” he said, his voice raw with emotion, “but I wasn’t ready yet. The idea of so many strangers knowin’ something so personal about me is terrifying. I’m still figurin’ out who I am in all this, Mark. I…I’m not as….” He shuffled his feet and tugged at his short locks, clearly wishing he was somewhere else.
Mark drew in closer. Finally, they were getting somewhere. “You’re not as what?” he implored quietly.
Jack sighed. “I’m not as comfortable with all of this as you,” he confessed, unable to meet Mark’s gaze. “I love you, and I love spending time with you; I love every second that I get to spend here in L.A. with you, but…this whole relationship is foreign to me. I’ve never been withanother guy before. I’ve never been in love before. It’s all so terrifying to me, and I didn’t want to add to the stress by makin’ it known by everyone on the fuckin’ Internet.”
A tear dripped down Jack’s cheek that he didn’t wipe away in time, and Mark’s heart cracked. He instantly felt like the lowest human being on Earth. “Oh, God, Jack,” he lamented, taking the other man’s hands and squeezing them. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
A few more tears fell, and he rubbed his cheek against his shoulder ashamedly. “I was embarrassed, okay?” he sighed, staring pointedly at the floor. “You’re so good at all of this stuff, and you’re always so confident and excited, and I felt like a dick for tellin’ you not to go public with us, but I just didn’t know if I’d be ready for it yet.”
Mark drew Jack in and hugged him tight, his chin buried in his shoulder. “I wish I’d known it was like that,” he said thickly. “I didn’t know what to think after a while, and I’m a total dick for that, I’m sorry. I just got it in my head that you were embarrassed by me or something—”
“No, no, no! I’m never embarrassed by you. If anything I’m surprised you’re not embarrassed by me.”
Mark chuckled, and the warm sound resonated between them both. He drew back and looked Jack in the eyes, smiling softly, and he wiped a few leftover tears off his boyfriend’s cheek.
“I really am sorry, I want you to know that,” he said quietly. “I was completely out of line, and you have every right to be angry with me for what I did.”
Jack half-smiled, meeting Mark’s gaze head-on, and replied, “Yeah, I do.” Both of them laughed a little. “But I forgive you.”
Mark kissed him briefly and went back to hugging him, relieved that he’d come back, even if it had been through the fucking window. After a few minutes of holding each other, Jack laughed and asked, “So, how’s Tumblr takin’ the news?”
Mark groaned, smiling stupidly. “Oh, dude, you don’t even wanna ask. Avoid Tumblr like it’s the fucking plague, seriously.”
“That bad, huh?”
“If you thought the porn was bad before, you’re in for a real treat.”
“Good God, don’t these people lives?”
They broke apart, both laughing, and stared into each other’s giddy faces. Mark lived for moments like this, when life was good and he could feel Jack’s hand and smile about the stupidest shit in the world knowing that somebody else thought it was funny too.
“God, I love you,” Mark blurted out, and Jack’s cheeks reddened.
“I love you, too. I really do.” He leaned in and kissed him sleepily on the mouth, then gazed absently around the room and said, “So where’s my phone, anyway?”
“On my nightstand, but it’s cracked now.”
“Goddammit,” he swore, but he was laughing. “Oh well, I didn’t really come back for it anyway.”
Flattered, Mark wrapped an arm around his waist and murmured, “Yeah…thank God you’re back.”