Work Text:
He wonders how much longer he’ll stay awake.
Jeff stumbles through the dark hallways like a drunkard, using his free hand to dig his nails into the walls in hopes that he won’t slip to the floor. They got him good tonight. His arm cradles his rapidly reddening torso as the blood pools on the floor with each step. The Boss’ll be pissed he made such a mess. Let him. After being bludgeoned and stabbed, he deserves a bit of lenience.
After a lifetime of walking, he collapses through the door of the medical hall, startling the doctor out of whatever activity he may have been doing. Jeff didn’t bother to look, his vision blackening on the edges like a vignette, what little he can see a blurry mess of watercolor figures.
“Shit—what’s wrong with you?” Jack’s voice runs circles around his mind, making him feel even foggier. How much blood has he lost by now?
“I fucked up,” Jeff slurs. He grapples through the air until Jack’s arms find him, and he’s gripping vicely to the demon’s skin as though he’s a buoy and Jeff is drowning. The vulnerability of it makes his skin itch, but Jack’s a doctor, so it’s not a big deal. He’ll keep telling himself that, eventually it’s gotta come true.
Jack lifts him, he thinks, because his body is lighter and then he’s lying on something, and Jack is talking but he can’t hear it through the sound of his own blood pumping through him. He likes the timbre of his voice though, the gravel of it, the huskiness—like he’s been somewhere cold for a couple hours, and warmness is still catching up to his breath. It comforts him, a scary thought, but he can allow it for now. He’s not in his right mind; everything is gonna make sense by morning.
“I’ll have to—” Jack audibly gulps. Jeff watches him with hazy and unfocused eyes, cutting him off before he can continue.
“Just do whatever before I bleed out and die,” he snaps, even in his weakened state unable to tear the barbs out of his words.
He nearly chokes when Jack starts to remove his hoodie, suddenly roused and alert.
Jack beats him to the punch. “Just do whatever,” he mocks. “Now stay still.”
Jeff inhales deeply, his chest tightening with a fear he hasn’t felt in ages. His protections are slipping away and falling to rest on the floor. The little strength he has is focusing hard on everything except the way Jack’s fingers ghost against his bare stomach when he lifts the fabric, and he’s especially not thinking about how his hand lingers for a second on Jeff’s collarbone before he’s left barren in only a black tank.
Next, Jack’s lifting the bottom of the tank, and the intimacy of the gesture despite the situation hits Jeff like a freight train. His breath quickens, the wound spitting out more blood as Jack peels away the fabric sticking to his torso, revealing the pale stomach stricken with red beneath. Jack’s hand ghosts over the wound, analyzing.
“Fuck,” he breathes, cringing. It must be worse than Jeff initially thought.
“Patch me up, would ya doc? Skip the meds, or whatever, I can take it.”
The silence is deafening. Jack is completely still. Jeff wouldn’t even be sure he’s breathing if not for the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“Jack?” His voice is softer than he meant it to be. It comes out a shaky whisper, and it must surprise the aforementioned demon, too, because it stuns him out of his stupor and he’s busying around the clinic as Jeff feels his life force pouring onto the cot.
The stitches come quick—painful, but fast and precise, though Jeff swears he can see Jack’s hands shaking as he slips in and out of consciousness. Every once in a while, Jack’s hand lingers, and Jeff’s skin buzzes where their flesh connects with a vitality that he thought had left him long ago. Each molecule in his body shudders in high alert. It’s an exhilarating and terrifying feeling, one he doesn’t have time to ponder as he fades into darkness again.
…He wakes up alone in a black room. What possesses him to call Jack’s name is a foreign entity to him, but he does, regardless, and the demon in question is at his side in an instant. His overwhelming presence makes Jeff feel uncomfortably warm. It must be the adrenaline wearing off, or his mind, still foggy from blood loss, playing tricks on him.
Jack hands him some water. His cracked lips and dry throat are thankful. “How do you feel?”
“Peachy,” Jeff says, downing the water in one gulp.
He’s glad he did so, because he chokes again when Jack’s palm presses against his stomach, feeling his own handiwork of tight bandages around stitches. Jeff’s body heats further, so much so it’s burning, his blood is evaporating into crimson clouds. The heat collects at a certain spot just under his torso, but he doesn’t have the willpower in him to justify that right now, so he blissfully ignores it even if the thought tugs at his mind in a slow torture.
It seems almost absentminded, the way Jack’s hand smoothes out over Jeff’s torso, finding its way through his ribs and the mounds of flesh until his fingers are ghosting along Jeff’s chin, so featherlight he’s sure he’s imagining it.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Jack whispers, pressing his fingers harder against Jeff’s flesh. His body responds by sending a shockwave reverberating throughout him, his face heating up so much so he’s sure Jack must feel it; he must feel how fast Jeff’s heart is beating, how undeniably alive it is in this moment.
“No. Why, you planning to kiss it better?” Jeff internally curses himself, blaming the way his body is involuntarily reacting to the closeness, the intimacy—it’s all because he hasn’t been touched in so long, all because Jack’s a doctor and that’s why he’s doing this, why Jeff is so okay with expressing the vulnerable side to him. It’s not his fault, it’s nothing abnormal, it can all be explained.
What can’t be explained is Jack leaning down to press a soft kiss to Jeff’s wound. What can’t be explained is the whispery moan Jeff lets out the moment he feels Jack’s lips against him. What can’t be explained is Jack’s hand resting flush against the side of his neck. None of it can be explained, and frankly, Jeff is tired trying to make sense of it.
“Does that feel better?” Jack practically purrs, and Jeff notices with a bitter resentment that the fucker is mocking him.
“Asshole,” Jeff spits. There’s no fight in it. Something inside him begs Jack not to stop, a deep desire that manifests in the pit of his stomach, a request that’ll never be spoken aloud. But the dark protects secrets, and his body is needy and wanting, and he’s sure Jack can see the way it reaches out to him, stuttering. Damned doctor and his observational skills.
“Looks like I’ll have to fix your mouth next,” Jack says, still teasing, but Jeff has found he doesn’t mind—for now.
And then, Jack’s breath is on his, and he’s finding that maybe he doesn’t mind at all. His gaping maw invites Jeff closer—when had he taken his mask off?—tantalizing, waiting. He’d never realized how plump Jack’s lips were, how his teeth stick out just slightly under his lip in a way that made them seem rife for discovery. He wonders, unsure, if Jack is thinking of Jeff like this, too. Jeff’s arms shake as he brings both hands up to Jack’s cheeks and cups his face. The skin is so much softer than he thought it’d be, so pliable to his touch. He realizes with a start that a sort of growling has taken root in Jack’s throat—purring, he remembers, the quality a side effect of his species.
Jack reclines full so that his legs are on either side of Jeff’s, using the cot to brace himself above the man, and they’re both still just hovering above each other, breathing the same air. Jeff is yearning for a touch he’s never had, body aching with a desire so incessant and ugly that he’s afraid the rot will never stop spreading through him, turning him to mold where he lays.
Jeff takes the initiative, pressing his mouth, unsure and inexperienced, against Jack’s.
It doesn’t magically cure him; his body still aches, but the warmness spreads from his mouth to the rest of his face to his torso to the tips of his fingers and toes—until his body is set alight with that yearning. A tight, decades old coil inside of Jeff snaps and he’s left erratic and hungry and desperate as he pulls Jack closer to taste him, to meld their bodies together until flesh is indistinguishable from flesh, until their bones fuse together into a disgusting tangle of sinew and gore.
Jeff groans into the kiss. He drinks the heat of Jack’s mouth, gulping it down where it settles in the pit of his stomach in a hard knot of wanting. There are implications to what they’re doing, to the way Jack’s hands roam Jeff’s face and neck, to the way Jeff’s grip settles firm on Jack’s waist—all implications he tosses away with the rest of his inhibitions as he kisses Jack ferociously, like he’s his last meal.
Jack’s tongue is a lustful appendage that burrows itself in Jeff’s throat like that’s its home. Jeff’s lungs scream for air, body flushed and aching, so he tears himself free of Jack’s mouth and heaves out a handful of breaths to keep himself from passing out.
“Holy shit,” Jack mutters, fingers curled into Jeff’s messy hair. “I think I need to put you on anti-psychotics.”
Jeff wipes the saliva from his mouth before it dries, still breathing heavily. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“You just kissed me. You kissed me.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you lose too much blood or something?” Jack deadpans, shaking his head in disbelief. “I thought you’d rather drop dead than admit you had feelings for me.”
Jeff’s jaw goes slack, “I don’t—you knew?!”
“I do now,” Jack smirks, “if that’s any comfort.” He sits up, now straddling Jeff, giving them both space to breathe.
Jeff head swims with not only thoughts of inadequacy, that’s a given, but with a pungent, nauseating bloodlust. As in, the realization of both what he’s admitted and what he’s done is driving him up the fucking wall. Where the only way to get rid of the urge is to flourish the knife he always keeps hidden on his person and drive it so deep into Jack’s flesh that the tip of the blade pokes out the other side. He also, strangely, has the urge to kiss him again. But more than that is the sense of wanting to vomit.
It took him years, many grueling, grueling years to accept that Jeff may be anything other than cisgender and heterosexual. Even if the signs were always there, he kept them tucked into his peripherals, something he could ignore and bury deep because he was too high-strung to confront anything about himself. A very teenage thing for him to do. But he’s come to terms with his gender and sexuality, now, enough to proclaim (secretly, in his head) that he differs from what’s considered default, but it’s not often that he ever acted on these ‘abnormal’ desires or thoughts. And Jeff has just kissed—no, made out—with a man.
So you can imagine the kind of stress he’s under.
“Hey,” Jack’s voice takes him out of his increasingly negative and violent thoughts. More like tugs him out of it by the scruff of his neck and leaves him barren under a microscope, really. “Are you okay?”
It’s such a simple question, one that usually fills him with anger, ironically enough. He fucking despises pity, people thinking they know there’s something wrong and then have the nerve to ask about it. But Jack says it in a way that makes him feel less embarrassed and more…sad. Jack doesn’t see him as glass that can be shattered at any moment. Maybe he sees him more as he is—a bunch of inherited traits that don’t belong to him, stitched together into a battered mess of a man.
“I’m fine.” He still lies, though, still acts like nothing is ever bothering him.
“What happened?” Jack gestures to Jeff’s—now patched—wounds.
“Just, the victim had people over and I didn’t expect it. They kicked my ass a bit ‘fore I killed all of them.” Jeff shrugs noncommittally, unwilling to relive the full experience, which included his head being slammed into a granite countertop and a kitchen knife lodged in his torso, for starters, because it doesn’t matter. He’ll pop more ibuprofen than suggested and struggle through it. So it goes.
“Clarifying question: as your doctor, is there anything else I need to know?”
Jeff squints. Fucker saw right through him. “Mild head trauma.”
Jack tuts, “Great. Explains what caused you to make out with me.”
Jeff levels him with the meanest glare he can muster, but can really offer no rebuttal. He did that. He did that, and the consequences of it are going to follow him for the rest of his life in this hellhole.
“Are we going to talk about that, or are you just going to brood?” Jack asks.
“Something tells me you’re not going to let me brood.”
“Yeah,” he chuckles, “You’re right. And you’ve essentially confessed you have some feelings for me, so I think we should talk about it.”
“I really don’t want to,” Jeff admits, and that’s about as much as he’s willing to be vulnerable, now that his head is clearer.
“I’m on your lap right now. I think we should talk.”
Jeff sighs, covering his face with his hands. “What’s there to say?”
“I don’t know, be honest with me for once?”
The silence is palpable. Maybe he should’ve just passed out from blood loss and avoided this entire encounter. (But he enjoyed it, and that is both terrifying to admit and strangely comforting, like he’s been inhaling water forever and just tasted oxygen. He can say it to himself. To Jack? That’s another story.)
Jack huffs, getting off of Jeff and pacing the length of the dark room. He switches on the light, and Jeff realizes he’s still lying on a cot in the infirmary, though thankfully not the bloody one he was stitched up in. Jack must’ve moved him, must’ve cared enough not to put him to sleep in his own gore. Does he know Jeff despises it, once the bloodlust is gone, does he know Jeff hates the feeling of sticky blood on his hands and body, hates the way it smells? Has he paid attention, found it with those damn observational skills of his? Is that how he knew Jeff cared for him, deep, deep down?
“Don’t know why I bother,” comes the resolution, bitter and ugly and completely, utterly expected.
“You know how I feel, though. You’ve read between the lines, why do I have to say anything?” Jeff retorts, sitting up. A pain blossoms through his body, stopping at certain nerve endings, and subsides once he’s upright.
“I just want to hear it.”
“I never took you for the egotistical type.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why are we arguing about this? You know how I am. I’d be horrible in any relationship beyond acquaintances, I’m being horrible to you right now,” Jeff says, near pleading. Don’t make him vulnerable. Don’t make him have something to lose. “I’ve always been horrible to you. It’s kind of my thing, being an asshole. You know that.”
“Unfortunately, I do, but I also know you. Not just the façade you parade around in because you’re afraid of yourself—I know you.”
Jeff is silent. The world is silent. He lays back down on the cot; it is all too much for him, right now.
“Then why are you still here?” he finally asks.
“I don’t know. I care about you more than I should. It makes me stick around your insufferable ass.”
Jeff cracks a grin at that; it feels natural to do so. “I think I care about you more than I should, too.” It’s fucking terrifying goes unsaid.
“So where’s that leave us?”
“Mutual state of dumbassery?”
Jack sits on the end of the cot. The way it dips to his weight makes Jeff’s stomach flip at the closeness. His heart skips a beat when Jack gently rests a hand on his leg, the touch warm and oddly comfortable, like sitting by the fire after a day out in the snow.
“I don’t want everything to go back to the way it was. And I don’t want you to go and fucking ignore me, either,” Jack says, quiet. Once again he has to be the one to pull the weight of their relationship—whether that be acquaintances or friends or something more complicated, something undefined. “You’re…important to me.” It almost feels like a love confession, the way he says it, like he’s forcing it out, like he can’t bear to keep it inside anymore. Jeff’s stomach lurches, a wave of nausea hitting him again. His body rejects the affection like it always has. The hand is burning, now, through his jeans and his flesh and up his bones and straight into his heart making it turn itself inside out and disintegrate.
“You’re a good kisser,” Jeff blurts, in lieu of his own riveting thoughts.
“Jesus Christ,” Jack mutters, putting his head in his hands.
“Shit. I—You’re about the only person I like in this damn place, even remotely. I’d be either dead or a walking corpse without you. Completely useless,” he says this all very quickly, the words like acid on his tongue. “And I’m, I wouldn’t want to be, uh, I wouldn’t want it to be someone else. Here with me, I mean.”
It’s all very weird, saying these things, but he felt within himself he had to do it. As much as he despises it, Jeff has something to lose here, he has something to prove. He’s never been one to ever put his feelings on display in a way that mattered, never opened up to anyone in his damn life. His thoughts are smothered in barbed wire and iron fences to ensure that nothing is ever out of his control. There’s something to be said, then, about the way Jack makes him nervous, because at times he thinks he’s going to say something more. By instinct, he considers it a bad thing. He wonders if it has to be.
Jack smiles something authentic. The first of its kind. “I like you too, dumbass.”
Jeff smiles back, and maybe this time, it borders on being genuine.